Coming up with an alternate explanation for the backstory case is pretty easy. Valant killed Magnifi, then lied to Phoenix and said Magnifi killed himself. He ripped out the page and messed with the IV fluid to make it look like Zak did it.

As evidence, I present - the lack of any mention of Magnifi's prints on the gun. Zak took the first gun, so the one left at the scene was the killing weapon. I know the prosecution in AA is allowed to hide forensics from the defense moreso than in real life, and that the trial ended early, but surely it would have been mentioned if there were prints on the gun. Maybe Magnifi's prints were on the gun, while Klavier thought it was just from preparing the gun, but case 1 of this game implies that prints can be used to determine how a person held something, so they might be able to tell the difference between prints from setting it there and from firing it. If Magnifi did it, there should be prints, but if Valant did it, he would've used gloves.

This one isn't so much an alternative explanation as a defense that a character could use. The entire case against Damon Gant hinges on one piece of evidence that was obtained illegally by a person who is later considered to be very untrustworthy. All Gant has to do is claim that Phoenix stole the bloody cloth out of his safe and destroyed it, then forged a clean piece of cloth with Ema's handprint on it. Ema's hand size can't have grown too much in two years, can it? Gant can claim that he was an accomplice to helping frame Darke for Ema's crime, but was appalled when Lana killed Goodman to maintain the facade.

This doesn't do much other than switch the roles of the principal culprit and co-principal, but if she was able to gain access to the kitchen somehow, it's possible that Viola was actually the one who put the poison in the coffee while Furio put sugar in in the hopes of getting Elg to drink more. A bigger way to shift the blame would be to say that Armstrong put the poison in the coffee when he heard Elg win the lottery, and Furio just put salt in the coffee to be a jerk without even realizing that there was poison in it, and then Furio orchestrated the plan to frame Maggey afterward so that he wouldn't have to admit what he was doing there and what he stole from the dead victim. He would've learned about the poison bottle from the perpetrator when asking if there was anything he needed to know for his staged murder.

As an aside, maybe Lisa Basil was the one who created M.C. Bomber and Elg just stole it from her.

Godot tried to stop Dahlia with a dagger, but he was in such bad shape from being poisoned that Dahlia was able to grab it away from him and stab him with it. Maya, having heard about the sword-staff from village legend, used it to kill Dahlia in self-defense. Godot, feeling guilty about having tried to stab Misty with a dagger and letting his pride prevent him from stopping Pearl from channeling Dahlia, bullied Maya into letting him and Iris take the rap. He figured that Maya wouldn't be allowed to be the new master if she had killed the old master, even by accident in self-defense. Maya reluctantly agreed that as long as no one who couldn't claim self-defense got blamed, she wouldn't confess and would give his plan a chance.

As an alternative explanation, maybe Dahlia figured that if she committed suicide and framed Maya for it, it would be an even better revenge than killing Maya. Godot took the heat because he knew the suicide would be hard to prove. Maya couldn't say who the real killer was because she had passed out.

I'm going to write out a story. Before I start, I'd like to remind everyone that in the "confession" at the end of this case in the game, the "culprit" only confessed to being scared of getting caught by the victim; the confession to killing him was only implied. But what if the thing they were nervous about saying (aside from what the victim was about to expose them for) is that after the victim scared them, they contributed to his death by telling someone else something that lead to him being killed?

I will admit that I ignored some weird detail about how there were two ways to access the cargo hold (the elevator and the door out of the attendants' room), and Cammy only had access to one of them unless she stole something from Rhoda; and about how it left a record if you take the elevator down to the cargo room, but you could still leave the cargo area without leaving a record. That part confused me and I don't remember the details, so I'm leaving it out of my story and assuming that both attendants can get in and out of the cargo area (even though passengers can't.)

Get ready for my little fanfic!

