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. Also, I do want to encourage you to
check out our other podcast, and today I'm calling out
The Great Adventurers of Old Time Radio, which is nearing
its one hundredth episode. You can find it at Great
Adventures or info. But now from November twenty ninth, nineteen
fifty here is Killer with the mind of a.
Speaker 2: Little boy.
Speaker 3: Going for just going lit a brunch.
Speaker 4: Hi, I just do a good day with you. I
think really good.
Speaker 3: Oh come on, stop a car.
Speaker 5: I don't want to be late for the show.
Speaker 3: I like calling the little brunch.
Speaker 6: I like you.
Speaker 7: I used to watch your house when you went out
with other men. Now you're with you blinds. Could you
could I lean my head in the two shoulder just
for a minute.
Speaker 3: You're crazy.
Speaker 7: I knew I should never have given you a day,
and you kept testing and testing like a kid.
Speaker 3: Ither one get away from the interview. Say you're long,
make me you.
Speaker 6: Make me sick?
Speaker 3: Let me.
Speaker 8: Salt Lake City.
Speaker 3: You talk on the pages of a salt Lake City Tribune.
The story of a reporter when enough about children to
catch a triplet.
Speaker 8: Salt Lake City. The story is that actually happens?
Speaker 7: Yeah, Johnson's story as he lived it, as you t
I Johnson, the part of.
Speaker 3: The salt Lake City Tribune. Dive along the main highway
to bring hogm in the salt Lake City.
Speaker 8: Everything seems just right.
Speaker 3: A new Green Tadan. You're diving, you're spect.
Speaker 8: To the fact.
Speaker 5: Is warm and a lie, and everything along the road
is a.
Speaker 3: Familiar to you as a hat on your head.
Speaker 8: It ought to be.
Speaker 7: This is your deep You just passed through the Mormon town.
If he's helpful, ways a few friends, and now about.
Speaker 5: A mile past you decided to stop.
Speaker 3: You are that's a great report?
Speaker 8: Looking for a story? Now, I think you might.
Speaker 3: If your mother in law yet it died.
Speaker 5: And left your buzzy lives.
Speaker 8: Will beat you follow up.
Speaker 6: Now I driving a new car.
Speaker 5: Oh like a fine let's.
Speaker 3: They driving out of even my ship?
Speaker 2: Sure s time of the years, your eyes, great time
of the year to be alive.
Speaker 8: With the gas defendant.
Speaker 7: But at that very moment, back in these helpfold as
a man who thought of the world and.
Speaker 3: A half night of dust. The man slowly drag plans
for Open's body, for the field of the ball dry grass.
You don't want to break the grass when he.
Speaker 6: There, Josh, he's dragging comes flow.
Speaker 5: I can't see him clearly.
Speaker 3: He's in a shadow.
Speaker 6: Here you what are you doing? At you?
Speaker 3: I'm casting it all now he's.
Speaker 7: You're back on the highland off yea, on your way
to thought.
Speaker 3: Like At first, you don't notice.
Speaker 2: It's the road.
Speaker 3: It's strange lands.
Speaker 8: They're mat of fact. You don't know if.
Speaker 3: Anything I'm gonna suddenly here You look at the aware
of your mirror. They might they have to somebody else.
What you see your mirror makes you slam your right
now the two supers guns along on you. Okay, you'll
step up and don't try anything. It's trying out, love,
Carl Rifling. What's the matter, g You're lucky, jes you
hadn't stopped right off. We just started shooting shooting your car.
He are greens are?
Speaker 8: Then they make theme.
Speaker 3: Come of the murder.
Speaker 8: You to get away.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, Carl what murderer?
Speaker 5: Back in eat hopeful some of just kill three people?
Speaker 3: Really listen, I can't let you go any farnt of
this car. You're greens are then? Oh, I guess you
better follow.
Speaker 8: Us back to eat, Hopeful.
Speaker 3: You'll follow in the wake of the children, the.
Speaker 7: Warm, living sunset they suddenly turned into a frightening purple
and black sky. A nice time to be alive and
to become a time of set. You drive back and
eat helpful. Everything seems to have lost this familiar loves
everything of fear. Maybe there's death striking three times, but fitn't.
