Dark City

25. MURDER: The Black Dahlia Beyond the Headlines Pt 2

• Dark City Productions • Season 1 • Episode 25

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Los Angeles, CA | We continue the tragic story of the murder of Elizabeth Short in 1947, famously known as the Black Dahlia, with the most compelling theories surrounding her killer's identity. 

*Note: Since the troubled teen industry came up at the beginning of the episode, we wanted to take the opportunity to share a few links on how you can help stop the abuses in this system:  stopinstitutionalchildabuse.com and unsilenced.org.  It's a cause we are passionate about and we will continue to bring awareness and advocate for change wherever we can!

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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

Have ideas or suggestion? We would love to hear from you! Send us a text via this link.

👏 Special thanks to our talented partners:
Paolo Sbrighi for Musical Composition (instagram.com/paulosbrighi/)
Mario Cintra for Logo Design (instagram.com/alacarala/)


Speaker 1:

Hi there, this is Leah and this is April, and this is Dark City Season 1, Los Angeles so I know that.

Speaker 2:

I told you, leah, that I was reading the Paris Hilton book. There's lots in there about the troubled teen industry and her experiences when she's there at these places. She mentions Synanon and the game and where she went it was called Rap and it's the game. It's the game and everybody's tearing you down and telling you you're a POS and nobody loves you and just all kinds of stuff. And she said you know, obviously everybody's expected to participate.

Speaker 1:

That is so messed up. Who are the people who thought that was just even remotely I know?

Speaker 2:

Where is the evidence-based practice? Or even intuitive, that our society is built on. To validate any of these measures that you're doing, you got this from a cult.

Speaker 1:

You got this from people who are incredibly cruel and angry and probably borderline, if not completely, psychopathic, and they enjoy making people feel terrible, and I feel like a lot of the people who run the troubled teen industry are just so angry themselves. It's like they. They, I imagine a lot. It's control as well, and I think honestly there's a lot that enjoy it, which is horrific, and yeah I hope karma is the thing I really do.

Speaker 1:

I said that in part one when the reporters told elizabeth short's mom that she'd want to be a contest, just to extract information oh my god, so many terrible people out there but I'm not through all of that yet.

Speaker 2:

um, I think so far I've counted five escapes. She escaped five times so far gosh, I didn't know that. And each time they like somehow find her and take her back and she went to like multiple facilities because once you escaped, then you got taken to like this worst place. Yeah, there are no words. I just. It's obviously like her parents didn't know the full scope of things and she's very forgiving and she's like my parents love me and I know that they felt like this was the only thing that they could do and they didn't know. Like the places that she goes to, they give a script to the parents. They're like don't believe anything that they say, and so they you know, they didn't know, they didn't know and so it's just, it was. The whole thing is like very heartbreaking, very sad. I highly recommend this book it's.

Speaker 1:

You know what we're going to. I'll link in the show notes again the advocacy groups for the troubled teen industry that there is legislation and things to do, and I think also to what in the program kathleen kubler, when she made that documentary, the program program, she had said right now we're focusing on at least basic awareness, which I do think will help a lot too.

Speaker 1:

But I also feel like some people will just continue to put their kids in any way and some may miss the memo. Their kids in any way and some may miss the memo. And there has to be a regulatory component. I think, if anything, there has to be repercussions, for if you have underage kids that are put in your care and treat them this poorly and cause even more damage coming out, there has to be some sort of punishment for them. It's, it's so horrible.

Speaker 2:

I think on a long enough timeline there will be enough awareness and probably reform, but I think it's going to take time, just like anything else. You know, there's no governing body, there's no.

Speaker 1:

Right, we'll keep talking about it every season too. We can do a new troubled teen industry. It's like yeah, I think katherine had said it too. It's like, um, like whack-a-mole too with these guys, or there was some comparable analogy, where you you get one knocked down and then another one pops up at least one of the places maybe she said that she was at doesn't exist anymore and but thank god.

Speaker 1:

So in part one of the story of elizabeth short, we learned elizabeth was no stranger to tragedy throughout her life and died in the most horrific way. Possible. Early into the investigation of her murder, a man named Robert Manley nickname Red for short became the top suspect. Remember, this is the pipe clamp salesman. It's not a laughing matter, though.

