Dark City

24. MURDER: The Black Dahlia Beyond the Headlines Pt 1

• Dark City Productions • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Los, Angeles, CA | In the shadowy landscape of 1940s Los Angeles, one murder would captivate and horrify a nation. Elizabeth Short—forever immortalized as the Black Dahlia—represents more than just a gruesome crime. She was a young woman whose tragic end became a dark legend, a mystery that has haunted investigators and true crime enthusiasts for generations. We’re peeling back the layers of sensationalism and diving deep into the forensic details, cultural context, and shocking evidence that might finally answer the question: Who killed Elizabeth Short?

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📚 In a world of viral history clips and quick hot takes, we do right by the many historians, journalists, and researchers who made this episode possible by citing their work.  Our key references for this episode are below.  For a full list of sources, visit us at www.darkcitypodcast.com. 

Eatwell, Piu. Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder. Liveright. Kindle Edition. Publication Date: 2017

Hodel, Steve. Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder: The True Story. Arcade. Kindle Edition. Publication Date: 2012

Hodel, Steve. Black Dahlia Avenger II: Presenting the Follow-Up Investigation and Further Evidence Linking Dr. George Hill Hodel to Los Angeles' s Black Dahlia and other 1940s Lone Woman Murders. Thoughtprint Press. Kindle Edition. Publication Date: 2014

https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/the-black-dahlia

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Paolo Sbrighi for Musical Composition (instagram.com/paulosbrighi/)
Mario Cintra for Logo Design (instagram.com/alacarala/)


Speaker 1:

Hello, this is Leah and this is April. Today we are diving into one of LA's darkest chapters the brutal murder of Elizabeth Short, known to the world as the Black Dahlia. Her shocking death in 1947 inspired a media frenzy, but the full, chilling story is rarely told. While this case remains officially unsolved, evidence from an unexpected source her most likely killer's own son has us thinking case closed. This is Dark City, season 1, los Angeles. We're recording in person together, yay, for the first time in a while. I don't know why I said in person together. That's redundant. I don't know how long it's been, though, since probably before the podcast festival, I think last, I think so yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm so glad I picked the grittiest case ever too Fantastic we're going to mess together. This is Famous Unsolved Cases Week, because did you realize thatflix just dropped a new series on john bonnet ramsey? I saw that yes, I never got into that case oh, it was so interesting.

Speaker 2:

I don't know when or like what I watched on it, but this was like a long time ago and all the like. Who killed jean benet and?

Speaker 1:

there's so, and there's so many books and there's so many documentaries. There's endless things on it like a theory.

Speaker 2:

It was her brother.

Speaker 1:

There's a theory, it was her dad, yeah, she and her mom, I mean so I don't know how I got sucked in, because when the first, the first time around, I did not get sucked into this case back when it came out in the late 90s, I just didn't. I just remember thinking, oh, that's a beautiful little girl, that's tragic. And then it just felt like. It felt like it was just kind of an excuse for so many people to make money off of a tragedy.

Speaker 1:

And it didn't feel. It just didn't feel genuine all the time. And I think, before I say anything else, I also want to just note she seemed like the sweetest little girl and I feel like that age, I don't know. That part just gets really dropped out of it. And all of the pictures of her at the pageants which are there. They're a lot, but most of the time she just ran around like a normal child, yeah, so I ended up listening to a few different podcasts on it and now I have a theory, but I want you to watch it.

Speaker 1:

It's just crazy when you get sucked in, but some of these cases, like this one, jack the ripper, for example where there are just details that just suck you in and you just want to know what happened.

Speaker 2:

Our entire family has watched a lot of Jack the Ripper.

Speaker 1:

Really, oh my gosh, that's a little separate.

Speaker 2:

At one point we had to turn it off because it was like I don't know, our daughter's a little too young for some of that information and things were a little general for a while. And then it like got to a point we were like, yeah, we got to cut it, but we've, the boys are older, so like we've watched some stuff with them.

Speaker 1:

That one I didn't get into because it was so grisly and also because it's so old that I felt like that they're never going to solve it. So many people have gone through it and if I, obviously, if I don't think I have a chance of solving it, which I don't like, the Doheny alleged murder or suicide in.

