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 Dragnet. But
first I want to encourage you, if you are enjoying
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to Patreon dot Great Detectives dot net. Well now from
August thirtieth, nineteen fifty, here is the Big Crazy.
Speaker 2: The story you were about to hear is true, only
the names have been changed to protect the innocent. You're
a detective sergeant. You're assigned to homicide detail. Thirty year
old woman is missing. Three months passed before a disappearance
is reported. There's not a trace of the woman. No
leed to were whereabouts? Your job find her.
Speaker 3: Drag met the documented drama of an actual crime. While
the next thirty minutes, in cooperation with the Los Angeles
Police Department, you will travel step by step on the
side of the law through an actual case transcribed from
official police fiolence, from beginning to end, from crime to punishment.
Speaker 4: Dragnet is the story of your police.
Speaker 5: Force in action. It was Monday, June. Night was warm
in Los Angeles. We were working a day watch out
of homicide detail. My partner's Ben Romero, the boss of
Stad Brown, chief of Detectives.
Speaker 4: My name's Friday.
Speaker 5: I was on the way back from the Stat's office
and it was ten eighteen am when I got to
room forty two on a side.
Speaker 6: Hi you, Joe, I've been waiting for you. Hi, ma'am,
I'd like to have you meet my partner, Sergeant Friday.
Speaker 4: Joe.
Speaker 6: This is miss Daily, Ruth Day.
Speaker 7: How do you do?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 8: Yes, Daily came in to find a missing report and
her sister, Joe. She already talked to missing persons and
they stand around to see. Yes, Oh, I have a
chair man, thank you.
Speaker 4: Well, what's it all about? Miss?
Speaker 7: I just started to tell Sergeant Ramere is, ma'am, I'm sorry, Ramero. Well,
it's about my sister, Bernice, Sergeant. She's missing. I wondered
if maybe you people could help me find her.
Speaker 4: Or what's your sister's name, Bernice?
Speaker 7: I guess you want a married name, missus James Butler.
Her description would be just about the way I look Bernice.
Speaker 4: Now a twin m where's your sister disappear? Lived in March?
Speaker 7: The first weekend in March. She disappeared on a Saturday.
Speaker 5: Well that's three months ago, miss Daily. How is it
this wasn't reported sooner?
Speaker 7: Was anotter effect. I halfway expected her husband to report it.
I talked to him about it when Bernice was gone
two weeks. He didn't seem too worried.
Speaker 6: Is there any reason for him not to worry?
Speaker 7: Well, there is no way. You see, Bernice has gone
off before. About a year ago. She picked up mont
to Arizona without telling anybody. When she came back, she
said she just wanted to get away for a while.
She didn't want to be around here.
Speaker 4: Well how long did she stay away that time?
Speaker 7: Almost a month?
Speaker 4: Well, how about your sister's married life? She get along
with her husband.
Speaker 7: All right, Well, first five years they were married, it
worked all right. Then it sort of turned sour. I
don't know what happened. They used to be happy.
Speaker 4: What was the trouble? Do you know?
Speaker 7: That's funny part. I don't wouldn't even know who to
blame for, Jimmy or Bernice. Both of 'em started drinking
a lot pretty heavy seeing me. Around that time, Jimmy
began to get a little funny.
Speaker 6: H See, has he ever been violent towards your sister,
miss Dale Emmy? Has he struck her or anything like that?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 7: No, really, Jimmy's kind of a milk toast character, timid,
skinny most of the time, afraid to say boo. Yesterday
I went over to the house to visit Jimmy. I
tried to make a conversation. He just sat in his
chair reading a book. Every time I mentioned Bernice, he'd
kind of look up and growl at me.
Speaker 4: I got sick of it.
Speaker 7: I put on my coat and started for the door.
Speaker 4: He followed me, Mmm, did you say anything at all?
Speaker 7: Yes. When I opened the door, I he turned around
say goodbye. We had this real horrible look on his face.
He said it right out loud by his days. He said,
you'd be surprised if I killed her, wouldn't you? You'd
be surprised.
