Keelan Makepeace was the father of Diane Makepeace and the killer in the Jigsaw Puzzle Killings.
Appearance[]
His hair had two different shades, the majority blonde, and his sideburns brown. Above the temples, two strands of blonde hair reach down, right above the eyes. He had no visible eyebrows so he had a large, jutting forehead. His nose is large, and pointed. His eyes have a somewhat pale yellow tint, and had dark circles under his eyes. He wore a large, black trench coat, with a orange undercoat. He also wore brown, baggy pants, with brown shoes.
Plot[]
Makepeace worked as a trader but soon became suspicious because of his practices. He had a daughter named Diane Makepeace and once borrowed money from a millionaire he knew. At some unknown point, Keelan suffered a betrayal of some kind by the head of the Agonni family, Severino Agonni, earning the latter the emnity of Keelan's daughter.
The Jigsaw Killings[]
One day, Makepeace murdered a young woman out in the street, by stabbing her in the back with a poisoned knife, in what would later be known as the Barbane Street Stabbing. The Scotland Yard's detective Justin Lawson, found out that Makepeace was the murderer, but, instead of turning Makepeace in, Lawson, for reasons unknown, told him to continue to kill, or be immediately be sent to jail. Makepeace was thusly "recruited" to kill other people, creating a crime spree later known as the Jigsaw Puzzle Killings, which Makepeace happily obliged just to save his skin and sate his own bloodthirst.
The second murder was the Case of Raymond Tube, where the eponymous man was strangled to death, his flat appartment completely ransacked, and on top of all, his head smashed post-mortem under a heavy 32-inch analogue television set, presumably done by Keelan in a flare of unexplained rage. Following that, the Stiffin Abattoir Murder happened, where in the at the time largest abattoir of the area, another woman was found by an employee inside one of the industrial refrigerators, having been strangled and then stuffed inside the appliance. Next was the St. Florian's Torching, where in the eponymous abbandoned hospital, a man was doused in petrol and set ablaze while still alive, all the while Keelan was observing the scene unfolding. The murders continued unopposed, until Keelan had in total killed 15 people, with each new murder escalating in violence and brutality further and further, so much so that Scotland Yard was forced to enforce a total media blackout, as not only widespread panic would have otherwise erupted across London, but also to prevent any possible wannabe copycat to further muddle the investigations.
The tread connecting all of these murders where jigsaw puzzle pieces, with one purposedly left on the crime scene, presumably under Lawson's order, for mysterious reasons, with Lawson himself placing other puzzle pieces at crime scenes of 11 other murders, resulting in 26 homicides being connected to Keelan and the Jigsaw Puzzle Killings case. In at least one occasion, Keelan took his daughter to one of his killings and nonchalantly took a picture of them as a memento.
Makepeace's targets were always people he didn't know, with the exception for one case where he murdered the millionaire he owed money to. Keelan, deciding it was easier to kill the man instead of paying him back, met with the millionaire in the latter's office under the pretense of a regular meeting for his job as a trader, then he used the heavy crystal ashtray present on the scene to clobber the man to death on the head, who fell on the floor breaking his nose, leaving a blood trace under his chair. After wiping off the blood and his fingerprints from the murder weapon, Keelan put once again the ashtray in its place, and tried delaying the discovery of the body by hanging it by the nearby hatstand and covering it with the victims own coat, hiding it from sight, with the hatstand hanger bending under the weight but not snapping. He left the scene, only to return a second time later, while inside the office there was a shady jeweller who also had a meeting with the millionaire, the gem trader completely unaware that a body of the seemingly missing rich man was there, as well as that the ashtray he had just put his cigarette butt in had in fact just been used as a murder weapon. With the excuse of going to search for the millionaire around the mansion, Keelan lead the jeweller outside of the office, only to re-enter the room immediately for a short time under the pretense to having forgotten his trunk; in truth, he used this opportunity to move the body from its hiding place on the office's couch, and leave a jigsaw piece in the coat's pocket. The body would then be discovered by the house maid, who, instead of calling for help, decided to help herself with the contents of her employer's wallet and walk away; finally, the wife of the man walked in the office and at last called the police.
