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 also want to encourage you to check out
our other podcasts. And today I'm highlighting the amazing world
of radio at Amazing dot Great Detectives dot net, where
we are currently featuring our Colombo Killers, an old time
radio series where every week we're bringing you an old
time radio episode featuring an actor who played the killer
on Colombo. Check that out wherever you get your podcast from.
But now, from April to fourth, nineteen fifty one, here
is poker game ends in death, The Big Story.
Speaker 2: Come on, come on, get the letout.
Speaker 3: Did you see him?
Speaker 2: Did you see Doug the way he was lying there?
How did you like that guy?
Speaker 3: The dealer?
Speaker 4: He thought he was gonna take it a big butt anyway,
he says another guy, I got a pair, one more
to go with it, get three of a kid and
then boom?
Speaker 2: Why did Doug have to get it quite done?
Speaker 4: All right, all right, quit the cry and says Doug's dead.
So what guy with three of them? The guy is
dead too.
Speaker 3: How do you like that?
Speaker 2: I caught my jacket and a nail. I paid seventy
five dollars for that jacket. Why does.
Speaker 5: Chicago, Illinois? From the front pages of the Chicago Sun
Times comes the story of a poker game that ended
in depth Chicago, Illinois. The story is that actually happened,
William Doherty's story as he lived it.
Speaker 3: Your first name is Bill, last name Doherty. One of
the proudest names in Chicago newspaper. For the past thirty years,
it hasn't been a single paper in Chicago that didn't
have a Doughty on the police run. You and your
four brothers, in a sense, had cornered the crime market
in the Windy City. But even the Dougherty sleep. And
that is what you were doing this mild May morning
at one am, when the bane of all Dougherty lives
the City Editor. And that's the work, the mechanism that
is the bane of all Dougherty Knights. Hello, were you sleep?
Who is this? Andrews? No, I was just sitting here
waiting for you to call well, Sonny, you better rub
the sleep out of your eyes on account of while
you were snoring, three hoods had the lovely suburb of
Heeavenstone all wrapped up. Could have carried it away for
all you know. Since when does a five and dime
stick up give reason the yanked me out of bed?
Speaker 6: Didn't I tell you? There were a couple of murders. Oh,
one of the hoods. And you remember Judge greens Bailer, Benny,
not that sweet guy. Yeah, he and a couple of
friends were playing poker. The hooch walked in. One of
the hoods got it, so did Benny. Hey, that's a story.
I'll be right over.
Speaker 3: You drive past Benny's house en route to the Fellmall
Street police station. They will be breathmen in the house
and hsterics and a few facts so you can come
back later. Right now, you want to learn what happened.
One of the poker players, George Curling, has a fabulous
eye for detail.
Speaker 7: It was going around eleven. Up to then, we'd been
playing sociable poker five and ten. I was losing, so
I said, how about a quarter and a half? Benny
was way ahead. He says, make it no limit. So
then we settled down. And when you play the.
Speaker 3: Kind of poker, the house could fall down around you
and you wouldn't notice it. HiT's about the size of it.
The pots were getting big and bigger. They must have
opened the door without anybody hearing them, and all of
a sudden they were standing there right at the table.
And then first one, this tall blonde one, he says, gentlemen,
this is a sticker. We were so surprised, and it
hapened so fast you couldn't exactly be sure.
Speaker 7: I didn't even get a good look at the other two.
There were two others. Yeah, Benny says, who you kidding?
But this tall blonde one got a gun out, and
Benny reaches for his coat, it's hanging over my chair.
And see he's a bailiff, he's got the right to
carry a gunners And before you know it, this blonde
kid shoots him. Then I went out of my mind.
I got Benny's gun out and I just squeezed the trigger,
and the tall blonde one fell down. Then one of
them must have sapped me, and I went out. What
about the others. There were five of you in the game, Oh,
Harry and Jerry and Willly Saltz, who owns the liquor store.
They just sat there. They were so scared they didn't
open their mouths. And you didn't get a look at
either of the other two. No, just one was there,
kind of a kid about eighteen or something before I
conked out. I've seen this kid, you.
Speaker 2: Know what he was doing.
Speaker 7: He was down on the floor like holding the head
of this one that I shot, and like rocking it
in his arms, and he kept saying, Doug, Doug, No Doug.
Then the other guy grabbed him and they feed it.
