List of Columbo episodes

File:ColumboDVD3.jpg

DVD box cover for the third season.

The following is an episode list for the crime fiction television series Columbo. After two pilot episodes, the show originally aired on NBC from 1971 to 1978 as one of the rotating programs of the NBC Mystery Movie. Columbo then aired less frequently on ABC beginning in 1989. The last installment was broadcast in 2003.

Because the Columbo episodes from 1989 to 2003 aired infrequently, different DVD sets have been released around the world. In Region 2 and 4, all episodes have now been released as ten seasons, with the tenth season covering the last 14 shows from "Columbo Goes to College" (1990) to the most recent "Columbo Likes the Nightlife" (2003). However in France, and The Netherlands (also Region 2) the DVDs were released as twelve seasons. And in Region 1, all episodes from seasons 8 are grouped differently; all the episodes that are originally aired on ABC were released as the COLUMBO: The Mystery Movie Collections. For the sake of clarity, all episodes in this article are arranged as they appear in the UK release.

Series overview

Season		Episodes	Originally aired	DVD Release
				Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
	Pilots	2	1968–1971	September 7, 2004	September 13, 2004	December 3, 2004
	1	7	1971–1972
	2	8	1972–1973	March 8, 2005	July 18, 2005	July 13, 2005
	3	8	1973–1974	August 9, 2005	November 14, 2005	July 20, 2006
	4	6	1974–1975	March 14, 2006	September 18, 2006	September 19, 2006
	5	6	1975–1976	June 27, 2006	February 12, 2007	Unknown 2007
	6	3	1976–1977	November 21, 2006	April 30, 2007	May 2, 2007
	7	5	1977–1978
	8	4	1989	April 24, 2007	March 31, 2008	June 4, 2008
	9	6	1989–1990	February 3, 2009	March 30, 2009	May 6, 2009
	10 and Specials	14	1990–1993 1994–2003	February 8, 2011 January 10, 2012	June 15, 2009 July 27, 2009	2009

Episodes

Before Peter Falk

Before Falk was cast as the character of Columbo, Bert Freed played the role in "Enough Rope," a 1960 episode of The Chevy Mystery Show, a TV anthology series. In 1962, that episode was adapted as a stage play titled "Prescription: Murder" (starring Thomas Mitchell as Columbo), which then became a made-for-TV movie in 1968, with Peter Falk debuting in the role.

The NBC Years (1968–1978)

Pilot episodes

Episode	Title	Directed by	Written by	Length	Airdate
1	"Prescription: Murder"	Richard Irving	Richard Levinson & William Link Based on their Play	98 minutes	February 20, 1968 (1968-02-20)
Dr. Ray Fleming (Gene Barry), a psychiatrist, murders his wife (Nina Foch) and persuades his mistress Joan Hudson (Katherine Justice), who is an actress and one of his patients, to support his alibi by impersonating her.
2	"Ransom for a Dead Man"	Richard Irving	Teleplay: Dean Hargrove Story: Richard Levinson & William Link	98 minutes	March 1, 1971 (1971-03-01)
Leslie Williams (Lee Grant), a brilliant lawyer and pilot, murders her husband Paul (Harlan Warde) to get his money, arranging the act to look as if he had been kidnapped and killed by his captors. Columbo and Leslie's step-daughter (Patricia Mattick), who hates her, successfully work together to get Leslie to implicate herself by revealing where she is keeping the money.

Season 1

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Length	Airdate
3	1	"Murder by the Book"	Steven Spielberg	Steven Bochco	73 minutes	September 15, 1971 (1971-09-15)
Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy) is one half of a mystery writing team, but partner Jim Ferris (Martin Milner) wants to go solo. That would expose the fact that Ferris did all the actual writing, and would leave the high-living Franklin without his cash cow. Franklin makes it look like Ferris was investigating gangsters, then takes Ferris to his cabin two hours away. Lily La Sanka (Barbara Colby), a general store owner, happens to see Ferris in the car while Franklin makes a call to Ferris's wife (Rosemary Forsyth) to establish that he is far away. At the cabin, he convinces Ferris to call home and say he's working late at the office. During the call, Franklin shoots Ferris, then takes his body back north and dumps it on his lawn. La Sanka tries to blackmail Franklin into a relationship, so he bludgeons her to death and capsizes her rowboat, making it look like an accident. Columbo solves the case-with an ironic twist ending admission from Franklin. Jack Cassidy played the villain in a total of three Columbo episodes--this one, episode 22 (Season 3), and episode 36 (Season 5). Note: In 1997 TV Guide ranked this episode number 16 on its '100 Greatest Episodes of All Time' list.
4	2	"Death Lends a Hand"	Bernard L. Kowalski	Richard Levinson & William Link	73 minutes	October 6, 1971 (1971-10-06)
Brimmer (Robert Culp), the head of a private detective agency, is hired by Arthur Kennicut (Ray Milland), a powerful publishing magnate who suspects his wife, Lenore (Pat Crowley) of infidelity. Although Brimmer indeed finds evidence of infidelity, instead of reporting this to his client, he attempts to blackmail Lenore into revealing secrets about her husband. She refuses and threatens to expose his plot to her husband, at which point Brimmer accidentally kills her in a fit of anger. He then dumps the body at a scrapyard. This episode won an Emmy for writing.
5	3	"Dead Weight"	Jack Smight	John T. Dugan	73 minutes	October 27, 1971 (1971-10-27)
Major General Martin Hollister (Eddie Albert), a retired Marine Corps General, after learning that he is being investigated for embezzling military funds, shoots his partner (John Kerr), after the partner decided to flee the country. The act is witnessed by Helen Stewart (Suzanne Pleshette), who is wooed by the General into doubting her own story.
6	4	"Suitable for Framing"	Hy Averback	Jackson Gillis	73 minutes	November 17, 1971 (1971-11-17)
Art critic Dale Kingston (Ross Martin) murders his uncle and frames his aunt, Edna Mathews (Kim Hunter, Planet of the Apes) to obtain what is considered to be one of the most valuable art collections in the world. Don Ameche portrays family lawyer Frank Simpson.
7	5	"Lady in Waiting"	Norman Lloyd	Teleplay: Steven Bochco Story: Barney Slater	73 minutes	December 15, 1971 (1971-12-15)
Beth Chadwick (Susan Clark) murders her domineering older brother, Bryce (Richard Anderson), in order to gain control of her own life and the family business. She arranges for it to look like an accident but is tripped up by the sharp memory of her fiancé, Peter (Leslie Nielsen). Beth's mother is played by actress Jessie Royce Landis, veteran of two Hitchcock films, in her final performance.
8	6	"Short Fuse"	Edward M. Abroms	Teleplay: Jackson Gillis Story: Lester & Tina Pine and Jackson Gillis	73 minutes	January 19, 1972 (1972-01-19)
Roger Stanford (Roddy McDowall) is a chemist and photography buff whose uncle, David (James Gregory), has taken over the business his parents built and his aunt (Ida Lupino) controls. When David proposes selling the business to a conglomerate in return for a seat on the board of directors, David tries to blackmail Roger into resigning. When this plan fails, Roger decides to murder his uncle with a box of exploding cigars. William Windom guest stars as the next-in-line Vice President whom Roger must remove before he can take over the company. Anne Francis plays David's secretary, who is involved with Roger. Suspecting Stanford from the outset, Columbo eventually tricks him into incriminating himself. Columbo brings a box of cigars, that he claims came from the death scene, with him in the cable car they're riding in. Stanford figures that these must be the exploding cigars he had planted there, that had not yet gone off, and he gradually becomes hysterical, begging Columbo to throw the box out the window, only for Columbo to reveal that the cigars are, in fact, just cigars.
9	7	"Blueprint for Murder"	Peter Falk	Teleplay: Steven Bochco Story: William Kelley	73 minutes	February 9, 1972 (1972-02-09)
Elliot Markham (Patrick O'Neal) is an architect with a vision for a city of the future, and a penchant for classical music. His latest project is being bankrolled by the young wife of Beau Williamson (Forrest Tucker), a wealthy industrialist who has been away on a lengthy overseas business trip. When Williamson returns and finds out how his money is being spent, he is furious, and intends to cut off the funds. Markham decides that the only way he can continue his work is to eliminate Williamson. Simply killing him, however, poses a problem, because his money reverts to a trust fund when he dies. Markham comes up with a clever plan to conceal the body and make it appear as if Beau has gone on another long foreign trip. With Pamela Austin and Janis Paige. This is the only episode Peter Falk directed.

