History Headscratchers / Columbo

* Why did Halperin specifically tell them to send Columbo to investigate Janice Caldwell's murder in "A Friend in Deed"? Normally, Columbo's ObfuscatingStupidity makes sense since the people only know him as a seemingly bumbling weirdo but this guy was Columbo's boss and should know about his impressive arrest record and almost inhuman ability to weed out even the most minor clues. Surely, he could pulled some strings to have someone less competent put in charge of the investigation?
** Halperin is described as a Deputy Police Commissioner. As far as I understand, a department will generally have multiple deputy commissioner all working under the Chief. This would certainly be the case for a department as large as the LAPD. I don't think it's said that columbo is his direct subordinate, so I would wager that Halperin primarily oversees the robbery division. This would explain how he knows the details of the belair burglar off the top of his head. His wife knew Columbo as the detective who made a fool of himself at an event, he probably remembered him the same way, not having intimate knowledge of the homicide department. The reason Columbo reported to Halperin throughout the episode is that it was a robbery turned homicide, or atleast it appeared that way.

*** as noted in LyingToThePerp, pretending to have hard evidence that doesn't actually exist has been known to elicit false confessions.

* In "Uneasy Lies The Crown", Wesley Corman and David Sherwin find a dead man, appearently because a heart attack, in Wesley's property. Instead of calling 911, they move the corpse, put it on a car, and push the car off a cliff so it would look as a car accident, and no one would know that the man had been in Wesley's house. When Columbo confronts them about moving the body, they both confess. Columbo just thanks them and proceeds his investigation. Shouldn't he have had them arrested for obstruction to the justice and, maybe, body desecration? At the end, Wesley Corman confesses having poisoned the victim, but David Sherwin, even if he was unaware that the man had been killed, and Wesley was the murderer, consciously and willingly tried to manipulate evidences. However he does seem to simply get way with it.

** Actually, Milo Janus could be convicted of perjuring himself in a sworn statement and the idea that he will go for sate time plus face federal charges (wire fraud, etc.) is going to functionally be a life sentence
** Not to mention the fact that, as pointed out on a fan website, Columbo makes the demonstration mentioning how it's how "right handed people" tie their shoes... Only the victim is clearly shown as left-handed!
** Oh, there's a lot more where that one came from, believe me. Officially it's handwaved by assuming that Columbo's got the perps so nerved up by then that they just fall apart; unofficially, WordOfGod has cheerfully acknowledged that the show's structure owes a lot more to the classic drawing-room mystery than the strict police procedural.
*** Columbo himself acknowledges it from time to time (especially up against Patrick [=McGoohan=]'s various villains) that he knows he's done it, and he presents his evidence that proves that he knows to the villain. however he knows that it's too weak to convict or even arrest. BUT then he adds "I'll be waiting for you to trip up".
** The point of that scene was that Milo Janus admitted, in his signed statement, that he knew the victim was already in his gym clothes... which he'd not have known at all if he hadn't killed the man, as Columbo was certain- with other little bits of evidence- that Milo had killed the man long before the faked phone call, plus the knot in the lace supposedly proving that the victim had not dressed himself.
*** This can often be used to explain a lot of how Columbo's mysteries end in a conviction. He often freely admits that by themselves, a lot of the evidence he comes across is circumstantial or weak, but it's usually a matter of using all the contradictions and circumstantial evidence to poke enough holes in the killer's story until it becomes clear that it's all just a house of cards. Like, by itself a man's shoelace isn't enough to convict, but the shoelace combined with the doctored tapes (used to fake the phone call) and the evidence that the killer knew the victim was in his gym clothes when he couldn't possibly have known (and so on) is enough to make an arrest.

* Why do the people always confess? Why don't they give a court case a try? In the episode with the pearl in the umbrella, it was planted evidence. he would never have gotten a case out of it.

** The murderers admitting their guilt is a way to show the remnants of dignity they managed to retain during the investigations. One of the typical ingredients of "the Columbo formula" is that the murderers are high-class, intelligent people, not some primitive, drunken oafs. Everyone knows the lieutenant wins in the end, so the villians get to make a grand exit as a way to lose graciously.

* In the episode "Forgotten Lady" Columbo's proof that the killer did it was that the film she was watching broke, and if she were in the screening room as her alibi had it, why didn't she fix it quicker than she did when she returned after committing the crime. Neither Columbo nor the man desperately trying to protect her consider she might just have fallen asleep before the film broke.

