Samuel King

"Orders are orders!"

- Samuel King

Samuel King (1938-2013) was the Chief of the Grimsborough Police Department. He was seen for the first time in The Death of Rosa Wolf (Case #1). In It All Ends Here (Case #51), on Grimsborough's Election Day, Samuel assassinated Adam Bentley by shooting his handgun between Adam's eyes at the Red Party's offices.

Profile
Samuel was a man of 75 years of age who had grey hair parted to the right side. He had light blue eyes and a thick mustache above his lips. He used to wear a white shirt with a black tie underneath a navy police chief suit. The suit showed four stars on each shoulder, and consisted of GPD's logo on the sleeves. Samuel was 6 feet and 1 inch tall, he weighed 180 lbs, and his blood type was A+.

In It All Ends Here, Samuel wore an "I VOTED" badge on the right side of his suit. In the very case, it was discovered that he could handle guns and was right-handed.

Personal Life
Not a lot was known about the personal life of Samuel.

Donna King, who had died 10 years ago, was his wife, Cathy King was his granddaughter, and, as discovered in The Poisoned Truth (Case #54), William Kingsley was his ancestor. Also, Samuel used to be friends with Sheila MacCarthy before she made her breakthrough and became an actress. He also happened to be a good friend of Stuart Huckabee and Serena Johnson.

As discovered in Blood and Glory (Case #42), Samuel was fond of playing tennis.

In A Brave New World (Case #52), much to the team's horror, it was discovered that Samuel was a crucial member of the Crimson Order as said by Jason Palms.

And lastly in There Will Be Blood (Case 56), it was discovered that Samuel used to attend violin classes along with Serena Johnson when they were kids and there, they met Roman Harris.

A Shot of Beauty
Samuel was aware of Alden Greene released on bond due to a procedure violation in court when Jones and the player wanted to spread the word. Samuel told the team that the police could not overturn the court's decision in allowing a release on bond. Jones opted to go on top of Alden realizing that Alden's Greene PharmaCorp were the ones providing the collagen that killed Kerry Ann Buxton. Jones didn't trust Alden's company that during the Additional Investigation, going against Samuel's orders, Jones checked Buxton Mansion for any unregulated medicines pending analysis. The medicine was proven to be safe, but Samuel was not pleased when he found out Jones took the player to chew on Alden as Samuel believed it was an act of insubordination.

One Wedding and a Funeral
Samuel was very irritated when the team was taking too long with Walter Fairbanks's murder investigation, that he had to snap at the team to encourage them to find hard evidence to complete the murder investigation. Instead of congratulating the team, Samuel yelled at the team again for loitering in the station, telling them that celebrating had to wait because Molly Mocard was to be on suicide check until further notice.

Snakes on the Stage
Samuel took advantage of the player and Jones when he overheard them talking about socialite Adam Bentley, as he didn't believe in coincidences, and in an act of authoritative abuse, ordered the team to keep a close eye on him, meaning that Samuel took a personal interest in the murder investigation of sorts. Following Adam's second chit-chat with Jones and the player, the team reported Adam's string of lies, up to and not including being Roland Vane's foster brother. Samuel King was known to be protective of the mayor, Howard Johnson, when he told Jones that he would hold him liable if anything happened to Howard due to Adam Bentley.

Samuel asked the player to accompany him to grill Adam after Annabel Stewart was indicted for Roland's murder. Samuel needed to ask Adam a few questions, but Adam tried to dodge the Chief by saying that he was in a hurry, because the elections were rapidly approaching, and Adam lost an important letter in the Livingstone Club. Samuel agreed to help Adam so that he could stop snooping around. After the player unraveled a Red Party (Mayor Johnson's party) invitation, Samuel demanded to know as to why Adam would be involved with the Red and Blue (Martha Price's party) Parties, but Adam wanted Samuel to give him some slack as life in Maple Heights wasn't easy.

It All Ends Here
The team found a hand gun in a trash bag at the "Election Podium" crime scene, analyzed the gun, confirmed the gun to belong to prisoner Tony Marconi, and chatted with Tony about Adam Bentley's murder. Alex opted to dig deeper and told the team that the gun was confiscated for driving under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol by Chief King. Jones refused to think that the Chief kept the gun, but at the time Samuel confiscated the gun, he wasn't the Chief of Police when he did so--he filed the gun as evidence of Marconi's arrest, but for some reason it disappeared. Jones was shocked that Samuel became a suspect as a result of the gun fiasco.

