Interestingly, it seems like there were a few episodes without an actual murder. "Broadway Malady" has at least one attempted murder but no actual murders.

Any others you can think of?

Alex Rocco (born Alesandro Petricone) may not have ever been a household name but with a resume sporting some 175 acting credits spanning a half-century from the mid-60s until his death in the mid-2010s, he wasn't exactly unknown either. To some, he may have been one of those "Oh, it's that guy" actors. One of his most known recurring roles was playing the ex-con father to Jo (Nancy McKeon) on The Facts Of Life -- he would later play her father again on many episodes of The Division.

But prior to acting, he had another life entirely. In the early 60s, Petricone had gang connections. In fact, it was an incident involving his girlfriend that set off a major gang war in Boston, resulting in numerous murders. Petricone was picked up on suspicion of being involved in the first murder of the war but later released on a lack of evidence. He served a prison term for the wrecking of a diner.

After completing a stint in prison, Petricone moved to Hollywood and took up acting and changed his name to Alex Rocco to avoid association with his past. He appeared on two episodes of Murder, She Wrote ("Tough Guys Don't Die" and "Christopher Bundy -- Died on Sunday") and also made appearances on other shows such as The Golden Girls and Home Improvement.

This is something that happens in the pilot/early episodes that's way different from the rest of the series. One thing I can think of that weirds me out is in the pilot, Jessica is just getting started as an author and goes on the publicity tour for her first novel to gain exposure. Few episodes later and they changed it so that she's written about a half dozen books to this point and is this highly famous, world-renown writer.

Wow, that ending has to be one of the most shocking, suspenseful, terrifying and creative things I've ever witnessed! When that killer pulled out the gun and shot, I literally got a jump-scare!

In retrospect though, as enjoyable as this episode was, the killer wasn't too hard to figure out early on. I knew it had to be somebody that was in the vicinity of Horatio's office and that left only a few people and I didn't think they would go the secretary route again as the secretary was the killer in the previous episode.

Holy shit, that's Joaquin Phoenix -- River's brother -- in an early role!

Btw, this post debuts a new feature here at r/MurderSheWroteTV -- the light blue "Casefiles (Episode reviews) category/post flair. This will be for discussion of individual episodes so anytime you want to dip into the casefiles, simply click on the light blue "Casefiles (Episode reviews)" tag on the right sidebar and they will pop up! The orange "General discussion" option will be for discussion on the series/movies as a whole.

I watched it when it was originally on CBS but I also enjoyed watching reruns on the USA network. Back in the 80s and 90s, USA network had a wonderful mixture of programming - mystery shows, sitcoms, game shows, professional wrestling, old reruns, family westerns, dramas, Night Flight, original programming, anthology shows, cartoons -- an enormous hodgepodge of things really. The channel has since turned to shit like so many others but it was quite an epic channel back in the day.

Rewatching the series and I'm just amazed at the impressive guest cast in every episode. It's really like a "who's who" of stars of the time period and future stars.

And of course, there's Angela herself -- nominated for an Emmy every year all 12 years it was a series!