Dragnet. It was Saturday, November 23rd. It was warm in Los Angeles. We were working the night watch out of homicide detail. My partner's Ben Romero. The boss is Blaine Steed, cap in a homicide. My name's Friday. It was 6.35 p.m. and we got to the corner of Western and Lexington. The Western fur shop. Hi, Brennan. Hi. What happened, Frank? The owner's been shot. His name's Albert Kriber. Yeah? Who is that? Mrs. Kriber. Haven't been able to get anything out of her. Where's the body? In the bag. Monkress is back there. Did you call the lamp? Yeah. Jones on his way. Photographer and fingerprint men with him. All right, let's take a look. Nothing seems to be messed up. Backroom is. It was a small shop. A couple of fur coats on dummies on one side of the store. On the other, a tall gold chain. On the other, a tall glass case holding about 15 more. Mrs. Kriber sat on a straight back chair staring at the floor. We went through the curtains into the back room of the store. Sprawled out on the floor. Far into the room was the body of a man. He had a fur coat gripped in one hand. Sergeant Monkress from Hollywood Division was standing by. What do you figure, Monk? Looks like a couple of hours. Did you call the coroner? Yeah. How long you been here, Monk? Just a couple of minutes. You think Mrs. Kriber moved anything here? I don't think so. She was sitting in that chair when we got here. I don't think she's moved except to call in. Did she put in the call? Yeah. Empty shelves down on the floor. Got a pencil? Yeah. Yeah, 32. Yeah. You think robbery? I don't know. Let's talk to the wife. Wait a minute. Bottle here. Sierra Valley Wine Company. World's finest muscatel. 27 cents a pint. Nobody touched this, did they? No, I've been here. Let's get out front. Anything in the customer files running? Not so far. Have you tried to talk to Mrs. Kriber again? No, pretty bad. Let's give it a try. Mrs. Kriber? I'm Sergeant Friday. This is Sergeant Romero. We'd like to talk to you if we could. We know how you must feel, but there are a few questions that we have to ask you. Did you telephone the police? We have to know how it happened, Mrs. Kriber. Mrs. Kriber? Mm-hmm. Can you tell us what happened? Mm. Who is it? It's a woman. Who is it? What do you want? We're police officers. Oh. Albert. Albert's dead. Albert! Albert! Did someone call the police? Mrs. Kriber, we are the police. My husband's been murdered. He's dead. Albert. Albert. We better leave her. Yeah. Friday. Here's something I found in the customer file. Mm-hmm. Miss Terry Shepherd, 10113 Norm, the apartment three. What about it? She took a code out that was in storage. Took it out today. We'll check her out when we're finished here. Thanks. Looks like the only hot receipt in the file. Joe, then? No background. What is it? Killing. Monkries will show you. Okay. That's all. Think we ought to try to laugh again? We can try. Mrs. Kriber, can we do anything for you? I'm a little better. I'll try to tell you what I can. All right. When did you get here? Must have been about 6 o'clock. A few minutes after. I came to take him home. Any customers around? No, the store was empty. I stood here for a few minutes waiting, and I went in the back and... Yes, ma'am. Did the front door open? No. Yes, the front door? Yes, ma'am, the front. Yes, open. Did you telephone the police? I think I did. Did you come here to pick him up? No. No, usually he drives home himself. I came down on the streetcar to ride home with him. What kind of a car do you have? An Oldsmobile. 1939 or 1940, I guess it is. Where does he usually park? In the rear of the store, this little place back there. I'll take a look. All right. Where is your home? 3412 Northwestern. I thought there was something wrong when I... I got a telegram from him. He said not to come down tonight. He said he'd be home late. What time was that? About 4 o'clock. I'm all mixed up. I haven't told the two years I remember. First, yes, first I telephoned here to the shop. That was this afternoon? Yes, 3.30. I'm sure of that because I made some other calls. I spoke to Albert. He didn't say he was going to be late. Then at 4 o'clock I received the telegram. Do you have that with you? Yes, it's in my purse somewhere. Somewhere, somewhere. Here it is. Thank you. Don't come down. I won't be home until late. I have to see a customer. Can I keep this? We'll return it to you. Yes. What did you do after you got this wire, Miss Crimer? Well, nothing. I thought it was strange, but I didn't think too much about it. Then I started wondering why he didn't say anything over the telephone about being late. So I came down here on the streetcar. Did you phone the store just before you left your house? Yes, but there was no answer. The parking lot's empty. Better get out an APB in the car. Miss Crimer, you said your car was a 1939 or 40 Oldsmobile, didn't you? 1940, I remember now. What model was that? It was a sedan, light blue. Do you remember the license number? I have it on this chain with the extra keys. Here it is, on this little tag. The veterans make these. Thank you. Joe, can I see you a minute? Sure. Excuse me, Miss Crimer. Do