Speaker 1:

Greystone Mansion. When we covered that one, how I was like, let's delay for a day. I just want to look at one more piece of information. Well, with the Black Dahlia case, I probably so. I started researching this when the idea of this podcast was just like this ill-formed thing in my head and I ended up reading maybe a couple thousand pages on it. But because it was so long ago and of course, I didn't polish up the script until recently, it was harder because I'd forgotten so many things and yeah realize there's just.

Speaker 1:

There's so much here. I personally think it is solved, but I also do think there's a lot of compelling reasons to wonder but, ultimately conclude a few other suspects were not the real killer in this case, but it is.

Speaker 1:

It's Jack the Ripper, but even more horrific, believe it or not. So this is a rough run. Before we get into the parts that are really, really rough, I'll warn everybody in advance if you want to skip ahead, but there's really no way around it. It's a brutal, brutal crime. Our story begins in Leimert Park, which today is a very dense, dynamic neighborhood. It's south of downtown and just a few minutes drive west of Exposition Park and the Natural History Museum, which are two landmarks that people who know the area fairly well will recognize.

Speaker 1:

It was once described by LA Weekly music critic Jeff Weiss as, quote the left bank of early 90s underground hip-hop. And I have to throw this fun piece of trivia in because there is nothing fun about the rest of this episode. So, before we watch the sun in the last rays, before it sets behind the mountains, I'm going to share this little piece. Do you remember that song by Ski-Lo? I wish, yeah, I wish I was a little bit taller, yeah. So that video most if not all of it, was shot in Lamer Park, and there's a famous scene where he's he's rapping or he's walking around the fountain and singing, and so that is.

Speaker 1:

That was shot at Lamer Plaza Park. So just to give you a sense, when I was looking at background I saw that and I thought, oh, I have to talk about that even though it's such a somber topic. So that's it. There's no more happiness from here on out. Going back to the 1940s, where our story starts, leimert Park looks nothing like it does today. It started out as a planned master community in the late 20s, designed for white middle-income families, so it's a segregated neighborhood, like so many in Los Angeles, unfortunately at the time, something that I felt I had to note because it is very much part of a dark chapter of Los Angeles as of 1948, though, they did do away with segregation, at least in this area.

Speaker 1:

On January 15th 1947, a young mother by the name of Betty Bersinger was passing one of these lots on 39th Street and Norton Avenue, pushing her three-year-old daughter in a stroller, when she noticed something very odd not too far away from the sidewalk. When she noticed something very odd not too far away from the sidewalk, she is looking at what appears to be a mannequin that has been broken into and there is a swarm of black flies buzzing around it. Her immediate thought is if any kids pass this, they will be frightened by it. So she goes to call the police to have them check it out. However, the first people to show up at the scene are actually not the police. The first people to show up are members of the press. How did they find out? So this story is also a story of how competitive and honestly awful some of the journalist tactics were at this time. To surface salacious stories that would help sell papers. Journalists would monitor police scanners to surface stories.

Speaker 2:

Oh, isn't there a saying like I don't know if it ble, don't know if it bleeds?

Speaker 1:

it. If it bleeds, it leads. Yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely. And this story sold a lot of papers. What the journalists and, soon after, the police who show up, find is beyond fathomable. What is lying in the lot is not a mannequin, but a woman who has been neatly bisected at the waist. Trigger warning you might want to skip forward a few minutes. Yes, it's going to take a few minutes to talk about what had happened to this woman, and it's absolutely not for the faint of heart. I'm going to give a pretty vivid description of how the victim was found and all that she endured, both during and after her death. But I do have to share these details though, because they will lend later to why certain people were suspected of being the killer and others weren't. It also just goes to show how vicious and awful and targeted this was.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like, and the degree of how bad it was Right.

Speaker 1:

Right, I don't think there are many. I don't think there are many that are like this ever. Yeah, so here we go. So first, it's no wonder Betty mistook this woman for a mannequin, because she does not look real. She has been completely drained of blood and washed.

Speaker 2:

That tells me it's somebody that knows what they're doing. Yes, okay, keep going, because who would know how to do that? Anyways, uh-huh, there's that tells me like it's somebody that knows what they're doing. Yes, okay, yes, keep going, because who would know how to do that? Anyways, uh-huh, most of us normal people don't.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot like that. There's no blood at this crime scene, at least where her immediately where her body is, her body was moved. Her body has been moved. Her face is framed by black hair which contrasts sharply with her pale skin. She had been bisected at the waist, as I mentioned, but her upper and lower halves were separated by about a foot 12 inches. Her arms were raised above her head, bent at the elbows, and her legs were spread apart. Her face had been gruesomely cut from ear to ear in a chilling glasgow smile. So think it makes me think of, like the joker yes, exactly, exactly. I wonder where the name glasgow smile came from.