***
"Maam, I need you to show me to the cargo hold."
"Huh? What?"
"I need to examine the plane's cargo area."
"Oh, uh, sorry, but passengers are not authorized..."
"Akbey Hicks, Interpol." He showed his badge and ID.
"Uh, uh, uh..." Cammy didn't know what to do at this point. She was very worried.
"I have a warrant here."
"Um, okay, right this way, I guess." Well, we don't have anything illegal down there on this flight yet, she thought to herself. She used her ID to lead him down to the cargo hold.
"Thank you for your cooperation, maam." He said.
"So, can I ask what this is about?"
"It says on the warrant that we're looking for evidence of smuggling and artifact forgery, especially relating to Borginian statues. We suspect that a member of this flight crew is involved in illegal activity. It isn't you, is it?"
"Oh, uh, of course not! I, like, get tired too easily to be able to pull off a crime!"
"Well, I hope for your sake it's not you." Agent Hicks began surveying the area from above. At first, Cammy didn't see the point of this, though she didn't like that he was scoping out the area where they would store fakes. It dawned on her that things would look different if he came back down here later, and that the statue that should be there, that she had recently signed off as being there, wasn't.

Cammy ran to go find her accomplice. Aside from overreacting when surprised, the other smuggler on the plane always seemed to emotionally "have it together" more than Cammy, despite Cammy's capacity for coming up with ideas in a limited amount of time and creating false appearances. Agent Hicks was too preoccupied to pay much attention to her leaving. As Cammy entered the flight attendants' room and quickly shut the door behind her, she saw Rhoda coming in. "Rhoda! Rhoda!" Cammy yelled. "There's an Interpol agent in the cargo room!"
"WHAT?! How did an agent get in there?" Rhoda's hair flew up from her surprise while she said this.
"I let him in. He had a warrant. What could I do? It's not like I could refer this to the captain!"
"That's true; even your sleazy smile wouldn't get rid of the captain's suspicions if he caught wind of this. But you should've at least told me first!"
"Uh... anyway, I, uh, think he's already noticed that the statue isn't here like it should be. He said something about looking for it or something."
"*** I'm a spammy Spambot that wants to be ban hammered! ***... let me go see what's going on!"
Without another word, Rhoda walked over toward the cargo bay door. Cammy needed a moment to rest and collect her thoughts, and was afraid of the Interpol agent, so she didn't follow right away.
***
Rhoda couldn't believe what a mess Cammy had allowed. As usual, I'm probably going to have to do most of the work around here, Rhoda thought to herself. She went into the cargo room and saw what she assumed must be the Interpol agent from behind. He appeared to take a picture with his cell phone. She tried to think fast, but it was hard to think clearly. She realized that if things looked different in the hold when he came back later, it would show when the illegal fake cargo had arrived. If he talks to the cargo guy in Zheng Fa who's with the ring, he'll tell him that I was his contact, she realized with a shock. Who knew what else this agent could do? He had to be stopped!
***
Cammy was still trying to figure out what they could do about the Interpol agent when she heard the faint sound of something that sounded like a man yelling coming from the direction of the cargo hold. What is going on in there, she wondered, alarmed. She ran into the cargo room and saw Rhoda more tense than Cammy had ever seen her before. "Where is he?" Cammy whispered.
"Ahhh!" Rhoda shouted a bit and jumped when Cammy spoke to her. "He's... he's... Ohhhh... You won't believe it, but... just look down there."
Cammy looked over the low railing and was appalled by what she saw. "AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! What did you do to him?!"
"Keep it down! I... I did what I had to."

