They Call Me Mister Tibbs! 1970

Detective Virgil Tibbs, now a lieutenant with the San Francisco police, is assigned to investigate the murder of a prostitute, a case that launches him into a web of personal, religious, and political tension. A prime suspect emerges in Logan Sharpe, a street preacher who is firmly aligned with one side of a heated city referendum on an urban renewal project. Sharpe claims he visited the victim in his professional capacity to offer spiritual counsel, insisting that when he left her apartment she was alive and healthy.

As Tibbs investigates, he follows a careful trail of witnesses and evidence. He tracks down the victim’s building janitor, Mealie Williamson, whose testimony and whereabouts become crucial, and he also talks to Woody Garfield, a shady building owner who may have profited from the woman’s activities and could have been involved indirectly through the janitor’s disappearance. The investigation grows more complex as Tibbs uncovers a new line of suspicion around a hood named Rice Weedon, a figure who is pursued and shot by Tibbs in what is described as self-defense, underscoring the perilous choices the case forces him to evaluate.

Through persistent questioning and a methodical approach, Tibbs arrives at a conclusion that Sharpe is indeed the murderer. When confronted with the evidence, Sharpe confesses his guilt; he makes a final, dramatic request for a delay in formal arrest—24 hours—to allow the city referendum to reach its polls. Tibbs, standing firm on procedure and justice, refuses the pause, and the situation takes a fatal turn as Sharpe, while being transported for arrest, steps in front of a moving vehicle and is killed, ending one volatile thread of the case even as Tibbs ties up the others.