Speaker 2:

I don't know is she on her back or is she face, she's face up.

Speaker 1:

yes, so she's, so she's lying, or so she's lying on her back, so you can see her face. I'm glad Betty did not realize it was a person.

Speaker 2:

Oh, could you imagine? And she had her three-year-old in a stroller. No, how horrifying.

Speaker 1:

I would have not have been able to keep my cool. My three-year-old would have probably been traumatized and remembered that. So I would not want to be the person. But it's not surprising though, just given it's weird to say this, but it's otherwise in an immaculate condition, in the sense that it's been cleaned and arranged in a certain way, that it's been cleaned and arranged in a certain way. Her right breast had been removed, and it just gets worse and worse. Some of her organs and intestines had been removed as well and placed neatly. I hate describing it that way, but that's how it?

Speaker 1:

was underneath her body. The deliberate and staged presentation suggests the killer wanted her body to be founded this way and it created this haunting theatrical display. Sure, now the newspapers, at this time they did not take pictures of it and print, thank god. But they did put a blanket over it and they printed those pictures Like they just touched it up which is you would not have that today. If you really want to go, look, there are pictures out there of the body.

Speaker 1:

I personally did not feel the need to, but they're. They're there as a quick break because I know that's a lot to digest. I'm just going to mention the press is just walking freely through this scene right now.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 1:

With the police officers. I know contaminating it and I know forensic science is not exactly advanced as far as like testing fibers and all kinds of other things you could find at the crime scene. But it's like guys, aren't you worried they might step on something or move something?

Speaker 2:

that could be a critical piece and didn't you say, they were there first, the press was there first yes so like they were probably tromping all over, like you're not gonna get footprints, you're not gonna yeah, yeah, right, they did get one, at least one later that we'll talk about.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to tell you all the things that were found in the crime scene, because they're going to be more important when we talk about who could have done it. Okay, but yes, it's, it's. It's just insane to me how the police and the press work together. It is like the Wild West You're going to see. Now, closer inspection and an autopsy of the body would reveal even more horrifying details. In his book, the Black Dahlia Avenger, author Steve Hodel reports that quote.

Speaker 1:

The autopsy report describes a victim who endured a horrific and painful death at the hands of a suspect or suspects who took the infliction of physical punishment to the extreme. The young woman was trussed and bound by her hands and feet, was tortured, initially by the killers inflicting minor cuts to her body and to her private parts, then cutting away her pubic hair, which he would later insert into her vagina. She was then beaten about her entire body. She was forced to endure the overwhelming humiliation of being made to eat either her own or their fecal excrement. Finally, she was beaten to death and her face and body were viciously lacerated and defiled, and I'll just say there were pieces of her body that were cut up and put other places and I'm just not going to go into.

Speaker 1:

It's really graphic, yeah. The victim's official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head and face. It was also determined that she was sodomized and the killer had performed a post-mortem hysterectomy.

Speaker 2:

Which makes me think that this person had a problem specifically with females.

Speaker 1:

That this person had a problem specifically with females, and I mean potentially this one specifically. It just feels like it's very, it's very targeted and Steve Hodel, he's going to come up a lot later, but he had said that too. That was his impression. Is that it? It just it seems like it's so targeted, and this person just had an extreme hatred for women. I mean, this is very much an attack of what makes a woman a woman, right? So, okay, I'm really glad we're past that rough part. I don't think we'll ever be that graphic again.

Speaker 2:

And why the right breast.

Speaker 1:

I don't I don't Is there a theory. You know that's a good question, okay, it's a good question, but I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I was like what's on the right side? What happened on the right side?

Speaker 1:

I don't know, I don't, I don't know it. Okay, yes, so the way that it was posed and the way it looked although I don't think it covers that part is really important in one of the theories. Later, forensic anthropologist Dr Elizabeth Murray has a history of forensic science course on the Great Courses Plus.

Speaker 1:

It's a site where you can watch a lot of courses by different professors and different topics and I totally nerd out on it all the time, but not really all the time because my time's limited, but she has a really good course and she analyzed the Black Dahlia crime and one thing she said that stayed with me is she often would get asked what has surprised you the most about these scenes and she said to her it's what one human could do to another human being. And I think that that is just the case with this. Yeah, it's like a monster. Um did what they did. Now the victim unfortunately has no id and no purse. So the police find that they have not just one but two mysteries they have to solve First, the identity of the woman and second, who her killer was. Now the first mystery is easy enough to solve.

