The Crimson Order

The Crimson Order is the main antagonist in Criminal Case and also a notoriously secret society in the game that has been "controlling" the city of Grimsborough since 1642. Details about the Crimson Order were first mentioned in A Brave New World (Case #52). The Order was finally put an end to in There Will Be Blood (Case #56), the final case of District 6 and the city of Grimsborough.

History
The Crimson Order is a secret society group that was founded in 1642, 372 years before the events of A Brave New World. They used violence, intimidation, murdering, and anything to ensure that they would stay secret and nobody revealed their secret.

A Brave New World
The Crimson Order was first mentioned in A Brave New World. The group was revealed to be a notoriously secret society that committed many murders, killing the innocents who were either researching or were about to reveal some sort of discreet information about them.

It was in this case when it was discovered that they had killed Pip Huckabee, a Pilgrim boy, and many others, in order to stay discreet. In this very case, they followed Susan Huckabee and threatened to kill her along with her family if she didn't silence Stuart Huckabee, who was researching about the secret society.

It was also discovered that the deceased Chief of Grimsborough Police Department, Samuel King, was a member of this notoriously secret society. This was discovered in the Additional Investigation of A Brave New World when Catherine King 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 this.

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.

There are also suspicions that the Crimson Order may have been involved in all the murders that took place in Grimsborough, or at least in Adam Bentley's murder committed by Chief King in It All Ends Here (Case #51).

Burying the Hatchet
During the Additional Investigation, Alex told the team that he spent the last three hours rummaning through old press articles related to the Aloki tribe, and he found out that there was an unsolved case of arson at the Aloki trailer park ten years ago, and all the documents were lost in the fire. So Alex tried to find something in the police database, but it was as if this fire never happened. So the team started new investigation on this mystery. After checking out on Ron Riggs, Delsin Peota and Anakee, they found out what really happened.

They discovered that Samuel King's knife was used in the 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.

The Poisoned Truth
During Chapter 2, the team found a torn pattern when they travelled in the past, exactly in 1645, when Grimsborough was a small Pilgrim village. After restoring the torn pattern, they saw the Crimson Order symbol on it. They then went to talk to the victim's ghostwriter, Jenny Quaid, since it was hightly possible that Rosie Gatewood discovered a secret about the Crimson Order and was going to write about it. Jenny told the team that Rosie thought that the Crimson Order's involvement in Grimsborough's history would make for a fascinating book, no matter the danger.

At the end of the case, it was discovered that Ashton Cooper, another one of Crimson Order's known members, was the one liable for the murder of the famous writer, Rosie Gatewood.

After being arrested, Ashton claimed that the Crimson Order was just like him: they were proud of their city and they would do anything to protect it. When Officer Jones angrily told him that they didn't make the city proud as they were nothing but a bunch of psycho killers, Ashton countered that they weren't senseless murderers and that all their so-called crimes were justified. He then said that Rosie was about to depict the Crimson Order as insidious manipulators and so, the group ordered him with a mission to kill the famous writer, and he executed it perfectly. Ashton further said that he used the "Killer Cards" in order to learn about the descriptions of each murder which would help him to commit the perfect crime. Ashton then concluded by telling the team how he prepared the poisoned dart, how he made sure everything was perfect, and lastly, how he had to act so fast and flee the scene after committing Rosie's murder.

At court, without any remorse, Ashton once again claimed that he committed the murder for the eternal glory of Grimsborough, and determinedly said to the Judge that putting him inside prison would change nothing as he could still act as a Crimson brother. After hearing enough, the Judge sentenced Ashton to life in jail for the murder of Rosie Gatewood. Before being taken away, Ashton stated that the Crimson Order had a message for the player which said, "your days are numbered". But Jones furiously countered that the Crimson Order did not scare his partner at all and that it was them who should be afraid instead.

Ashes to Ashes
Luna Hecate, a modern-day witchcraft practitioner, found out that Tess Goodwin 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 the Nautical Museum (which has a similar look of 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.

During the Additional Investigation of the very case, the secret behind Chief's suicide and further valuable information about the Crimson Order started to reveal.

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.

Chief 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 and expose their leader.

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 finale of District 6 and Grimsborough. Serena Johnson was then found guilty for making Samuel execute Adam Bentley. The team went to talk to Cathy King and they found that Cathy was a very serious suspect in the investigation and thus was locked up for the rest of the investigation.

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 tried to blackmail the Crimson Order but in response to Adam's blackmail attempt, 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.

Finale
The team, in There Will Be Blood, were still left with one more thing: unmasking the leader of the Crimson Order and putting an end to this chapter of terror.

The mysterious leader of the Crimson Order gruesomely murdered Aloki Indian Delsin Peota with a dagger, with the words, "YOU ARE NEXT", carved onto the victim's chest, indicating that the player was next in line.

In the game's most 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 and founded the Crimson Order, in which Jones was aghast because those 4 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. Officer Ramirez intervened hitting Milton with his saucepan--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 tonight'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 Johnson 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 told the Judge that the Crimson Order should be worshipped and not locked away. The Judge continued by holding Serena liable for manipulating Samuel King for killing Adam Bentley but Serena countered by claiming that she would be known as the city's greatest matriarch. The Judge then made the murder of Rachel Priest a Crimson Order murder but Alden countered that the Order could have made Grimsborough rich because of the gold Solomon seized from the Aloki. Howard was told that he abused his power as Grimsborough Mayor and the Judge assumed that he was acting on his mother's orders but Howard didn't get what the Judge stated.

The mess the Crimson Order made through 4 centuries of bloodshed were grounds for a lifetime jail sentence in solitary confinement, even though the Judge felt it was too light of a sentence in her opinion. Milton responded in disgust that the Crimson Order built Grimsborough but the Judge stated that the city was built through acts of murder and told Milton not to talk anymore. Cathy was released from jail, the Judge 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.

Known Murders Committed

 * Pip Huckabee (Killed in 1642) - Murdered to ensure that they would stay secret and Pip would not reveal any kind of information about them.
 * Harriet Gatewood (Killed in 1645) - Murdered by Geert De Haan, who was told to follow the Crimson Order's orders and lead the village.
 * Mary Goodwin (Killed in 1649) - Tried and burned for witchcraft on the Pilgrim docks as she was about to expose the Crimson Order.
 * Gerald Walker (Date of Murder Unknown) - Murdered for an unknown reason.
 * Donna King (Killed in 2004) - Murdered by Shane Kolinsky, during a robbery, to blackmail Chief Samuel King and force him to not leave the Crimson Order.
 * Adam Bentley (Killed in 2013) - Murdered by Samuel King originally for reasons unexplained, later to be under orders by Serena Johnson as Adam discovered the Crimson Order's Gold Mine and was going to expose the illicit endeavor.
 * Rosie Gatewood (Killed in 2014) - Murdered by Ashton Cooper, as Rosie was about to depict the Crimson Order as insidious manipulators.
 * Tess Goodwin (Killed in 2014) - Murdered by Luna Hecate, as Tess was about to dig into secrets of the Crimson Order while researching about her ancestor's death.
 * Delsin Peota (Killed in 2014) - Murdered by Milton Grimmes, the leader of the Order, in the final case of Grimsborough.

Trivia

 * The Crimson Order is a parody of a real-life secret society known as Illuminati.

Case Appearances

 * A Brave New World (Case #52)
 * Burying the Hatchet (Case #53; mentioned during the Additional Investigation)
 * The Poisoned Truth (Case #54)
 * Ashes to Ashes (Case #55)
 * There Will Be Blood (Case #56)