Eric Prince was the owner of a funeral home and murderer in Ashes To Ashes.
Eric Prince grew up in England and aspired to one day become a successful actor. He travelled to Los Angeles in the United States Of America to pursue this goal, but he ultimately wound up unsuccessful and had to get a job working under Arthur Haverland at his funeral home. In September 1969, the body of famous actress Dorothea Page wound up in the crematorium wearing a valuable diamond necklace. Unable to resist the wealth it could bring him, Eric enacted an elaborate plot to steal the jewel by placing it inside Page’s body and recovering it later to sell off to a blackmarket salesperson named Eddie Fenelle, or better known under his moniker Eddie The Fence. Years later, Prince became a partner in the business and it was renamed to Haverland Prince Funeral Home. Later still after that, Mr Haverland died and Prince was left as the sole owner of the establishment. He has a brief sexual relationship with a reporter named Verity Chandler, but ultimately this fell through. Prince was proceeding with business as usual by burying a famous movie star named Chuck Houston and making romantic advances on his widow, Liz Houston, when Verity returned to tell him that she had discovered his theft of Page’s diamond and was going to expose him. Unwilling to allow this to happen, Prince bludgeoned Chandler to death with a nearby embalming tool and cremated her body in place of the person he was supposed to cremate that day, Chuck Houston. Her ashes were thrown out of a helicopter by Liz and Prince assumed he had gotten away with his crimes, now content to spend the rest of his evening with Chuck’s widow. Soon after, Lieutenant Columbo began investigating the situation as a missing persons case. The lieutenant discovered information about the diamond and what Verity had been investigating by questioning Eddie The Fence and Sheikh Yarami. Eric crafted an alibi by having Liz Houston confirm that he had spent the night of Verity’s disappearance with her. Prince continued to hide evidence by now cremating Chuck Houston’s body alongside the corpse of a man named Mel Lergy. Once this evidence was disposed of, nothing would be left to prove that Eric had killed Chandler. Prince attended an event held by the Association Of Mortuaries And Crematoria in high spirits as they named him “Mortician Of The Year” and even pleasantly spoke to Lieutenant Columbo there. However, his crimes finally caught up with him when Columbo discovered that Chuck Houston had a piece of shrapnel in his body from an injury he sustained during World War II. A piece of shrapnel that was recovered in Mr Lergy’s urn, where it could not have been if Prince had been telling the truth about who was cremated when. The murderous mortician resigned himself to arrest as his lies finally caught up to him.
Eric Prince was played by Patrick McGoohan.