Speaker 2:

April Pipe clamps are extremely important. I bet they were. That's probably why the job existed.

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean you still. I mean. So a pipe clamp holds pipes in place, preventing them from sagging, sliding or colliding with other surfaces. Wow, you did your homework on this one take very seriously the integrity of plumbing, heating and other piping systems by for which red was selling these pipe clamps, for I'm sure they're probably like ordered online or sold your education to me.

Speaker 1:

Leah has made me change my ways you will never take your plumbing for granted again. He was a bad guy, but he also also did not get off the hook either, metaphorically speaking.

Speaker 1:

So, plot spoiler Red is not the killer, that would be too easy. But he of course became a top suspect because he was one of the last people to see Elizabeth alive. Now, the way Red was found was through the Los Angeles Examiner. Now, remember, the newspapers are cutthroat at this time. They're trying to find all the leads as early as possible, and this particular publication learns of his existence from a woman named Dorothy and her mother, elvira French. That was the family she had been staying with in San Diego before she went back up to the Los Angeles area and you know the rest.

Speaker 1:

So Red first met her on a street corner when he was on a business trip in San Diego about a month before her death. He said nothing much happened with her. They went dancing and to dinner. He kissed her. That was pretty much it and he told her I'll let you know next time I am in town.

Speaker 1:

When she wore out her welcome with the Frenches, she called Red and asked him to come and pick her up. He lived in Los Angeles and she wanted him to drive her there, where she claimed that she would meet her sister Betty, and they would go to Berkeley from there. When the paper and police talked to Red, he confirmed yep, I did take her to LA. Then he helped her check in her suitcase at the bus station. Then he took her to the glamorous Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA, which is where she was supposed to meet her sister. That was pretty much it. He never saw her again. Now Red was booked as a suspect but ultimately he passed a polygraph test and oh, remember his wife and his four-month-old baby. Yeah, he's got those. He's got them sitting at home. His wife stood by him and gave him an alibi.

Speaker 2:

Wow.

Speaker 1:

But it doesn't end up turning out well for him. I believe this is probably linked to I mean, how upsetting must it be, regardless of the circumstance and how right or wrong you were to be going out with her but then to find out later that Elizabeth was killed so horrifically and you were the one who was questioned for police that is. It's incredibly upsetting for anyone, regardless of their life circumstance. His wife ended up committing him in 1954 into a hospital after he reported hearing voices. According to an LA Times article, the hospital administered sodium pentothal to get him to tell the truth about Elizabeth. I do not think that's an accepted practice today. He had nothing to share. He didn't do it. He's truly innocent, guilty of other things for sure but not this crime.

Speaker 1:

There is a myth that the last sighting of Elizabeth is of her leaving the Biltmore Hotel on January 9th. She is seen exiting the hotel and is never seen again until she is found on January 15th, and you know the rest. She's rumored to haunt the biltmore and I came across this really disturbing photo of what could be her ghost reflected in a mirror. I got really to use.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I'll post that on our social media and let oh, I think you told me about that okay I think I told you about this a really long time ago, yeah, when we were probably in the early phases of creating the podcast, and then this was one of the episodes we knew we were going to do later, just because it's so complicated and so much information. But yes, you'll recognize it when I show it to you again.

Speaker 2:

The Los Angeles Examiner was able to extract another key piece of information from the French's and again that's the family that Elizabeth stayed with in San Diego the month before she was murdered. Elizabeth had a trunk stored in the American Railway Express office. This could be a goldmine of information and potentially contain clues as to who her killer might be, but the company would not allow the examiner to take a look at the contents unless the police were present. The examiner, city's editor, jimmy Richardson, has a plan Remember, this is the same guy who was the mastermind behind the strategy to tell Elizabeth's mom that she'd won the beauty contest in order to extract as much information as possible, before telling her that her daughter had actually been murdered. And, you know, maybe her mom would be too hysterical to talk.

Speaker 1:

It's so horrible Every time I come across that detail. It never gets better. I cringe every single time. Oh, it's awful.

