TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE: Jessica is getting put in the slammer!

When murder mystery writer and former English teacher Jessica Fletcher is tapped to fill in for a friend at the local maximum security prison for women, all hell breaks loose when a body is discovered, leading to a lockdown and hostage situation.

The warden (Psycho's Vera Miles) is the prisoners' main suspect, and well-liked inmate Mary (Linda Kelsey) is the staff's and Jessica needs to figure out if either of them done it or someone else might get killed... well, someone else other than the other person who gets eventually killed.

Our intrepid inmates include Adrienne Barbeau, Margaret Avery, Susan Oliver, Eve Plumb, and Susan Peretz in this all-ladies cast of convicted thieves and murderers (sometimes wrongly) torn between rioting and shooting their way out and working together to save one of their own. Since the food there sucks, the clinic drugs don't work, and the staff doesn't seem to treat them well, it could go either way.

Among our prison employees are the doctor (Janet MacLachlan), the chef (Yvonne de Carlo), the deputy warden (Barbara Baxley), and a collection of guards of varying likability.

Will Jessica be able to prove Mary innocent, the Warden ethical, and the prison food actually edible before the hotheads overtake the practical and a bloodbath of fire and fury? And is this the first TV episode where a poster of a uterus made it on TV? All this and more will be revealed in JESSICA BEHIND BARS!