Season 2

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Length	Airdate
10	1	"Étude in Black"	Nicholas Colasanto	Teleplay: Steven Bochco Story: Richard Levinson & William Link	98 minutes	September 17, 1972 (1972-09-17)
Alex Benedict (John Cassavetes), the married conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, murders his mistress, Jenifer Welles (Anjanette Comer), after she insists on going public with their affair, and tries to make it look like a suicide. Columbo searches for clues to place Benedict at the murder scene. Blythe Danner and Myrna Loy guest star as Benedict's wealthy wife and mother-in-law, respectively. Pat Morita cameos in one scene as Benedict's butler. (During filming Danner was pregnant with her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow, who was born ten days after this episode aired.)
11	2	"The Greenhouse Jungle"	Boris Sagal	Jonathan Latimer	73 minutes	October 15, 1972 (1972-10-15)
Jarvis Goodland (Ray Milland) and his nephew, Tony (Bradford Dillman) stage Tony's kidnapping in order to break his trust fund, but Jarvis shoots and kills Tony once the ransom is paid, and a careful swapping of guns with Tony's philandering wife casts suspicion in her direction. This episode marks the appearance of Bob Dishy as Columbo's newly assigned and totally unwanted neophyte partner, full of the latest techniques from Berkeley. He appears again in Now You See Him.. (Season 5, Episode 5)
12	3	"The Most Crucial Game"	Jeremy Kagan	John T. Dugan	73 minutes	November 5, 1972 (1972-11-05)
Paul Hanlon (Robert Culp), the general manager of the Los Angeles Rockets football team, wants to create a sports empire, but Eric Wagner (Dean Stockwell), who inherited the team, lacks ambition. Hanlon kills Eric instead. He sneaks out of the football stadium during the national anthem by disguising himself as a Ding-A-Ling ice cream truck driver. He then drives out to near Eric's house, and makes a call to Eric's house from a payphone, knowing full-well that Eric's phones are bugged, during which he makes it seem like he's in his private box at the stadium by holding a radio to the receiver. He then drives up to Eric's house, and kills Eric with a block of ice, and makes it look like a diving accident. Valerie Harper played Eve Babcock, an operative placed in Eric's home as a secretary by a private detective (Val Avery). Dean Jagger plays Eric's attorney, Walter Cannell, who hired the private detective.
13	4	"Dagger of the Mind"	Richard Quine	Teleplay: Jackson Gillis Story: Richard Levinson & William Link	98 minutes	November 26, 1972 (1972-11-26)
When Sir Roger Haversham (John Williams) realizes that actors Nicholas Framer (Richard Basehart) and his wife, Lillian Stanhope (Honor Blackman), have manipulated him into backing their theater production, he confronts the couple, and is accidentally killed during the ensuing scuffle. The pair cover up the murder by stuffing the body into a trunk, taking it home to his estate, and staging an apparent fall down the stairs. Columbo is visiting London as the guest of Scotland Yard Detective Chief Superintendent William Durk (Bernard Fox), who stops by the estate to investigate the incident. Wilfrid Hyde-White is type-cast as the butler. Sharon Johansen played Miss Dudley, an attractive young understudy. The episode was filmed in both London and Hollywood.
14	5	"Requiem for a Falling Star"	Richard Quine	Jackson Gillis	73 minutes	January 21, 1973 (1973-01-21)
Jean Davis (Pippa Scott), personal assistant to aging movie star Nora Chandler (Anne Baxter), is marrying gossip reporter Jerry Parks (Mel Ferrer), who has secret information about Chandler. When Davis and Parks switch vehicles one night, Chandler starts a gasoline fire just as his car pulls into his garage being driven by Davis. Columbo only solves the case after connecting it to the mysterious disappearance of Chandler's husband a decade earlier. Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head has a cameo as herself.
15	6	"A Stitch in Crime"	Hy Averback	Shirl Hendryx	73 minutes	February 11, 1973 (1973-02-11)
Cardiac surgeon Dr. Barry Mayfield (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. Edmund Hidemann (Will Geer) have pioneered a major medical breakthrough that Mayfield wants to publish immediately, but Hidemann wants to continue testing. When Dr. Hidemann has a heart attack and needs an emergency bypass, Mayfield performs the surgery and plans to kill his partner by placing dissolving sutures in his heart. After their nurse, Sharon Martin (Anne Francis), discovers the plot, Mayfield kills her, and stages a mugging to pin the crime on her drug addict ex-boyfriend. This episode contains a rare scene of Leonard Nimoy losing his temper. (Nimoy is known for playing the always-in-control Mr. Spock). Sure enough, it turns out later that he had been faking his anger.
16	7	"The Most Dangerous Match"	Edward M. Abroms	Teleplay: Jackson Gillis Story: Jackson Gillis and Richard Levinson & William Link	73 minutes	March 4, 1973 (1973-03-04)
When chess Grandmaster Emmett Clayton (Laurence Harvey) loses an impromptu game to Eastern European champion Tomlin Dudek (Jack Kruschen) the night before their championship match, Clayton kills Dudek to prevent losing to him. The hearing impaired Clayton shoves him into a garbage grinder in the basement, but because of his malfunctioning hearing aid, he doesn't realize that the grinder automatically shuts itself off when anything big falls into it. (Columbo discovers this important fact when his Bassett hound gets loose near the grinder.) Dudek survives and now Clayton schemes to poison his rival in the hospital before he can regain consciousness. Heidi Brühl plays Linda Robinson, who follows in her mother's footsteps in looking after Dudek. Lloyd Bochner plays Dudek's accompanying physician, Mazoor Berozski. Columbo regular Mathias Reitz plays Dudek's chess coach, Anton.
17	8	"Double Shock"	Robert Butler	Teleplay: Steven Bochco Story: Jackson Gillis and Richard Levinson & William Link	73 minutes	March 25, 1973 (1973-03-25)
When Clifford Paris (Paul Stewart) becomes engaged to Lisa Chambers (Julie Newmar), his twin nephews, Dexter and Norman Paris (both portrayed by Martin Landau), kill him via electrocution before he can change his will, and pass off the murder as an accidental heart attack. Clifford's lawyer, Michael Hathaway (Tim O'Connor) reveals that indeed a new will already exists and that he will be willing to "lose" all copies of it for a price. However, Chambers has a copy of it too, requiring her to be eliminated. Unlike most Columbo episodes, this has a whodunit element in that it is not made clear which brother was the murderer until the end of the episode. Indeed, when Columbo starts his investigation, each brother "helpfully" explains to him the motives that the other one has to kill their uncle. Dabney Coleman plays Columbo's colleague, Detective Murray. Jeanette Nolan plays Mrs. Peck, uncle Clifford's fastidious housekeeper, who makes Columbo's life a living Hell, complaining very loudly about the "terrible mess" he is making every time he turns around.

