Candidate for Crime story

columbo1971e3x03 · 1973-11-04

Harry Stone, a campaign manager for Nelson Hayward, is coercing the womanizing senatorial candidate to end his affair with his wife Vickie's personal secretary Linda, which Stone regards as too risky during a campaign. Stone is also the mastermind of a publicity stunt that involves fabricating death threats against Hayward, to promote his tough stance against crime. Hayward uses this to his advantage: he lures Stone to his own beach house (while driving Hayward's car and wearing Hayward's coat), where the candidate shoots and kills Stone, making it look like a case of mistaken identity at the hands of the phantom assassins. Final clue/twist: Hayward, realizing that Columbo is coming closer to solving the murder, stages a phony assassination attempt on himself. He fires a silenced gun through a balcony window into his private hotel room. He later gets rid of the gun. Hours later he returns to the room, ignites a firecracker to mimic a gunshot, and claims that someone has just shot at him from outside. When the police express shock at the brazenness of the alleged shooter, he feigns outrage at them doubting his word, and demands that the bullet be removed from the wall and analyzed. Columbo reveals that the ballistics of the bullet are already in, and that it indeed was fired from the murder weapon. He explains that after Hayward had been alone in the room (a time when he ostensibly was making phone calls), Columbo had searched it and found the hole in the window and the bullet in the wall. He had done this hours before Hayward claimed someone had just shot at him. Directed by: Boris Sagal. Story by: Larry Cohen, Irving Pearlberg, Alvin R. Friedman, Roland Kibbee, Dean Hargrove.