Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to Ashes (Case #55) is the fifty-fifth case of the game.

Case Background
The victim was Tess Goodwin, an escaped convict, who died burnt at the stake at the Nautical Museum. The killer was Luna Hecate, a member specializing in witchcraft.

Luna found out that Tess spent hours in the detention center's library trying to study how her ancestor Mary Goodwin died and couldn't afford to let Tess get away with it. Luna mailed a pendulum to Tess's detention cell so Tess could hypnotize the guards and escape. Luna's plan went well as she was able to corner Tess in what used to be a pilgrim ship in the past. Luna tied Tess the same way Mary was tied up and then killed Tess the same way Mary was murdered in 1649. Luna admitted that she was a member of the Crimson Order, but she refused to out the name of the leader as her family had been Crimson Order members for generations.

In court, Luna stated that she did the city a favor but the Judge countered that Tess's guilt didn't warrant a murder, and condemned the convict to 25 years in jail.

Towards the end of this case, the team finally solved the big puzzle--why Chief Samuel 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 socialite Adam Bentley. He knew if the team caught him alive, the Crimson Order would kill him after executing Cathy just like they executed his wife Donna back in 2004 to prevent King from quitting the Crimson Order. 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.

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

Although the team solved the big puzzle, they were still left with two more tasks to complete: to find out why King murdered Adam, and to unmask the Crimson Order's leader.

Victim

 * Tess Goodwin (died burnt at the stake)VB55.jpg

Murder Weapon

 * Bonfire

Killer

 * Luna Hecate

Killer's Profile

 * The killer knows witchcraft.
 * The killer has scratch marks.
 * The killer owns a black cat.
 * The killer's blood type is A-.
 * The killer has blond hair.

Trivia

 * This case, A Brave New World (Case #52), Burying the Hatchet (Case #53) and The Poisoned Truth (Case #54) are the only cases in which we have to investigate a crime scene from the past.