| Fifi Laguarde |
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Fifi Laguarde was the animal-loving director of the prison within which Bronco Knight was murdered. Her prison uses animal therapy, giving each inmate a pet to take care of as part of the rehabilitation process.
Assassination plot
- Main article: SS-5 Incident
Laguarde and her accomplices.
Before becoming a prison director, Laguarde was the director of the Happy Family Home orphanage. In 2007, she was bribed into conspiring with then-Chief Prosecutor Excelsius Winner and a body double of President Di-Jun Wang of Zheng Fa to assassinate the real president and replace him with the body double. The conspirators hired the infamous blind assassin Bodhidharma Kanis to carry out the killing itself. They planned to betray and kill Kanis after the assassination so as to cover their tracks, but this scheme was overheard by a boy at the orphanage named Simeon Saint, who had been saved from death by Kanis a number of years previously. Kanis was thus able to escape with his life.
Laguarde and Winner then went to dispose of the corpse. However, a photojournalist stumbled onto the crime scene and sent a voicemail message to his girlfriend about what he believed was a kidnapping in progress. He was swiftly killed by the body double, and his corpse placed near where Wang's body had been lying in the snow in order to cover up their tracks. They then replaced the photographs on the reporter's camera with that of a scene they staged of Laguarde, disguised in a trenchcoat and with her face hidden, pointing a gun at the body double. This was done in order to make it seem as if a kidnapping had occurred outside the orphanage.
For the subsequent investigation into the "kidnapping", now referred to as the SS-5 Incident by law enforcement, Laguarde was the only suspect that the police, led by Da-Long Lang, could find, due to it happening outside her orphanage. However, since Winner was the one set to prosecute the case, the evidence was soon manipulated. Thus, Laguarde was acquitted and the case went cold. Laguarde later interrogated Saint repeatedly, somehow discovering that he had seen the murder, but he eventually ran away.
Prison blackmail
Interrogating Kanis.
Winner later appointed Laguarde director of both the local prison and the adjoining detention center. She strongly believed in animal therapy, and assigned each prisoner their own pet. Bodhidharma Kanis was caught and imprisoned in the same prison, and threatened Laguarde and her family by claiming that he still had many henchmen roaming free. He also said that he knew about President Wang's secret son, whom Wang had planned to acknowledge publicly. This knowledge would prove that the President Wang running Zheng Fa was a fake.
Laguarde thus gave in to Kanis's whims, mostly by smuggling in various goods for him and his fellow prisoners, and giving him special treatment, including a very large and confortable maximum security cell. Kanis also obtained five chisels from Laguarde, which he used for wood carving. Throughout his stay, Laguarde tried to help the police catch his subordinates and interrogated Kanis personally. However, her efforts proved fruitless.
In order to smuggle goods into the prison, she recruited Frank Sahwit, one of the inmates, with the promise of him receiving preferential treatment and a better chance for parole, as well as ignoring the fact that he had broken his electronic bracelet. Sahwit would turn off the prison's power so that Laguarde could cross the normally electrified fence from her office to the prison yard. She would drop the goods down the yard's well, and spray perfume to signal Kanis's dog Helmut to pick them up. Sahwit would then turn the power back on, and Laguarde would correct the timestamps on the security cameras so that nothing would seem amiss.
Prison murder
- Main article: The Captive Turnabout
Fearing for her life.
In March 2019, Bronco Knight was arrested and detained in the holding cell. Laguarde soon discovered that he had been engaging in correspondence chess with Kanis. Convinced that he was one of Kanis's "dogs", Laguarde resolved to deal with him. She wrote a report on her suspicions of Knight to Winner, and told him to recover the real president's body. She then waited until March 27, when she would be scheduled to smuggle goods into the prison, and when the Berry Big Circus would arrive to perform for the prisoners.
Laguarde interrogating Knight
Early in the morning, Laguarde interrogated Knight. During the session, she searched his belongings and found a small chisel inside a chessboard. Laguarde saw this as a sign that Knight was indeed in cahoots with Kanis, and killed him using the knife that had been confiscated from Kanis by the police, which had custom-made bells attached to it. Laguarde decided to frame Kanis for the crime so that he would at least be transferred to a different prison.
