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 do want to encourage you, if you're
enjoying the podcast, to please follow us using your favorite
podcast software. And I want to highlight another one of
our podcasts as well. I want to encourage you to
check out The Great Adventurers of Old Time Radio, where
we are bringing you Tarzan and Counterspy, two great adventure
stories every week. Check that out at Great Adventures dot
imfoor wherever you get your podcasts from. But now, from
October the eighteenth, nineteen fifty, here is Puritan Morality and
Violent Death.
Speaker 2: A Big Story.
Speaker 3: It wasn't any different from usual. He came home late,
your husband, and he knew it was going to be
one of.
Speaker 4: His insomniac nights. He said, I will sleep. So he
took his handkerchief and he pulled some chloroform. On chloroform,
he called it des Scent of the Gods. He took
a little and put it on his handkerchiefs put the
handkerchief over his face and went to sleep. He had
done it many times.
Speaker 2: Before, used to take chloroform to go to sleep.
Speaker 4: About five, I thought I heard a noise downstairs. I said, Harold,
please see what it is. And I reached over and
touched him, and he was cold. Harold was dead.
Speaker 5: Hartford, Connecticut. From the pages of the Hartford Times comes
the story of Puritan morality and violent death, Hartford, Connecticut.
The story as it actually happened, Albert Prince's story as
he lived it.
Speaker 2: It was a scoop, a clean scoop, and you had
been scooped there.
Speaker 6: It was in black and white on the front pages
of the opposition paper.
Speaker 2: Wife finds husband dead in bed.
Speaker 6: Harold Duran, prominent meteorologist and weather expert, dead of chloroform poisoning.
Speaker 2: But the scoop didn't bother you much.
Speaker 6: Albert Prince, reporter of the Hertford Times.
Speaker 2: Not really sure. It hurts to be scooped.
Speaker 6: But what really bothered you was that you knew Harold
durand know him for a quiet, good looking, middle aged scientist,
a member of.
Speaker 2: The Hartford Weather Bureau, accurate, conservative, easy with the reporters.
Speaker 6: The man almost everybody turned to first in the paper
to see what today's weather was.
Speaker 2: Going to be like? Are the morrows?
Speaker 6: What hit you disturbed? You meet you restless? Was that
there was something weird about it. That was the only
word that accurately described that weird. Harold Durand with chloroform
so to clear up the weirdness of it. You sat
now on the porch of a nice house in East Hartford,
where the widow Durant speaks to you in her small,
controlled voice.
Speaker 4: We had been married twenty five years. We were going
to celebrate our silver anniversary at my folks house in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: She stops musing on what that twenty fifth celebration might
have been like.
Speaker 6: And you look at the face. Not an attractive woman,
a woman who never learned a dress, A woman who
was not allowed by our upbringing to give in the vanity.
A woman with thin, pale lips and thin long fingers,
A frail woman weighing no more than a hundred pounds,
pure Puritan stock.
Speaker 4: We were childhood friends in Stoneham, We played together as children.
We married there in my father's big house.
Speaker 2: Missus Durand, I knew your husband pretty well. I heard
him lecture at the university. I even read some of
his scientific articles. Such a clear, clean mind.
Speaker 4: He was like that in everything. Harold was the kind
of man you dream about and meet once in a lifetime.
How does a man like that wind up with well drugs,
the chlorophor. I don't know what to say, only that
he worked so hard, he was too tired to sleep
so often.
Speaker 2: Where do you get it? A man doesn't just buy
chloroform in a drug store.
Speaker 4: I never thought of that, But if you knew how
seriously he took his work. Ships at sea depended on
his accuracy, and airplanes and farmers, even banks used to
call it. Oh, I'm terribly sorry.
Speaker 2: I beg your pardon.
Speaker 4: I've kept you out on the porch. I've offered you nothing.
Speaker 2: Oh that's all right.
Speaker 4: I didn't even ask you inside.
Speaker 7: Surely a cup of tea.
Speaker 4: I know I'd lack a cup for a moment.
