 Presenting Joel McCrae as Jase Pearson in Tales of the Texas Rangers. Of the Texas Rangers, authentic stories from their official files. Texas, more than 260,000 square miles. And 50 men who make up the most famous and oldest law enforcement body in North America. The Texas Rangers come these stories based on facts. Only names, states, and places are fictitious for obvious reasons. The events themselves are a matter of record. Hey, sport tonight, living death. It is 2 a.m. on the morning of October 3rd, 1948. A man stands in the brush on the American side of a Rio Grande, watching another man wading rapidly across the river from the Mexican side. Sir, you're green. Sir, you're green. Where are you? Over here. And shut up. I almost fall and never mind. You crazy wearing a white sombrero with that moon? What is the harm, sir? You're green. Nobody sees the ego but you. Don't be too sure of that. Somebody followed me down here. I don't know whether I shook him or not. The body patrol? No. Hi, Jacka, maybe. You got the package? Oh, see, right here. 20 ounces. Okay, here's your money. 200 ounce, $4,000. Oh, gracias. Will be another shipment next week. Yeah, I know. I'll meet you here again on the 12th, same time. And be a little more... You all right, amigo? Someone does follow you? Quiet. Son came from over there. He's moving this way. You'll have to crawl through that clearing first and the moon's right on it. You gonna use a gun? What do you think I got it for? Keep quiet. There he is, coming into the moonlight. Yeah, and he doesn't see us. Just like a sitting duck. You hit him, senor? Yeah. It looks like I didn't hit him good enough. Yeah, that's better. Grab his leg. Grab his leg and get him out of this clearing into the brush. Longer it takes to find him, the better. Senor Grif, we should not meet this place again. It will not be safe. All right, drop me here. No, we can't use this place again. It'll be too hot. I must get back across the river. Where do we meet next time? Next time, use our old crossing. Nearly hit us. I'll get lost. Fast! The body of the slain man was discovered. But for two months there was no clue to point to his killer. And then suddenly another man was shot to death on the streets of a small town in West Texas and Captain Stinson of the Texas Rangers, radio ranger, Jase Pearson, to meet him at the county morgue. The body is on this slab, Jase. Shot right through the heart, eh, Captain? Yeah. And here's our ballistics report. 45 caliber slug. Look at the markings on this photo of it. Uh-huh. All right. Now look at this ballistics photo. This is a report on the slug they took out of the man who was killed near the border two months ago. Yeah, see what you mean. Both slugs came from the same gun. Uh-huh. Are topsy report on this man completed yet? To be untyped up. We'll have it in a minute. Clyde Mooney is waiting for it. Mooney? Oh, is he here? Yeah. I sent for both of you. Mooney worked on the border killing. Since it's tied up with his second killing, I thought you'd better tackle it together. It suits me fine. You got some special reason for wanting to see the autopsy report, Jase? Yeah. Look at the body. Mark's on the left forearm. Look like the kind we usually find on drug addicts. Well, we'll know in a second. Now here's Clyde now. Howdy, Captain. Hi, Jase. Howdy, Clyde. Good to see you, boy. Heard you're talking as I come in, Jase. You hit it all right. Here's the autopsy report. Man was a drug addict. He's probably just as well off dead then. Well, it ties this one right up with your border case, Clyde. I guess we're both after the same killer. Yeah. I've been hunting wetbacks for two months trying to find the man who was toting the gun no slugs came from. Any of the nail shoe boys want to see here? No, Captain. Well, let's get out of here then. Any identification on this man we just saw, Captain? Not a thing. He was dressed like a hobo. Doesn't fit any of the descriptions on missing persons reports either. Might help a lot if we knew who he was. I can't see this killing as a job done by a wetback. Why not, Jase? It was somebody sneaking across the border. Tracks weren't clear by the time the body was found down there, but there were tracks. Both your cars in back, may I mind? Yeah. Yeah. All right, Jase, go ahead with your theory. Well, a wetback sneaking into the country to earn a few dollars working is usually too poor to own a gun unless he's carrying something across with him. You thinking of those hypo-marks, Jase? It adds up to me, narcotics smuggling. It might be. A man who