Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star - S10-E3
Factual error: Champagne corks have a metal cap between the cork and the wire cage. (They can be seen when both Creighton and Columbo open bottles.) When Creighton injects the chloral hydrate into the champagne, he does not have the difficulty he should have getting through the metal. The needle does not come out damaged as it should, and it did not go far enough into the cork to put the liquid into the champagne-it would get lost in the cork itself.
A Bird in the Hand... - S11-E3
Factual error: The license plate on the automobile of Stallions football team owner Fred McBain reads STALLION1, but personalized California license plates can not have more than seven characters ( http://www.vanityplatebystate.com/alphabetical-listing-of-states/california/).
A Bird in the Hand... - S11-E3
Factual error: They are watching a football game on TV with The Stallions playing some other team. The game they are watching is actually a Canadian Football League game between the Edmonton Eskimos and the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Factual error: Despite the fact that other officers are doing so, Columbo does not wear gloves while examining the crime scene. He also eats and drinks in the room - both absolutely forbidden - leaving eggshells scattered about the place. The crime scene is now totally compromised and nothing found can be used as evidence.
Undercover - S12-E3
Factual error: At the crime scene, the landlady of the dead man is brought into the room in order to identify one of the dead men. This is never, ever done - she could contaminate the crime scene in a dozen different ways. She would be asked to identify the corpse at the morgue after the scene had been cleared by forensic examiners.
Factual error: In common with many other episodes neither Columbo, the attending police officers or forensic investigators wear gloves or other sterile gear while examining the murder victim's body or the crime scene. Columbo hands out bananas to other people on the scene which they happily eat. The senior crime scene forensics officer, Kingsley, hands out coffee and doughnuts! Eating and drinking are absolutely forbidden on a sterile crime scene, which has been hopelessly contaminated with fingerprints anyway.
Factual error: An important plot point is that diamonds do not burn and can be recovered from the ashes of a cremated body. This is completely wrong - diamonds would combust freely at cremation temperatures, and since they are pure carbon they don't even leave any residue.
Answer: "Apparent" drowning answers your question - things are not always as they seem. Drowning could be accidental, but it could also be a murder in disguise. Moreover, the actual cause of death has not yet been determined - accident, suicide, murder, or natural cause (e.g, heart attack while swimming). Columbo would be there to investigate if anything looks unusual for it to be a mere drowning or if there is evidence or suspicion of something else.
KeyZOid
This was just on TMZ.com's "Aaron Carter Dead at 34" (11/05/2022): "Law enforcement sources tell TMZ... homicide detectives have been dispatched to the scene but we have no information or evidence of foul play. It's standard operating procedure for homicide detectives to investigate such [drowning] death scenes."
KeyZOid