Maybe it was a spell. Never lose at least street somewhere.
You can feel it, even here in the chief's office.
Nobody got to look at him too.
Speaker 6: Nope.
Speaker 3: If we found Blanche Wilson, George nell As, you're.
Speaker 8: Called dead, I phone for roadblocks up and down.
Speaker 5: Figure you'll catch him before.
Speaker 8: The night time.
Speaker 2: Isn't uh? Isn't there anything else? You don't even know
if anybody can do? Sorry, wait, I can't make it
any more.
Speaker 8: Exciting for it.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I didn't mean exact way, chief, that's all right?
Oh well, yeah, I almost forgot. That's talk at Blanche
Wilson's daughter Jenny or what you have to say? Nothing,
he was out when whoever it was called on Blanche.
Speaker 7: Oh, doesn't anybody in town have any ideas.
Speaker 8: That who he is?
Speaker 3: Nope, everybody don't know though, since we're catching.
Speaker 5: Look, Chief, I'm I'm a reporter.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 3: I know it would be stupid of me to go
streching around in my own car. But couldn't you know?
Speaker 8: Okay't at all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I least behind today. I find some checkers on
the board.
Speaker 8: We can play a bit if.
Speaker 3: You laid it on. We go out together and taken
the ground. You know, Chief Palace as well as he
knows you see Johnson, And it takes you just about
ten seconds to figure out what the old man is
up to me. He knows there are.
Speaker 7: Hundreds of men out there in the dark with gune.
He knows that you are a reporter might very easily
get in the way of a bullet said. You decide
to go looking for the night by yourself.
Speaker 8: So in his own neat.
Speaker 3: Way, he has just trapped.
Speaker 7: So without another car, you obviously join in the Hi.
You've played checkers for about an hour, not every tick
of the old clock and chief palace is offered.
Speaker 3: You get to feeling more jumpy and more help work.
Speaker 7: Finally, no more chief to bed, going to live and
walk around town, get some background material.
Speaker 3: I don't have my story already. When you catch the murderer.
Well do you think I'm going? I thought i'd have
a talk a branch.
Speaker 5: Wilson's daughter Jenny.
Speaker 3: Y, Jenny, have your right?
Speaker 9: This just happen.
Speaker 8: You'd be nice?
Speaker 6: What's coming over to?
Speaker 3: Sure? Need any one to do.
Speaker 5: What you read?
Speaker 10: Your boss?
Speaker 3: Hello?
Speaker 6: H Jenny there, I'll.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 6: Hello.
Speaker 3: Hello? Is that you? Jenny?
Speaker 5: Jenny is your mother?
Speaker 8: There?
Speaker 3: Jenny is your mother there?
Speaker 7: Did you see it?
Speaker 3: Mm hmm?
Speaker 8: That's too bad.
Speaker 11: I'll bet you.
Speaker 6: We don't want to talk about him for you.
Speaker 5: That's wrong.
Speaker 6: I don't call it's a stranger. I can't get.
Speaker 5: Out of Jenny.
Speaker 4: This is mister Johnson.
Speaker 5: He hit the papers.
Speaker 6: He can't invite you around the phone.
Speaker 5: He just wants to.
Speaker 8: Happen to keep me so someone.
Speaker 3: You know, Helen.
Speaker 6: I've never heard his first before.
Speaker 7: When I said offer that metal.
Speaker 6: She started to cry and he said, now you know,
how hard are you?
Speaker 8: That is weird? You have no idea how my mother.
Speaker 6: And I know many strange you should picture with the
packing to work.
Speaker 3: Oh, thanks, I won't bother you anymore.
Speaker 8: You heard.
Speaker 6: She knows a man on the phone, he sounded on
them all shouted, I've.
Speaker 3: Had some of the women in the plant. They have
told me you were Blanch Wilson. Real well, yes I did, mister.
Speaker 6: Johnson speaking in the office.
Speaker 8: Who's got in for a smoke?
Speaker 10: And who talk?
Speaker 8: Uh huh?
Speaker 3: Did she have many admirers who?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 6: Oh, she wasn't bad. She just like growing out that.