Speaker 6: She was out of herself, just a brief moment. But
now the puritan morality, the politeness, the kindness to other
people asserts itself. The tight, pinched face has the smile
hostesses used, and you walk into a restaurant.
Speaker 7: You have a cup of tea.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I don't want to trouble you, but I
would appreciate it, and it almost.
Speaker 6: Seemed normal, the bereaved woman talking, offering tea on the
porch of a house like any other house on the
clean street. Then you find yourself in the living room.
The altar hit you first, a red lacquered vase, bright
as a fire action, rising three feet above the oriental
rock in the center of the large wall. Candles in profusion,
burning a half some hounders at the foot of the altar,
and at the apex.
Speaker 2: And an idol, a fantastic idol.
Speaker 6: Three hideous monkeys, half life size, grin a smirky clearing
their eyes, fantastically real, as if there were life inside
these grotesque nonstates. A sweet, almost sickeningly sweet aroma, and
an its sauce. Two blue incense burners, the odor of
must and sandal.
Speaker 2: Wood, a fantastic color in this ordinary house.
Speaker 4: Most people didn't know about that about Harold. But Harold
was a cultist, you see. Harold was a disciple student
of metaphysics, a believer in the inner life, the pure light,
the sanctified light.
Speaker 2: I see something in the bedroom. I didn't mean to
look in.
Speaker 4: Another altar, the main one, this one here was for
the ordinary days, the one in the bedroom for cult days.
Here's your tea, cream lemon sugar.
Speaker 6: You never tasted the tea, never saw it, never smelled it.
You could never take your eyes from those two fantastic altars.
Your nose was filled with a burning incense. And even
now from the house, the same.
Speaker 2: Word weird, weird again, weird.
Speaker 6: Had been planted almost physically in your mind. For a conservative,
scientific meteorologist with a Puritan wife.
Speaker 2: This comes to your mind. Lizzie Borden took an X
gave her father forty wax.
Speaker 6: The famous poem forms in your mind the story of
the New England woman years ago named Lizzie Borden killed
her father with an ax. And you find yourself sitting
talking to a very flat, very smart, very skeptical detective
name of Sergeant McGovern.
Speaker 2: Whatever it did, you're after, l Elia eight to one.
You got nothing. Why are you so sure? Why?
Speaker 8: Because I too am about to celebrate my silver anniversary
twenty five years at this desk.
Speaker 2: Look, Mac, you never gave me a bum steer. Now
just answer me this question. Yeh, where the duran ever?
At any time in the last ten years in any trouble, difficulties,
maybe even a fight.
Speaker 8: Look, just because you went to somebody's house and they
haven't got it furnished the way you think they.
Speaker 2: Ought to have it.
Speaker 8: Fernie, have you've seen that altar the monkeys? It never
was in the house, but I get the general idea.
Even so, Okay, it's crazy incense, sandalwood candles, monkeys. So
I got a collection of fearless fustic am I suspect
number two in your book?
Speaker 2: Please don't get wise with me, Mink. Were they ever
in there? Ever? Anytime?
Speaker 9: Durant?
Speaker 8: Durand wait a minute, Catherine Durant, Harold Durant. Yeah, it
was two years ago in the fall. I think I
was on the desk the two of them came in,
mister and missus Durant. What a scene too, You know
how that kind of person whispers, Well that's what they
were doing.
Speaker 2: Why did you have to come here? We can say,
I don't have to, Sachin. It's all a misunderstanding. I'm
going to take my wife home now now just a second,
if you please, What is this all about? It's absolutely nothing.
You just upset and you think.
Speaker 3: That I could hear it from the lady, the things
he says, the things he does, the kind of things
he brings home, the kind of things I have to
put up with Etherine, for heaven's.
Speaker 8: Sake, Like, like, what, lady, what kind of things?
Speaker 2: Since wind catching? Do we have to make a private
affairs public?
Speaker 4: It's nothing, Sergeant. I think I did something very foolish
coming here in Vala.
