Richard Braun

Richard Braun (リヒァルト・ブラウン) is a private investigator hired by Hans Georg Schuwald to know the reason behind Edmund Fahren's sudden suicide.

Therapy with Dr. Reichwein
Following the incident of Stephen Joos' homicide, he has been seeing Dr. Reichwein for his counseling. The two seem to build an extremely close relationship, as Dr. Reichwein sees Richard as more of a friend rather than a patient and Richard also sees Dr. Reichwein as a friend rather than a counselor; as Richard is able to share much of his information about his cases. Dr. Reichwein is shown to be deeply moved by Richard's death.

Relationship with his family
Although his relationship with his family is strained, he still shows that he cares for his daughter greatly and wishes to meet her.

His wife still shows signs of compassion toward Richard.

Homicide of Stephen Joos
At some point, Richard Braun was assigned to investigate a series of serial murders being committed by a young man named Stephen Joos (who was, unbeknownst to the authorities, an alumnus of 511 Kinderheim). Braun had troubles with alcoholism at the time, and this may have proved to be the undoing of his career as a public investigator, though this would be called into question later on. Whatever the case, Braun eventually managed to track the teenage killer to a back alley after attempting to apprehend him, ostensibly after he'd been drinking, but the unstable young man pointed a loaded pistol at him. Without hesitation, Braun shot and killed Joos, but in doing so, he violated his oath not to kill an underage suspect and was expelled from the police force, as Joos was still under 17 years old.

However, this event causes Richard to feel panging sense of guilt and needs to see a psychologist to help him. Throughout the few episodes, it is seen that Richard experience the events over and over again. Although such occurrence became fewer as the story progresses (until the point where Richard overcomes it and is willing to accept that it was not his fault) the event came back to haunt him and led to his death. This is because it was found out that he wasn't drunk at the time of murder and was fully aware of what he was doing.

Personality
Richard is known to be under therapy due to the trauma he had from killing a serial killer. He shows great remorse over this when Johan led him to think about that incident was not due to himself being drunk. The amount of guilt led to his death. He has shown to have a strong sense of justice and cares for those around him. He seems to carry a friendly demeanor with him, although he is not liked by his colleagues; due to his drinking and his casual attitude towards professionalism within the police.

Richard shows good skills of deduction and pattern recognition, when trying to unlock the mystery behind the previous murder cases he hadn't solved; proving to be a good detective and uncovering that Johan was dangerous without meeting Dr. Tenma; knowing the truth behind these cases though made him a vital target for Johan; leading to his death.

While he has some alcohol issues, Richard does maintain a strict preference to his drink. He will drink scotch, and only scotch; anything else is of no interest to him.

Name Differences
The Monster anime (Episode 30) and the official German translation of the manga used the surname "Braun" instead of "Braun."