He was almost crying, crying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at the morgue, Captain Michael's lets you get the details,
because the name of Doherty is still a pass in
the Chicago Police station. So it's an easy matter for
you to learn the facts about Doug. The dead hood
Douglas grimco aged thirty Larson he with loneous intent, three
years for old for all violation, armed robbery, five years,
the usual depredation and the usual form cards, the usual picture,
the usual aliases, the usual story, but no more. And
that noon, when the story's been written and in the edition,
andrews Idols over to you a long needle in his hand,
looks like the dirtors are slipping. Look, Andrews, will you
talk like a human being to me for a second.
You told me yourself, no editor is human? All right,
all right? A kidd gets down on the floor and
holds a dead guy's head in his arms and cradles.
That don't sound like a hood to me. It's stilling
all walking in there in the middle of a poker game,
big as life. That's about as pro a job as
I've heard in a long time. Well, you'll straighten it out. Sure,
you're a great health. Hey, maybe the funeral, Maybe maybe
the funeral. The grimco gets buried this afternoon. This funeral
is the traditional funeral, but the profusion of flowers that
the poor always reserved for last rides. And this too,
doesn't sound like a professional hood. In walking through the group,
the sad people and the clothing, you notice he was.
Speaker 2: Never very good to her or to Herbie.
Speaker 3: There are no whales, no screeches, no rending of clothing.
And when you hear it again, it strikes.
Speaker 2: You she was wise not to come. Herbie too not
to see it.
Speaker 3: This is a funeral. Well, the chief Mourner's absence. She
is his mother, and Herbie his brother. They're not there.
Why did you find your why in the battered house
on East Clayburne where his sister lives. She wasn't at
the funeral either. Why didn't you going?
Speaker 2: My business is out of yours.
Speaker 3: Why didn't your mother go? And your brother herby?
Speaker 2: You get out of here.
Speaker 3: Look, miss, I'm a newspaper man. You're liably get the
same questions asked if you're not so.
Speaker 8: Polite, Wow, mama went away.
Speaker 2: What's she going to do?
Speaker 3: Go to his funeral?
Speaker 8: Stand there and have all those friends point their fingers
at her. So her and Herbie went away? Is that
a crime?
Speaker 3: Nope? Less Herbie had something to do with Doug.
Speaker 2: You get out of here.
Speaker 8: I'd rather answer the cops.
Speaker 3: A Bureau of Identification tells you that Herbert Grimco is seventeen,
that he weighs one hundred and forty two pounds, that
he's a graduate of the Chicago Parental School, which is
a reform school, and that he was sent there when
he was thirteen on a burglary charge, and that he
assaulted three policemen resisting arrest, And that too, is a
story dead hood's brother fugitive search out for brother of
would be gunman at least today run the lookout for
seventeen year old Herbert Grimcock Doorty speaking.
Speaker 8: You think you're pretty smart, don't you.
Speaker 7: Who's this?
Speaker 8: All I gotta tell you is you better get yourself
a lawyer. I got that story you wrote right in
front of me and my brother. Herbie is no fugitive
from justice. You better get yourself a lawyer.
Speaker 3: Mister, I don't think I'm the guy and he's a lawyer.
Where you get a little smart. Fella's brother gets shot,
he doesn't show up at the funeral. He's got a record.
He's the guy and he's the lawyer.
Speaker 8: They'll never give him a break just because he's Doug's brother.
He's a good kid, just because he's Doug's brother.
Speaker 3: Right, all right, Look, let me tell you something about
the way police work. And maybe they're wrong, but they
think your kid brother is a fugitive from justice. He's
with your mother, isn't he. Now maybe some couple will
see him and you make a wrong move when somebody
will get awful hurt. So what you say is true.
Tell him to come back for his own good tell
him to come back.
Speaker 8: He hates the cops and they hate him because it. Doug, look,
you sound like a fair guy. Would you talk to
him me? He talked to somebody who talks his language.
He's only a kid.
Speaker 3: You call me when he's ready to talk. You'll figure
that's the end of that. But it isn't. And within
twelve hours she walks into your office and she says,
if you're ready, he's waiting in a car in the
alley just behind the sun times.
Speaker 2: They won't give me a break. They never give a
kid like me a break. I got a record and
I'm Doug's brother. What good does it do if I
tell you I didn't have anything to do with it.
Speaker 3: Nothing. I wasn't nowhere near the place where were you.
Speaker 2: I was kidding around the whole evening with one of
my friends with a poolstick, from ten going on till midnight.
But shooting was about eleven, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: You were suddenly in the midst of a decision, Bill Dougherty.
A kid is pouring out his guts, maybe the truth,
maybe not. You've told his sister you'll help him. You've
also told yourself that you'll write and act honestly, what
do you do now? Turn him in.
