Well all know the drill, Columbo hounds and badgers the killer. They keep trying to confuse him or throw him off the trail. They act all helpful with answers trying to remove suspicion from themselves. All they end up doing is giving Columbo all the ammo he needs to take them down.
But was there any cases where the killer would have gotten away with it if they had just shut up and got a lawyer the instant Columbo identifies himself as a cop. Even if the death was framed as a suicide or accident. Columbo would hit a brick wall, even if the suspect was formally brought in for questioning the lawyer would stop them from saying anything incriminating.
The killer in Columbo always ends up cooking their own goose through loose lips. But what if Columbo had to use cold hard evidence?
Gah, I meant WON, not lost.
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I thought it was closer to the opposite.
I would say most of them probably won’t have gone as well if the suspects were just smart and got a lawyer. His whole gimmick is that he tricks them into saying something they regret. A lawyer wouldn’t prevent that every time but certainly would some of it.
Quite so. In fact it’s often why he ends up winning.
A particular car I remember is how a guy had an explosion go off timed by a record player that also pushed a book off a table.
Columbo was stumped and did make a partial conclusion but without knowing who the killer was.
Ofcourse the killer was the guy he was talking to and explaining his deduction. But the only reason he figured out the killer was because the killer corrected him and showed how he actually did it because some of the details Columbo was getting to was wrong.
So it was the killers arrogance and need to brag that ended in him pretty much revealing himself.
Most of them.
Colombo’s entire thing is to press people with minor details and evidence until they crack. Without that crack he’s mostly got circumstantial evidence and frankly fairly dubious deductions, a competent lawyer would tear most of his cases to pieces on the stand. He plays on their nerves and arrogance, tricking them into incriminating themselves.
Pretty much all of them.
It’s why he dresses like a schmuck and acts like a ditz. It’s bait.
It’s also who he is, buuuut it’s bait.
>But what if Columbo had to use cold hard evidence?
The issue is that most of his cases involve really intelligent killers, and just as importantly, rich assholes. The kind who have friends in high places who makes things go away.
He wouldn’t be able to crack most of them. Maybe something would appear years later, but between the competency of most of the murders and their social circle, there’s not much to do.
Edit: Ooooh, won, not lost. Was getting mixed messages from the text lol. Don’t remember my episodes well enough for that, sorry.
Depends if he can get a search warrant or not. Many episodes depend on the killer allowing timely evidence collection that Columbo wouldn’t be able to get otherwise
I mean, Columbo’s whole thing was having it look like the guy was going to get away with murder, right up until something a lawyer would’ve told them to shut the fuck up about came back to bite them in the ass at the eleventh hour.
So, ah, quite a few of them.
The main stand out for me is Paul Galesko in Negative Reaction. Columbo had gone well beyond reasonable investigation by the end of it. He was into harassment and borderline framing the guy. Sure Galesko was the killer, but at that point there was no real evidence and Columbo pulls a “oops the police accidentally destroyed key evidence” From a neutral observer point of view, that was a frame job of a guilty man!
A lawyer for Galesko would have advised him to keep his mouth shut and demanded that there was an investigation into the missing evidence, or at least told Columbo he’d be putting that to the jury
The Columbo file shows the huge problem
“Columbo has created a blown-up image of Frances’s kidnap photo, and the clock on the mantelpiece behind her shows that it’s 10am in the morning – the time Galesko previously claimed to be at home alone with his wife.
The stern detective is therefore ‘surprised’ to see Galesko beaming at him in the face of such damning evidence. “You’re a gem. You’re a little flawed and you’re not too bright, but you’re one of a kind,” laughs Galesko before pointing out that Columbo has inadvertently reversed the print. The clock actually reads 2pm. If Columbo can produce the original print Galesko will prove it.
Only Columbo can’t do that because he accidentally dropped the original in some hydrochloric acid. It’s gone for good. But he’ll testify that there was no mistake made when creating the image, and invites Hoffman to read Galesko his rights.”
That’s the point where all Galesko has to do is say “I want my lawyer.” If he did that Columbo would be in a world of trouble. Instead he grabs for the incriminating camera evidence.
