The Jane Darwell Murder Case: Broadway Is My Beat (August 11, 1949)

“The Jane Darwell Murder Case” is an episode of Broadway Is My Beat, the old-time radio show, first broadcast August 11, 1949. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

Listen to Broadway Is My Beat free, live around the clock: every episode, in the order it first aired. No sign-up.

What happens

Detective Danny Clover receives a typewritten note predicting the murder of Jane Darnell, but arrives too late to prevent her death by strangulation. When the killer strikes again, murdering Mary Smith with an ice pick and leaving cryptic notes asking "What girl next?", Clover races to identify and protect the third intended victim, Sally Webb, uncovering a connection between all three women through a fatal car accident from a year earlier.

New York City, primarily Manhattan and a tool manufacturing plant in New Jersey, including a department store and subway.

Characters: Detective Danny Clover, Jed Stacy, scandal columnist, Jane Darnell, Mary Smith, Sally Webb, Mac Taylor, Sergeant Tartaglia, Freddie Nae

Listen for: The atmospheric narration of Detective Clover describing Broadway and the killer's twisted logic; the revelation that Mac Taylor (formerly Quimby) murdered the three women to avenge his wife's death in the auto accident; the climactic confrontation in the department store where Taylor takes his own life.

Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.