Speaker 3: That's the parking lot out that window, isn't it?
Speaker 7: Uh huh?
Speaker 8: Belongs to the plants.
Speaker 3: In the same time, I imagine you can see clear
over to the gate there. Couldn't you clear over to
the cafe, couldn't you?
Speaker 8: That's my job?
Speaker 7: Yeah, uh huh.
Speaker 3: I can see right out to the gates to the cafe.
I haven't see a green sedan waiting for Blanche.
Speaker 10: You.
Speaker 3: No, well, I won't bother you anymore, like thanks anytime?
Speaker 6: Yes, the way he said, admire kind of fee me wrong?
Speaker 5: What do you mean, well, all of a sud.
Speaker 7: It wasn't a boyfriend of Blanche.
Speaker 3: Just so I didn't think of him when you fell.
Speaker 8: That's a battle clown.
Speaker 3: He used to wait for Blanche regularly.
Speaker 7: At the gate.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, he never would have gone out with him.
Speaker 5: Why well, whyn't used to laugh about him?
Speaker 11: Well, if you were a woman, mister Johnson, you'd understand.
Speaker 6: I don't think he's important.
Speaker 3: Anything might be important, believe me. What what was wrong
with him?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: He begger for a date, but it was more like
he was just begging to be looked at. Oh that
sounds wrong.
Speaker 8: Well, sometimes nothing.
Speaker 10: Sometimes he just laughs and he'd walk off slowly to
the by himself.
Speaker 3: Sometimes thanks, thanks awful.
Speaker 6: Lot, knowing that that little clown that never even struck me.
Speaker 3: Like a man, like.
Speaker 10: A love little boy.
Speaker 7: It's almost eleven at night when you leave the packing
clam you had.
Speaker 3: Across the black and they spread at a cafe A
love little boy. Little boy cried twice though.
Speaker 7: Wherey you've heard that description and your mind is founding
hard that the.
Speaker 8: Meaning inscribed that description.
Speaker 3: And at the moment that Joe left with that question,
about twenty miles away, a mother and her son frond
their way home from a church social O my.
Speaker 10: Hand, Jaffer Roby crosses.
Speaker 9: Yet This is Sar Harris returning it to your marriagor
and the big story of T. R.
Speaker 7: Johnson as he lived it and piled it. R. Johnson
of the Star Lake City, could bill who they had
to suddenly appeared in the personality of a lost little
boy earlier tonight in the Mormon town of the Polpful. Yes,
struck three times, he vanished in the greens the Dan.
But you've heard the possable killer described as being like
a little boy who is sometimes going to the cafe itself.
Speaker 3: And now you're at the counter of that very can.
Speaker 7: What a bp frothy gray Spratt. I've got a fleet
roll to go with, no thanks, just coffee. Getting a
story on the killing, right, if I can get enough
to write about wrote with every pair of pants in
the county, something around.
Speaker 8: With a gun.
Speaker 7: Seemed to me they kill a proper fellow by now
that happens further heard and they packed out. Which a
branch is is my ilas had himself a new dream to.
Speaker 3: Dan, how about you? Me?
Speaker 5: What about me?
Speaker 7: Looking out of this to say window here you could
just see any of Branch's boyfriends waiting at the gate
for us.
Speaker 3: And you don't have a dream.
Speaker 5: To Dan, maybe you're right at that's here.
Speaker 3: I don't recall one race. You remember A fat little
fellow used to hang around pressing.
Speaker 8: Blands for a day him.
Speaker 3: Sure, boys, it true for a man that's side of
wherever it is they.
Speaker 5: Make you boys.
Speaker 3: I used to come in here regularly, either before I
after branch of brush hims, and he'd always ask.
Speaker 5: The same thing. He got a son, that son?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I say you sure any turn a serious as
a preacher hadn't been paid any years.
Speaker 5: Lecture me what on? Don't make your son sadness?
Speaker 3: Freedom shouldn't change.
Speaker 7: Funny thing about that fat little fellow. You must have
had a poor memory. I els the subject was on.
Speaker 6: His mind every time he'd come in, same question.
Speaker 3: Yes, every little thing sounds cool to me.
