Suspense. And the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrills, the master of mystery
and adventure, William N. Robeson.
The most lurid of crimes is the crime of passion. No mere bank robbery or stock swindle can
compete for newspaper space with a nice juicy love nest murder. Our story concerns itself
with a murder which criminologists would classify as a crime of passion. But we feel that it
is just the opposite. A crime of no passion. A negative murder committed because passion
had fled and love was dead. A homicide without hope. Listen, listen then as Miss Kathy Lewis
stars in a statement of fact which begins in just a minute.
Now, a statement of fact starring Kathy Lewis. A tale well calculated to keep you in suspense.
I'm sorry, no comment.
Call the perfection, Mr. Critchin.
Let me through please. Would you let me through? Sorry, I have nothing to say at this time.
Oh, hiya Chris. You didn't waste any time.
Can't afford to. How'd the press get in on this?
The sheriff called them after I told them you were on your way down.
Publicity hound, huh?
Well every little bit helps in an election year.
Yeah, where's the prisoner?
In there with him.
Where's she been hiding these last three days?
I don't know, she didn't talk to me. At least to me.
She'll talk to me.
Just a minute, the sheriff left orders that he's not to be disturbed.
What's your name?
Deputy P.G. Thaler.
Mr. Thaler, I want you to go and stand by that door over there. No one, absolutely
no one is to come through that door until I say so.
I take my orders from Sheriff Morrow.
Oh, you do?
Thaler, I...
Hey, I thought I told you I didn't want anyone around here.
Morning, Sheriff.
Who are you?
Dale Christian, Deputy District Attorney.
Oh, we can handle this situation all right, Mr. Christian.
Is Mrs. Dudley in there?
Yes.
She's guarded?
No need to guard her.
Get in there, John, don't take your eyes off her.
Right, Chris.
Now look here.
Now you look here, Sheriff, you're going to do as I say.
Just a minute there, Bradford.
He has no right to go into my office.
He has every right to go in there, and I'll show you why.
Here, see this? It's a warrant issued just after noon
for the arrest of Ellen Randall Dudley.
When you see that seal and that signature,
your authority has automatically superseded.
No one comes in here and tells me how to run my job.
I'm telling you.
You're trying to get your name and picture in every newspaper
in the country at the expense of this case.
I'll have no more of it.
This is no pressman's holiday.
If you have any brains at all, you'll take Mr. Thaler here
and go outside and get rid of those reporters as fast as you can.
I'll take action against you for this, Mr. Christian.
You just do that, Sheriff, and see where it'll get you.
And now...
starring Kathy Lewis, act 2 of A Statement of Fact.
Good morning, Miss Dudley.
Yes?
My name is Christian, Miss Dudley. I am the deputy district attorney.
All right, John. Okay.
What are you going to do?
Just ask a few questions, Miss Dudley.
What kind of questions?
I'm obligated to warn you that whatever you say right now
may be used later in the court.
To be on the safe side, I shouldn't tell you anything.
Miss Dudley, listen carefully.
Yesterday afternoon, I attended a coroner's inquest
inquiring into the death of your husband, Robert Ames Dudley.
The coroner's jury determined that Mr. Dudley came to his death
as the result of wounds inflicted by you, his wife.
A hatchet was presented as evidence
and was identified by police experts as the murder weapon.
That hatchet carries fingerprints identified as yours.
Two witnesses, your maid, Ethel Lee Barth,
and a neighbor, Mrs. Frank Thompson,
gave testimony that further incriminates you.
Enough evidence was presented for the coroner's jury
to recommend that you be taken into custody
and held for the action of the grand jury.
Now, do you understand what I have just told you?
Yes, I think so.
In a few days, the grand jury will meet and charge you
with murdering your husband.
Do you understand that?
Yes.
Fine.
Now, a frank, honest statement from you right now
may determine the disposition and the proper plea
to be entered on your behalf.
What do you mean, Mr. Christian?
Proper plea?
Miss Dudley, you murdered your husband on the night of the 13th.
The sooner you admit that, the better off you'll be.
Suppose I... suppose I don't admit anything.
Then you can expect no clemency,
and that, of course, is entirely up to you, Mrs. Dudley.
But I must tell you that the death house
in the state penitentiary is full of people
who didn't listen to reason while they still had a chance.
This is your chance, Mrs. Dudley, right here and now.
Well?
