The Big Present

Friday - The Dragnet Podcast · Oct 12, 2026 · 28m

Originally Aired: November 24, 1953

Dragnet #223, "The Big Present," finds Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Frank Smith working burglary detail on a puzzling string of market break-ins that has plagued Los Angeles for two months. With eighteen stores hit and no solid leads, the detectives consult Sergeant Lindsay Simmons at the Georgia Street Juvenile Bureau, suspecting their thief might be a youngster. The evidence points in that direction: empty milk bottles left at every scene, only petty cash and candy taken, and most tellingly, the burglar enters through impossibly small openings…