Laguarde took the bells from the knife and attached them to the chisel. She then repeatedly stabbed Knight's neck with the chisel and planted it there to make it seem as if it were the murder weapon. When Sahwit cut the power as usual, Laguarde wrapped the body in a sheet to prevent a blood trail and tied it to a contraption that had been set up over the well for the circus's performance. During the subsequent circus show, the contraption was unwittingly used to send the body to the bottom of the well. Helmut then picked up the body, which was eventually found in one of the workrooms. Laguarde specially chose this method in order to give herself an alibi.
Miles Edgeworth, the prosecutor in charge of Knight's case, visited the detention center only to discover that his suspect had been killed. The murder weapon became a large point of contention between Edgeworth and Verity Gavèlle, a member of the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence, who had Excelsius's son Eustace take charge of the case. During the investigation, Laguarde hid the real murder weapon inside her pet alligator Ally. Despite these efforts, Edgeworth found the knife, and Laguarde was arrested for the murder.
On trial
- Main article: Turnabout for the Ages
Laguarde was soon put on trial for Knight's murder, with Gavèlle as the judge, Eustace as the prosecutor, and Rosie Ringer as her defense attorney. Problems arose even before the trial began when Ringer was murdered by Excelsius and Eustace ran away. The two attorneys were replaced by prosecutor Franziska von Karma and defense attorney Eddie Fender. However, the trial soon grounded to a halt when it was discovered that both the murder weapon and the chisel had vanished.
Fender and von Karma stalled the trial while Edgeworth looked for Eustace and Shaun Fenn, Gavèlle's son, whom Excelsius had allegedly kidnapped in order to threaten Gavèlle into acquitting Laguarde. It turned out that Eustace had given the evidence to Excelsius, who had thrown it away to cover for his former co-conspirator. Eustace eventually returned and confronted his father using the small piece of evidence that he had managed to retrieve from the garbage dump, which proved that Excelsius had thrown the evidence away. With Fenn rescued, Laguarde's guilty verdict became all but certain, and would only be delayed so that all of the evidence could be recovered from the dump. Laguarde snapped and openly berated Excelsius for not being able to cover up her crime. As a result of this trial, Excelsius's authority to seal the SS-5 Incident files was revoked, allowing Edgeworth to reveal the truth behind that case once and for all.
Personality
Mugshot.
Laguarde had a habit of being overly affectionate when greeting people by both hugging and kissing them. She came across as motherly, and referred to both her orphanage and her prison as her "home". However, she had a darker and crueller side, as not only was she willingly bribed into assisting with the SS-5 Incident, but she was also not averse to threatening children and murdering other people if it benefited her.
Laguarde wore a white fox around her neck, which was alive and usually copied her facial expressions. At one point, she even spoke through it. Her coat is also made entirely of live foxes, which jumped off her during her breakdown to reveal a blue and white striped convict shirt underneath.
Appearance
Fifi has pooch blond hair and brown eyes. She wears pink lipstick.
Laguarde wears a blue and white striped dress, black heels, and a police hat. Her brown coat and white boa are actually brown foxes and a white fox.
Name
- Japanese - Marie Miwa (美和マリー):
- Her full Japanese name comes from "mimawari" (見回り), which means "patrol".
- English - Fifi Laguarde:
- Her last name comes from the French phrase "la garde", which means "female guard".
- "Fifi" is a stereotypical name for a small dog.
- French - Marilou Lagarde:
- "Lagarde" comes from "la garde", which means "female guard".
- "Marilou" might be a play on "loup" ("wolf").
- Chinese - Xúnluó Pèizhuó (循羅 佩卓):
- Her Chinese family name is synonymous with "巡邏" (Xúnluó), meaning "patrol".
Unofficial
- English - Patricia Roland:
- Her English name in the unofficial English fan translation of Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit is "Patricia Roland"; the prefixes "Pat" and "Rol" form the word "patrol", which is a reference to her original Japanese name.
- French - Mira Vexel:
- Her name in the unofficial French fan translation is a play on "mire avec zèle", referencing her duties as the prison warden.
Development
- Laguarde is the earliest born female culprit in the post-Meiji timeline.
- To date, Laguarde is the only defendant in the Ace Attorney series to receive an on-screen "Guilty" verdict as a result of a personally-committed murder.