The Crimson Order

The Crimson Order is a notoriously secret organization featured in the first season of Criminal Case.

Details about the Crimson Order came to light in A Brave New World, most of which revolved around the organization's heinous and discreet crimes throughout the years across Grimsborough. As the story progressed, the ill-famed society caused complete mayhem for the Grimsborough Police Department, until it was finally put to an end in There Will Be Blood.

History
Headquartered in Airport (a district based in the city of Grimsborough), the Crimson Order was founded in 1642, around 372 years before the events of the game. The organization is infamous for having resorted to violence, intimidation, murder, and just about anything in order to ensure that it would stay secret and that nobody revealed its identities.

A Brave New World
The Crimson Order was first mentioned in this case. The group was revealed to be a notoriously secret society that committed many murders, killing the innocents who were either researching the organization or were about to reveal some sort of discreet information about them, and that was how they'd been "controlling" Grimsborough for centuries.

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 the very case, they followed Susan Huckabee and threatened to kill her along with her family if she didn't silence her brother, Stuart Huckabee, who was researching the secret society.

It was also unearthed that the deceased Chief of Grimsborough PD, Samuel King, who was liable for committing the shocking murder-suicide back in It All Ends Here, happened to be an important member of the Crimson Order. This was discovered during the Additional Investigation of the case when Cathy King, King's granddaughter, asked for the police team's help to find a lost article about one of her grandfather's investigations in the natural harbor. When Inspector Jones and the player found it, they sent it to Alex Turner for analysis. Alex confirmed that the article was about the murder investigation of a man named Gerald Walker, but also said that information about this mysterious murder was gone from the police files and that the only one who could delete it was Chief King himself. Jones couldn't believe that Chief King would help the Crimson Order, so he and the player decided to have a conversation with conspiracy theorist Jason Palms about this subject.

Jason stated that it was the Crimson Order's doing of deleting vital details about Gerald's murder investigation from the police force's files. He further said that Chief King was a member of the secret organization because all his investigations on the Crimson Order were silent.

Per the late Stuart Huckabee, the Crimson Order was under suspicion of all the recent murders that took place in Grimsborough.

Burying the Hatchet
In the aftermath of the case's closure, Alex told the team that he spent the last three hours rummaging through old press articles related to the Aloki tribe and managed to find out that there was an unsolved case of arson at the Aloki trailer park ten years ago, and that all the documents were lost in the fire. So Alex tried to find something more about the unsolved case in the police database, but it seemed as if the fire never happened. As a result, the team decided to commence an investigation about this mystery; they interrogated the owner of Grim Gas Station, an Aloki Indian, and an Aloki shaman, thus finding out what had really happened.

The team discovered that Chief 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, the gas station owner stated that he had his flammable products stolen the day before the fire and that the Crimson Order was evidently involved since he found a ninja star (bearing the Order's insignia) stuck into the wall of his shop after the robbery. Furthermore, the team received a bloody naphtha container scrap from the Aloki shaman which she had found after the fire. They then collected a blood sample from it and sent it to Grace Delaney for analysis. Grace analyzed the DNA she found in the blood and confirmed that it was Chief King's.

Gathering all this information, the team deduced that the flammable products stolen from Grim Gas Station were used to start the fire, which meant that Chief King had done it for the Crimson Order. The reason behind this act remained unknown for the time being, but the only hypothesis the team found out was that the Crimson Order had done 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. This explained why Chief King ignored the Aloki when they asked to file a complaint.

The Poisoned Truth
The team found a torn pattern when they "traveled to the past", exactly in 1645, when Grimsborough was only a small Pilgrim village. Restoring the torn pattern, the Crimson Order's insignia could be seen on it. They then went to talk to Jenny Quaid, ghostwriter of the late Rosie Gatewood, since it was highly possible that Rosie was murdered due to discovering a secret or two about the Order and planning to write about it in the future. During the conversation, Jenny informed 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 climax of the case, Ashton Cooper, another one of Crimson Order's known members, was incriminated to be the Rosie's slayer.

During the moment of his arrest, Ashton claimed that the Crimson Order was just like him: they were proud of their city and would do anything to protect it. When Jones angrily countered that they didn't make the city proud as they were nothing but a bunch of psycho killers, Ashton responded that they weren't senseless murderers and that all their so-called crimes were justified. He then continued by stating that Rosie was about to depict the Crimson Order as insidious manipulators, and so, the organization ordered him with a mission to kill the famous writer, which he executed perfectly.

