Moonlight Sonata Murder Case

Situation
Kogoro Mouri received a strange cut-and-paste letter from a client called Keiji Asoh asking him investigate something on Tsukikage Island. He then found out that the man requesting for the investigation, Keiji Asoh, has been dead for 12 years. He was a world-renowned pianist who suddenly killed his family, set his house on fire, and played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as his house burnt around him.

Despite thinking the letter is a poor prank, Kogoro decides to investigate anyway and finds the island is holding elections for mayor. Two years ago, a passerby heard the Moonlight Sonata playing from the community center and discovered the body of the mayor slumped over the piano. Although he died from a heart attack, the similarity to the death of Keiji Asoh caused the islanders to think the piano has been cursed.

Both Reiko and Narumi were excluded from the suspect list due to that they have alibi during the time of murder. Conan manage to decode the musical notes which were from the murderer about revenge from 12 year ago.

Resolution
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 * Evidence
 * First Murder
 * Victim: Hideo Kawashima
 * Cause of Death: Drowning
 * Location: Piano Room
 * Time of Death: 30 minutes – 1 hour before being found
 * The first movement of the Moonlight Sonata was played from a tape recorder.
 * There was a sea water trail from the door to Kawashima's body and he has dirt and sand on the back of his shirt.
 * Kawashima's jacket was found on the beach.
 * The doors and windows of the piano room were locked from the inside.
 * There were several minutes of silence at the beginning of the tape.
 * The Moonlight Sonata sheet music was found, but the notes in the fourth bar were “strange”.
 * Conan decoded that the “strange” notes actually say: "The hellfire of hatred made you pay."
 * Second Murder
 * Victim: Tatsuji Kuroiwa
 * Cause of Death: Stabbed to death
 * Location: Broadcasting Room
 * Time of Death: 5 minutes and 30 seconds before being found




 * Nishimoto discovered the body.
 * The tape has 5 minutes and 30 seconds lead in silence.
 * Music notes written with the victim's blood were found.
 * Conan decoded the music notes: "You realize it don't you? You're next."
 * Third Murder
 * Murder: Ken Nishimoto
 * Cause of Death: Hanging
 * Location: Storage Room
 * Time of Death: 30 minutes before being found
 * The third movement of the Moonlight Sonata was set to play.
 * Sheet music that looked liked a suicide note was found under his feet. The decoded note said he regretted killing Kawashima and Kuroiwa and that he didn't want people to find out the wrongdoing they did years ago.
 * There was no chair or anything to stand on, so Nishimoto couldn't hang himself.
 * No one would bother writing a suicide note in code.
 * Other incriminating evidence:
 * The dusty piano in the city hall was tuned perfectly.
 * After the first murder, there was someone outside the piano room whom Conan and Kogoro failed to catch.
 * When the gang returned to the city hall after the second murder, there was someone in the piano room who jumped out the window and Murasawa was found unconscious on the floor.
 * After the third murder, Conan returned to the piano room and found a tuning hammer for the piano.
 * Under the piano was a secret drawer with cocaine in it.
 * Upon looking at the pictures of the crime scene where Kuroiwa was murdered, there was a button with its red light on near the victim's neck.
 * Conan found that Hirata has powder-like substance under his sleeves and his left hand was bandaged. He also had lots of foreign money with him.
 * Keiji Asoh left sheet music in his safe to which it read: “To my son, Seiji”. Asoh had a son who became ill when he was a child and had to be hospitalized, meaning he was NOT killed in the incident that took the lives of the Asoh family.

