Red Herrings
Where history gets messy and the law gets loud.
Brittany and Joccoaa take turns serving up shocking crimes and unforgettable legal battles. One brings the past, the other brings the courtroom — and together, they bring the chaos.
It’s smart, a little unhinged, and full of twists you won’t see coming.
Red Herrings
An Infamous Tale - Part 1
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Welcome to Red Herrings!
This week, Brittany and Joccoaa present: The Black Dahlia
Hosted by: Brittany Warren & Joccoaa Gray
Sound Engineer & Co-host: Christopher Brown
Edited by: Joccoaa Gray
If you would like to get in touch, please contact us at redherringspod@gmail.com.
Sources:
Welcome to Red Herrings. I'm Jacoa, Master's student in law and human rights, host of True Crime Club Newcastle, and creator of True Crime Forum Newcastle.
SPEAKER_00Hi, I'm Brittany. I have two degrees in history and 15 years experience in genealogy. We're the red herrings.
SPEAKER_05Well, well, well. What do we have here? Two red herrings and the catch of the day. Don't forget about me.
SPEAKER_03Hi, Chris! We're the red herrings.
SPEAKER_05And Chris.
SPEAKER_00This recording, this case, Chico and I are doing together.
SPEAKER_02Yes, we are.
SPEAKER_00Because it came about a conversation that the three of us had quite some time ago now. Maybe just before we stopped recording, just before our break.
SPEAKER_03Way before that.
SPEAKER_00Turns out Chris has never heard of this topic. Oh my god. And both of us said, I'm sorry, what?
SPEAKER_05Uh-huh. We did. Yeah, and apparently that's scandalous. It is, because But I think many people won't have heard of this.
SPEAKER_00I think everyone will have heard of this case.
SPEAKER_05And if you're one of them, dear listeners. This episode's for you.
SPEAKER_03You've just never heard it told like this. Oh.
SPEAKER_00You've just never heard it. Because well, when we get into it, I asked him like beforehand what he knew, and there was like two things he knew about it, and it was just where it happened, and some small minor detail relating to the case. Wow. Chris, get ready to learn a lot. Yes.
SPEAKER_05I'm excited.
SPEAKER_00Are we good to go?
SPEAKER_05And this is the first collab.
SPEAKER_00It is. Exciting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Okay, let's go.
SPEAKER_00I should just say it's a very gruesome case. It's very detailed. I really don't know what else to say. There's a lot of gruesome details.
SPEAKER_03Sheard your loins.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, prepare yourselves.
SPEAKER_03Trigger warning for extensive details.
SPEAKER_05Well, no spoilers. Details. Oh, okay. Are there eyes involved? No. Okay. No eyes.
SPEAKER_03Literally, probably everything but eyes.
SPEAKER_05Oh no.
SPEAKER_03Sorry. But we will handle it very sensitively. Yes. Yes. And yeah, let's go.
SPEAKER_05As we do with everything in this podcast.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely everything. On the morning of January 15th, 1947, a young mother was walking her daughter in a Los Angeles neighborhood that was still largely undeveloped and dotted with vacant lots. What she saw made her stop. A pale shape lying in the weeds a short distance from the sidewalk. For a moment, she believed it was a broken store mannequin discarded and left to rot in the winter grass.
SPEAKER_05And was it?
SPEAKER_00It was not until she moved closer that she realized the shape was a human body. A young woman naked and severed cleanly at the waist. Did you know about that?
SPEAKER_05Severed cleanly at the waist. Do you want to see a photo, Chris? Yeah, go on. Naked and severed cleanly at the waist.
SPEAKER_00Like, are we talking about fully cut at the waist?
SPEAKER_05Where where in the waist? Like the tummy? Okay. So the hips were gone.
SPEAKER_06Well, I'm gonna get into detail in a minute.
SPEAKER_00Let her show you this photo. I don't know if I want to see the photo.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Is it bad?
SPEAKER_00Is it yes, that's the one I saw.
SPEAKER_05I can't even make that out.
SPEAKER_00Which Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Is that an arm?
SPEAKER_00That's the head.
