Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Painter Max Barsini kills his former wife Louise to keep her from revealing that he murdered his first agent, disguising her death as a drowning; a mark on her face carries his individually mixed red pigment. Magazine partners Dian Hunter and Sean Brantley arrange her disappearance for publicity, but Brantley kills her after she decides to sell her stake. Her missing fur coat and pager lead Columbo to the body behind a newly finished wall. Lawyer Oscar Finch, hoping for political advancement, shoots a blackmailer and stages suicide; tooth marks in cheese match his discarded chewing gum.
Vivian Dimitri tries to poison Columbo’s wife with marmalade while the detective investigates a separate killing; he has the jar tested, stages a false funeral and draws out her confession under cover of a fake death. Dentist Wesley Corman tries to frame his wife for a rival’s death with poison placed beneath a crown, but Columbo bluffs about a chemical test and makes him reveal his knowledge. In Malibu, novelist Theresa Goren’s young suitor Wayne Jennings confesses, but the autopsy shows she was killed earlier; Columbo finds her underwear put on backwards, supporting his conclusion that the man close to her had redressed her to disguise the murder’s timing.