Tales of the Texas Rangers

Steve flies to Rotterdam to find ex-Nazi Rudolph Karpel...with the help of the Glutenschwitzen girls!

Saturday night, June 5th 1948, time, 10pm. On a small ranch ten miles south of Cranston Irwin County, Texas Milton Thomas was counting a large sum of money preparatory to locking it up for the night. As he was counting his dog Rags appeared to be nervous. Thomas tried to quiet him...

It is shortly after 9 am on the Tuesday after Labour Day 1946. Two men in a late model black sedan cruise slowly along the main street of the town of Live Oak in West Texas casing a bank.

It is 4:00 pm April 14th 1947. A prisoner in the jail at Pentland County Texas is being returned to his cell as the visiting hour comes to an end. His name is Paul Abbott, serving out a six-month sentence for petty larson. His cellmate John Sagood has not had a visit for Sagood is being held without bail awaiting trial for murder…

It is 1:30 am December 4th, 1945. A single light glows in the living room of a farmhouse 4 miles to the town of Ashton in west Texas. Inside the house a frantic young woman tries to place a telephone call to the sheriff...

The two colleagues were delivering a cargo of car radios valued at $39,000 when their truck is sent on a detour to a dead end. The truck and its cargo is hijacked and Rover and Simms are both needlessly killed.

It is 9.45 pm on a Saturday night in September 1937. The business district of central city Texas is dark except for the office of Harry Cashman's used car lot. Cashman is pacing the small office in agitation as a man in a leather windbreaker crosses the lot slipping between the cars for sale and knocks at the door. He is the blood father that was presumed dead of the daughter that Cashman and his wife have adopted and now he is threatening to take the child unless Cashman pays him more money.

It is 11:30 am a Monday morning in November 1939. Sheriff Ross Petsby turns his car in to a quiet residential street in Harpers Landing, Texas. Seated in the car with him is Mrs. Blackburn a medical assistant. She becomes increasingly nervous as they approach a sign marking the home of Dr. Walter Hemet who has not been seen over the past few days despite his car being in the garage. The sheriff breaks down his door and enters to discover that the doctor has been shot to death.

It is January 16th 1950, the time 6:28pm. A freight train just outside of a west Texas town gains speed and rolls through the gathering dust. Inside a gondola car a hobo crouches in the corner as the brakeman comes toward him. As the brakeman tries to throw him off a scuffle ensues and the hobo jumps off. At 2:55am on the morning following the freight train incident a rancher named Banker noticed a small coupe parked in the shoulder of the road with Okalahoma licence plates. Banker turned his spotlights on the car and saw a man slumped down on the drivers seat dead. The Texas Rangers are called in to investigate. After the story you can hear the Texas Ranger's Prayer by Captain Pierre Bernard Hil.

It is 5.45 am March 6th, 1940 and Pete Salverson owner of the roadside café in West Texas is opening for business. As he sweeps up in the kitchen he hears a sound outside the back door and discovers a beat up and hungry dog there with a strange kind of leash on it like a harness the kind a blind mans dog might wear. When the sheriff turns up he remembers that he’d had a missing persons bulletin on a blind man three days ago. The sheriff had a hunch that they needed to find the dog’s owner quickly.

Tales of the Texas Rangers, a western adventure old-time radio drama, premiered on July 8, 1950, on the U.S. NBC radio network and remained on the air through September 14, 1952. Movie star Joel McCrea starred as Texas Ranger Jayce Pearson, who used the latest scientific techniques to identify the criminals and his faithful horse, Charcoal, to track them down. The shows were reenactments of actual Texas Ranger cases.

"Texas, more than 260,000 square miles! And fifty men who make up the oldest and most famous law enforcement body in North America!" Like its predecessor, Dragnet, Tales of the Texas Rangers adapted actual police cases for its broadcasts. Leading each week's investigation was Texas Ranger Jayce Pearson, portrayed by movie star Joel McCrea. Because the stories were set in the present, Pearson used the latest scientific techniques to identify criminals. Unlike Joe Friday, Pearson didn't have a regular partner, typically working with the local sheriff instead. Working environments would range from big cities to isolated wilderness areas that could only be reached on horseback. Produced and directed by Stacy Keach Sr., Tales of the Texas Rangers ran from 1950 to 1952 and featured radio's top supporting actors. Its popularity spawned a 1955 Saturday morning television series starring Willard Parker and Harry Lauter broadcast on CBS until 1958. Included are the following episodes: "Apache Peak" "The Trigger Men" "Play for Keeps" "Dead or Alive" "The Hatchet" "Sweet Revenge" "Death Plant" "Pick-Up" "Last Stop" "Cover-Up" "Three Victims" "Misplaced Person"