Detectives on the Air

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...

Originally Aired: July 6, 1954 Johnny Dollar #222, "The Jan Brueghel Matter The Flowering Judas Matter," Johnny is summoned to Detroit when Eastern Indemnity gets a tip that a stolen 17th-century masterpiece can be recovered. The painting, "The River" by Jan Brueghel, was stolen eleven years ago from wealthy collector Lauren Jeffers, resulting in a $120,000 insurance payout. Now someone is offerin...

Originally Aired: June 29, 1954 Johnny Dollar #221, "The Woodward Manila Matter," finds the globetrotting insurance investigator traveling to the Philippines to investigate a $75,000 burglary at a Woodward Company hardware store. Ralph Wheaton briefs Johnny before his departure, revealing that not only has the cash been stolen from the store's safe, but an American clerk named Daniel Blake has mys...

Originally Aired: June 15, 1954 Johnny Dollar #219, "The Paterson Transport Matter," finds insurance investigator Johnny Dollar rushing to Kansas City, Missouri, where a series of brutal robberies threatens to turn deadly. The Patterson Transport Corporation, which handles parcel delivery for local department stores, has been hit six times in one week by a lone attacker who grows more violent with...

Originally Aired: June 8, 1954 Johnny Dollar #218, "The Sara Dearing Matter," Johnny Dollar heads to Palma, California to investigate the mysterious death of Sara Deering, a silent movie star who retired at the peak of her career in the 1920s. Federal Life carries a hundred thousand dollar policy on her life, and rumors suggest her death in a bedroom fire wasn't accidental. Dollar meets Maggie Lac...

Originally Aired: June 1, 1954 Johnny Dollar #217, "The Temperamental Tote Board Matter," Johnny Dollar travels to San Juan, Puerto Rico to investigate the death of Luis Alvarado, co-owner of the Desconciso racetrack, who was found shot under the infield tote board at dawn. The case appears suspicious not just because of the $50,000 insurance policy naming his brother Jose as beneficiary, but beca...

Originally Aired: May 25, 1954 Johnny Dollar #216, "The Punctilious Firebug Matter," Johnny Dollar races to Dallas after receiving an urgent call from Jeff Connors, the Southwestern States manager for Eastern Indemnity. An arsonist has been systematically torching insured properties, striking every Tuesday night at 11 o'clock with clockwork precision. Four fires in four weeks have already cost the...

Originally Aired: May 18, 1954 Johnny Dollar #215, "The Bilked Baroness Matter," Johnny Dollar travels to New York to investigate a suspicious $100,000 theft of furs and jewels from the penthouse of Baroness Olga Jarvas. The timing raises red flags: just last week, the Baroness's second ex-husband, Thomas Bentley, filed for bankruptcy with his photography business owing exactly $100,000, and gossi...

Originally Aired: May 4, 1954 Johnny Dollar #213, "The Dan Frank Matter," Johnny Dollar heads to the Great Lakes town of Middleborough to investigate the suspicious death of Police Chief Dan Frank. The middle-aged chief was shot to death with his own gun in his home, and his 27-year-old wife Laura filed a claim for $50,000 just 24 hours after his death. They'd only been married eight months. Johnn...

Originally Aired: April 27, 1954 Johnny Dollar #212, "The Frustrated Phoenix Matter," Johnny Dollar heads to Chicago to investigate a beneficiary change request on a $25,000 insurance policy held by Martin Venneberg, a once-brilliant novelist whose literary star burned out twenty years ago. The routine assignment becomes a murder case when Venneberg is found shot to death in his squalid one-room a...

Originally Aired: April 20, 1954 Johnny Dollar #211, "The Nathan Swing Matter," Johnny Dollar travels to Los Angeles to investigate the murder of Nathan Swing, a small-time bookie whose body was found floating in the harbor with two bullet wounds. Sergeant Matthews of Central Division Homicide briefs Dollar on the case and points to a suspicious connection: powerful racketeer Jimmy Durando may be...

Originally Aired: April 13, 1954 Johnny Dollar #210, "The Magnolia And Honeysuckle Matter," finds the freelance insurance investigator heading south to Charleston, South Carolina, where the Ambrose Cooper Paper Company has suffered its second suspicious fire in two years. This blaze has claimed the life of secretary Felicia Farrell and threatens to cost Johnny's company a hundred thousand dollars....

Originally Aired: April 6, 1954 Johnny Dollar #209, "The Sulphur And Brimstone Matter," Johnny Dollar heads to Venezuela when construction magnate Asa Travers dies under suspicious circumstances at the Sierra de Avari Dam project. Travers had reported sabotage attempts threatening to delay completion of the hydroelectric dam, which carries a costly time penalty clause covered by Eastern Indemnity'...

Originally Aired: March 23, 1954 Johnny Dollar #207, "The Piney Corners Matter," Johnny Dollar travels to the small Pennsylvania town of Piney Corners to investigate an anonymous letter claiming that the death of Martha Williams was not committed by persons unknown but by someone close to home. The woman was shot through her front window a month ago while sitting with her neighbor, Mrs. Keeler, an...

Originally Aired: March 16, 1954 Johnny Dollar #206, "The Berlin Matter," finds the freelance insurance investigator traveling to post-war Berlin to look into the suspicious death of Sam Harvey, an American consulting engineer. Harvey had recently increased his life insurance policy from ten to fifty thousand dollars and changed the beneficiary from his mother to his new German wife, Elsa. When Be...

Originally Aired: March 9, 1954 Johnny Dollar #205, "The Terrified Taun Matter," finds America's favorite freelance insurance investigator traveling halfway around the world to investigate a peculiar claim. Tom Benson at the home office sends Johnny to Kuala Lumpur in British Malaya after receiving an alarming letter from policyholders Harrison and Maida Langley, who claim someone is trying to mur...

Originally Aired: March 2, 1954 Johnny Dollar #204, "The Road Test Matter," finds insurance investigator Johnny Dollar called in by his boss Mr. King to investigate a dangerous mystery at Allied Motors' top-secret testing facility. The company's revolutionary new automobile model has crashed three times during road tests, resulting in one fatality, and both the manufacturer and the insurance compa...

Originally Aired: February 23, 1954 Johnny Dollar #203, "The Classified Killer Matter," Johnny Dollar receives a 4 a.m. wake-up call from Ted Albright, Eastern Indemnity's new Chicago branch manager, with devastating news: claim adjuster Frank Harvey has been murdered. Harvey's body was found shot three times in a snowdrift on Manheim Road during a winter blizzard. Dollar flies to Chicago and lear...

Originally Aired: February 16, 1954 Johnny Dollar #202, "The Uncut Canary Matter," insurance investigator Johnny Dollar races to Beverly Hills to track down a missing 89-carat orange-yellow diamond worth $125,000. The rare uncut canary diamond vanishes from the vault at Madame Johanna's exclusive jewelry store, where it has sat for over a year while the proprietor carefully plans how to cleave the...

Originally Aired: February 9, 1954 Johnny Dollar #201, "The Harpooned Angler Matter," finds America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator jetting to the French Riviera town of Cassis to examine a suspicious death claim. Policy holder Arnold Bernier has been found dead at the bottom of the Mediterranean with a fishing spear driven through his back while skin diving, and his $75,000 policy was...