Speaker 2: I ain't lived very long, we never had nothing. But
every time I walk on the street after ten o'clock,
they look at me like I'm up to something, and
they try to and things on me, just because it
does because of that time I got high.
Speaker 3: In for the comes, it has the ring of truth
and this dismal light. In a back alley and an
old car, someone is speaking, but he considers the truth.
You take a big breath.
Speaker 8: And say it.
Speaker 3: Oh, maybe you've had bad breaks, maybe the cards are
mistacked against you. But if you want half a fair
shake or a quarter even, walk into the film or station,
talk to Captain Joey Michaels, tell them Doherty sent you.
Speaker 2: I know what they'll do.
Speaker 3: I know what else you're gonna do, kid, what else?
I'll back you up.
Speaker 5: This is Cy Harris returning you to your narrator and
the big story of William Doherty as he lived.
Speaker 3: It and wrote it. It's a few hours, Bill Dougherty,
since you told Herbie Grimcoe, the brother of the Deadhood,
to give himself up to the police, that this was
the best way that you would stand behind him. And
now in your City Room. You're editor, Bob Andrews Sidlezova.
No needle in his hand this time, but maybe something worse.
I just had a call from Captain Michael's over at
Filmore Station. That's so your kid, Herbie showed up. I
thought he would. Three of the guys at the poker
game identified him straight out as the second of the
three hoods. How did they know, he admitted, They were
so mixed up, they didn't know what was going on.
As a matter of fact, Kerlik, who killed the first
Hoood when he saw Herbie at the police station, nearly
strangled it. You know Benny was a cousin of his.
Oh well, it's very easy for guys to go while
and make identifications, very easy. What did the kids say?
The kid doesn't deny he was there. He doesn't me
he was there. He's just not talking. Well, he's scared,
that's all. He's scared. So Michael says he wants you
to come over there because the kid trusts you. All
he wants me to do is go over and get
the kid to spill his guts. Huh. Look, this is
a kid. I told her to do something. This is
a kid I told I. Stand back of what am
I going to do? And no, I'll sell him out.
That's entirely up to your bill, entirely, Michael said, for
me to tell you, it's entirely up to you. How
do you ride the horns of a dilemma? Answer you?
Don't you face what you knew all along you were
going to have to face. You're too loyalty to the
truth and to the kid who never had a break
and who probably isn't getting one right now. So you're
alone with him in the fillmore station.
Speaker 2: I tell you, I told you the whole thing. I'll
tell you anything you want to know.
Speaker 3: Don't tell me tell them.
Speaker 2: I don't want to tell them. I don't want to
tell them nothing.
Speaker 3: I ain't going to talk to those guys. Look, Michael,
it's a nicer guy as they come. He's no slugger.
Speaker 2: Where's the hitting the guy without hitting him? Why don't
you listen to me?
Speaker 3: Because I'd have to tell him? Would you?
Speaker 2: Would you also tell him if I wasn't there?
Speaker 3: Herb be? What is the truth?
Speaker 2: Like I told you, I was in this pool place,
the trading post it's called with my friend Lester Gate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you told me all about that pooling around
with a pole Q from eleven until twelve with Lester Gates.
So all right.
Speaker 2: As soon as I heard about the killing and how
Doug got shot. Now everybody knows about me and Doug
being so close, Mar and me went up to Muskegan
and spent the night there, and next morning we took
a bus and started to California. You see, Mars sick.
She had to go to the funeral and face a
friend and see him dead there. I didn't know what
it would have done to it.
Speaker 3: Herb. Three men identified you with that card party. Three
men said you were there that when Doug got shot,
you get down on the floor and put his head
in your lap. They say you kept saying Doug, oh, Doug.
It's not true. I was in the trading post. It
doesn't it sound like you. Herby the kid wh would
pick up his own brother's head and say what you said?
Who was somebody else? Is that the best you can do?
Speaker 2: See see now you'll tell him no, take that, and
they'll string me up with it. You know better than
a cop.
Speaker 3: I didn't say I tell anybody anything, and I won't,
And just tell me one thing. It is what you said.
The truth.
Speaker 2: I swear, I swear on on my sick mother's life.
Speaker 3: All Right, we'll see. It's an oath not taken lightly,
he means it. And although there are holes in the story,
you go out with the fullest kind of objectivity, either
to patch up those holes or a drive a truck.
Throw the man at the trading post, he remembers, Yeah,
that's right, he ran up six racks him and what's
his name, Western Gates, Yeah, him and Gates six racks.
Let's see, it was going on twelvely walked in one
hole widens going on twelve. The murder was eleven fifteen
pm exactly. You drive your car slowly from the house
on Adams Street to the trading posts. Time elapsed fourteen minutes.