In court, without any remorse, Ashton once again claimed that he committed the murder for the eternal glory of Grimsborough and determinedly stated that putting him inside prison would change nothing as he could still act as a Crimson brother – grounds for him to receive a lifetime jail sentence for the murder of Rosie Gatewood. Before being taken away, Ashton, on behalf of the Crimson Order, implied that the player's days were now numbered – prompting an agitated Jones to counter that the Order did not scare his partner whatsoever and that it was them who should be afraid instead.

Death of Tess Goodwin
Luna Hecate, a modern-day witchcraft practitioner and member of the Crimson Order, discovered that Tess Goodwin spent hours in the detention center's library trying to study how her ancestor, Mary Goodwin, died at the hands of the Crimson Order. Realizing that she couldn't afford to let Tess get away with it, Luna mailed a pendulum to Tess's detention cell so that the latter could hypnotize the guards and escape. Luna's plan went well as she was soon able to corner Tess at the Nautical Museum, a pilgrim ship replica. Luna tied Tess to the ship's stake and burned her to death – the same way Mary was murdered in 1649. Luna was eventually incarcerated for the grand homicide, she admitted to be a member of the Crimson Order but refused to out the name of the organization's leader as her family had been loyal Crimson Order members for generations. In court, the witchcraft practitioner stated that she did the city a favor.

Revelations
In the hours following Luna's indictment, the secret behind Chief King'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 realized that he had had enough, thus making a firm decision to give up on the Crimson Order. However, the Order couldn't afford to let him go due to the fact that he was too valuable for them. Therefore, the day King decided to leave, the organization sent him a message by killing his wife, Donna King.

Donna was slain by Shane Kolinsky, a now-deceased member of the Crimson Order, during an attempted robbery. Shane was soon brought to court where he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Surprisingly enough, he later died of food poisoning just two weeks after being imprisoned. This didn't seem to be just a coincidence; however, whether or not this was a premeditated murder could never be proven.

Furthermore, the team managed to unearth the reason behind Chief King's 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 police after committing the murder of socialite Adam Bentley. He knew if the team caught him alive, the secret society wouldn't hesitate to execute Cathy before executing him for the sake of its identity. Therefore, King was afraid that, if he ever talked, he would be passing harm to himself and his granddaughter. For this very reason, King was forced to shoot himself to death, to protect Cathy, for she was all he had.

King clearly explained the aforementioned details in a letter written by him to his deceased wife (in order to let it all out) prior to being incriminated as Adam's killer. The team found the letter inside a cryptex located at the Nautical Museum (King kept it there since the ship was designed by his wife), the same place where Tess would later be murdered.

The team couldn't risk telling all of this to Cathy since she would probably come looking for answers, thus requesting Constance Bell to keep this revelation a secret until they could finally put an end to the Crimson Order by exposing their leader.

Get-go
Jones and the player received a strange letter, supposedly from the leader of the Crimson Order. The letter instructed them to "go down to the woods today," which Alex deduced to be a construction site that used to be a picnic spot. The team didn't hesitate to rush to the construction site. There they found the corpse of a male victim who was apparently scalped to death, with the words "YOU ARE NEXT" carved into his chest, indicating that the player was next in line. Also, the victim was revealed to be none other than Delsin Peota, the Aloki Indian who was last seen three cases before.

Consulting Anakee
Jones and the player consulted Anakee – the Aloki shaman mentioned above – moments after shipping Delsin's body for autopsy to investigate a Pilgrim feast as it was in 1643, using the same peace pipe ritual they used during the murder investigation of Sandy Grimmes, but with a different herb blend. As with her last encounter, Anakee was kind enough to give the team any artifacts from the past that caught their attention. In addition, Anakee told the team to physically dig the construction site, where they then found skeletons underneath the grass – grounds for the team to declare the Pilgrim feast, the discovery of skeletons underneath the construction site, and Delsin's murder, linked altogether.

The "Execution Order"
As the investigation went on, Nathan Pandit made a new conclusion of the autopsy result: Delsin was actually murdered in an illicit gold mine. The gold mine was later located by Ramirez, allowing Jones and the player to dig deeper into the mystery behind Delsin's murder.

When investigating the gold mine, the team managed to find an execution order issued by Serena Johnson commanding Samuel King to kill Adam Bentley for discovering the Crimson Order's secret gold mine and attempting to out the illicit endeavor unless Adam received money to convince him not to out any information. This prompted the team to arrest Serena for the second-degree murder of Adam. Alas, the driving force behind King's murder-suicide was finally unearthed.

Detaining Cathy
Furthermore, Cathy had to be detained until the end of the investigation when the team mistook her for being involved in the Crimson Order after finding out that she had broken into the gold mine, not to mention the fact that her hair traces was found in Delsin's scalp. Alex's mutual affection for Cathy made him condemn her arrest as he firmly believed that Cathy was and should be innocent.

