Luna planned to talk to the first victim and even watchlisted her, assuming she was going to wake up in her clone (knowing she probably didn't remember much due to soft cloning issues) but then she was biomassed. (Something I am dubious about - gosh there's definitely some people luna would love to ask Concord to biomass but, well, she can't).
Why would you be dubious about that? It is not standard that capsuleers have soft clones, despite what might come across by the RP player base.
If you kill a capsuleer out of pod, usually that means they're dead. Which is what this person did. In such situation, the best thing you should do is biomass the character as, as far as most players are concerned, a character isn't truly dead unless they're in Doomheim.
However, on this note, this
does give a possible opening down the line. If Mr. Secret wants to give people a clue to follow up on, then perhaps one of his (presumedly future) victims
does end up having a soft clone that wakes up after the murder, no idea what happened but eager to find out (and willing to hire other characters to help investigate).
To echo what others have said, if you want people to be involved then there needs to be a sense of actual progress against the enemy. A feeling that actions are futile is one of the fastest ways to get people to shrug and move on.
This. ^^^^
Again I'll say that presence in space isn't what's necessarily needed (though it helps), but the ability to impact the villain
is.