The Big Story
The Cord Around Her Neck
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The Big Story turns newspaper reporting into radio drama, following reporters as they pursue the facts behind striking headlines. This episode draws on the 1938 Seattle murder of Emily Maude Ziegler Butte and the reporting of Stuart Whitehouse of the West Seattle Times. The broadcast’s title points to the detail that captured public attention: Emily’s request for a farewell kiss as she lay dying.
The story traces the case from the confusing scene in an apartment building through Charles Felix Butte’s admission, the changing course of his plea, and his eventual sentence. The account also distinguishes the documented events from the dramatization: names and details could be altered for legal reasons, and the script may have taken liberties with the underlying reporting. Its central perspective is that of a reporter trying to make sense of a sensational crime and the legal proceedings that followed.
The result combines crime drama with the texture of newspaper work, while leaving room to consider how headlines and radio scripts shape a real case for listeners. It offers a tense, fact-based premise and a glimpse of the distance that can separate a dramatic retelling from the events that inspired it.
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.