was killed in my territory could have been shot because he spotted somebody crossing with the stuff. Well, that's possible. But how about the dead man who just left? He wasn't shot near the border. Well, it looked like he was down and out. Had the habit, but not the price. Might have tried to get some narcotics by threatening to expose the peddler. I'll buy that, Jase. How about you, Clyde? Best bet I've had so far. All right, Jase, where you planning on starting? Back along the border. What, my area? No, killing was made that spot too hot for him. They'll go back to some old crossing that's cooled off. I know a few, and you probably know a few. Well, yeah, place west of Laredo. Then there's Devil's River. That's been quiet lately. Yeah, and the Castellan area and the Big Bend, up through Lajitas and Redford, it's a big border. Yeah, so the sooner we get started, the more of it we can cover. You're dragging a double trailer, Jase. Suppose I load my horse in with charcoal. We'll use one car. Good. Let's go. Mooney and I covered the old smuggler crossings one by one, but weeks passed and we hadn't found anything by the time we reached the Big Bend. We were riding the river near Lajitas. Getting kind of late, Jase. We ought to make camp turn in. Yeah, might as well quit this spot tomorrow. Move on toward Redford. There's a good campsite ahead, and we'll be carrying near that clump of honey mesquite. You've got eyes like a cat. We can make radio contact when we get back to the car tomorrow. Cap may have something for us. Yeah. What was it he said he'd check on? Narcotic possession cases. Trying to pin down areas where the drug traffic seems to be the heaviest. Man who's smuggling narcotics must be picking up for a central distributor. Well, it could be just a small operator. Small operators' business wouldn't warrant the risk of crossing the border. Whoever makes the pickup is working for a boss. But why couldn't he be the distributor making his own pickup? Ah, big boy, play it safe. Stick somebody else's neck out, not his own. Here we are. Ooh, ooh, Charlie. You want to get the bed rolls off, Jase? I'll strike a fire, get some chuck cooking. No, no, let's skip the fire and eat cold. Why? We're moving out of here tomorrow. I'd like to watch one more night. It's too quiet here. I haven't been in reports of any trouble in this section in almost three years. I haven't even spotted a wet-back trail. Okay, no fire. Might as well let the horses drink before we hobble them. Come on, Charcoal. Come on, boy. I want to rub Charcoal's legs down a night. A way to gear's been cutting him up. Yeah, I got a few nasty scratches myself. Had a boy. Drink up. You looking for something over there, Jase? Yeah, let the horses go for a second. Come here, bring a flashlight. What is it? Slight depressions in this mud bank. Just barely saw them. Flash the light. Yeah. They were tracks, all right, not much left, though. Something else here. A piece of paper half-buried must have been stepped on. Hmm, brown. Looks like that brown stickum paper they used to seal packages. No, this is the kind of paper a bank uses to wrap money. Traces of blue on here from an ink stamp. Yeah, can you read it? No, maybe the lab at Austin can. Anybody who tore a band from a packet of money in this spot must have been counting it. Yeah, this isn't exactly a business neighborhood. Let's take out, boy. We found some kind of a crossing, and it may be the one we're looking for. We didn't dare move out of the area. We took turns sleeping and keeping the horses out of sight as much as possible. We gripped out along the river, moving slowly undercover. Five nights now, Jace. Maybe they won't cross again in the same spots. I know. A mile above or below us, and we'd never even see them. We found tracks in a couple of places along here. They might... Oh. One of our horses thought we had something for a minute. Climb. That isn't one of ours. We found one from the wrong direction. Put your head to the ground. I don't have to. I can hear him coming now. Can't be our horses. They're hobbled on the one we hear is moving free. Come on. Don't show yourself on the river side. That's where his contact will come from. Coming now, there's something moving in the water out there. A few hundred yards down. Our horses would have to be up the other way. We'll have to try it on foot. We haven't time to go back and get mounted. They make a fast pass. We'll never get there in time anyhow. We'll have to risk a little noise. Step it up. The contact is across to this side by now. I can't see him