The Big Dive

Originally Aired: November 9, 1952

Dragnet #177, "The Big Dive," Sergeants Joe Friday and Frank Smith respond to a grisly discovery at the Greenleaf Apartment Hotel. When maid Georgia opens a closet in apartment 406 to clean, she finds the body of an unidentified woman on the bedroom floor. The apartment's tenant, Raymond Bartlett, has mysteriously vanished, leaving behind no personal belongings despite having a week remaining on his rent. Building manager Mrs. Holden can provide only the vaguest description of Bartlett—a heavyset man around 200 pounds with brown hair—and knows virtually nothing about him. A neighbor reports hearing a woman's voice and a loud argument coming from the apartment the previous night around 10:45 p.m.

The crime lab crew processes the scene and recovers a cast iron fireplace poker bearing the victim's hair as the probable murder weapon. Detective Bergman lifts several fingerprints from the apartment and the weapon itself, but the dead woman remains unidentified, and the prints don't match any records. With no personal effects, no witnesses who can properly describe the suspect, and a killer who seems to have carefully covered his tracks, Friday and Smith face a challenging investigation with few leads to follow.