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I've been thinking about Rokkenjima Prime and the culprit theories for that lately, and it's a bit frustrating. The message bottle stories should have the required info in them.
The most likely options I've seen are:
(1) That it was all some sort of accident or huge mess that snowballed out of control.
That idea could be supported by the text, I think. At a tense family conference full of people desperate for money (if it was like that), and with perhaps Beatrice showing up with gold and shotguns, and then a couple of serious misunderstandings and accidents, okay. The ep 7 tea party and its Kyrie/Rudolf culprit theory didn't seem to make sense because of the risks involved, but maybe Prime could have something better. The Ushiromiya's are hot-blooded people who don't always get along. Especially if they were in the middle of a fake murder mystery, somebody not in on it could get paranoid and get shooting.
It can stand up as a reason why Eva refused to talk about it, because it would have shown so many people in a bad light. It's enough reason for Beatrice (if she wrote the stories after) to try to take the blame all on herself, especially if she's to blame for sparking the whole thing off.
(2) Yasuda...
But that is a really unsatisfying conclusion, because although Yasu has a motive for pulling off something like a fake murder mystery party for Battler, nothing about her suggests that she has reason to kill people for real. I like this option the least.
Furthermore, if Yasu did it and Eva knew that, there's no way Eva would cover for her.
More likely would be Yasu being involved but not intending to kill people. After either a big group misunderstanding killing everyone but Battler and Eva, or a specific culprit committing the murders, she might well flip the switch on the bomb to either kill the culprit or hide the evidence.
Alternatively, she could have been pulling a Kinzo and leaving the bomb timer switched on for the sake of "magic", but intending to put it back before it activated. If there was an incident and she was killed or unconscious, she would be unable to stop it. It doesn't even have to be a malicious incident: it could be as simple as "everyone had a great time at the family meeting, including Beatrice, but unfortunately when everyone was playing catch with a ball, she was hit on the head and knocked out..."
(3) Someone else, who Eva and Yasu both need to protect. In earlier discussions I've seen and agree with, that tends to indicate either Battler or George. Eva doesn't want her son painted a murderer, and if Battler did it she wants to protect Ange from that knowledge.
And this is where I get stuck the hardest, because what motive could Battler or George possibly have for killing everyone? There could be all sorts of things going on in Prime that we weren't aware of, okay, but the text ought to have something. Battler survived the incident, which makes him more suspicious, and George seems to have some extremely suspicious traits in the games themselves, but when it comes to a motive for killing all those people, it's really hard to think of one which fits either of them. Neither is portrayed as caring about the gold or being the head of the family. (And even if they did, the scale of the murders doesn't even make sense for people who did want the gold or headship.)
George might have a motive for something involving Battler or Shannon, but what about Maria? Jessica? Gohda? Kumasawa? His parents? Etcetera.
Perhaps the best theory for any given individual is one where there's a murder game, they aren't in on it, and they believe murders are really happening. And then they get paranoid while holding a shotgun, and real deaths result from that. It's not a great theory, but I can understand that happening.
But as for a deliberate murder of all those people, I have a lot of trouble thinking of anything sufficient for either Battler of George. Does anyone else have an idea for that one?
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