out there anymore. Wait. Wait. The horse is stopping too. Diego, over here, senor. Come on, give me this stuff. Here's the money. They're not wasting any time, Jace. No. Let's go. Keep going, Diego. Run. Get up, boy! I'll get the one on the river, Jace. He shot at close range, Jace. I had to kill him. We've got to leave and get after that rider. Let's get to the horses. You're right. We've been 50 yards closer to him back there, Jace. He went over the ridge up ahead. We can pick up his trail up there. I could swear I hit him when I fired. I hope you did. Our cottage traffic's the filthiest thing on earth. Well, here's the ridge, Jace. Whoa, boy! Whoa, Charco. Look where we have to track. Skeet and grease wood. Ground as hard as rock. It won't be much of a trail here, Jace. It'll take us hours to cut back and forth, looking for soft spots. No time for that. Get off. It's going to be too bad if I didn't hit him. A blood trail's our only chance. Yeah. They'll find another contact for narcotics across the border. Sure they will. Unless we get to the man we're after. He's the only one who can lead us to the ring on this side of the border. And we've got to get to him before he gets rid of that package. We're listening to Tales of the Texas Rangers, starring Joel McCrae as Ranger Jace Pearson. Today marks our first Sunday broadcast, and we sincerely hope that all our old friends who'd listen to us on Saturday night will be with us at this new Sunday time. Also, we extend a cordial welcome to our new listeners and hope that you'll be with us every Sunday at this time. Now we continue with tonight's case, Living Death, an authentic story from the files of the Texas Rangers. We combed the ground for a blood trail, and we found it. Not much, but enough to follow. It led through the Mesquite and Greasewood, but the rider knew the country. He'd been weaving through the roughest spots. He's a smart one, Jace. Yeah, slowing us down all the way. Got a good hour on us by now. Man, an hour is too long. He's probably just using that horse to get to a car someplace. We can't waste any more time trail-cutting them. No. He must have headed for cover someplace to take care of that wound. General Direction seems to be northeast, but we'll have to gamble on it. Okay, let's ride. Get up, Charlie. As we reached a road and picked up the trail again, we had horse tracks to follow now, and they led to a dilapidated barn near a rundown ranch house. He was here all right, Clyde. Blood in the hay and his torn cloth ripped a piece off his shirt to make a bandage. He knew this spot and headed right for it. He must have been here before. Yeah, but we're still way behind him. Main road's only a mile or so from here. He's gotten to his car by now. Ranch house is dark. Let's wake him up. He might have seen something or heard something. I believe the horse is here. Okay. This place sure has gone to sea, Jace. Yeah, big house, fallen apart. Fences, sagging, no stock. Must have been a nice ranch once, though. Isn't any more. Man gets his living from the earth. I think he'd take better care of it. Here's a house. Open up. Hey, wake up in there. Texas Rangers, ma'am. We'd like to talk to you. The door, she was carrying a candle. The inside of the house was almost barren. What do you want? We're looking for a rider who came through here tonight. He stopped in your barn. You see her here or anything? No, I didn't. You rent out a horse to anybody? A horse? Ranger, if I had a horse, I'd have sold him for food for my kids. Sorry, we have to bother you, ma'am. It's all right. What difference does it make? You know anybody around who, ma'am, would you mind holding your candle over the mantle of this fireplace? Why? Jace, that picture. The face was younger, full and healthier than when we'd seen it last. But there was no doubt about who it had been. Jace, that's a picture of the man we saw with the cap, the body and the morgue. Oh, no. Take it easy, ma'am. Ma'am, I'm sorry. When? When did you say him? It can't be, daddy. It can't be. I'm afraid he is, ma'am. You'll help us a lot if you'll tell us who he was. Jack Prentice, my husband. Oh, my poor kid. Oh, why didn't you report him missing? Because he left me two years ago. He'd sold and lost everything we owned. He was sick, half-crazy, acting like a madman. I don't know why I didn't do anything. He'd never been like that before. You got any idea at all of what started it? A friend of his. Jack was all right. He was a good husband and father till he took up a verge of grief. Then he spent more time with him than he