Speaker 8: No, No, just a moment, please, you started to say
something and then all of a sudden, sorry.
Speaker 3: There's nothing to talk about. And I think I would
really like to go home with my husband. A family affair, Sergeant,
that just let get a little away from me.
Speaker 2: Well, that's all it was to it.
Speaker 7: El.
Speaker 8: So they had a tiff that came in. They decided
not to have the tiff in front of me.
Speaker 2: Anyhow. That doesn't gibe twenty five years of blissful harmony,
childhood sweethearts. I don't believe it.
Speaker 7: You don't believe what.
Speaker 2: I don't believe things are the way they seem. And look,
I'm not kidding, Mac, I'm asking you a straight question.
Could this be murder?
Speaker 8: The Medical Examiner's report says accidental death by asphyxia chloroform poisoning.
Speaker 2: The guy thought he.
Speaker 8: Knew how much he was taking.
Speaker 2: He took a little more than he thought. And why
couldn't it be that someone gave him a little more
than he took?
Speaker 8: On account of the medical examiner looked into that aspect,
on account of two of my best men, interviewed Missus Durant,
on account of pigs don't whistle? You seriously think that
frightened little lady who think she killed the husband? She'd
been married you for twenty five years?
Speaker 2: Remember the poem Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her
father forty one. Yeah, I know, and when the job
was nicely done, she gave her mother forty one. Or
You're run of your head. Okay, man, I've been wrong before,
but then again, once in a while I've also been right.
Speaker 9: This is Sy Harris returning it to your narrator and
the big story of Albert I Prince as he lived
it and wrote it.
Speaker 2: There's got to.
Speaker 6: Be more of this dead man, this meteorologist, scientist, Harold Duran,
this bizarre cultist with the incense and the candles, and
the monkeys in his living room and bedroom. They must
be other bizarre things, other weird aspects. An ordinary man
doesn't take chloroform he goes before he goes to sleep
at night, and a conservative scientist even less other what
other women are the practices and his cult? You want
to know more? And so you say all this, you,
Albert Prince, reporter, just say all this to Ernie McGovern,
Sergeant Mac to you, and he says, now.
Speaker 8: Look, I'm just not interested in this case anymore. The
fellow died of accidental less fix you? All right, all right,
accidentals fix you?
Speaker 2: Will you give me permission to go into his office
down at the Weather Bureau, maybe his house. I got
no right to get information like that, all right, at
least you know about it. If I get picked up
for oh, I don't know, snooping, I guess, or breaking
or entering or something.
Speaker 8: Well, my advice is to you, don't snoop, don't break,
and don't enter. Oh, go on, go take a trip
down to the Ale. The boys are having a good
football game there tomorrow afternoon.
Speaker 2: Look, I still like the Lizzie Borden theory. Boy are
we stubboring this morning? Well? Anyhow, you know what I'm doing?
Speaker 6: The Weather Bureau is neat precise, quiet with the big
maps on the wall, all kinds of gadgets, meters, barometers, anemometers,
thanks you've vaguely heard about but never looked at before.
And the quiet, distinguished looking cobby hole the closed door
with a name neatly lettered Harold Durand.
Speaker 7: I'm terribly sorry you can't go in there.
Speaker 2: I'm from the Times and we want to do a
story on mister Durand did you know him? Well?
Speaker 7: I was his secretary.
Speaker 2: Well, miss, you can help me if you'd like to,
And I think help him too, if you wanted.
Speaker 7: He was the nicest boss a girl ever had, sweet.
Speaker 2: Thoughtful How could I ask your name?
Speaker 7: Susan Reiner?
Speaker 2: Miss Reiner? I know he was working on an annual report,
a summary of some kind, and I thought it'd be
a tribute if we, the paper that is, brought it out,
or maybe he said something about it. He'd like that,
So won't you help me?
Speaker 7: I'm sorry you want to go in, go ahead, but
his things.
Speaker 10: Were all in there and I.
Speaker 7: Just couldn't bring myself to do it.
Speaker 2: That's okay, miss Renner, I'll get the story myself.