The person who knocked out Murasawa in the piano room was Kazuaki Hirata. The bandage on his left hand was the result of smashing the window when he was trying to escape. He was also the one that Kogoro and Conan chased outside the piano room. The piano room was his meeting place with Kawashima when doing business: dealing drugs. He was using the piano's secret compartment as a hiding place for cocaine he got from overseas to which he exchanged later for large sums of money. The reason why he was always talking about the cursed piano was because he wanted to keep everyone in the town away from it. Murasawa saw the drugs that he had left in there earlier so he hit him. Still, he was unrelated to the murders because he wouldn't have related the piano to the crimes.
 * Conclusion

In the second murder, they found that he had been dead for only a few minutes but when Conan fell on the code of blood, it didn't smear when it takes 25-30 minutes for human blood to dry. It was just a trick that the killer used to manipulate the time of death of the victim. Upon looking at the pictures, there was a button that was lighted near Kuroiwa's neck. But after the body was moved, the light was turned off. This was actually the reverse button. While the police weren't looking, the killer turned off the light. The killer used the reverse side (the blank side that didn't have the song), which played for over 30 min and then it reversed. That was when the 5 minutes and 30 seconds of gap played before the music started.

In the third murder, the killer didn't have the time to put a chair or desk at Nishimoto's feet because he had to escape in time. The killer was probably male because the murders required a lot of physical strength.

The purpose of drowning Kawashima was to send the forensic examiner back to Tokyo, because it was impossible to do an autopsy on the island. The tape in the second murder was a setup so the killer could create an alibi.

Conan deduced that the killer was Narumi Asai and that she was, in fact, Asoh's aforementioned son, Seiji Asoh. Asai was probably the surname of the family that adopted him. After graduation, he came to the island as a female doctor. The pronunciation of his name was not written on his diploma, nor the medical license, because if they checked his history, they would have found out that he was a man: the kanji forming Asoh's name could be read as either "Seiji" (a male-only name) or "Narumi" (a female-only name): coupled with Asoh's feminine features and rather girlish voice, it let him masquerade as a female doctor rather well, plus falsifying the times of death and manipulating the crime scenes. He also stayed all night so that they'd make him last for questioning, keeping the "disguise" intact.

As for Murasawa, he was an admirer of the late Asoh and he was the one who kept the donated piano in tune just like that night.

As Conan-through-Kogoro explained all of this, suddenly the police came in and said that Seiji/Narumi had escaped. While they were looking for him, the community center building suddenly went up in flames: it turns out Seiji, who had realized that he had been found out, locked himself inside and set it on fire, intending to die like his father...

Conan, carrying Asoh's last music sheets with his message for the then-young Seiji, managed to slip in and told Seiji, who was sitting at the piano, to keep on living. Seiji confirmed that he was the young boy who escaped his family's murder, plus everything that Conan-through-Kogoro had already said (explained below in "Motive"). When Seiji was done, Conan insisted that he should escape and live; Seiji refused, however, saying that he was already too bloodstained. Then, he grabbed Conan and threw him through the window, saving his life. Afterwards, he played one last music code message in the burning flames: "Thank you, little detective."

Seiji's motive dated back when his father, the pianist Keiji Asoh, and his family was murdered. Kawashima, Nishimoto, Kuroiwa, and Kameyama used Asoh's international concerts as a front for their international drug trade. When Asoh stated that he wouldn't cooperate any longer, they got scared that their secret might be exposed, so they locked the family in their home and set it on fire,. This was all written in the sheet music that he left behind in the safe as his confession to his remaining son. Seiji was hospitalized in Tokyo at the time of the murder, and later was adopted by a friend of the Asoh family.
 * Motive

Seiji went back to the island, under his "Narumi" disguise, bewcause he never believed the official "Keiji Asoh killed his family and himself" version and wanted to find out the truth. As said above, when he told Kameyama that he was Asoh's son, the late mayor was terrified and told him everything an then had a fatal heart attack. Seiji played the Moonlight Sonata that his father loved so much upon seeing the mayor dead, and ultimately that gave him the idea of taking justice in his own hands.

After Seiji's death and the end of the case, Conan and Ran talked about him. They wondered why did Seiji summon Kogoro when he knew how risky that would be for his plan, and Conan speculated that it wasn't just a challenge - that deep down, Seiji wanted Kogoro to stop him.

Rerun
The episode was rerun on September 22, 2003. It was unchanged except for the addition of a footage of Gosho Aoyama talking at the beginning.

Trivia
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 * The keyboard code presented in this case is usable despite minor errors made by the animation staff.