The First Deadly Sin

The film opens outside Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on West 81st Street in Manhattan. A man is viciously attacked by another man wielding an ice axe. The attack is intercut with graphic closeups of a woman undergoing surgery. The NYPD arrive to process the scene. The coroner, Dr. Ferguson (Whitmore), shows Detective Edward Delaney (Sinatra) that the fatal wound on the skull was made with a round object.