Speaker 7: I don't know such a good naked cloud. Please tell
me did you ever get a good look at his car?
Go on to uh, don't tell me suspect that little man.
I was nothing but an overgratiflator thinks back, did you ever.
Speaker 5: See his car?
Speaker 8: Car?
Speaker 3: Paw car?
Speaker 7: I get me a lift one with a greencident M nice?
Speaker 5: Thanks?
Speaker 7: Yeah, wait, he couldn't have done it he was.
Speaker 12: Like a kid.
Speaker 3: You rush out of the cafe married for the midnight streets.
The chief parros is offered to you at the moment.
Speaker 7: The murderers now they object. The teeth chase one along
the dark highway, my men with gun. The other is
going on inside your own mind. Three times now you've
heard him described as a little bore. Desperately you keep
dropping for the conclusion. You know it's hidden somewhere in
your own mind, like the murder himself. The complosion keeps
slipping away, escaping. If you're not play of mind. That's
just talking to the police chief.
Speaker 8: Stop where it been.
Speaker 7: It doesn't rolling up and down the road shooting in
every woman. He's seen the dead, thy winded already on.
Speaker 8: No, what's small? We've lost them. No, I could chill
him with my own hand.
Speaker 7: What do you say he's lost. He's still in the
area somewhere. Can't you see he's just playing for nose
in your face? I plains, that's not here on my desk.
The Paul Free Sudents just play close to autumn, often
to big city. If I were a letter, that's right
hat to a big thing.
Speaker 3: To lose myself.
Speaker 8: That's way.
Speaker 7: He must be right now heading in to Agen. That's
not why not cheek. Look you got the new shootings
marked one, two three the line. The line is from
tak itself. I don't know what's drive in those three
shootings from alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah you see it now. The murderer isn't heading into Ogden.
He's heading back this way, heading back this way. Why citties,
that's what I've been trying to fit a bender in
my mind. Shoo, listen to me. I'm not fantasy psychologist,
but you don't you put up not seem to sit
in his clothes.
Speaker 3: I don't know what's that's talking about this.
Speaker 2: Time to night I heard people describe the man, and
every one of them was the same words, like a
little boy. So yeah, that's mad man about shouting up
the country guide.
Speaker 5: I can't take hre out of it.
Speaker 3: An every woman and that I'm not gonna talked to
him said the same thing, like a little boy.
Speaker 2: I love little boy. Oh it was maybe thirty Dan
person was forty five. He wouldn't want to like them, mom.
He wanted there like a tod wants his mother. All right,
I've heard him. I know you have him I'm only
telling you all this because I need your help. Great
Julbert that very definitely identified to meet him furtherest. He
said he dragged a great at all. He dragging to
his face before I.
Speaker 10: Got got here.
Speaker 5: Don't you see? See he's like a chaw, a lunatic child.
Speaker 3: Dance must have given him a boat and didn't got
destructed with him.
Speaker 5: So he had a temper like a kid.
Speaker 2: I mean, he takes it was a murderous lunatic cancer
and it's still going on, but it's wearing hawk. That's
why he's had him bout to Swis, because that's what
a kid does when a Campton wear a golf he
comes back to see how much damage he's downed to
get a punishment. Okay, I can't he I think you're right.
That's where I watched for there in the Chief's office.
We're absolutely sure of yourself. And now I'm sitting in
the chief car. Most of you are nerves is gone.
We've both decided if the best way to watch at
the cafe. You can see the chief next to you
doing the little patience After all. H. G. R.
Speaker 7: Johnson A reported from Saltmake City there suddenly started figuring
that the.
Speaker 3: Involved mind of a lunatic.
Speaker 8: There known.
Speaker 3: For And I'm going back to the officer. Don't he
all right? I'm standing watch out here, and the streaking
right good good at the city. Think do you want
to think?
Speaker 11: That's all right?
Speaker 8: Back to a later.
Speaker 3: Now you're alone all along the waiting in the autumnce,
show the president your reserve of confidence.
Speaker 13: To begin the feelings of school, cold lonely school, we
decide to warm up a bit by walking quickly.
Speaker 5: Around the block.