Season 3

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Length	Airdate
18	1	"Lovely But Lethal"	Jeannot Szwarc	Teleplay: Jackson Gillis Story: Myrna Bercovici	73 minutes	September 23, 1973 (1973-09-23)
Cosmetics queen Viveca Scott (Vera Miles) has developed a seemingly magic wrinkle remover, but the formula has been stolen by her former lover, Karl Lessing (Martin Sheen), a chemist for her company, who refuses to sell it back to her at any price. Taunted by Lessing, Scott bludgeons him in a fit of rage but also before he can sell it to her ruthless competitor, David Lang (Vincent Price). When Lang's secretary (Sian Barbara Allen) becomes a potential blackmailer Scott kills her as well.
19	2	"Any Old Port in a Storm"	Leo Penn	Teleplay: Stanley Ralph Ross Story: Larry Cohen	98 minutes	October 7, 1973 (1973-10-07)
When Adrian Carsini (Donald Pleasence) inherited a small winery specializing in unprofitable but prized wines, his spendthrift playboy half-brother Rick got the land. When Rick (Gary Conway), tired of Adrian's indulgences, tells him that he has agreed to sell the land to mass producers of cheap, profitable wines, Adrian beats him and leaves him to die in an airtight wine cellar, before traveling to New York City to accept an award and attend wine auctions, and establish his alibi. Upon his return, Adrian then concocts a scuba diving accident to cover the crime. Columbo suspects Carsini almost immediately, and he befriends Carsini while slyly searching for clues to link him to the murder. Julie Harris plays Adrian Carsini's formidable secretary.
20	3	"Candidate for Crime"	Boris Sagal	Teleplay: Irving Pearlberg & Alvin R. Friedman and Roland Kibbee & Dean Hargrove Story: Larry Cohen	98 minutes	November 4, 1973 (1973-11-04)
Harry Stone (Ken Swofford), a campaign manager, is coercing the womanizing senatorial candidate Nelson Hayward (Jackie Cooper), to stop his affair with a personal secretary, which he regards as too risky during a campaign. Stone approves of Hayward's publicity-minded claim that anonymous killers are threatening Hayward's life. Hayward uses this to his advantage: he lures Stone to the garage of Hayward's beach house (while wearing Hayward's coat), where Hayward shoots him, making it look like a case of mistaken identity. Joanne Linville plays Hayward's wife, and a young Katey Sagal plays a secretary. Katey Sagal's father, Boris Sagal, directed the episode. (Boris Sagal was killed in a tragic accident in 1982, while he was in Oregon, directing World War III (TV miniseries). He turned the wrong way when exiting a helicopter and walked into the tail rotor.)
21	4	"Double Exposure"	Richard Quine	Stephen J. Cannell	73 minutes	December 16, 1973 (1973-12-16)
Dr. Bart Keppel (Robert Culp) is a "motivation research specialist" who has written several successful books on marketing and made a name for himself on the subject of subliminal advertising (which involves inserting frames of an advertised product into the reels of a film; the frames at regular speed go by too fast for the conscious mind to note them; but subconsciously the viewer's mind picks them up and he will crave what is pictured). But Dr. Keppel's more lucrative sideline is blackmail: he takes pictures of his married clients with a girl hired to tempt them. When his latest victim, Vic Norris, balks and threatens to expose him, Dr. Keppel must kill him. Dr. Keppel uses a subliminal cut of a refreshing drink to lure Norris out of a screening room where he and a number of other executives are watching a promotional film that Dr. Keppel is supposedly narrating (in fact they are listening to a prerecorded narration), during which time Dr. Keppel sneaks out and shoots Norris in the building lobby, then arranges things to make it seem like the crime was committed by Norris's wife. When Keppel's projectionist Roger White (Chuck McCann) discovers the cuts and pieces together the plot, Keppel shoots him as well. Columbo incriminates Keppel using his own science by showing him a film laced with subliminal frames of images taken of where the murder weapon was supposedly hidden. This episode received the Emmy Award in the category for Outstanding Limited Series.
22	5	"Publish or Perish"	Robert Butler	Peter S. Fischer	73 minutes	January 18, 1974 (1974-01-18)
Publisher Riley Greenleaf (Jack Cassidy) decides to kill his prolific author Alan Mallory (Mickey Spillane) to keep him from defecting to another publisher. He hires ex-con and avid homemade bomb enthusiast Eddie Kane (John Chandler) to do the job. While Greenleaf is getting drunk at a nearby bar, Kane walks into Mallory's office and shoots him. To cover his tracks, Greenleaf kills Kane with one of his own bombs, making it look like an accident. Columbo must discover the link between the two crimes. This episode has a split screen of Greenleaf's alibi and Mallory's murder. Spillane was the real-life author of Mike Hammer detective mysteries. Jack Cassidy played the villain in a total of three Columbo episodes--this one, episode 3 (Season 1), and episode 36 (Season 5). Mariette Hartley plays a publisher's assistant.
23	6	"Mind Over Mayhem"	Alf Kjellin	Teleplay: Steven Bochco and Dean Hargrove & Roland Kibbee Story: Robert Specht	73 minutes	February 10, 1974 (1974-02-10)
When Dr. Howard Nicholson (Lew Ayres) threatens to expose Neil Cahill (Robert Walker, Jr.) for plagiarizing a paper from a recently deceased scientist, Cahill's father, Dr. Marshall Cahill (José Ferrer), director of a high tech Pentagon think tank, kills Nicholson to protect his son. To do so, he installs a cybernetic robot codenamed MM-7 (Robby the Robot) to take his place overseeing a war planning exercise. Whle that happens, Dr. Cahill steals a fellow scientist's car from the motor pool and drives to Dr. Nicholson's house. When Dr. Nicholson steps out into his driveway, Dr. Cahill runs him over, then carries his body into the house, and ransacks it to make it look like a burglary gone wrong. He then drives back to the motor pool garage, and to cover up damage the car received from the impact with Dr. Nicholson, Dr. Cahill backs his own car into the death car while everyone is heading home for the night. Also starring Jessica Walter as Mrs. Nicholson and Lee Montgomery as the child genius Steven Spelberg.
24	7	"Swan Song"	Nicholas Colasanto	Teleplay: David Rayfiel Story: Stanley Ralph Ross	98 minutes	March 3, 1974 (1974-03-03)
Ever since Edna Brown (Ida Lupino) caught her husband, Gospel-singing superstar Tommy Brown (Johnny Cash), cheating on her with an underage girl, she has been blackmailing him into donating all the proceeds from his concerts and records to a fund to build a new tabernacle. When Tommy decides he's had enough, he drugs both women to sleep on their small, private plane flight to Los Angeles, and then parachutes from the plane, making it seem like he was thrown clear in a tragic crash. Edna's brother Luke (Bill McKinney) insists the police handle the case as a homicide, while the FAA is ready to write it off to an accident.
25	8	"A Friend in Deed"	Ben Gazzara	Peter S. Fischer	98 minutes	May 5, 1974 (1974-05-05)
When Hugh Caldwell (Michael McGuire) kills his wife in the heat of a fight, he seeks help from his friend and neighbor, Mark Halperin (Richard Kiley) (who also happens to be the deputy police commissioner). Halperin sees an opportunity to kill his own wife (played by Rosemary Murphy), a wealthy heiress who freely shares her wealth with the needy, so he helps Caldwell cover up the first crime and forces him to assist the following night, arranging it so that a cat burglar (Val Avery), who has recently been active in their neighborhood, is seen as the culprit in both murders. When Columbo realizes what happened, he enlists the burglar's help in catching the real perpetrators.