Speaker 2:

Disgusting. Jimmy calls the chief of the homicide squad, jack Donahoe, and tells him that he will share the location of the trunk, but only if they open it at the examiner's office. Jack, of course, cannot pass up an opportunity to get a hold of this key piece of evidence that you know what if this broke the case. So he agrees to the deal.

Speaker 1:

Okay, this is. Is this what you call I don't know obstruction of justice? Much oh probably.

Speaker 2:

I have this huge piece of evidence, but I can only share it with you if you let me get the initial scoop on it.

Speaker 1:

I hate that they can do this. I hate it. We talked about this in the Cecil Hotel too. The reporter I think her name was Laurel Erickson how she withheld the information about, or no, she threatened she was going to share the type of shoe and size of Richard Ramirez.

Speaker 1:

if the police did not get her an interview which is so disgusting considering then he could have destroyed the shoe and then those families would never get justice because it'd be one where people would get murdered. Yeah, because it's one thing. It was the only thing linking him to those crime scenes. The press can be so amazing and so helpful and there's so many amazing journalists. I think that these individuals are just an insult to the profession and basic decency.

Speaker 2:

When they opened the trunk they found typical contents Clothes, for example. Trunk. They found typical contents clothes, for example. They also found photos, albums, letters to and from different men that she'd been in relationships with and it gave kind of general insight into her life. But there's a little bit more revealing evidence coming up later. What happened on the morning of January 23rd, eight days after Elizabeth's body was found, is like a scene from a movie. Jimmy would later describe it in detail in his autobiography that he wrote. He took a call that afternoon and the sly, soft voice on the other end asked is this the city editor? The city editor? He confirms and the person on the other end says well, mr Richardson, I must congratulate you on what the examiner has done in the Black Dahlia case. After Jimmy thanks him, he says you seem to have run out of material. This is like a movie, I know.

Speaker 1:

Poorly written.

Speaker 2:

The caller proceeds to offer some help. He says I'll send you some of the things she had with her when she, shall we say, disappeared. Dun dun dun.

Speaker 1:

Meanwhile, yeah, right I can't help it.

Speaker 2:

Jimmy is frantically sending a note to his assistant trying to trace the call, but unfortunately he wasn't able to keep that caller on long enough for them to trace the call, but unfortunately he wasn't able to keep that collar on long enough for them to trace. When he gets the promised materials two days later in the mail, he is convinced that whoever he spoke to was the killer. So the package included a note that said in newspaper cutouts, which is interesting also, but I guess there's a reason for that stereotype.

Speaker 1:

That's something that doesn't happen anymore. Newspaper cutouts that is like a thing of the past.

Speaker 2:

So it says here is Dahlia's belongings Letter to follow. Did it really say here is and not here?

Speaker 1:

are it did? Yes, it's a point of contention.

Speaker 2:

Later I feel like it's such bad grammar I know I like have a hard time reading it because I was like I can't hear, Anyways.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a point of contention. It's so bad that it's like but was the person who was sending these things? Were they doing that on purpose?

Speaker 2:

Purpose, or do they really have bad grammar? The actual contents included Elizabeth's identification address book, her birth certificate and social security card, and the package smelled like gasoline, so the reason for that was to remove fingerprints. I'm going to confess that I Googled how does gasoline remove fingerprints and also why does gasoline remove fingerprints and some other questions that Google suggested. So God forbid, should anything happen in the future. This is me like saying today, I Googled this and that's why it's for this case.

Speaker 1:

Oh, trust me, and not anything else, the research I have done on this case and you have done on this case, or just in general for Dark City, we are on probably multiple lists at this point I was like.

Speaker 2:

I sat in front of it and I was like, should I actually Google this?

Speaker 1:

I've asked questions to chat GPT and they've come back to tell me how inappropriate the question was, and I always write back just so you know. Here's the address of the podcast oh my gosh. So basically, if you or I were to commit a crime, it would be really dumb and I hope we're never framed for one.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I would have to do it in a hazmat suit. I don't feel like I don't know. Anyways, I don't think this person I feel like I'm shedding my hair is going to be everywhere. Oh yeah, it's not going to work.

