The Big Guilt

Originally Aired: November 23, 1952

Dragnet #179, "The Big Guilt," Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Frank Smith respond to a grim discovery in a back alley at 18th and Winfield. A well-dressed man has been found strangled with his own necktie, his pockets turned inside out, robbed of everything. Officer Harper has detained Alexander Jones, a man found stumbling out of the alley that morning. Jones appears severely hungover and shaken by what he's witnessed. As the crime lab processes the scene, they discover footprints that don't match the victim's shoes and a wallet behind garbage cans identifying the dead man as Arthur McKinley from Hollywood.

Friday and Smith question the troubled Jones, who reveals himself to be Alex Stafford, a former serviceman from Kansas who came to Los Angeles with high hopes and four hundred dollars. Instead, his dreams dissolved into alcohol and desperation. As Stafford tells his story of squandered money, lost lodgings, and finally landing a dishwashing job just yesterday, the detectives must determine whether this broken man is simply an unfortunate witness or something more sinister.