Season 4

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Airdate
26	1	"An Exercise in Fatality"	Bernard L. Kowalski	Teleplay: Peter S. Fischer Story: Larry Cohen	September 15, 1974 (1974-09-15)
Renowned exercise guru Milo Janus (Robert Conrad) is the owner of a chain of renowned gyms that operate under his name. Janus seems safe, but when franchise owner Gene Stafford (Philip Bruns) threatens to expose Janus's scheme to overcharge his own corporation for equipment and supplies and deposit the profits in offshore bank accounts, opening his operation to fraud and extortion investigations, Janus strangles and kills Stafford, and makes it look like he was trying to lift a weight too heavy for him. Collin Wilcox plays Mrs. Ruth Stafford, and Gretchen Corbett plays Milo's secretary. Pat Harrington, Jr. also guest stars.
27	2	"Negative Reaction"	Alf Kjellin	Peter S. Fischer	October 6, 1974 (1974-10-06)
After several years of living confined by his domineering wife Frances (German actress Antoinette Bower), professional photographer Paul Galesko (Dick Van Dyke) decides to kill her. To do so, he hires ex-con Alvin Deschler (Don Gordon) to rent a country property for him, where Galesko takes Frances, ties her to a chair, takes photographs of her, and then shoots her, then sets things up so that it will look like he is at a gas station at the supposed time of the murder. Galesko then meets Deschler at a junkyard for a staged ransom drop, where he shoots Deschler with another gun, then shoots himself in the leg with the gun he used on his wife, then plants the murder gun on Deschler, so that it will look as if he killed the "kidnapper" in self-defense. JoAnna Cameron plays his lovely assistant, with whom he was planning a trip to the Philippines, "over his wife's dead body." Larry Storch, Vito Scotti and John Ashton also guest star.
28	3	"By Dawn's Early Light"	Harvey Hart	Howard Berk	October 27, 1974 (1974-10-27)
Colonel Lyle C. Rumford (Patrick McGoohan), head of the Haynes Military Academy, an all-boys military school, is told by Board of Trustees president William Haynes (Tom Simcox) that the school will convert to a coed school as a solution to declining enrollment. Haynes, who is the grandson of the academy's founder and was once a cadet under the colonel, has furthermore decided to boot out his hated former commandant. Rumford decides to kill Haynes instead. To do so, he rigs the school cannon by blocking its discharge with a cleaning rag, so that it will explode when Haynes fires it on Founder's Day. Rumford then pins the "accident" on Cadet Roy Springer (Mark Wheeler) who had gun-cleaning duty, but is tripped up by his own fanatic sense of duty. With this episode McGoohan won the first of his two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. His second was for Agenda for Murder. Father and son Bruce Kirby and Bruno Kirby co-star, as a Sergeant and a Cadet, respectively. Bruce Kirby appears in a number of Columbo episodes.
29	4	"Troubled Waters"	Ben Gazzara	Teleplay: Bill Driskill Story: Jackson Gillis and Bill Driskill	February 9, 1975 (1975-02-09)
While aboard a Mexican cruise he takes frequently, used auto executive Hayden Danziger (Robert Vaughn) has been having an affair with the cruise ship's lounge singer Rosanna Wells (Poupée Bocar). When Wells threatens to expose their affair to his wife, Sylvia (Jane Greer), Danziger decides to kill her. He inhales some amyl nitrite to feign a heart attack in the swimming pool, so that he will be checked into the ship's infirmary. By wearing a ship's crew uniform, Danziger sneaks out of his infirmary bed, and makes his way to Wells's cabin, where he waits for her to come back during the break in her routine. Once she comes in, Danziger shoots her, and plants evidence to make it look like a fellow band musician (Dean Stockwell) was responsible, before ditching the gun and returning to the infirmary. Columbo, who happens to be enjoying the same cruise with his wife, is pressed into service by the ship's captain (Patrick Macnee). Bernard Fox and Robert Douglas also guest star.
30	5	"Playback"	Bernard L. Kowalski	David P. Lewis & Booker T. Bradshaw	March 2, 1975 (1975-03-02)
Harold Van Wick (Oskar Werner), the gadget-obsessed president of Midas Electronics, decides to kill his mother-in-law Margaret Midas (Martha Scott) after she decides to remove him from his position due to massive revenue losses. To do this, Van Wick rigs up his high-tech home security system. Careful to avoid being seen, Van Wick shoots Margaret when she is in the viewing field of one camera. He then plays back the tape of the shooting to the gatehouse guard's monitor on a time delay, to make it look like Margaret was shot by an intruder after Van Wick had left the house for a party. Gena Rowlands portrays Van Wick's wheelchair-bound wife Elizabeth, who proves instrumental in convicting her husband. Robert Brown played Arthur Midas, Margaret's son. Trisha Noble was also a guest star.
31	6	"A Deadly State of Mind"	Harvey Hart	Peter S. Fischer	April 27, 1975 (1975-04-27)
Psychiatrist Dr. Mark Collier (George Hamilton) kills Carl Donner (Stephen Elliott) with a fireplace poker after a confrontation with Donner over Collier's affair with Donner's wife, Nadia (Lesley Ann Warren), who is one of Collier's patients. Collier concocts a cover story involving a home robbery gone astray. But when Columbo catches on, Collier tries to clear himself of any suspicion by hypnotizing Nadia into taking a deadly dive into a swimming pool from her fifth story balcony. Although Columbo (unusually) admits he cannot prove Collier killed Nadia, a witness to his first murder, a blind man walking past the house as Collier was leaving, proves to be his undoing.

Season 5

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Airdate
32	1	"Forgotten Lady"	Harvey Hart	Bill Driskill	September 14, 1975 (1975-09-14)
When Henry Willis (Sam Jaffe) refuses to finance a return to the spotlight for his wife, aging former movie star Grace Wheeler (Janet Leigh), she kills him in his sleep, and passes it off as a suicide. Her butler, played by Maurice Evans, believes she was in the screening room the entire time, watching one of her classic films. This is the only episode where the murderer is not arrested, as Ned Diamond (John Payne), her longtime song and dance partner, falsely confesses to save Grace, knowing that she is dying of a brain disease and doesn't even remember the murder. Columbo has no choice but to arrest Diamond, both of them realizing that by the time he is cleared, Grace will have died after spending her last days living happily in the past, unaware of her condition. The episode features excerpts from the 1953 musical comedy Walking My Baby Back Home, which starred Leigh. (This movie was on while she was committing the crime.)
33	2	"A Case of Immunity"	Ted Post	Teleplay: Lou Shaw Story: James Menzies	October 12, 1975 (1975-10-12)
Hassan Salah (Hector Elizondo), chief diplomat of the Legation of Swahari, an Arab nation with a new young king, has a scheme for shifting power within his government. He enlists Rachman Habib (Sal Mineo), a naïve idealist in the Legation, to help him stage the murder of a beloved security officer, and then plants evidence to make it look like the work of radicals. Salah pins the murder on the now-absent Habib, who as part of the plan, has gone into hiding. Columbo quickly unravels the truth, but finds himself stymied by the fact that Salah has diplomatic immunity and cannot be arrested. Columbo gets Salah to confess the murder with his monarch in the next room listening. To stay in the U.S. rather than face Middle Eastern justice, he waives his immunity from prosecution.
34	3	"Identity Crisis"	Patrick McGoohan	Bill Driskill	November 2, 1975 (1975-11-02)
When a CIA operative codenamed "Geronimo" (Leslie Nielsen) recognizes the man he was sent to cut a deal with as speech-writing consultant Nelson Brenner (Patrick McGoohan, who also directed), a CIA double agent from the past, Brenner must kill Geronimo before he can reveal his secret. In the course of his investigation, Columbo finds himself blocked at every turn by a man accustomed to keeping secrets, and even by a visit from the Director of the Agency (played by David White). The episode features another French car, the Citroën SM. An in joke is that the Director's name is Philip Corrigan (aka Secret Agent X-9)
35	4	"A Matter of Honor"	Ted Post	Brad Radnitz	February 1, 1976 (1976-02-01)
Retired matador Luis Montoya (Ricardo Montalban), who now raises bulls, kills his long-time assistant and friend Hector Rangel, in order to protect his own reputation after one of his bulls gores Hector's son Curro (A Martinez). Montoya tranquilizes Hector in the ring, then unleashes the bull on him, since Hector is now vulnerable. Columbo, who happens to be in Tijuana for the weekend, is recognized by the local chief of police (Pedro Armendáriz, Jr.), who enlists Columbo's help.
36	5	"Now You See Him..."	Harvey Hart	Michael Sloan	February 29, 1976 (1976-02-29)
Jesse Jerome (Nehemiah Persoff), owner of the Cabaret of Magic, tries to blackmail the Great Santini (Jack Cassidy), a magician extraordinaire, with the discovery that Santini is really Stefan Mueller, a former Nazi SS prison guard. To avoid the chance that the secret will be exposed, Santini kills Jerome in the middle of his famed water tank escape act, thereby giving himself what he believes to be an airtight alibi. To do so, he sneaks out of the room where he hides during the act, makes his way through the cabaret's kitchen dressed as a waiter up to Jerome's office, shoots him, then returns to his act without anyone missing him. Robert Loggia portrays Harry Blandford, the club's maître d’ and Jerome's partner. This was Jack Cassidy's last Columbo episode.
37	6	"Last Salute to the Commodore"	Patrick McGoohan	Jackson Gillis	May 2, 1976 (1976-05-02)
Commodore Otis Swanson (John Dehner) owns a ship building company, and is not happy with the shady dealings of his son-in-law Charles Clay (Robert Vaughn), who has turned the modest and upstanding business into a name-brand production line for status-seekers. Nor is he pleased with any of the people closest to him - his alcoholic daughter Joanna Clay (Diane Baker), his elderly nephew Swanny Swanson (Fred Draper), his lawyer Kittering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), and employee Wayne Taylor (Joshua Bryant). He announces at his birthday party his intention to sell the company. That night, the Commodore is murdered; and although we do not see the murder being committed, Clay is seen covering it up by impersonating the Commodore, taking the body out on his yacht at night and throwing it overboard. Columbo investigates this case with the help of a veteran sergeant and a 29-year-old novice. The rumpled, redoubtable detective knows Clay covered up the crime. But his conviction that Clay committed it, also, may prove premature; when Clay turns up dead, the mystery deepens with surprises that even Columbo would not expect. This episode departs from the usual Columbo format in several ways. First, the man implied to be the killer is not, and thus the episode becomes a true whodunit, with the actual murderer revealed at the end of the episode. Second, both murders are committed off-camera. Third, Columbo's personality is atypically agitated, impatient and less amiable than in previous episodes. Fourth, regular cliches such as "Just one more thing" and "Something's been botherin' me" are absent from this episode.

