The Big Story - 1950-11-15 A Dead Certainty [Kenneth McCormick, Detroit Free Press]

English · Radio

It’s May, 1939 in Highland Park, Michigan. The sad story played out in the news over just three days. A body of a widowed man, William Reigart, is found in his ransacked home, victim of a burglary murder. Or so they thought. A neighbor, Walter Boss, had killed the man in a drunken brawl over his refusal to buy more drinks. The body was discovered when Boss’ wife, Greta, invited their neighbor and friend Reigart, for breakfast. They became suspicious when he did not come, and checked his home. They discovered the murder and robbery scene. Walter Boss acted surprised. As the story quickly unfolded, the police said there were finger marks discovered in the apartment. Greta mentioned this to her husband in a matter-of-fact conversation about the happenings of the day. She misunderstood what the police found. They saw evidence of choking on the neck of the victim. Greta mistakenly referring to the marks as fingerprints on Reigart’s neck, not marks. Walter believed that the police would soon discover his crime if there was fingerprint evidence. The fear of being caught led him to go to a friend's house where he committed suicide by slashing his wrists and hanging himself in the basement. Reporter Ken McCormick was a long-time staffer of The Detroit Free Press , working there from 1929 to 1962. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1945 reporting about corruption in the Michigan state legislature. His most famous reporting came in 1953, when his investigative skill assisted in the freeing of the wrongly-convicted Willie Calloway. He wrote about it in the book Sprung -- The Story of Willie Calloway . McCormick died in 1986 at age 78.

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.