Credits to the German Gang for beta-testing.
If enough people scream for help, a hintboard may appear.
Full theories only
It's a bit tricky to just say the narrator is reliable. He can be tricked, as is usual in these boards. The problem is that he's writing this after the fact with full knowledge of the solution - but with the intention of keeping the mystery intact. So he may have chosen not to point out his misobservations or mistaken reasoning despite knowing better now. Of course, whenever he's talking about things with clear hindsight ("as it later turned out", etc.) you can take his word for it.
There is no more than one culprit.
The culprit is defined as the person who killed Beowulf.
There are no accomplices.
An accomplice is defined as someone knowingly assisting the culprit.
(within reasonable limits... only with stuff that would be actually related)
All Knox rules except 8 are guaranteed, and for rule 3 I'm going with 'no secret passages'.
I can't fully guarantee 8 due to some indirect cluing which could be argued to not satisfy it. Subjective stuff. Have fun. :^)
Let's kick this off with a collaborative blue with @Bad-Player . No leprechauns, surprisingly:
The culprit is X.
X, who was working with Beowulf and Freki to steal the cult's silver, planned to frame Wolfgang for subsequent murder and theft. This is why the amusement park was chosen as the location where one of the culprits, Beowulf, would shake his pursuers.
To this end, X hid in the ferris wheel's control booth before Beowulf arrived. After making his request and riding up to the top, Wolfgang left the control panel. Here, X takes the short window where Wolfgang isn't observing the wheel to move it--after this movement, the box at the top of the wheel is no longer where Beowulf is hiding.
Next, the goons arrive, searching for Beowulf. The top cabin is searched, and as expected, no one is inside. Freki, who is in on the plot, is the one that mans the controls while Geri and Wolfgang search the other cabins. From this position, Freki fools Geri into believing they've searched every cabin. This could be accomplished with another movement while Geri and Wolfgang go downstairs, such that the "top" cabin is in fact searched twice.
Meanwhile, X, the person caught on camera entering Wolfgang's apartment, is lying in wait. Sometime earlier, he's made a copy of Wolfgang's apartment key, allowing him entry. Beowulf makes his escape from the cabin (either by breaking it open once everyone has left or with a sneaky unlock by Freki) and heads to the rendezvous point at Wolfgang's apartment. Beowulf enters via the open window of a different apartment (one of the two on the first floor, perhaps), allowing him to avoid detection by Fenris. He enters Wolfgang's apartment and gets stabbed, etc etc. In order to solidify the case against Wolfgang, he sets the chain and removes the door from its hinges, leaves, then replaces the door. If you prefer, a smaller "door" is cut into the chained door, evidence of which is destroyed when Fenris busts down the chained door. For good measure, he creates a fake blood trail leading to the front entrance of the building (this can be done before or after the murder), then hides upstairs in the apartment that Beowulf entered through.
If we want to be extra rigorous here and avoid running afoul of Knox's 1st, X can be either of the park's employees.
While Wolfgang was manning the booth, nobody could have entered it without him noticing. Furthermore, both floors of the booth are too small to hide in.
Only one relevant key to Wolfgang's apartment ever existed.
No door was damaged or taken off its hinges. (...before Fenris' investigation)
Bursts through the window
Merry chrustmas
First, early in the morning, the culprit had actually been hidden in Wolfgang's apartment. After Wolfgang left, they simply unlocked the front door from the inside (since I imagine on the inside is a simple bolt.) The culprit then escaped through the window.
Next up, the disappearance.
In the time it took for Wolfgang to get to the control booth, the culprit snuck into one of the cabins to the side of the one Beowulf was in. After the ascent, the culprit maneuvered to Beuwulf's cabin, unlocked the door, pushing him out and into the river below. This caused the injury Beowulf would receive, causing the bleeding. The culprit then closed the cabin and jumped into the water, but with grace, managing to avoid significant injuries. Dragging himself and Beowulf to the other side of the shore, we come to our first twist.
Wolfgang's apartment is actually on the other side of the river. The 30 minute commune is simply the time it takes to go down the river, cross the bridge, and go back up to the park. By directly swimming, the commute is cut to nil.
Now, while on the other side of the shore, the culprit makes a preparation. This is where the second twist comes in.
Beowulf has no legs. That's why he had difficulty walking -- because of the artificial legs he was on. The culprit throws those away.
Now comes the third twist: the culprit is really really short.
