A rare case where we get to see Colombo at his desk, inside the police station :-) The solution is not so air-tight as Colombo seems to think, but I guess it was enough at the time.
Galesko (Dick Van Dyke) is a famous photographer who has published many books. He has a wife, a very unpleasant woman, always shouting at him, drinking and offending him, still instead of leaving her he opts for killing her... a bit extreme but he was sure he had thought of everything, coming up with a perfect plan...
Alvin Deskler just came out of prison and started working secretly for him. Galesko's plan was rather complex. He forged a ransom letter to himself written using letters taken from a newspaper, had Deskler buy him an old camera and also a small farm in the country. Galesko led his wife to see the farm then tied her up to a chair, put a clock on the mantelpiece and took her picture - actually he took two because the first didn't come out right, and hurt his photographer-sense. He'll pretend that that picture was sent to him as proof that someone has kidnapped his wife. Then he shot her.
As instructed by Galesko, Deskler now rents a car to meet him, and Galesko orders him to call him at a specific hour at his house and then meet at a junkyard at a specific time. At home, Galesko tells his maid that his wife went away, not giving her reasons because he wanted her to be suspicious so she listens in when he receives a phone call and answer personally, acting weird and writing $20.000 in small bills on a notepad that he leaves there for her to see.
He goes to meet Deskler and shoots him with another gun then puts in his hand the gun he used to kill his wife and shoots himself in the leg. He will tell Colombo that he went to pay the ransom, the guy shot at him and he reacted and shot him, killing him. He has already put the cut newspaper, the glue and the camera in Deskler motel room.
Colombo notices that the clock has been put there recently, then he finds the discarded photo. Deskler had been in prison already (although only for stealing, never for killing), and after everything found in his room the other cops are pretty satisfied with the case, but Colombo is not. Which is why we love him. He cares.
Colombo, talking to the other cops, asks if they think that Deskler was an idiot, because only an idiot would leave so many clues behind. Then there are a lot of little things piling up. The discarded photo (would any kidnapper care so much about the composition of the picture?), the fact that Deskler always went around in a taxy although he was supposed to have no money, the fact that he refused to look for a job, the fact that his room had been cleaned by the maid and nothing was found there the day before, the fact that there was the newspaper but no little bits of paper you would inevitably made while cutting the letters....
There was one witness at the junkyard, but he was completely drunk and the next day he doesn't remember a thing. Colombo went to question him at the shelter for the poor, where a nun thought he was a poor man in need of some food and also tried her best to give him a new coat, and when he was finally able to tell her that he was a lieutenant on a case she thought he was undercover :p
Colombo acts dumber than usual, and Galesko falls for it. He thinks that Colombo is a fool, a simpleton who knows nothing about pictures. At the end, Colombo is sure that he did it but still has no proof, so he called him at the police station (making him angry, he already told him to stop harassing him) and accused him of murder in front of three officers. He says that he has proof that the murder was committed at 10 am and not 2pm, so Galesko does not have an alibi while Deskler has one - he was taking his driver license, if I'm not mistaken - by the way, when Colombo goes to check this talking to the man Deskler took his driving test with, the man acts scared to death about Colombo's car and his ability to drive lol, at first the door doesn't even open, then there are no seatbelts, he doesn't use turn-signals... the man couldn't wait to get out of that trap, he'd rather walk the rest of the way :lol:
As proof, Colombo shows him an enlarged copy of the picture that shows his wife tied to the chair, only the picture has been inverted and now the clock shows 10am. Galesko shouts that it's a pathetic attempt to frame him, that if he looks at the original picture he will see that it's been inverted, but clumsy Colombo says he inadvertently destroyed the original... so Galesko feels he has no other choice but to show him the real picture, and very confidently steps forward moving aside the other cameras on the shelf to take out the one he used to take that picture, to show him that inside there's still the negative.
Colombo now have witnesses that among a dozen cameras he picked the right one with confidence, knowing which one it was because he himself took the picture. Galesko now realises that if he hadn't taken the camera there would be no proof against him whatsoever.
Now, this is where it ends and it's ok, we appreciate that the murderer has been caught and that the good guys win, but if we look at it closely, does it really make sense?
The fact that the picture shows one hour or another, does it really mean that the woman was shot at that hour? Sure, the fact remains that Deskler had an alibi for that hour so he couldn't have taken the picture. Ok, we accept that.
Does the fact that he picked the right camera be absolute proof that he took the picture himself? He's an expert photographer and he had seen the original picture, he had hold it in his hands, so isn't it possible that he knew that only that camera produced such pictures? The other cameras were very different, the pictures would have been different, would have had to be developed and would have come out differently no doubt. This was the kind of camera that immediately delivered a picture, like a polaroid.
Who knows, but after all it's not like we really care right? :-)
Colombo - Peter Falk
ITA Colombo - Una mossa sbagliata
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