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MURDER BY MOONLIGHT

·39 min·3 clips

At Three Oaks, Jeff and Ann find Bruce Albright and Sylvia at the pool, apparently dead.

1. Hot Copy Radio Theatre recreates "Murder by Moonlight," a Hot Copy script originally broadcast on NBC radio on September 17, 1944. 2. Logan Smith serves as announcer, and Ronda Sigler Ware and Patrick Brancato are credited as Ann Rogers and Jeff Warren, the pair who drive the case. 3. The episode centers on Bruce Albright's death at Three Oaks, where a moonlit pool, a midnight appointment, and a marked envelope of money frame the mystery. 4. Bruce Albright tells Creighton that he knows the "little plan" involving Sylvia and refuses to let the marriage happen. 5. Ann Rogers and Jeff Warren travel in the moonlight after a Swedish restaurant stop, and Jeff says he has been hired to investigate a man at 12 a.m. 6. At the Albright estate, Gerald Gardner, Trace, and Creighton are performing artificial respiration when Ann and Jeff arrive at the pool. 7. Jeff inspects the bodies and says Bruce Albright was killed by a blow to the back of the skull, not drowned. 8. He then confirms that Sylvia was also murdered, which turns the pool scene into a double-homicide investigation. 9. Trace says he found the bodies during his midnight rounds, and he says he turned on the pool lights after he discovered them. 10. Creighton admits that Albright offered him $25,000 in a marked envelope to buy him off. 11. Creighton says he took the money to Sylvia, explained the scheme, and told her that Albright had gone swimming. 12. He also says he and Sylvia had secretly married because she expected her father to interfere. 13. Jeff tests the timeline against the study, the pool, and the midnight routine, and he keeps pushing each suspect for exact times. 14. Ann spots the envelope in Trace's inside pocket, which links him to the missing money before he can explain it away. 15. Jeff then challenges Trace's description of Sylvia's "shiny white" face by pointing out that the body was floating in the water. 16. The dead man's float clue and the red blood moon rising at a quarter to twelve give Jeff the timing argument he needs. 17. Sergeant Roberts arrives as the questioning shifts from private suspicion to an arrest on murder charges. 18. The episode plays as fast radio drama, with Ann and Jeff trading jokes while the suspects try to keep their stories straight. 19. Listeners who like vintage radio mysteries, clue chains, and detective banter. 20. Listeners who want contemporary interviews or nonfiction reporting.

As heard by us

A moonlit estate mystery carried by crisp performances and old-radio suspense.

Hot Copy Radio Theater keeps Murder by Moonlight in tidy, old-school whodunit territory, building its puzzle from alibis, a marked-money dispute, and a late-night trip to the pool.

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Why you'd press play

You want a moonlit whodunit with a 1944 radio-drama glow and a newspaper reporter on the case.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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