A Utah man, Bob Lansing, is on vacation in California and doing some hunting and fishing. Before going home he stops in the town of Outcast at the request of a priest who ran the orphanage in which he grew up. The priest asked that Bob look up Fred Bell and thank him for the large donations he gave to the orphanage over the years that really helped out.
But Bob notices that all of the townspeople are giving him a funny look. Some refuse him service and the town innkeeper even refuses to let him have a room. He soon learns that he is the spitting image of the biggest criminal to ever rampage through the streets of Outcast, having killed a couple of people while robbing a bank back in 1939. Ultimately the criminal, Lynn Aberdeen, died as a result of wounds sustained during the robbery, the money he stole never having been recovered.
Bob visits Perry Mason, hiring him to look into his background and find out if he is the son of this bank robber, since he is an orphan with no knowledge of his relatives. Perry tells Bob not to go back to Outcast, that he will do the inquiring and says that going back there with the huge chip on his shoulder that he currently has can only cause problems.
Perry must feel like Ann Sullivan in this episode, because in spite of clearly communicating to Bob that he should NOT go back to Outcast, he does just that, and is found next to the body of Fred Bell who has been bludgeoned to death. Since Perry is used to being lied to and having his advice ignored by clients, he has no problem keeping Bob on as one and defending him in the murder trial.
The folks in this small town are really a piece of work. I'm surprised that Perry didn't ask for a change of venue as they really dislike Bob, in spite of the fact that they don't know any more than Bob does as to whether or not Lynn Aberdeen was his father. And why would they hold it against somebody who was a toddler at the time anyways even if this was true?