The Big Eavesdrop

Originally Aired: December 14, 1952

Dragnet #182, "The Big Eavesdrop," finds Sergeants Joe Friday and Frank Smith working the narcotics detail when they stake out the 617 Club on Pico and Clemens to intercept a big heroin buy. While waiting in an adjacent booth, the detectives overhear a conversation between two men that changes the direction of their investigation entirely. One man mentions killing an old lady in San Francisco, prompting Friday and Smith to abandon their drug case and follow the suspects. They trail a man named Sam Allison to a hotel on West 6th Street, while Frank pursues the second suspect but loses him in the darkness.

The investigation intensifies when Friday contacts Inspector Charlie Sutton in San Francisco and learns about an unsolved murder from January 15th—a woman robbed and beaten to death in the Land's End area. When the detectives confront Allison in his hotel room the next morning, he claims he was merely in the bar and denies any knowledge of a killing. As Friday and Smith press their suspect about his activities in San Francisco and his relationship with the mysterious second man, Allison grows increasingly evasive about what he does for a living and where he was in January.

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