Speaker 1:

I don't know how anyone gets away with stuff today just with the cameras that are everywhere, like the park, the site where she was found like somebody now would probably have a camera. You have like all kinds of advances where fiber analysis and fingerprint analysis can be done like DNA testing, and it's amazing to me that stuff doesn't still get solved.

Speaker 2:

But Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, in case anybody's wondering, it has to do with, like, the stuff that's in our fingerprints. Some is polar and some is nonpolar, and I think the gasoline works on both types of substances. I'm pretty sure that's how soap works also, anyways.

Speaker 1:

So that's as scientific as I'll get, but yeah, but still, and I feel like that lends to like this person is like reasonably intelligent to know that Right.

Speaker 2:

To do that? I mean back then you can't Google it. Who do you ask? I don't know. Maybe you just run in those circles that you would know this information, somebody with a science background would know. I don't know. Yeah, that you would know this information.

Speaker 1:

Somebody with a science background would know. I don't know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, possibly there were fingerprints found, but not positively ID'd, and probably because they were too smudged, which I did see. Like gasoline can take off some of it but not all of it, but I don't know if that's because of our technology today, which is quite different than you know what it was. What is particularly interesting among these contents is the address book. It included over 75 names and embossed on the cover of the book was a different name. That name would become the prime suspect in the case. In fact, an entire book was written on this case, in which he was one of several people that the author concluded was likely responsible for her killing, and we're going to leave you hanging on to that for right now. Don't worry, we'll come back to it.

Speaker 1:

As for the note to follow, the following weeks brought a flood of further letters and postcards addressed to the LAPD and various newspapers. It was a lot to sift through, but the police believe that the first package and note were from the real killer, along with a few others. There was one handwritten postcard that is believed to be that quote note to follow and it says says here it is turning. In wednesday, january 29th, 10 am, had my fun at police, signed the black dahlia avenger I feel like that's weird that they signed it, the black dahlia avenger it might have implied that maybe they murdered her for some avenged wrong.

Speaker 1:

But okay, so there's another few clippings that come through. These, the rest of these this was the only hand written note. The rest of these were all cut from news clippings. On january 30th they got another note that said have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing was justified. And then they get another one from pasted letters from newspapers. It says Dahlia's killer, cracking, wants terms. But then they had another one that says I will give up in Dahlia killing if I get 10 years. Don't try to find me.

Speaker 1:

All of these are considered, among all of the muck, to be legitimate.

Speaker 1:

It seems like again he's sort of teasing them and then indicating he wants to turn himself in.

Speaker 1:

I think this sounds like, if it is the killer, it just sounds like they're having fun after, right, if it is the killer, it just sounds like they're having fun after and clearly, just given the staged presentation of Elizabeth's body, they're doing all this to get noticed in a certain way. There were fingerprints found, I believe, throughout, but there was never a match made and, honestly, because a lot of evidence that they had at one point got lost. I don't even know if you could test them from now, and there's certainly a lot of people who have been following this case so closely which we'll talk about very soon here that if they could test and do a match, I have a feeling they would have done it already. Yeah, so with that, let's get into the theories as to who killed Elizabeth. So there are so many of them. We're just going to talk to you about the ones that are most discussed and researched, and all of these have corresponding books indicating the depth of research and thought that was put into each of them into each of them.

Speaker 2:

One theory for who murdered Elizabeth Short was put forward by Janice Knowlton in her 1995 book. Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer. Janice claimed she uncovered a series of repressed memories involving her father. Those memories included that George Knowlton, her father, having sexually molested her as a child, that he threatened to kill her mother and committed multiple violent acts. Among these memories was a graphic account of him murdering Elizabeth Short. According to Janice, she witnessed her father beat Elizabeth to death with a claw hammer in the family's garage where Short had been staying after an alleged affair and miscarriage. Janice said she was forced to accompany her father when he disposed of Elizabeth's body, describing how he first attempted to dump the corpse at the Seal Beach Pier before ultimately getting rid of it in Los Angeles. She even claimed to have called short Aunt Betty and was frequently taken to her apartment in Hollywood which I'm assuming is slightly on a different timeline when she wasn't living in their garage.

