That’s one of my favorite episodes. Robert Vaughn makes a great creepy murderer. Also, Patrick MacNee and Bernard Fox are in it too. And that nurse is hot, hot, hot! 
I laugh now every time I hear Columbo say he’s looking for “powder burns” on one piece of evidence… He would have known the correct term is “gunshot residue.”
I always watch the woman with the hat in that episode. 
Culp eventually played the father of a killer in a later Columbo episode, right?
“Columbo Goes to College” (1990). The son was played by Stephen Caffrey (“Lt Goldman” in Tour of Duty).
I think my favorite bit from the series is when it doesn’t work: a report comes in that a body has been found, and in his usual low-key fashion our hero asks the guy he’s talking with — you know, someone who could maybe wrap this whole thing up by explaining an odd detail a hapless schlub can’t make sense of — would please drive him over to the officers at the scene, what with Columbo not actually having a driveable car at the moment, you know how it is.
And so they get in the businessman’s car; and Robert Culp off-handedly asks which way to turn out of the parking lot, prompting a “beg pardon?”
”I couldn’t possibly know how to get there, could I?” — and he doesn’t keep the smirk out of his voice, and for a moment they both acknowledge that I Know That You Know That I Know.
I loved that show. For a while I had every episode on a VHS tape — until I threw out all my tapes.
My favorite is “Negative Reaction” with Dick Van Dyke. It always seems that the murder was planned perfectly, yet Columbo proves it with a brilliant stroke at the very end.
The same thing happens in “Now You See Him,” when Columbo has Jack Cassidy do his handcuff trick. That moment really is priceless!
Its weird. I grew up on that shit. Columbo, McMillan and Wife, Mccloud…
But I just watched the youtube link that someone posted, and I cannot for the life of me remember Hec Ramsey. Nothing. As if scrubbed from my memory.
I wrote a FB post a couple of years ago extolling the Sunday Night mysteries, but concluded with “This was my favorite hour of TV every week, though I’m not sure if I ever watched an episode of Hec Ramsey.” Don’t remember it either.
There were only 10 episodes of Hec Ramsey, so it would have been quite easy to overlook.
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.
You are correct. “Dust of Death” was a short story.
Looking at the plot description of “Dust of Death,” I can see how it could be confused with the novel.