Columbo Cries Wolf story
When Dian Hunter, the partner of men's magazine publisher Sean Brantley, vanishes after expressing a desire to sell her 51% interest to a rival, suspicion falls on Sean and his girlfriend Tina. Columbo sets out to find the body, eventually digging up much of Brantley's estate and breaking open the walls. But after the search turns into a full-blown media event, Dian resurfaces, explaining she needed some time to herself. Dian and Sean planned the disappearance as a publicity stunt to increase sales. But to his shock, she actually intends to sell now that her holding is more valuable. Sean proceeds to then kill Dian for real and hides the body, believing that Columbo will not be allowed to search for it again. Richard Levinson and William Link wrote the story for this episode, but were uncredited. Final clue/twist: Dian apparently left wearing a fur coat. Columbo gets suspicious when he sees all her remaining fur coats in plastic storage bags, deducing that Brantley put the body in the missing bag. Knowing he will not be supported in a second full search, he phones the pager Dian wears as a wristlet: it is on her body, behind a finished section of the replacement wall being installed; which Columbo tears down. (The word Columbo uses to ring the pager is "Gotcha".) Directed by: Daryl Duke. Story by: William Read Woodfield.
18 total · 3 choice · 6 major · 9 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| greed for riches | choice | Sean murdered Dian because she threatened to sell her majority stake in their shared company, which would have put an end to Sean's extravagant lifestyle. |
| how to murder someone and get away with it | choice | Sean Brantley came up with this unusually elaborate plot to murder his business partner and lover Dian Hunter: He convinced Dian to hoodwink Columbo and the police into thinking he had murdered her as a publicity stunt. Then, later, he murdered her for real thinking the police wouldn't risk embarrassing themselves by investigating him a second time. One gathers that he would have gotten away with his crime had it not been for the meddlesome Lt. Columbo. |
| murder of a lover | choice | Sean Brantley came up with an unusually elaborate plot to murder his business partner and lover Dian Hunter. |
| law enforcement | major | The bumbling but sharp-witted homicide detective Lt. Columbo was tasked with solving the following murder mystery: Had a business woman been shot dead in her car and replaced by an impostor, or had she merely run off on a secret adventure. |
| malicious hoaxes in society | major | The story turns on the Dian and Sean elaborately faking Dian's disappearance as a publicity stunt to increase sales of their smutty magazine. |
| romantic infidelity | major | Dian said that Sean was serially unfaithful and frequently slept around with his models. She had had enough and was going to leave him. |
| romantic jealousy | major | Dian feigned to be wildly jealous of Sean's young love interest, Tina. An apparently jealously Dian watched her lover, Sean, make out with another woman on a closed circuit video stream. |
| romantic relationship | major | Sean and Dian had a turbulent on-again, off-with-her-head kind of relationship. |
| womanizing man | major | Dian said that Sean was serially unfaithful and frequently slept around with his models. |
| coping with the death of a lover | minor | Sean shed alligator tears for his presumed dead lover and business partner Dian. |