Speaker 1:

This is interesting too, because she said that he tried to dump the corpse at the Seal Beach Pier. How clean the body was. It just seemed like it would have been a very careful. You would have to be very careful to move it from wherever they did what they did to the new location. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of room to put it other places.

Speaker 2:

Her story did gain some initial traction. In 1991, she convinced Westminster police to excavate her former home's vacant lot, searching for evidence, but they didn't find anything.

Speaker 1:

That's also really interesting too, that she was able to produce enough doubt that they went excavating a lot Like right, that's not something that is not exactly not resource intensive because didn't she think her father had buried other like stuff and or people or something?

Speaker 2:

yeah, there was enough at least for them to go put manpower into that psychiatrist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder found her accounts potentially plausible and she appeared on national talk shows to tell her story and published her book in 1995 with all of her allegations. She went on Larry King Live and do you remember Sally Jessie Raphael?

Speaker 1:

Oh gosh yes, I feel With the big glasses. Oh gosh, those shows are so exploitive, but yes, Her family, however, vehemently rejected her claims.

Speaker 2:

Her stepsister, jolaine Emerson, insisted quote her book was trash and it wasn't even true. She felt like she had a good assessment of the situation because she had stayed with the family for over a decade, so it kind of lent a little credibility. Not that people can't hide things in a household, though.

Speaker 1:

Oh for sure. Yes, I know I mean. How many times do people get surprised when it turns out so-and-so member of the family did A, b or C?

Speaker 2:

Janice died in 2003. Her death ruled a suicide by drug overdose.

Speaker 1:

Her stepsister believed it was accidental, a final chapter in a life consumed by what she saw as a devastating psychological fantasy I think suffice to say that she was a very deeply troubled person at a minimum, and that's a sad story, regardless of what the truth actually is.

Speaker 2:

If it was true or not. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

The next theory was also covered extensively in a book we've already cited by Pew Eatwell, called Black Dahlia Red Rose. Remember how I said we would come back to the name on the address book that was included in Elizabeth's possessions? That name was Mark Hansen, and he is a character. So Mark Hansen, at the time of her death, was 55 years old, originally from Denmark, but moved to the US at age 19 and became very wealthy, very powerful. He owned about a dozen theaters. He part-owned a nightclub called the Florentine Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard and that is known for its shows with scantily clad girls and a hidden casino. He might have been part also, too, of an illegal abortion racket, among so many other things. He had his hands in a lot, a lot of shady stuff. So not a good guy. Also, remember how I mentioned in part one in the summer of 1946, after Elizabeth's relationship with Gordon Fickling came to an end, she moved to LA from where she was staying in Long Beach. There were problems with her roommates and ultimately she had to leave because of those issues and she couldn't make the rent, and that's where. From there she went to San Diego. That she was living during that time was one of Mark Hansen's rooming houses behind the Florentine Gardens which he rented to Hollywood hopefuls and apparently this was a thing too, where some of these nightclub owners would also own housing that they would rent or let women stay in. It was such a manipulative, it sounds shady, so shady, it's like the fox running the hen house. That's what I think reading that. Oh God.

Speaker 1:

Now Mark Hansen took quite a liking to Elizabeth reported confirmed by other girls that she was living with at the time and he was noticeably different with her than he was with anyone else. But it wasn't reciprocated, she was not interested in him. He was in fact so jealous of all the men coming in and out of her life he would forbid them from coming, like they had to park a few blocks away just to drop her off, so he wouldn't see them off. So he wouldn't see them. And she was kicked out of the apartment when she got into a fist fight with another girl that Mark brought home because she was worried like this girl was going to try to break into her suitcase. But there was a lot of drama before that, like she'd been kicked out before and then came back under different circumstances. So this was just not a good, easy time and there was a lot of resentment and a lot of badwill between her and Mark.

