***SPOILERS*** Let. Frank Ballinger, Lee Marvin, finds himself in a quandary when his best friend and former partner Malcolm Grove, Willard Parker, is the #1 suspect in the murder of Mark Grifford who's ex-wife Julia, Jeanne Cooper, he was having an affair with. Having no alibi where he was at the time of the murder it looked like a slam dunk case for assistant prosecutor Steve Lanley, Dan Tobin, who had it in for Grove since he had him canned from his job as assistant district attorney in being suspected of taking kickbacks from the mob or syndicate.
It's the love sick Julia who in trying to save her lover Grove's neck who admits to have killed her ex-husband in self defense when he in a drunken stupor attacked her. Let. Ballinger knows that she's full of it in that Grifford's wounds as well his head being brutally bashed in was the work of a man in excellent physical condition; Not a frail and delicate looking woman like herself. Sure enough as Let. Ballinger starts to uncover the evidence regarding Grifford's murder his killer, hiding in a closet in Grove's apartment, tries to murder him, unsuccessfully, as well.
***SPOILERS*** It's in a plan by trapping Grifford's killer in revealing himself that Let.Ballinger gets him to come out into the open and ,by dropping his guard, trying to murder him had in fact expose himself. Heving everyone suspected in Grifford's murder shown up at Julia's penthouse apartment Let. Ballinger laid a trap for his killer without him knowing it. And when the killer took the bait it was curtains for him. And the bait was something that the killer left behind at the murder scene that in returning to pick it up fingered him.
It's the love sick Julia who in trying to save her lover Grove's neck who admits to have killed her ex-husband in self defense when he in a drunken stupor attacked her. Let. Ballinger knows that she's full of it in that Grifford's wounds as well his head being brutally bashed in was the work of a man in excellent physical condition; Not a frail and delicate looking woman like herself. Sure enough as Let. Ballinger starts to uncover the evidence regarding Grifford's murder his killer, hiding in a closet in Grove's apartment, tries to murder him, unsuccessfully, as well.
***SPOILERS*** It's in a plan by trapping Grifford's killer in revealing himself that Let.Ballinger gets him to come out into the open and ,by dropping his guard, trying to murder him had in fact expose himself. Heving everyone suspected in Grifford's murder shown up at Julia's penthouse apartment Let. Ballinger laid a trap for his killer without him knowing it. And when the killer took the bait it was curtains for him. And the bait was something that the killer left behind at the murder scene that in returning to pick it up fingered him.