History Main / FoundTheKillerLostTheMurderer

* This happens ''four times'' in ''Series/{{Castle}}''. The first time, Castle and Beckett find the man who murdered Beckett's mother and find that he's a hired killer, but Beckett has to shoot him in order to get Castle out of a hostage situation. The second time, Beckett manages to capture another hired killer, a sniper, who was hired by the same person(s) who ordered her mother's murder. This sniper is still alive by the end of the episode but indicates with a stone-faced glare that he'll never inform on his clients. The third time involves a key person involved (really, really complicated) with her mother's murder- [[spoiler:'''''Police Captain Montgomery!''''']] She gets to talk to him uninterrupted, and he knows who the mastermind behind the conspiracy is, but refuses to say the name anyway, saying that the mastermind is so rich and powerful that giving her his name would get her killed as certainly as if he'd shot her himself. He dies minutes later. [[spoiler:And Beckett is shot during his funeral, making it a SenselessSacrifice. Or not so senseless, as the sniper broke into Montgomery's house looking for info on Beckett's protector; she's able to confront him but fails at defeating him. He puts Beckett's protector in the hospital, then tries to find the incriminating files hanging over his boss's head...only to be killed by a booby trap on them. This destroyed the files...but after sifting through them, they figure out who the boss was...but they can't touch him because he's a high-ranking Senator.]]

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* This is explored in ''L'étrange mort de Paul-Louis Courier'', an episode of ''La caméra explore le temps'' relating the real-life murder of a political writer in 1825. During the first investigation, Louis Frémont, Courier's keeper, is suspected but eventually acquitted due to insufficient proof and the lack of motive for the murder. Four years later, new reveals firmly establish Frémont's culpability... but Judge Hainique is still unable to figure out why he killed Courier, and since Frémont was already judged and acquitted, it is impossible to try him again for the same crime. Even though Hainique becomes firmly convinced that Courier's wife Herminie is behind the murder, he now has his hands tied, since he can't expect a jury to condemn the instigator while the actual murderer remains free. The narration concludes that even today, we know for sure that Frémont killed Courier but we can't explain why.

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* The ''Series/DueSouth'' pilot follows Benton Fraser as he heads to Chicago [[CatchPhrase on the trail of the killers of his father]]. He tracks down the hired assassin who did the deed, only for a friend of his father's to shoot the hitman in cold blood, ostensibly because he wanted revenge [[spoiler: but really because he was the one who ordered the hit.]]