On New Battlestar Galactica, Gaius Baltar gave a nuke to a Cylon who used it to kill thousands. No one ever found out.
On DS9, Sisko lied and was linked to the murder of A Romulan senator to pull The Romulans into the Dominion War. Only Garak knows everything. I don’t think its ever come out. If it had a passing mention on Discovery, I don’t know about it.
Sort of related to the subject…on Game of Thrones, I don’t think Ser Davos, who serves on the Small Council with Bronn at the end…knows that Bronn directly killed his son at BlackWater Bay.
OG Magnum outright murdered a Soviet diplomat* and as far as I could ever tell, got away with it. I know Buck Greene would have loved to hang Magnum for that, so somehow the murder of a diplomat connected to Magnum rated…no investigation?
*he needed killin’
Harry Callahan, after being all self-righteously honest in Magnum Force, let a murderer get clean away in The Dead Pool.
On E.R., Samantha (Linda Cardellini) shot her abusive ex to death while he slept and her lawyer made it disappear. The ex’s character was a straight-up monster and the audience was totally on her side, but I don’t remember it even being mentioned from a few episodes on until the end of the show. Earlier in the series, Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) had let a killer die when he had him alone in the elevator and he held off on a defib. There was a hearing, and his bosses narrowed their eyes suspiciously a lot, but he never faced consequences.
The list goes on, Jing-Mei Chen euthanized her father with Greg Pratt’s help. Kovac beat a mugger to death with his bare hands and Doug Ross helped a woman euthanize her disabled kid.
Those last 2 were investigated, so maybe not what the OP is looking for.
Columbo figured that he’d keep solving murders that baffled the rest of the police force, only he apparently couldn’t qualify on the pistol range as required. And so, after an episode of (a) sleuthing a locked-room mystery in between talk of (b) ‘internal affairs’ this and ‘or I pull your badge’ that, he — paid a guy to take the test for him, and then kept doing what he does best.
Is it wrong for Poirot to keep the secret of who the killers were in Murder on the Orient Express? Mind you, I just realized tons of characters do know about that since he discussed it with the murderers.
I believe Sherlock Holmes did the same at least once when the victim was atrocious.
I also thought it was bad to start a film series where the fabled detective goes against his own principles. You should establish those principles before you beak them.
On an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel had reverted to the evil Angelus, whom Buffy had to slay. Willow tried to make him Angel again magically, which she did. Xander knew that she did. Nevertheless, he either didn’t tell Buffy or lied that the spell didn’t work. (It’s been a long time since I saw that episode.) As a result, Buffy slew him, even though she saw he was Angel again, in order to save the world. Nobody ever found out about what Xander knew, although I think it almost happened in one episode. I kept waiting for that shoe to drop throughout the series.
In a season 7 episode, Buffy throws that statement back at Willow who is understandably confused, but the danger of the day was so important that they moved onto other topics.
Xander’s lie was apparently hugely controversial in fandom - to the point that if you google “Xander’s lie” with no other info, you’ll get a lot of Buffy discussions/fan fiction/etc.
Thats exactly the kind of thing I was talking about…“And one on ever knew”
Similarly on GoT (and Im sure there are tons of at least near examples on there and Hot D) Sansa backed up Littlefingers lie over what happened to Lysa…her part in it never came to light.
The Naked Sun by Asimov; Elijah Baley and R. Daneel agree not to tell anyone that Gladia Delmarre killed her husband while in a dissociative state, and choose to let people believe that Jothan Leebig tricked a robot into doing the deed.
