Burke's Law

- Season 1

(1963)

Model Holly Howard is found murdered, and the only clues seem to link a trio of wealthy Texans to her death.

A body turns up at a merry-go-round. There are no identifying papers on the body and the labels have been removed from the man's clothing. The few clues available point Burke toward an actress under exclusive contract to Flood, a rarely seen industrialist. Burke discovers a number of women are under such exclusive contracts. Then, the detective discovers the dead man was Flood himself. Burke must figure out who, among a number of suspects, committed the crime.

Cable Roberts, a legendary writer, documentary filmmaker, and hunter in the Hemingway mold, is found murdered in his study. There are three significant clues: he was killed with one of his own rifles, he was shot twice big game style, and his body was propped against a wall alongside his many hunting trophies.

Burke's investigation of the murder of Harris Crown is complicated by the fact that Mrs. Crown is pregnant - and not by her husband.

Julian Buck, one of America's most respected authors, is found strangled to death in his study. The manuscript for his latest novel is missing, but one curious item is found: what appears to be an extra rubber cap for the feet of his typewriter stand.

The publisher of a girlie magazine is murdered at one of his own key clubs.

One of a set of identical sisters with odd personalities is poisoned with cyanide at the residence of a beach bum and Burke and Tilson uncover a family history of suspicious deaths involving a cast of quirky characters.

A recording star is murdered. Was the killer his agent, his sister, his music arranger, or someone else?

Wealthy Wade Walker is killed when his plane blows up in mid-air. Burke's investigation concentrates on four women - a nurse, a singer, a beauty queen and an explosives expert.

Dr. Eric Techman, a fashionable LA psychiatrist, telephones Burke to warn him of an impending murder by one of his patients -- his own. But Techman is gunned down before he can name the killer.

Prior to her apparent murder, a practicing witch sends Amos a message predicting her murder with a list of five suspects from the occult arts.

Burke has to search for a missing cat before he can find a killer.

"Professor" Kingston runs a cheap sideshow in a traveling carnival; one of his exhibits is a supposedly genuine electric chair. The girl strapped to it is certainly dead.

Burke is at a poolside party when he sees artist Beau Sparrow take a hard dive into a pool---a dive which kills him. Investigation shows the diving board's catapult was deliberately tampered with.

An extremely strange girl called Lucy Brewer finds a corpse in the shower. Burke's suspects include an old friend, a cultivator of unusual plants, a wine snob and the dead man's daughter - or is she?

Can it be that Amos Burke himself has been murdered?

The elaborate robbery of a bank ends with the unprovoked shooting death of its owner, financier Victor S. Barrows. The key to solving the mystery is locating one of perpetrators, a man so average in appearance that nobody can clearly describe him.

A shady attorney carrying a lot of money is murdered after making a telephone call.

Carhop waitress April Adams is found murdered in an automobile scrapyard. The discovery that she had over $40,000 in the bank indicates that she had a second income that was both lucrative and illicit.

Carrie Cornell, singer and model, is found murdered on a beach. A photograph of her in Girlicue magazine links her to sleazy millionaire Martin Van Martin and he has disappeared.

A man claiming to be an exiled Russian prince - not that anyone ever believed that - is murdered.

Ruthless Hollywood agent Marty Kelso is murdered and leaves behind a plethora of suspects including a new wife and three ex-wives.

Burke and his team investigate the murder of a wealthy industrial designer.

Pop artist Andy Zygmunt is fatally impaled on the spikes of one of his creations. The discovery that he blackmailed people into buying his works provides a motive and five suspects: his last four customers and the possessor of a missing fifth work.

During Chinese New Year celebrations, a body is found concealed in a car.

Housewife Molly Baker, a brunette, is found dead in her shower, the apparent victim of a fall and drowning. But the autopsy shows that she was strangled and the discovery of blond wig hairs on four of her dresses is the first indication of her very busy secret life.

Socialite equestrian William Henry Otis IV, nicknamed WHO IV ("WHO Four"), is beaten to death in his stable with a horseshoe from a riding trophy. The suspects are the regulars in his weekly fox hunts, among them Burke's old flame Jennifer and her husband St. John ("Sinjin") Carlisle, and, of course, the butler.

Party girl Annie Foran is found strangled in the back seat of a customer's car at the exclusive restaurant Club Nova. Suspicion falls on her ex-boyfriend, baseball sensation Eddie Dineen, who was there at the time in the company of his mentor, the acerbic columnist Whitman Saunders, and Saunder's assistant, Milo Morgan.

Using a .38 revolver with a silencer, an assailant murders heiress Diana Mercer in her bedroom after she's been dropped off by her date--her old flame, Amos Burke. As he investigates her death, Burke discovers that the woman who was murdered was a far cry from the one he knew and loved years earlier.

Nirvana is an upscale health spa for women only in the wooded hills near LA. The karma there is disrupted when socialite Celia Bannerman, a notorious husband stealer, is found murdered in the mud bath. Suspicion centers on the five women who shared her bungalow. Four had reasons to kill her and all received a free stay at Nirvana courtesy of an unknown party.

A waxwork in a museum turns out not to be a waxwork at all - it's a corpse.

The unpleasant Benjamin Glory, one half of the ownership of the Glory Lee fashion house, is found dead in an elevator after it crashes. But he was dead before he ever entered it, killed by "a sharp and blunt instrument".