Speaker 6: A devoted secretary up set as everybody you know him,
apparently is so you don't like yourself exactly for what
you are doing.
Speaker 2: There's papers are just papers, comparative high lows.
Speaker 6: Here's nineteen forty six, twenty seven, forty eight, New England
precipitation nineteen forty eight, forty nine, weather prediction accuracy ratios
nineteen forty one from nineteen forty nine. Nothing here. And
then in a small Mahogany humidor he didn't smoke, a
packet of letters and a diary. And when you've glimpsed
the first few words, you can't wait to get out
of the office and into a place where you can
read what you've gotten. You find a bar and you
get a beer, a quiet corner with a small life,
and you start first the diary reading Property of Catherine Duran,
her book Entry.
Speaker 3: I don't think I can take it anymore. It's got
to stop. It's got to stop.
Speaker 2: Entry. Ten days later, I.
Speaker 4: Know what's been going on. It's him and that girl.
Speaker 7: I know it.
Speaker 4: I thought I could deceive myself, but I can't anymore.
Speaker 9: Entry.
Speaker 2: Three days later, one week before the death of Harold Duran.
Speaker 3: Now I know finally exactly what it is I have
to do about them, but especially about him.
Speaker 6: You almost stop there, almost get up, almost run the
Sergeant Mac. There are those letters, letters dated from a
year ago, My darling.
Speaker 10: When you're away from me, all I can think of
those kids, kiss that just you and I have.
Speaker 7: Alone in the world.
Speaker 2: Letter dated three months later.
Speaker 10: When are you coming back from Boston? When can I
see the people I meet? This is my husband, Harold
Whens Letter dated one month before the deaths of Harold Duran. Harold,
I don't know what you're doing. Why are you lecturing
so much away from home and away from me? You
said we were going to be married. If you've been
lying to me, I don't know what I'll do, but
I'll do something.
Speaker 2: And the name, the name and all the letters.
Speaker 6: Susan Susan Rhyner a devoted secretary, or couldn't go in
the room because she couldn't bring herself to touch his
things at headquarters. Sogeant maclesson, as you tell him, you're
more convinced than ever that doctor Jekyl scientist Harold Duran
was mister Hyde as far as Susan Ryiner was concerned.
Speaker 2: When you both confront her, she says.
Speaker 7: You must be out of your mind. Suggesting a thing
like that I loved him, I always loved him.
Speaker 8: Okay, you loved him, only it says here and you're
writing if you are lying to me, Harold, I don't
know what I'll do.
Speaker 7: But you know what I mean, charging for Heaven's sake?
Well I meant was I would go out of my mind.
Harold and I were.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you were special, the first two people on earth
that really loved each other.
Speaker 2: Just one little question, where were you on the night
that he was killed?
Speaker 7: Killed?
Speaker 2: Killed?
Speaker 7: I was home with my father, my mother, my sister,
and my older brother.
Speaker 2: Can they verify that?
Speaker 7: Do they have to? I mean, do you really think I?
Speaker 2: And Mac is quietly shaking his head, and so are you.
Speaker 6: Albert Prince, because it's obvious, very obvious. She didn't do it.
She's confused, she's disturbed. She was in love and he
wasn't coming through on his promises.
Speaker 2: But she didn't do it. If somebody did, Lizzie Borton
gave her father for he wax. Yeah, that's my sentiments too.
Speaker 6: But if things are as in this case, they are
hardly what they seem, and it is a Lizzie Bowden,
a violent, passionate woman, inside a calm, purit nexteria. Then
it's a delicate instrument that has to be played carefully.
No slugging, no rapid fire. Cross examination is going to
bring this out. And Mac agrees, and.
Speaker 2: So you and Sergeant Mac go and sit on the
porch with her. There are was never anything wrong was
there between you?
Speaker 4: I thought I told you everything you wanted to know.
Mister Prince.
Speaker 2: It was one of those marriages made in heaven.
Speaker 4: Why do you touching me like this? What do you want?