When they had regained a fraction of their wits, Rhoda and Cammy went down to where the agent's body was. "There's no way he's going to make it," said Rhoda. "He might already be dead."
"Do you think we could try to smuggle his body off the plane in Zheng Fa? There's less security and more of a ring presence at the airport there than at our destination airport."
"No," said Rhoda. "There's only one guy from the ring in the cargo crew there, and while Zheng Fa doesn't have any statue authenticity experts or strict controls on what leaves the country, their customs agency is thorough enough that they would catch anything with blood on it coming off the plane."
"So there's no way to hide the body?" Cammy blew some bubbles in frustration.
"No, but we can hide the fact that he died in the cargo hold. We can make it look like a passenger did it, as long as we hide the fact that he died here."
"How can we hide that, though?"
"We clean up the blood, then move the body."
"I guess we should get cleaning then. Hmm, but what do we clean with?" Cammy mused. "Let me take a look around... Ooh! There's some cloth here!"
"Cloth? Where?"
"Oh, it says on the box here in Borginian that it has cloth in it. Hmm... Hmm... Hey, maybe we should try to make it look like he died after we got to Zheng Fa!" The cogs in Cammy's head were really turning now as she thought as hard as she could. She wasn't just going to hide the fact that a flight attendant did it; she was going to make sure that Rhoda took the blame if someone figured out that a flight attendant did it. She had no problem scamming people out of tens of thousands of dollars with fake artifacts, so tricking a murderer wasn't going to disrupt her frequent need to sleep. Besides, getting Rhoda busted was no worse than pinning it on an innocent passenger.
"Why?"
"Well, like, no one will notice that we used cloth if there's no cloth on the plane!"
"What about the cloth with blood on it that we can't unload?"
I'll plant it somewhere that makes you look guilty, Cammy thought. I'll pin the murder and the smuggling on you. Though, it would be better if they didn't come down here, or find things on that form I signed... "I'll take care of that if you take care of the body."
"Hmmph." Rhoda said, as she and Cammy finished wiping up the blood. "I think I'll use my suitcase to carry his body onto the elevator."
"Okay, you go do that! All this cleaning has made me... YAWN! ... tired! I'm going to take a snooze now."
"You can't seriously be thinking about sleeping at a time like this!"
No, Rhoda, I just want you out of here so that I can plant some evidence in your locker. That cell phone will work... Cammy tried to slip the victim's cell phone into her pocket when Rhoda wasn't looking.

Valant Gramarye specifically states that he wiped the gun with the intent to frame Zak. So... yeah. But I guess you wouldn't be able to prove it. Wait, no. In another case, they were able to tell that a gun had been wiped and not held with gloves. But then no one mentioned the wiping of fingerprints on Magnifi's gun and just said there were no prints, saying Zak could've been the murderer because he wore gloves. But then Valant could just be claiming suicide to get off with a lesser crime. But why confess if no one's investigating the trial anymore? Yeah, I say the backstory makes sense and is probably true/what really happened. I believe Valant. The alternate one wouldn't make much sense once you consider Valant's claim of wiping the gun and the fact that he was gonna come clean to the police out of his own free will.

Phoenix's evidence wasn't illegal.

Gant couldn't say Phoenix altered the fabric because he blurted out that it was the genuine article as soon as it was presented to the court. The whole point of not presenting it as soon as the opportunity arose was to trick Gant into claiming Phoenix had the real thing, since he'd already tried the "Phoenix forged evidence" excuse earlier in the trial (and the whole "Rules of Law" blah blah).

Maya couldn't have possibly known about the sword-staff even if she knew Misty had one because she didn't know who Elise Deauxnim was until after her death.

As far as Dahlia killing herself, she was stabbed through the back with a long sword. It's pretty much impossible to do that to yourself without help.

1-5 implies that the two main rules are that the evidence has to be relevant to the case and authorized by the police. Yet in Ace Attorney Investigations, they claim that Faraday couldn't get Coachen convicted because some of the evidence was illegally obtained.

Was it definitively stated that she was stabbed through the back? I don't remember the autopsy report. It might create a conflict with how Elise' body lay after Iris pulled the sword out, but couldn't she have been stabbed through the front?

fake bloody card

Atmey got in Bullard's office, but how? Bullard didn't invite him, and Atmey had no keycard, so he went in with Ron DeLite. After he realized that Ron came to kill Bullard, he knocked his lights out and left as he thought he would be suspected.

Both Wocky and Alita had guns, so what if they shot at the same time? Very unlikely, but maybe Wocky decided to clean up the side he shot and take away the bullet.

The Atmey one doesn't work because Ron has no strong motive for it. Certainly a lesser motive than Atmey had

I thought that the gun that Alita used for the murder was taken from Wocky. I was under the impression that Wocky took the family's gun, then Alita took it from him when she went to the clinic and still had it with her when she was stuffed in the cart.

