The Lt. Columbo Forum

An area where fans from all over can ask each other questions and voice their own ideas and opinions on anything Columbo.

This Forum is fondly dedicated in memory of  "cassavetes45"  (Carleen Zink),
Columbo's greatest fan and a great friend to us all.
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The Lt. Columbo Forum
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Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

The first one that comes to my mind is Paul Galesko from "Negative Reaction". He's also the first one who comes to mind when I think of the murderer I (almost) wish could have gotten away with it.

Columbo is 100% reliant on Galesko reaching for and identifying the "evidence" that Galesko should otherwise know nothing about. Galesko absent-mindingly incriminates himself in a moment's flash of exasperated fury. Just like Columbo needed him to do - and KNEW he would do! I tell you, that Columbo... he's like a little shaggy-haired terrier who gets a grip on a murderer's trousers and won't let go, looking up at the killer with a blank innocent expression on his face.

As for wishing Galesko could have gotten away with it? His wife, the hideous harpy played by the usually incredibly beautiful Antoinette Bower (Make-up really did a number on her to turn her into a nag) was just so awful, I think she deserved an even more gruesome death. (Joking. Sort of.) She treated her husband so incredibly cruelly. And besides, Rob Petrie is just such a wonderfully, nice guy!

And so is Dick Van Dyke. How about him handing out cash to those lined-up job seekers in Malibu the other day? WHAT A GUY!!!

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

I didn't hear about that but that's great.

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

Of course Beth Chadwick is almost in a category by herself, because she's acquitted at the very beginning. So whenever she tells Columbo to stop bothering her, she's on really solid ground.

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

Headache2112
The first one that comes to my mind is Paul Galesko from "Negative Reaction". He's also the first one who comes to mind when I think of the murderer I (almost) wish could have gotten away with it.

Columbo is 100% reliant on Galesko reaching for and identifying the "evidence" that Galesko should otherwise know nothing about. Galesko absent-mindingly incriminates himself in a moment's flash of exasperated fury. Just like Columbo needed him to do - and KNEW he would do! I tell you, that Columbo... he's like a little shaggy-haired terrier who gets a grip on a murderer's trousers and won't let go, looking up at the killer with a blank innocent expression on his face.

As for wishing Galesko could have gotten away with it? His wife, the hideous harpy played by the usually incredibly beautiful Antoinette Bower (Make-up really did a number on her to turn her into a nag) was just so awful, I think she deserved an even more gruesome death. (Joking. Sort of.) She treated her husband so incredibly cruelly. And besides, Rob Petrie is just such a wonderfully, nice guy!

And so is Dick Van Dyke. How about him handing out cash to those lined-up job seekers in Malibu the other day? WHAT A GUY!!!
This is off my topic, but I would love to see some "Headache Puzzlers" again someday.....

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

Is it ever made clear why Paul just doesn't divorce his wife and walk away? Staging a kidnapping and then a double murder would surely not be the answer however much of a hell hound his wife was?

As for the question at hand, there are a number of Columbo murderers who are only caught through self incrimination.

Paul Bremmer in Death Lends a Hand, Kay Freestone in Make me a perfect murder and Oliver Brandt for example, all needed to do nothing but sit tight and they may well have got away with murder die to lack of evidence.

In a further line of thinking, I've often wondered how many cases,had they have come to court would have been acquitted?

99% of A Stitch in Crime but the denouement is a little shaley. A defence lawyer would have a field day with the supposed vital piece of incriminating evidence having been found in the arresting officers pocket when every witness in the room saw absolutely no evidence of dissolvable thread being used.

I think a significant number of Columbo's arrests would have walked free from court.

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

Here's a few.

1. Brenner. He certainly had "the juice" to get away with it IF it wasn't for his timing blunder. I wonder what the director thought after he got arrested. Probably wanted to sign Columbo up for his own team.

2. Elliott Blake was boarding the plane to his new life when he was intercepted.

3. Lauren Stanton had to confess in order to be convicted. Of course had she not done that the police would have continued to harass the hell out of her daughter

4. As mentioned, Dr. Mayfield came extremely close to getting away with it. All he had to do when Columbo shut the door was remove the sutures from the pocket of the OR suit and hide them somewhere else quickly and that would have been the end of that story even when Columbo came back in the room.

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

Oh and one more. Eric Prince. From Ashes to Ashes. The evidence that Columbo needed was in the helicopter on its way to be spread over the ocean. If that would have occurred, Prince is home free

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

The way the scene is filmed, Abigail Mitchell has plenty of time to drop those car keys before Columbo approaches. Even if he saw her do that, I'm not sure if even divers could've found them.
(Of course, he would've still found that piece of the title page and the message from Edmund.)

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

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Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

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Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

How about Troubled Waters, if Hayden Danziger didn't hide those gloves, which incidentally had nothing to do with the murder he would have been free.

One might think in The Most Crucial Game, Paul Hanlon can easily defend himself and walk free by simply stating he recently reset his clock. However, I never understood why they didn’t use the recordings from his office. It was already established that Ralph Dobbs bugged Eric Wagner’s home AND Paul Hanlon’s office, however they never spoke about the office recordings.

Lovely but Lethal, Viveca Scott could have said she got the poison ivy from her lab since it’s a fact that poison ivy was used to make that formula.

In many of the episodes the clues were weak, and since the murder’s were often rich and powerful many of them would have gotten off in the real world.

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

Just watched Forgotten Lady this week and it reminded me that she absolutely would have gotten away with it. A locked room, cadaveric spasm, a middle aged small framed woman with a notable medical ailment impairment (in regards to jumping to the tree from the balcony).... no prosecution would ever have been able to convince a jury that she did it. And as for the time unaccounted for during the film, who hasn’t fallen asleep during a movie especially after 11:00 at night after a full evening out. Or she could have been in the bathroom. Ned Diamond didn’t need to claim he did it to get her off the hook as I doubt any prosecutor would have even taken that one on.

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

Lt. just arrests them.
He doesn't try the.

Fyi MOST CRUCIAL GAME.
Lt. heard the chiming clock when he went.to tell Hanlon about the death.

Re: Who (in your opinion) Came Closest to Getting Away with it?

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