you want me to wait? I'd like to go home. We'd like you to wait for a little while, yes. Do you have any relatives living here? A niece and a nephew in Beverly Hills. Jerome Reed. They live on Cannon Drive. We'll call them for you. Thank you. Lee, is this phone out here all right to handle? Yeah, it's been dusted. Okay. Joe, you coming in? Yeah, right away. Pretty clear, easy to trace. I'd say he was standing over here by the curtains when he was shot. That's where the stains began. And he must have stumbled along this glass case. You can see the smears here on the glass when he tried to grab hold of something. Yeah. And I guess he caught hold of that fur coat and pulled it down with him. Uh-huh. And he stumbled and bumped up against this coat rack, fell through that and up against the safe. How many times was he hit? Six empty casings on the floor. Looks like four through-and-through wounds. Thirty-two, huh? That's right. The wife know if anything's missing? She's in pretty bad shape. It looks to me like somebody took his wristwatch and a ring from his left hand. If he had a bill fall, that's gone. No coat. All the trouser pockets are turned inside out. What about that wine bottle? It's smear. It can't lift a thing. Okay. Thanks. Ben? I'm still on the phone. Okay. No, no, no. License 15 Boston. 6707. No, 707. Yeah. Driver might be armed. Hang on a minute, Wallace. What? Now give that DMV, will you, to save another call. Miss Kriber, did your husband have a wallet? Yes. Yes, brown alligator. Did he keep his identification in it? Yes. Did he carry much cash? No, just a few dollars. He was always afraid of holdups. Thank you. You want to give that to him, Ben? Yeah, okay. Hey, Wallace, suspect might have a brown alligator wallet with identification cards of Albert Kriber. Yeah, that's C-R-I-B, Boston B, Boston E-R. 3412 Northwestern Avenue. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, bye. Joe? Hmm? Might be something here. Yeah, Monk? Invoice from a far north fur company. Three mink coats delivered here today. I looked all around. I only found two, one missing. Did you find a sales slip for the other one? No. Miss Kriber, would you come over here, please? Yes. Where are they, Monk? Over here. Over this way. These are mink coats here, aren't they? Yes. It's wild mink. Albert told me he ordered them. Yes, ma'am. We found the invoice. He ordered three. There are only two here. Do you know anything about any of his customers? No. No, I don't. I never met any of them. Oh, I remember now. Just the night before last, he called someone from home, told her he had some minks in today, and she could come in and look them over. Do you know who that was? I didn't hear any name. Miss Kriber, do you have any idea who might have wanted to shoot your husband? No, none at all. He was friendly with everyone. Everybody liked Albert. He didn't run around. He was either working or at home. Did he drink? Not at all. No, I mean beer, a little wine maybe. No, no, no. He never touched anything. All right, thank you. Brennan, do you see that Miss Kriber gets to her nephews? Right away. Thank you. Might as well go, Ben. Yeah. We can talk to some of the neighbors. Six shots fired. I wonder why nobody heard him. Pretty heavy traffic outside, huh? Somebody wanted to mink coat pretty bad. Coat like that cost quite a bit, doesn't it? This one's going to come a little high. Yeah. 7.05 p.m. Most of the stores along the street were closed, but a small shoe repair shop across the street was open, so we went over there. On the window was one word, Pete, and a picture of a shoe. Sitting in the window was a small, dark man wearing a leather apron. He was working on a pair of shoes. Hello. We're police officers. I see you drive up across the street. Are you Pete? Sure. What happens to Mr. Kriber? Is he robbed? No, he was killed. No. Shut? I do not hear anything. Have you been sitting in your window all afternoon? Oh, most all the time. You see, I have machinery here. I advertise that way. People watch. Mm-hmm. Do you remember seeing anybody going into Mr. Kriber's house? Do you remember seeing anybody going into Mr. Kriber's this afternoon? Uh, two, three long black cars. Uh-huh. Anybody else? Uh, some. Were they women? Officer, they are all women. I see. Did any of them walk out with a new fur coat? Uh... There, hold that. I do not see all of them, I guess, but I see two. Can you describe them? Uh, one, beautiful young girl, tall, red hair. She walk out with big package. What time was that? Three, four o'clock. Uh, the second woman is about the same time. Funny thing, I do not see the bottle, but Benny from liquor store in corner tell me the second one, the blonde. She buys bottle wine. Did he tell you what kind? No. Reason I remember, I laugh when he tell me. I go over to Benny's for a can of beer. He tells me she buys cheap wine, walks out of Krivors with new fur coat. Me, I spend five dollars for good wine, and my wife has no fur coat. How old was this blonde? How is she dressed? Uh, she is maybe 25. Young, you know, not too young, but young. She has on slacks, gray. Uh-huh. What kind of fur coat