Speaker 3: Nothing to lose because the cards up in the stillness
of the night had.
Speaker 8: Here at a meaning.
Speaker 3: We start walking, hoping, hoping that something will happen the
food that you.
Speaker 13: Are not a fool.
Speaker 4: It should cold.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah it is.
Speaker 3: I think that's getting a brook if they don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, got out of hud.
Speaker 3: A group of ship down.
Speaker 5: How I come?
Speaker 8: How?
Speaker 3: I don't how you drive up?
Speaker 13: I got a little old show myself called that so
h my looking out the window.
Speaker 5: Look, bay, I didn't realize.
Speaker 3: Hello, what at your audience?
Speaker 11: I add, I don't know. Okay, you're so good asome cock.
I guess I was looking a long time, and then
the older and you didn't much and we would you
like any happy.
Speaker 8: H thank you.
Speaker 4: Being had a son? Yeah, I didn't. That's the sounds
sad set him moves them things I do, I make
you talking? I n proper grows, okay, I should I
like to?
Speaker 13: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Should get me to beat up? Not a thing that
rolls along proper grows now for the first time. Because
he came to the packing the first thing then just
put in her hand.
Speaker 8: Fell.
Speaker 3: We can just stop in front of.
Speaker 8: A coupling fast to the blue.
Speaker 2: Anything wrong goes and I'll go to cracking in a minute.
One off, I said that Monday handed and the boat
the sun saying I'm not looking at the pop.
Speaker 8: Icist fellow goes to fuss and see.
Speaker 10: Don't get gas. I have a play before you. It's
this concession all now, yeah, I've got your concession. Worn't nice?
Speaker 1: So what is other?
Speaker 10: Be nice to me?
Speaker 8: It was.
Speaker 5: Some little to get easy that.
Speaker 3: I would us that telegram from pre armpon of a
tall lead.
Speaker 2: At style of matter Internet take story with ACTI editor
in secting whether as the dating the sentence him for life.
Speaker 8: To the sight of sidn.
Speaker 3: He died two years later.
Speaker 5: In order to.
Speaker 13: Protest the names of people about above will not name
it the ball park. If he's gone to take him
the train could be attacting to the hoof paper reporter,
good story, that's.
Speaker 11: Education, welcome back.
Speaker 1: Well, now let me go ahead and we'll get the
rest of our cast information. Our hero, T R. Johnson
was played by John Sylvester. Also in the cast were
Gene Robin, Agnes Young, Amzi Strickland, Joan shay Owen, Jordan
Merril Jones, and Les Damon. Now, our story tonight was
about an obsessed and stunted local man who was generally
marked as a loser and got a date with a
local woman named Blanche and murdered her and then went
on a big murder spree. And all of that is correct,
except the man was not local, the woman didn't agree
to a date with him, and he didn't have creepy
mommy issues. But the woman's name was Blanche. I mean,
if you're going to say we changed the names, why
did you leave the name of the victim the same?
But we do know the story upon which this was based,
thanks once again to the ever vigilant doctor Joseph Webb
writing on these stories behind the big story and the
person who did this came to town using the name
George Ruffledge. He was a San Diego butcher. His real
name at birth was Pascal Boyer, and he grew up
in Missouri and he lost his parents. His father died
when he was four, and then his mother away when
he was fifteen, and then he married. He ran a
grocery young ran a grocery store and had marital problems,
started drinking, tried to commit suicide, and then they moved
to Colorado, changed their names, and then moved to California.
And then he got a job in construction and some
scaffolding fell on him. And after that point he had
injuries that were or he had actions that we would
now associate with some sort of traumatic brain injury web rights.
There were a series of incidents, some innocent and some not,
where he forgot significant things that he had done to others,
one of which was beating his wife. Doctors told him
he was doing too much and was burning the candle
at both ends. The problem with forgetfulness of even the
most recent personal and events persisted. In court testimony. His
wife related that he would sometimes forget he was living
her asking when she arrived in town. They moved from
Colorado to Wyoming. He developed crime fits in addition to amnesia,
and had persistent exhaustion. He also suffered from epileptic auto motonism,
which are behaviors that occur during a seizure. Bab Right's
little was known about brain injuries in the nineteen thirties.
