The Big Winchester

Originally Aired: August 16, 1951

Dragnet #114, "The Big Winchester," Sergeant Joe Friday is pulled away from his annual physical exam when his partner Ben Romero calls about a suspicious death in the Westlake Park area. An elderly man named Martin Latimer, a 68-year-old retired grocery store owner, has been found dead in his living room with a bullet wound in his chest. At first glance, the scene appears to be a suicide, with a Winchester rifle elaborately wired to a chair and connected by string to the victim's finger, but Officer Harkness from the radio car patrol has his doubts.

As Friday and Romero examine the scene, the evidence reveals troubling inconsistencies. The trajectory of the bullet doesn't match the supposed suicide setup. The slug passed through Latimer's body but the bullet hole in the wall is in the wrong location, several feet off from where it should be based on the rifle's position. What initially looked like an elaborate suicide arrangement begins to appear more like a carefully staged murder scene, and Friday and Romero must piece together what really happened.

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