Speaker 5: Ten am we finished taking a complete statement from Ruth
Dailey regarding the disappearance of her married sister Bernice Butler.
Before she left, we got the business address of her
brother in law, A broadcast and a missing bulletin was
gotten out, and then Ben and I drove Crosstown to
have a talk with a husband of the missing woman,
James Butler. We located him at work in a job
printing shop on South Vermont, where he was employed as
a journeyman printer.
Speaker 4: He was in his early thirties, thin blonde hair.
Speaker 5: Light complexion, about five foot seven, one hundred and twenty
five pounds. He wore a pair of rimless glasses. Ben
and I introduced ourselves and began to interview him. He
was close, moud, and not too cooperative. Seemed to resent
every question we asked him. While we talked, he worked
over a paper cutting machine.
Speaker 8: To admit, it's a little out of the ordinary, mister Buddery,
your wife missing three months, and you actually act he's
been going three hours?
Speaker 6: Did you hear me? Butler?
Speaker 4: I heard you.
Speaker 6: What about it?
Speaker 9: Just a minute? Well, you know it's not ordinary or
going away. I'm married to her.
Speaker 4: I know my own wife.
Speaker 5: We talked to your wife's sister this morning, Ruth Daily.
She seems to think you might know all about your
wife disappearing.
Speaker 4: He does. That's right in my way. I got to
get that other side of cards.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, what do you think.
Speaker 4: I don't know. There's something wrong with him.
Speaker 6: She's got a big grudge for somebody here.
Speaker 4: Say wonder what that girl meant?
Speaker 6: What she called him?
Speaker 8: Bashful and about as bashful as a wild born a plumb.
Speaker 4: Thinking in my way, I gotta get in there. Yeah,
go ahead. I haven't got any spad time to talk.
I have to get this order out. I'll only take
a few minutes, if you'll be good enough to offer her.
I haven't got the time, and so it's almost your
lunch hour. Is it's supposed to talk?
Speaker 10: Then?
Speaker 4: Got no time then either? Why don't you talk to Ruth?
She seems to know. Well, let's about enough of this list.
We ask you civil questions.
Speaker 5: We expect civil answers if you think this is an
important change your mind. Your wife's been gone for three months.
Nobody's seen or heard from her. It's all right, job
to check it.
Speaker 4: Now. You can talk to us here downtown. You take
your pick. I have to finish up this batch first.
We can talk about in the alley and back. I
want everybody knowing my business. That's fine with us. You
do what you have to do. We'll wait for you.
Speaker 6: Who is aching in an argument?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Well, what his big trouble is?
Speaker 6: Maybe a hangover? Once you don't use that. There could
be he.
Speaker 8: Had something to do with his wife's disappearing, and think
you'd try to cover what he's acting.
Speaker 6: He didn't seem to camill leave me.
Speaker 4: Now, let's see what kind of a story is gotting. Okay,
it's this way out back and go ahead. Yeah, what's
a big deal? Have you ever been arrested? Butler?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 4: Almost couple of times. They couldn't get me.
Speaker 6: What kind of trouble were you in?
Speaker 4: He said, they didn't get me. I'm not gonna put
myself in out of water. But to find out how
your wife was before she disappeared.
Speaker 5: Do you know of any reason why she'd go off
the way she did, any reason why she'd stay away
three months.
Speaker 4: Without any word?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 4: I don't know any rasons about your relatives, your friends.
You check to see if she might be with one
of them. I'd call if she was. You never checked
with him. Oh, I think, Ruth.
Speaker 6: Did you have any big arguments with your wife, Butler?
Other times you disappeared?
Speaker 4: I mean we had them all the time. She bothered me,
she was too fresh. Beat it out of her that too.
You got to give me a little freedom. Me thinking
can take over. Nag didn't tell you what to do,
what not to do, sick of We'd like a straight
answer here, Butler. Did you want your wife out of
the way? What do you mean by that? I mean,
do you know why she's missing? There'd be a lot
of reasons, right, no one.
