At 09:36 AM 14/09/98 -0700, Jamie and Bridget Wilde wrote:

Mark, I hope you don't mind me cc'ing the list on this, because you've
brought up some very good points that I'd like to share with everyone.

'S ok.

Please note that my comments may be aimed at misdirecting all of you.
None, some, or all of them could be valid suppositions of the real
killer's methods and motivations.

Mark Doherty wrote:

At 04:41 PM 10/09/98 -0700, Jamie and Bridget Wilde wrote:

Mark Doherty wrote:

Interesting tale. Nothing like a murder mystery to get the mind going.
Of course, like everyone, I wildly suspect someone on flimsy grounds. ^_^

That's okay, I haven't given up anything solid yet.

Lack of evidence should never stop an accusation. ^_^ (I was watching an
old detective movie from the early forties a week ago, the detective was
this guy called the Falcon who, over the course of the movie, accused almost
every member of the cast of committing the murder. He got it right...
eventually.)

Ah, but how do we know that he wasn't just accusing people in order to
unsettle them into saying something that would lead him closer to the
real killer? A classic tactic of the hard-boiled murder mystery pulps.

It probably had something to do with him bringing the police to arrest
the person everytime he made an accusation. ^_^ (His sidekick was a police
sergeant.)

[snip]

and Kunou don't appear to have access to the pressure point techniques

You can argue that this would be out of character for him, but he could
also have a twisted sister who decided that hot sex with her brother
wasn't kinky enough -so she adds the victims into the mix. Kodachi could
find a way, and wouldn't have the least qualm about using it. It might
make good practice for the real victim: Akane...

Who needs Kunou? Perhaps Kodachi was given a guy curse, perhaps as a 
minor punishment from one of the fiancees for 'just not getting it'. This
sent her over the deep end, and now she's killing whoever meets her when
she's in her boy form and tries to 'date him' - quite an insult for a girl
who puts much stock in being desired as a girl. Anything's possible, it's 
just that I didn't want to spend _too_ much time on accusations; anybody 
could have done it, it's just that some seem more likely than others... at 
the moment.

To tell the truth, I've never held much(any) belief in a Tatewaki/Kodachi 
tryst, even in really non-canonical stories. Personally, I'd believe there was 
more chance of... say... hmm... a Ryouga/Mousse one. Or an Ukyou/Akane one. 

Say, they both show signs of bisexual tendencies(dressing as boy+liking the 
idea of 'boyfriend' having female curse, hating boys+no protests to being 
engaged to Ranma in a period or two where he may be permanently stuck as a 
girl). Not to mention that they seem to be together in a fair few scenes in
the later manga, Ranma or no Ranma. ^_^

Perhaps they 'teamed' up, decided Ranma was the bastard he is for jerking them
around like that, and in a fit of crazed lesbian passion, plotted to frame 
him. Who'd suspect the killer to be a good friend of one of the deceased?
Perhaps Yuka pushed the 'did you do anything with Ranma' line _one_ too many
times. Perhaps Ukyou is pushing the Tsubasa/Konatsu rivalry, in the hopes that
one gets killed, the other jailed, so she doesn't have to put up with them.
Perhaps they hope that Shampoo will be forced to kill herself, honourless, if
Ranma is sent to jail for murder. Perhaps they're dealing with the pent-up
sexual frustrations of being two tomboys. 

Perhaps not. ^_^ That's the problem with 'Scream' solutions, when you start
pairing up suspects, anyone could do it. So while you don't discount it, you
don't keep it in the fore of the mind either, since you tend to need specific
evidence to know when two are doing it.

that would require the Tofu Solution(tm). Mikado is the only one who may
have the natural charisma to convince the girls into sexual situations
without knocking them out. Tarou, while having the skills, projects way
too much of an arrogant attitude for me to believe he'd ever skulk around
like this, even for thrill-kills.

Just because a character doesn't have canonical evidence to suggest
knowledge, doesn't mean that I haven't found a way to give it to them in
the story. I might not have released that necessary clue just yet.

Of course not, I operated my accusations on what you'd written, and the
original manga settings: to do more would have weakened my reasoning. If
you want to, you can make anyone a killer - perhaps Katsunishiki is getting
frustrated at being ordered around by a small girl, and is taking it out on
normal girls, since he's afraid of his 'master'. But I can only operate a
thesis on what is given, not on what I can imagine, otherwise my arguments
hold no point.

[snip]

Tarou is also enormously sexually frustrated because of the constant
rejection from women that he receives. Who knows how he is coping, if he
is coping...

He could always corner the market in live pornographic films requiring
tentacled monsters. o_O

Shampoo and Cologne can be eliminated as too unlikely. While Shamps might
go off the deep end, and might even molest girls who have called her a
Chinese slut/etc before she killed them, I couldn't see her using a male

body.

Maybe not. But I don't think that is a strong enough argument to
eliminate 'Poo.

Oh, it isn't. But until there's a view of Shampoo within the story, it's 
fine for an opening discounter. After all, in most mysteries there are
a couple of 90 degree plot twists - you can't truly discount anyone until
they admit to it in the 'final reel'... and sometimes, not even then.

[snip]

As for Ranma... if he developed such a hatred of women, I couldn't see
it being such a faceless hatred. If he were to kill, surely it would be
the women he knows who annoy him most - Nabiki, Shampoo, Kodachi, etc.

Depends on if he's in his right mind or not... The transformation to his
girl form might be an intense psychic shock to him. In the neko-ken, the
only people he seems to identify with are Akane and Genma. No-one else
means anything to him. 

You snipped the other paragraph of reasoning on why I discounted neko-Ranma,
which was:

'Nah, no way. Neko-Ranma shreds things, if he was the one doing the killing,
it'd be more than the face that's damaged - the whole body would be a bloody
mess. Plus, of course, the lack of struggle on the victim's end - hard
to believe if it was a ferocious, cat-posessed Ranma. Besides, there appears
to have been a concerted effort on the killer's part to hide evidence. The
cat in Ranma couldn't do that, although it is conceivable that the human
part could after waking up.'

[snip]

It didn't really take much thought at all. And it's a mystery - it doesn't
matter whether I'm right or not, just that I've loudly expressed my opinion
on who the killer is as long before the 'final reel' as possible. ^_^

True enough. And who's to say that I've even picked the killer yet? :) 

Not me; most mysteries don't offer enough clues (or offer false clues) so
that it could be practically anyone until the final 'ten minutes' - and is
usually the least suspicious person. (Of course, by that reasoning, Tofu
is out, since you just publicised my accusation to the fic world. ^_^ )

It's not over till its written. So when's that?

************  
Mark Doherty  -  mdoherty@uq.net.au
My spam/fanfics are at - 
http://www.tass.org/~mdoherty/index.html

Everything I learned, I learned from fanfics No. 9:
Deus ex machina is not a dirty word. Er... words.