If he was in on the killing, then he had
adequate time to get to the trading post at twelve.
The hole is bigger.
Speaker 8: Well, I was going by.
Speaker 9: I mean this friend of mine, he says, to meet
him outside the trading post, and I've seen him and
Lester walk in.
Speaker 8: They were sweatten.
Speaker 3: What time was that? Miss?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 8: I know because I was looking at my watch and
this fellow was supposed to meet me at eleven thirty.
Speaker 9: It was five minutes to twelve.
Speaker 3: That's how late he was. The hall is widened and reinforced,
and now min age thirty stocking smiling, walks up to you.
Haven't look at all of its town for you, even
down of the paper. They says you was up here?
Who are you? Lester Gates? Is my name? What are
you looking all over town for me? About Gates?
Speaker 4: Well, on account of I want to tell you about
Herbie and I kind of I heard you was checking
up on Herbie. You know about me and him in
the trading post. Well, we was there. We were playing pool,
six or eight res we played all.
Speaker 3: That's fine. I'm glad you told me.
Speaker 4: I didn't tell you the time I met him there?
Speaker 3: What time was it? About one o'clock? We started? The
hall is wider and jagged. Now somebody is doing a
lot of lying. Not the owner of the bull poller
of a girl. Why should they, but either Leicster Gates
or Herbie Grim And you're back at the film mass station.
Two people said you were at the trading post at
twelve starting at twelve. The everybody in the world is
a liar, Herbie.
Speaker 2: You're fencing me in with all this talking, you're digging
a hole from me.
Speaker 3: Herbie, listen to me. Now, don't say a word. Just listen.
I made a pledge to you. I said I'd stand
behind you. But you can't stand behind a liar because
he gets it and you get it too.
Speaker 2: Oh I ain't a liar, I swear to you.
Speaker 3: It takes fourteen minutes only to get from the Adam
Street House to the poolroom. You could have done it,
I didn't. You took your mout up to Muskegon and
you took a bus and went straight out west. Huh,
that's right?
Speaker 2: Till I called up my sister to see how things were,
and she said to come back.
Speaker 3: There are no buses that leave Muskegan and go straight
out west. They come to Chicago first. You gotta change
for another bus at Chicago. No kid on the run
would do that. You couldn't. You didn't.
Speaker 2: It was a special bus they were running.
Speaker 3: There are no buses from Muskegan out west. None. You
told me your mother is sick. Would you take your
sick mother on a five day bus ride?
Speaker 7: All right?
Speaker 2: Who do you want me to say?
Speaker 3: What do you want me to do? Who was it
took Doug's head in his lap and said, Doug, Oh, Doug,
who was it?
Speaker 2: You know who it was?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 3: Who was with you?
Speaker 2: I was alone?
Speaker 3: Who was the third guy?
Speaker 10: I was alone?
Speaker 3: You crazy kids? You the cold you've got for yourself. Look,
it's perfectly obvious what happened. You and Gates agreed that
if there was any trouble, you would swear you were
with each other from ten o'clock on. You know what
Gates said, He said, he met you at the trading
post at one o'clock. Don't you see what he's doing.
I was with him from ten o'clock on. He's gonna
make you and Doug the four guys, and he walks
out of it clean herd blisten to me. Those three
men who identified you, they saw Gates and it didn't register.
They didn't identify him. Think about how he left Doug there.
Think about that Doug was dead and.
Speaker 2: Gates kip yelling how he tore his new seventy five
dollars prod check.
Speaker 3: Now you're being smart, and as you expect, of course,
he's disappeared. Gates. He put his knife in and disappeared.
But this kind always leaves a trail living this kind
of life. They ruin others on the way to the
latest ruination. And you find one such person, a twenty
sixth girl, a dice girl who opens her mouth with
extraordinary pleasure.
Speaker 9: In my time, I've been taken, but never by such
a lout.
Speaker 3: Where is he now?
Speaker 9: Was walking around till yesterday saying how he put the
squeegee on the Grimko brothers, how Doug got killed in
herb he was taking the wrap and he was worse
than Scott Free. You know what that loss does, sells,
heistlesssstless sure cases.
Speaker 3: Businessman.
Speaker 9: You know what time they close their places, and how
much cash they got when they played porcocessions, the stakes,
things like that. Then he sells them lists well, left
us hold the list of the Grimco brothers cut. Then
he cuts himself in the deal and gets paid.
Speaker 2: From both ends.
Speaker 3: That's a nice kind of louse.
