In The Heat Of The Night

When Virgil Tibbs joins the Sparta, MI, police, resentment festers in Chief of Police Bill Gillespie. But when a local co-ed is brutally murdered, Gillespie and Tibbs join forces only to discover a tangled web of guilt and deception. (Part 1 of 2)

Police Chief Bill Gillespie (Carroll O'Connor) and Chief of Detectives Virgil Tibbs (Howard Rollins) are at odds when Tibbs suspects that Gillespie's old friend, Sonny Mims, killed his wife because of his involvement with the dead woman's cousin.

Emotions run high when a black businessman (Randy Brooks) comes to Sparta to buy the town's newspaper, and it is suspected that he is romancing the paper's married white owner (Nana Visitor). Carroll O'Connor and Howard Rollins star.

Sparta is overjoyed when a local boy turned, successful businessman, offers to bring new prosperity to the Mississippi hamlet by moving his business interests "back home." But all of his business interests may not be exactly legal. (Part 1 of 2)

After Virgil (Howard Rollins) narrowly escapes death at the hands of Ritchie Epson's henchmen, Chief Gillespie (Carroll O'Connor) still does not have enough evidence to prove that former hometown boy Epson (Bill Sadler) is a major drug supplier.

The Sparta jail descends into complete and utter chaos when the six wives of a bigamist (guest star Ted Lange) all show up to visit and shower him with gifts. But when the man turns up dead in his cell, which of his wives turns out to be a murderer?

An escaped convict and his girlfriend leave a trail of bodies in their wake as they travel through Mississippi and eventually take Althea and Scooter, the grandson of one of their victims, as hostages in a desperate bid for freedom.