Speaker 1:

The press is super eager to help identify the victim and I wish I could say it was because of the goodness of their own hearts. They are very much motivated by. I want to break this story first. If you get the identity first, then you can figure out a lot of details before they're out scooping the competition. True crime reporters were often faster than the police at getting to key pieces of evidence and locating people.

Speaker 1:

In Pugh Eatwell's book Black Dahlia, red Rose, there is a really great detail on the characters and competition of the local papers for this story. I'm not going to get into it here because the story in and of itself of the main crime is enough, but I'll give you little glimpses here and there of what that was like, high level. William Randolph Hearst, a name you probably recognize, was the owner of the Herald Express and the Los Angeles Examiner, which competed amongst themselves, and then they also competed fiercely with the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily Mirror, which were both owned by a competing force in media real estate, billionaire Harry Chandler. You may recognize the name, harry Chandler, if you recall from our episode on LA Stolen Water. Do you remember how there was a bunch of leaders that got insider knowledge?

Speaker 1:

on where the alley aqueduct would terminate in the San Fernando Valley. So they stacked up a bunch of land and made a profit. Yes, he was one of those. To summarize, there is a lot of competition and that drives a lot of behavior that I would describe as helpful and or horrible, and so you know how much is at stake here. The Los Angeles Examiner's extra edition, published on January 15th, the day that this woman was found, had the headline Fiend Tortures Kills Girl. That edition sold more copies than the edition that covered the bombing at Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 2:

Really Yep? Is it because, like, something has happened within their community? You hope? You hope that they're like oh my gosh, this happened in my community, right, and maybe with the other, like you're gonna have other sources television, radio, like right maybe it was also just really salacious some of the stuff they printed?

Speaker 1:

I don't think they would. Newspapers are very much digital entities right now, but they wouldn't get away printing with what they did and how they did. They're like right the way this woman was talked about, like you can see so much sexism, the fact that they published a picture with a blanket over her it. It was a very it was a very different time in a very different environment.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're not there's. Oh my gosh. The LAPD was able to get the victim's fingerprints and they airmailed them over to the FBI in Washington DC for identification. However, the city editor at the Los Angeles Examiner, jimmy Richardson, realized he actually could get an ID quicker. The Examiner had a proprietary communication network that was essentially a primitive fax machine. The paper used this then to send the prints over to the FBI, so it would arrive much faster than the airmailed copy. And within 56 minutes this is incredible. Within 56 minutes of receipt they had an ID. Wow, and that is insane considering this is 1947 and they have over 100 million prints at the time. Oh my gosh, I know.

Speaker 1:

The victim was ultimately identified as 22-year-old Elizabeth Short. It turns out that she was in the FBI's system twice. In January 1943, elizabeth had applied at the commissary of the Army's Camp Cook in California. Seven months later she was taken into custody by the Santa Barbara police for underage drinking, and I'll note here the mugshot of her when she was taken into custody for drinking. When people think about Elizabeth Short or the nickname the Black Dahlia, they're usually thinking of this picture because her hair is all wild. It's very unsettling and I'm not going to. I'll post pictures of her on our social media. She's very striking striking, but it's I. I feel like people need to think more consciously about the sort of photos they release of the victims, because it's like they're picturing her in like her most awful state. Yeah, and it's like you know, with JonBenet Ramsey, like we mentioned before, like the pictures of her in the pageants that were the ones we all saw, which is not like the same as just a little girl who's living her life.

Speaker 1:

And it becomes a very different type of story.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's catchy and flashy, you know yes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yes, exactly, you know. Yes, yeah, yes, exactly, exactly. Unless, of course, like we're talking about some of our villains from our past episodes, like griffith or the rockefeller imposter. In that case, you don't get a glamour shot, while post whatever.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean I was wondering she's 22. I don't remember when I got like my first fingerprint clearance card, but I didn't realize that until you do that or have an encounter with the police or something like that, that they'll have no record of you. Like I had no idea. I just always thought when I was a kid, like they just know.