It would be hard to hide where a bullet hit, but I guess there was confusion about a missing bullet in DL-6.

They did both think that Bullard was blackmailing them. It was the first time Ron had been hit with a demand for $50,000, whereas Atmey had paid like over a million already over a period of time, but they both believed themselves to have been blackmailed.

Who's to say they didn't both kill him at the exact same time? Dun-dun-dun! But seriously though, Kane didn't invite Atmey, so he didn't let him in. Atmey didn't have a card key, so he didn't get in himself. Therefore, Ron must have let him in and they killed Bullard at the same time. A double murder ! Dun-dun-dun!

The autopsy report on Goodman clearly stated that he had ONE stab wound. ONE. In fact, that was a point used to counter Angel Starr's testimony - that he was only stabbed once.

Except he was apparently stabbed twice. Once by Gant, causing the death, and once after death by Lana. Damage from two wounds would be noticable, even if Lana managed to follow the path of the switchblade exactly with Edgeworth's knife. Yet the autopsy report insists, one stab wound, only one stab wound. Between the Chief Prosecutor, the Chief of Police, and Miles freakin' Edgeworth, nobody thought to bring up that major contradiction?

I think the bullet in von Karma's shoulder only proves that he was near the elevator at the time, but it doesn't prove that he was the killer. Like, Miles throws the gun, it fires and the bullet hit Manfred. Miles hears the scream then falls unconscious. The gun falls near Yanni, who grabs it and kills Gregory, while Manfred goes away.

Alternative theory: you know, Phoenix asks to compare the bullet in Manfred's shoulder with the one found in Gregory's heart. But they never actually do it. So what if Manfred was right? His bullet comes from an unrelated event, the gun was already missing a bullet and the impact in the elevator's door was made during the earthquake or something. Miles actually killed his dad, the scream he heard was maybe Gregory's, and Manfred's vacation was really because of the penalty.

Now about the present. There isn't much to prove Edgeworth's innocence. Let's say the gun belonged to Edgeworth (and was already missing a bullet), and he actually killed Hammond, while the first gunshot that Larry heard was just some firecracker used by Yanni for Christmas.

Edgeworth says that Cammy was the only person on the flight with fluent knowledge of Borginian, so she chose the cloth with Borginian on it to wipe the blood, therefore, she killed the man, etc, etc. But couldn't Zinc LaBlanc have done it too? Being the angry rich guy he is, he could have requested to check his statue, the fake Alif Red, killed the guy, and as he speaks Borginian, he got the Borginian cloth, and all else mentioned in the case.

3-5.

That is a plausible explanation for how Zinc might have gotten into the cargo hold, but it seems like Cammy would've had an easier time getting access to Rhoda's locker to plant the phone in there than Zinc would have. Still, he did have the cloth, and could have been a co-perpetrator of the statue fakery rather than the victim. Good thinking!

Manfred

Von Karma wrote that letter that was in Yogi's safe...

Wasn't the green envelope Bullard blackmailing Atmey? So Bullard let Atmey in so that Atmey could give him his money.

Wocky had a knife, not a gun. And they made a big deal about the location of the bullet hole. Remember when Stickler testified? Pal was shot in his right temple. First Stickler testified he came from the south, meaning when Pal turned to Stickler, his right temple was facing Wocky. But when Stickler revealed he came from the north, it meant that Pal's right temple would be turned away from Wocky, so it would've been impossible for Wocky to shoot Pal in the right temple.

That's a valid point, but one could argue that even if Yanni received the letter, that doesn't mean he followed the instructions (after all, the letter was also telling him to burn the letter).

It is stated that Wocky had a gun(The one picked up at the crime scene, which he stole from Kitaki Manor) and Alita had a gun(the one she stole from Kitaki Manor to kill Meraktis at the clinic). They both shot at the same time, and both bullets hit. However, seeing as they're Kitakis, they're careful and remove the bullet from Wocky's side.

