Santos Ortega stars as a psychoneurotic man whose secret guilt complex over loving a foster son more than his own biological son drives him to murder. This is a disturbing story that was first produced on the series Indictment on 1958-09-21. The story is by Allan Sloane, known best for his work on The Big Story franchise of both radio and television. Sloane was an award-winning writer for television and movies. The stories of that series were from the experiences of Eleazar Lipsky, an author, and assistant district attorney in Manhattan in the 1940s. A manuscript he authored became the screenplay for the famous movie Kiss of Death. Lipsky was in private legal practice until he died at age 81 in 1993. His real-life encounters with criminals, victims, law enforcement, and social services were a rich source of material for the ground-breaking Indictment series. The series was produced by Paul Roberts. When Roberts became producer of Suspense and was in need of scripts, he selected three. This episode is the first produced on Suspense.
The story does not seem “right” for Suspense, but it is done well. A disturbed man, unsaid but implied as suffering from what would be considered as PTSD in modern terms, has two sons. He is estranged from his wife, but that is covered up in the story by claiming she is at work. The sons are with him and his elderly mother who watches them. The older son is biological with his wife. The other son, Wilfred, Junior, was fathered by another man while he was in the Army. He accepted him as his own from the time he first saw him. There is great pain in the household, as the little boy suffers from asthma, which was not as well-understood as it is today. The father is torn between the two sons. He has great difficulties coping with the younger sick son and while having a strained relationship with the older boy. The story begins with the discovery by the grandmother that Wilfred, Jr. is dead. She had assumed he was fine and just sleeping until she went to wake him up in the morning.
The police investigate, and it is clear that Wilfred, Sr. has great trouble with basic matters as to the day and time, where he is, made worse by his being overwhelmed by the loss of the son. When he relates a series of events from the recent past to the police, he is not certain of the times, details, or sequence of events. In the end, it is very clear that the father was physically responsible for the death, but the story ends with the dilemma of whether or not he really knew what he was doing or had control of his emotions. This is the kind of story that might be found on today’s Law and Order: SVU series.
No script can be found to identify all of the actors and their roles with specificity. The program recording date and related information is not available.
There are two surviving recordings of this broadcast. The network broadcast has a narrow range and a slightly clipped open, but is otherwise intact. The better recording is the Armed Forces Radio Service one (AFRS#756) and is newly available to Suspense enthusiasts from a find of AFRS discs in 2013.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP591011
THE CAST
Santos Ortega (Mr. Catman), Nat Polen (Ed Morgan), Ruth McDevitt (Grandma Catman), Ralph Bell (Sam Russell), Frank Butler (Velie), Dan Ocko (resident, Sgt. Bowen)
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