SPEAKER_05Oh, so the legs are there. Yes. I thought the legs were missing. No, sorry. Okay. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00She was basically just cut in half. The woman ran to a neighboring house to call police, and within a short time, the quiet residential block between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street became the center of what would grow into one of America's most infamous unsolved murder cases. Did you know it was unsolved?
SPEAKER_05I did not.
SPEAKER_00Patrol officers soon arrived, followed by homicide detectives and the press. Among the earliest reporters on scene was Aggie Underwood of the Los Angeles Herald Express, whose photographs that you just saw, I believe that was probably his, whose photographs of the body and the surrounding lot will become some of the most widely circulated and most disturbing images connected to the case.
SPEAKER_03Interestingly, until I started researching this case this week, I hadn't seen those photographs before.
SPEAKER_00Me neither.
SPEAKER_03I guess you have to really look for them nowadays. Well they're pretty hidden. But yeah, it's yeah, I I hadn't seen them before.
SPEAKER_05But when I was like I guess it's not the kind of thing you can show on a YouTube video, is it? Maybe.
SPEAKER_00No, probably not. But yeah. When I was looking, I think yesterday or two days ago, I just typed in like Black Dahlia to like onto Google and then went to images. And I was like, oh, I was kind of apprehensive, being like, what's gonna come up? But really, like that took me because I saw that photo as well, but I had to go to an article and then it popped up, so I was like, oh.
SPEAKER_05And were these published in a newspaper? Yeah. Oh wow. Damn, can you imagine opening a newspaper and seeing that?
SPEAKER_00Aside from the mutilation itself, investigators were struck by the complete absence of blood at the scene. Despite the extensive wounds, the ground beneath and around her body was clean. She had been killed elsewhere entirely, then transported to this empty lot and deliberately arranged for whoever might come across her.
SPEAKER_03As if there is actually somewhere in this world where that happened, where all that blood was and everything, like crazy.
SPEAKER_05See, I'm thinking immediately we're looking for like a butcher with a like one of those bands.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_05No?
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_00Well, we can't say anything.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_00Because then I'm not gonna say anything till part two of my opinion, and probably the same with Jacoa, because we don't want to give anything away.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00But keep your theories coming.
SPEAKER_03Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_00The condition of the body was so severe that it could not be easily described, and it would haunt the detectives, coroners, and reporters who encountered it for the rest of their careers. Her body had been bisected at the waist, the two halves separated and placed roughly a foot apart from each other. It had been drained of blood and thoroughly washed, leaving her skin an unnatural, bloodless white. Whoever had killed her had also taken the time to pose her remains. Her arms were raised above her head with the elbows bent at sharp right angles, and her legs were spread apart.
SPEAKER_03Can I ask an awful question?
SPEAKER_00I think I know where you're going with this.
SPEAKER_03If there was no blood in the body, does that mean that she was alive when she was split in half? No, I don't think so. And I'll get to that in a minute.
SPEAKER_05Why would it mean that?
SPEAKER_03Because I mean, like blood, like if it's a dead body, it's there's no heart to pulsate it around, right? So it's just gonna stay there. It's gonna coagulate. Coagulate inside the body. But if there's no lividity, is it called, where the blood pools in a certain place, like if you're lying on your back and dead, your blood will pool around your back and the back of your legs. There's none of that. No.
SPEAKER_05Then does it mean if you cut it in half and then like hang it up or something?
SPEAKER_03Right. So if it's like right, dead and then immediately cut in half.
SPEAKER_05Well, it doesn't have to be I mean I don't know.
SPEAKER_00No, because you know, no. No, no, I do get where you're saying, but I don't I don't know. If you get a joint of beef, there's still blood in the packet, isn't there?
SPEAKER_03Okay. Yes.
SPEAKER_05I think technically that's like hemoglobin, right?
SPEAKER_03Right, so that's what I'm saying. Was she alive when she was split in half? No, she was not. She absolutely wasn't. She was not. Thank you.
SPEAKER_05You see where my brain is. Because I say that in a second. I wonder how what you're saying is how quickly after you kill them do you have to chop them in half?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's where I'm getting like to drain the blood. Yeah. But we don't know that. Did you think we were gonna be talking like this tonight?
SPEAKER_05No. Sorry. But nothing really surprised me in this.
