The Manhunter

Car chases and flamboyant steam railroad train robberies spark this violent, action-packed '30s hour. For contrast, Star Ken Howard's detective Dave Barrett, is the quiet, laconic type in the thick of the fray, who's about to silence Ma Gantry (Ida Lupino) and her vicious gang.

A Federal officer, blinded during a raid on a gang hideout, asks Dave Barrett to be his 'eyes' in a dangerous pursuit of the wily gang leader, following the trail of murderous gangster Tom Baily. Barrett and the blind officer, Jeff Donnenfield, narrowly escape with their lives from a trap Baily sets.

Fearing for the life of his gangster son, an elderly farmer hires Barrett to find the boy before the police can capture him.

A vicious gangster and his men take over a small-town hospital, forcing the staff to neglect their patients and concentrate on saving their critically injured cohort.

A killer bank robber gets away with a strongbox full of gold but loses it as he heads for his backwoods hideout and an explosive family feud.

Striking from the sky in a World War I airplane, cattle rustlers are killing cowboys, depleting local herds and leaving baffled ranchers searching vainly for horse or automobile tracks.

Dave Barrett pursues a gang led by a demented, bomb-throwing, defrocked minister when he is hired by a union official to find the real criminals responsible for the murder and robbery for which his men are being falsely accused.

A muckraking reporter is captured and tortured into revealing where he has hidden evidence proving state graft payoffs.

The grisly stabbing death of a Marine buddy plunges Dave Barrett into the stormy backstage affairs of a theatrical troupe whose leading lady is fighting to revive her fading career.

When the owner of a trucking company refuses to deal with mobsters, the criminals retaliate by hijacking his trucks and stealing his valuable cargo.

A search for a missing teenager leads Dave to a corrupt carnival owner who kidnaps pretty young girls and forces them into prostitution.

Dave Barrett barricades himself with a group of townsfolk in a small village store to stand off a vicious assault launched by a gang leader and his men.

When a sharpshooting Marine hides out in the hills, determined to avenge his wife's brutal rape-slaying, Dave Barrett tries to head him off before the law hunts him down.

A once-wealthy jewelry-store clerk, ruined in the stock-market crash of 1929, tries to rejoin the ranks of the rich by stealing a fortune in gems.

Melva Tice, having seen the cold-blooded murder of a grand jury witness, becomes a target of the killers, and Dave Barrett, trying to protect her, finds his every move known by corrupt police.

A daring gang, working with military precision, steals an Army tank and kills a good friend of Dave Barrett, who sets out in pursuit, unaware the tank is to be used in an epochal jailbreak.

Dave Barrett is thrown into a chain-gang prison and singled out for special mistreatment after his search for a missing prisoner threatens the warden's corrupt regime. Joining forces with a black prisoner, Simon, Barrett lays plans to escape.

When a ship carrying six murdered men drifts into a harbor, the daughter of one of the victims asks Dave to find the killer.

Barrett goes after a double-crossing gangster who is being pursued by the hoods he has victimized. Knowing that the mobsters he cheated are gunning for him, the criminal sets up his innocent brother to receive the bullets meant for him. 

Dave Barrett seeks the killer who set off an explosion in which his friend Paul Tate was critically hurt and he learns that a woman fears the blast was meant for her.

Barrett is hired to find the political assassin of a powerful governor and learns that his quarry is a professional hit man who never misses and has never been seen.

A half-crazed man, bent on vengeance, kidnaps Dave Barrett's father and uses his hostage to get to Barrett, in the "Trial by Terror" episode on "The Manhunter." Ernie Sutton (guest star Woody Strode) makes Barrett obey his cruel orders in a series of bizarre settings, including an abandoned arena, an old mine and an eerie museum.