did with us. He must have been gambling or something. We had a good place here. Then it was all gone. This isn't going to be easy to take, ma'am. Your husband wasn't a gambler. He was a drug addict. Oh, why didn't he tell me? I begged him to go to a doctor, but he wouldn't. When did you see him last? I told you two years ago. When Virgil Green left him, Jack left right after him. You've seen his Virgil Green since then? No. You know where Green went after he left here? No, but it must have been Chino. I got a couple of letters from Jack. He came from there. Then he stopped writing. Not even a word to his kids. Ma'am, I hate to leave you like this, but we'll see if we can get you some help later on. Nothing can help anymore. Not for me. But I beg for my kids. You won't have to. You'll hear from us. Come on, Clyde. We got to get the boy who gunned her husband, Jace. We got to get more than one. We got to get them all. The whole ring. There'll be a hundred more like her husband. Diane's slower and worse than he did. You think this Virgil Green is the link? It must be. It's the cards we've been playing. Jack Prentice couldn't raise money to buy from Green, threatened to expose him, and Green killed him. Then he killed a man near the border, too. Got to try to pick up Green at Chino. He knew this place. It's a fair bet he's the man we've been chasing. Get up, Charcoal. Oh, boy. Taking him is going to be a pleasure. We can't take him. Not until we find out if he still has that package. We better knock on these ponies until we get to our car. Get up, Charcoal. The car. But before we hit it for Chino, I put in a phone call to Captain Stinson. All right, Jace. I'll have a Ranger plane pick up that bank wrapper and send it to the lab. It may be a bank in Chino. Well, that fits with a few other things. My checkup shows a heavy drug traffic in and around the Chino area. And the town where Prentice was killed is only 60 miles from Chino. Good. That narrows it down. Let's see if you can dig up a Chino address on Virgil Green while we're driving up there. He's only two hours ahead of us. We can burn up road. We may reach there almost as soon as he does. Let you know by radio, Jace. I'll head for Chino myself. Thanks, Captain. We'll see you there. We're out of Chino when our short wave came through with Green's address. KTX-80, unit 10. Unit 10 to KTX-A, go ahead. Address of Subject Virgil Green is Greendale Ranch, State Highway 39, 14 miles west of Chino. Got it. Any report from lab on bank money wrapper? Stamp on money wrapper restored by Austin Lab. Money and packet came from Chino State Bank, Corner Main and Crockett in Chino. 10-4, unit 10 clear. Any exit, Austin? That's all we need, Jace. Yeah, we can get Green in sight before he unloads that package. It was dark when we reached the Greendale Ranch outside of Chino. We'd made up time on Green's head start because we saw a car and horse trailer pull into the ranch just ahead of us. A man got out of the car and limped up to the house, and he was carrying a package. Walks like a man's been shot in the leg, Jace. Yeah. Don't turn in after him. Go on past the ranch. Okay. Where do you want to stop? Wherever we can watch the house and keep the car shielded. Well, there was some heavy brush on the other side of the road just across from Green's place. All right. Turn around and go back and keep an eye on him from there. Kept a watch on Green's house all night, but nobody showed to pick up the package. In the morning, Green came out and got into his car. We followed him into Chino. He's pulling into a parking space up near the next corner, Jace. Yeah. Slow down. He's getting out. He's got the package, all right, sticking out of his pocket. Park here. Quick. He's going into that building on the corner. Come on before we lose him. Hey. A street sign. Main and Crockett. And he went in there, Jace. Chino State Bank. That's where the money wrapper came from. Don't go in. He's on the corner. We can look through the bank windows. There he is, Jace. Last counter, the rear of the bank. Safe deposit boxes. Going through the rail into the vault. Let's have a box he's going to plant the stuff in. We're going to grab him? No. Waley comes out. But he won't have it on him then. We've got enough on him. We can pick him up anytime. We've got to stay with that package until we know who gets it next. Hey, he wasn't in there long. He's coming out. The package isn't in his pocket now. All right. Get out of sight, man. He's in there just long enough to open up the box and drop it. Yeah. You've seen the package now. Drift around to the front of the bank. See that nobody leaves that vault with it unless you follow him. Okay. Where are you going? To meet the captain and get a court order to open that vault. We got the order. Then we wait until the bank closed and the employees were out. We got the president of the bank at his home and took him back to open the vault. Now, got it, sir. Most distressing, gentlemen. Oh, come in, please. All right. Which box is green? 