In January of 1972, ABC first aired the made for television movie The Night Stalker. It was based on Jeff Rice’s unpublished novel The Kolchak Papers, which was adapted for tv by Richard Matheson.

The "Kolchak" in question is actually reporter Carl Kolchak, first introduced in the 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker as a down-on-his-luck newspaper man in Las Vegas who stumbles upon the story ...