was she wearing when she came out? Mink. Look from here, like mink. I see. Did you notice where she went? Mmm. The blonde, gray slacks, mink coat. Yes, turned the corner on to Lexington, and she went up the street. Did you see Mr. Krivors' car drive away? No, he parking back. I don't see him come in. I don't see him come out. All right. Thanks a lot, Pete. You know, officer, that blonde, something wrong there. How do you mean? Well, she has got fur coat, but she drinks wrong wine. I don't understand. Why do you say that? $5,000 coat, 27 cent wine. 7.45 p.m. Ben and I questioned Benny Davis at the safety liquor store. He remembered the blonde and said she bought a bottle of Sierra Valley muscatel from him between 2.30 and 3 o'clock that afternoon. He'd never seen her before. We contacted communications and gave a description of the blonde to supplement the All Points Bulletin. Then we started checking Western Union offices to find out where Mrs. Krivors' telegram had been sent from. We finally traced it to the office at Normandy and Hollywood Boulevard. The operator who sent the telegram to Mrs. Krivors also remembered receiving the call. She told us that the person who phoned in the message was a woman, the time 3.22 p.m. We asked her to put a tracer on it and told her we'd check back. 8.24 p.m. Ben and I went to 101-1-3 Normandy to talk to Miss Terry Shepherd, whose name had appeared in the customer files at the fur store. The receipts showed she'd taken a coat out of storage that afternoon. This is something like the place the wife and I used to live in. Yeah. Same people must have built it. Apartment 3. Miss Terry Shepherd. All right, come in. The door is open. Find yourself a seat, Fred. I'll be right in a minute. Police officers, Miss Shepherd. Oh? What's wrong? We'd like to talk to you. What about? What if you could come out here, please? I just got out of the shower. You'll have to wait a minute. Well, this place has got the same floor plan as mine. Kind of small, isn't it? Not too bad. Wonder what rent she pays. You don't mind if I wear this too, do you? My hair's wet. It's all right. We're sorry to bother you. What can I do for you? Have you got a fur coat, Miss Shepherd? Yeah, sure. What if we could see it, please? Sure, but I don't think it'll trill yet. It's only muskrat. I bought it in Pittsburgh. Where is it? In the closet? Yeah. Again? It's down the hallway, first door on the right. I think I know where it is. What's this all about, Lieutenant? What time were you at the Western Fur Shop today? Oh, I'd say three o'clock. Why? What'd you do while you were down there? I got my coat out of hawk. I had it there during the warm weather. Paid the man, signed something, and he put the coat in the box, and I took it. Do you know Mr. Kriber down there, the man that owns the store? You got me. The man was about 50. His hair was a little gray. I hardly even looked at him. This is the only fur coat, Joe. Could have passed from ink when I first bought it. It's pretty sad now, isn't it? Not to me. I'll give that closet my last check. What happened? Did somebody steal a coat? Was anybody else in the store while you were there? Yeah. Yeah, there was another girl there. What was she doing? Nothing, just sitting. Do you remember how she was dressed? Oh, she was wearing a gray suit, slacks, blonde. Her face wasn't much, but she had a neat little figure. Do you remember anything else about her? I didn't pay that much attention. Anything else in there, Ben? Not a thing, Jill. Maybe I'd better take this towel off my head. It doesn't look so hot when it's wet, but it's natural. It's natural red. Yeah. Is there anything else that you might be able to tell us? Hmm, I think that's about all. I gave the man my claim check and the money, and he got the coat and put it in a box and gave me a receipt. Mm-hmm. Nothing else? No. Well, when I got the receipt, I saw the blonde walk over and pick up the telephone. I was just leaving then. Did you hear any of the conversation? She asked for Western Union. Sunday, November 24th, 9 a.m. Ben and I contacted the owners of all the shops in the vicinity, but none of them saw or heard anything at the time of the shooting. Officers Brennan and Moncrease interviewed all the regular customers of Albert Kriver's fur shop. Only three had been in the store on Saturday, but none of them had noticed anything wrong. 11.35 a.m. We spoke to Mrs. Kriver again, but she could add nothing. She said, I'm sorry, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We talked to Mrs. Kriver again, but she could add nothing to her story. Her niece and nephew had been to a football game at the Coliseum in the afternoon and knew nothing had happened until they were telephoned by Officer Brennan. 