The team then reported Adam's murder investigation progress to the Chief but told the Chief that he was a new suspect in the investigation of Adam's murder, in which Jones told that the gun was confiscated by him years before this case when he arrested Marconi for a driving offense. Samuel was very impressed with the player's integrity, and thus decided to step down as Chief of Police until the investigation ended, and gave Jones and the player permission to treat him as an ordinary suspect.

Samuel agreed to talk to Jones and the player in the interrogation room stating that he couldn't be treated differently from other suspects and Jones started by having Samuel confirm that he confirmed the gun to be confiscated from Marconi. Samuel stated that he did it and placed Tony behind bars before the player placed Marconi behind bars for good. Jones wanted to know if the gun was kept in the evidence room but Samuel couldn't help the team as although he filed the gun based on procedures he needed to follow, whatever happened to the gun was out of his reach afterwards. Jones also wanted to know as to why Samuel held a grudge against Adam Bentley and Samuel feared that Adam was getting very close to the Mayor and feared that something bad might happen to the Mayor. Samuel was able to critique Jones's way of interrogating suspects when Jones inquired about Serena Johnson and his apparent bias of the Johnsons, but Jones needed to explore every lead. Thus ended Samuel's interrogation.

In a shocking turn of events, the killer's attributes incriminated Samuel as Adam's killer, forcing the player to take Jones to the Chief's office to arrest Samuel, but Jones didn't understand the reason as to why, but also refused to think Samuel would kill Adam. Much to Jones's disbelief, Samuel admitted to Jones and the player that he killed Adam, but Jones still refused to believe Samuel as Adam never harmed the mayor, but Samuel countered (with guilt) that him killing Adam had nothing to do with the mayor. Jones went ahead and demanded answers from Samuel up to and including explaining to Judge Hall as to why he did it, but Samuel felt guilty of what he did, advised the team to find their own answers, wept, and pointed a gun at his head. Jones told Samuel not to commit suicide as punishment for Adam's murder, but Samuel felt that he had no choice but to commit suicide for the actions he took. In his last words, Samuel told the team that working with them had been an honor, and alas, he shot himself to death in a tragic outcome. Thus, Samuel's motives to kill Adam would remain a mystery for now.

After the tragedy, during the Additional Investigation, the team found a medal at the place where Howard was announced Mayor for another term, and after revealing the medal to be Samuel's Medal of Valor, inquired about the medal to the Mayor. Howard told the team that Samuel received the Medal of Valor when he started his political career and when Samuel was just an inspector. Samuel arrived at a burning building knowing that the Grimsborough Fire Department would be too late and opted to save a child trapped in a burning building, something Howard could not reconcile with Samuel killing Adam. After the inquiry, the team went to give the medal to Cathy, who wanted to place the medal at his grave, although to this day, Cathy would not know as to why Samuel lost himself.

Eventually, Stuart Huckabee would approach the team and politely ask them to head to the Airport district to find the truth behind Samuel's reasons for killing both Adam and himself, and any plot holes the team could benefit from that could incriminate hidden evils they could arrest.

A Brave New World
At the Airport district, after the death of Chief King, it was revealed from Herman Cavendish that the King family were from a Pilgrim family called Kingsley, but their family name changed to King after those centuries. Another shocking fact was discovered in the very case that Samuel was one of the members of the notoriously secret society known as "The Crimson Order". In the Additional Investigation of this case, Cathy asked for the team's help to find a lost article about one of her grandfather's investigations in the natural harbor. When they found it, they sent it to Alex for analysis. Alex said that this article was about a murder investigation about a man called Gerald Walker, but he said that this murder investigation was gone from their files, and the only one who could delete it was Chief King. Jones couldn't believe that Chief King would help the Crimson Order, so the team went to talk to Jason Palms about it. Jason said that it was the Crimson Order's doing of deleting the murder investigation from the police forces' files. He further said that Chief King was a member of this secret society because all his investigations on the Crimson Order were silent.

Burying the Hatchet
The team discovered that Samuel King's knife was used in an arson attack at the Aloki Settlement. He never reported the loss, so he had been evidently involved. On the other hand, Ron revealed that he had flammable products stolen the day before the fire, and the Crimson Order was evidently involved since Ron found a ninja star with the Crimson Order logo on it stuck in the wall of his shop after the robbery. They also received a bloody naphtha container scrap from Anakee, which she found after the fire. They examined it and sent to Grace a blood sample. She analyzed the DNA she found in the blood and she found out that it was Samuel King's. From all this info, the team deduced that the flammable products stolen from the Grim Gas Station were used to start the fire, which meant that King did it for the Crimson Order. The reason is still unknown, but the only hypothesis the team found out was that the Crimson Order did it to prevent the Aloki tribe from getting any more land since there were old County documents proving that they were entitled to more land. It might explain why Samuel ignored them when they asked to file a complaint.

