Was that the spider cider?
How long was that statute of limitations? and, that island better be part of Hawaii, because I think the federal statute may be suspended during time a suspect is outside the jurisdiction. I am not positive, though-- and it might apply only to people indicted, not mere suspects.
Although the Hawaiian chain was originally ethnically Polynesian, geographically it’s an outlier with most of the rest of Polynesia over a thousand kilometers to the south or southwest. It doesn’t make sense that it would be within (easy) canoe range of inhabited Polynesian islands or have been in the battle zone of the WW2 Pacific theater. However it would make even less sense for a small craft that had set out to go a few score miles offshore to have been swept that far away by even a days-long typhoon. Especially when it’s a given that virtually anything lost in the ocean off Hawaii will end up on or near the island.
On topic, a murderer will attempt to create an alibi for him/herself by glancing at their watch and saying something like “Oh, it’s 9:13 already. I’m late!” to someone nearby as they flee the scene of the crime. However, this immediately evokes suspicion on the part of the detective handling the case, leading to the ultimate downfall of the guilty party.
I don’t understand-- how would that work at all to try to establish an alibi? It seems like doing what you describe would do nothing but draw attention to the fleeing murderer and point suspicion right at them.
It’s more often “Murderer hires a hitman to do the deed at 11 pm”, camps out at bar across town and calls attention to the time at 11…
…or they kill a person (possibly accidentally), race to bar and say to a stranger “Man, I really should get going, I’ve been here since 7:30!”
Yeah, those scenarios both make much more sense.
"Oh I looked at the clock cuz I was saying to myself, “Where could he be going at five to seven with that sawed-off shotgun?”
If memory serves, the Columbo episode A Friend In Deed used that device near the start.
A lot of them do. In “Playback,” Oskar Werner says the 9:13 line to his security guard as he leaves home after videotaping his mother-in-law’s murder. Dick van Dyke mentions the time to a gas station attendant after offing his wife in “Negative Reaction.”
“Last Salute To The Commodore” has Robert Vaughn do it when driving past the gate-checkpoint exit upon leaving his (dead) father-in-law’s place on the water — you know, so it’ll be clear that it was before the old guy was seen taking out his boat (by which I mean Vaughn then swam back there, put on the dead guy’s clothes, loaded the dead guy onto the boat, and sailed off for to make it look like the old guy must’ve banged his head or something and fell overboard during some night boating).
Columbo isn’t fooled for a moment, because, seriously, why would a guy with an expensive and ultrareliable wristwatch check with some rent-a-cop wearing a cheap drugstore one? I mean, if the two of you disagreed, then you’d condescendingly correct him, right?
Yes now I think about it, ‘murderer establishes a fake alibi’ was definitely a Columbo trope. There’s Suitable for Framing where the murderer keeps looking at his watch whilst at some social engagement, while he has his minion keeping the body warm with an electric blanket, to try and fool the pathologist.
Werner had rigged the video machine to play the murder tape over the security system at 9:30, so the guard was fooled into thinking it had just happened when he saw it on his closed circuit TV set.
Columbo nailed Werner because there was a piece of evidence in the tape that shouldn’t have been there at 9:30 (his invitation to the event he left to attend).
A variation of the trope came in “Candidate for Crime,” where the murderer was tripped up by there being no available telephone near the scene of the crime when he called the cops from his home to leave a bogus tip.
Oh and another one (I forget the episode but it’s one with Robert Culp in it I think) where, after the murder, the murderer records some dictation on tape which gives him his alibi (because it is supposed to have been recorded at the time the murder takes place), but trips up by referring to some news he’s heard on the radio which he couldn’t have known about at the time he was meant to have made the dictation.
The ‘90s-est one is probably an employee calling (a) from his home office (b) to his boss, William Shatner, at the agreed-upon time: Shatner’s answering machine picks up and starts recording the message being left — at which point Shatner picks up the phone and apologizes for being a moment late — and they talk for a bit, and then a gunshot rings out and Shatner overacts like someone who unexpectedly just heard a guy get killed.
Twist being, Shatner was just at the other guy’s house, picking up the cordless extension while the other guy is already on the landline, for to shoot him in the back…
IRL, I once gave an affidavit over a car accident I witnessed, where the were several witnesses, but I was the only one who could say that the car that T-boned the truck entered the intersection on red-- because I was driving a manual.
I stopped at red, right after the light had been yellow, and the car in front on me stopped too. I took my car out of gear, and stepped on the brake. Then just as soon as I was on the brake, the car in front on me took off, and since I’d barely had time to get out of gear, I thought “Wow, that was a short light,” and looked up to check, which is how I saw it was still red.
It was a 4-lane bypass, where a pikeway crossed it with a stoplight. No one else proceeded when the car in front of me did, so lots of people were willing to say they hadn’t seen a green light, but no one except me was willing to say absolutely that it was red.
No idea why the woman in front of me proceeded on red after stopping. But she hit the driver’s side of a very small truck, and injured the driver pretty badly.
The lawyer for the truck driver called me a couple of weeks after I gave the affidavit, and said I would not have to testify at a trial; the woman was settling, and no longer maintaining the light was green.
Trivia: Oskar Werner’s only appearance on US TV.
That was “Identity Crisis,” with Patrick McGoohan as the murderer. It was in this episode that McGoohan admitted he wore a hairpiece.
I’m starting to think I’ve seen too many episodes of the series too many times! 
The bogus phone call in “Candidate for Crime” now has me wondering: Was caller ID available in 1973? If so, wouldn’t the LAPD have been using it?
Bob Denver in Back to the Beach (1987):
well, that narrows it down.