The culprit puts the dazed Beowulf on his shoulders, puts a mask on him, and puts a coat over them. He then walks over to Wolfgang's apartment, goes through the front door, and simply enters Wolfgang's apartment. He goes into the room, locking the front door, making sure the window is locked and setting the chain. A bit before Wolfgang shows up, he stabs Beowulf and hides into the lower half.
My incredible evidence for this is the money. While the amount doesn't make sense for one person, it does if we assume it was the combined amount of two people. The culprit had already had some money from before, and after dragging Beowulf out of the water, stuffed the other man's money in the coat, as well.
Of course, of course. No way around covering the basics-- wait what.
When Wolfgang left and locked his apartment in the morning, there was nobody inside.
The Ferris Wheel is large enough that you wouldn't survive a fall from the cabins at the top, river or not.
Anyone hiding inside the apartment would have been found and exposed during the search. That includes if they were posing as part of the victim.
Let's patch up DWaM's theory. Might as well take the madness as far as we can get it.
The culprit picked Wolfy's pocket, taking the key and the charm. Probably in the morning, on Wolfy's way to work, before he was too far away from the apartment. The culprit then at some point un-picked the key back onto Wolfy's person. (Could've been shortly before Wolfy returned home; the culprit could have returned the key, then rushed ahead back to the apartment building, entered through the window they had left unlocked, and locked it by hand.)
The Ferris Wheel escape is the same... except instead of just jumping off from the top, they climbed to the top of the cabin that Wulfy had been in, went halfway down the Ferris wheel but using the tops of the cabins as stairs, and then jumped into the river. (I guess you could go the full way down that way, if you're lame.)
Even if the culprit isn't an evil leprechaun, they can bypass the camera easily by leaving the incapacitated Wulfy outside of Wolfy's apartment window, entering the front door, and then pulling in Wulfy's body through the apartment window.
Once the crime scene was set up, the culprit locked the room from the inside, affixed himself to the ceiling right above the door, and then maneuvered himself out while Wolfy and Neuro were distracted by the corpse, before the search of the room occurred.
From the time Wolfgang left his apartment to the time he returned, the key to his apartment remained on his person.
During this board, nobody except Beowulf was ever at the top of the Ferris Wheel. (top = everything above half its height)
Two more band-aids:
After Wolfy locked Wulfy in the ferris wheel, while Wolfy was on his way to the control panel, Lykos or Lupa ran up, unlocked the cabin, and ran away. (Wulfy probably asked them to do so beforehand. Helping the victim doesn't make them an accomplice.) Once at the top, Wulfy could then escape using the cabin as stairs, or with a rope or bungee or something. The culprit ambushed Wulfy when he reached the bottom, I guess.
The culprit got into the apartment by breaking the window and replacing the glass.
You knew full well these potshots wouldn't work. Well at least the second one.
While Wolfgang operated Beowulf's cabin to the top, it was properly locked.
No windows were ever broken.
Gonna give it a try...
The victim was trying to hide in the Ferris Wheel from The Pack as to avoid getting caught by them because he stole their silver. Beforehand, the victim tampered with the lock of the cabin. Normally, you turn the bolt up, slide over, then bolt down to lock it. But the victim did something to the lock so that the bolt can’t go all the way down after you slide it over or it goes back up again shortly after turning the bolt down for the proper lock. (Piece of material placed to prevent the bolt from going down all the way, broke part of the lock or maybe the lock is old and worn so it didn’t close down properly to begin with.) The slide part of the bolt still works properly, however, so Wolfgang assumes he locked the cabin properly.
Of course since the slide part still works, the door to the cabin can’t be opened by this alone as that slide is still in place. But once the slide happens, the bolt is effectively off the lock and so can still open the door without having to slide it back down again, as is the case with all sliding bolt locks. This is where the trick comes in.
Before you can go to the top of the Ferris Wheel, it of course has to go in this crescent moon angle before you reach the top. (So if you’re in a cabin, you start all the way down, then it goes left, left up, up, right up and now you are at the top) This movement of going left and then left up, along with the velocity of the Ferris Wheel moving and perhaps some gravity, causes the bolt to slide to its unlocked state and the door can be opened from inside the cabin as a result.
Now back to the story. Geri and Freki arrive at the Ferris Wheel, having found Beowulf’s hiding spot because they need their silver back. The above paragraphs set up was done by Beowulf all in the case this would happen, as he knew he’d be sitting duck otherwise. But they were not going to get him alive, so time to commit suicide. Beowulf jumps out of the Ferris Wheel the moment Wolfgang and Freki are out of view, going towards the control panel. Beowulf dies. (The police say death was more or less instant and that the knife had pierced the victim's heart, but they never said death was due to the knife.)
