Night Baron Murder Case

Chronology
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Episode 68-70 (Int. Episode {{{int-episode}}})
Information
Title:	Night Baron Murder Case
Japanese title:	闇の男爵殺人事件 (Yami no Danshaku Satsujin Jiken)
Original airdate:	July 21, 1997 (The Case) July 28, 1997 (The Suspicion) August 4, 1997 (The Resolution) August 15, 2009 (Remastered version) August 22, 2009 (Remastered version) August 29, 2009 (Remastered version)
Season:	3
Manga source:	Volume 8: Files 2-7 (072-077)
English version
English title:	Knight Baron Mystery
Dubbed episode:	Episode 70-72
Case
Cast:	Conan Edogawa Ran Mouri Kogoro Mouri Sango Yokomizo Professor Agasa Yusaku Kudo
Case solved by:	Kogoro Mouri (via Conan)
Next Conan's Hint:	Karate (Part 1) Building winds (Part 2) Adhesive (Part 3)
Staff
Director:	Kenji Kodama
Organizer:	Masato Sato
Storyboard:	68 Masato Sato 69 Masato Sato 70 Akio Kawamura
Episode director:	68 Yasuichiro Yamamoto 69 Masato Sato 70 Yoshio Suzuki
Animation director:	68 Keiko Sasaki 69 Akio Kawamura 70 Izumi Shimura
Voice Cast: Minami Takayama as Conan Edogawa Kappei Yamaguchi as Shinichi Kudo Wakana Yamazaki as Ran Mouri Akira Kamiya as Kogoro Mouri Kenichi Ogata as Professor Agasa Akio Otsuka as Sango Yokomizo Sho Hayami as Shiro Konno Shigezou Sasaoka as Tokio Ebara Hiroshi Ito as Genichirou Kaneshiro Rin Mizuhara as Shizue Hayashi Chieko Enomoto as Hideko Kamijo Taro Arakawa as Satoru Maeda Chieko Honda as Akiko Sayama Isshin Chiba as Manager, Policeman A, Forensics officer A Wataru Takagi as Customer, Policeman B, Forensics officer B, Next Conan's Hint Yukiko Iwai as Customer, Waitress Yasuhiro Takato as Misawa
Music
Opening song:	Nazo
Closing song:	Hikari to Kage no Roman

Cast

Characters
Conan Edogawa Ran Mouri Kogoro Mouri Sango Yokomizo Professor Agasa Yusaku Kudo (flashback)

Gadgets

Gadgets
Voice-Changing Bowtie Stun-Gun Wristwatch

Case

Situation

The Case

Conan is thrown off a balcony.

Conan, Ran, and Kogoro end up on a vacation to the Izu Princess Hotel beach resort, which is actually a mystery tour, to find the sponsor behind the tour who is using the alias Night Baron (a fictional character in Yusaku Kudo's books). The winner gets the hotel stay covered and a software program that is most likely a powerful virus also named for the Night Baron. Seven other people are on the tour as well, and they all become tense when Kogoro is revealed to be a private detective. Later, while Conan is pondering the mystery on a balcony, the Night Baron appears and pushes Conan over the edge, causing him to land in the pool below.

Later that night, when Conan, Ran, and Maeda are in the top-floor viewing lounge and Kogoro and Kamijo are in the hotel bar, the Night Baron reappears. Rather than causing more trouble, he falls from a hotel balcony and becomes impaled on the spear of a statue in the outdoor restaurant.

Murder
	Location: Izu Princess Hotel Outdoor Restaurant Victim: Tokio Ebara Cause of death: Falls from a great height and stabbed Suspects: Shiro Konno, Genichirou Kaneshirou, Shizue Hayashi, Hideko Kamijo, Satoru Maeda, and Akiko Sayama

Conan must determine who the Night Baron is, why Tokio Ebara was murdered, and how both connect to the rumored computer virus. Amidst the investigation, the Night Baron reappears once more in front of Ran, Conan, and Akiko, but does nothing else besides dodge Ran's instinctive karate kick and then vanish once more. Ran and Conan's suspicion about the identity of the culprit is aroused, but is it the truth? Conan via Kogoro leads Inspector Yokomizo to solve the case, but who is really Night Baron?

People

Shiro Konno
	28 years old Banker

Tokio Ebara
	Victim (stabbed) 32 years old Computer programmer

Genichirou Kaneshiro
	74 years old Computer company owner

Shizue Hayashi
	56 years old Kaneshiro's servant

Hideko Kamijo
	29 years old Computer software company president

Satoru Maeda
100px	30 years old Jonan University Electronics Department assistant

Akiko Sayama
	24 years old High school math teacher

Resolution

  Show spoilers »

Summary

Ebara's killer was Akiko Sayama. Her motive was to avenge the suicide of her beloved older brother from three years ago. Ebara had hacked into her brother's company's records and stolen the program into which he'd invested every penny of his company, driving him to leap from a building to his death. To get revenge, Akiko organized the contest and lured Ebara into participating by pretending to have the legendary Night Baron Virus. She disguised as the Night Baron for two reasons. She attacked Conan with the intention of scaring Kogoro back home before the murder occurred to prevent his involvement in the investigation. Akiko also planned to justify Ebara's fall in the costume by tricking the other participants and police into thinking that Ebara was the contest sponsor and died by mishap while trying to cause trouble as the Night Baron. Satoru Maeda, Akiko's boyfriend, realized Akiko was the murderer, stole the Night Baron disguise from the police, and appeared in front of Ran and Akiko in order to give Akiko an alibi and take blame for her if the police discovered her trick.

