The Big Dance

Originally Aired: January 18, 1951

Dragnet #84, "The Big Dance," finds Sergeant Joe Friday and his partner Ben Romero tracking a pair of brutal young holdup men who have terrorized Los Angeles with 23 robberies in three months. The detectives are pulled from a quiet Sunday morning breakfast at Friday's apartment when another vicious crime occurs at a small newsstand on South Grand and Colonial. The victims are John and Madeline Wilden, an aging couple running a modest newspaper stand near a church. Mrs. Wilden is carried away unconscious, her face brutally beaten, while her husband struggles to explain what happened when he returned from getting change and discovered the robbery in progress.

The holdup men fit the familiar pattern: two young men in their late teens or early twenties, one with red hair and another with dark hair, both willing to use shocking violence for small amounts of money. As Friday and Romero investigate the scene and question the shaken Mr. Wilden, they piece together the details of an attack that exemplifies the senseless brutality these young criminals bring to every job. The detectives face the challenge of stopping these unpredictable bandits before they strike again.

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