SPEAKER_03Sorry, sorry. And I will leave that in as well, even though it's awful just in case the listeners are thinking the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, everyone.
SPEAKER_05Lovely.
SPEAKER_00Her face bore some of the most disturbing wounds. Both corners of her mouth have been sliced outward toward her ears. Three inches on the right.
SPEAKER_06Two and a half.
SPEAKER_00Ooh, you know the name. Producing a horrific ear-to-ear grin that will later become known in criminal history as a Glasgow smile.
SPEAKER_05Would it later become known as that, or was it already known as that?
SPEAKER_00It was probably known at maybe known at this point, but like shortly thereafter, but I could be wrong. Do you want me to look it up?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, look it up. Because I don't know where the whole Glasgow gangster thing was.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because it's traditionally with the gangsters, right? Or the the gangs of Gang. Glasgow. The gangs of Glasgow.
SPEAKER_05Fun fact about the gangs of Glasgow while Jaco's looking that up. My great-grandfather he had a man dropped out of a helicopter onto his property.
SPEAKER_03Where is this going?
SPEAKER_00I was questioning this, but I actually do know this.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, he was dropped out of a helicopter in his property, and the police came round and sort of like, Do you know you've got a man, a dead man, splash it on your property? And yeah, it was to do with the Glasgow gangsters. Wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh my gosh. So a Glasgow smile is a wound caused by making a cut from the corners of the victim's mouth up to the ears, leaving a scar in the shape of a smile, and it originated, the practice is said to originated in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1920s and 30s. So it appears this was a thing before this happened, which could be an interesting connection.
SPEAKER_05Interesting, okay.
SPEAKER_03I also have a photo of someone with the scar from a Glasgow smile, if you want to see it.
SPEAKER_05That's not that bad.
SPEAKER_00Sorry.
SPEAKER_05Do you not think?
SPEAKER_00This is coming from the same man who thought Van Gogh was hot.
SPEAKER_05Well, maybe it's just mutilation that turns me on. Don't leave that in. Oh god.
SPEAKER_03You're married to him now. Honey. Blink twice if you need help.
SPEAKER_00That's almost worth writing down.
SPEAKER_05So we're looking for a butcher from Glasgow.
SPEAKER_03Case solved.
SPEAKER_05How many butchers can there be in Glasgow?
SPEAKER_03I wonder if anyone has looked at anybody who got a flight back to Glasgow any time after. I wonder if they're w has everybody been looking in the wrong place this entire time? You need to do your genealogy work. She might find the killer.
SPEAKER_05I believe.
SPEAKER_00Investigators also found ligature marks circling her wrist, ankles, and neck, evidence that she at some point had been bound.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05I mean you would have to like tie them up to solemn in half. I don't think she just sit there.
SPEAKER_00But she was already dead.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_03We haven't gotten there, but she was already, spoiler, she was already dead.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha.
SPEAKER_03I assume you're gonna say if she was already dead when she got the Glasgow smile as well. Uh no, I didn't actually say that. Okay, but I'm wondering if maybe she wasn't bound while she was alive in the way of torture. What if that was how you hang her to drain her?
SPEAKER_02Sorry.
SPEAKER_03Sorry again, awful stuff. We did give a trigger on it at the beginning, but that she maybe was never bound while she was alive. But then they would know that, right? Because there would be bruising. If there isn't bruising, then it m happened after she died, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Near the body, detectives discovered a heel print pressed into the soil amongst a set of tire tracks, along with a nearby sack of cement that contained watery diluted blood.
SPEAKER_05Eh? Eh? Diluted blood.
SPEAKER_00So you didn't know this detail.
SPEAKER_03So no, I've deliberately stayed away from your scripts in some of the bits because I'm like, ooh, I don't want to know too much. I want to be, you know, my organic reactioning.
SPEAKER_00This might come back later in part two. So say that a sentence again. Near the body, detectives discovered a heel print pressed into the soil amongst a set of tire tracks, along with a nearby sack of cement that contained watery diluted blood.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so when you say a heel print pressed into the the Don't ask me any further questions.
SPEAKER_01But like what I'm saying is do they I think we've killed you, Coma.