Exposition

After dinner, Akiko called Ebara up to her room, implying that she would give him the Night Baron Virus. Once he arrived, she drugged him to make him fall asleep, went to his room to plant the glove Kogoro found stuck to the balcony and create a room locked from the inside, and then put the rest of the Night Baron outfit on him (minus the unnecessary wig) before she threw him off the building. While landing on the statue was a fluke, having Ebara's body land in the area beneath his room's balcony was her goal. In order to conceal the fact that Ebara was in her room, she dropped his body out the window closest to his balcony, which happened to be sheltered from the wind blowing outside. This way, it seems like Ebara locked himself in his room, changed into the costume, and attempted to descend into the room below (the room occupied by Genichirou and Shizue) in order to cause more mischief, only to slip and fall to his death.

However, Akiko's plan backfired. She failed to factor in the force of the wind that was blowing at the time of the murder (and continues to blow similarly all the time). Conan, as Sleeping Kogoro, had the police drop several rolled futons from each suspect's room, each futon carrying weights to give them approximately the same weight as a person and a sheet tied around them to act like Night Baron's cape (as well as the number of the room they were dropped from written on them for identification). Thanks to the force of the wind and the cape catching that wind, none of the futons landed beneath any of their respective balconies. In other words, if Ebara had fallen from his own balcony, the wind would have blown him to the right of the statue rather than on top of it. The only way to make Ebara's body land beneath his own balcony in spite of the wind was, as demonstrated by Conan and the police, to drop his body in an area of the hotel that would shield it from the wind, an area that is only accessible from a room below the 20th floor of the hotel. With the suspect list in mind, Ebara could only have fallen from room 1901, Akiko and Maeda's room.

The Night Baron that appeared before Ran and Akiko, however, was Satoru Maeda, who had no connection to the murder. After noticing a few anomalies about Ebara's body, he began to suspect Akiko and went through her luggage. He found the Night Baron wig in her suitcase—she had originally intended to include it with the rest of the costume she placed on Ebara, but she didn't need it since Ebara's hair already looked the part. With proof in hand, he realized his girlfriend's plans and made his own plan to divert attention away from her so she wouldn't go to jail. The first part was to not reveal the alibi that he did have, as to not create inconsistencies within any possible confession he may have to make. The second was to steal the costume and appear in front of Akiko and someone else, creating a phony alibi for Akiko; stealing the costume proves there's only one costume, and only one costume would lead people to believe there's only one Night Baron, which couldn't be Akiko.

After Akiko is accused, Maeda insists that he's the real killer, but Ran tracked down his alibi to clear his name, and Conan via Kogoro presented the phone call Akiko made to the front desk from her room to prove she was at the scene of the crime when Ebara was thrown to his death. Maeda is also convicted, but for interfering with the investigation and the offenses that came with it, and is likely to get a lighter sentence due to the circumstances of his crimes. Akiko tells Maeda to forget about her since she's not a good woman; he promises to wait for Akiko's release, however, and despite trying to put on a mask of stoicism, she can't help crying as she's taken away.

Hideko Kamijo, Ebara'a ex-wife, entered the contest because she wanted to make an antivirus for the Night Baron virus. Incidentally, Ebara sold Akiko's brother's program to Kamijo, but she realized that it was a stolen program and stopped its sale. Genichirou Kaneshiro wanted the virus in order to punish the creator for ruining his high school girl dating simulator 4 years ago. Shiro Konno's reason for wanting the virus is unconfirmed, but Kamijo suggested earlier that he had nefarious purposes; Genichirou seemed to concur with Kamijo's analysis, though his agreement came after Konno began sweating bullets over Kamijo's assertion.

Remastered version

A remastered version of the entire case was aired over the span of August 15, 22, and 29, 2009. Instead of editing the episodes and combining them into an hour, all three standalone episodes were remastered.

Dub changes

• The names of the characters and places in the Funimation Dub are:

• Shiro Konno - Mark McKean
• Tokio Ebara - Romero Rojas
• Genichirou Kaneshiro - Winston Cadbury
• Shizue Hayashi - Clarissa Bunn
• Hideko Kamijo - Heidi Camino
• Satoru Maeda - Cliff Reed
• Akiko Sayama - Audra Kelly
• Satomi (Shiro's Mother) - Naomi (Mark's Mother)
• Izu Princess Hotel Private Beach - St. Anne Island

See also

• Season 3