WHEN COLUMBO "HELPED" MATLOCK

'MATLOCK'

"DIARY OF A PERFECT MURDER" (PILOT)

'COLUMBO'

"ETUDE IN BLACK"

When Ben Matlock was searching video from the night of the murder in question in hopes of finding something that would break Paul Lockwood's alibi, something finally clicked and he realized it wasn't something that he was hoping to see, but something that he couldn't see....

Perhaps what clicked in his mind was a memory of a similar case from California about fifteen years previously.  It had to be a very famous case to have the details be included in the news coverage back in Atlanta.  And considering the murderer was world-famous symphony conductor Alex Benedict, that would have merited coverage by all of the news outlets of the day. 

Benedict killed his concert pianist Jennifer Welles, who was threatening to come forward with revelations about their affair.  This would destroy not only his marriage but his career with the symphony orchestra as well.

 

 

Benedict showed up at her house before that night's televised concert and made her death look like suicide.  But unbeknownst to him, he lost his carnation during the crime and only noticed it was missing during the concert.  Later, he went to Miss Welles' home where he was able to retrieve the carnation before the CSU got hold of it.  

In his solution to the case, Lt. Columbo of the LAPD showed videos of Benedict without the carnation during the concert and then of the Maestro leaving the Welles' home now wearing it.  His own wife admitted that he did not put it on after the concert before leaving for the crime scene.

And that's what Ben Matlock was able to do in breaking Paul Lockwood's alibi in court.  With three monitors set up in the courtroom, he first showed Lockwood at a party where he was wearing an ID badge.  The next video showed him leaving the party once he "found out" that his ex-wife was murdered, but there was no ID badge on his lapel.  And finally, as he was leaving the crime scene, Lockwood was now seen in news footage wearing the ID badge again.

 

 

Lockwood was defiant; he said there was no way that the videos could prove he did it.  But Matlock was not concerned: he didn't have to prove Lockwood did it, only that there was reasonable doubt as to whether his own client did it.

Just another one of those little bits o' trivia that theoretically hold the TV Universe together.....

BCnU!