SPEAKER_04Never mind then I guess.
SPEAKER_01I know nothing else about that. I'm so sorry. I really slapped on this one, guys. No, you didn't, you didn't. We got married.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, we did get married.
SPEAKER_01We had like 30,000 people come and stand in our house and move around.
SPEAKER_03No, the thing is, is that you ask questions that you never think you'll be asked. Like, you know, that's the thing, like you would because I bet the question I'm about to ask you as well, you never would have even thought, but like I'm wondering, like, okay, it was a bag of cement. Is the cement hard? Is the is it diluted or is it mixed in with the cement? Like these.
SPEAKER_05I'm thinking if there's diluted diluted blood in it, like it's mixed with the cement dust to make like thick cement as it's cement set.
SPEAKER_00It's yeah, when you say that in my head, uh-huh, I imagined a solid block of cement in this bag and just watery, bloody water on top. Okay, no idea.
SPEAKER_05Pretty stupid and don't know what cement is.
SPEAKER_00You're pretty stupid.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Um, when you see a heel print pressed into the ground, is that like intentional? Were there other heel prints around you know, footprints around?
SPEAKER_03She said, right, in Britney's defense, she said a heel print. So I think that's one.
SPEAKER_05So to me, that's feels like someone. Well, I think if you're trying to throw someone off, you'd put more heel prints, right? I wouldn't just put one heel print.
SPEAKER_03Oh no, man. I'm not looking into the heel print at all.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_03I mean maybe look into the woman that found it. It's a v yeah, it's a vacant lot. Anyone could walk over that.
SPEAKER_00This is in the 40s as well, where maybe like people had shoes in the 40s, yeah. No, but you know, like the crime. You know what I mean? Like the police maybe weren't as on it as they maybe are.
SPEAKER_05So you're saying there were more than more heel prints?
SPEAKER_00I'm saying it could have been anyone.
SPEAKER_05Policeman wearing heels.
SPEAKER_03It's so surprising to me that you're even focusing on the heel print at all. There's a cement bag with diluted. Can I also ask diluted with what? I'm just assuming like water. Right. Okay. What's that mean?
SPEAKER_05Why maybe she did it rain? Well, I guess he you he washed the body, right?
SPEAKER_03So I'm thinking maybe he was probably Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_05Is that a good did I make a good comment?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean that makes sense. But what's it mean? What's any of it mean?
SPEAKER_05I don't get why the cement's involved. Was he meaning to like weigh the body down and chuck it over the bridge or something? But why would you dump it? Was he on the way to a bridge?
SPEAKER_03He's used the cement bag to weigh the body down in water to wash it. And then when it's all when he's brought it back up, it's got diluted blood in it.
SPEAKER_00I don't I don't get me wrong, I didn't actually look on a map like where this is. I do have the actual like neighborhood, and it was found, I think, like in a not in a park, but I do have the actual streets.
SPEAKER_03Is it freshwater?
SPEAKER_00But I haven't actually looked. I don't know if there's a river or blood's salty. There's canals in LA. I it may have been near canal. I I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so he dunked it in the canal with the cement bag to keep it down to wash it properly, and then he's brought it all back up. Maybe. That is the only thing that makes sense.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it doesn't really make that much sense. I know.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so heel print, tar tracks, and a wet some wet bloody cement.
SPEAKER_02Was it her blood? Don't know.
SPEAKER_05Well, I guess we couldn't tell, right?
SPEAKER_03Can't tell, okay. Oh god.
SPEAKER_00If they still had that, could they test it? They could test it to see if the s it's the same blood type as her. However, if her body was drained of blood, how are you going to know what blood type she was? Just DNA.
SPEAKER_05Can you not tell blood type from DNA?
SPEAKER_00I don't know about that.
SPEAKER_05Could you tell what blood type I was from a chunk of my flesh?
SPEAKER_00I don't know.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00The formal autopsy was conducted the following day, January 16th, by Los Angeles County Coroner Frederick Newbar. His report described the victim as five feet five inches tall and 115 pounds with light blue eyes, brown hair, and teeth that showed signs of neglect. Newbar documented superficial lacerations, cuts to her right forearm, left upper arm, and lower chest.
