Missing Newshawk Caper: The Adventures of Sam Spade (July 18, 1948)

“Missing Newshawk Caper” is an episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade, the old-time radio show, first broadcast July 18, 1948. Listen free on Stupid Potato.

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What happens

Sam Spade is hired by newspaper publisher Alex Youngblood to find Ray McCollum, the paper's top crime reporter who has been missing for two days. McCollum has been writing an exposé series targeting organized crime and racketeers, and Youngblood fears the missing reporter may have been silenced by the criminals he was investigating.

San Francisco, with flashbacks to a desert ranch in Butte, Montana

Characters: Sam Spade, Avi, Charlie Shank, Alex M. Youngblood, Ray McCollum

Listen for: Sam's investigation into the disappearance of a crime reporter and his interviews with the newspaper publisher who hired him; references to McCollum's explosive exposé articles naming criminals and racketeers.

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.