Speaker 1:

In the case where you have a victim of a crime that needs to be identified dental records in her case, I don't believe there were any, so that's but that's another, another way. Yeah, with Elizabeth identified, the next step is to notify her family. Again, the Los Angeles examiner is the first to find Elizabeth's mom, a woman named Phoebe Short, who is living across the country in Medford, massachusetts. Jimmy instructs his reporters to call her mom and extract as much information from her as possible before revealing her daughter was dead. Oh my gosh, that is like cruel. No, but listen to what they say when the reporters call her. They told her that they were calling because their daughter won a beauty pageant.

Speaker 2:

That was like heartbreaking to listen to.

Speaker 1:

And her mom is, of course, excited and is gushing about her and her hopes and her dreams of being a star, and then they finally break the news.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that is so messed up. I don't know how that conversation went from there. But All of those people, I hope some bad karma came your way. I can't even. That is terrible. Yes, holy cow. Okay, and can you imagine going from? Oh, my daughter just won this wonderful thing. She'd gone to LA to try to make it in Hollywood. To no, actually she died the worst possible death you can imagine. But let's talk more about Elizabeth and her background. Elizabeth was born on July 24th 1924 in Hyde Park, massachusetts, to parents Phoebe and Cleo Short. She went by the name Betty in her younger years and then, I think, like late teens, it was Beth. A lot of sources refer to her as Elizabeth.

Speaker 1:

I'm just going to call her Elizabeth from here on out. I don't know if that's the right choice. Sorry, elizabeth Short, wherever you are. Elizabeth was the third of five girls born to the couple. Even from a young age, she always wanted to be a star in Hollywood, so you can imagine again how her mom was so excited when she found out she'd won this award.

Speaker 1:

She was always impeccably dressed and she was really well-liked. People really just had nice things to say about her. Growing up she was prone to it sounds like manic depressive tendencies, but then especially for the depressive episodes, though I think they're pretty understandable given how heavy the stuff she's dealing with. Her childhood was marked by a tragedy in 1930. Her father, cleo, vanished. His car was found abandoned in a vacant parking lot near the Charleston Bridge. His body was never found and it was just assumed it was like a Depression-era suicide because there were a lot at that time. But it actually turned out he faked his death and abandoned his family and he would eventually ask Phoebe to get back together with him and thank God she said no, which is so brave in the 40s. Having five girls oh my gosh.

Speaker 2:

But, again.

Speaker 1:

Elizabeth dropped out of high school her sophomore year. Elizabeth dropped out of high school her sophomore year and then okay. So the timeline from there, from her mid-teens to 22 years of age, when she's found they're very hard to follow. In those six years she lived like a lifetime. This was a period that was marked by a lot of instability, a lot of different places she lived, a lot of different people she was coming into contact with. Some sources are pretty consistent about some of the major life events during this period and some are not, and I think the big takeaway from all of this is just it was a very, very unstable, not always happy, to say the least time, and all of that made her someone I could see a predator preying upon, like that left her vulnerable, kind of.

Speaker 1:

Exactly Okay, and because there were so many people in and out of her life. That's why it was so hard to try to figure out who would have done this. I cannot imagine the resources that were spent on this investigation. Yeah, because between all of the people they had to go through and clear, and all of the tips they were getting and all of the coverage, it was a lot. And it's tragic too because there were other women that were dying of pretty horrific deaths, like kind of around this period, and they didn't get nearly the same amount of attention, which unfortunately is the case in these crimes.

Speaker 1:

In these crimes, one thing that was the sort of backdrop to her major geographic decisions are she had an acute bronchial condition that the doctors thought was probably tuberculosis. So living in Massachusetts, especially in the cold winters, is not ideal for that. So she suffered quite a bit. So she would move to Miami and then back to Bedford, I think, when weather was better there's different reports and then later on she made her way, obviously, to California and to the Los Angeles area. She moved to Miami because it was a warmer climate and she made a living by being a waitress. And it was in Miami that she met and fell in love with Flying Tigers pilot Major Matt Gordon Jr, who was stationed at this location.

Speaker 1:

This relationship shows there's a lot of potential delusion and obsessiveness that can come with her relationships. So she would sometimes write to him three times a day. Then again, it's the 40s, so people write letters all the time. I don't know. He was ultimately killed in an airplane crash in India, but she told people that they had been married. But then later, when the police were investigating her death and they talked to his mother, she said no, that never happened, they were never engaged. How old was she when?

