The Big Saw

Originally Aired: April 6, 1954

Dragnet #242, "The Big Saw," finds Sergeants Joe Friday and Frank Smith investigating a bank robbery carried out by two masked gunmen. The case centers on the tense interrogation of the bank's assistant manager, an older woman who witnessed the entire holdup. She recounts in meticulous detail how she arrived at work that morning, only to be ambushed by the thieves hiding behind the escrow desk—one armed with a machine gun, the other with an automatic pistol. The robbers used her as a decoy, forcing her to stand near the entrance so arriving employees would suspect nothing before being locked in a back closet.

The situation escalates when bank manager Mr. Branton arrives and refuses to surrender his vault key, prompting the smaller gunman to threaten violence. When Branton suffers a heart attack during the confrontation, tensions between the two robbers boil over. The witness describes how she ultimately gave the thieves the safe combination herself to prevent further violence. Friday and Smith must piece together her detailed but rambling testimony to identify the perpetrators, working with limited physical descriptions and the knowledge that these criminals carefully planned their robbery down to the last detail.