I don't know what to do.
If you don't take my advice, they'll hang you.
I promise you, Mrs. Dudley, they'll hang you
as certainly as you're sitting in that chair.
Well?
I don't know what to do.
And now...
starring Kathy Lewis, act three of A Statement of Fact.
Now, suppose we begin at the beginning, Mrs. Dudley.
The beginning?
What was the beginning? I don't know.
Well, let's say... where'd you meet your husband?
Seems to me I read someplace that it was in Europe.
Yes, yes, that's right.
In the south of France, I had a villa on Cap-Fra that summer.
What summer would that be?
1950.
Meet him through friends, did you?
Yes, yes, that's right.
Gala in Monte Carlo.
We were married three weeks later at the Marais in Grasse.
Rather a short engagement, wasn't it?
Seemed an eternity at the time.
I was fed up with European gentlemen, I suppose,
tired of having my hand kissed,
bored with the kind of men who put all women into two categories,
possible wives or possible mistresses.
Roger seemed only interested in me as a wife,
and he was so refreshing, so healthy, so American.
But the marriage didn't work out the way you expected.
I understand you and Mr. Dudley have been having trouble for some time.
Oh, yes, for years.
I soon found out that although he wanted me as a wife,
he wanted every other woman as a girlfriend.
And he drank?
He drank.
Now, if you'll just start with the events of that night.
What is today?
Friday.
I'd be playing bridge this afternoon.
There's a dog show tomorrow evening I wanted to go to,
but I won't be able to go anywhere now.
Do you feel sorry for me, Mr. Christian?
I beg your pardon?
Do you feel sorry for me?
Makes no difference how I feel, Mrs. Dudley.
You're an accused prisoner, and my job is to get a statement of fact from you.
That's why I'm here.
Mrs. Dudley, I'm your friend here.
In a courtroom, I'll represent the prosecution,
and I'll do everything I can to see to it that you hang
unless you make a complete confession now.
Is that perfectly clear to you, Mrs. Dudley?
Yes.
And if you have a record of always getting a conviction,
that'll help when you decide to run for district attorney, won't it?
Mrs. Dudley, my professional career has nothing to do with this.
If I weren't here talking to you, someone else in my office would be here.
It's a job that has to be done, and I happen to be the one who's doing this.
But wouldn't it be better for you if you had more of an audience
than Mr. Bradford over there?
Wouldn't it be much better if you had me in a courtroom
with reporters and photographers around the scene?
Mrs. Dudley, do you want to talk to me now?
I don't mean to make you angry, Mr. Christian,
but if all you've told me is true about what happened at the coroner's inquest
and what will happen when the grand jury meets,
you can hang me right now.
I certainly can.
And yet you're here to get my story.
You must be uncertain about something.
I told you I'm trying to help you, Mrs. Dudley, but I warn you,
I am not uncertain about anything where you're concerned.
Make no mistake about that.
I have a duty to the people of this state,
to learn the facts of this case and present them before the court,
and I intend to do that with or without your cooperation.
Well?
May I talk to you alone?
You understand why Mr. Bradford is here.
Yes, I... but I'd like to tell it to you alone.
It can't possibly hurt anything to talk to you first, can it?
All right, John, wait outside.
I'll send for you when I need you.
Right, thank you.
Thank you.
And now, starring Kathy Lewis, act four of A Statement of Fact.
All right, Mrs. Dudley, we're quite alone.
What do you want to tell me?
I killed my husband.
Very well.
Tell me how it happened.
I was having some people over for dinner that night.
I was busy in the kitchen with the maid fixing the dinner.
When Roger came downstairs, I asked him to do a simple thing,
just a little thing.
I asked him to start a fire in the fireplace.
Go on, please.
Well, he took so long down in the basement getting things ready for the fire,
and our guests were arriving at 7.30.
So I asked him to come up and make some martinis and let the fire go for the minute.
He called me a name.
Why?
I never knew why he did things like that.
I went downstairs to ask him why he was so angry,
and he called me another name.
It wasn't just the name or him being angry.
It was all of the things he'd done to me before,
the arguing and the fighting and the insults.
When he started up the stairs, I picked up the hatchet and I hit him with it.
He fell down.
Then what did you do?
I ran upstairs and put on my coat and left the house.
Where have you been these last three days?
I never left town.
I took a room at a motel and last night I decided I better get away, go east maybe.