Speaker 9: Where is he, mister with the greatest of pleasure, With
the greatest of pleasure thirteen sixteenth seven avenue take him good.
Speaker 3: The taking, with the help of Captain Michael's is an
easy matter. The breakdown is easy too, because his car
was seen the witnesses who placed Herby placed Gates two
at the trading post at twelve, and the list, the
heist list, undoubtedly kept for later resale, was found in
the thick wallet. But the ease came really in the
words of Herbie Grimcoll I.
Speaker 2: Do hereby acknowledge that this confession is made of my
own free will, without coercion, without promises of any kind
of immunity. My brother dug in me invest the gates
and the hold up of a house on Adam Street,
and things went wrong, Just as one of the fellows
in the card game for Sanity had three of a kind.
Speaker 3: Three of a kind. The brother was the hood and
shot and got shot, the blind, pilpy heist salesman who
betrayed his own accomplices, and the kid who never had
a chance and never would again. They were different, but
also the same, three of a kind.
Speaker 5: Now we read you that telegram from William Dardy of
the Chicago Sun Times.
Speaker 3: Brother of dead gangster Tonight's Big Story, was found guilty
and sent us to twenty years. The highest salesman Gates,
also got twenty years and another term of twenty five
to forty years for armed robbery. Both are still in
the Julia penitentiary and so ends another Big Story. 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.
Speaker 10: Reporter welcome back.
Speaker 1: Well, this was one of those instances where I definitely
clocked who our lead was. Bill was of course played
by Les Damon. Also in the cast Ruth Yorky, Holly Bester,
Betty Jane Tyler, Al Rampsen, Melruick, Bob Reddick, and of
course John Gibson. Now, according to the Stories behind the
Big Story website by doctor Joe Webb, this event occurred
in nineteen forty seven, and one thing the radio show
actually downplays, which probably made it more of an interesting story,
was that this was a poker game party where there
were thirty people present. There were actually two people at
the party killed who attendees in one of the bandits,
but the dead bandit's identity leading to the arrest of
his brother, was true. One remained at large for a
good amount of time, more than a year and a
half afterwards, Albert Hordeci. He was caught and tried in
nineteen forty nine for one of the murders and then
convicted of the second murder in December nineteen fifty And
there were actually six Doherty brothers who worked as reporters
in Chicago. An interesting story overall, and it illustrates how
the stories on The Big Story can be different than
what you'll hear on other detective programs due to the
real life nature. Because in any fictional detective it would
be a case where the kid in jail didn't do it,
but nope, the reporter gave it his best shot. But
you can't do much when someone and at telling you
the truth. Well, now it's time to thank our Patreon
supporter of the day, and I want to thank Jeff,
Patreon supporter since October twenty fifteen, 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, Jeff,
and 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.
Speaker 3: My baitware, Oh my lord, you know, big girl and
a race.
Speaker 7: And I walk out and a man grabs me, miss
me drop things.
Speaker 2: He brings me here.
Speaker 3: Why tell me what crime I've come in? And tell me?
Speaker 11: You passed a bill in a bank early this afternoon,
mister Grace, one thousand dollars bill?
Speaker 10: Where'd you get it?
Speaker 3: I got it the banks. It was good, didn't they?
Speaker 10: Then?
Speaker 3: Who are you have to stick your nosey? And I
got it.
Speaker 11: We're a man who sweats for everything he gets. How
much sweat for that thousand, mister Grace? A bill the
bank recognized from serial numbers as one from a five
year old payroll robbery where a pay messenger was murdered.
How much sweat for it? Mister Gray?
Speaker 3: You know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: I bought it.
Speaker 3: I bought it from a man on forty fifteen Broadway.
He said I could have it for two hundred and
fifty dollars.
Speaker 11: I laughed in his face, But you bought it and
so well.
Speaker 3: I laughed in his face at first, but when he
said he'd go to the bank with me and proved
to me it was good.
Speaker 11: This man was he less chaining.
Speaker 3: I don't know who he was.
Speaker 2: I never saw him before.
Speaker 11: Maybe I can freshen it for you. Mister Grace. Cheney
was a man we believed responsible for the robbery and murder.
We couldn't prove it though. We never found the money,
but he was set up for a possession of narcotics.
Speaker 3: He's out now. Less Cheney tell you that, I don't.
Speaker 2: Know maybe it was him. I told you I never
saw the man before. A thousand dollars almost nothing, wouldn't
you have bought it.
Speaker 7: Let's pretend you're friends.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll be with us then. In the meantime,
send your comments to Box thirteen at Greatdetectives 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.