Speaker 1:

Pugh-eat-wall's theory is that Mark was so angry because he was constantly getting rejected by Elizabeth, and also, potentially, she knew too much about some of his illicit dealings, that he asked a man named Leslie Dillon, who was like a low-level associate she believed, or potentially a pimp, for him to, you know, quote unquote take care of her. You know, not realizing that what he would translate that to be would be something more horrific than anybody could imagine. Fbi documents revealed that Leslie was, at one point, the top suspect in the case, and how he got on their radar is an insane, deeply disturbing story. On October 28th 1948, almost two years after Elizabeth's body was found, lapd psychiatrist Dr Paul DeRiver received a letter from a man named Jack Sands with a return address of a PO box in Miami Beach. This Jack Sands said he knew someone who was present a man that he would later identify as Jeff at the killing, and knew a lot of the people involved, though Jeff claimed he was not the actual murderer. Now the man, jack Sands said he wanted to get in touch with the psychiatrist to help assist and track down the person. So Dr DeRiver plays along.

Speaker 1:

They correspond for a few months. You know they talk about the typical stuff like Jack's interest in sexual sadism and what the psych profile is of the dolly or killer. Yeah, I know this will be really shocking but it turns out the author of the letters was not actually Jack Sands, it turned out to be Leslie Dillon. Oh gosh, this reminds me this letter writing between the two. It kind of reminds me of in the John Benny Ramsey case. There was a schoolteacher horrifying named John Mark Carr that started corresponding with an investigator. Like there was a ton of correspondence before they finally found him working as a teacher abroad. I remember that name. John Mark Carr might sound familiar because he's probably come up a lot in the news now because the new JonBenet Ramsey series talks about him. It's that weirdness of a person going and contacting authorities and corresponding and inserting themselves in these crimes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's so strange, it's just it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Speaker 1:

Also too, when I looked up Leslie Dillon and John Mark Carr, they kind of look the same. They're both lanky, I can't tell. It said Leslie Dillon was tall but John Mark Carr might've been. They have like those like downward sloping shoulders and like the vacant eyes that like just don't connect with any other human. It's very, very weird. Let me give you a little background on Leslie Dillon. So he's originally from Oklahoma and eventually ended up in LA. He's one of those people who's just. He's been around so many different places, a lot of geographic instability. He had a lot of different jobs. He was dishonorably discharged from the military for stealing watches of all things. He was later arrested and charged for being a pimp. Other not as bad types of occupations that he had included. He was a bellhop, a dance instructor, a taxi driver and get this he even had a daughter he ended up naming Elizabeth.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, come on man, oh yeah come on man.

Speaker 1:

So obviously so, at a minimum. This guy is a complete basket case creep and he's obsessed with this case. When law enforcement initially tracks leslie down in person, he's really reluctant to talk and he insists he will not come to los angeles. So they end up meeting. There's a whole circuitous route that ends up being followed. I'm not going to get into it, but basically he, dr DeRiver and I believe a few detectives like at least one end up in Banning, near Palm Springs, at a health resort and hotel and they stay there for a few days, during which Dr DeRiver and Leslie would meet in the hotel room and discuss the case and Leslie would talk about it in a lot of graphic detail. And then at one point Dr DeRiver asked Leslie if he would take off his shirt and then also his trousers so he could physically inspect him.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, yeah. So like reading that, I thought I am extremely uncomfortable. This is so psychotic. I know this is the 40s and it's not exactly like you have professional standards in place, but this is sketchy af okay. So if this isn't insanity enough, then dr de river and detectives um end up accompanying leslie for like more than a week. They move around various locations in Southern California, and then, in January 1949, they ended up at this hotel in LA it's downtown called the Strand Hotel, where Leslie drops a handwritten note out of the hotel window asking for someone to notify his defense attorney because he's being unlawfully held by police this whole situation is so bizarre.

Speaker 1:

It is so bizarre this whole book was like. It was like it was like a fever dream this part. Yeah, so belly pd gets contacted and they officially book leslie. Now dr de river's theory was was that Jeff was an alter ego for Leslie, but then they actually found the real Jeff Connors who, enough about him, matched the description that Leslie had shared. He was from San Francisco. So this guy, the real Jeff Connors, comes in for questioning Both of them, are investigated and ultimately neither one of them gets charged and released and in fact Leslie would later sue the LAPD and Dr DeRiver for unlawful detention and false arrest and it's my understanding I think he might have even gotten a settlement out of it. So so sketchy.

