A Deadly State of Mind story
Psychiatrist Dr. Mark Collier is having an affair with a patient of his, rich housewife Nadia Donner. One day, Nadia invites Mark to a weekend sex vacation at the Donner beach house. Collier shows up at the beach house only to be unpleasantly surprised by Nadia's husband, Carl. The two men get into a violent confrontation over Collier's affair with and drugging of Nadia, with Carl threatening to damage Collier's reputation. When Collier surprises Carl by attempting to leave with Nadia in tow, Carl attacks him. A scuffle ensues, which ends with Collier bludgeoning Carl with a fireplace poker. After telling Nadia to explain it to the police as a home invasion that turned tragic, done by several masked men, Collier drives off, almost running over a blind man walking his dog past the beach house. Investigating the scene, Columbo is not satisfied with Nadia's version of events, wondering why Nadia didn't see the headlights of the burglars' car. When Columbo tells Collier that Nadia's story is not credible, Collier secretly hypnotizes her into, in effect, committing suicide by taking a deadly dive from her fifth floor balcony into the swimming pool below. Final clue/twist: Columbo claims to have a witness to the first murder. Collier is confronted with the eyewitness, a man wearing dark sunglasses who looks just like the blind man Collier narrowly avoided hitting with his car shortly after the murder. The man settles down on the couch, hands Columbo a match, and then identifies Collier as the driver he saw at around the time of the murder. Collier, as confident as ever, says that he has not been fooled, that he knows the man is blind, and thus cannot be a witness to anything. Collier challenges the man to read from a magazine he hands him, and is stunned when the man does read from it. Columbo reveals that the man is the brother of the actual blind man. But Collier has incriminated himself. In “knowing” that the witness was blind, he has established that he was at the scene of the crime. He has in effect been an eyewitness against himself. Directed by: Harvey Hart. Story by: Peter S. Fischer.
18 total · 3 choice · 8 major · 6 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| breaking the law to cover up another crime | choice | Dr. Mark Collier came up with the following elaborate plot to rid himself of his partner in crime, Nadia. |
| how to murder someone and get away with it | choice | Realizing that Lt. Columbo was hounding in on their scent and that he could not rely on Nadia to keep her lies consistent, Mark came up with the following elaborate plot to rid himself of this liability of a partner in crime: He hypnotized Nadia under the pretext of helping her pass a lie detector test. Instead he implanted a command that made her try to jump into the pool below her fifth story balcony, triggered by his command over the telephone. He knew full well that she would not survive the plunge. |
| what if I killed someone by accident | choice | Dr. Mark Collier hit Carl over the head with a fire iron when Carl attacked his own wife, Nadia, and inadvertently killed him. Worried perhaps more about his reputation than the legal repercussions of what seems like obvious self-defense, Mark and Nadia decided to try and cover up the murder by blaming it on unknown masked assailants that wanted to rob the house. |
| burglary | major | Mark and Nadia tried to pin Carl's death on unknown burglars. Columbo spent the entire story poking holes in the burglary theory. |
| doctor and patient romance | major | Mark was carrying on in a romantic relationship with his prize patient, Nadia, (who he wanted to write a book about) in flagrant violation of medical ethics. |
| extramarital affair | major | Mark and Nadia were having an affair behind her husband's back. She was in fact a serial adulteress, according to her husband. |
| law enforcement | major | The bumbling but sharp-witted homicide detective Lt. Columbo was tasked with the following murder mystery: Was Nadia's husband killed in a botched burglary of their beach house as she told the police, or was she perhaps covering up for someone she'd invited over for a weekend sex vacation? |
| medical occupation | major | The villain of the story Dr. Mark Collier was a successful psychiatrist and a behavioral researcher. He was treating Nadia for some psychological condition. Anita was a human behavioral research working under Mark. |
| paramour and paramour | major | Mark and Nadia were having an affair behind her husband's back. |
| scientist occupation | major | Mark and his colleague, Anita, were conducting research into the manipulation of human behavior. This involved wearing lab coats, conducting stereotypical mouse in a maze experiments, and experimental work on hypnotic suggestion in humans. |