Speaker 6: Did you kill your wife, Butler?
Speaker 4: It'd be silly to tell you that, wouldn't they?
Speaker 6: Yeah, did you kill her?
Speaker 4: I mean one way, I'll say yes to that. You know,
would you prove it?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 4: It wasn't easy to understand from the way it started.
Our interview with James Butler would get us nothing.
Speaker 5: We had no evidence against him, nothing to indicate definitely
that his.
Speaker 4: Wife had met foul play, nothing but.
Speaker 5: A suspicious remark. He was supposed to have made to
his sister in law, Ruth Daley.
Speaker 4: But once we'd left the print shop and got out
in the back alley where he couldn't be overheard, he
was full of information.
Speaker 5: Besides telling us that he beat his wife, Butler also
admitted that he'd threatened her life on several occasions, twice
in the presence of friends.
Speaker 4: He seemed to take some kind of a peculiar pride
in admitting how violent he'd been with his wife.
Speaker 5: Ben and I took him downtown, questioned him further, and
listened to him talk. He made veiled hints that he'd
been involved in various criminal activities in this country and
also in Europe, that he was a close friend with
half a dozen notorious Underworld gang leaders, That he was
ruthless and clever enough to dispose of his wife if
he wanted to and still avoid prosecution. While we were talking,
Ben had James Butler's name and description double checked to
the Record Bureau files. There was no previous criminal record
listed for him, as far as we knew. At no
time had he even been held under suspicion in a
criminal investigation. The next day, together with Brian and Lopez
from homicide. Ben and I made the rounds of mister
miss Butler's frien and relatives and neighbors. Four twenty five
pm we got back to the office. Oh hi and
open my Ben, Joe, what's doing nothing great?
Speaker 4: How'd you two make out?
Speaker 11: It's a funny setup. To me, I'd say the guy's
are phony. Everybody we talk to, everybody who knows Butler,
they all say the same thing. That's that I was
afraid of his own shadow. He's a milk toast, nothing
to him. What'd you get about the same?
Speaker 5: Every housewife around the neighborhood out where they live, they
all told us the same thing.
Speaker 9: The guy's a hen packed husband. His wife laid down
the laws and he follows him psycho. Okay, it must be.
Speaker 6: I don't know how else to explain it.
Speaker 8: Every time I asked one of their friends if Butler
beat up his wife, they laughed in my face, said
he wouldn't even dair case his check on. Beaty had
to bring it home. If anybody got beat up and
must have been him. Yeah, he sure tells a great story.
He could make you believe he was a blue bed.
Speaker 6: Did you get any different answers? It's all over.
Speaker 4: Yeah one, maybe you want me take a look.
Speaker 6: Uh, let's see. Yeah here, Uh missus Irene.
Speaker 11: Brady, she's an Animassus Butler.
Speaker 6: Uh huh.
Speaker 11: She said the same thing about Butler, about him being
a real mouse and all. And she told us about
the dizzy things have been doing the last couple of years.
Speaker 4: You know what was that?
Speaker 6: Four or five times?
Speaker 7: She said?
Speaker 11: He just went out looking for trouble, go in a
neighborhood bar and saw some big steved or he get
his face pushed in.
Speaker 4: He always picked big guys. Didn't see the mind getting
beat up as long as he couldn't sell them.
Speaker 6: Oh, not much dot. I guess the guy's ready for
the net for him.
Speaker 4: Apparently he's got a.
Speaker 5: Big beef with people who push him around. Maybe figured
if he could take care of just one of those people,
he could even up the score. What do you mean, Joe, Well,
missus Butler. The wife, she's probably the one who gave
him the worst time.
Speaker 4: He's a little bit off metally. That had make him
capable of.
Speaker 6: Murder when he couldn't be. Yeah, maybe the wife poured
it on. He was wrong, wrote him do it crazy
as a cook. That too many movies, mystery book, I
got it. I was side from now. Oh, yes, man,
how's that now? When was that? Yes, ma'am, yes as
we can.
Speaker 4: But that daddy wasn't.