But let's say Ron and Luke collaborated and constructed a plan to get their money back. Luke came in and distracted Bullard, but Ron came in with a weapon, intending to kill Bullard. Atmey was concentrated on the money, so he went to the safe while Ron was supposed to restrain Bullard as part of the plan. Ron killed Bullard after getting the chance. After Atmey retrieved the money, he realized what was going on. Ron stuffs the body in the safe, they fight, and Ron gets knocked out. Atmey doesn't report it to the police, as he would be arrested for robbing Bullard and the whole Mask De Masque thing. Also, what was the murder weapon in Bullard's murder? One more question, does anyone know where I can find the black-and-white screenshot of Atmey at KB?

They were able to tell, and list in the autopsy report, that damage occurred to the body after death - in this case, the body's 10-foot fall. So why, then, were forensics unable to determine in 1-5 that Bruce Goodman was stabbed after death? I'll give them a pass on Misty because of the highly unusual shape of the Shichishito - a stab wound with that thing could cover up practically any other stabbing injury. But Goodman? Inexcusable.

That's a good point. Yogi could've received the letter and realized that he wanted to see Hammond and Edgeworth again, but not kill them. Hammond or Edgeworth could've brought a gun, or stolen one from Yogi. Then, when Edgeworth and Hammond were on the boat together, Hammond could've said something infuriating like, "I know that Yogi wasn't temporarily insane when he did it" or "I think that YOU did it!" Hammond could've even recognized Yogi in the shop, then decided that with both Yogi and Edgeworth there, it was a set-up, and mistakenly believed that Edgeworth was in on it and attacked Edgeworth first. Admittedly, it would be strange if he got in the boat if he knew there was a plot against him. Anyway, the person who called the unhappy reunion isn't automatically the killer at it.

As for how Edgeworth's right hand prints would be on the gun if he's the one who fired with his left in Lotta's photo, though...

I agree that there is a problem here. I find it very unlikely that Lana managed to stab at the exact same location as the original wound, especially since she said she was shaking and injured herself because of that. Maybe Gant tampered with the autopsy report?

There's actually an explanation for that in the game. Manfred says that Edgeworth could have wiped the gun after he fired, so he could have left the fingerprints of his right hand afterwards.

No, Wocky took a gun from Kitaki manor, and Alita took that gun from Wocky; there was only one gun. That's why Wocky brought a knife.

But if you want to say that Wocky then got a second gun, and both shot and both bullets hit... That's still pretty much impossible, since there was only one bullet wound in Pal; it's not like they could cover up the fact that Pal was shot by Wocky just by removing the bullet. And then why would Wocky stay silent about Alita also being a killer? If he removed his bullet, I'm assuming he did it so that he wouldn't get caught.

Atmey was blackmailing Ron, so why would Ron go get Bullard? And then why would Ron kill Bullard?

If Edgeworth is the killer, I'd like to know what the gunshot right before midnight was...

It could have been some firecracker used by Yanni for Christmas. Or maybe a champagne bottle. I doubt Larry would have been able to tell the difference, as he was listening to the radio and didn't even remember the gunshot at first.

Would those things really have been loud enough for Lotta's camera to pick up on the other side of the lake, though?

If I remember correctly, Faraday was unable to get Coachen convicted because some of the evidence went missing.

Does anyone else think Ambassador Palaeno could have killed Coachen? I mean, the murder occurred in his office, and he had motive enough since he knew Coachen had hired Ka-Shi Nou and could have been ashamed to have a corrupt secretary, as well as the fact it is said that Coachen did a better job of running the Babhalese embassy than Palaeno himself, and Palaeno could have killed him in fear of losing his job.

where Coachen died was disputed. Edgeworth said it was the theater practice room or something, right? The only evidence I remember that proved that he died there instead of the office where he was found were a bouquet picture with a knife handle, a "pick" found near the "stage," Shiu-Na's suspicious behavior that would make more sense if she was helping Alba than Paleano, and the alleged bloody hot dog box. And the name of the cancelled samurai move that Alba knew.