SPEAKER_03Defensive wounds.
SPEAKER_05That's exactly what I was thinking. Good. We're glad we're all on the same page.
SPEAKER_03Just call us detectives.
SPEAKER_05You're a detective. So we're looking for a butcher that attacks people from Glasgow. Right. Who owns a car and some high heels.
SPEAKER_03I can get to Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_03Was it okay? So when you say heel print, do you mean a high heel? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00So I think it's literally just the heel of your shoe. Right.
SPEAKER_03So it doesn't mean anything. Okay.
SPEAKER_00It was said that she had been dead for roughly 10 hours, placing her death late on the 14th or in the early hours of the 15th.
SPEAKER_05How the fuck do you tell that?
SPEAKER_00You can tell by the body the way it's- Of course you can tell. Absolutely. 100%.
SPEAKER_05But the body's been drained of blood.
SPEAKER_00It doesn't matter. You can see it. What are you looking for? Don't ask me. I'm not a forensic investigator.
SPEAKER_05Why not?
SPEAKER_03For example, um, I understand, I may be wrong, but I understand that rigor mortis only lasts eight hours. So if the rigor mortis has worn off, it's been dead for more than eight hours.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_03And then if there's no maggot infestation or no beginning of insects eating it and stuff, you can then narrow down the timeline even.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but how long do maggots take to like is that not a few days?
SPEAKER_03Maggots would be days, but any animal activity or anything. You can tell.
SPEAKER_00No, ruh roughly. Roughly.
SPEAKER_03It hadn't been more than a day.
SPEAKER_00It hadn't no. They can tell. You're a true crime buff. You should know this.
SPEAKER_05They can tell. They can tell.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The bisection itself, Nubar determined, had been carried out using a technique associated with a surgical procedure known now, guys. I googled how to say this.
SPEAKER_03Oh my god, I saw this in your script. I was like, I can't wait for it to say this.
SPEAKER_00Hemicorporectomy. Oh clap, clap. Pretty clean. Thanks. I literally went to Google Translate, put it in, and I had it tell me how to say it.
SPEAKER_05Smart. Hemicorporectomy. Is that not just chopping a body in half? Is that not just the Latin term for chopping a body in half?
SPEAKER_00Cutting cleanly through the lumbar spine between the second and third vertebrae. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Chopping a body in half.
SPEAKER_00There you go.
SPEAKER_05Love it. Well, that doesn't really help us, does it?
SPEAKER_03Well, it's just it does no need to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_05Specifically between the two vertebrae.
SPEAKER_03Yes. It it could show medical knowledge. Yeah. Okay. You have to know what you're doing.
SPEAKER_05Could have been luck, no.
SPEAKER_03Doubt it. Well, no, I'm on the I'm on that. Really? Yeah, I don't think any of this proves that the person knew medical stuff. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're gonna cut someone in half, you're gonna you no matter where you start, you're like gonna you're not gonna cut through bone, you're gonna make sure you cut through a vertebrae somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but how do you do that? If you're starting from the st from the stomach.
SPEAKER_03I mean, uh did they?
SPEAKER_00No, we don't know. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03So they might have started at the back sort of because you spine's right next to the skin. So you're actually feeling it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because I can see your vertebrae on your spine.
SPEAKER_03And she was a very small lady. So if you started at the back, you could find the gap, and then it just so happened to be between the second and third, which happens to be around the waist.
SPEAKER_05Do we know what was used? Like what cutting implement?
SPEAKER_03Uh oh.
SPEAKER_05Like was it a clean cut? Was it like a saw? Do we know a bandsaw?
SPEAKER_02Fuck.
SPEAKER_03I didn't say it all. So no, the specific weapon used to cut is not known. The murder remains officially unsolved, which we said at the beginning, the exact knife or tool was never recovered. You would think though, that we would be able to see just by the cuts themselves, right? You would think.
SPEAKER_05See, I would have thought there would be marks on the bones.
SPEAKER_03For example, the Setagaya family murders, which we just covered in True Crime Club, they knew that that was a sushi knife.
SPEAKER_00But I think that's because the weapon was still in the house.
SPEAKER_03Fine, okay.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, didn't know.
