How to solve a cold case file game: build the timeline, test statements against records, apply the two-source rule and avoid the three mistakes most players make.
Most people who get a case file wrong did not miss a document. They read the one that mattered and did not notice, because they were reading like a reader and not like an investigator. This is the method that fixes that. It works on our files, on boxed kits, and on any document-based mystery.
The cold case memo tells you what you are being asked to prove. Then read the entire folder without taking notes. You are not solving yet; you are learning who the people are and what the night looked like. It takes forty minutes and it is the best forty minutes you will spend.
Draw a line from the start of the evening to the discovery of the body. Put every timestamp on it with the document it came from: phone records, logs, receipts, patrol reports, the autopsy window. Then, in a different colour, put every claimed time from the statements. Where the two colours disagree, circle it.
For each suspect, write their account in one line. Underneath, list every record that supports it and every record that contradicts it. A record is a document produced by a process or a stranger: a telephone company, a scale house, a hotel folio, a laboratory. A statement from the suspect's friend is not a record.
Accuse only when two independent records contradict the same person. One contradiction can be a mistake or a misremembered time. Two, from different sources, is a lie. Equally, clear a suspect only when a record puts them somewhere else; "they seem nice" and "they have no motive" clear nobody.
Try the method on the free case. If you get it wrong, the solution will show you which record you read and did not weigh.