In today's imaging and other technologies may have diagnosed the
extent and nature of its particular problems and led to
management of his condition. So this may have been a
case where these deaths were caused by the fact that
this man had an injury that the medicine of his
day just could not understand, and as a result, it
ended in tragedy. Now, since it was unexplained, I said, yeah,
let's just go ahead and make up this story about
the whole mother's fixation. It'd be great for radio. Also
had to chuckle a bit at the narration because the
way that it stated is this reporter keeps thinking, well,
we're I'm going to this Mormon town and the idea
of Mormon country from the reporter's perspective. The thing is
that from the perspective of a reporter in Utah in
the nineteen thirties, Utah was about seventy percent Mormon, and
the rural counties and small towns of Utah were more
LDS than the rest of the state. And that's still
the case. The rural counties in Utah have a much
higher percentage of LDS adherents than the rest of the state.
And the idea of driving through like every single town
in Utah and there's a Mormon town in the nineteen thirties,
it's just it reminds me of a cartoon where a
very strange family played spot the car by not like
spotting the red car the blue car, but spotting any car.
So for audiences in Utah, this might have been some
odd choice of language, though they were probably used to it,
and I think it was meant to draw a dramatic
image based on the idea that people had about Utah.
This happened in a close knit community that's very wholesome,
where everybody knows everybody else's name. That's the sort of
image that Utah evoked at the time, and so that
was the word picture being drawn for the rest of
the country, even though it didn't make much sense the
way that it was stated in the episode. Now we
turn to listener comments and feedback, and we start with
an email from Derek, who writes on the Latest Big Story.
You mentioned programs based on real events, including The Big Story,
Tales of the Texas Rangers, Dragon Nats, and also The
Silent Men. First question, are there any others you can
think of? And second question can you rank them in
your opinion? Who gets it closest to the most accurate
and to the least accurate? Well, I did find a list.
There are some shows that are listed that I probably
wouldn't include, but the ones I would include, I couldn't
think of any that were not on this list. Calling
All Cars, which was a program from the thirties that
dramatized true police cases the FBI in p War and
This Is Your FBI, both of which dramatized cases from
the FBI. True Detective Mysteries which was based on stories
from true crime magazines, and then there was Unsolved Mysteries,
not to be confused with the later Robert Stack program.
We've played a couple episodes on the old time radio
snack Wagon, then Tales of the Texas Rangers, not watch
twenty First Precinct, True Adventures of the Junior g Men,
and I would also add Gangbosters and Unit ninety nine. Now,
I think you kind of have to take Unit ninety
nine and not Watch as being a very separate thing,
because these were essentially a record boards of policemen actually
out on calls. It was like Cops, but over radio
or not scripted at all. I do feel I can't
give you a full answer to the question, though, because
most of these series I have encountered, but I think
to list them all in order it would require having
listened to them in enough depth that you could definitively
and intellectually explain why you thought. If you did that,
the FBI in Peace and War was a more realistic
series than Calling All Cars. It's also hard to measure
the accuracy of an entire series, particularly when a lot
of it might be missing. Although I guess, in my opinion,
there's one clear winner and leader in the category, and
that's Dragnant. I think there are many ways that Dragnet wins,
and that's not because they don't occasionally change facts to
suit the needs to simplify the case to get it
to air, or to ensure they don't lose their audience,
or whatever other reason. Where I think Dragnet wins. If
I were to put to the one central fact, it
is what they say at the start of the episode,
you will walk step by step on the side of
the law to an actual case from police files, and
that following this from the side of the law means
approaching the case differently. A lot of these true time programs,
particularly in the pre Dragnet era, would spend a lot
of time with the criminals and focusing on their side
of the operation rather than looking at how police or
the FBI were able to track them down. You see
the problem with this when you reach an episode where
all the criminals involved in all potential weaknesses ended up dying.