SPEAKER_05Maybe we can't I guess it's you'd have thought, right, if it's a chop through the spine, you can see like there's a difference between chopping it with like an axe or like a knife or a bandsaw, right?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_05I think if it's a clean cut all the way through, that's that would lead me to something like you're looking for a like a rotating blade, like a buttons thing, or a bandsaw or like a sawmill thing, right?
SPEAKER_03Is there fucking nothing out there talking about this? There should be. I mean Not that I've seen. Surely someone in the detectives thought of this.
SPEAKER_00I think there's so much out there. And like you'll see as we continue, I think there's so much out there that's just not been released to the public.
SPEAKER_02Fair.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay. Even like 80 years on.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05Wow.
SPEAKER_00Critically, he noted very little bruising along that incision line, evidence suggesting the cut had been made after death.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00The true cause of death, according to Newbar's findings, was hemorrhage brought on by the facial lacerations combined with shock from blunt force trauma to the head.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so the her head was pretty fucked up, was it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I say here the coroner found bruising on the scalp and a small amount of bleeding beneath her skull, consistent with blows delivered before death.
SPEAKER_05I would much rather be bonked over the head than chopped in half.
SPEAKER_03I don't think that's a unique opinion.
SPEAKER_00Okay, good. Newspapers of the day, eager for a sensational story, claimed the young woman had been. Tortured for hours before she died.
SPEAKER_05I fucking love how newspapers just make shit up.
SPEAKER_00And police allowed these exaggerated reports to spread, understanding that doing so helped conceal the true cause of death, information they wanted to hold back from the public, and from anyone falsely confessing to the crime.
SPEAKER_05Okay, I get that.
SPEAKER_00Investigators soon turned to her fingerprints, but because the body had already begun to decompose and the local prints were smudged, Los Angeles police transmitted copies to the FBI using a sound photo machine, an early wire transfer technology, essentially a very early fax machine, commonly used by news services to send photographs across the country. The turnaround was almost immediate. Working from the FBI's vast fingerprint archive, which held more than a hundred million prints at the time, agents found a match.
SPEAKER_05Where are they getting these from?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. But people were in there like numerous times, you'll come to find out. It wasn't just like one person. Maybe all ten fingers as well. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay. Right.
SPEAKER_00Agents found a match in just. Do you want to take a guess how quickly they found it? It's pretty impressive. So it would be someone looking through paper like prints. Two days. And your answer?
SPEAKER_05Oh, I have no idea. I think it would take weeks.
SPEAKER_00Fifty-six minutes. What the fuck. Interestingly, she appeared in the files twice. The first record dated to January 1943, when she had applied for a clerical position at the Commissary of Camp Cook, an army base near Lompoc, California. The second came from later that year when she had been arrested by Santa Barbara police for underage drinking. Along with the matching prints, the FBI located a mugshot from the Santa Barbara arrest and released it to the public.
SPEAKER_05That feels harsh. Like you're releasing a mugshot. People are gonna think, oh she's a real.
SPEAKER_00Well, when you see her mugshot, you wouldn't actually believe it's a mugshot. That's really true. It's actually like a pretty good photo of her.
SPEAKER_05What would you do in your mugshot? Would you smile? Would you like go full glam?
SPEAKER_00Genuinely RBF it the whole time. Right.
SPEAKER_03Until right now, till you said that, I did not know that was a mugshot.
SPEAKER_00It's probably the most famous photo associated with her case, is actually her mugshot.
SPEAKER_03It's like what you'd put in the beginning of your model portfolio, right?
SPEAKER_05Well, she was arrested for underage drinking, so I'm guessing she was drunk while she took it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So slay, show me.
SPEAKER_00We're not there yet. One more sentence, and then we'll get there. Her name? Elizabeth Short. A 22-year-old originally from Massachusetts who had been living in the Los Angeles area, reportedly hoping to break into the film industry. I have four photos. You're only to look at the document and then the two photos of Elizabeth Short.
SPEAKER_05I'm sorry, the first one is not a mugshot.
SPEAKER_00No, it's the let me see.
SPEAKER_05I was gonna say. Okay.
SPEAKER_00The second one's the mugshot.
SPEAKER_04Holy shit. