Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Volume 2|Mystery Audio Dramas · Adam Graham|Old Time Radio Detective Host

Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Confidential Matter, Part Five and Manhunt: The Clue of the Contradictory Confessions (EP1207)

April 3, 2026·35 min·2 clips

Drew Stevens reveals that Winters poisoned himself at 4:30 knowing the insecticide would take two hours to work — so three different people all also poisoned him at supper, but after he was already dying from his own hand.

1. Great Detectives of Old Time Radio, hosted by Adam Graham from Boise, Idaho, presents a compilation episode featuring two classic American radio dramas alongside host commentary and listener mail. 2. Adam Graham hosts the show and provides brief analysis between episodes; he thanks donors including Mary, Nicholas, Gary, William, Andrea, and Gina for their financial support. 3. The episode's first drama is 'Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: The Confidential Matter, Part 5,' the concluding installment of a serial set in Panama in which insurance investigator Johnny Dollar is tracking a criminal who turns out to be his best friend of 12 years, Ed Morgan. 4. Ed Morgan had embezzled $80,000 from a company Johnny was auditing, faked his own death, and fled to Panama with a woman named Nicky Barrett; Johnny took the job not knowing Ed was alive. 5. The episode opens with Morgan having escaped in a stolen police car despite two highway blockades — a fact made stranger by the revelation that he risked recapture to go to a hotel and collect Nicky. 6. Morgan and Nicky attempt to flee via an abandoned cliff road and drive off the edge; Nicky's body is found in the submerged car, while Morgan is discovered alive but fatally injured in a rock gully on the cliff face. 7. In his final conversation with Johnny, Ed reveals that Nicky admitted — right before the crash — she never loved him and had only come to Panama for the remaining embezzled money. 8. Ed's dying statement is that he thinks he would do it all over again because for a while Nicky let him believe she loved him, and 'nobody else ever let me even think it'; Johnny holds his hand in the dark until he dies. 9. Johnny's final expense account entry — $487.25 for hotel and return transport — closes the report with the note 'Remarks? No, Mort, not on this one. Ed Morgan was my friend. The report stands.' 10. Host Adam Graham notes that the serial demonstrated 'the heart of Johnny Dollar' — a character wrestling not just with sadness but with anger and confusion before arriving at a conclusion that friendship outweighs the ledger of crimes. 11. The second drama, 'Manhunt: The Clue of the Conflicting Confessions,' stars Drew Stevens, who works with — and gently corrects — police detective sergeant Bill. 12. The victim is Andrew Winters, a wealthy and openly cruel man who arrives at his impoverished sister Molly Barton's farm threatening to evict her, and then dies at the dinner table. 13. Bill confidently promises Drew he will have a murder confession within an hour; he achieves three — Molly Barton confesses to putting insect poison in the food, her son John phones in with the same confession, and family doctor Morton reveals he slipped to the shed and added poison to Winters' coffee. 14. Drew's counter-evidence consists of two physical clues: Winters' travel bag contained no spare shirts or pajamas despite a planned week's stay, and his wallet contained no return train ticket — both suggesting he knew he would not be going home. 15. The medical examiner's report provides the final piece: the insect poison required at least two hours to take effect, but Winters arrived at 4:30 and was dead by 6:30, one hour after supper began — meaning he must have ingested it at 4:30, before any of the others acted. 16. Drew's conclusion is that Winters, who was terminally ill and in continuous pain, poisoned himself the moment he arrived, deliberately intending to die and to ensure someone else would be blamed — 'a first-rate suicide of a third-rate scoundrel.' 17. Bill's comedic frustration at having three confessions and no murder is the source of most of the episode's humour; Drew describes Bill as an 'old-fashioned detective sergeant getting results in an old-fashioned murder' before demonstrating why the case isn't old-fashioned at all. 18. Host Graham's commentary frames both dramas as quality examples of their forms — 'not an original premise, but well done' for Manhunt, and a 'great ending' and strong character study for Johnny Dollar. 19. Listener email from Linda praises the show as feeling like 'chit-chatting with a like-minded friend'; she describes watching Columbo and Quincy with her parents, reading Agatha Christie as a child, and now sharing the show with her daughters and husband. 20. The episode ends with a schedule update: Manhunt will be absent next week because only four parts of the next Johnny Dollar serial are available, but it will return in two weeks alongside a special episode of 'Here Comes McBride' starring Frank Lovejoy.

As heard by us

A hard-edged Johnny Dollar finish, then Manhunt opens with a family feud and period radio tension.

Johnny Dollar starts in Panama and closes by letting the lead sit with sadness, anger, and confusion before he lands on the plain fact that Ed was his friend. The ending feels earned, and it keeps the pulp edge that makes the series work.

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Why you'd press play

Stay for Johnny's finish, then let Manhunt pick the next fight.

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