Originally Aired: February 6, 1956
Johnny Dollar #321, "The McClain Matter Ep 1,"
Johnny Dollar is called to the office of Don Taylor at Tri-State Insurance to meet a woman with an extraordinary claim. Mrs. McClain, a well-dressed woman in her late twenties, reveals that she is legally dead and her husband, Dr. Dave McClain, collected ten thousand dollars on her insurance policy two years ago in Los Angeles. She explains how a transient woman named Teresa Corbett died of a heart attack in her husband's medical office, and Dr. McClain saw an opportunity for fraud. With no one to identify the body, he convinced another doctor, Dr. Reed, that the corpse was his wife, securing a death certificate under Mrs. McClain's name while she disappeared to Palm Springs.
Mrs. McClain reveals that her husband promised to meet her in New York after collecting the insurance money, but after three months of letters, he stopped all communication. She never received a dime of the money and has carried the burden of this deception for two years. Now, tormented by guilt and abandonment, she has come forward to confess, leaving Johnny Dollar to investigate this bizarre case of fraud, betrayal, and a woman returning from the dead.