***SPOILERS*** Lady defense attorney Leslie Williams, Lee Grant, cooks up this elaborate plan to do in her husband Paul, Harlan Wade, who's law firm she a partner in as well as screw her 18 year old step daughter Margaret, Patricia Mattick, out of her $300,000.00 inheritance as well. Leslie starts by knocking off Paul after coming home from his working vacation, in a case he's handling there,in Phoenix Arizona. Paul gets a bullet between the eyes by Leslie as he walked through the front door who ends up dumping his body in the Pacific Ocean. Leslie then using letters from newspaper headlines makes out a phony random note demanding $300,000.00 for his release from his kidnapper: Real smart isn't she! But as she soon found out not as smart as the bumbling and absent minded like policeman in charge of finding Paul Let. Columbo, Peter Falk, of the LAPD.
Smelling that something isn't all that kosher in Paul's kidnapping Columbo goes along with his grieving wife Leslie's plan to pay off his kidnappers only to realize that it's all a hoax on her part in how the money was used to pay them off: By dropping it in a plastic bag at night from a plane in the middle of the California Desert! It's later when Paul's body washed up on the beach that Columbo's suspicions of Leslie's involvement in his murder became crystal clear. The keys to Paul's car were never found and the car seat was lowered to accommodate a much smaller person, Leslie, making it very obvious that he was very probably already dead in him being shot before he was dumped into the ocean!
***SPOILERS*** Putting on his usual, that worked for him so well over the years, klutzy act in order to get Leslie's guard down Columbo together with Margaret cook up a plan to get her to expose herself as her husband Paul's murder. With Margaret, who knew her all too well, putting the squeeze on Leslie to pay her off in order to keep her mouth shut about what a gold digger, not faithful wife, she was it's decided to have her paid off with some not all of the fake and not recovered $300,000.00 in ransom money. As it soon turned out it was that money, all counted and serial numbers registered by the FBI, that was all that was needed to convict her!
Smelling that something isn't all that kosher in Paul's kidnapping Columbo goes along with his grieving wife Leslie's plan to pay off his kidnappers only to realize that it's all a hoax on her part in how the money was used to pay them off: By dropping it in a plastic bag at night from a plane in the middle of the California Desert! It's later when Paul's body washed up on the beach that Columbo's suspicions of Leslie's involvement in his murder became crystal clear. The keys to Paul's car were never found and the car seat was lowered to accommodate a much smaller person, Leslie, making it very obvious that he was very probably already dead in him being shot before he was dumped into the ocean!
***SPOILERS*** Putting on his usual, that worked for him so well over the years, klutzy act in order to get Leslie's guard down Columbo together with Margaret cook up a plan to get her to expose herself as her husband Paul's murder. With Margaret, who knew her all too well, putting the squeeze on Leslie to pay her off in order to keep her mouth shut about what a gold digger, not faithful wife, she was it's decided to have her paid off with some not all of the fake and not recovered $300,000.00 in ransom money. As it soon turned out it was that money, all counted and serial numbers registered by the FBI, that was all that was needed to convict her!