It just becomes readily apparent those scenes are based on
dramatic imagination, and really in most episodes that would be
the case, with writers imagining what the criminals would or
did say based on at best educated guesses. Because I
think most of these programs focused on the idea that
crimes were interesting, that true crimes, things that actually happened,
and crimes that were committed that shock people. That's interesting,
and I think that by and large there's a sort
of hotened level to the performances and the writing to
make it dramatic. It's not always bad, but because so
much of it is dedicated to making up or imagining
what the criminals might or could have said, it's hard
to say that it resembles reality much, particularly in episodes
where that takes up, you know, more than half the
running time. What Dragnett decided was that the investigation itself
was interesting. The process by which police catch criminals is interesting,
and there is drama in that and around that, and
the great advantage of telling the story of the investigation
and that being the core, is that we do have
from the police files they use to write the cases,
the actual story and evidence. Now, of course there are
changes made to that for radio, and some of it is,
as the opening said, to protect the innocent, some is
to protect the production team from lawsuits, and some is
to make the story work within the frame of a
half hour radio program that's about to Los Angeles Detectives.
So there are all sorts of changes that can be necessary,
but these tend to be on a different level than
the big story or others which go for these sort
of big sensationalist sort of inventions like he killed because
he had an unexplained mother fixation, and while I think
once the show gets going, tells The Texas Rangers tends
to be really good, and it is, let's be clear,
still a great program in terms of realism. We begin
most episodes with the crime occurring, oftentimes with dialogue. They
would have no way of knowing that this was what
was said, and I think the purpose of those sort
of scenes is to be this sort of big, melodramatic
attention grammar, but it's not often to the benefit of accuracy.
Now shows I think can be a bit inaccurate and
still reflects some of the truth of what happened, or
quite a bit. But I would tend to give Dragnet
the Knowed and the Silent Men I will I don't
think there's enough episodes for us to really evaluate that
at scale. It would be fascinating to hear if there
have been more episodes made in this series, because when
we were comparing The Silent Men to The Big Story
and Tales of the Texas Rangers, it's not a fair comparison.
With the case of the Big Story, you're dealing with
a series that ran on radio for more than seven years.
Dragon at more than six years, Texas Tales of the
Texas Rangers two years more than ninety episodes, and then
you've got The Silent Men, which just has around twenty
episodes in circulation and so didn't really have a chance
to build up. I do enjoy The Silent Men for
its dedication to the more obscure branches of government. Of course,
one disadvantage of the obscurity. It's hard to say how
one hundred percent realistic is this. I think it definitely
has a realistic feel to it, and for the very
short series it is, it's well worth a listen, and
I would encourage listeners who didn't catch it the first
time to go check it out. Now it's time to
thank our Patreon supporter of the day, and I want
to go ahead and think thank you to Calleen, Patreon
supporter since March of twenty twenty one, 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, Calleen, 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 from We will be back
next Tuesday with another episode of the Big Story. But
join us back here tomorrow for Broadways. My bait where.
Speaker 12: Trying to find out for me, as Dailius, whether you
knew this man, whether you've ever talked to him, whether.
Speaker 3: There's a reason why he should be dead in front
of my door.
Speaker 8: That's right.
Speaker 12: From what I can tell, this man was beaten to death.
In the way he's lying, he probably struck his head
against this wall here where there's blood.
Speaker 6: Well, I told you, I told you all I know
about it.
Speaker 8: Tell me again. Like I was on the town, nightclubs, parties,
you know, go on life. I came home. I saw
this man, this man who's delivers milk. His identification says
his name is Raymond Grant. Do you know I'm just
talked to him. You keep asking me that I told
you that I came home and I came home alone. Yes,
I always come home alone, mister Kober's It's a good deed.
Speaker 3: I do myself whenever I go out.
Speaker 7: I came home alone and I found this man.
Speaker 8: He was dying Jesse as he is now. He went
into an apartment, called the police. Yeah, what do you do,
miss Daily? I study his tea.
Speaker 6: Mister Klover, I'm a graduate student university.
Speaker 8: How long ago did you come home, Miss Daily, I.
Speaker 7: Don't know, half hours and twenty minutes or more.
Speaker 8: I don't know about Papa. I'd say this man is
killed just a little while before you got here. Say that.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll be with us then in the meantime.
Send your comments to Box thirteen at Greatdetectives dot net,
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This is your host, Adam Graham's signing off.