Somebody recognized me at the bus station.
Why did you kill him?
He took my life away from me, Mr. Christian.
I don't understand.
When I went down the stairs that night and saw him standing there,
I suddenly realized all he had taken from me,
everything that was young and fresh and wanting.
And I despised him for it.
So I killed him.
Why?
Why did you have to kill him?
You could have divorced him, left him.
Don't you see what he had taken from me, Mr. Christian?
There was nothing left for him to steal from me
and nothing left for me to give to another man.
Are you married?
No, I'm afraid I've been too busy.
You wouldn't know what a man can take from a woman if...
Mr. Christian, am I someone you'd want to be married to if...
if this terrible thing hadn't happened?
Am I someone you'd be proud to have for a wife?
You might be.
What one needs is to be wanted.
Am I old and ugly and unattractive?
Am I shallow or flighty?
Look at me, Mr. Christian.
I am.
No.
Stand up, please.
Look at me.
Close.
Yeah.
Would you want to be loved by me?
You're beautiful, Mrs. Dudley.
Have you any idea what it means to be a beautiful woman, Mr. Christian?
To be admired by every man and envied by every woman
and never to be sure of why?
How many times have I heard those words, I love you,
wondered what they meant.
What was love?
My face?
My figure?
My artificial makeup?
My Dior gown?
Or me?
Maybe you can give me the straight answer, Mr. Christian.
I haven't been able to get to the hairdressers recently.
I've run out of lipstick.
I'm afraid this suit needs pressing.
Would you want to be loved by me, Mr. Christian?
Yes.
Yes, I would.
Well, I was nothing to Roger Dudley, nothing.
And my love was nothing to him.
I was a fixture, a decoration, an animal.
And he took all of it.
My love and my life.
And then he stood at the bottom of the stairs and called me a name.
Mrs. Dudley, Mrs. Dudley, now listen to me.
Listen to me.
Now no one saw this happen.
The maid was upstairs in the kitchen.
Mrs. Thompson only heard it from next door.
Now no, listen to me, please.
You can claim that you did it in self-defense.
He came at you, and you picked up the hatchet,
and you hit him with it to protect yourself.
Now you tell it that way when Mr. Bradford comes back here.
There are a dozen good men in this state who'd be glad to represent you in court with a story like that.
I'll be opposite them, but you can get off.
In the end, you'll be charged with second-degree murder,
and at the most, you'll get a suspended sentence.
Don't you understand what I'm telling you?
You can be free.
Yes, Mr. Christian.
All right, let's have Mr. Bradford in here now, please.
Right.
Wait a minute.
Hold it.
I can never be free.
What are you talking about?
You haven't understood a thing I told you, have you, Mr. Christian?
He took my life away from me a long time ago.
Can't you see, Mr. Christian, I don't have any life to live now?
Mrs. Dudley, you have everything to live for.
Look, you're young, beautiful.
You want and need all of the things that I can...
that life can give you.
Too late, Mr. Christian.
No, it's not too late.
Miss, listen to me.
You're too valuable a person,
too desirable, too beautiful to die.
You must live.
Why?
For me, for us.
What?
You need to be loved, and you need me.
God help me.
I need you.
A few minutes ago, you were telling me about your duty
to the people of this state, Mr. Christian.
Tell me about it now.
Uh...
Yes?
All right, send in Mr. Bradford.
I wanted to talk to you alone like this to make sure I was right.
You're no different than he was, Mr. Christian.
You'd take a woman and do the same thing to her that he did to me.
Until you kissed me just then, I wasn't a person to you.
I was an animal, a trapped animal.
And if I let you help me escape from this trap,
I'd just be escaping into a smaller one, a worse one.
With you.
You're another Roger Dudley.
Okay, Chris.
Chris?
Are you ready to make your statement of fact, Mrs. Dudley?
Yes.
All right, John, take it down.
From the beginning, Mrs. Dudley.
Just as it happened.
Suspense.
In which Kathy Lewis starred in William N. Robeson's production of A Statement of Fact,
written by E. Jack Newman.
In just a moment, the names of the supporting players
and a word about next week's story of suspense.
Supporting Kathy Lewis in a statement of fact
where John Danaer, Charles Seal, and Barney Phillips.
Listen.
Listen again next week when we return with another tale
well calculated to keep you in suspense.
This is the United States Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.