Enjoy two free true-crime episodes of This Is Your FBI w/ Stacy Harris

A) 5/14/48 The Big Guy

B) 11/21/52 The Swamp Killer

J. Edgar Hoover, the powerful first director of the F.B.I., insisted any portrayal of the bureau on radio should be positive, emphasizing its successes in the war on crime and the effectiveness of its modern techniques. Local police departments had already cooperated with producers of true-crime programs by providing files of old cases that could be dramatized. The F.B.I.’s files were bursting with robberies, murders, and assorted acts of skullduggery. For This Is Your FBI, Hoover gave producer/director Jerry Devine access to its closed F.B.I. files and fans of the series had a weekly treat in store. Told from the agent’s point of view, stories had our men in blue tracking down embezzlers, murderers, kidnappers, burglars and enemies of the state. Over a period of 8 years, screen star Frank Lovejoy, followed by Dean Carleton and William Woodson, narrated exciting, realistic dramatizations of racket-busting and crime detection. Special Agent Jim Taylor, played by Stacy Harris, took the lead role. His character was fictional but the cases were real, with the names of criminals, as well as locations, changed to protect the identity of innocent people involved. The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States sponsored This Is Your FBI for the entire run (1945-1953). The program covered much of the same ground as Gang Busters, which was created in 1935 by Phillips H. Lord.