Speaker 1: Welcome to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio from Boise, Idaho.
This is your host, Adam Graham. In a moment, we're
going to bring you this week's episode of The Big Story.
But first I want to encourage you. If you're enjoying
the podcast, please follow us using your favorite podcast software.
And I want to encourage you to check out our
other podcast and today I am highlighting the Great Adventurers
of Old Time Radio, featuring two great adventures every week,
including Bersan and Counterspot. You can find it at Great
Adventures dot info or wherever you get your podcasts from.
But now, from March's first nineteen fifty here is the
somewhat long winded tititle New facts about a twenty six
year frame.
Speaker 2: Up a big story.
Speaker 3: Just a second?
Speaker 2: How about a faintment before they lock up?
Speaker 4: Okay, I'll tell you the whole suit, but you won't
put it. I'm guilty. I'm guilty because I'm nobody. I'm
guilty because somebody wanted to get somewhere. In order to
get there, he'd put his feet right in my face,
stepped on me, sent me up for life to get
where he wants to get here.
Speaker 5: I'd like to see your printing.
Speaker 6: Freedom of Repress, Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 2: From the pages of the Detroit Free Press comes the
story of a frame up so cold, so calculating, so
perfect that it took twenty six years to explode it Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 7: The story hasn't actually happened, Swelph Girl's story as he listed.
Speaker 2: It's a dream writing assignment, Ralph gall of the Detroit
Free Press, a six month job of digging into the
unsolved times of Michigan. And you've written a thousand years
a riddle of the bicycle, that one, all the special
Karns interest in the beings, the case of the Seven Hands.
This one brought a well deserved promotion to a cop
on the feet and the others all good, honest story,
and with the public clamoring for more, it kept digging
in and then out of the mague. In the yellow
pages of its case twenty five years old, three thing pictures.
First the name the case of.
Speaker 8: The Picnic Murder.
Speaker 2: Second the byeline by Teddy Larkin. Eddy Larkin, now dead
died at thirty one was one of the best reporters
on the paper. From an old friend, one of the
very best. His byline on a story meant something brow.
And three. The third thing that hit June was fast
a fourth of July picnic calibrations twenty five years ago
in sils In Gardens just outside Detroit.
Speaker 3: Cheese, cheese, cheese?
Speaker 1: Is that automated chee?
Speaker 3: I thought, well, he was humming. You know how he
is about chee.
Speaker 5: They had to work.
Speaker 2: Do you think him holiday of the year they take
time off on that.
Speaker 3: Feelings what you're going about? You know why they're working?
Speaker 5: Sure?
Speaker 7: I know, I honestly wouldn't mind waiting the extra month.
Speaker 2: To get married.
Speaker 3: They just see us once on a Sunday off and
a double eggs? Did you bring the pickles?
Speaker 2: What do you think? This is? What's the picnic?
Speaker 3: And No?
Speaker 2: The first girl Fee was dead instantly. The second girl
aDNA a terrible pain and the shoulder a bullet and
better and a memory that will live with her forever.
Speaker 9: He was big.
Speaker 10: They had some kind of a bag over his shoulder.
Speaker 2: He came up to me close.
Speaker 9: He took out the company. No, some like chloroform sens.
Then I don't remember. I don't remember.
Speaker 2: A posse of over five hundred men come the area
of Sylvant guns and comb the downtown flop house looking
for a man six feet tall, dark, dirty with a shoulder, bags,
guns and maybe still the places of the cotton and
the Chloro farmy views. There was one suspect, Tony Stanley.
Tom Venton, local policeman packed him up.
Speaker 5: What do you mean? What was I doing? I told
you what I was doing. Office.
Speaker 4: They were pouring drinks, free drinks all along Michigan Avenue,
Fourth of July celebration.
Speaker 5: I was lapping up as fast as I could. What's
the matter, There's no Christ.
Speaker 2: Let's go, Stanley. I don't want to hear anymore.
Speaker 5: You didn't ask any one of the bartender's office. I
was an eight ten twelve joint past him. They wouldn't remember.
Speaker 2: You got mud on your shoes, mud from Sylvan gardens
where you were trampling around before you did it, and
you got blood on your lapel. How'd you get blood
on you lapels?
Speaker 5: I came out of one of the bars the back
way into the yard.
Speaker 2: There I was.
Speaker 4: I didn't know where I was going. It was dark
and muddy, and I tell it was a can there
no sardine can.
Speaker 5: I fell on. I cut my maybe I wiped it
off on my leftel. I don't know how there's a
shoulder bag.
Speaker 2: What you do with a gun, and where's the chloroform?