2.55 p.m. We spoke to all the tenants of the apartment house at 5513 Lexington, which is in the rear of the fur shop. None of them had been home, but the owner told us that they had some men working on theolution of the apartment house at the time of the murder. the apartment house at the time of the murder. Through the owner of the durable roof company, we traced the two men who had been working on the roof and they told us that about four o'clock they'd seen a blonde in gray slacks enter the parking space in the rear of Kriber's fur store. They whistled at her, but she paid no attention to them. She got into a Nolz mobile and drove east on Lexington. Seven p.m. We checked in at the office and got word that Albert Kriber's car had been located in a parking lot at Vermont and Eighth. We drove down to the location and talked to the parking lot attendant. Well, the car must have come in sometime last night. It probably came in the back way because I don't remember it coming in and it doesn't have our lot tag on it. Did you work all last night? No, I finished at midnight and started at 10 this morning. I kept waiting for somebody to claim this thing and well, and after supper I figured it might be stolen so I phoned the police. It's been sitting here all that time. Are there any keys in it? No sir, there weren't last night either. Have you ever seen this particular car before? No sir. Have you ever seen a blonde woman about 25 wearing gray slacks? You mean hanging around here? Yeah, or in the neighborhood. Yeah, but not today or yesterday. You remember one? Yes sir. Does she drink a lot? Maybe. Well, there's one that hangs out in these bars around here. Once in a while she comes in the lot, but not lately. When did you see her last? Well, a couple of weeks ago. Was she with anyone? Yeah, but I don't remember him. I seen her with a lot of different guys. Does she hang around with anybody in particular? Yeah, her husband. Before leaving the parking lot we pulled the rotor out of the distributor so that nobody could drive the car away. 8.12 p.m. We called homicide and asked for more men to canvas the bars in the neighborhood. Ben and I staked out on the car. We sat in our car across the street from the parking lot until midnight. Nobody showed up to claim the car. The streets were almost empty. Our only chance was that the blonde lived in the neighborhood or was in a bar and would sooner or later try to claim the car. 1.53 a.m. Hmm. What rent do you suppose that shepherd girl pays? You got me. 75? I don't know. I bet I pay more than she does. Is that Monkrie's? Yeah. Hi, Monk. Hi. Take a look up the street. See that couple? Where? Coming this way. Blonde, gray slacks, fur coat. She's pretty drunk. Where'd you spot her? Turn the corner from Olympic. They've been looking in parking lots. Monk, there's a rear entrance to this lot off the alley. Do you want to cover that? Yeah. Thank you. You see them all right? That's it. Where'd they walk under that light? Yeah. Pretty drunk. Looks like the same kind of coat, isn't it? Yeah. They're stopping. Looking for another parking lot again. Sierra Valley Wine, world's finest muscatail. You're going into the parking lot? She's not carrying a purse. Those coats don't have pockets big enough for a 32 automatic. That stuff sure gets people. All right. Let's go. We're getting in Kriber's car. No, you can't even find the door. She's helping us. You take the other side of the car, will you? Yeah. Who are you? Police officers. Can I see your driver's license, please? I ain't got a driver's license. What's going on? What's your name? Betty Moore. What's it to you? The registration slip on the steering column says Albert Kriber. What's the matter with this car anyway? Who's Albert Kriber? Oh, I know who he is. Who is this man? He's a friend. That satisfy you? Yeah, I'm a friend. Something's wrong with this thing. Take a look at the glove compartment, Ben. Okay. Come on, honey. Let's get going. It's locked. What do you want in there for? Let me have those keys. Here you are, Ben. There's nothing in there. Here's a purse. Give me that. Can you keep your hands on the wheel? It's a gun, 32. It's his. It's empty anyway. There's nothing wrong in that. Do you have a permit to carry it? Yeah, I got a permit. Can I see it? I lost it. Give me those keys. Keep your hands on that wheel. Here's a wallet, identification cards, Albert Kriber. Where'd you get these? I don't know. The man's watch, Albert Kriber engraved on the back. Who's Albert Kriber? I don't know. I told you. All right, let's get out of the car. Why didn't that car start? Come on, stand up. You get over there. Where'd you get the fur coat? I bought it. Where? I don't know. Joe, look at her slacks. Wine stains. I spilled wine on them. What kind of wine? Muscatel. Muscatel isn't a red wine. It's a white wine. Who's Albert Kriber? I don't know. This is his wallet. This is his car. Where'd you get them? I don't know. I don't know. Is this the gun you shot him with? Is this the gun you shot him with? I was going out with him. He said he'd give me a fur coat. He promised me a watch and he never gave me one. Then we sent a telegram to his wife and everything. Said he'd give me a fur coat and take me out. He backed out of me. So you shot him? Sure I did. He promised me the coat. He said I could have any coat in the shop. He promised me. What are you crying for? You've got the coat. This is the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, the voice of information and education.
