Columbo Goes to College story
Criminology professor D.E. Rusk threatens to expel spoiled fraternity brothers Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman for cheating by stealing the final exam. In a variation of Leopold and Loeb, the two students decide to kill Rusk. They fake a message to lure him away from the university just when Columbo will be giving a guest lecture to his class. While sitting at the lecture, they monitor the parking garage using a miniature TV camera and shoot Rusk by his car with a remote-controlled gun, both devices being hidden in their pickup truck's engine compartment. With an airtight alibi, the boys then plant evidence to make it look like the professor was killed because of a Mafia exposé he was working on. Final clue/twist: Columbo tricks the murderous duo by letting them "overhear" details of a car owned by a suspect. After the murder weapon is found in the car, he reveals it is actually his wife's car. Because only they could know which car it was, they must have planted it and must be the murderers. Directed by: E.W. Swackhamer. Story by: Frederick King Keller, Jeffrey Bloom.
20 total · 2 choice · 9 major · 9 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| how to murder someone and get away with it | choice | The fraternity brothers Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman hatched the following scheme to knock off their professor before he exposed them as the cheaters: They arranged to shoot him in the head using a remote controlled gun while attending a lecture, thus securing an seemingly ironclad alibi. One gathers that they would have gotten away with their crime had the guest lecturer not been the tenacious Lt. Columbo. |
| what if I were in a tight spot | choice | The fraternity brothers Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman hatched the following scheme to knock off their professor before he exposed them as the cheaters. |
| academic occupation | major | Prof. D.E. Rusk was a criminology professor. He was shown giving a lecture, and later confronting two students over a stolen test. |
| cheating | major | The frat brothers Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman resorted to murder to avoid getting expelled for conspiring to cheat on Professor Rusk's final exam. |
| framing someone for a crime | major | The fraternity brothers Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman went to elaborate lengths to pin the murder of Professor Rusk on the ex-con Dominic Doyle. |
| friendship | major | The fraternity brothers Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman were good buddies. |
| law enforcement | major | The bumbling but sharp-witted homicide detective Lt. Columbo was tasked with the following murder mystery: Was the criminology professor D.E. Rusk taken out in a mob hit, or were some of his own students behind it? |
| living up to expectations | major | Justin Rowe was expected to become a big-time lawyer, like his father. It was in part for this reason that Justin stooped to murder to avoid getting expelled from college. |
| roommate and roommate | major | The fraternity brothers Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman cohabitated in the same dorm room. |
| technology | major | Foreshadow by a prank and central to the murder plot was the technology of transmitting TV signals and remote controls using only relatively small hand-held devices. |