Come on on your freak walk. So you cut your
finger on a sadine canna that you have irod iron handy.
The rest was equally bizarre, equally fantastic, terrify. Then the
identification by the frightened girl.
Speaker 9: Get him all, please, get him all.
Speaker 10: He's the one he did it.
Speaker 1: Get him house.
Speaker 5: He's the judgment of the court.
Speaker 11: If you have any Stanley, you'll spend the rest of
your natural life in prison.
Speaker 5: Will you stand guilty of the crime of murder?
Speaker 2: I wish to.
Speaker 6: Rend my power to sentence you who pause up punish.
Speaker 2: And the fourth fact about this case, the fourth unusual
aspect stuck your Ralph gal feature right on as you
read the yellowed sheets. You said it tonight out of
the Fred Sandler.
Speaker 8: Remember this case, Sander vaguely, vaguely, boy. They never disproved
this sardine can theory about the blood.
Speaker 5: Lots of things not proved in lots of cases.
Speaker 2: So the girl didn't testify at the trial.
Speaker 8: So they took at deposition somewhere else. They never found
the shoulder bag for the gun, or the cotton or
the chlorophorm.
Speaker 6: So what so what?
Speaker 5: How old is a chestnut?
Speaker 8: Anyhow?
Speaker 2: Twenty years more?
Speaker 8: You know who wrote it, Ted Lockin? So who filed
this story where it's file?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 5: What are you talking about?
Speaker 8: I mean, what's an open and shut murder case doing
in the file of unsolved crime?
Speaker 2: Who put it there?
Speaker 8: Was it misfiled?
Speaker 2: Or was it?
Speaker 8: And if you read this story, he never put it
down in so many words, but in every line, in
every sentence, almost dead Lockan implied, watch out, frame up.
Speaker 5: Well maybe he'd been on this stuff too long.
Speaker 8: Not lock him. He was quite a guy, you know
that he wouldn't imply frame up unless he meant frame up.
Do you remember what Lockan used to say about the
guys in stir He supported a piece of poetry walk Whitman.
Remember I am one with these convicts and felonmus what
about that? Maybe it's good poetry rul here, but it
don't make a story. And if I proved this, God this,
you'll print a paper with this knock off for a week. Well,
just take the political side layoff features when you guys
get the quoting poetry.
Speaker 2: Brother, you drop it because orders are audis. But all
that weight Ted Larkin's quote and whopen, and then you're
a Ralph go.
Speaker 8: I've been reading this series about unsolved crimes, and I
only got one question to ask. Would you laugh if
a fellow said, twenty five years ago I was framed.
If you would tear this up, don't read no more.
But if you're a decent guy like Ted Larkin was,
he once.
Speaker 2: Worked on your paper, interviewed me. Then I got something
to say. My name is Tony Stanley. Just one of
those things that happened, one of the fantastic coincidences that
make up life.
Speaker 8: Well, Santa, Oh go ahead if you want to go ahead,
I don't care. All I want to do is go
up and see the guy at Markta.
Speaker 5: I told you to go ahead. I am one with
the convicts and teller.
Speaker 2: At first I thought i'd grow axis high.
Speaker 7: It's maybe some of them little zenyus. But nothing grows
nothing bad. Sorry, I about to talk about your letter,
mister Stanley. Sometimes morning glories grow some six seven feet high.
Speaker 5: You like them?
Speaker 12: Yeah, they're nice, mister Carl. When a guy gets somebody
to believe in in just a little bit. You don't
want it to be over with right away. I had
this experience ten times. Maybe somebody gets a little bit interesting.
Speaker 13: You learn not to talk about it all at once,
because it'll bust right out of you and disappear. Maybe
if you do it, if you don't understand sure, who
cares about a broken down bump from skid row? Who
cares about the shoulder bag of the cotton of the
gun of sardine can? I'll tell you who cares. Former
Chief of Detectives Tom Vinton cares.
Speaker 5: He cares a lot. He's the one who sent me
up famed, used my face to get where he was good.
Do you know that scum?
Speaker 14: You remember the man of Tom. You remember the coup
on the feet Tom. Do you remember he got a conviction?
Then you remember he got another sage invented by now
and another and another. Skid Row bombs nameless people. He
became Lieutenant of Detectives, the big roundup of Michigan Avenue
dives and then Chief of Detectives Thomas jam Then Venton got.
Speaker 2: Sent up for framing two guys caught at it.
Speaker 5: Right, that scum, he's right in this jail.
Speaker 8: Now who was behind it? He did? The whole thing
is that it Vinton.
