Detectives on the Air

Originally Aired: October 31, 1955 Johnny Dollar #251, "The Valentine Matter Ep 1," Johnny Dollar finds himself with unexpected free time in New Orleans after a case involving a bellhop who stole a diamond necklace and ran off with the hotel manager's wife wraps up quickly. While killing time at a bar on Burgundy Street, Dollar recognizes a solitary, gray-haired man as Dan Valentine, a former proh...

Originally Aired: October 28, 1955 Johnny Dollar #250, "The Alvin Summers Matter Ep 5," Johnny Dollar finally comes face to face with the man he's been hunting. After Gloria Harris leads him to a remote jungle hut where Alvin Summers had been hiding, Johnny is confronted at gunpoint by an unseen voice in the underbrush. The mysterious stranger orders him to return to his hotel room alone within th...

Originally Aired: October 27, 1955 Johnny Dollar #249, "The Alvin Summers Matter Ep 4," Johnny Dollar confronts Gloria Harris after catching her searching his hotel room. What started as a romantic evening takes a dark turn when Gloria reveals she's been stranded in Santo Tomas, Mexico for four months without a passport. She knows where embezzler Alvin Summers is hiding and offers Johnny a deal: h...

Originally Aired: October 26, 1955 Johnny Dollar #248, "The Alvin Summers Matter Ep 3," finds freelance insurance investigator Johnny Dollar in deep trouble with the Santo Tomas police. Lieutenant Gomez brings Johnny in for questioning about the murder of Benito the bellboy, whose throat was slashed in Johnny's hotel room. While Johnny has an alibi courtesy of Gloria Harris, he reveals his true pu...

Originally Aired: October 25, 1955 Johnny Dollar #247, "The Alvin Summers Matter Ep 2," Johnny Dollar continues his investigation in Santo Tomas, Mexico, searching for embezzler Alvin Summers. After being beaten in his hotel room by a muscle-bound thug warning him to leave town, Johnny meets the mysterious Gloria on the terrace of the upscale Playa del Mar hotel. She seems unusually interested in...

Originally Aired: October 24, 1955 Johnny Dollar #246, "The Alvin Summers Matter Ep 1," Johnny Dollar receives a puzzling assignment from Fred Wilkins at Northeastern Fidelity. Six months ago, Alvin Summers embezzled $75,000 and disappeared, leaving the insurance company on the hook for the bond. Now someone has called from Santo Tomas, a sleepy fishing village on the west coast of Mexico, claimin...

Originally Aired: October 21, 1955 Johnny Dollar #245, "The Chesapeake Fraud Matter Ep 5," Johnny Dollar receives urgent news from Pat Kelleher in Baltimore: Frank Bowers and George Hanley, one of Pat's operatives who was watching Bowers, have both been shot dead. Johnny had been investigating whether Bowers was actually John Reardon, a man supposedly dead for five years with a $20,000 insurance c...

Originally Aired: October 20, 1955 Johnny Dollar #244, "The Chesapeake Fraud Matter Ep 4," Johnny receives a telegram from Pat Kelleher at the Universal Adjustment Bureau ordering him to close the case and come home from Denver. The fingerprints prove that Frank Bowers is not the supposedly dead John Riordan, but Johnny refuses to give up. Despite the evidence and warnings from his private detecti...

Originally Aired: October 19, 1955 Johnny Dollar #243, "The Chesapeake Fraud Matter Ep 3," Johnny Dollar continues his investigation into whether John Reardon, supposedly killed in an accident, is actually alive in Denver using the name Frank Bowers. After Elizabeth Reardon discovers her late husband might still be alive, Johnny meets with Hugh Bryan, who provides crucial evidence including Reardo...

Originally Aired: October 18, 1955 Johnny Dollar #242, "The Chesapeake Fraud Matter Ep 2," Johnny Dollar continues investigating the suspicious death of John Reardon, who allegedly died in a boat explosion five years ago. Dollar meets with Reardon's widow Elizabeth, accepting her invitation for cocktails at her home. During their conversation, Elizabeth opens up about her troubled four-year marria...

Originally Aired: October 17, 1955 Johnny Dollar #241, "The Chesapeake Fraud Matter Ep 1," Johnny receives an urgent call from Pat Kelleher at the Universal Adjustment Bureau in Baltimore about a baffling case. Eastern Fidelity paid out twenty thousand dollars five years ago when John Reardon died in a boat explosion on Chesapeake Bay in 1950. The accident killed four people, though Reardon's body...

Originally Aired: October 14, 1955 Johnny Dollar #240, "The Molly K Matter Ep 5," Johnny Dollar believes he has finally cracked the case of the sunken Molly K. After learning that the Tokyo grain market crashed just before the ship sailed, Johnny realizes Captain Brawley isn't the saboteur. The real culprit is Dean Sutton, the shipper who stood to lose half his investment when grain prices dropped...

