The Big Fourth

Originally Aired: May 29, 1952

Dragnet #155, "The Big Fourth," finds Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Frank Smith assigned to juvenile detail, investigating a disturbing pattern of infant abductions. When eight-month-old baby Donaldson is stolen from his mother's car at a neighborhood shopping center, it marks the third child stealing case in less than three weeks. All three cases share a chilling similarity: each baby is taken from the same twelve-square-block area in Los Angeles, with no witnesses, no clear motive, and virtually no evidence. The only potential lead comes from Mrs. Donaldson, who recalls seeing a middle-aged, gray-haired woman in a green sedan parked nearby.

As Friday and Smith work with Captain Stein to devise a decoy operation using policewomen with baby carriages, an unexpected development interrupts their planning. A woman named Marion Bolger phones the station insisting she needs to be investigated to prove her innocence in the baby thefts. Though the detectives have never heard of her and haven't identified any suspects, Mrs. Bolger's strange, unsolicited confession raises immediate questions. Friday and Smith head to her Ewing Street address to determine whether they've found their baby snatcher or encountered something even more peculiar.