Just wondering ... Didn't the prop dept. on the set of Columbo ever make use of fake blood? This came to mind when recalling a few victims who were killed by gunshot but didn't appear to leak any of their life's liquid.

A few off the top of my head:

In "Dead Weight," Eddie Albert shoots his military officer friend. When Columbo comes around to question him, he examines the house and there is nary a drop of blood to be found. Later, we see that Albert has hidden the corpse behind a revolving wall. The victim is wrapped up in plastic, looking as fresh and preserved as if he'd merely fainted.

In "A Bird in the Hand," Tyne Daly shoots the young man who attempts to blackmail her. Then she props his dead body into a wheel chair, drives him back to his own home, breaks a few windows, and puts him in his own bed. And how does Columbo crack the case? By looking for blood evidence within her home? No. By noticing the trail of blood droplets from house to car? No. By perusing Daly's vehicle for blood? No. He solves it by examining the victim's hat and noticing that he had had a hair cut.

In "Lady in Waiting," Beth Chadwick shoots her brother in the chest three times. Then she drags his lifeless body across the carpet to a different part of the room. No blood smears on the carpet? Not even any depressions on the carpet to indicate that something was dragged across it? Honestly, I don't know why they even called Columbo for this one. Any good forensics team would have noticed that the body had been moved and that Beth's story was false.

... That is, if Beth's brother had had any blood in him.

I know Columbo isn't a trace evidence-centred show; its intrigue lies in Columbo's investigative skills and his interaction with the killer. I'm not complaining, but just bringing it up for discussion. Didn't TV watchers notice these anomalies back in the era of Columbo? And didn't the LAPD hear of luminol?

Those are interesting points, Eve. Although I'm glad the series played down the physical ugliness of murder, in some situations, especially what you pointed out in "Lady in Waiting", that sterile approach can create some inconsistencies in the narrative.
This isn't completely related, and certainly doesn't signify any sort of holes in the story as in the examples you gave, but I find it interesting that a few episodes don't even show the bullet wounds at all. In both "Candidate for Crime" and "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case" I've never been able to spot bullet wounds on the two victims (even at the very moments the bullets impact), although I admit that through the years I've never really tried to scrutinize those scenes very closely, so perhaps I've simply been missing something. But, again, I'm glad overall that the series kept things clean.

Interesting observation. Can't say I ever noticed this before, and pretty much true as far as I can recollect for the old episodes.

But one of newer episondes had blood as a central clue. I think it was Agenda for Murder, where Columbo used dried blood in the wrong place as a clue to show that there was a fake suicide.

And don't forget Columbo Goes to the Guillotine. Oy!

"Candidate for Crime" None in sight despite being shot three times.

Yes, this is an interesting observation. It seems that the early Columbos had a 'no blood' policy. This is off the top of my head and I could be wrong - but didn't Columbo actually put his fingers in the victims clothing in Fade To Murder and take it out without a hint of blood on his finger. Also, in the episode about the psychologist who used the dogs to kill his associate we see Columbo petting the dogs in a scene after the murder, and there is not a trace of blood on his hands and there is no blood on the dog's face. (Maybe someone cleaned the dogs but I don't think anyone would put their hands near the dog's mouths.) There are a couple of episodes where we see the police outline of the victims body - Now You See Him Comes to mind - and we don't see a trace of blood in the outlines. There are other examples too I am sure.

One of the weirdest bloodless episodes is a Stich in Crime. A few years ago I had the unfortunate experience of having to go to a surgeon. In his waiting room was a artist portrayal of a team of surgeons in which the artist purposely rendered the patient and surgeons covered in blood. Why the surgeon would put that where patients would see it I cannot imagine - but surgery is a very bloody affair. At least in my recollection the surgeons in Stich do not show a drop of blood - on their gowns or even their gloves.

As was mentioned years later in Agenda there was blood - but just a drop and just enough for the story line. I imagine that there should have been a lot more blood considering the way the victim died.

Thanks for a good topic. I never thought about this before. Long time ago when The A Team was popular I read an article about it. They actually had a no kill policy. There was a lot of shooting but no one was actually hit and no one ever died. So sometimes tv people purposely avoid death. Maybe the producers of Columbo purposely kept blood from the set as not to distract from the characters, and maybe they wanted to keep the show 'light.' Still I agree it is strange that we never see blood, especially that blood is such a big part of crime investigation.

"Why the surgeon would put that where the patients would see it I cannot imagine."

Maybe the same reason people in doctors' waiting rooms seem to want to have conversations with each other about medical stuff, whatever that reason is. When I say that, I don't mean urgent talk about medical things, I mean the very casual kind. You'd think that in a doctor's waiting room they'd prefer to talk about anything else!

Oh, that's easy. He wants his patients to recall how "bloody hard" he and his team worked to save their lives. That way when they get his bill, they won't be too upset.

Thank you for the anecdote and its relation to "A Stitch in Crime." That was one sterile operating room when you compare it to real life.

Now that I've just watched "Ransom for a Dead Man," I can now contribute an alternative explanation.

In that episode, Leslie Williams shoots her husband in their own living room, then wraps up his body, drags it to his car, and disposes of it. Columbo explains the oddity of the total absence of blood evidence by noting that Williams was shot with a .22 calibre hand gun. He asserts that Leslie specifically chose that calibre because those bullets do not have the force to exit the body. They would simply remain lodged in the body's tissues.

So maybe all these bloodless victims were likewise killed with .22 calibre guns (?)

On the other hand... I'm no blood spatter expert, so I can only surmise; but when a bullet penetrates the body, wouldn't you expect that some blood would leak out from the entrance wound? (... unless the bullet itself stanches the flow).

It is briefly mentioned in Dawidziak's "The Columbo Phile" (a wonderful book but sadly out of print and hard to find nowadays) as "an important step" for the show that while the strangling of Carol Fleming was gruesomely played out before the camera in "Prescription: Murder", later episodes (starting from "Ransom For a Dead Man") would either not show the murder at all or show it in a "sanitized" way. Obviously this was an intentional choice by the producers.

Of course, all those bloodless murders aren't exactly realistic, but it has never bothered me. "Columbo" is not about realism anyway...