*** Actually, this point is a bit of a myth- having one eye would not interfere with aiming skills. Careful aiming with gun sights can be done with one eye closed, and anyone using a scope(such as a sniper) will be using one eye by default. HOWEVER, depending on whether or not his good eye is opposite to his preferred hand, then things may be a bit complicated- while one could get around that with practice, it's suggested Columbo hated to even hold or fire a gun, meaning he'd be out of practice either way, one eye or two.

** Worth noting; on an episode of ''Series/{{QI}}'', comedian Frank Skinner discusses an argument he had with his comedy partner David Baddiel about whether Peter Falk's glass eye was actually 'acting' as a real eye (i.e. whether it was supposed to be an actual eye as opposed to whether Columbo was supposed to only have one eye). The example above aside, I suppose you could just theoretically argue that for the most part Columbo was simply supposed to be a two-eyed individual who happened to be portrayed by a one-eyed actor.

** It is strongly implied that Salah has embezzled money, and staged the robbery to make it look like student radicals stole it, killing the security chief in the process- it's not clear ''why'' he had to kill the chief of course, but he might have just wanted to make it look real, and / or further demonise the student radicals as suggested.

* What was the motive in "The Most Crucial Game"? The team manager kills the team owner because...? All we seem to know beforehand is that the manager is setting up the owner with various women behind the owner's wife's back, and the owner's attorney plants bugs to try and catch proof of this but got nothing whatsoever to prove anything(at most a single implication out of numerous phone recordings). I also don't get the 2:30 PM phone chime(the one piece of evidence- or lack thereof- that blows the manager's alibi from a phone recording). This one seems to lack any explanations for much of what we see.
** This one seems like Paul Hanlon (the manager) did it out of disliking how Eric Wagner (the owner) was acting as a poor owner of the company by spending a lot of time binging, partying and laying around. He might have done it partly ForTheEvulz as he seems to have little respect for him, but supposedly he planned to take advantage of the ownership vacuum left by Eric's death. However there can be the impression of a MissingStepsPlan with Paul. Interestingly, Jarvis in the previous episode kills his nephew for similar petty reasons, unable to stand the idea of him squandering his portion of the ransom money on his wife.
** The 2.30 clock chime blows his alibi apart; he claimed to be in the owner's box making a phone-call at the time of the murder, and the fact that the clock didn't chime in the background proves he wasn't.

** His motive is never firmly established and that is a common criticism of the episode, but the synopsis on Wiki/TheOtherWiki says it's something about shifting power within his government, and it can be inferred from the episode proper that Hasan is trying to a) make himself a closer advisor to the new monarch, and b) poison the new monarch against the student radicals and their politics, so quite possibly the security chief was just a cold-blooded sacrifice to achieve those political ends.

** Also, this particular criticism is a little bit misleading, as the episode clearly establishes the shoelace not as the clinching proof, but as a vital step in the chain that demolishes Milo's alibi. To wit, Milo has claimed that he received a phone call from the victim at the time he was actually murdering him, revealing that he was going to be working out at the gym. Columbo demolishes this not just with a shoelace, but with this:

** Paul Hanlon's motive is touched on indirectly in the episode. He points out that he has no motive at which point the victim's wife arrives and hugs Paul in grief. It is pretty clear that Paul Hanlon and Shirley Wagner are close personally, and what might happen without Eric in the picture is worth thinking about. It is the only time it is really brought up in the episode though, and one wonders if something was left on the cutting room floor.

** His motive is never firmly established and that is a common criticism of the episode, but the synopsis on TheOtherWiki says it's something about shifting power within his government, and it can be inferred from the episode proper that Hasan is trying to a) make himself a closer advisor to the new monarch, and b) poison the new monarch against the student radicals and their politics, so quite possibly the security chief was just a cold-blooded sacrifice to achieve those political ends.

** As for the shoelace, Columbo makes a point of showing Milo one of the victim's shoes that he'd tied himself, in order to demonstrate how the victim normally tied his laces. This is then contrasted with a photo of the shoes wearing when he was found dead, which are clearly tied differently -- thus demonstrating that someone else had put the shoes on the victim and tied them. While the right-hand / left-hand thing might be a genuine flub, the episode does clearly establish the broader point that the victim didn't tie his own shoelaces, someone else did.