Speaker 2: A childhood romance and a marriage that sweetened and ripened
every year it lasted. Please there were no complaints by
you against him, were there ever?
Speaker 4: Please? Go?
Speaker 2: You never went to the police and said he beat you,
said he treated you badly?
Speaker 7: Oh go go go.
Speaker 2: You you remember me, Missus Durant, No, I think you do.
I think you remember coming into the police station about two.
Speaker 11: Years ago with your don't break with that woman. I
know now what I've got to do. No, no, no no,
Susan Ryer, Susan and Harold Susan.
Speaker 4: I did it?
Speaker 2: Why? Why, Missus Durant?
Speaker 4: Why first he used to ask me to make lunch.
He used to eat his lunch in the office. It
was always two sandwiches, two apples, two pieces of cake.
I used to think, what an appetite he had. Then
I realized how foolish I had been. For over two years.
I used to make lunch for her every day, Susan,
and then he used to bring her to the house
for dinner, and I would cook for him and her,
and they would eat dinner and talk meteorology, talk weather.
And after dinner, I would do the dishes, and they
would go upstairs to his room to work, he and Sis.
The cruelty was always polite, the humiliation always done with gentility. Oh,
dear Lord, how I hated the cultian sense, the older,
the hideous statues of vulgar burning lights. And one night
he came home and he fell down on.
Speaker 2: The bed and said to me, get me the bottle.
Speaker 4: You're not going to take that again.
Speaker 2: Give me the nectar of the gods, the scent of
the angels. Give it to me. Don't stay me looking
like a jackass.
Speaker 4: All right, Haron, here you are.
Speaker 2: In traps on a handkerchief. I shall taste the beauties
of all. You can sleep.
Speaker 12: The sleep of forgetfulness. It would be the greatest joy
in the world some night to go out, to go
on and on until you go out on an everlasting
diet of sleep. Get out of the room. You sicken me.
Speaker 4: And so I waited until he'd fallen asleep, and then I.
Speaker 2: Walked back in.
Speaker 3: The battle was beside the bed on a table the chloroform,
and as I poured it, I said to him, you
want to go out on an.
Speaker 4: Everlasting diet of sleep, Harold, you will, Harold, on a
diet of everlasting sleep. I did it, and may the
Lord have mercy on my soul.
Speaker 5: WHOA how we read you that telegraph? Albert Prince of
the Hartford Times.
Speaker 2: When questioned in her cell Murderous and Tonight's Big Story,
calmly repeated all the gruesome details which led to the
killing of her husband. In court, although nervous, she pleaded
guilty to a charge of manslaughter. She was sentenced to
the state prison at Wethersfield. And so ends another Big Story.
Speaker 13: In order to protect the names of people actually involved
into Night's authentic Big Story, the names of all characters
and the dramatization were changed. With the exception of the
newspaper reporter, The Big Story has been a presentation of
the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the Voice of
Information and Education.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Well, first of all, let's go ahead and
go through our cast, which is a bit smaller. This week.
We had Bob Dryden as our reporter and along with
him Agnes Young, mz Strickland, Walter Griza, and Louis van Ruten,
with Louis van Ruten being the only actor to double
and he played Harold. Now, one thing that not seem
like a plot hole is that Harold having Katherine's journal
was kind of weird and not fully explained. But I
think when you look at the type of man he was,
he was a very twisted person and also a very
cruel one who played with the emotions both Susan and Catherine.