Ashes to Ashes
During the Additional Investigation, the secret behind Chief's suicide and further valuable information about the Crimson Order started to come out.

All the years, Chief King was manipulated and forced to act for the Crimson Order. Finally, at some point in 2004, King had enough and wanted to give up on the Crimson Order. But the Crimson Order couldn't let him go, he was too valuable for them. Thus, the day King decided to leave, the Crimson Order killed his wife, Donna King.

Donna was killed by Shane Kolinsky, a now deceased member of the Crimson Order, while an attempted robbery. Shane was soon brought to court where he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. And shockingly, he died of food poisoning just two weeks after being arrested. This didn't seem to be just a coincident and thus it is presumed that it was King who killed Shane to avenge his innocent wife's death. However, it hasn't been proven yet.

Samuel King's reason for committing suicide
In the aftermath of Luna Hecate's indictment, the team managed to find out why Chief King committed suicide. King would do anything in order to protect his granddaughter Cathy from the notorious Crimson Order. He knew he was soon to be arrested by the team after committing the murder of Adam Bentley. He knew if the team caught him alive, the Crimson Order would execute Cathy before executing him, since that was the way how they worked. Thus, King was afraid that if he ever talked, he would be passing harm to himself and his granddaughter. For this reason, Chief King shot himself to death, to protect Cathy, for she was all he had.

King explained all of these clearly in a letter written by him to his deceased wife right before he was about to be arrested in It All Ends Here. King then hid the letter inside a cryptex located at the Nautical Museum his wife had designed, the same place where Tess Goodwin was murdered.

The team couldn't risk telling all of this to Cathy since she would probably come to them looking for answers, and thus requested Constance to keep this secret until they could finally put an end to the Crimson Order.

There Will Be Blood
The team managed to solve a puzzle regarding Samuel's reason to commit suicide back in Ashes to Ashes, but were still left with solving the puzzle regarding Samuel's motives to kill Adam Bentley, which they excellently did later on in There Will Be Blood, the last case of Grimsborough.

The Execution Order
During the construction site investigation, the truth behind Samuel killing Adam was revealed during the team's infiltration of the Crimson Order's illicit Gold Mine: Serena found out that Adam discovered the Crimson Order's gold mine and the order's existence alas Serena couldn't afford Adam to get away with it. Adam made it clear to the Crimson Order that he won't out the Crimson Order's illicit gold mine if the Crimson Order paid him, but in response to Adam's blackmail, Serena "pressingly" ordered Samuel to perform the hit on Adam, thus finally knowing the reason as to why Samuel kept quiet when he admitted guilt for killing Adam, and the reason to why the Order wanted Adam dead.

Gameplay
As the Chief of the Grimsborough Police Force, King asks the player for reports from three teammates before he can let them investigate the next case, and also notifies the player when they levels up in Grimsborough. Starting at the end of Case #51, Jones will be the one notifying the player of a level-up in Grimsborough and from Case #52, Jones will be asking the player to turn-in reports from three teammates before advancing to the next case. Chief King being replaced by Jones occurs due to Chief King committing suicide in Chapter 4 of Case #51.

Trivia

 * Samuel, Donald Byrd and Matt Barry are the only killers in Grimsborough who aren't indicted by Judge Hall.
 * Samuel and Donald Byrd are the only killers in Grimsborough who committed suicide.
 * Samuel, Howard Johnson, Carl Ackerman, Luke Harris, Heather Valentine, and Yann Toussaint are the only suspects who appeared in at least one case before appearing as a suspect in a further one.
 * Samuel and Yann Toussaint are the only main characters-to-date who were flagged as a suspect in a case.
 * Samuel also happens to be the only main character who was later incriminated to be the killer.
 * Samuel is one of the characters who animate (or move) in at least one cutscene in the game.
 * In the "Gift Shop" crime scene of The Ice Queen (a case in Pacific Bay), a US Postal Stamp with Samuel King's face can be spotted.

Case Appearances
As one of the main characters and the Chief of the Grimsborough PD, Samuel appears in every case of Grimsborough except Beautiful No More, Anatomy of a Murder, and The Lake's Bride. His final appearance takes place in It All Ends Here.

After his death, Samuel is also mentioned several times during the events of A Brave New World, Burying the Hatchet, The Poisoned Truth, Ashes to Ashes (also appears in a flashback), and There Will Be Blood.