| “ | You have no idea what you're meddling in! If you want to stay alive, keep out of it! | „ |
| —Louis Leroux |
Louis Leroux (1985–2019), appearing as a recurring character in Season 5 of Criminal Case, was a suspect in the murder investigations of three people and a quasi-suspect in three other cases. Later, he was revealed to be the killer of former social worker Zoe Kusama in Head Case (Case #52 of The Conspiracy). In Breaking News (Case #54 of The Conspiracy), he was found murdered in prison. He also made video appearances in Snake in the Grass (Case #1 of The Conspiracy) and Reap What You Sow (Case #57 of The Conspiracy).
Profile
Leroux was a 33-year-old now-former CCN journalist with brown eyes and wavy brown hair. He wore a blue collared shirt with a black tie under a black suit with a CCN badge on his right lapel.
In his first video appearance, he was seen wearing a grey shirt instead of his usual blue one.
In his first suspect appearance, he was seen holding a CCN microphone.
In his second suspect appearance, it is known that Leroux used dental floss, wore hiking boots and used insect repellent.
In his fourth suspect appearance, it is discovered that he used mouthwash, had a dust mite allergy and did crosswords.
In his third quasi-suspect appearance and at the time of his death, he sported an orange prison uniform with a white shirt and black shoes.
| Height | 5'8" |
|---|---|
| Age | 33 |
| Weight | 180 lbs |
| Eyes | brown |
| Blood | B+ |
Events of Criminal Case
Snake in the Grass
Shortly after arresting Nathan Pandit's killer, the player accompanied Gloria in finding a birthday gift for her son Carter in the zoo shop. While there, they found a DVD of CCN's "Grimsborough: A Year in Review", where Leroux recapped all the year's most exciting and biggest events, including a satellite falling from the sky. Having just found out about the incident, and shocked by it, Gloria turned to Jones, who clarified that a commercial satellite had suffered a technical difficulty and crashed into the empty forest. He also said that people had mostly forgotten about it by now.
Stonewalled
After arresting Stella Ziarati's killer, Leroux came to the precinct and asked Gloria and the player for their help regarding a missing person's case. He presented them with a photo of Zoe Kusama, a social worker that had disappeared several months prior. After reporting her disappearance to the police, he decided to some detective work of his own and tracked Zoe's phone to Cooper Park. Gloria and the player then agreed to help Leroux and decided to search the park.
Shooting Star
Leroux became a suspect after Gloria and the player found his press card and discovered that he had interviewed the victim. He revealed that interviewing celebrities was not the kind of journalism he expected when he joined CCN, but the murder was quite a scoop. He then excused himself to start digging for information elsewhere.
Leroux was spoken to again about a viral video that showed him provoking the victim about his sexual inability. He told them that he wanted to make the interview go viral in order to get his bosses to notice him. However, the victim complained to his boss, which almost led to him being fired.
Leroux was found to be innocent after the team incarcerated Yoshinobu Akagi for Ronald's murder.
Muddying the Waters
After arresting Jordan Coprolite's killer, Jones and the player questioned Leroux about the fake satellite that he had recorded crash-landing into Grimsborough. He told them that he had seen people from DreamLife sealing off the area, claiming that their satellite had malfunctioned. However, he had never actually seen the satellite. He then remembered having an audio tape from his interviews, which had fallen out of his pocket by the West Bridge. Jones and the player then searched the bridge for the audio tape.
Death in My Hand
Leroux became a suspect again after Jones and the player found his voice recorder in the DreamLife dome's security checkpoint and learnt that he was snooping around the dome. When being asked about this, Leroux said that he was curious when the team raised doubts about whether or not there was a satellite in the dome, so he decided to investigate for weeks to discover the truth behind DreamLife. Then, after being informed of Dr Ernesto's murder, Leroux was surprised as there was another murder and told the team that he would include the murder in his broadcast.