Speaker 2:

she had a relationship with him. I don't know. Okay, I don't think of it. She was still pretty young.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yes, this is where, like this is like where I wanted to pound my head because, like, one source would say one thing, one say another so I'm just gonna say like, look, they were in love, she was in love, she was delusional, probably okay at one point. At one point, elizabeth went to live with her dad in Vallejo, california, which is insane that she would want to see him again.

Speaker 1:

But then again it is her dad. Sure, that arrangement lasted like three weeks. Her father expected her this is what he said. I expected her to take care of me and take care of the household, which I can understand to a certain extent, because he's giving her a place to live and she's technically old enough to do things on her own. Yeah, but she's starting to display this habit of she goes out a lot. She's keeping late hours. Later on, the police came to talk to him as part of the investigation into her death, and this is terrible. Her father said basically I haven't seen her in a long time. It had been years since she lived with him and he made it very clear he wanted nothing to do with the investigation. Wow, horrible man. Oh my gosh, when she was 18, she worked at Camp Cook in California, so remember the fingerprints that they found.

Speaker 1:

It was from that position. Her former boss at Camp Cook, inez Keeling, described her as beautiful and charming, but also shy. She was voted the Camp Cook cutie of the week or year, or something like that this is like a very dated thing?

Speaker 1:

yes, absolutely, and inez keeling said, though, unlike other girls, she wasn't crazy about dating the servicemen. She always refused. Some sources say she was dating a sergeant there at some point. Either way, it was rumored that he assaulted her and all of a sudden he was court-martialed and he left the base and she was gone pretty soon after, so the details on that are really okay sketchy now. However, you know, as killing remembers her, from here on out something changed and she becomes a very different person. I think about this like in the context of the 40s and women not having a lot of options and if you didn't get married you couldn't always get hired to do something, and she's she's still an aspiring hollywood star.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, she drifted around a lot in her late teens and early 20s, like across the map. In the summer before she was found dead in Leimert Park in 1946, she was being put up in a fully furnished apartment by her boyfriend, gordon Ficking, and their relationship, though, was interesting because it was like on his way out, but he was paying for her at this residence, and meanwhile she was being visited by a lot of men. This is a pattern. I think it started probably not too long before this time, and then would go on up until her death, but there are a lot of men every place she lives. I don't think she was. It was said she's not a sex worker.

Speaker 1:

She's not an escort, but I think just she's broke and she's not working. So I kind of feel like they were her meal ticket or they would, you know, pay for her, give her a place to stay. I'm sure some she probably was genuinely interested in, yeah, but she was also seen around this time frequenting a drugstore, soda fountain that's so 40s, yeah, in lacy black clothes which I mean I don't know they could be. They could be things we'd look at today and be like that's not a big deal.

Speaker 2:

Right yeah.

Speaker 1:

This might have been where she got the name, the nickname the black Dahlia. There's a lot of conflicting stories on how this was. There was, like a movie called the blue Dahlia that came around at that time. The person who either ran or worked at the drugstore soda fountain where she would hang out at the boys, the men she would hang around with, called her black Dahlia, and so when the newspapers found that they were with, called her Black Dahlia, and so when the newspapers found that they were like, oh, we're taking that, that's a great nickname. And dahlias they're like how do I describe them? They're like geometric perfection. They're these beautiful flowers that grow, I'm sure, in a lot of places, row, um, I'm sure in a lot of places, but in los angeles they're known as the winter rose because they only bloom in um, like january. February is usually where they last. So, like in our yard right now, I can see like the buds coming from our tree that has dahlias on it and they're just really beautiful flowers I always like.

Speaker 1:

When I saw her for the first time, she has curly hair. This beautiful curly hair. I beautiful curly hair. I thought is it like a reference to like the dark hair and the way?

Speaker 2:

that's what I always thought fall, yeah, I always thought it was like from her looks right, I know I know by the end of the summer of 1946 her relationship with gordon.

Speaker 1:

I think I said ficking. It should be fickling, that was his name, okay who kept her?

Speaker 1:

up in that fully furnished apartment. It was pretty much over. So this is August. She moved up to Los Angeles from there, so this is placing her in the Los Angeles area. She stayed with a few other female roommates but there were a lot of issues we'll get into later when we get into the theories about who might have committed the crime. And also she couldn't pay rent so soon she found herself homeless again. She's found on December 8th by a young woman named Dorothy French sleeping in a movie theater sleeping in a movie theater and Dorothy feels sorry for her and she seems like, you know, just a normal person who's probably down on her luck.