Season 6

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Airdate
38	1	"Fade in to Murder"	Bernard L. Kowalski	Teleplay: Lou Shaw and Peter S. Feibleman Story: Henry Garson	October 10, 1976 (1976-10-10)
Egocentric actor Ward Fowler (William Shatner), who portrays Detective Lucerne on a weekly TV show, is being blackmailed by his producer and ex-paramour, Claire Daley (Lola Albright), about a dark secret from his past. Fowler decides to kill Claire. He drugs a friend staying over at his house watching a baseball game, puts it on tape delay, then dons a ski mask and robs a deli store where Claire is shopping. After Fowler takes Claire's money, he shoots her, then ditches the gun and mask. He then steps in and out of character to assist Columbo with the investigation. Claire Daley's secretary is played by Shera Danese, who would eventually marry star Peter Falk. Walter Koenig guest stars as a police sergeant.
39	2	"Old Fashioned Murder"	Robert Douglas	Teleplay: Peter S. Feibleman Story: Lawrence Vail	November 28, 1976 (1976-11-28)
Ruth Lytton (Joyce Van Patten) kills her older brother Edward (Tim O'Connor) after he decides to sell the family business, the Lytton Museum, to which the bitter old maid Ruth has devoted her entire life. She is assisted by an ex-con whom she double crosses and shoots shortly before shooting her brother when he comes to investigate the sound of a gunshot. Her plan is to make it look like the two men killed each other in the middle of an attempted robbery. Celeste Holm plays Ruth's older widowed sister, Mrs. Brandt, who faints whenever homicide is mentioned, and Jeannie Berlin plays Ruth's lovely niece Janie Brandt. When Columbo doesn't fall for the staged robbery, Ruth, out of desperation, tries to frame Janie. Columbo figures out that Ruth also murdered Janie's father, Mr. Brandt, years ago, and he "forgets" this in exchange for Ruth confessing to the current murders. Jeannie Berlin is Elaine May's daughter.
40	3	"The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case"	Sam Wanamaker	Robert Malcolm Young	May 22, 1977 (1977-05-22)
When Bertie Hastings (Sorrell Booke) discovers that his friend, Oliver Brandt (Theodore Bikel), a senior partner in an accounting firm, has been embezzling money to support the lifestyle of his wife, Vivian (Samantha Eggar), Brandt kills Hastings at the Sigma Society, the local meeting place of a national Mensa-type club for geniuses, making it look like a burglary gone bad. In her TV debut, Jamie Lee Curtis has a small role as a surly coffee shop waitress.

Season 7

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Airdate
41	1	"Try and Catch Me"	James Frawley	Teleplay: Gene Thompson & Paul Tuckahoe Story: Gene Thompson	November 21, 1977 (1977-11-21)
Mystery author Abigail Mitchell (Ruth Gordon) is convinced that her nephew-in-law, Edmund Galvin (Charles Frank), murdered his wife (Mitchell's niece) in a boating "accident" and got away with it. Mitchell asks him to retrieve something for her from her airtight walk-in safe, then locks him in it before flying off to New York. After being arrested Mitchell observes that if Columbo had been the one to investigate her niece "disappearence" she would not have had to kill Edmund. Mariette Hartley plays Mitchell's trusted assistant, Veronica, who becomes embroiled in the crime.
42	2	"Murder Under Glass"	Jonathan Demme	Robert van Scoyk	January 30, 1978 (1978-01-30)
Renowned restaurant critic Paul Gerard (Louis Jourdan) fears being exposed by the restaurant owners from whom he is extorting money in return for good reviews. When one of them, Vittorio Rossi (Michael V. Gazzo), refuses to pay money to Gerard, Gerard kills him with a bottle of poisoned wine. Richard Dysart and France Nuyen also star. Antony Alda played the victim's nephew, Mario, who spoke only Italian. Falk's wife Shera Danese returns as Gerard's secretary/treasurer. Writer van Scoyk received an Edgar Allen Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his teleplay. After Columbo has got the goods on him, he asks him what he thinks of the meal he has just prepared, and the charming murderer says "I wish you had been a chef."
43	3	"Make Me a Perfect Murder"	James Frawley	Robert Blees	February 28, 1978 (1978-02-28)
West coast television production boss Mark McAndrews (Laurence Luckinbill) is promoted to a high level position in New York. He fails to name his lover and employee, high-powered TV programmer Kay Freestone (Trish Van Devere), as his replacement, feeling that she's not ready for the responsibilities. Her consolation prize is a new Mercedes. She's more interested in the gun he drops on the bed - after he jokingly invites her to shoot him and make him a perfect murder. Joking or not, she takes him up on it during an important preview for the "New York bunch" of executives for a new made-for-TV movie called "The Professional" that she had helped produce. She tricks the projectionist (James McEachin) by fiddling with the projector's timer and then sends him on an errand. With a handy timer used to pace herself, she sneaks up to McAndrews's office and shoots him, then returns to make the reel change successfully before the projectionist gets back, just barely. Patrick O'Neal plays Frank Flanagan, her boss.
44	4	"How to Dial a Murder"	James Frawley	Teleplay: Tom Lazarus Story: Anthony Lawrence	April 15, 1978 (1978-04-15)
Mind control (or, as the Doctor corrected Columbo, "life control") seminar guru Dr. Eric Mason (Nicol Williamson) uses two trained Doberman Pinschers, Laurel and Hardy, to kill his "best friend" Dr. George Hunter (Joel Fabiani), who had been having an affair with Dr. Mason's now deceased wife. Kim Cattrall plays the resident of Mason's guest house who discovers the body. Ed Begley, Jr. has a minor role as an animal control officer. Tricia O'Neil plays an animal trainer who advises Columbo.
45	5	"The Conspirators"	Leo Penn	Howard Berk Based on an Idea by: Pat Robison	May 13, 1978 (1978-05-13)
Famous Irish poet and author Joe Devlin (Clive Revill), who is secretly a fund-raiser and gun-runner for the IRA, shoots and kills his gun supplier Vincent Pauley (Albert Paulsen) in his hotel room, after discovering that Pauley intends to cheat him. Now with Columbo hot on his trail, Devlin must find his guns and arrange their shipment out of the country. This was the last episode of the Columbo series broadcast on the NBC television network.

The ABC Years (1989–2003)

