Doctor Plain

Appeared from Friday, December 8, 1950 to Monday, February 5, 1951

Dr. Plain’s full name was Doctor Keenan Plain and he was a one-armed surgeon and murderer. Doctor Plain was a bald man with a white mustache, whose left arm had been severed at the elbow. He sometimes wore a false hand and at other times he attached a small flame thrower to his left arm.

Doctor Plain and his wife, Mona Plain, were anxious to gain Mrs. Forchune’s wealth, which she was leaving to them in her will. They couldn’t wait for the Forchune family to die, so Doctor Plain murdered Mrs. Forchune’s son, Jim Forchune, by burning him to death with the flame thrower. He then shot Jim’s wife, Evelyn, and let her die on the operating table when he was the surgeon who was doing the operation.

Doctor Plain and Mona mixed up a poisonous mud pack which Doctor Plain instructed Mrs. Forchune’s beautician, Opal, to use for Mrs. Forchune’s facial. When Opal used it, it induced a heart attack in Mrs. Forchune and sent Opal to the hospital. Mrs. Forchune fell dead in her kitchen and Doctor Plain tried to fake her death as a suicide by turning on the gas from the stove, but Tracy did not believe his story. Mona then suffocated Opal in the hospital.

Mona and Doctor Plain then celebrated their newfound wealth. Their celebration was cut short when Tracy and the police arrived to arrest them for murder. Doctor Plain turned his flame thrower at Tracy, and then fled down the stairs, with Tracy shooting at him. Doctor Plain ran out into the street with the flame thrower shooting flames. Police bullets cut him down and he fell into the path of a gasoline truck which overturned and then exploded. Doctor Plain burned to death on the street. When the fire was extinguished, Tracy wrapped Doctor Plain’s remains up in a sheet and had them carried off in a basket.

Reprinted with permission from the author Victor E. Wichert “The Dick Tracy Encyclopedia Oct. 4, 1931 – Dec. 25 1977″

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