At this point, Geri saw this happen and hatched a plan to keep the silver all for himself while pinning Beowulf’s death on Wolfgang. (Or perhaps this was his plan all along given the security footage, expecting that it was likely that Beowulf would kill himself if he was caught, or perhaps they were in cahoots all along. Might reconsider this later.)
Geri hides the body of Beowulf, by ordering his bloodhounds to all group together in a cozy herd and stand right near the body, (Kinda like a sheep herd except with dogs) making the body out of view as all the hounds are covering it like this:
(Except with hounds of course...)
However, one of the hounds decide to chew on the victim’s leg at this point, which causes a wound in the leg, which Geri later patches up with bandages)
When Geri and Freki bring Wolfgang to their hideout, they take the lead with the hounds only really following close behind them going after the humans. This way nobody ever notices the corpse that is lying around on the ground near the Ferris Wheel. The body is left behind there and since nobody is around thanks to the pandemic, it stays there for a while and is never found.
Geri and Freki beat the snot out of Wolfgang, perhaps even knocking him unconscious once in a while, back at the hideout. It is at this point that Geri obtains Wolfgang’s key to his flat, as well as his trinket which is found on top of the corpse later. (Would be easy to pickpocket Wolfgang during interrogation without him noticing because he is getting beat up) At some point during the interrogation, Geri goes back to the Ferris Wheel to collect the corpse, which he brings to Wolfgang’s flat, presumably near the window. Geri enters Wolfgang’s flat, opens the window to haul the body in and thrusts a dagger into the victim’s back.
For the chain lock, I assume there must have been a way to put the chain in place while still being on the side of the flat’s exit. Your hand can’t go through the gap of the door, but with a chain lock there is still a gap regardless. Perhaps by the use of some thin and long tool, like a pencil or something else that’s long and thin, Geri could scoop the chain through the gap of the door and then attempt to drop the chain to where the chain is supposed to go, into the lock. Repeat until successful. Geri locks the main flat door with Wolfgang’s key again and brings the key back to Wolfgang who is still in interrogation, who never notices his key was gone/back cause he was too busy getting beaten up to remember or notice.
As for Fenris and his surveillance camera… Fenris mentions he only heard the door open once, but he never said anything about hearing it close that would have prompted Fenris in checking the security footage. Alternatively, Fenris only checks the footage when he hears a door open and the culprit was super sneaky quiet with opening and closing doors to avoid detection by Fenris all other times. Fenris also only mentions he saw someone in the footage arrive AT THE APARTMENT and didn’t actually see anyone enter Wolfgang’s flat, all in all leaving plenty of opportunities to enter Wolfgang’s flat unseen and unnoticed. ...I guess.
I'm willing to give you the first bit despite it being debatable if that still counts as 'properly locked' but Geri can't really take Wolfgang's key off him - I guaranteed in red that it remained on his person.
I believe the culprit to be the person that Wolfgang saw before he did the Ferris Wheel thing. I will call him Beowulf Prime (B').
My theory goes as follows. B' killed B early on with a stab to his chest and then placed his body in Wolfgang's house with the knife trap lodged on the ceiling, which will drop and puncture his back in time. This is to give off the illusion that his death was actually recent. As for the body warmth the room could be simply kept hot. Cough thermodynamics cough. The perfume is to mask the rotting smell. I presume he did this early on before he showed himself at the Ferris Wheel.
As for how he entered Wolfgang's house, He snuck into Wolfgang's house last night and opened the window. The then entered through the window placed the body set the chain and left. But before he did, he placed the silver trinket (which is dense and heavy) to use as a mechanism to lock the window from the inside when he leaves. (I hope this is not considered a string trick uwu). He then scattered the blood trails and climbed out of the window.
Beowulf Prime then went all the way the Ferris Wheel and purposely showed Wolfgang his face to set his trick in place, burnt himself when he's at the top of the Ferris Wheel until there's only ashes left so when the cabin returned down he wasn't there. I kinda got this idea that he will disappear by killing himself during the karma prose because it seems natural that he is guilt ridden after murdering his twin brother. My evidence for this is the money since it would kind of make sense as DWaM pointed out if it was for two people. He also faked the limp because he knew Beowulf had a leg injury to add some credibility to his elaborate trick.
Let's rock 'n' roll.
First, the disappearance. I'll upgrade Fury's theory. The lock was perfectly functional. Once he got to the top, Beowulf slammed against the sides of the cabin, causing it to shimmy left and right, giving it momentum until:
The whole fucking thing rotated around the bar holding it. In the moment it was upside down, the latch came off by itself due to gravity!!
