The Great Santini is a master magician, but his employer discovers that he was a German camp guard during World War II and blackmails him. Santini is forced to engineer a perfect murder--he kills the owner while apparently performing his famous "water tank" illusion on stage in front of dozens of witnesses. Santini in fact supposedly hides out beneath the stage, and uses a radio transmitter to convince a waiter that he is there when he's busy killing the owner. Now Columbo must unravel a magical mystery and break a perfect alibi.
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