Speaker 5: The only thing I ever smile about Raul.
Speaker 2: The only thing is.
Speaker 5: That I know where that's come is. He's sitting in
there a trust the yard. See write in there, solitary
for the rest of his natural life.
Speaker 2: You got five minutes. Don't get too close to him. Thanks.
Speaker 5: Then I told him, what's that along?
Speaker 2: Don't come near me. I'm Ralph gall Of, a fleet
press reporter. I said, I don't want to say anybody.
I never want to say. Nobody let me alone. I'll
come here me.
Speaker 8: I'm not going to touch you.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't touch you.
Speaker 15: Don't know.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows. I think because you solitary, because you got
barsness tell me. Yeah, They just say I look addressed
my neck. Got me with a spoon one of the trustes.
Did you say, still get you? That'll kill me? He'll
kill me.
Speaker 5: I know it.
Speaker 2: I played with the ward and I could call him
abused me.
Speaker 8: I told him, Sam, you framed a lot of guys.
Didn't invent him. You got to be chief stepping on
a lot of people's faces, didn't you? What about Tony Stanley?
It's what about the servant gardens killing.
Speaker 15: If that's all I need to talk, just to say,
if that's all I need, then it would get around.
Speaker 2: And I said it, but I framed the guy, and
that I said.
Speaker 15: I get it just once. And you know what they'll
do that movie with me exqueezed me. What they did
before would like nothing if they heard I told him
just one case and the women make me.
Speaker 2: Tell them all just get out of here. And then Nahara.
In the incredible pole Less of a completely corrupt human being,
one simple fact emerges. Tony Stanley was framed twenty five
years ago. Did you feel the phrase of Walt Whitman's
as never before, I am one with the convicts and felons.
Now prove it, God, prove you mean.
Speaker 11: This is Sy Harris returning into your narrator and the
big story of Ralph God as he lived it and
wrote it you.
Speaker 2: Ralph gaw Pature, writer for the Detroit Prey Press, under
the biggest question You've had in your reporter's life, how
to reopen a case twenty five years dead? You begin
at Detroit Police headquarters. The mugging shots routine pictures taken
the history of the criminal the psychologist report, all yellowed pray,
all very unsubstantial. That's of paper. It'surge.
Speaker 5: Look at this.
Speaker 8: No previous arrests, no previous record, not even a minor
narcotics wrap.
Speaker 6: Look.
Speaker 5: One of the nicest murderers I ever met, never made
a single wrong move, not even one till the day
blew up.
Speaker 8: His family, killed his wife and six kids. Oh, you're
informed today. Who's what I don't get? No bag was
ever found, no gun. The girl testified. The murderer was
six feet tall. Stanley's no better than five six, maybe
five to seven. And listen to this part of the
psychologist report. Criminal tendency is dubious.
Speaker 2: That's upside.
Speaker 8: Collegeous, brother, You go on up to Marquette someday, give
some of them intelligence tests and stuff to the guys
and sell blocked. They'll knock over most of them professors anytime.
Speaker 5: Don't tell me you believe that stuff.
Speaker 2: Where do you go to find corroboration on a twenty
five year old crime, Well, skid rolled and mes. You're
gonna have an your dives. Who would remember? Oh maybe
somebody would. The old guy who's been selling paper for
thirty seven years with the corner.
Speaker 16: He remembers Stanley, he't he the guy went over to Africa.
Call that other guy, Remember mister Stanley, Doctor Livingston, what
do you do now?
Speaker 3: Get him?
Speaker 5: Sell flawed?
Speaker 2: The mission of the Friendly as old as Detroit's waterfront,
almost with characters that go at the place there for decades.
But the organist doesn't remember, and the guy who glasses
the plate around doesn't remember, and the man who stands
up and speaks of the brotherhood of derelicts. But one does,
incredibly one does. One who steps off from the platform,
gets his full of soup. He talks, yeah, yeah, him
and me like the same thing.
Speaker 5: Flowers.
Speaker 10: Saddest little guy in the whole world, framed heat like
a picture frame, stung up on a wall.
Speaker 5: Saddest little guy in the world. How do I know?
Speaker 9: I know?
Speaker 13: Prove it?
Speaker 5: Prove that a dead guy's dead. He's dead. That's all.
Speaker 2: Nothing in a series of nothing, nothing and nothing compounded
in Pontiac nearby, whether the trial was held because Sylvan
Gardens is in Rockland County, you get the compounding of nothing.
Speaker 5: Just a minute, young man, one question at a time.
Speaker 16: The judge, Well, he died eleven years ago, heart attacks,
a prosecuting attorney.
