***SPOILERS*** After his involvement in a jewel armored car robbery, where two people were killed, in 1948 Chris Philips, Hugh O'Brian, the wheel-man in the crime has laid low and straighten himself out as law abiding and productive citizen Chris Martin. Martin is shocked to later find out that his three accomplices in the robbery have escaped from prison and are out gunning for him. It turns out that Chris left the three high and dry without a ride as he fled from the scene to save his own neck.
With both him and his wife Helen, Gena Rowlands, who was kidnapped by the trio lives on the line Chris resorts to violence himself to prevent his former accomplices in crime from murdering him & her. In the process Chris ends up killing all three by the time the Alfred Hitchcock episode is over. And even more striking the police in knowing that Chris's victims Adam Fred & Steve, John Anderson Jay Lanin & Richard Shannon, got exactly what they deserved they don't bother arresting him and try him for their, what was at first thought to be, cold blooded murders.
Unusual story where the killer, Chris Martin/Philips, gets away with murder, or better yet self-defense, which was unheard of in US films or TV shows back then in 1962. Hitchcock who was known to slip taboo subjects through the TV & movie censors, like he did in "Strangers on a Train" & Notorious", did it again this time without them realizing it. Not that Martin/Philips killed three people and not made to stand trail for it but also torched half of Southern Californa in his escape from his antagonists but he also didn't have to stand trail for the crime, murder & robbery, that he was involved in some 14 years ago!