Season 8

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Airdate
46	1	"Columbo Goes to the Guillotine"	Leo Penn	William Read Woodfield	February 6, 1989 (1989-02-06)
Elliott Blake (Anthony Andrews) a "psychic" who is trying to convince the government to give him a lucrative contract based on his ESP abilities, conspires with an old colleague, Max Dyson (Anthony Zerbe), a magician known for exposing frauds. After their trickery is successful, Blake settles an old score with Dyson by tricking him into being decapitated by his own guillotine. Columbo has to solve the crime before the government whisks Blake beyond his reach, changing his identity. Karen Austin plays Dr. Paula Hall, Elliott Blake's lovely research partner and lover. This is one of two Columbo episodes that feature magicians, the other being Now You See Him..., where the magician is the murderer. This was the first episode broadcast on the ABC network.
47	2	"Murder, Smoke, and Shadows"	James Frawley	Richard Alan Simmons	February 27, 1989 (1989-02-27)
Boy genius Hollywood director Alex Brady (Fisher Stevens), prior to becoming a success, made a 16mm movie in which a young woman, Jenny Fisher, was killed in a motorcycle accident. Brady and his cameraman conspired to pretend that the woman never made it as far as the scene of the filming, leading the official investigation to conclude that it was an accidental death. As the episode begins, Jenny's brother Leonard Fisher (Jeff Perry) shows up in Brady's office with a copy of a film that was left to him by Brady's very recently deceased cameraman. When Leonard informs Brady that he is going to use the film to destroy him, Brady kills him, using one of his outdoor movie sets at night as the murder weapon. Molly Hagan co-stars as Alex Brady's girlfriend, Ruth 'Ruthie' Jernigan.
48	3	"Sex and the Married Detective"	James Frawley	Jerry Ludwig	April 3, 1989 (1989-04-03)
When renowned sex therapist Dr. Joan Allenby (Lindsay Crouse) finds her lover David Kincaid (Stephen Macht) in bed with her assistant Cindy Galt (Julia Montgomery), she invents a game to get rid of David. In said game, she disguises herself as a professional prostitute named "Lisa", wearing a long black wig. Under this disguise, Dr. Allenby sneaks out of a fundraiser concert she is attending, and meets with David at a nearby bar. She then tricks him into taking them both back to her clinic. Once there, she shoots him, then ransacks the therapy bedroom to make it look like David was killed by a mystery prostitute during a fight.
49	4	"Grand Deceptions"	Sam Wanamaker	Sy Salkowitz	May 1, 1989 (1989-05-01)
Colonel Frank Brailie (Robert Foxworth) runs a paramilitary mercenary school owned by General Jack Padget (Stephen Elliott). Brailie is also having an affair with Padget's wife Jenny (Janet Eilber). Brailie is siphoning money from Padget's Foundation into what he calls "The Special Projects Fund", which is used to finance illegal dealings. The suspicious General asks an employee, Sgt. Major Lester Keegan (Andy Romano) to look into the matter. Keegan finds evidence of Brailie's misdeeds and his secret affair, but he decides to blackmail Brailie into sharing the profit instead of reporting his findings to the General. Brailie decides to kill Keegan instead. On the night of a training exercise, which also happens to be the night of the General's birthday, Brailie sneaks into the merecenary camp, wearing a ski mask to hide his face, and stabs Keegan, then puts the body on a landmine that is then detonated. He then sneaks back to the General's estate and makes it look like he was assembling a diorama of the Battle of Gettysburg at the time.

Season 9

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Airdate
50	1	"Murder: A Self Portrait"	James Frawley	Robert Sherman	November 25, 1989 (1989-11-25)
Temperamental artist Max Barsini (Patrick Bauchau) effectively lives with three women - his ex-wife, Louise (Fionnula Flanagan), his young live-in model Julie (Isabel García Lorca), and his current wife Vanessa (Shera Danese). Max takes delight in the way they fight for his attention, but also likes to control them. But when Louise begins seeing a therapist, Dr. Hammer (George Coe), Max fears she will break away from him and will reveal that he killed his first agent, who was robbing him. He kills her, then makes it look like she drowned at the beach while he himself was in his studio painting for a friend.
51	2	"Columbo Cries Wolf"	Daryl Duke	William Read Woodfield	January 20, 1990 (1990-01-20)
When Diane Hunter (Deidre Hall), the partner of men's magazine publisher Sean Brantley (Ian Buchanan), goes missing after expressing a desire to sell her 51% interest to a rival, suspicion falls on Brantley and his girlfriend Tina (Rebecca Staab). Columbo sets out to find the body, eventually digging up much of Brantley's estate. But once the event turns into a full-blown media event, Diane resurfaces, explaining she needed some time to herself. Sales and the magazine's value are increased by the controversy, but she still intends to sell. Sean proceeds to then kill her for real and hides the body, believing that Columbo won't fall for the same trick twice.
52	3	"Agenda for Murder"	Patrick McGoohan	Jeffrey Bloom	February 10, 1990 (1990-02-10)
Oscar Finch (Patrick McGoohan) is a successful lawyer, who uses illegal and underhanded methods to get his clients off, like coercing young men into destroying evidence, like his friend Paul Mackey (Denis Arndt), who worked for the D.A.'s office in 1969, whom he bribed into destroying some evidence against a client of his, racketeer Frank Staplin (Louis Zorich). 21 years later, Mackey is running for political office and is chosen by the presidential candidate Governor Montgomery (Arthur Hill) to be his Vice Presidential running mate. Later that night, Finch gets a call from Staplin, who is facing another indictment. Staplin reminds him about the favor Finch did for him 21 years ago, and threatens to expose this fact to the public and ruin both Finch's and Mackey's political futures. Rather than be exposed, Finch decides to kill Staplin. He leaves his house and goes to his office in the middle of the night, where he crushes a cigar and scatters the ashes in an ashtray to make it look like he was meeting with someone there when the murder occurred. Finch then walks from his house to Staplin's house in a rainstorm so that no one sees a car parked in Staplin's driveway. After conversing with Staplin for a few minutes, Finch shoots him, and makes his death look like a suicide. McGoohan won a second Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his role, following his part in "By Dawn's Early Light".
53	4	"Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo"	Vincent McEveety	Peter S. Fischer	March 31, 1990 (1990-03-31)
Vivian Dimitri (Helen Shaver) is a real-estate executive whose recently deceased husband had been sent to prison by Columbo. She seeks revenge by killing Columbo and his wife. But first she murders her boss, Charlie Chambers (Edward Winter), her husband's partner who avoided prison by informing on him. Vivian shoots Chambers in his office, using her affair with married Leland St. John (Ian McShane, Lovejoy) to establish an alibi. Then she plants evidence to make it look like Chambers was killed by disgruntled residents in a new housing development. Her plan to kill the Columbos with a jar of poison marmalade fails. Roscoe Lee Browne (Legal Eagles, Judge Dawkins) plays her psychiatrist, Dr. Steadman.
54	5	"Uneasy Lies the Crown"	Alan J. Levi	Steven Bochco	April 28, 1990 (1990-04-28)
Dentist to the stars Dr. Wesley Corman (James Read) wants to get rid of his unloving wife Lydia (Jo Anderson) and use her money to support his gambling habit. So when Adam Evans (Marshall R. Teague), a Hollywood heartthrob having an affair with Corman's wife, comes under the dentist's care, Corman puts a time-release poison made from digitalis under his dental crown, one that takes effect just as he is making love to Corman's wife that evening, thereby framing her for the murder. Paul Burke) co-stars as Horace Sherwin, Lydia's father, also a dentist.
55	6	"Murder in Malibu"	Walter Grauman	Jackson Gillis	May 14, 1990 (1990-05-14)
Jess McCurdy (Brenda Vaccaro) fails to convince her sister, best-selling author Theresa Goren (Janet Margolin), to cancel her wedding to Wayne Jennings (Andrew Stevens), a playboy/tennis bum half her age and a golddigger. McCurdy impersonates her sister on the phone with Jennings to dump him. Jennings reacts by killing Goren. Further complications ensue, leaving Columbo to untangle a plot that involves his surprisingly detailed familiarity with women's panties.