I could argue that Beowulf parachuted across the river or something. But let's keep things reasonably sane.
The leg injury was faked. In actuality, Beowulf could easily climb -- and he did so -- moving to one of the side cabins. It's important to note which one. If we assume the ferris wheel moves a clockwise direction, Beowulf would move to the one directly RIGHT of his cabin. Why? Because when his captors bring the ferris wheel down, if he assumed (correctly) that his captors would go on to search the cabins, that one would be the very last one to possibly be searched. Then, it was simple: after they started searching through the cabins, Beowulf simply carefully returned to the cabin he had originally been in. Since they would likely not search the same cabin twice, they would never find him.
Alternatively, he could've simply slipped out when they were searching the first cabin, but then I imagine the dogs would've barked. Unless, of course, he had a different scent than the one given to them to track or something.
Still, if this is all true, we have a problem. This is taking too much time. Beowulf had to already be at the apartments. In other words, the person caught on camera at 7:05 couldn't have been him. Very well. Let's have this man -- this stranger -- simply go down the hallway somewhere. He does not enter Wolfgang's room.
After all, how could he? If the culprit was not in Wolfgang's room at the start of the day, and the culprit was not able to get the key, only one conclusion can possibly be made:
In spite of the bloodtrail leading to his apartment, at the time he returned, there was nobody in it. The person who had entered -- the person who had been bleeding -- might've bled, leaned against the door to Wolfgang's apartment, managed to suppress the wound temporarily and made their way forward.
But the fact of the matter remains someone DID get in. So how do we explain that?
It's simple. We just need to remember the movements. As he's about to enter his apartment after unlocking it, Fenrir calls to Wolfgag, causing the latter to go back down the hallway. Understand? He was not in front of the door. This is important, because it means that when Fenrir went into his room for 15 seconds and Wolfgang was waiting for him: nobody was minding the door to the room.
It was at this time that someone came from downstairs -- it was either Beowulf (who had, in the meantime, been let in through one of the upper windows by the masked man caught on camera), or the masked man himself. Since this man will be the victim, the implication of the latter option means the victim was not actually Beowulf, but someone with his face and wallet.
The victim ducks into Wolfgang's apartment. The wound reopens, connecting the bloody trail from before. He goes into the main room, setting the main chain. He then leans against the door. It's his weight that prevents a gap.
When Fenrir bursts through the door -- devours it -- the victim is hit with such force that they fly across the room, hitting the kitchen counter, which, in turn, causes the knife to fly from the countertop, into their back, and the victim to roll onto the floor, finally ending up on their stomach.
Dead.
When Wolfgang left his apartment in the morning, the window in the apartment was locked.
Nobody could have completely reduced themselves to ashes.
When a ferris wheel cabin is properly locked, it can only be unlocked by a human hand undoing the bolt from outside the cabin.
I'm unsure if you got the layout down here correctly, when Fenris called out to him Wolfgang was already in the entranceway of his apartment, then went back out in front of it, but didn't really go down the hallway.
So for the blood trail, someone just leaning on the door wouldn't explain it because when Wolfgang unlocked the door, he already saw it continue past that into the entranceway towards the second door. But hey...
That blood trail in the building really belonged to Beowulf. All of it.
Beowulf was already dead before Fenris destroyed the door.
Copypaste the other theory, while inside the cabin Beowulf disguised themselves as a pile of silver bars by using the silver they already have, which Freki/Geri steals and does not mention to Wolfgang for obvious sketchy-authority reasons.
The locked room is a lolsuicide.
Uh... where exactly does all this silver come from that can completely cover up a human body? Wolfgang certainly didn't see Beowulf push a whole cart into the cabin.
And lolsuicide doesn't work if Beowulf can't even get inside the room.
I'll keep this within the realm of possible.
The culprit is Lykos.
Before Wolfgang could return to the booth, Lykos made the ferris wheel spin really fast, and it reached the top quickly, meanwhile Beowulf slammed against the sides of the cabin just like DWaM suggested, and at some point it detached from the ferris wheel and went flying, straight to Wolfgang's apartment.
Lykos knew how the ferris wheel worked, so he could help Beowulf with this. Notice how Beowulf didn't die, since the cabin protected him, and the glass is strong enough to not break. As for how a 30 minute travel was achieved in one flight, the route Wolfgang normally takes is the intended one, while Beowulf avoided all of that, perhaps jumping over a river.
