Beniko Suo (Case Closed)

Beniko Suo (Ikuko Tani) was a hidden villainess from "A Cursed Mask Coldly Laughs", episode 7.22 of Case Closed (airdate March 13, 2000). She was a former singer and the President of music company Mahogany Promotions. She was also the prominent founder of a charity dedicated to the victims of car accidents.
The episode began with Beniko inviting Kogoro Mouri, his daughter Ran, and Conan Edogawa to a dinner she was hosting at her mansion, with her other guests being members of her charity. The guests included: photographer Masanori Katagiri, baseball player Mamoru Matsudaira, tarot prophet Haruka Nagara, and rock singer Touya Aikawa. During the dinner, it was revealed that Beniko had a shared past with Touya and Masanori: Touya's mother had been Beniko's former business partner and, twenty years prior, she committed suicide after causing the hit-and-run accident that killed Masanori's wife.
Kogoro went to Beniko regards a note he had found attached to a tree branch that been left on the road to her mansion, warning them not to join her charity. But upon being told this, Beniko brushed the threat off as one of many she received for her charity work and instead hired Kogoro to investigate the death of Masanori's wife; offering him two million yen for his services. But later that night, Beniko was found stabbed to death in her bedroom, surrounded by her collection of the infamous 200 masks created by Julio González (which were believed to have a death curse). While the curse was initially believed to have caused Beniko's death, Conan deduced that the killer had been Touya, him having strung the masks into Beniko's room with a knife attached to them and manuevered the string of masks to stab his mentor in the neck.
Beniko's posthumous villainous reveal came shortly after Touya's reveal, as he angrily confessed the truth about his mother's death: she had been murdered by Beniko, who had been the real culprit behind the hit-and-run that claimed the life of Masanori's wife and framed Touya's mother for the crime. Beniko then killed her business partner and staged her death as a suicide to fully cover her tracks, with Touya learning the truth later after finding a letter in his mother's journal revealing the truth about the accident. While Beniko's current partner, Kazuyo Inaba, angrily denied Touya's claims, he definitively proved Beniko as a callous murderer by revealing how his mother had been spending his birthday with him at the time of the accident, while also blasting Beniko for only using her charity for wealth and popularity.
== Gallery ==
Beniko Suo corpse.jpg|Beniko's corpse
Category:2000s
Category:Anime Villainess
Category:Business Villainess
Category:Callous
Category:Corpse
Category:Deceiver
Category:Greedy
Category:Hero's Friend
Category:Man Kills Villainess
Category:Murderer
Category:Murder: Staged Suicide
Category:Murder: Vehicle
Category:Show Business
Category:Vehicle Weapon
Category:Villainous Reveal
Category:Fate: Deceased
Category:Demise: Stabbed
Category:Demise: Severed Jugular