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Harold Van Wick, the controlling, arrogant, gadget-obsessed president of Midas Electronics, has wired his estate-home with closed-circuit television cameras and video recorders. His mother-in-law Margaret Midas, who owns the company, and who blames a steep drop in profits on Van Wick's costly fascination with obscure gadgetry, orders him to resign his post by the following morning, or she will expose his philandering ways to his wife, her daughter, Elizabeth. Van Wick has already set in motion a scheme to murder her. He rigs his high- tech home security system and shoots Margaret when she is in the viewing field of one camera, feeding a recording of an empty study to the guard monitoring the estate's rooms. Having already forced open a window and planted footprints outside it to make the murder look like the deed of a burglar, he then uses a timer to play back the tape of the shooting to the gatehouse guard's monitor to make it look like Margaret was shot by an intruder after Van Wick had left the house for a party. Robert Brown played Arthur Midas, Margaret's son and Elizabeth's brother. Patricia Barry plays the owner of an art gallery which provided Van Wick with his ostensible alibi, and Trisha Noble plays her sexy assistant, who may have had an affair with Van Wick. Final clue/twist: Columbo notices, while viewing security monitor recordings from both before and after the murder, that Van Wick's invitation for the party was still on his desk after leaving for the party. Van Wick had presented the invitation to get access to the party that provided his alibi. So Margaret had to have been shot sometime before the security guard viewed it on the monitor, and, more damningly, Van Wick would practically have had to step over the body to retrieve his invitation before leaving for the party. Directed by: Bernard L. Kowalski. Story by: David P. Lewis, Booker T. Bradshaw.
23 total · 2 choice · 7 major · 14 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| greed for riches | choice | The villain of the story Harold Van Wick liked being president of his mother-in-law's electronics company so much that he committed murder to remain in the post. |
| how to murder someone and get away with it | choice | Electronics company president Harold Van Wick hatched an elaborate plot to shoot his elderly mother-in-law dead and make it look like she met her demise in a burglary gone wrong. Van Wick did all this to prevent the mother-in-law, who owned the company, from forcing him to resign as company president. One gathers that he would have gotten away with his crime had it not been for the meddlesome Lt. Columbo. |
| burglary | major | Columbo made Swiss cheese of the theory that a prowler killed Margaret while attempting to burgle her home. |
| human pleasure | major | The villain of the story Harold Van Wick was fascinated with electronic gadgetry. |
| husband and wife | major | The villain of the story Harold Van Wick was married to the wealthy but electric-wheelchair bound wife, Elizabeth Van Wick, and very much enjoyed running her family business. |
| law enforcement | major | The bumbling but sharp-witted homicide detective Lt. Columbo was tasked with the following murder mystery: Was the elderly owner of a large electronics company shot dead in a botched burglary, or was something more sinister afoot? |
| mobility impairment | major | Elizabeth was electric-wheelchair bound. Elizabeth remarked to Columbo about people assuming they need to "tiptoe around her". Her husband, Harold, treated her like she was made of glass, perhaps mistaking her physical disability for general incompetence. |
| mother-in-law and son-in-law | major | The plot turns on Harold shooting dead his no-nonsense mother-in-law, Margaret, to stop her from ousting him as president of the family electronics company. The few interactions they had in the lead up to her death were characterized by a tone of mutual hostility. |
| technology | major | A novelty of the story was the Midas estate being equipped with such high-tech electronic gadgetry as closed-circuit television cameras, video recorders, and clap activated doors. The novelty of Harold's digital watch was featured. |
| American football | minor | The bar patrons were caught up in the football game that was being broadcast on television. An instant replay of the fumble gave Columbo an idea for how to crack the case. |