Speaker 8: That was a sister in law, Ruth Daily just told
me she's part of if Butler murdered his wife?
Speaker 6: And what makes you think sure? Number one?
Speaker 5: She says, Butler told her so, he admitted it to
her last night. It doesn't hold anymore water, And the
rest of his stories I don't know.
Speaker 8: And any girl says she spotted if she's got the
evidence to prove it, what's a murder weapon?
Speaker 6: Bloodstains all over?
Speaker 4: Four forty five PM.
Speaker 5: Then and I got in the car and drove out
to the home of mister and Missus Butler, where we
found the missing woman's sister waiting for us on the
front stairs. She told her she'd been doing some kind
of checking of her own through the house that afternoon,
and going over the attic, she said she'd found a
claw hammer hidden under a loose board in the attic floor.
Speaker 4: She said the.
Speaker 5: Hammer was covered with what appeared to be dry bloodstains.
Speaker 4: She took us inside, up the stairs to the attic.
Speaker 7: Capul of the steps officers know how it's getting ready
to fall apart?
Speaker 6: Watch your step here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm all right, go ahead.
Speaker 7: Light couldn't right. That's how I happened to see the
loose boards over here?
Speaker 4: Did you pick up the hammer, miss day A?
Speaker 7: Here? No? I started too, but then I remembered about
fingerprints and things just where I found it. Didn't touch it.
Speaker 6: You want a pencil, Jill, Maybe you can get it
claw there?
Speaker 4: No, I think we can see it right where it is,
and see, uh.
Speaker 6: Couldn't be oh bloodstained? Well, it sure looks like it
from the handle here all over the head of the hammer.
Speaker 7: I knew it. I knew there was something wrong the
day she disappeared.
Speaker 6: He looked at this, Joe, I just noticed these stains
on the floor, whole trail of me. See, they'd right
for the door we met.
Speaker 5: A got the crime lab on, and A have Lee
Jones on the benzadine test on him. What time does
he easily get home from work, miss Dailier by the
more about six o'clock.
Speaker 7: Don't know about today though?
Speaker 6: How do he means he worked late on Tuesday?
Speaker 7: No? But I wanted to make sure he wouldn't be
home when I came over today. I called the print
shop where he works. He's not there. Called again this afternoon.
Jimmy hasn't been seen since last night.
Speaker 4: M he in the habit of skipping work.
Speaker 7: No, it never does. I called every one of his friends.
I know of Bernice's friends too, I call them places
he hangs around. Nobody's seen him nut since last night.
Speaker 4: Since you talked to him, you've got no idea where
he might be.
Speaker 7: No, just like Bernice, he disappeared.
Speaker 3: You're in the statistician's office of a metropolitan police department.
Speaker 6: Have you made the run on this one?
Speaker 3: Five seven and sixty pounds suspect, his left handed operates
on foot.
Speaker 6: We've punched up the master of the cards in the machine.
You'll make the run now?
Speaker 3: Okay, fine, there are many suspects to choose problems.
Speaker 4: You're looking for one, thank you? Yeah, this is the
one we want.
Speaker 2: When you have a choice to make, you want to
be sure.
Speaker 5: Tuesday, June tenth, five twenty pm, Ben got on the
phone and called around town to check further on the
whereabouts of James Butler, the husband of the missing woman.
Speaker 4: No luck.
Speaker 5: We called the office and they got out of broadcast
and an APV on Butler. We drove downtown to the
crime lab, gave him the claw hammer that we found
in the Butler's attic and asked him to run a
benzidine test on the stains. We'd also made arrangements for
Lee Jones to run similar tests on the stains we
found on the floor of the attic.
Speaker 9: Three days passed, Butler was gone. There was no sign
of him. The search was intensified.
Speaker 5: Another three days went by Monday, June sixteenth, we got
an answer on the APB, A phone call from the
chief of police in Hilario, California.
Speaker 11: Yeah, James Michael Butler, WMA, thirty three years five at
seven and eight.
