***SPOLIERS*** Poor little Sylvia Oxman, Patrica Cutts, became the black sheep in the wealthy and well connected Benson clan when her father killed himself when his wife check out on him with this Neapolitan fisherman whom she met while on vacation in Italy. Being considered not worthy to carry the Beson family name Sylvia was to later marry her collage sweetheart Frank Oxman, Gene Blakley, whom she had a son, Peter with.
Still not able to live with the shame of both her fathers suicide and mothers desertion Sylvia started to go to the local gambling dens around town and run up thousands of dollars in IOU's that she got stuck with gambling. Now with Peter's father and her estranged husband Frank wanting to get control of Peter those IOU's if in Frank getting possession of them can keep Sylvia from getting custody of him in them proving her to be an unfit mother. And it's the manager of the Clover Club sleaze ball Danny Barker, Robert Strauss, who has position of those explosive IOU's and wants big bucks $25,000.00,from Sylvia to give them back to her.
As expected Barker after trying to blackmail Sylvia gets mysteriously murdered with Sylvia's gun found next to his body in his office at the Clover Club. With Sylvia the #1 suspect in Barker's murder her defense attorney Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, has to dig up all the dirt in the Benson family to prove her innocence. And what Perry digs up is a gold mine that can supply the tabloid newspapers and TV shows with enough dirt for the next six to eight months.
***SPOILERS*** Even though she didn't do it, murder Danny Barker, it was head of the Benson clan Matilda who set the stage for all the trouble that both her grand daughter Sylvia and momma's boy son Robert, Barry Atwater, were subjected too all these years. Perry soon began to realize what a nut case old Matilda was in her trying to have her way or the highway in how her children ran their lives that, by her running them, in fact destroyed them. As it turned it was better that Peter should stay with his father Frank Oxman not his mom Sylvia for his own good and mental health. Or else he would ends up like they did which was a fate even worse then death!