Later, the team heard a strange noise coming from the forest. After going there to see what happened, the team saw Leroux with his friend, Zoe Kusama, who fainted while walking in the forest with him. After being asked what happened, Leroux said that Zoe had phoned him, asking if he would walk through the forest with her to help jog her memory. However, when they were walking, Zoe started to faint. Luckily, she was then coming around.
After letting Zoe rest, the team came and interrogate Leroux again after they found a cheque in the victim's satchel and learnt that Leroux was paying $5,000 to the victim. When being asked about the reason why Leroux did it, he said that Ernesto had promised to hand over highly classified information about DreamLife to him for the right price. However, Ernesto then took the money, but he changed his mind, not giving Leroux the inside information about DreamLife anymore. In the end of the conversation, Leroux angrily said that he had trudged out to the lake for nothing.
Leroux was then found to be innocent after his friend Zoe was incarcerated for Ernesto's murder.
Dearly Departured
Leroux became a suspect for the third time after Jones and the player found his keycard and learnt that he had been in the victim's hotel room. He explained that he had interviewed the victim for a series on safety in air travel and had accidentally left his keycard in her room. They had agreed to meet at the gate bar so that she could return his keycard to him, but when he arrived, it had been closed down.
Leroux was spoken to again about his threatening message to the victim. He explained that the message he had sent her was not a threat, but a warning. He revealed that Dolores was a whistleblower and was exposing some uncomfortable truths about airline safety. He said that he felt responsible for her as she had taken a great risk by coming to him. He then left to interview some of the passengers.
Leroux was found to be innocent for the third time after the team incarcerated Shane Redfern for Dolores's murder.
Head Case
Leroux became a suspect yet again after Gloria and the player learned that he visited Zoe at the hospital before her murder. He told the team that Zoe had seemed fine when he had visited her and that she had improved so much.
Leroux was spoken to again about why Zoe did not want Leroux to visit her again. He explained that Zoe mistook his genial nature for flirtation and thought that he was trying to make a pass at her. He assured the team that he had no romantic feelings for Zoe, but she refused to believe him and yelled at him.
In the end, it was proven that Leroux was Zoe's killer. Upon admitting to the murder, Leroux explained that he had caught Zoe telekinetically levitating a teacup when he showed up in Zoe's room unannounced. Connecting her abilities to her time under the dome and realizing it was his duty to uncover the whole truth, Leroux then asked to examine the extent of her condition. Zoe, freaking out at the prospect of more tests performed upon her, started screaming. In a panic over getting kicked out, Leroux grabbed a fence post and smashed her head in to keep her quiet. Judge Powell sentenced an apologetic Leroux to life in prison. Post-trial, the team rushed Jones to the hospital after he had attempted suicide via overdose on sedatives.
After the trial, Gloria and the player re-interrogated Leroux about Zoe's alleged powers. He claimed that he had seen Zoe moving things with her mind. Wanting to record evidence of her powers, Leroux hid a camera in her room, prompting the team to reinvestigate Zoe's room.
Playing Dead
After arresting Savannah Blake's killer, Gloria and the player discovered that Leroux was actually the fifth member of Ad Astra. When questioned about his true intentions with Zoe, he told the team that he had to run more tests on her to learn more about the powers that the superhuman serum had gifted her. Leroux then told the team that they had no idea what they were meddling in and warned them to keep out of his business if they wanted to stay alive.
After the investigation, Chief Parker ordered the team to interrogate Leroux again. However, Cathy informed them that Leroux had been found dead in his jail cell.
Murder details
Leroux's body was found blown to pieces in his jail cell. Martine determined that Leroux had been killed by the explosion, and noted that she had found shards of glass embedded in his body originating from a light bulb. Rita suggested that Leroux had been killed by a light bulb rigged with a flammable substance which would have exploded once the light was turned on. The killer's elaborate plan allowed Martine to conclude that the killer knew chemistry.