Speaker 10: Pounds, blond here Hayes lines.
Speaker 7: He got a North Hankochiet.
Speaker 1: Address down there.
Speaker 4: That right, Yeah, it sounds like the man we're looking for.
Speaker 11: He's a real word. When Freddy caused a little trouble
at one of the taverns up here last night, kept
picking fights with the biggest truck.
Speaker 4: Drivers he could find.
Speaker 9: We'll locked them up.
Speaker 3: After his third fight.
Speaker 4: Getter jailed in up all night wild what do you do?
Ill shouting all over the places?
Speaker 7: Been doing anything with him.
Speaker 6: Huh, he's telling everybody how smart you.
Speaker 11: Yeah, he said he killed his wife, and nobody's ever.
Speaker 10: Going to find out.
Speaker 5: James Butler was returned to Los Angeles, where he underwent
further interrogation in addition to a psychiatric test.
Speaker 4: The test showed that he.
Speaker 5: Was definitely abnormal, but he was still judgmentally competent. The
crime labs tests on the bloodstains found on the hammer
and on the floor of the attic in the Butler's
home revealed that the stains were made by animal blood,
not human. We questioned Butler about it, but we failed
to get him to even admit he knew anything about
the stains. He was released from custody, but he was
kept under surveillance. The week passed, two weeks nothing developed.
Still no sign of the missing woman, Bernice Butler. Still
no definite sign of foul play in connection with her disappearance,
no definite sign that her husband was criminally involved in
any way. Considering all the angles of the case, we
were still incline to figure that he fitted in some
he had some direct hand in his wife's disappearance.
Speaker 4: We stayed on it. Nothing happened. On June twenty.
Speaker 5: Sixth, the twin sister of the missing woman Ruth Daley.
He met Ben and I at the office and laid
out a plan she had in mind.
Speaker 4: She insisted, we try it.
Speaker 8: You mean you want to work on his emotional nature
and try to get some kind of an admission out
of him.
Speaker 6: Is that the whole idea?
Speaker 7: That's it, Sergeant. I know what a nut he is
about being dramatic. I know it'll work.
Speaker 4: Its possible. Yah, How do you figure to set it up?
Speaker 7: It won't be very hard. For one thing, you know,
my sister Bernice and I look quite a bit alike.
People always take us for one another. You can get
Jimmy out of the house at night for some reason
or another. I'll slip in and go upstairs and put
on one of the dresses Bernice used to wear all
the time. I'll sit there in the upstairs bedroom. Were
just a hall light on, just enough light so we
can see you when you bring him upstairs. I'll even
bring over Bernice's pet cat, she had si of eat.
You always hated the cat.
Speaker 6: M I don't know, ma'am. I'm not quite sure about it.
Speaker 4: Or it might be worth a chance. It's not too
orthodox but maybe it'll work.
Speaker 7: If I know, Jimmy, it'll work, Sergeant, if you can
just warm him up to it ahead of time before
you bring him upstairs he sees me sitting in that
room with a cat. I know he'll think it's Bernice
bond to get some kind of reaction. That's better than
we're doing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, what do you think sounds like a movie script?
I don't know. It's like she says, I guess we'd
bond and get a reaction.
Speaker 7: I know it'll work. I'm sure of it.
Speaker 6: Joh, all right, let's give it a try.
Speaker 5: The following night, a few minutes before eight o'clock, Ben
and I got James Butler away from his house on
the pretext of taking him downtown for further interrogation. We
delayed long enough to make sure that Ruth Day, the
sister of the missing woman, had plenty good time to
get into the house, change her clothes, and take her
place in the upstairs room with her sister's pet, Siamese cat.
Speaker 4: Then we started back for the house. We've made arrangements to.
Speaker 5: Have Brian and Lopez from Homicide standing by, concealed in
the immediate vicinity of the house.
Speaker 4: In case they were needed. Eleven o five pm.
Speaker 5: While we drove him back toward his home, Butler was
talking ve but not too relaxed. Was the same line
we'd heard before, how tough he could be when he
wanted to, the same hints that he was an undiscovered killer,
one of the more talent the professionals in the deadly
circles of.
