Marshall Cahill leaving a match in Nicholson's ashtray wasn't too bright. First rule of crime school: never leave anything at the scene except the corpus delecti!

Another dumb thing Paul Galesko did (but didn't actually get caught) was tooling around in that big Rolls Royce while meeting with and trying to frame Deschler. Nobody would have thought those wheels unusual outside that fleabag motel or near the junkyard?

Thanks for replies. I will compile.

Clay, my question about the similarity between those three episodes was so ridiculous that I feel ridiculous having asked it. But having admitted it was a ridiculous question the answer is that planes were used.

I just watched the entire first 7 seasons on Netflix and found something stupid that every murderer did. I'll have to put my thinking cap back on and drop a list, but I'll start with this one:

Bart Kepple: He turned on the tape recorder in the lobby instead of in the viewing room. Why even turn it on the first place? Was a recording even necessary?

It doesn't really qualify as stupid because they barely had the TIME to do it, but I've always thought that Nicky and Lily could have talked Sir Roger out of his plan to ruin them. After all, his main problem was wounded pride, and it seems to me like he couldn't have gotten them blacklisted the way he wanted to without the whole story getting out (whether THEY leaked the story or not), and that would've been even WORSE for his pride. So if only they'd had the time to spell that out to him, the accidental killing might not have happened.

Didn't Bart Kepple have to turn it on to record in order to tape over his narration? That's why I thought he turned it on. But yes, I agree, he should have turned it on earlier. Unless it was still rewinding during that earlier time, I'm not sure.

This has been brought up several times by me (and others, I guess), but COLUMBO seems to be almost full of blackmailers who definitely act like they aren't going to press their luck with the killer over and over, so it at least SEEMS foolish to make that person a second victim, but that's usually just what happens. There's Shirley Blaine, Tanner, Lily La Sanka, and others.
Oddly enough, nearly the only blackmailer who makes it clear that he's not going to go away is Artie Jessup, who of course isn't what he seems to be.

That's true, he would have had to record over it, but he also could have just switched the tape out after the viewing or told police he made a taped copy for his secretary to transpose into a script for his narrator. All in all, it's just a weird part of his scheme. One other thing that bothers me about this episode is the gun. Kepple uses a calibration converter to change the size of the ammunition, and we see him remove it and place it in the lamp, that's how Columbo catches him afterall. Columbo tells Kepple that all his guns were checked and that none of them had been fired and aren't even the right caliber. Now, I'm not a gun expert, but if Kepple used an automatic, wouldn't there have been powder residue on the ejection chamber? Also, unless it happens off screen, Kepple never removes the clip with the ammo and replaces it with an empty clip.

Yes, I had thought of that as well regarding the GSR. Also, I just watched it again last week, and the gun shot was so loud, that despite the film going on in the theater, someone would most certainly have heard the gunshot. He should have had a silencer to make it more believable. Even so, it's still a fantastic episode. Very clever story line, all the characters where great. And Robert Culp always made such a great murderer with that flair of cockiness about him. The golfing scene was fantastic!

It's one of my favorite episodes and one I always keep on my iPod Touch.