Relationship with suspects
Leroux's cellmate, Willie Redfern, first found him too soft but then he found him too weird after Leroux's constant mood swings and after Willie caught Leroux looking at him funny when he bent over to pick up soap in the shower. Leroux attended prison science classes taught by convicted DreamLife scientist Shweta Noorani, although Shweta hated him as he was the first journalist to report on Shweta making a supervirus that caused the plague in India, which would eventually give her a bad reputation. Leroux feared for his life in prison, feeling that someone would want to kill him and made many attempts to escape: he coordinated with the Ad Astrans outside prison; he also coordinated with his Ad Astran junior, Polly O'Brien, but was planning to keep her inside the prison for her safety, much to her irritation; he also tried to blackmail his lawyer, Trudy Lively, into forging a court order for his early release.
Killer and motives
The killer turned out to be Shweta.
Upon confessing to the murder, Shweta said the real leader of Ad Astra, a "puppeteer" more powerful than the five members, had realized Ad Astra was outliving its usefulness and so was planning to kill each of the members one by one, starting with Leroux. The "puppeteer" ordered Shweta to kill Leroux, and so she filled the light bulb in Leroux's cell with smuggled nitroglycerin and waited for Leroux to turn it on and get blown up. Seeing that Shweta had only admitted to the "puppeteer" being a good friend of hers, Judge Powell sentenced her to 30 additional years in prison.
Some time after Leroux's death, the team uncovered the whole truth behind Zoe's and his murder. When power over the DreamLife dome was transferred to Denise Daniels, the "puppeteer", after Rozetta's arrest, she intentionally kept the serum from Ad Astra, making Leroux impatient enough to investigate on his own.
In his investigation, he discovered the location of Denise's secret lab where she was developing the serum and stole a small sample of it. However, Leroux was apprehensive about using it, possibly anticipating its negative side effects on the consumer, and so he warned his fellow Ad Astrans not to take it without testing it first. He also found out about Denise's army of invincible neohumans and how they were programmed to obey their leader, even sharing the info with Joe Warren.
Because of his snooping, Denise found him particularly troublesome and targeted him first in her bid to take out the Ad Astrans. Therefore, after finding out that Zoe had been exposed to the serum, Leroux became increasingly desperate to perform tests on her as the threat of Denise grew closer, even killing her.
Trivia
- Leroux may have been based on British broadcaster Louis Theroux.
- CCN is a parody of CNN. It could also be an abbreviation for Criminal Case News.
- In Shooting Star's sticker album, it is noted in the suspect list sticker that Leroux is 6'0" when he appeared as 5'8" in his profile. This is most likely a developer oversight.
- Leroux is one of the characters to physically appear in four districts of The Conspiracy.
- Leroux is one of the characters to appear as a suspect four times.
- Leroux is one of the characters to appear as a quasi-suspect thrice.
- Leroux is one of the killers who was interrogated again in the Additional Investigation.
- Leroux is one of the characters to become a suspect, killer, and victim.
- He is also one of the characters to appear as a suspect, quasi-suspect, killer, and victim.
Case appearances
- Snake in the Grass (Case #1 of The Conspiracy; video appearance)
- Stonewalled (Case #8 of The Conspiracy)
- Shooting Star (Case #9 of The Conspiracy)
- Muddying the Waters (Case #25 of The Conspiracy)
- Death in My Hand (Case #34 of The Conspiracy)
- A Pointy End (Case #45 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- Like a Pig to the Slaughter (Case #46 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- In Vino Veritas (Case #47 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- To Kingdom Come (Case #48 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- Dearly Departured (Case #49 of The Conspiracy)
- Lights Out (Case #50 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- Out of Breath (Case #51 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- Head Case (Case #52 of The Conspiracy)
- Playing Dead (Case #53 of The Conspiracy)
- Breaking News (Case #54 of The Conspiracy)
- Running Scared (Case #55 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- Reap What You Sow (Case #57 of The Conspiracy; video appearance)
- Extinguished (Case #58 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- Eve of Disaster (Case #59 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
- Blaze of Glory (Case #60 of The Conspiracy; mentioned)
Gallery