421, right here. Come on, open it for us. Of course. What? It's empty. Now, couldn't you have made a mistake, ranger? No. Clyde, are you sure that package wasn't taken out? Positive, Jase. I watched every single person went in or out till the bank closed. Our order covers the rest of these boxes, doesn't it, Captain? Yes. All right, let's open them all. We found what we were after, but not the way we expected to find it. The stuff was there, all right, but it had been split up into smaller quantities. Owners of these boxes must be names that you have on your list of dope peddlers, then, Captain. I'll check that on the bank records. Yeah, but how'd this stuff get split up? Green wasn't in here long enough to do it. No, you couldn't have done it. Miss Key'd only give him access to his own box. I have to be done by somebody with a set of duplicate keys. Somebody working here. Well, that's impossible. All of the head cashier and I have duplicate keys. Were you in the vault after the bank closed? No, sir. I haven't been in here all day. That's truth, Jase. I could see him through the window. And then the head cashier's our boy. He's the distributor. And a pretty clever distribution scheme, too. No direct contact, and he has access to the vault after the guard has left. If he's handled those packets, there'll be fingerprints on him. What's his name and where does he live? His name is August Webber. He's got a big ranch over near Australia on Highway 39. And I know how he got it now. He said he was making money on investments. Investments? He meant a black market and human souls. Come on, Clyde. Let's get him and Virgil Green. We found the house. An elaborate building on a fine ranch. There was another car in the driveway when we pulled up. Hey, Jase, that car in front of the place. Yeah, we're in luck. It's the car Virgil Green was driving. Light around the side of the house by that French door. Maybe they didn't hear us drive in. Good. Let's slip up on that side of the porch and find out. Might be able to take him easy. And don't count on it. Cold-blooded killer like Green. He'd keep on killing as long as he has a gun. He slipped up to the French door. It was locked, and we couldn't see through it. But their voices drifted out through an open window. Tellin' you where were my legs, Infect. I gotta see a doctor. Have him report a bullet wound. You want me to die? I can put a bullet in you, too. Well, let me know when you want to try. That little killer myself, Green. Only I haven't thought about it. Nobody's caught me, eh? All right, Clyde. Let's kick a hole in this door. All right. Don't move. You hurt bad? My side. You hit, too, Jase. Blood on your head. Just a minute. I'll get you to a hospital. How about... how about them? Leave them for the coroner. They're both dead. Gun found beside the body of Virgil Green proved to be the murder weapon the Rangers had been seeking. Narcotics peddlers having safe deposit boxes at the Chino State Bank were rounded up, and they admitted they had been supplied by August Weber. They were tried and sentenced. The traffic in living death was halted. Here again is the star of our show, Joel McCray. A friend of mine returned recently from a visit to Texas. While he was there, he'd seen a Texas Ranger and he asked his host, a rancher, what the requirements were for a man who wanted to be a ranger. A host looked thoughtful for a moment and said, well, I'd say if a man could ride like a Mexican, trail like an Indian, shoot like a Tennessean, fight like the devil, he might have a chance to get in. I hope you'll be with us again next week. Same time, same station. Good night. We told McCray in another authentic re-enactment of a case from the files of the Texas Rangers. McCray is currently seen starring in the MGM production Stars in My Crown. Tonight's cast included Tony Barrett, Barney Phillips, Larry Dothkin, Byron Kane, Ken Harvey, and Lillian Byers. This story was transcribed and adapted by Joel Murcott and the program was produced and directed by Stacey Keach. This is Hell Give Me Speaking. Three times mean good times on NBC.