Lieutenant Columbo

Home → Episodes → Columbo Goes to College

The car-park recording: an alibi on videotape
The car-park recording: an alibi on videotape “Columbo Goes to College”, 1990 · NBCUniversal
10×01 · Season 10 · 1990

Columbo Goes to College

Russian title: Коломбо отправляется в колледж · Russian version

Two law students murder the professor who caught them cheating, using a remote-controlled shotgun hidden in his car radio. The murderers are the youngest in the series, and the most casually amoral.

Editor’s rating — 8 out of 10.

Number
56 of 69
Aired
December 9, 1990
Running time
89 min
Director
E.W. Swackhamer
Writer
Jeffrey Bloom and Frederick King Keller / Jeffrey Bloom

The case

The killer
Stephen Caffrey as Justin Rowe and Gary Hershberger as Cooper Redman
The victim
James Sutorius as D.E. Rusk
Guest cast
Stephen Caffrey, Guy Stockwell, Katherine Cannon, William Lucking, James Sutorius, Les Lannom

Columbo is an inverted mystery: the murder opens the film and the killer is known from the first minutes. What you are watching for is how he proves it — see how the character works.

Stephen Caffrey
Stephen Caffrey — Justin Rowe and Gary Hershberger as Cooper Redman
A scene from the episode. Columbo is Called Out! Official Columbo channel · YouTube

The murder

Justin Rowe and Cooper Redman are rich, clever and entirely untroubled. Professor Rusk has caught them cheating and intends to have them expelled, which would cost them the careers their fathers have already arranged.

The murder is engineering. They build a shotgun into the professor's car stereo, wired to fire when triggered remotely, and detonate it from a lecture hall where they are visibly, unmistakably present — surrounded by classmates and, for part of it, by Columbo himself.

The alibi is the best in the later run: they are on camera, in a room full of witnesses, at the moment of the killing.

The two students are the products of money and indulgence, and the film is precise about it: Justin's father is a wealthy man who has fixed things before, and both boys have grown up understanding that consequences are negotiable.

Professor Rusk catches them cheating in an exam and refuses to be reasonable about it. Expulsion would cost them law school and the careers already mapped out for them, and they treat that as a technical problem.

The device is built over days: a shotgun barrel fitted into the professor's car stereo, wired to a remote trigger, tested and installed. They then sit in a criminology lecture — the one Columbo has been invited to give — and fire it from there.

Two students who are bored and allowed everything
Two students who are bored and allowed everything “Columbo Goes to College”, 1990 · NBCUniversal

How Columbo gets him

The episode's charge comes from how much the two of them enjoy it. They invite Columbo to lecture their criminology class, ask him about his methods, and treat the investigation as an extension of their coursework.

That arrogance is the crack. Boys who are certain they cannot be caught keep testing how close they can get, and the lieutenant lets them come.

The mechanical work — how a stereo becomes a weapon, who bought the parts, where it was assembled — narrows quickly once he stops believing the shot came from outside the car.

The lecture is the film's masterstroke. Columbo is in the room when the murder happens, invited by the murderers, which means his own presence is part of their alibi. The audacity of it is what eventually undoes them, because they cannot resist returning to it.

The students spend the film testing him, and the lieutenant lets them. They ask about famous cases, offer theories, invite him to explain his methods — and each exchange tells him a little more about how their minds work.

The mechanical investigation is straightforward once he stops believing the shot came from outside. A weapon inside a dashboard requires access to the car, tools and time, which narrows the field to people who were near it in the days before.

The ending. The Finale of Columbo Goes To College Official Columbo channel · YouTube
The garage where a professor was shot in broad daylight
The garage where a professor was shot in broad daylight “Columbo Goes to College”, 1990 · NBCUniversal
A dorm room better furnished than most flats
A dorm room better furnished than most flats “Columbo Goes to College”, 1990 · NBCUniversal
The car radio. Columbo reconstructs the device and demonstrates that the shot was fired from inside the dashboard, which means it was installed by someone with access to the car.

Worth knowing

Verdict

One of the strongest ABC films. The murder method is genuinely ingenious, the alibi is airtight, and the two young killers are more chilling than most of the elegant older ones because they find the whole thing amusing.

The final scene, in which their confidence finally cracks, is the most satisfying comeuppance of the second run.

One of the best of the second run and the most inventive murder method of the ABC years. Two young men who commit a murder while sitting in the same room as the detective is a premise the classic era never attempted.

It is also the coldest pair of killers in the series. There is no wounded pride here and no principle — only two people who found the whole thing interesting.

The lieutenant gives a lecture, and listens harder than he talks
The lieutenant gives a lecture, and listens harder than he talks “Columbo Goes to College”, 1990 · NBCUniversal

Familiar faces

Actors who turn up in the series more than once — sometimes in very different parts.

Cast data from TMDB, including uncredited bit parts. All the familiar faces →