Originally Aired: October 13, 1955 Johnny Dollar #239, "The Molly K Matter Ep 4," Johnny Dollar finds himself under arrest, hauled in by Inspector Dan McKay on assault and battery charges filed by Captain Brawley. Dollar believes the charges are simply a delaying tactic to keep him from investigating the sinking of the Molly K. At harbor police headquarters, he lays out his theory for McKay: Brawl...

Originally Aired: October 12, 1955 Johnny Dollar #238, "The Molly K Matter Ep 3," Johnny continues his investigation into the suspicious sinking of the freighter Molly K by getting valuable testimony from Josiah Hawkins, a terrified crew member who served as ship's carpenter. Over drinks, Hawkins reveals explosive information: the ship didn't hit a derelict, but was sunk by an internal explosion....

Originally Aired: October 11, 1955 Johnny Dollar #237, "The Molly K Matter Ep 2," Johnny continues his investigation into the suspicious sinking of the freighter Molly Kay in San Francisco Harbor. When he receives a mysterious phone call from a woman asking him to meet her at Pier 29 after dark, Johnny keeps the dangerous blind date. As he approaches the Brawley Shipping Company office on the fogg...

Originally Aired: October 10, 1955 Johnny Dollar #236, "The Molly K Matter Ep 1," insurance investigator Johnny Dollar is summoned to San Francisco by his client Dave Borger to look into the suspicious sinking of the freighter Molly Kay. The vessel, insured for half a million dollars, steamed out of San Francisco Bay bound for Yokohama and went down suddenly just twenty miles off the Golden Gate....

Originally Aired: October 7, 1955 Johnny Dollar #235, "The Macormack Matter Ep 5," Johnny Dollar finds himself dodging bullets in the Bronx after receiving a tip from convict Mike Cairn about Joe Panny's connection to a jewelry heist. When Panny turns up murdered, Dollar discovers a shocking link: Panny's ex-wife Iris is now married to the robbery victim, Julian McCormick. After being shot at in a...

Originally Aired: October 6, 1955 Johnny Dollar #234, "The Macormack Matter Ep 4," Johnny Dollar investigates the murder of Joe Panny, a small-time auto thief suspected of pulling off a major safe burglary five years ago. The Harbor Patrol has recovered Panny's body, revealing he was shot from twenty feet away with a .25 caliber weapon and his feet were burned post-mortem. Johnny connects with Fra...

Originally Aired: October 5, 1955 Johnny Dollar #233, "The Macormack Matter Ep 3," Johnny continues his investigation into the $100,000 McCormick burglary from 1951, tracking down ex-convict Joe Panny, who has mysteriously disappeared after being paroled. When Johnny finds Panny's hotel room completely ransacked by a professional search and is knocked unconscious by a mysterious dark-haired woman...

Originally Aired: October 4, 1955 Johnny Dollar #232, "The Macormack Matter Ep 2," continues Johnny's investigation into a five-year-old jewelry heist. After receiving a tip from dying convict Mike Cairn about a suspect named Jojo Panty, Johnny heads to Long Island to interview Julian McCormick, despite warnings from Frank Porter at Allied Casualties that McCormick can be dangerous. At McCormick's...

Originally Aired: October 3, 1955 Johnny Dollar #231, "The Macormack Matter Ep 1," Johnny receives an urgent call from Father Taggart, a chaplain at Sing Sing prison, asking him to visit Michael Cairn, a dying inmate. Cairn is an old-time con man whom Johnny's testimony helped put behind bars years ago. Despite their history, Johnny agrees to make the trip when he learns Michael is dying of a lung...

Originally Aired: August 3, 1954 Johnny Dollar #226, "The Hampton Line Matter," Johnny Dollar receives what seems like a simple assignment: fly to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and observe while the Coast Guard investigates an explosion aboard the ore boat Hampton Queen. The prime suspect is Carl Richards, an honest supply boat operator who boarded the Queen just ten minutes before a blast caused fi...

Originally Aired: July 27, 1954 Johnny Dollar #225, "The Radioactive Gold Matter," Johnny Dollar rushes to South Bend, Indiana when Washington Research Hospital reports the theft of $150 worth of radioactive gold isotope—a lethal substance used in cancer treatment. Dr. Reeve McKinlock explains the gravity of the situation: whoever stole the four ounces of gold leaf from the hospital's lead vault i...

Originally Aired: July 20, 1954 Johnny Dollar #224, "The Jeanne Maxwell Matter Fen," Johnny Dollar travels to Boston to investigate the death of twenty-one-year-old Jeanne Maxwell, whose body was found in shallow water beneath a bridge. Lieutenant DeRosa shares his conviction that this wasn't suicide, pointing out that the bridge seems wrong for such a death and that Jeanne was still wearing her c...

Originally Aired: July 13, 1954 Johnny Dollar #223, "The Carboniferous Dolomite Matter," Johnny Dollar travels to Sumatra when oil company owner Peter Van Oosterhout makes an unusual request: instead of accepting $60,000 in insurance money for destroyed drilling equipment, he wants the company's best investigator for three weeks. Van Oosterhout believes someone is deliberately sabotaging his oil o...