Finale
The team was still left with one more thing: unmasking the leader of the Crimson Order and putting an end to this chapter of terror.

In the case's tense moments, the primary arrest occurred when the team incriminated Milton Grimmes – the prison warden of the Grimsborough Detention Center – as Delsin's killer as well as the leader of the Crimson Order. Per Serena, Delsin attempted to discover the Crimson Order's grave secrets, and Milton wouldn't let him get away with it.

During the arrest, Milton – who had been waiting for the team, dressed in his Crimson Order robe and helmet – expressed his belief that the city belonged to the Grimmes family, admitting that he killed Delsin and then drank his blood. Milton dropped a bomb when he revealed that his ancestor, Solomon Grimmes, had done the same to Inaya after discovering that the Aloki tribe had an abundance of gold through a gold mine, thinking that the gold would be enough to control Grimsborough with an iron fist. So, Solomon devised a plan to gather the Aloki in one roof by seducing Inaya and invoking a Pilgrim-Aloki feast, where he later had the Crimson Order do the dirty work. After the Aloki massacre, Solomon seized the gold mine for the Crimson Order's financial benefit. This statement by Milton disgusted Jones because the four-century-old gold mine was the Order's motive.

Milton then continued that with the gold mine as the Order's headquarters, he could declare himself a dictator and a God, and prepared himself to kill the player with his handgun. Fortunately, Ramirez intervened in the nick of time by hitting Milton with his frying pan – mirroring the saving move he demonstrated during the events of The Rorschach Reaper. The team didn't hesitate to handcuff Milton, who responded in disgust that he was supposed to bring the player's head to the night'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 Mayor 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 her 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 they seized from the Aloki. Last but not least, Judge Hall informed Howard that he abused his power as the Mayor of Grimsborough, acting on his mother's orders, although Howard didn't understand what the judge said at all.

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 replied harshly 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 has finally put an end to the dark era, and a bright future now awaits Grimsborough, thus marking the end of the notoriously secret society.

Aftermath
In the aftermath of the trial, Jones and the player returned to the gold mine for another investigation in order to confirm that the mine originally belonged to the Aloki tribe. There they found an ancient Aloki painting, and after careful analysis, Grace deduced that the Aloki founded the gold mine prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims, and with that knowledge, the Aloki were finally vindicated.

With peace restored in Grimsborough, the player accepted a position in the Pacific Bay Police Force, but not before the Grimsborough Police Force accompanied Cathy in throwing a farewell party for the player.

Members

 * Note: This list only showcases all significant members of the Crimson Order, meaning those who were named and/or were majorly involved in the dark era of Grimsborough.

Known Murders Committed

 * Pip Huckabee (Killed in 1642) – Murdered to ensure that they would stay secret and that Pip would not reveal any kind of information about them.
 * Inaya (Killed in 1643) – Murdered by Solomon Grimmes, as he seduced her to marry him, and then planned an Aloki-Pilgrim feast to slaughter her alongside other Aloki guests as the Aloki had a gold mine the Crimson Order needed to expand their power.
 * Several Aloki Indians (Killed in 1643, along with Inaya) – Murdered to seize their gold mine for financial benefit.
 * Harriet Gatewood (Killed in 1645) – Murdered by Geert De Haan, who was told to follow the organization's orders and lead the village.
 * Mary Goodwin (Killed in 1649) – Tied to a pole and placed in a bonfire on the Pilgrim docks as she was about to expose the Crimson Order's illicit activities. As a cover-up, the organization charged her for witchcraft.
 * Gerald Walker (Date of murder unknown) – Murdered for unknown reasons.
 * Donna King  (Killed in 2004) – Murdered by Shane Kolinsky, during an attempted robbery, to blackmail Samuel King and force him to stay with the Crimson Order.
 * Rachel Priest (Killed in 2013) – Murdered by Alden Greene as she was about to indirectly expose 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 their illicit endeavor.
 * Stuart Huckabee (Killed in 2014) – Murdered by his sister, Susan Huckabee, who was threatened by the Crimson Order to silence Stuart as he was researching them, or get killed otherwise.
 * 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 deeper into secrets of the Crimson Order while researching the truth behind her ancestor's murder.
 * Delsin Peota (Killed in 2014) – Murdered by Milton Grimmes, the organization's leader, as Delsin was caught attempting to expose the Crimson Order's grave secret at the construction site in the woods.

Trivia

 * The Crimson Order is strongly based on the real-life secret society known as the Illuminati.
 * Burying the Hatchet is the only case in the Airport district in which the Crimson Order plays no role in the murder plot.