Now, Wolfgang returned to the booth, and he gave the wheel a normal spin, so the cabin that was at the bottom when the cabin got detached went to the top, and Wolfgang didn'tt think anything was amiss. Wolfgang didn't notice a cabin was missing because there were a lot of them.
Lykos then disguised himself as one of the men in black, And Lupa as the other, and pretended nothing happened, he knew about them since Beowulf told him. Lupa didn't have any other role in this, they were bribed by Lykos just for this.
While Lykos and Lupa were beating Wolfgang, Lykos took the strap from him, then he rushed to Wolfgang's apartment and freed Beowulf from the cabin, he managed to arrive before Wolfgang since Wolfgang was severely injured. Beowulf was bleeding because of the fall, and walked to the front of Wolfgang's apartment, then he entered, as was shown on the footage by the camera in front of the door.
How did he enter, you ask? Wolfgang's apartment is yet another wheel, so Lykos made the rooms rotate, and Beowulf took a second key for that apartment, which he took from the landlord in Berlin after killing him. This key was never used on the door to Wolfgang's apartment, so this is not considered a relevant key for it. Fenris' apartment isn't part of the mechanism, that's why it didn't rotate.
Anyways... Beowulf entered the apartment, and Fenris saw it on the footage, then he walked into the room, the blood that was dripping was from the injury Beowulf got when the cabin crashed, he also locked the door from inside and set the chain. Beowulf opened the window and dropped a rope he had brought with him, hidden under his clothes. Lykos entered the apartment through there, but Beowulf had different plans, he pushed Lykos out of the window, and dropped the key out of it, the strap fell to the floor while Beowulf was pushing Lykos.
Beowulf took a knife from the kitchen, because he saw the strap and thought of a contraption that would reasonably work on a beaten up Wolfgang, he glued the knife to the ceiling, thinking that Wolfgang would try to pick up the strap, and then he would shake the unstable room through the wheel contraption, so that the knife would stab him in the back, but Lykos, with the last strength of his, did it instead while Beowulf was placing the strap correctly, and the knife stabbed Beowulf in the back while falling, helped by the moving room so that it got deeper in.
When Wolfgang got to the apartment, he was so messed up that he didn't notice the apartment wasn't his, even if it was really similar, the room being poorly illuminated didn't help either.
The reason for this mess? Part of it wasn't planned, as you'll notice. Money, of course, The plan was for them to share it, but Beowulf betrayed Lykos and pushed him out of the window at the end. The reason for the presence of both banknotes and coins is that Beowulf was poor, while Lykos was rich and handed some of it to Beowulf for the plan.
The reason for choosing Wolfgang's apartment was that Lykos already knew where it was and he could set up the trick easily, knowing how it really functioned, and they both had some past grudge over Wolfgang (this might be due to shady affairs of Wolfgang, and that is the reason why he has a fake name).
The men in black at the end are the real men in black, they were called by Beowulf, who told them Wolfgang was hiding him.
At some point Beowulf sprinkled some perfume across the room so that when the men in black eventually came, he could take them by surprise and not be detected by the dogs.
Wolfgang didn't notice the men in black weren't the same ones he saw because they were covered in black, they barely talked and he wasn't in a great condition after being beaten, at the end.
My body is ready.
Regarding the first mystery of Beowulf's disappearance, he had an accomplice (does not violate red since Beowulf is not the culprit). When he entered the ferris wheel cabin, while Wolfgang was making his way to the control panel (and thus wasn't looking at the ferris wheel), an accomplice came out of the bush somewhere, unlocked the cabin, let Beowulf out, and locked it up again. The two then escaped. Wolfgang didn't see that and assumed that Beowulf was still in the cabin as it ascend.
Earlier theories speculated that the apartment was across the river from the theme park so I'll use that too. Beowulf and accomplice crossed the river using a boat and arrive at Wolfgang's apartment.
The next question is how did they enter the locked apartment?
The answer; the diagram shown in the gameboard isn't merely the schematic of the apartment, it is a top down view of the apartment complex. That's right, Wolfgang's apartment's and the one above's ceilings were removed. This was likely done sometimes in the afternoon while Wolfgang was out.
Beowulf and his accomplice climbed the building side (accomplice helped Beowulf) and into Wolfgang's room. The accomplice then betrayed Beowulf, killed him, and planted a blood trail. (They unlocked the door from the inside and also planted the blood trail in the hallway. The masked guy Fenris saw in his footage is not relevant to the mystery.)
The culprit (who is called Luna because Luna's Trap) then climbed out the way they came in.