Season 10 and specials

Episode	No. in Season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Airdate
56	1	"Columbo Goes to College"	E.W. Swackhamer	Teleplay: Jeffrey Bloom Story: Jeffrey Bloom and Frederick King Keller	December 9, 1990 (1990-12-09)
When criminology professor D.E.Rusk threatens to expel spoiled fraternity brothers Justin Rowe (Stephen Caffrey) and Cooper Redman (Gary Hershberger) for cheating (by stealing the final exam), they decide to kill Rusk instead. They lure him away from class and shoot him in the parking garage via a remote control gun installed in their pickup truck's engine while they are sitting in class listening to Columbo deliver a guest lecture, giving them an airtight alibi. The boys then plant evidence to make it look like the professor was killed because of a Mafia expose he was working on. Robert Culp returns to the series, playing Justin's powerful lawyer father. (This is the only time, in his four appearances, that Culp is not the killer. See Repeat Offenders.)
57	2	"Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health"	Daryl Duke	Sonia Wolf, Patricia Ford and April Raynell	February 20, 1991 (1991-02-20)
Wade Anders (George Hamilton), a former security expert and host of the popular crime show CrimeAlert, gets an unexpected visit one night from his rival, chain-smoking newscaster Budd Clarke (Peter Haskell), who Anders beat to the position of CrimeAlert host. Clarke has received from a friend of his a porn video starring a young Anders. He warns Anders that he plans to go public with the tape unless Anders resigns from the show. Clarke hasn't really given him a lot of options, and Anders decides to kill him. To do so, he palms a pack of Clarke's cigarettes, which he doctors by putting a few drops of the alkaloid poison nicotine sulfate into them. Anders then makes two trips to his production office - one that night and one the next morning - so as to doctor the surveillance tape there so that it will look like he arrived early to do some weekend work and was in the office all day, and didn't leave until after the murder was committed. Anders then drives to Clarke's house, where he takes advantage of Clarke setting up the porn video tape to switch one of his cigarette packs for the poisoned pack. Once the poison kills Clarke, Anders makes it look like Clarke had a heart attack at his desk while looking over a potential news story. There's an amusing incident where Anders and Columbo collide in the parking lot. The intellectually limited Anders made serious mistakes, making Columbo's job easy, and suggesting that Budd Clarke would have made a superior crime show host.
58	3	"Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star"	Alan J. Levi	William Read Woodfield	April 29, 1991 (1991-04-29)
When unfaithful rock star Marcy Edwards (Cheryl Paris) threatens her lover, high-priced murder lawyer Hugh Creighton (Dabney Coleman), with a palimony suit and threatens to bring his unconventional methods to light, he drugs the champagne in her beach house and waits until she shows up there with her current lover. As Marcy does not drink, Creighton shows up while her lover is passed out, and snaps her neck. Her lover awakens and flees the scene. Creighton enlists his associate, Trish Fairbanks (Shera Danese), to help him concoct an airtight alibi, which she uses to blackmail him into a full partnership in the firm. Columbo cracks the case, despite the existence of a speeding ticket which appears to exonerate Creighton completely. Little Richard cameos as himself.
59	4	"Death Hits the Jackpot"	Vincent McEveety	Jeffrey Bloom	December 15, 1991 (1991-12-15)
When photographer Freddy Brower (Gary Kroeger) wins a $30 million lottery, he wishes to keep the money a secret from his wife Nancy (Jamie Rose), who is divorcing him. So Freddy arranges with his uncle, wealthy jeweler Leon Lamarr (Rip Torn), to pretend that the lottery ticket is his uncle's, until the divorce is final. What Brower does not know, however, is that his uncle has recently lost all his money and is also having an affair with Nancy. Lamarr decides to kill Brower in order to keep the lottery winnings for himself. To do so, he schedules a big costume party at his house, during which he temporarily sneaks over to Brower's apartment, knocks Brower out, undresses him, then drowns him in his bathtub.
60	5	"No Time to Die"	Alan J. Levi	Teleplay: Robert van Scoyk Story: Ed McBain	March 15, 1992 (1992-03-15)
Columbo attends the wedding of Andy Parma (Thomas Calabro), his police officer nephew. While Andy is showering, his wife Melissa Alexandra Hayes (Joanna Going), a fashion model, disappears from the bridal suite. Andy enlists Columbo's help in unraveling the case. She has been kidnapped by Rudy Strassa (Daniel McDonald), a psychopath who intends to kill her once he consummates "their" marriage. Based on a story by Ed McBain (actually the 87th Precinct novel So Long As You Both Shall Live, though not credited as such). This is the only episode where no murder takes place, and Columbo doesn't meet the criminal.
61	6	"A Bird in the Hand..."	Vincent McEveety	Jackson Gillis	November 22, 1992 (1992-11-22)
Given a deadline to pay his debts, or else, chronic gambler Harold McCain (Greg Evigan) plants a bomb under the Rolls Royce of his uncle, professional football team owner Big Fred (Steve Forrest). However, Big Fred is killed while jogging by a hit-and-run motorist driving Fred's gardener's stolen pickup truck, and Harold's main concern becomes preventing the bomb exploding and possibly even killing someone, and sure enough, it does just that when the gardener tries to move the Rolls Royce out of the way of the TV camera crews. Fred's wife Delores (Tyne Daly) is having a good time as Fred's team's owner, but after Harold tries to squeeze her for money, he turns up shot dead in his cabin, and it is obvious who is responsible. Much like "Last Salute to the Commodore," the real killer is not revealed until near the end, and both murders occur off screen; both episodes were scripted by Columbo veteran Jackson Gillis (this was his final contribution to the series).
62	7	"It's All in the Game"	Vincent McEveety	Peter Falk	October 31, 1993 (1993-10-31)
Wealthy socialite Lauren Staton (Faye Dunaway) and Lisa Martin (Claudia Christian) kill their abusive two-timing lover Nick Franco (Armando Pucci), and make it seem like Nick was shot and killed by an intruder while Lauren and the building manager (Bill Macy) were outside the apartment trying to get in. Lauren takes all the heat from Columbo in order to protect Lisa, even going so far as to romance him. The viewer does not find out that Lauren is Lisa's mother until almost the end of the episode. Dunaway won an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for this. This is the only episode written by Falk.
63	8	"Butterfly in Shades of Grey"	Dennis Dugan	Peter S. Fischer	January 10, 1994 (1994-01-10)
Domineering radio host Fielding Chase (William Shatner) faces a crisis when his ward, 25 year-old Victoria Chase (Molly Hagan), decides to spread her wings and leave for New York. Chase is a national celebrity thanks to his call-in radio show and while Victoria works as his producer, his affection for her runs deep. The root of Chase's problem however is another employee on Chase's staff, Gerry Winters (Jack Laufer), who has been encouraging Victoria and has even found a literary agent to peddle her book. Chase decides to kill Winters. First, Chase instructs Winters to call his house phone at a certain time. Just before this prescheduled time, Chase drives over to Winters' house and quietly sneaks in. Winters calls Chase's house, unaware that Chase is actually behind him in the same room, and as Chase is not there, the phone bumps to an answering machine. Once the phone goes to voicemail, Chase picks up a phone in another room, claiming to have been late getting to the phone. At that point, Chase shoots and kills Winters, then makes it look like Winters was shot by his gay lover. A cell phone is a key to Columbo's solution of the crime.
64	9	"Undercover"	Vincent McEveety	Teleplay: Gerry Day Story: Ed McBain	May 2, 1994 (1994-05-02)
Irving Krutch (Ed Begley, Jr.), a crooked insurance investigator, enlists the help of Columbo to solve a series of murders that starts when two men, each of whom possesses a piece of a photograph, kill each other in a burglary gone wrong. Some years back a group of four men robbed a bank, but all of them were killed by the police after they were caught in a car accident. But before they died, they hid their loot somewhere which can only be found through the assembled photograph. Columbo must go undercover to recover some of the pieces, solve some murders to get some others, and all the while trying to figure out what Krutch might be after. This installment departs from the usual format by not revealing the culprit until the end of the show. Based on a story by Ed McBain (actually the 87th Precinct novel Jigsaw, though not credited thus). Unlike the previous episode based on McBain source material, No Time To Die, this features a regular character from the 87th Precinct series, Arthur Brown (played here by Harrison Page).
65	10	"Strange Bedfellows"	Vincent McEveety	Lawrence Vail	May 8, 1995 (1995-05-08)
Graham McVeigh (George Wendt), a thoroughbred ranch owner, is tired of the fact that his brother Teddy is in constant debt to a mob bookie, Bruno Romano, who also owns a restaurant. He decides to hence kill Teddy and frame Romano for the crime. To do so, Graham makes Teddy take a big loss at the race track by drugging his own horse so that it loses, so that Teddy will think he is in deep trouble with Romano. Graham then disguises himself and goes to Romano's restaurant, where he sets mice in one of the bathrooms. While Romano is distracted getting rid of the mice, Graham calls Teddy from Romano's back office phone to make it look like Romano was calling to set up a meeting. Graham and Teddy then drive out to a spot on a secluded back road, with Teddy driving. Under the pretense of getting fresh air, Graham gets out, walks around the car, steps up to Teddy's window and shoots him at point-blank range, then rides away on a folding bike he stashed in the trunk. The next day, Graham calls Romano to come out to the ranch, ostensibly to pay Teddy's debt. When Romano looks at the briefcase containing the money, Graham shoots him, switches Romano's revolver for the identical murder gun, and makes it look like self-defense. Mob boss Vincenzo Fortelli (Rod Steiger) starts to exert pressure on McVeigh. To solve the crime Columbo must work with the gangster.
66	11	"A Trace of Murder - 25th Anniversary Movie"	Vincent McEveety	Charles Kipps	May 15, 1997 (1997-05-15)
Cathleen Calvert (Shera Danese, in her sixth and final appearance) and her lover, crime scene investigator Patrick Kinsley (David Rasche), are weary of having to see each other on the sly, because she can't divorce her husband, Clifford (Barry Corbin), a wealthy businessman, because of their prenuptial agreement. So they scheme to get him out of the way by killing Howard Seltzer, an investment broker who is suing him, and framing Clifford for the murder. To do so, Patrick drives over to Seltzer's house while Seltzer is at home and tricks Seltzer into letting him in by claiming that his car phone died and that he has a daughter in the hospital he needs to check on. After getting in, Patrick shoots Seltzer and plants evidence to suggest that Clifford was responsible. Columbo's work is cut out for him, because the killer is on the team handling the investigation.
67	12	"Ashes to Ashes"	Patrick McGoohan	Jeffrey Hatcher	October 8, 1998 (1998-10-08)
Patrick McGoohan stars in and directs his fourth and final appearance. This is his third time playing the murderer, and as funeral director to the stars, Eric Prince, he murders gossip columnist Verity Chandler (Rue McClanahan), when she attends his latest funeral, that of actor and war hero Chuck Houston. Chandler informs Prince that her next expose will be about how 20 years ago, he stole a valuable diamond from the body of a deceased silent film star. Prince bludgeons Chandler with a tool in his storage room, then hides the body in the storage compartment for other bodies. After the Houston funeral is done, Prince takes the casket containing the body back to the preparation room, where he takes Houston's body out, and puts Chandler's body into the casket in its place. He then puts it into the cremation oven, and afterwards, the ashes are scattered by helicopter over the Hollywood hills. Prince then goes to Chandler's house, fakes evidence of her abduction and changes the story on her computer to another one she's working on. Later, so that no one will become suspicious, he cremates Houston's body by piggybacking him onto another dead body scheduled to be cremated. Sally Kellerman plays Chuck Houston's widow, Liz Houston, and Catherine McGoohan, the real-life daughter of Patrick McGoohan, plays Prince's assistant Rita.
68	13	"Murder With Too Many Notes"	Patrick McGoohan	Teleplay: Jeffrey Cava and Patrick McGoohan Story: Jeffrey Cava	May 12, 2000 (2000-05-12)
Hollywood film composer and conductor Findlay Crawford (Billy Connolly) has been mentor to a talented young composer, Gabriel McEnery (Chad Willett), who has been ghostwriting most of Crawford's work for the last few years, and penned Crawford's entire last movie score, which won an Oscar. Crawford realizes he will be ruined and ridiculed if it ever becomes known he was a has-been. Aware that Gabe practices on the roof of a studio building, Crawford uses this to his advantage. He tells Gabe that he'll get to conduct a part of a big orchestral concert based on several of Crawford's "own" movie scores. While giving a toast, Crawford drugs Gabe, and takes his body up to his rooftop rehearsal place, which happens to be on the top of a set of trap doors to a freight elevator. After making it look like Gabe was practicing rehearsing, Crawford departs. Just before the concert begins, Crawford starts up the freight elevator and makes it into the music center in time to start conducting before the elevator reaches the top. When the elevator doors at the top open, Gabe's body is pushed over the side and falls to his death, landing in front of a late arriving couple.
69	14	"Columbo Likes the Nightlife"	Jeffrey Reiner	Michael Alaimo	January 30, 2003 (2003-01-30)
Los Angeles rave promoter Justin Price (Matthew Rhys) helps his girlfriend Vanessa (Jennifer Sky) get rid of the corpse of her ex-husband, mobster Tony Galper, who was backing Price's new club, after he drops dead in Vanessa's apartment. He disposes of the body for her but unknown to him, tabloid photographer Linwood Coben secretly photographs him getting rid of the body. He tells Price he can have the negatives and prints for $250,000 and Price agrees to pay him. They meet that evening but Price instead kills him and makes it look like a suicide. This was the final episode of Columbo.

