Morix: Web of Mistrust

Turnabout Live, Part 10

August 8

Courtroom No. 4

12:00 PM

Felicity Amaya

"The crime took place the day of a scheduled tour at the Lady Bird Studios," I began. "However, an email was sent out a few hours before the tour began to say that no members of the cast were set to show up anymore. As of the time that this email had been sent, the crime had already been committed, and the victim had been dead for a while."

Chrysalis offered her opinion at this point, and she let out a small sigh before shaking her head. "The email was widely assumed to have been sent by the victim, but this is not necessarily the case. In fact, chances are that the culprit was the one to send out the email at the time of the crime. They wanted to keep the members of the cast and crew from interfering in their plans until after they had set up the crime scene to look the way that they needed it to."

"The victim was killed in his office when he came by to prepare for the tour," I continued. "He was shot in the head, and he died instantly. Blood was left everywhere in the area, but the killer didn't want the office to be found in the state that it was in, so they put the body on top of a rolling costume rack and decided to move it away from the room. They settled on placing the body in the room belonging to James Devine, the star of the show being filmed at the studios."

"That was when the emails were sent out," Chrysalis said next. "The killer only wanted James there so that he would be easier to frame. They set up the body in James' room before placing the rack in the room and covering up the bloodstained areas with clothing from other areas in the studios. The blood was wiped off, but there were still traces of it to be found in the region."

"The director's office was locked from there, and the window was blockaded to keep everyone out. The keys for the studios were used to lock up the area, keeping everyone away to ensure that nobody could interfere. The keys have been missing for quite some time since then, but I believe that they'll still be able to offer us important evidence yet," I declared. "Anyways, the point is that the body wound up in the defendant's dressing room."

"The culprit placed a sign over the door to make doubly sure that nobody investigated it until the time was right for the body to be discovered in a staged manner during the tour," Chrysalis continued. "The culprit handled quite a few objects at the scene of the crime, and I'm sure that we would be more than able to find out who was responsible if we compared fingerprints. Even if no official prints were left behind, the size would still be notable, and we could use that to narrow down our ideas as to who the culprit is."

"The killer didn't just leave behind marks using their hands though. In fact, they also left traces behind of their feet. They spilled powder in the defendant's dressing room as they were setting up the space to look how they wanted it to, and the spilled powder wound up absorbing a footprint from when they were trying to make their escape. The size of the footprint in the dressing room disproves the possibility of most people at the time having committed the crime," I told the court. 

Mr. Gassman was starting to look particularly nervous now, but he seemed to understand that speaking up would only hurt his case. Interrupting our explanation was far from being the best idea, so he instead went silent and looked at everything in the area that could keep him from making eye contact with the people around him. 

"The keys and gun used in the crime went missing," Chrysalis went on. "The culprit took both of these objects with them when they made their escape from the crime scene. The building where the crime took place was searched from top to bottom on multiple occasions, and yet, there were no traces of the gun or keys left behind. This means that the killer must have taken both the weapon and the keys with them when they were fleeing from the scene."