***SPOILERS*** It's when SFPD Detective Andy Anderson, Virgil Frye, is found gunned down on a San Francisco street it's suspected by higher ups that he was on the take taking kickbacks from top city bookie Johnny Utrecht, Robert Alda. It was Anderson who was assigned to get the goods on Utrecht who when found shot to death had unaccounted amount of $500.00 in cash on him an a bank account with $2,000.00 that was just opened, the day before his murder, for him by an unknown party. Special police consultant Robert T. Ironside, Raymond Burr, and a good friend of Andy feels that he was set up by Utrecht making his murder look like a random street mugging gone wrong not a preplanned contract hit. As things were to turn out it was neither but the truth to Anderson's murder is far more disturbing then first suspected. he was the third, one was soon to be murdered later, victim of the killer who offed him for reasons that he, Anderson, foolishly got himself involved in.
Ironside trying to bring Anderson's murder to justice is dumbfounded in just what the #1 suspect in his murder bookie Johnny Utrecht wanted him killed for. All that did was throw suspicion on himself and nothing else. There's also Utrecht's former partner in crime the now cleaned up out of jail and "upstanding" San Francisco businessman Daryll Frazer, Peter Mark Richman. Frazer was once involved in a love triangle with sexy Adrienne May played by Jan Shepard who's, what a small world this is, now or was the late Let. Andy Anderson's secret lover! That love affair resulted in Frazer's wife ending up murdered with Frazer later being found innocent by a jury of his piers.
***SPOILERS**** It takes a while for Ironside to figure out what all this confusion is really all about but the murder of the third victim of the elusive killer magazine photographer Simon Arkoff, William Schallert, tips him off to who Anderson's as well as Frazer's wife's killer really was. It was Arkoff who lied under oath to cover-up the circumstances behind Frazer's wife's murder two years ago that got him off. It was Arkoff who now chickened out and was about to spill his guts to Ironside and the SFPD, about Frazer's wife murder, that lead to him being murdered himself. And it's Andy Anderson who was the link that could have tied the two killings together and now he's gone as well. But it's Ironside who finally figured out who the killer is and who set the trap for him or her that would not only bring him out into the open but have him put his, Ironside, life on the line in him doing it!
Ironside trying to bring Anderson's murder to justice is dumbfounded in just what the #1 suspect in his murder bookie Johnny Utrecht wanted him killed for. All that did was throw suspicion on himself and nothing else. There's also Utrecht's former partner in crime the now cleaned up out of jail and "upstanding" San Francisco businessman Daryll Frazer, Peter Mark Richman. Frazer was once involved in a love triangle with sexy Adrienne May played by Jan Shepard who's, what a small world this is, now or was the late Let. Andy Anderson's secret lover! That love affair resulted in Frazer's wife ending up murdered with Frazer later being found innocent by a jury of his piers.
***SPOILERS**** It takes a while for Ironside to figure out what all this confusion is really all about but the murder of the third victim of the elusive killer magazine photographer Simon Arkoff, William Schallert, tips him off to who Anderson's as well as Frazer's wife's killer really was. It was Arkoff who lied under oath to cover-up the circumstances behind Frazer's wife's murder two years ago that got him off. It was Arkoff who now chickened out and was about to spill his guts to Ironside and the SFPD, about Frazer's wife murder, that lead to him being murdered himself. And it's Andy Anderson who was the link that could have tied the two killings together and now he's gone as well. But it's Ironside who finally figured out who the killer is and who set the trap for him or her that would not only bring him out into the open but have him put his, Ironside, life on the line in him doing it!