Speaker 1:

Now in Puyat-Well's book. It's very well researched. She went to a lot of legal documents. She talked to people alive today that were close to the case or would know a lot about it. So it's very deep in terms of research. It paints a really good picture of the era and also goes into like the shenanigans of the press and all of the characters in this drama.

Speaker 1:

But the main theory that she puts forward is that she thought she put together evidence that she thought Mark and Leslie were involved at least the two of them, and possibly Jeff Connors, were involved in Elizabeth's death and the reason why she fought this. One of the reasons why she thought this is that she found when she was going in her in-depth research, there was like missing documents, pages removed, and it seemed like they always related to Mark and Leslie. Digging further into this, she found that one of the detectives leading the investigation was a man named. Of the detectives leading the investigation was a man named Finnis Brown. According to further research, she found that it's possible that Brown was like mixed up with Hansen, as in there was probably like underhanded stuff going on where he would cover for him, and then, to further complicate this, finnis Brown had an older brother named Thad Brown, who was also a powerful commander on the LAPD. He could basically protect his brother, who could then do things that looked really sketchy when they went back into the files.

Speaker 1:

Okay, here's what I think about this. I think that Mark Hansen had a lot of reasons to not want to get on the police's radar for any reason whatsoever. So even if that's true, that Finnis and Mark were too close for comfort and then Finnis's brother, thad, would help anytime he wanted to cover up things or not play fair and square. I don't think that means he's a killer. I think it just means he I don't know maybe he doesn't want to get called in and questioned for Elizabeth's murder. And then they start talking about maybe the casino, other things or the abortion racket. So I can explain that away and say like that has nothing to do with Elizabeth and everything to do with this. Guy had his hands in like a whole hodgepodge of different illegal things that he did not want to be.

Speaker 2:

Like it was self-preservation.

Speaker 1:

So I don't buy that. Here's something, though. I can't exactly explain away the scene of the crime, so we don't know exactly. We know she was transported. Elizabeth was transported, but we don't really know from where. But we don't really know from where.

Speaker 1:

Well, it turned out when she, when P Wheatwell was doing her research, that there is a motel where they found it was drenched in blood, like carpet, all the linens, and there were feces on the wall, which is an important detail in addition to being incredibly gut-wrenching, because from the autopsy it found that Elizabeth had been forced to eat fecal matter. So this is sounding really, really sketchy. And, to make things even more complicated, there were multiple people, including the Hoffmans, that said, yeah, I think Leslie was staying here around that time and we think we saw her as well, and not just the Hoffmans, but other people. Now we do know at least Leslie Dillon stayed there in April, so that's a few months later, and there aren't like hardcore records. In January, because it turned out the daughter had taken them, she had taken them home and they were running out of space, so she burned them, which in and of itself sounds so sketchy. So, all right.

Speaker 1:

Another question you might have is like okay, so if you open up a room and you find this is the site of a horrifying crime, obviously why are you not calling the police? Well, it turns out Right. Yeah, well it turns out the.

Speaker 1:

Hoffmans also didn't want to be on the police's radar because Henry Hoffman had, just days before, been booked for a domestic incident and spent the night, and there was a lot of stuff going on, that you know. Again, I think it's like with Mark Hansen, just because they didn't commit this crime doesn't mean they don't, it doesn't mean that they're in a good place for the police coming and sniffing around, right so, but it is all these shady people. It is strange. I will give it that it is. It is strange. It is a very, very, very uncanny coincidence. You know, then again, los angeles had a lot of crazy stuff going on. I mean, like Cecil Hotel, like we've seen horrible stuff happen there, but like the timing, the day, the timing with her body being found, it's very hard to you know square with. But it's also described as a motel too, where it's the type of place where men in dark suits pay cash for rooms.

Speaker 1:

So this, is you know, this is a place you do not who knows. It could have been anything. It could, yeah, it could have been anything. It could yeah, it could have been anything. There's another compelling detail too, for also why Pew thinks Leslie Dillon committed the murder. In those really sketchy hotel room conversations over days with Dr DeRiver, she said it was revealed that he knew a couple of details about her mutilation that the police never released. Only a very small number of people knew about these. But here's the thing though the the transcripts from those conversations they're not. If they're, they're out there.

