Columbo

Debonair actor Ward Fowler is tired of his producer and one-time lover Claire Daley, who has been blackmailing him. He decides to lift a page from one of his own scripts and carries out her homicide, which he disguises as a fatal shooting at an armed robbery. With an apparent air-tight alibi supplied by his "go-for", Mark Davis, Fowler humors himself by dueling with Columbo on who did it and how.

Spinster Ruth Lytton, curator of the financially troubled, family-owned Lytton Museum, blackmails security guard Milton Shaeffer into helping her carry out a plan to rob the museum for needed insurance money. But the clever woman, harboring feelings of hostility toward her family, carries the plan one step further to the surprise of Shaeffer and her brother, Edward. Ruth offers an innocent façade while finalizing the plan - revenge against her sister, Phyllis, by implicating the latter's daughter, Janie.

Accountant Oliver Brandt has been embezzling his client's funds to supplement his wife's expensive taste. When his partner, Bertie Hastings, discovers his financial misdeeds, Brandt slays him. Investigating the crime, Lt. Columbo plays a mental cat-and-mouse game with his clever adversary.

Obsessed with avenging the death of her niece, writer Abigail Mitchell sets the stage for the carefully planned homicide of her nephew, Edmund Galvin, whom she holds responsible.