Thank you for your reply John,

(1) yes, you are probably right, they wanted to lead the police to the dead end by this behaviour

(2) ok, so that is what I meant by killing two birds with one stone, that confirms it
(3) I didn't know it was so easy (and cheap) then :)
(4) maybe it is my english but I thought "tie" is something else than "necktie". And as I am saying real Norman (the gambler) had only a tie :)

Back in those days you can walk into an airport and pay cash right out of your pocket for an airplane ticket. Without anybody giving any second thought to it. And the LA to Las Vegas run probably ran on the hour. So it would be simple to hop a plane over there. I don't even think that it's a full hour flight more like about 40 minutes.

This still makes me giggle though.
He asks Columbo to ‘follow him’, like he’s taking him to another room or something, yet there they are, in Vegas!

I understand flights were easier to buy, and possibly very frequent, but you’d still have to drive (in LA traffic), to the airport, park, get to the terminal, work out who is paying for the tickets, wait for the next flight, and then at the other end, you’d have to get a taxi, get to the casino and find his brother!

I know it’s for TV, but it would have been funny if Columbo had made some sort of joke about it.

Don’t forget they’d have to do all that in reverse! Did Columbo have no other jobs on?! ;)

i think they (also) killed her, because she was to inherit all

The fiancée was supposed to inherit all, but the corrupt lawyer was in cahoots with the brothers to get the will from her and destroy it. Once he had that copy, he was going to produce the uncle’s old will and Norman and Dexter would inherit all, after paying a tidy sum to the lawyer for managing the estate.

It makes no sense to me why the brothers would kill her and frame the lawyer. After doing that the lawyer produced the real will so the brothers could not inherit. Maybe I missed something.