by Hal Erickson
synopsis
Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) follow up reports that a shabbily dressed eight-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl have been going door to door in a fashionable Bel-Air neighborhood, begging for food. A tip from a servant in one of the homes indicates that the little beggars are two of three severely malnourished youngsters who are living in squalor in a large, decaying house. The detectives find out that the children have been abandoned (and not for the first time) by their alchoholic mother--and that the youngest of the three kids is dying of a skull fracture. This episode is based on the Dragnet radio broadcast of February 1, 1951.
