Did you not buy the script’s direct addressing of this point? I mean, it’s fine if you didn’t, but changing it does change the basic point of characterization the story was trying to make.
To your spoiled point, if the alternative you suggested had happened, the murder wouldn’t have any reason to take the course of action you suggest, so it’s kind of moot. 
(IIRC) That Cash’s character was deeply troubled by the murder? Not as much as the writers.
I mean, Columbo is a dance between the perp and the Lt. That’s the joy of it. But sometimes, I think the show doesn’t write the characters correctly if they were real people. They want the ending they want, and they’ll make characters act the way they do to get there.
I think, if you’re cold enough to kill your wife AND an innocent person, just to get out of a bad financial situation, then killing a cop isn’t that much farther a leap. Three life sentences is the same time served as two life sentences.
All talky confession detective shows eventually write weak episodes. If the perp would just SHUT UP, they’d get away with it. I respect that Columbo is not The Closer. The fun of Columbo is that the perp views it as a game as much as Columbo does. They are unable to shut up. Hence, the dance.
I’m watching the pilot episode right now because of the thread, and even though it’s a tiny bit slow, it’s also quite good.
Which pilot, Prescription: Murder or Ransom for a Dead Man?
I love the bit in Prescription: Murder where Columbo and the killer psychoanalyze each other. It’s a masterful bit of acting.
That one.
Another one I particularly like is “Candidate for Crime” with Jackie Cooper as a scumbag politician, Joanne Linville as a whiney drunk, and Katie Segal as Cooper’s secretary.
Not following you. I looked up an episode synopsis to see if I had remembered it correctly, and I got it pretty much right:
Columbo had the murderer perform the guillotine trick on him, and he had switched the labels for the ‘safe’ and ‘deadly’ settings. To do that Columbo had to assume 2 things that both had to be correct in order to not lose his head:
Assumption 1 is a given since hey, it’s Columbo, so of course the guy was definitely the killer.
But assumption 2 is far from a given. Maybe the killer knew Columbo didn’t have enough proof, and decided he didn’t need to kill him. Maybe he thought killing a police detective would be a mistake. Especially in a place where a supposed suicide had recently taken place; would look pretty suspicious. There’s a lot of reasons why the guy might not want to try offing Columbo, at least not then and there, and if he had taken the supposed ‘safe’ route, Columbo would have lost his head.
Or lie.
My point is that I, at least, do not recall Columbo asking Blake to pull the lever. The way I remember it, it was just a demonstration to show how he thought the killing happened, and that Blake pulled the lever without warning. So if that’s the case, Blake would have never done it at all if he hadn’t already decided to kill Columbo.
I think I posted this on another thread a few months back, but for those that missed it and are interested…
This YouTube channel is working its way through every single Columbo episode (it is going to take some time!). It is pretty much exhaustive in terms of facts and trivia for each episode. You can tell the person who does the channel is a massive fan and I really like that.
I’m cheating a bit, or else this would be incredibly easy — you’d surely remember if, say, an episode opened with someone cheerfully killing Sean Connery and Roger Moore and George Lazenby in the first minute — but I’m talking about OLD-FASHIONED MURDER, where a spinster got dumped back when by a guy who married her sister, and all these years later said spinster (a) can but view her niece as the daughter she would have had, and (b) murders two people, framing each for killing the other.
Columbo eventually concludes that she also murdered the guy who dumped her back when, and can make the case to Niece Janie; hence, Aunt Ruth promptly agrees to confess to the two murders we saw her commit — the ones Columbo came here to solve — in the conversation where she implores him not to tell Janie that she also murdered Janie’s father: “It was all such a long time ago. It couldn’t matter to anyone anymore. Only to Janie.”
Ah, ok, I get your point now. Maybe I’ll do a rewatch, since I’m curious now exactly how it played out.
In fact, I just did a “watch every Columbo episode” binge a couple years ago. Feeling like rewatching a lot of these again after reading this thread.
I remember that episode. Joyce van Patten was the spinster. She murdered her brother, Tim O’Connor, who wanted to close their museum, and then the patsy she set up to take the blame. (Or was it the other way around?) But I confess I have absolutely no recollection of her confessing to a third murder long ago.
The thing I remember most about this episode is that the niece was played by Jeannie Berlin. If you don’t recognize the name, she was the bride who got dumped in favor of Cybill Shepherd the original version of The Heartbreak Kid (1972) .
What a choice that must have been! 
Now I’m watching Ransom for a Dead Man. Lee Grant is excellent.