Speaker 1:

No warning signs, except for the fact that obviously she doesn't have a roof over her head. So she invites her to come stay with her and her mother. Now, during this time that she stayed there, which is pretty much up until like early January, she kept claiming she's looking for a job, but mostly she lounged around and wrote letters. She claimed she was married to Major Matt Gordon, who she said was killed in a plane crash. So again this is coming up and she had a child by him, but that child had died. So she was like spinning this tale and stuff like that. That makes it so hard to investigate her.

Speaker 1:

Then, on January 8th, she is picked up by a man by the name of Robert Manley, also known as Red for short, who takes her up to the Los Angeles area. He is a 25-year-old. This is not a job that exists today. He's a 25-year-old pipe clamp salesman. Pipe clamp yeah, okay, okay. Those random involved jobs.

Speaker 1:

Pipe clamp salesman, pipe clamp yeah, okay, okay, that was random and bullshots. Somebody's gotta do it and it's robert manley. His, he's. He's not single, he has a wife, um, and he also has a four-month baby at home. But here he is with Elizabeth and this is also going to be why he is going to become the top suspect in this case. One thing I do want to say we'll whittle down the list to something manageable, but according to pew eat, well, a police report noted that there were at least 50 men at the time of her death that she knew that they had to investigate and she had been seen with at least 25 of them in the 60-day period preceding her death. And again, I mean, she's not a sex worker, she might be an escort?

Speaker 1:

I don know, but there were just so many people that she.

Speaker 2:

It just like it makes you wonder what was going on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, she's just splitting about here and there. I mean she's very lost, it's very clear yeah. According to the report, this is such a this is such an indication of the time. It was said she was a tease. I feel like that did not age well. Yeah, Really just think this is a young lost woman who doesn't really have family she can rely on and she's just trying to get by any way she can.

Speaker 2:

It sounds like Exactly, you know, she's using what she's got to be able to survive Right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it's obviously highly risky. In a lot of ways, she's really brave, because she could have just given up and gone home.

Speaker 2:

Oh for sure I was thinking that, exactly as you're telling me some of these things, I'm like man, I would have just gone home and I don't care if I have to live in the closet. That's the only space that my mom has for me.

Speaker 1:

I couldn't do this on my own, and I suppose what's hard about that, too, is because of Massachusetts, because she had that lung condition. Yeah, it would be hard, but it's obvious she would not have a hard time getting married, which was a route that a lot of people take, but she refused to do that. A route that a lot of people take, but she refused. She refused to do that. Before we move on, though, I have to ask you to guess april. How many people do you think confessed to this crime?

Speaker 2:

oh, I bet, because it was so salacious. Oh my gosh, okay, okay, I'm going to say at least 100. I don't know if that's too many or not enough. I have no idea.

Speaker 1:

It's a multiple of five. It's multiplied by five. Really, Uh-huh, oh my gosh. 500 people. Oh what 500 people would ever ever say that they did something like this? Those 500 people. Oh what 500 people would ever ever say that they did something like this? Those 500 why?

Speaker 2:

why would you want to be that person? You want your 15 minutes of fame, I guess, but like, what a horrific thing to be like.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was me, you have at least 500 seriously messed up people, plus the killer and however many more in this area. It's when I read that number I was just like where are these people living, I'm sure the cops were like, oh crap, this case is horrible.

Speaker 2:

And then, when that happened, they were probably like I hate my job. Yes, probably like I hate my job. Like now you have to sword through all the muck and get everything out of the way, and how do you even solve the case?

Speaker 1:

I guess you don't really, because here we are, but how do you break it to the person? We're sorry to let you know like we have rejected your application to be you are not the killer, you are not.

Speaker 2:

And what a waste of, like, resources and money. And I know, oh man, like the effort that they could have put into the actual solving of the case, but they couldn't, because they're doing this instead, right?

Speaker 1:

right, so we will not go over all 500. We'll go through a handful of those plus. The killer starts communicating with the police and we're this is like jack the ripper almost well, there's parallels?

Speaker 1:

I guess there are. Yeah, this was very, very targeted. More crucial pieces of evidence will come forward and, yeah, it won't be as brutal. I don't think we won't have to describe the crime scene again. Um, so there's that. Thank you for listening and we look forward to telling you the second part of the story in a couple of weeks. Bye, thank you.