Speaker 2: That was butt them.
Speaker 5: He was a major in the infantry.
Speaker 2: Died at Bottle Canal. What about the jurors. Jurors, you
can search all over America, spent a nice fifty years.
You might find one. I doubt that, But miraculously, in
only six months you actually find one. During number seven,
you see I.
Speaker 10: Saved You know, maybe I shaved ysh did which long ago?
Ish Shandy. It's funny you can't remember his saying you
send a man up at the rest of his life.
Can't remember ze Oh, wasn't deary sheriff? There is something
about a sheriff jumping.
Speaker 8: You don't remember what.
Speaker 5: Sheriff is.
Speaker 3: My father, I don't mind speaking of it, he said.
I was there at time he died. He said, Tony Standley.
Speaker 2: Never had a chance.
Speaker 14: Your father.
Speaker 17: I mean, you don't mind if you saying he took
his own life. I think he did it because of
what he was made to do about Tony Stanley. He said,
just before he died, that poor little guy never had
a chance. Straying from the word, go Tom Vinton's work.
Speaker 2: Now the blood begins pounding within you. The first real
basis for a reversal, something tangible. I'm not slipping through
your fingers. A deposition from the daughter of the sheriff
who killed himself because of the Stanley case. Get the procedings,
get the transfers. You get them, and it's worse. It's
worse than if you're from nothing, because what.
Speaker 8: Do you mean they've never been transcribed. They must have
been transcribed sometime somewhere, that's.
Speaker 2: Mister, that's all I know.
Speaker 5: Those notes in the handwriting the court Stentel they never
would transcribed.
Speaker 3: And that system he used was his.
Speaker 2: Own private system one.
Speaker 5: It ain't a soul alive that I ever heard of
to make sense of it?
Speaker 3: On what's impossible?
Speaker 5: Osteno's notes can be read?
Speaker 3: Well, you'll try it, mister, Six other people tried it.
You know how part I got.
Speaker 11: I have studied the notes, mister gall and they can
be transcribed. Guess will take roughly yere six months. The costs, hell,
there would be fifteen hundred.
Speaker 2: Dollars be too much?
Speaker 3: Are you kidding?
Speaker 2: Thought of that?
Speaker 5: I couldn't help you.
Speaker 8: But is there anything in there? Can you tell me
anything about the hearings at all?
Speaker 11: And I spent the time on one section that dealing
with the witness and the persil. And then on the
basis of my difficulty with this section, I made my
estimate there is incident the bill fifty dollars.
Speaker 8: Can you give me her address?
Speaker 5: At least it's cold.
Speaker 18: Handle the bill.
Speaker 2: One slim hope A girl, Edna Purcell is her name.
It's still the same if she's still in Detroit. Once
you remember, where can you find that? You've got this farm?
So you'll keep going In the city directory from nineteen
twenty nine.
Speaker 8: You learn Edina Purcell married Henry Stamper June seventh, twelve
sixty two.
Speaker 2: Yuclet Avenue.
Speaker 3: Do you want to repeat that, please, mister dolf.
Speaker 8: I just want to know, Missus Stamper, if you can
remember anything at all about an incident twenty six years ago.
Speaker 2: The fourth of July.
Speaker 19: Mister gall I started teaching school about old twenty years ago,
and one of the teachers at the school was very
kind to me. He was a slightly older man, very understanding.
Missus Stanton. We went around together seven years before he
asked me to marry him. I never told him anything.
I can't I never talked about it to anyone. And
then Ellen was born, she's getting out of college this month,
and Jimmy and Donald. I got white children, my husband,
this house. I do the usual things that a woman does,
and I paint a little What did you want me
to say?
Speaker 5: What do you want? Mister God, you're here, I'll come.
Speaker 2: It's the moment in the place. If you don't asked,
you don't pursue the line you've been forstowing for over
the years. Why because here is the girl of self,
now a woman. The horror is behind her, the life
is the of the structure of family. Can you upset
all this by bringing up the past? Now you must
ask yourself whether the innocence of one man is more
urgent in the lives of five people. It's okay, missus stamper,
not important, not that important.
Speaker 3: Mister g Who is important? Which one of us? Which
one of us is or isn't? Oh, don't think I
don't appreciate that you didn't ask me.
Speaker 2: I want to talk.
Speaker 3: All these years, I wonder did I learn myself in
the moment to dest it to the frame up of
an innocent mind? Did I identify the girl man.
Speaker 2: I could go?
Speaker 5: I did?
