User Reviews

A young Puerto Rican on his first night in the city meets a woman at a dance hall and asks her to dance; she refuses because she is already married but suggests he asks her cousin who is waiting downstairs. He asks this second woman but she says she can't because she's getting married in the morning. The young man is soon thereafter arrested for assault and robbery and is identified by the woman victim who subsequently dies. He insists that he was with the second young woman at the time the crime was committed and knows this because the church bells sounded at midnight. The first woman denies there ever was a second woman. The story has an interesting twist at the end if not entirely unexpected. There were a couple of other interesting bits in this episode - one Garland tries to convince the first young woman that a wife beater will not change his ways, all to no avail of course, and secondly the brief glimpse we get about Puerto Rican immigrants.

***SPOILERS*** Just off a plane from Puerto Rico alone and friendless Juan Ortaga, Thomas Millan, is introduced to pretty Maria Tristeza, Marlina Colon, by her friend Anita Fernandez, Gloria Marlove, at a dance in the lower East Side of Manhattan. To Juan's disappointment the lovely and saintly looking Maria tells him she's to get married the very next day which puts a sudden end or damper to him trying to hit in on her. It's only later that Maria becomes a major part in Juan's life as a witness that will get him off a both robbery and murder rape charge of local candy store owner Mrs. O'Connel, Mary Michael, who he's been arrested for the crime.

It's Antia who's been keeping the police from finding Maria in her fear that it was her husband the just released from prison Raul, Dario Berrie, who actually committed the crime that Juan has been arrested and in-prisoned for. With police woman Casey Jones, Beverly Garland, put on the case she feels that Juan is telling the truth but can't help him without any evidence that he was at the dance hall at the time that the crime was committed. The only person who can is the mysterious Maria who's nowhere to be found. That's when on a hunch Casey Jones decides to check out the Saint Anthony Church in the neighborhood that Juan claimed he, as well as Maria, heard its bells chime at midnight at the precise moment 12 midnight that the crime that he's accused of happened!

***SPOILERS*** As things turned out Casey Jone's hunch paid off not only in proving Juan's innocence but having Mrs. O'Connel's killer reveal himself by making a break for it when the truth and evidence pointed against him. It was Marie who's testimony saved Juans neck that in the end brought back his faith in his fellow man or in Marie's case woman that he somehow lost in how he was being treated by the police and everyone else for a crime that he didn't commit!