Shot After Her Big Break: The Unsolved Murder of TV’s Barbara Colby

Barbara Colby’s big break arrived in 1975. After years of walk-ons, the charismatic character actress landed a major part in a new sitcom.

Although acclaimed in Broadway plays, success on TV was more elusive for Colby. A memorable 1971 appearance in the Columbo detective series was followed later with guest spots on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1974 and 1975. Her skills captivated MTM Enterprises executives who cast her in a spinoff, Phyllis, starring alongside Cloris Leachman.

In the Columbo episode that propelled her career, Colby played Lilly La Sanka, a shop owner who fatally miscalculates how perilous blackmailing a murderer can be. In her final scene, Colby freezes in terror, eyes widening while the killer closes in.

An eerily similar horror played out in real life on July 24, 1975, after an acting class Colby taught in west Los Angeles. She and an actor friend, James Kiernan, were in the school parking lot when a pair of armed men approached them. Two shots rang out at close range. Colby, 37, died at the scene but Kiernan, 35, survived long enough to describe the attackers as two Black men driving a light-colored van. Fifty years later, the slayings remain unsolved, although experts think a resolution is still possible.

“There’s somebody out there that knows” says Tim Lumas, a retired sergeant with the Oxnard Police Department. “It’s whether or not that person feels guilty enough, sad enough, or says, ‘I can’t carry this with me anymore,’ [and reaches out to authorities]."

Colby and Kiernan were shot at close range but not robbed, at around 11:50 p.m. The killers may have not taken anything because they panicked, Det. Michael Maloney of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) told the San Antonio Express-News.

“It seems like [they] were either in the process of raising their hands or were too slow in raising them,” Maloney said. “Whatever happened, someone decided to shoot them. The most I can tell you is that it was a small-caliber revolver.”

Police originally linked the crime to the fatal shooting of Gloria Witte, the wife of a Lockheed Corporation executive. Armed robbers ambushed Witte, her husband and another couple in a Santa Monica, Calif., neighborhood at 11:10 p.m. on the same day Colby and Kiernan were murdered. However, investigators later determined that a .22-caliber weapon was fired in Colby’s shooting, which differed from the one used in Witte’s case.

“We’ve interviewed hundreds of people,” Maloney said. Yet, “we know nothing.”

“The biggest challenge is that investigators never identified a motive” in Colby’s slaying, says Paul Vernon, a retired captain who spent over three decades with the LAPD. “Motive often is what takes you to your suspect.”

Colby and her husband, Robert Levitt Jr., were separated, but the split was amicable, according to reports.

“When detectives see a shooting with no robbery and no apparent dispute, they consider several possibilities: a targeted attack, mistaken identity or random violence. In this case, none of those theories could be confirmed,” Vernon says. Investigators also never established if Colby was the intended victim.

“I know that she was shot through the arm, and then it went through her chest and hit her lungs, that she bled out in the lungs,” he continues. “I don’t know if her arm was down beside her, like she was turning away, or if her arm was up in a self-defense mode as she got shot.” He finds it curious the assailants “never bothered to make sure they were both dead.”

Asked if the crime was gang-related, Vernon notes it occurred in the Palms neighborhood, a dense area of inexpensive apartments mostly occupied by young actors during the 1970s.

“It wasn’t considered a major gang area. My best guess would be either a robbery that they chickened out on, or a mistaken identity.”

Lumas also doubts the slayings resulted from gang violence.

“To me, it’s a contract killing. I’ve been to more than my fair share of drive-bys, and they’re not very neat about it,” he says. “They just tend to show up, [shoot] everything in sight and then keep on driving.” In contrast, Colby and Kiernan’s deaths were “so methodical.”

“Drive up. Walk up. Bam. One shot each, turn around, get in the car and drive off. That’s a cold-blooded act,” he explains. “I would be hard-pressed to look at this as anything other than this being a professional killing. Whoever hired them knew they would complete the job, and they would get it done, and they would be as discreet as possible.”

As for the assassins, he speculates that “these two cats knew they could trust each other. Whoever the two were, they’ve done this before together.”

Lumas notes also that the intended victim could have been a third party attending the class who wasn’t present that night.

The two actors’ deaths traumatized the Hollywood community. The tragedy was followed by the fatal stabbing of actor Sal Mineo, known for his part in Rebel Without a Cause, outside his Hollywood apartment on February 12, 1976.

Graced with a toothy grin, brunette curls and expressive eyes, Colby “was so distinctive looking, you could not mistake her for anyone else,” says true crime author and historian Joan Renner. With Phyllis, Colby “was making a solid career for herself, and I think she would have been even better in the years to come. The whole thing was tragic, no matter how you want to look at it,” she says.

Martin Mojarro, a detective with the LAPD, says that the Colby murder investigation is still open, and police welcome information. Anonymous tip lines include the LAPD at (877) 527-3247; the LAPD’s Cold Case Homicide Special Section at (213) 486-6810; and Los Angeles Regional Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-TIPS.