Speaker 3: If you'll just let me get my coat and leave
a note for mister Stanley. I'll be breaded with you.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: We read you that telegram from Ralph Gaul of the
Detroit Free Press.
Speaker 8: Cooperation of EDNA, plus my series of big stories and
the recommendation of Circuit Bench of Rockland County all led
the Governor of Michigan to issue a commutation of Stanley's sentence.
Stanley is a useful citizen today, earning decent living and
large factory in Detroit Tom Vinton, although never directly connected
with crime of framing, Stanley will surely die a prisoner
and Marquet prisons.
Speaker 20: In order to protect the names of people actually involved.
And I thought that big story, the names of all
characters and Land the patient were changed with the sets
into the newspaper Reporter. This is the United States Armed
Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Before we talk about anything else, let's go
ahead and get into the cast. And this episode stared
Nap as our hero, and he is a future Great
Detectives actor. He would star in Indictment as the assist
District Attorney during the late nineteen fifties. Also in the
cast Athena Lord Joan shay Bill Smith, Scott t Tennyson,
Walter Griza, Tom Heathey, and Humphrey Davis. This is a
fascinating story and I think to appreciate it you do
have to have the actual timeline. This particular case, the
murder occurred in nineteen seventeen and our intrepid reporter investigated
it in nineteen forty three, and you just had to
appreciate all of the barriers he faced based on how
the world had changed, all of the niche things about
the case, like oh yeah, this was never transcribed and
the court reporter did it. He's dead and it's indecipherable.
In this case, the name of the man who was
convicted on this evidence was Alan Livingston. They did find
what the witness who identified him, and she admitted she
could have been mistaken in her identification. And this is
a quoting from these stories Behind the Big Story by
doctor Joe Webb, saying she only caught a glimpse of
the murderer. Police had stacked the lineup in nineteen seventeen
to ensure the selection of one of two bombs in
the five person lineup. The witness said she felt pressured
to pick one. Now, some of the incidents that doctor
Webb notes lined up with the story. The sheriff did
commit suicide before the trial. The judge was killed in
an auto accident, which wasn't in the story. Detective did
go to prison for but it was for graft for
a gambling ring. One thing that wasn't mentioned is that
after a new trial was granted, the original prosecutor committed suicide.
I guess the only other observation I had on this
episode is I think that really put Goal in this
position that the prisoner felt like reaching out to him
was that he really believed that Goal was someone who
helped people. And indeed, some of the I think a
lot of the strength of the press was a belief
that at least some of them, specific ones, were on
the sides of the angels, whether they were or not,
and that they cared about people. And I think that
that reputation is something that you don't really see a
lot in modern journalists, which I think does affect our
view of the press and our ability to trust them.
One other note the stories behind the Big Stories note
that Goal not only worked in journalism, but he also
became a successful fiction writer and at one point wrote
for both the Green Hornet and the Lone Ranger at WXYZ,
which was also based in Detroit. Well, now it's time
to thank our Patreon supporter of the day, and I
want to go ahead and thank thank you to Bruce,
Patreon supporter since March twenty twenty four, currently supporting the
podcast at the Shawmas level of portollers more per month.
That will do it for today. If you're enjoying the podcast,
please follow us using your favorite podcast software and be
sure to rate and review the podcast wherever you download
it from. We'll be back next Tuesday with another episode
of The Big Story. But join us back here tomorrow
for Broadways my beat, where.
Speaker 18: After all what to do not Disturb sign has been
hanging on the front of the door all day and
here it is almost midnight. So so a place like
this ran the room for three point fifty, pulled out
the old pills, leave the world to its own sorrow.
The Savannah's getting quite a reputation for her. Oh this
is the room now, That's how I found her, right
there on the bed. I could tell it right away.
She wasn't a suicide. That bullet hole, no gun. She
took the room yesterday registered as Mary Smith. I keep
a straight face as long as the payment is made
in the dance. Even she didn't have luggage, so what
Quite a few of my friends have not a presentable
suitcase to their names. What about her visitors? This is
her home away from home. That's our philosophy. Here the Savannah.
Why shouldn't she have visitors? After did she have her
I don't know. People come and go, a regular little
world in itself, this Savannah. I remarked this to myself
often as I stand at the desk, like I was
looking at into a regular little world. That's why I
always don't say, mister Burgess, I'll take it from here.
Speaker 1: You'll be with us then in the meantime. Send your
comments to Box thirteen at Greatdetectives dot net, follow us
on Twitter, Radio Detectives, and check us out on Instagram, Instagram,
dot com, slash Great Detectives from Boise, Idaho. This is
your host, Adam Graham signing off.