Repeat Offenders

Here is a list of the actors who starred as murderers in more than one episode of Columbo.

• Patrick McGoohan starred in 4 episodes as the murderer: By Dawn's Early Light (Emmy Award) (1974), Identity Crisis (1975), Agenda for Murder (Emmy Award) (1990), and Ashes to Ashes (1998).
• Jack Cassidy starred in 3 episodes as the murderer: Murder by the Book (1971), Publish or Perish (1974), and Now You See Him... (1976).
• Robert Culp starred in 3 episodes as the murderer: Death Lends a Hand (1971), The Most Crucial Game (1972), and Double Exposure (1973).
• George Hamilton starred in 2 episodes as the murderer: A Deadly State of Mind (1975), and Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health (1991).
• William Shatner starred in 2 episodes as the murderer: Fade in to Murder (1976) and Butterfly in Shades of Grey (1994).

Index of Killers by Episode

Pilot Episodes

• Prescription Murder: Gene Barry (1968)
• Ransom for a Dead Man: Lee Grant (1971)

Season 1 (1971-1972)

• Murder by the Book: Jack Cassidy
• Death Lends a Hand: Robert Culp
• Dead Weight: Eddie Albert
• Suitable for Framing: Ross Martin
• Lady in Waiting: Susan Clark
• Short Fuse: Roddy McDowall
• Blueprint for Murder: Patrick O'Neal

Season 2 (1972-1973)

• Étude in Black: John Cassavetes
• The Greenhouse Jungle: Ray Milland
• The Most Crucial Game: Robert Culp
• Dagger of the Mind: Richard Basehart and Honor Blackman
• Requiem for a Falling Star: Anne Baxter
• A Stitch in Crime: Leonard Nimoy
• The Most Dangerous Match: Laurence Harvey
• Double Shock: Martin Landau

Season 3 (1973-1974)

• Lovely But Lethal: Vera Miles
• Any Old Port in a Storm: Donald Pleasence
• Candidate for Crime: Jackie Cooper
• Double Exposure: Robert Culp
• Publish or Perish: Jack Cassidy
• Mind Over Mayhem: José Ferrer
• Swan Song: Johnny Cash
• A Friend in Deed: Richard Kiley and Michael McGuire

Season 4 (1974-1975)

• An Exercise in Fatality: Robert Conrad
• Negative Reaction: Dick Van Dyke
• By Dawn's Early Light: Patrick McGoohan
• Troubled Waters: Robert Vaughn
• Playback: Oskar Werner
• A Deadly State of Mind: George Hamilton

Season 5 (1975-1976)

• Forgotten Lady: Janet Leigh
• A Case of Immunity: Hector Elizondo
• Identity Crisis: Patrick McGoohan
• A Matter of Honor: Ricardo Montalban
• Now You See Him...: Jack Cassidy
• Last Salute to the Commodore: (Not revealed until the end)

Season 6 (1976-1977)

• Fade in to Murder: William Shatner
• Old Fashioned Murder: Joyce Van Patten
• The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case: Theodore Bikel

Season 7 (1977-1978)

• Try and Catch Me: Ruth Gordon
• Murder Under Glass: Louis Jourdan
• Make Me a Perfect Murder: Trish Van Devere
• How to Dial a Murder: Nicol Williamson
• The Conspirators: Clive Revill

Season 8 (1989)

• Columbo Goes to the Guillotine: Anthony Andrews
• Murder, Smoke, and Shadows: Fisher Stevens
• Sex and the Married Detective: Lindsay Crouse
• Grand Deceptions: Robert Foxworth

Season 9 (1989-1990)

• Murder: A Self Portrait: Patrick Bauchau
• Columbo Cries Wolf: Ian Buchanan
• Agenda for Murder: Patrick McGoohan
• Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo: Helen Shaver
• Uneasy Lies the Crown: James Read
• Murder in Malibu: Andrew Stevens

Season 10 and specials (1990-2003)

• Columbo Goes to College: Stephen Caffrey and Gary Hershberger (1990)
• Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health: George Hamilton (1991)
• Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star: Dabney Coleman (1991)
• Death Hits the Jackpot: Rip Torn (1991)
• No Time to Die: (This is the only episode where no one dies) (1992)
• A Bird in the Hand...: (Killer not revealed until end of episode) (1992)
• It's All in the Game: Faye Dunaway and Claudia Christian (1993)
• Butterfly in Shades of Grey: William Shatner (1994)
• Undercover (1994): (Killer not revealed until end of episode)
• Strange Bedfellows: George Wendt (1995)
• A Trace of Murder - 25th Anniversary Movie: David Rasche (1997)
• Ashes to Ashes: Patrick McGoohan (1998)
• Murder With Too Many Notes: Billy Connolly (2000)
• Columbo Likes the Nightlife: Jennifer Sky (2003)

References

• Dawidziak, Mark (1989). The Columbo phile : a casebook. New York: Mysterious Press. ISBN 978-0-89296-984-5.