Speaker 9: The underworld that came from Illinois, originally Cicero. You guys,
now it is back there. You have to stay right
up on your toes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, how long you've been out here?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 6: Brother?
Speaker 4: You expect me to tell you that? And wise, the
way you guys work, you're not gonna get me on
questions like that one. I'll understand.
Speaker 9: You do quite a bit of reading, Jim, and come
across anything good lately and nothing likely all the good
books they've already been written, Edgar Allan, Poe, Stevenson, Demopus
on Go Go. They know how to tell a good
murder story. These new guys are wasted time reading. That's
all reading. That's what I like to do, not that
modern junk. Only the best. He takes some of poll
and Stephenson.
Speaker 6: For instance.
Speaker 9: I know those guys, ye sure, I know the stuff
well enough to tell you. I got whole pages memorized.
I'd like to hear some Stevenson.
Speaker 4: Maybe all right, go ahead.
Speaker 9: I have to belign my nature. All men do. All
men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles.
You see each dragged away by life, like one whom
bravos have seized and muffled in the cloak.
Speaker 4: If they had their own.
Speaker 9: Control, if you could see their faces, they would be
altogether different. They would shine out for heroes and for saints.
I am worse than most. Myself is more over laid.
My excuse is known to me and to God. But
had I at the time I could disclose myself, that's
out of steven See you, I'm a pretty smart fellow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, sure, yeah, you got a pretty good memory.
Speaker 4: I read those books all the time.
Speaker 10: Nothing better.
Speaker 4: This is the house, all right? Yeah, that's right. Well,
maybe i'll say you later. Huh, thanks to the right.
Speaker 5: Well, I tell you we'd like to come in the
house with you if you don't mind, But one or
two things.
Speaker 4: You'd like check over, if that's all right with you?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 9: Sure, I guess you ought to know by this time huh.
Nothing I'd hide in that house that you'd never want
to find. Come on, let's go.
Speaker 6: Sure and dark got in there a little bit chilly.
Speaker 9: Yeah, what do you want to check over in the house?
Speaker 4: All this one or two things, just routine, Jim. We
won't keep you along.
Speaker 9: I guess I'll be a little burned at you cops
by now. Huh getting all this roused him? How about
laying out pretty soon? Maybe I am getting a little burned.
If you can prove something on old.
Speaker 4: Jimmy butt, I prove it. If you can't do it,
let him along.
Speaker 5: We're just tying up a few loose ends here, gym.
There's nothing to get excited about it. What's the matter
if you get your front dorky.
Speaker 4: I got it my business.
Speaker 3: You learn not to forget anything can't afford to forget.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's quite a big place, you got, brother. You
just stay here all by yourself.
Speaker 4: That's the way I like it. By myself.
Speaker 9: But I look at anything you can look now when
you throw. I got some bourbon in the cellar. I
keep a big booze selly. You know, all first rate stuff.
It's a manic or nothing, Jim, I thought I heard
a cat someplace? Did you no cats in this house?
What do you mean you heard a cat? I hate
the lousy things. I wouldn't have one.
Speaker 6: Wouldn't you tell us.
Speaker 4: Once your wife had a cat? I think it was you.
Speaker 6: You didn't like it, bunch?
Speaker 4: Did you kill the lousy thing? Got nax and killed it.
The wife of mine used to drive me crazy with
the cat hair all over the place, you know how
it is? Got an ax and killed it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and there it is. I thought I heard it,
cause you got another one?
Speaker 4: Now, bother, I'll get rid of that thing. I'll find him,
get rid of him right now, umstairs.
Speaker 5: I suppose the house makes you think of your wife
quite a bit down in the gym, well, I mean
you spent so much time in it together, you and Bernice.
It's got quite a few memories for you. I guess, huh,
find that thing. If it takes all night, I'll get
the accent. I'll find any thing.
Speaker 9: Except here, all right? Maybe down the hall that Bernice's room.