While at first glance appearing to having created for himself a rock solid alibi, what Keelan did not know was that, thanks to the hidden camera the millionaire had secretly installed in the front of his office door, all the actions Makepeace had took to cover his tracks were in truth crucial evidence that pinpointed him as the perpetuator without question. Keelan however, was never caught for murder of the millionaire, because two vital pieces of evidence, the photoes of him entering and subsequently exiting the crime scene before anyone else had mysteriously vanished, stolen by Lawson, and Keelan was free to continue his killing spree.
Makepeace remained at large for about a year, due to Lawson's rank in the police force; if another member of the force ever got close to solving one of the murders, Lawson would destroy vital evidence. His daughter Diane noted to Lucy Baker that Makepeace was able to evade capture for his personal murder despite Alfendi's investigation because, she once witnessed her inebriated father claim that he could get away with his killings because he had connections inside Scotland Yard. Although that someone was Lawson, it was clear that Makepeace had never discussed this in detail with anyone; Diane later came to mistakenly believe that it was Inspector Alfendi Layton, because he was the one who did the case files.
Eventually, however, the investigation finally led New Scotland Yard to Forbodium Castle, where Makepeace was hiding, and the murderer was confronted by Alfendi Layton, who had gone on ahead to arrest Makepeace while Commissioner Barton, Hilda Pertinax, and Justin Lawson himself were all preparing to move out.
The official version of the events that then happened there was as follows:
Justin, Hilda, and Commissioner Barton, all rushed to the scene in a hurry, but as soon they arrived, they heard a gunshot, and decided to split up in order to quickly find them; Justin was leading the charge, as he proclaimed to having visited Forbodium before, and suggested for the Commisioned to prowl the castle grounds, and for Hilda to take the Central Tower. A few minutes later, while the Commisioner was searching the castle grounds in front of the main gate of the castle, and Pertinax was exploring the top floor of the Central Tower of the castle, they both heard Justin shouting from the roof of the East Tower for Alfendi to not shoot anymore and to stand down. While the Commisioner could only see Justin leaning from the East Tower from his lower position, Hilda was instead able to glimpse at the scene from the slit windows, seemingly seeing exactly what Justin would later descibe as Makepeace and Alfendi, both on the rooftop of the West Tower, guns trained on each other, with Keelan holding his right side in visible pain, while Alfendi was closing in to the cornered man while deviously grinning, his gun pointed squarely at Makepeace, the latter too injuried to try to properly fight back. In reality, Pertinax wasn't able to see Layton at all, but in the state of panic she was, she became sure she did.
Allerted by Lawson about the location of Alfendi and Keelan, the Commisioner headed to the West Tower from the ground floor, but eventually found the way towards the rooftop blocked, forcing him to begin to hack at the door with an emergency axe, delaying his arrival. Meanwhile, while he was occupied by the door, both Justin and Pertinax began moving towards the West Tower, Hilda forced to descend the entire Central Tower due to all the connecting doors leading to the western one being blocked with the exception of the ground floor one, while Justin had to descend the roof of the East Tower from the external woodden stair. Just as Hilda had reached the bottom of the West Tower, and Justin the end of the external stairs, two more gunshots rang into the air. After finally breaking the door down, the Commisioner together with Hilda were the first to arrive on the scene, findind both Alfendi and Makepeace in pools of blood, the former barely alive due to a shot in the chest, Lawson joining them soon after. Everything seemed to point out that Layton had shot Keelan in the head in cold blood, only for himself having also been shot in retaliation.
