In each case the police of Santa Carla could find clues, no witnesses, no clear or immediate motive, no marks or struggle, and no hint to the identities of the killers.

Cecil's immediate motive in proposing the peace Ballot was to outflank Lord Rothermere's claims of growing public support for his isolationist and anti-League position.

But they cast his immediate motive as a desire to resolve an embarrassing dispute over summer school.

Her seduction and rape by Gianettino Doria provide the immediate motive for the conspiracy.

The forced installation of the Qizilbash was the immediate motive for the uprising.

Drawing on 328 witness statements, federal investigators determined that the immediate motive behind the killings was vengeance.

Not the underlying psychological or social causes, but the immediate motive.

What immediate motive could a woman have for a series of homicides like this?

But the immediate motive?

The immediate motive of her testimony was a conversation that she had accidentally overheard on a railway journey.