Bouncing Betty Caper Afrs: The Adventures of Sam Spade (December 12, 1948)

“Bouncing Betty Caper Afrs” is an episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade, the old-time radio show, first broadcast December 12, 1948. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

Listen to The Adventures of Sam Spade free, live around the clock: every episode, in the order it first aired. No sign-up.

What happens

Private detective Sam Spade is hired by a butler to investigate murder attempts on a young woman named Kathy McGraw at her family estate, Bleak Cliff. Suspicion falls on her brother Tony, who is undergoing psychiatric treatment by their stepfather Dr. McGraw, but Kathy believes the doctor himself is trying to kill her. When Dr. McGraw is killed by a hidden bomb in his office, the truth about who planted it and why becomes the central mystery.

San Francisco and Bleak Cliff estate near Squid Beach on the California coast, 1948.

Characters: Sam Spade, Kathy McGraw, Dr. Mark McGraw, Tony McGraw, Carothers, Lieutenant Dundee, Effie Perine

Listen for: A clever twist involving a German anti-personnel mine called a Bouncing Betty, hidden in a wastebasket; the butler Carothers delivers the final revelation with dark irony about justice and despotism.

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.