The Big Present

Originally Aired: November 24, 1953

Dragnet #223, "The Big Present," finds Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Frank Smith working burglary detail on a puzzling string of market break-ins that has plagued Los Angeles for two months. With eighteen stores hit and no solid leads, the detectives consult Sergeant Lindsay Simmons at the Georgia Street Juvenile Bureau, suspecting their thief might be a youngster. The evidence points in that direction: empty milk bottles left at every scene, only petty cash and candy taken, and most tellingly, the burglar enters through impossibly small openings measuring just nine by fourteen inches. When another market is hit—this time Marty Derabertos' small Italian delicatessen on Broadway—Friday and Smith arrive to find the same pattern: entry through a tiny rear window, stolen cigarettes and candy, and the telltale milk bottle on the counter.

As Ray Pinker and the crime lab crew dust for prints that once again yield nothing, Friday and Smith face a familiar frustration. They need to catch this elusive thief before he strikes again, but with no physical evidence and a suspect who can slip through spaces no adult could manage, they're running out of options.

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