It’s a rare episode where I actually wish Columbo hadn’t solved it. I don’t like it when police go rogue, even to catch someone who is guilty.
Pretty much in EVERY show. LOL
The way his cases typically go, is that he comes to focus on his target because of some incredibly trivial detail that would never stand up in court, and he badgers them until they give themselves away somehow. So with nearly all of them, if they had just remembered once in awhile about Shut the Fuck Up Friday, he would have gotten nowhere. But they all think they can play him, because he comes across as distracted and not that bright. That’s a deliberate facade to put suspects off their guard.
There was one I can remember, and my memory is fuzzy. I think he goes to a wax museum and actually plants evidence in an umbrella by flicking a pearl bead into the display holding it . I remember it because I remember thinking that it wouldn’t hold up in court. Did I dream up that one?
Example the opposite way: Most investigations in the series “Homicide” ended if the suspect lawyered up. That was like, “game over” for the cops because they knew they wouldn’t be able to get enough for a conviction.
Columbo had absolutely nothing on Paul Hanlon, other than the sound of a bell chime during a recorded conversation. He didn’t have witnesses, found no weapon and couldn’t concretely establish motive.
Even after Paul’s angry confrontation with Columbo, he still could have gotten away with it after hiring almost any lawyer. There’s just nothing to hook him on, other than his own word.
A lot of them! Probably even most. Columbo’s powers of observation and deduction are both extremely good, but his most important ability is to make people underestimate him. The killers don’t shut up and lawyer up because they’re so unthreatened by him they feel confident that they can engage with him and easily divert him. Almost every one of the killers is undone by something they said to Columbo directly rather than some critical piece of evidence he discovered independently.
One thing I will say, is that sometimes this may still happen. Presumably Columbo has a decent conviction rate, but we never see the trial so maybe some get away with it still.
Columbo knew who was guilty in the first 5min he just like to long things out with “just one more thing”
Probably, but that’s like saying “could X have won this fight if they didn’t lose?”
This happens several times – mostly the shutting up part. Columbo is willing to absolutely hound people, going far beyond the definition of police harassment, if it means getting them to slip up or to testify if they had chosen not to.
A lot of columbo’s cases don’t hold up in court without a confession or a witness’s testimony.
A quick breakdown based on my memory of the show + wikipedia article summaries of episodes:
Columbo gets the killer without their responses in 37 cases.
In 25 cases, he gets proof that the killer can’t easily fight in court: S1E3, S2E2, S3E3, S3E7, S4E1, S4E3, S4E4, S4E5, S5E3, S5E4, S5E5, S6E1, S7E1, S7E5, S8E3, S8E4, S9E1, S9E2, S9E3, S10E1, S10E2, S10E8, S10E9, S10E12, and S10E14.
In 11 cases, he confronts the killer with evidence and they confess, but would have probably gone away otherwise: S1E1, S1E6, S2E8, S3E2, S5E2, S6E2, S7E2, S9E5, S10E4, S10E6, and S10E13.
In one case, he gets an accomplice to confess: the first pilot.
Meanwhile, in 27 episodes, the killer’s actions are columbo’s best evidence.
19 killers react to him in a way that proves the case, sending them to prison: the second pilot, S1E2, S1E4, S1E7, S2E5, S2E6, S3E4, S3E5, S3E8, S4E2, S4E6, S6E3, S7E3, S7E4, S8E1, S8E2, S9E4, S10E10, and S10E11.
Columbo’s evidence is questionable or he probably loses in court in 9 episodes: S2E1, S1E5, S2E3, S2E4, S2E7, S3E1, S3E6, S5E6, and S9E6.
He doesn’t arrest the killer in 3 cases: S5E1, S10E5, and S10E7.
So it’s about half and half for cases where the killer would have gotten away without columbo’s actions. Maybe in some cases he would have found better evidence without the killer’s actions, and maybe in some cases he wouldn’t have noticed some detail unless the killer said something. But every single killer made life worse for themselves by not getting a lawyer / talking to columbo.
They do that in a LOT of cop shows. I find it incredibly lazy on the writers part