The show was created by Abby Mann, an Academy Award-winning film writer best known for his work on drama anthologies such as Robert Montgomery Presents and Playhouse 90. Universal Television approached him to do a story based on the 1963 Wylie-Hoffert “Career Girl” murders. The crime involved the brutal rape and murder of two young professional women in Manhattan. Due to poor police work and the prevailing casual attitude toward suspects’ civil rights, the crime was pinned on a young African-American male who was being held at the time on an assault charge. After illegally obtaining a confession, the police had the suspect all but convicted until a second investigation by a different team of detectives exonerated the suspect and identified the real killer.
Mann developed the project as a gritty police procedural, but with a subtext focusing on institutionalized prejudice and the civil rights of suspects and witnesses. The result, The Marcus-Nelson Murders, in which the character’s last name was spelled “Kojack”, prompted the commission of the series.