And with Katherine, I think the way she described it
is a kind of delight at her humiliation. So very
person and this actually aligns very well with the real
life story stories behind the Big Story notes that this
actually happened in the late twenties and story stretched into
the early nineteen thirties, and the man murdered was Harry Adams,
who was a very respected meteorologist. He actually had multiple
affairs going and he didn't store the letters in the office,
He stored them in the buddhistron he kept in his house. Now,
according to doctor Joe Webbitt Stories Behind the Big Story,
his cultic religion was kind of his own invented version
of Buddhism. While his wife did confess to murder, but
she was convicted of manslaughter and was let out after
two years. Great public sympathy for her in this whole situation. Now,
another thing about the episode is the continual use of
Lizzie Borden references. And on the surface, this crime has
very little similarity to the Borden case. The murder message
radically different. And in addition to that, as listeners the
old time radio snack Wagon might know, as we played
an episode about this case in our first season of
Unsolved Mysteries, Miss Borden was actually acquitted by the jury
of the crime. However, generations of Americans decided not to
let the verdict of a jury stand in the way
of a good rhyme. Of course, where it's applicable is
the idea that this meek New England woman was capable
of a homicide. It's one of those things that it's
kind of interesting and kind of weird about the way
The Big Story approaches its broadcast because there is a
sense where they are trying to tell you true life
stories investigated by reporters, but there's also this sense where
they really like to get fanciful and theatrical in ways
that kind of undermine you feeling like this is a
real story that happened. I mean, could you imagine a
reporter going around signing a cultural story as a reason
to investigate and reopen a crime, like, you know, I know,
the evidence shows there's nothing there, but George Washington cut
down a cherry tree. Okay, but there's no evident and
now listen to me. Though George Washington cut down a
cherry tree, it does give it this sort of odd,
melodramatic feel also trying to lend in true facts. So
I hope folks are enjoying that. Well, listener comments and feedback,
and we go to Patreon and Jeff comments five hundred
dollars prize apparently is no longer awarded due to the
pau male sponsorship loss. Well, thanks for the question, Jeff,
And it seems like a bit of a misunderstanding because
the uh Paull male sponsorship is actually continued throughout the
run of the series, and the five hundred dollars award
is still in effect. But I think it's an understandable
misunderstanding because we have been on a steady diet of
Armed Forces Radio Service transcriptions of The Big Story, and
the AFRs required all commercials be removed from the episodes
before or they were transmitted overseas. They did not want
to use the US government military radio station to sell
products to servicemen. Now we do have the original scripts
for these episodes because of Powmoule's continued sponsorship, because they
were among the papers that were disclosed as required by
the tobacco Settlement back in the late nineties, and that's
where I get the cast list from. And also in
that script, Ernest Chappel says, thank you, mister Prince. The
makers of Palmouth's famous cigarettes are proud to present you
the paw Mau five hundred dollars Award for notable service
in the field of journalism. However, that wasn't included in
the broadcast because it was part of the commercial content
of the But thanks so much, appreciate the question, Jeff.
Now it's time to thank our Patreon supporter of the day.
Thank you to Ian, Patreon supporter since August twenty sixteen,
currently supporting the podcast at the Detective Sergeant level of
seven dollars and fourteen cents or more per month. Thanks
so much for your support, Ian, and that will do
it for today. If you're enjoying the podcast, please follow
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really enjoy it, so that our YouTube channel can grow.
We will be back next Tuesday with another episode of
The Big Story. But join us back here tomorrow for
broadways my beatware.
Speaker 9: It's tried.
Speaker 14: Then you did make report found doing us, mister Welch, Yeah,
didn't make.
Speaker 9: You know something? Then what they say, I'm innocent? You
say it me.
Speaker 14: I still don't know. I was out of the world
at the time. I was drunk that girl either Gray, Yeah,
spunky kid to sit up there and tell it into
the teeth of the world that I was with her
at the time Fay was my wife was being killed.
I wonder if I had fun. I wonder if I
hadn't had fun while Fay was dying. She broke our case,
saved your life. You want it, I give it to you.
But whatever my life's worth, now take it, deal it
out among your friends. Look, mister Welsh, a free man,
what's with this?
Speaker 9: Free? A man pronounces a word and that makes me free?
You love? Fay's dead. The girl I loved is dead.
A girl you know something then, but it's now the
law of the land. And I didn't kill my wife.
That means someone else did. I'll try it. I'll make
your promise out of the goodness in my heart. I'll
get to the killer before you do.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll be with us then in the meantime.
Send your comments to Box thirteen at Great Detectives dot net,
follow us on Twitter at 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.