She had the cat. What's it doing here? There's no
reason for her could have wandered back in? Can we
get more light in this whole way? I can't see
anything cat could be anywhere. What's it doing here alone?
The cat was always with Bernice.
Speaker 4: Never left it. Oh, it sounds to me like it's
just around here. Maybe through that door there, you think.
Speaker 9: It's Bernice's room. I killed a lousy cat. He couldn't
be in there.
Speaker 4: Oh, maybe it's just a cat out in the street
now on the side alley.
Speaker 9: Maybe, huh. Probably not even in the house. Take a
look in the room here.
Speaker 4: No, no, it ain't real. She's not there. She's not there.
Speaker 7: Don't hurt the cat, not the poor cat. Jimmy, don't
kill him, not both of us. Don't kill the cat. Please,
don't kill two of us.
Speaker 6: You go away, you go away.
Speaker 4: You're not there. It's a fake.
Speaker 7: You're not there, Bernie, Please, Jimmy, not both of us.
Don't kill both of us. Some kind of a trick me.
Speaker 9: You go away, Bernie, your dad and I killed you.
You're downstairs. You're in the ground. You're deep in the ground.
Speaker 4: I killed you. You can't be sitting here.
Speaker 7: Please, Jimmy, please, all.
Speaker 6: Right, butther come in.
Speaker 4: No, get away, you get away from me. She's downstairs,
she's in the ground. I'll show you. You can't trick me.
I'll show it.
Speaker 10: I cat, I can't.
Speaker 4: Dear God, come on, Ben downstairs. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I tried to grab him, tried to, he broke away.
Speaker 7: We'll we'll be Do.
Speaker 4: You see it? Love? Yeah?
Speaker 6: Good? Drop from the window. He came fast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not too pretty.
Speaker 6: Huh, must be something. Huh. How about getting the doctor?
Speaker 11: He lost the doctors when he hit that sidewalk. Only
one thing left I know called a priest.
Speaker 9: In his suicide leap from the top story of his house,
James Butler died instantly on the pavement below.
Speaker 4: Afterwards, when the reports.
Speaker 5: Were made out and the deputy corner removed the body,
a special detail of men was sent out to help
probe the grounds around the Butler home and also the
ground directly beneath the house. The search was thorough, The
ground was dug up foot by foot.
Speaker 4: We found nothing.
Speaker 5: Butler's last admission before his death that he killed his
wife and buried her in the grounds adjoining the house,
seemed to be as empty and worthless as some of
the other stories that he told us. The pains taking
search for the body of James Butler's wife went on.
Speaker 4: We found nothing alive or dad. There was still no
trace of her.
Speaker 5: Butler's friends and relatives held a modest funeral for him,
and he was buried in a small cemetery south of
the city. In Missing Persons Bureau, there were still no
leads on the case of Bernice Butler.
Speaker 4: It was still open.
Speaker 5: Summer finally got to an end. The fall season came
and went, and then Christmas and the holidays, and then
back into January and February. On the rainy morning early
in March, almost a year to the very day when
the case started, we got a communication from San Francisco.
Speaker 4: It had come to the notice of the police to
the County Health Department.
Speaker 8: In regard to your apb of June so and so
last year. This is to inform me that missus Bernice
Butler has been a patient in the tubercular Ward County Hospital,
San Francisco since June sixteenth of last year. Prently, her
case was considered critical from the day she was admitted
to hospital. Last Thursday, she succumbed to the owners. Identification
was established next to King notified, but no one famed
to bury. She was buried at kind the expense I trust.
This may aid you an establishing facts pertinent to her disappearance.
Speaker 6: So well, how about that. It doesn't figure it sooner
later you get him off.
Speaker 8: How would you figure out that night we had but
at the house, I mean we had his sister on
in there, and he thought he saw his wi Who knows.
Speaker 4: Suppose he really had himself talked into what he thought
he committed one hundred percent murdered. Yes, he thought about
it long enough, fully convinced himself. Must have worked out
something like that inside his mind.
