The Big Crime

Originally Aired: February 15, 1951 Dragnet #88, "The Big Crime," Sergeant Joe Friday and his partner Ben Romero are called to investigate a terrifying case when four-year-old twin girls, Jo and Kelly Carson, disappear from a park during a family picnic. As hours pass without any sign of the children, the investigation takes on increasing urgency. The detectives methodically canvas the area, interviewing neighbors, friends, and storekeepers, but find no leads until they speak with an ice cream vendor named George Kamencek. He reports seeing two young girls matching the twins' description in the company of a large man with a mustache near a clump of trees in the park. The case takes a dark turn when torn pieces of the girls' clothing are discovered in the bushes. The detectives rope off the area and call in the crime lab while intensifying their search. An emergency check of registered sexual psychopaths produces a possible suspect named D.H.L. Glamberg, who lives near the park and matches the physical description. Friday and Romero track him down at his workplace, a small bar where he works as an organist, and begin questioning him about his whereabouts during the critical hours when the children vanished.