Delsin Peota

Delsin Peota (1985-2014) was a suspect during the murder investigation of a social worker named Sandy Grimmes in Burying the Hatchet (Case #53). In There Will Be Blood (Case #56), Delsin was gruesomely murdered.

Profile
Delsin was a 29-year old Aloki Indian with black hair wrapped with a brown bandanna. He sported some sort of birth mark on his left cheek. He wore a red plaid shirt and also a beaded necklace around his neck. During the events of Burying the Hatchet, Delsin had bad breath, had turpentine contact, and smoked.

Role in Case(s)
Delsin was an Aloki Indian who was the boyfriend of the victim, Sandy Grimmes. He also happened to be the ex-husband of Shanaya Peota, another residence of the Aloki trailer park.

Delsin was called into the investigation when the team uncovered a faded engraving on the totem pole wing they found in the Aloki Settlement. The object had "Sandy + Delsin" carved on it, which proved that Sandy had carved the name of her lover, just like her ancestor, Solomon Grimmes, did. (After his arrival to America, Solomon started dating an Aloki Indian girl named Inaya, the ex-lover of Keme Peota and the ancestor of Delsin.) Delsin told the team that he and Sandy were lovers and that he had also given her Keme's panther amulet, a precious family heirloom.

Delsin was interrogated a second time when the team found out that he had sent the victim a photo of his family with a threat note written on it. He explained to the team that he did it because Sandy had sent his kids to foster care--she had removed them from his ex-wife Shanaya's custody and instead of rehousing them with Delsin, she sent them to foster care.

Delsin was spoken to again in the Additional Investigation of the very case, when the team decided to ask him about the arson at the Aloki Settlement which had occurred a decade ago. Delsin said that it had destroyed the Alokis' future. He further said that the Aloki Settlement was targeted to prevent them from getting any more land, since there were old county documents proving that they were entitled to more land, but they were destroyed in the fire. He continued that there were no investigations, so they tried to to file a complaint but nobody helped them. The last thing Delsin mentioned was that they had salvaged everything that survived the fire and stored it away in a box which the team then found after searching for it in the Aloki trailer park. Inside the box was a police knife and the team immediately handed it to Alex for analysis. After analyzing it, Alex discovered that the police knife belonged to Chief King, who had never reported the loss. After further investigation, the team discovered that it was King who had started the arson (which explained why he ignored the Aloki Indians when they wanted to file a complaint) using the flammable products he stole from Ron Riggs's gas station (which explained why King's blood was found on a naphtha container scrap).

Murder Details
Delsin was found at the construction site at the woods horrendously scalped to death with the words "YOU ARE NEXT" carved onto his chest. It looked as if he was killed as a threat message to the player indicating they were next. The team didn't hesitate to ship Delsin's dead body to Nathan for autopsy. Upon autopsy, Nathan deduced Delsin was scalped alive and might have suffered intense pain while being scalped. The killer pulled Delsin's scalp after making a scalp cut, grounds for Delsin to die of rapid blood loss. He also found traces of abietic acid and gold on Delsin's skull, which came from a material called rosin. Since rosin is used on bowed-string instruments to produce a better sound, it was used by a violinist, meaning the killer knew how to play a violin.

Nathan then determined due to the amount of gold dust on Delsin's body, Delsin was not murdered at the construction site, but in an illicit gold mine, which was located by Ramirez, allowing Jones and the player to dig deeper into the mystery behind Delsin's murder.

Killer and Motives
In the case's tense moments, Milton Grimmes, the prison warden of Grimsborough Detention Center, was incriminated as the one who killed Delsin and was also revealed to be the leader of the Crimson Order.

Milton believed that the city belonged to the Grimmes family and admitted that he killed Delsin and drank the blood of the slain Aloki. Milton dropped a bomb when he revealed that his ancestor, Solomon Grimmes, did the same to Inaya because Solomon discovered that the Aloki tribe had an abundance of gold through a gold mine and thought that the gold would be enough to control Grimsborough with an iron fist. So according to Milton, Solomon devised a plan to gather the Aloki in one roof by seducing Inaya, invoke a Pilgrim-Aloki feast, and have the Crimson Order do the dirty work. After the Aloki Massacre, Solomon seized the Gold Mine for the Crimson Order's financial benefit, to which Inspector Jones was aghast because those four centuries gold was the Order's motive.

Milton continued by stating that with the gold mine as the Order's headquarters, he could declare himself as a dictator and a God, and attempted to kill the player with his handgun. Ramirez intervened by hitting Milton with his frying pan--mirroring the saving move he demonstrated when the team arrested Tess Goodwin. The team didn't hesitate to handcuff Milton, but Milton responded in disgust that he was supposed to bring the player's head to Milton's great ceremony in the Crimson Order's Headquarters. And so Jones and the player disguised themselves as Crimson Order members to arrest Alden Greene and Howard Johnson at the Crimson Order hideout. With Milton, Alden, Howard, and Serena detained, the trial of the century was about to ensue.

Judge Hall started by profiling the Grimmes family as Crimson Order leaders and mass murderers, but Milton blasted Judge Hall for labeling the Crimson Order as criminals instead of heroes. Next, Judge Hall held Serena liable for the second degree murder of Adam Bentley, to which Serena responded that she would be known as Grimsborough's greatest matriarch. Furthermore, Judge Hall made Rachel Priest's murder a Crimson Order murder, but Alden countered that the Order could've made Grimsborough rich because of the gold the Crimson Order seized from the Aloki. Finally, Judge Hall told Howard he abused his power as Mayor of Grimsborough, acting on his mother's orders, although Howard didn't understand what Judge Hall said.

The mess the Crimson Order made through four centuries of bloodshed were grounds for a lifetime jail sentence in solitary confinement, even though Judge Hall felt it was too light of a sentence in her opinion. Milton responded in disgust that the Crimson Order built Grimsborough, but Judge Hall stated that the city was built through acts of murder and told Milton not to talk anymore. Judge Hall admitted that the mass sentencing of the Crimson Order finally placed an end of a dark era, and a bright future awaits Grimsborough, alas marks the end of the Crimson Order.

Trivia

 * Delsin, Salvador Cordero, and Molly Robinson appeared as suspects in one case before being murdered in the final case of their respective districts.
 * On Delsin's mugshot image, his birthmark is smaller.
 * Besides that, as a corpse in the "case preview" image, Delsin's birthmark is on the right cheek instead of the left. But as confirmed by the developers, it wasn't an error but the image was just mirrored so that Delsin's birthmark would be more visible.

Case Appearances

 * Burying the Hatchet (Case #53)
 * There Will Be Blood (Case #56)