It was Friday, August 17th, and hot in Los Angeles when Sergeant Joe Friday and his partner Ben Romero picked up the robbery detail no cop wants: a store clerk shot dead because he didn’t empty the till fast enough. Burt Matthews died in front of a co-worker who could describe the gunman’s build and his nervous twitch, even the way the getaway taxi’s doors swung open, but not much else. Within days, six more armed robberies hit the city, each one ending the same way: the bandit backing out the door and vanishing into a waiting cab.
The break came out of the crime lab, where two different .38 revolvers turned up tied to two different killings, and out of a stack of 87 photographs pulled from every taxi company in town. A frightened eyewitness finally put a name to a face, but it was a stranger’s newborn daughter, traced through a job application and a hospital’s birth records, who led Friday and Romero to a bedroom on the edge of Beverly Hills, where the case ended the way so many Dragnet cases did: quietly, and with a confession neither man wanted to give.
Episode Quotes
“It’s cold logic that every suspect who’s armed in the commission of a robbery is a potential killer.” – Sergeant Friday
“Keep a gun in there. You know how many cab drivers get shot. A guy can’t be too careful.” – Ralph Tobin
Radio Archaeology is a Vancouver Island podcast celebrating the Golden Age of Radio through classic broadcasts including Gunsmoke, Dragnet and other timeless radio dramas while exploring the history of vintage broadcasting and storytelling. Radio Archaeology is part of The PULSE Podcast Community.
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