Columbo also gets a lucky break when he witnesses the hostility between step-mother and step-daughter at the funeral, providing him with a useful ally. Slightly more substantial is the position of the seat in the car, which has been moved forward for a woman to drive rather than her tall husband. Now this is clearly not a mistake as such, but Columbo is presumably astute enough to recognise an acting performance when he sees one. She is almost impossibly cool about things, but then falls apart in front of other people in a courtroom when she is told her husband has died. This tends to be behaviour that isn’t quite what he would expect from somebody in Leslie’s circumstances. First we get the elements of the case that tip off Columbo, setting him on the right path, while not constituting evidence as such. It helps that she has advanced phone technology in her line of work as a lawyer, which is capable of making a timed phone call using a recording.
The clever bit is what comes after that, with Leslie staging a ransom attempt. Getting revenge on her spoilt step-daughter is a bonus.Ī simple shooting at home, but with a 22 calibre revolver to avoid leaving a bullet hole in a wall. So this is a simple one: it’s all about money. Her husband didn’t want to live a lie and was threatening to kick her out. Leslie Williams got bored with her husband, but wanted to keep cohabiting to retain her wealth and status. The victim hardly even gets a line to speak, so we don’t actually have the motive spelt out for us until around the 70 minute mark. Later in the episode, there will be a telephone call from a dead man… It looks like something from a different world now, but in 1971 this was a picture of a very modern crime, helped by cutting edge technology. We start with a woman using letters cut out from newspapers to create a ransom letter, while a reel-to-reel tape player sits on the desk beside her.
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