However, this was not what truly had happen:
That first shot that was heard was in truth the gunshot that had hit Alfendi in the chest, causing him to instantly pass out and collapse, entering a coma. While he was laying unconscious, Keelan, after shooting Layton, having already planned beforehand with Lawson how he should have acted during their raid at Forbodium Castle, began acting as if he had been shot in his right side, making it look like Alfendi had instead shot him, tricking the witnessing Pertinax, who had been directed to the Central Tower for this exact reason, Lawson scream being the final touch to complete the false premise in Hilda's mind.
Following the charade, Lawson, then quickly, and rather recklessly, crossed over the tiny ledge on the outside of the Central Tower, climbing along the ivy vines that grew along it, in order to reach the West Tower from the East one. Once he was on the West Tower's roof, Lawson picked up the gun of Alfendi and then, much to the killer surprise, shot Makepeace two times, once in the left side, then in his head, ending his connection with the Jigsaw Puzzle Killings and pinning Makepeace's death on Alfendi, before fleeing the scene the same way he came from. However he hadn't realized to having erroneously shot the wrong side of Keelan, creating an inconsistency with what Hilda had seen.
Legacy[]
Lawson couldn't bring himself to finish of Layton, a dear friend of his, and instead left him alive; Layton was then rescued by the arriving Hilda and Commissioner and miraculously, survived the gunshot wound that Makepeace inflicted to him, albeit barely, briefly entering into a coma due to it. While recovering in the hospital, at his bedside, Lawson secretly attempted to hypnotise him in his sleep to influence his memories of what had happen, but due to his lousy job, he instead accidentally became responsible for Al's multiple personality disorder, creating the "Placid" persona, who became the main identity of Alfendi. While this suited Lawson for the moment, since once he awoke from the coma, Placid Alfendi immediately confessed to the crime just as planned, Justin became however afraid that the original persona of Al, "Potty" as he would later be nicknamed, would eventually reveal the truth, so he began keeping a close eye on Al for signs of recovery.
Placid confessed to the crime, but on the other hand, Potty had no recollection of shooting at Keelan and refused to talk due to his suspicions of having been framed; as a result of this unusual situation, the death of Keelan, and as such the Jigsaw Puzzle Killings case as whole, couldn't be declared solved, and as such remained opened for the next few years. Justin, in his paranoia, still kept the case file about Forbodium Castle on his desk instead of archiving it, something he would later come to regret.
Four years later, Keelan's daughter, Diane, who was attempting to avenge her father, manipulated the right-hand man of the Agonni family, Barbarossa Sassina, in assisting her into creating copycat murders of Keelans first works, with Barbarossa himself then becoming the victim of the carbon copy of Keelan's first murder, all in an effort from Diane to raise awareness about her father's work, get revenge against the crime family, and complete her father's work by leaving four other mysterious jigsaw puzzle pieces belonging to the same puzzle picture as the other pieces near the corpses of the four gangsters .
Eventually, Diane forced Alfendi to surrender himself and, misguidedly believing him being the backer of her father that had betrayed him, was about to shoot him, and then leave the final jigsaw piece next to him, having previously left the second to last one in the pocket of a murdered Interpol agent, that she had killed specifically to use his corpse as, once again, a copy of one of the original crimes, specifically the murder of the millionaire.
However, at the last second, Lawson, both to save Al as well as to shut Diane's mouth, paranoid about what her fater could have told her, shot Diane in the right temple, having used the same trick he had previously used with Keelan himself, to blindside her. He then implicated Alfendi once again for the murder; however this time, Lucy Baker was able to figure out Lawson's modus operandi by connecting the mystery of both murders to the broken ivy, thusly clearing Alfendi of the accuses and arresting Lawson.
However, the true meaning behind the jigsaw puzzle picture still remained unknown, as when asked about his motive to getting involved with Keelan in the first place, he categorically refused to elaborate, simply saying "let's just say some bad people were getting a little too powerful".
Spoilers end here
Trivia[]
- His name's pronunciation makes the phrase "kill and make peace". It is possibly referencing that some of the people he killed were evil, and killing them would stop trouble, therefore, killing, to make peace.