Speaker 8: Imagine he lived right through it. Figured he really killed her.
When he came for the punishment, he's ready to buy that.
There wasn't any way out, so young mixed up to
and get him. He's too bad all things considered. I
guess he loved it quite a bit.
Speaker 5: Well, it doesn't see the matter now, what he did
wasn't much of a chance, he honey, mean, well.
Speaker 4: A girl TV on one side, maybe murdered on the other.
Speaker 6: Either way, she had to die.
Speaker 2: The story you have just heard was true, only the
names were changed to protect the innocent.
Speaker 3: On March ninth, the meeting was held in the office
of Captain of Homicide Police Department, City and County of
Los Angeles, State.
Speaker 4: Of California, in a moment the results of that meeting.
Speaker 3: After locating missus Bernice Butler in the tubercular ward in
San Francisco County Hospital, final disposition was made of her case.
Her late husband, James Butler, was cleared of any connection
with her disappearance. You have just heard drag met a
series of authentic cases from official file outs. Technical advice
comes from the Office of Chief of Police W. H. Parker,
Los Angeles Police Department.
Speaker 4: Say tuned for Counterspy next on NBC.
Speaker 1: Welcome Back. Who could have predicted that playing with the
head of a mentally unstable man could end badly? Well,
a lot of people actually, I mean Ben Romero mentioned
this sounded like a movie plot, and it's generally a
good idea for the police to steer clear of borrowing
from bay movie detectives. So if you're one ever wondered, well,
why don't the police ever try anything like that in
real life? Well, this episode gives you an idea as
to why.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 1: These passage of Stevenson that was quoted was actually from Marcott,
which is a story about a man who kills a
pawnbroker and is subsequently haunted. And this may have been
an indication, given the husband's sort of weak grasp on reality,
that he believe that sort of thing was possible. We
turn now to listen her comments and feeback, and we
have a comment regarding the being Winchester over on Facebook.
Alicia writes, chubby, matronly old woman of forty five. Uugh,
my husband just turned forty five, and I'm not too
far behind trying to decide if I should be triggered
or not. Lull old might not have been part of
that description, but she sure sounded about eighty. Thanks for
the comment, Alicia. You know, I started doing podcast with
Dragnett back when I was twenty six, and so these
sort of descriptions just kind of went right over my head.
Speaker 9: But some of them.
Speaker 1: I am getting to the point where the old phrase
I resemble that remark comes to mind. Now it should
be said that, and there have been plenty of me
of this, and you know photographic evidence that people of
the same age and prior generations looked older for their age.
There are things that led to more severe aging, both
environmental and social factors. And they say that forty is
the new thirty, they of course, being people like us
in our forties trying to feel better about ourselves, but
nevertheless they say it, and so I will just go
with that and just assume that people were older. Yes, well,
now it is time to thank our Patreon supporter of
the day, and I want to go ahead and ninth Kirk.
Kirk has been one of our Patreon supporters since January
of twenty twenty four, currently supporting the podcast at the
rookie level of two dollars or more per month. Thanks
so much for your support, Kirk, And that'll 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
will be back next Thursday with another episode of Drag Nap,
but join us back here tomorrow for yours truly. Johnny
doll Or where that motive?
Speaker 4: Motives?
Speaker 10: I hadn't told you that Red, Well, the main thing
is that that cutting open the flotation tanks was done
with some kind of a nack. I was asking about motive,
and I know that Elmer didn't have any axe on
that boat.
Speaker 6: Do you find the ex Johnny, No, no, no, read I'll.
Speaker 4: Tell you what he had in his boat beside his clothes. Well,
let's cover this motive thing. He had to anchor, of course,
that went with the bull red.
Speaker 10: He had a nice new Sila flex rod with a
Mitchell three hundred dollar. He had a long handled neck
that he picked up somewhere in LA and an old
beat up McKenny tackle box for plugs and spoons.
Speaker 4: On the fiet right.
Speaker 10: And that was all Johnny, no ax. That was all
he had read. That bush shore beating around is getting
pretty big.
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.