Speaker 1:

I would like to see how that conversation transpired, because the way she put it in her book was he knew the answer to two questions that had not been released. These are there. If you really want to know them, you could probably go digging. They're extremely graphic and violent things that were there, just horribly disturbing things that happened to her body. But I could see how you could ask the question and how he could get. He could potentially guess correctly. Also, dr de river, we're not going to get into all of the things around him, but there was a lot of sketchy stuff, you know. In addition to the fact that I don't know he's like asking this guy to undress in a hotel room so he can inspect him, so a lot of stuff like that, where it's like I'm not saying he was lying, I'm just saying I don't know if I I would side-eye everything this guy says.

Speaker 1:

He doesn't sound like a credible, a credible person. So whole side story. You can read the book and it will go into that. Another. Another detail too is that Leslie Dillon there were a couple of people that put him in the San Francisco area the day before and after the crime, I don't know. You know, it's kind of like with these people being questioned. It's the same with, like the people who said, like the Hoffmans, who said they saw Leslie and they saw Elizabeth at the motel. They were getting questioned like up to like anywhere from a year and a half to a couple years later that they were getting this stuff on record.

Speaker 2:

So it's like you know how reliable is the memory?

Speaker 1:

So maybe you know, maybe he could have driven back to LA, maybe he wasn't really in San Francisco, maybe dates were mixed up and all of that. Maybe there's credibility issues.

Speaker 1:

Okay, here's the big issue I have with this theory the person who committed this murder had to have some sort of medical knowledge or training. For sure. Yeah, and I came across this multiple, multiple places that a lot of different types of experts said this. Steve Hodel notes this in Black Dahlia, avenger 2. Steve Hodel notes this in Black Dahlia, avenger 2, and I also noted this in other places that there's a lot of professionals who studied this crime very closely Law enforcement officers, district attorneys, coroner experts, fbi and they all generally agree that this had to be someone who was skilled.

Speaker 1:

Some go so far as to say it had to be a surgeon, but basically they had to be skilled. Pew will say well, leslie Dillon was a mortician's assistant. Here's the thing he was a mortician's assistant for three weeks. So, like you're hardly through the training manual, you're an assistant, so that means you're probably not hands-on doing anything with the corpses. And last I checked what morticians do is they embalm bodies. And when they do that, when they drain the body of blood, it's like a very precise, clean procedure, that massacre that they saw in the hotel room. If Leslie really knew how to drain a body, he went into detail about how it would be done or how it would work with Dr DeRiver. So he's obviously interested. But then why in the world would you have such a messy crime scene and then be able to clean the body so it's so immaculate? Also a hysterectomy and the organs that were removed that like. I think you have to be more than a butcher, for example, to know that. But that requires a lot of knowledge about anatomy and there is nothing in Leslie's background that indicates that.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So, with that said, now that we're talking about, this person had to be pretty highly trained, know the body really really well. Well, that's going to limit our suspect pool dramatically. That gets us to the last suspect. Dramatically, that gets us to the last suspect, the one I personally think committed the murder. But I'm not going to tell you about that directly Steve Hodel, who I just cited his work. He is a homicide detective who's done a lot of work examining the evidence around this. He can tell the story far better than we ever could. So we are going to go into a part three, have Steve speak for himself and the evidence that he found around this case and also, to throw another twist in it the killer he suspects is his dad.

Speaker 2:

So while we get that episode ready for you, we have a special bonus episode with journalist and author James Bartlett. He's the author of Gourmet Ghosts and has done a lot of research around true crime and hauntings tied to various places around LA.

Speaker 1:

So that episode with James will drop next week, and then in two weeks the episode with Steve Hodel will drop, but we might be able to drop it sooner. So follow us at Dark City Pod on all of our social media Instagram, Facebook threads and TikTok. We'll post when it's ready. Also, follow us wherever you're listening, because then it will be available for you in your most updated episode stream. Until then, bye, Thank you.