That may be true, that they don't want us too sympathetic, especially after Columbo says how much he likes certain murderers: "Not for what they did, never for that", etc.
I also think that sometimes a write fleshes out a great back story and some studio hack will come in and edit it to shreds. In Murder With Too Many Notes it's so bad that it looks like they ran out of time. The final clue that was supposed to catch Findlay Crawford was from written music that spelled out B-E-C-C-A. And therefore.....? Therefore the episode was over and Crawford asked if any prisons had a good orchestra, lol. IT MADE NO SENSE!
So perhaps Edmund's back story and the niece's death would have been fleshed out more and, for purposes of brevity, they just said she died mysteriously. And Abbie suspects foul play.