****SPOILERS**** Getting up in years and needing a little time to enjoy himself Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, and his eager sidekick and all around legman as well as part time punching bag in always getting himself worked over, by the bad guys, in the movie Ken Malansky, William R. Moses, decide to spend some time in Las Vages to watch the big championship fight! Sure enough Perry gets himself involved in a murder by agreeing to take the case of David Benson, John Posey, who's accused of gunning down poker and master blackmailer as well as publicist Richard Stuart, Robert Culp, who's just in the movie long enough to be both introduced, to those of us watching, and murdered. Benson who's mad at Stuart for driving his by then alcoholic and drug addicted brother Peter to blow his brains out in Stuart, his former campaign manager, destroying his both political and legal career. Benson plans to murder Stuart while he's in the middle of his by invitation only and high stakes poker game in Sin City. Of course Benson in being the nice guy that he is can't bing himself to blow the creep away but he does give someone in the card game the idea to do it instead! And have Benson take the rap for it!
With Benson being the prime suspect in Stuart's murder his only alibi is the mysterious woman that he met in the hotel parking lot who claimed she had the goods on Stuart and have him put away in the clink, jail, for a long long time! With her now gone with the wind Benson is sure to be convicted of Stuart's murder even though we in the audience, in seeing that he really didn't do it, know he's as innocent as the morning snow! It's in fact Benson's 13 year-old daughter Marlaine, Jenny Lewis, who gets the wheels turning for her pop by getting the Great Perry Mason Esq to defend him! Not by paying Perry a hefty fee but by playing on his sense of justice in preventing an innocent man from ending up convicted and on Nevada's death row!
**SPOILERS*** Using his powers of preservation as well as intimidation Perry gets those in the card game with the late Richard Stuart to come clean, by handing them subpoena, in what they know about his murder! As things turn out Perry was dead right in suspecting that one of Stuart's card playing partners was in fact the one who murdered him. Stuart had been blackmailing his poker playing partners for years and used his winnings at the card game, $75,000.00 a costumer, to trick the IRS into thinking that the ill gotten cash was the result of his winning at the poker table not his blackmail payoff money!
***MAJOR SPOILER***As it soon turned out one of Stuart's victim's had a lot more to worry about then just paying him off! There was someone else nibbling at his now fast depleted bank account and that person was the reason that he was being blackmailed by Stuart! And as it soon turned out that person was not only David Benson's air tight alibi in him not having murdered Stuart but also the one who set him up to take the rape for it!
With Benson being the prime suspect in Stuart's murder his only alibi is the mysterious woman that he met in the hotel parking lot who claimed she had the goods on Stuart and have him put away in the clink, jail, for a long long time! With her now gone with the wind Benson is sure to be convicted of Stuart's murder even though we in the audience, in seeing that he really didn't do it, know he's as innocent as the morning snow! It's in fact Benson's 13 year-old daughter Marlaine, Jenny Lewis, who gets the wheels turning for her pop by getting the Great Perry Mason Esq to defend him! Not by paying Perry a hefty fee but by playing on his sense of justice in preventing an innocent man from ending up convicted and on Nevada's death row!
**SPOILERS*** Using his powers of preservation as well as intimidation Perry gets those in the card game with the late Richard Stuart to come clean, by handing them subpoena, in what they know about his murder! As things turn out Perry was dead right in suspecting that one of Stuart's card playing partners was in fact the one who murdered him. Stuart had been blackmailing his poker playing partners for years and used his winnings at the card game, $75,000.00 a costumer, to trick the IRS into thinking that the ill gotten cash was the result of his winning at the poker table not his blackmail payoff money!
***MAJOR SPOILER***As it soon turned out one of Stuart's victim's had a lot more to worry about then just paying him off! There was someone else nibbling at his now fast depleted bank account and that person was the reason that he was being blackmailed by Stuart! And as it soon turned out that person was not only David Benson's air tight alibi in him not having murdered Stuart but also the one who set him up to take the rape for it!