User Reviews

As usual Kojak's instincts are right. The apparent suicide by hanging of call girl Denyce Liston is not a suicide. Several years earlier Telly Savalas busted this woman when she was a teenage junkie and then just peddling her body for a fix. She kicked the junk, but now folks pay some big bucks for her offerings.

Before it's declared a homicide Kojak has the squad investigating this one. As it turns out not only sex is being offered, but some high price stock fixing involving a sitting judge who was one of her clients and a top executive who was another.

Some good players like Priscilla Pointer, Stephen Elliott, John Glover, and Roger Robinson doing one of his semi-regular appearances as Gil Weaver on the Manhattan South Squad.

Kojak took this one real personal, even more than normal.

The case is almost a personal one for series star "Theo Kojak" who is shocked to see a woman who apparently had hung herself. We know better right from the opening scene when it shows two guys entering her residence and then putting a cushion over her mouth. Since they hang her, the cause of death appears to be loss of breath....but Kojak thinks something is not kosher, despite the ME's report that she died of suffocation.

Everyone else believes that but Theo, to the consternation of his boss and a few others. Theo keeps pursuing it. The victim, "Azure Dee" was a woman who had picked herself up from gutter, got clean from drugs and was living a decent life (except for being part-time call girl). Kojak knew her in her dark, drug days, and cared about her.

This episode has a Charlie Chan-type ending with Kojak explaining to a bunch of people in a dining room what really happened and why (with the culprits included there to listen with others).

Along the way, there is riveting scene with a street junkie, "Billy Jo" He was played by John Glover in one of his early acting roles. Man, he looked young, almost like a late teen, but he could act and it's no wonder he made it in the business.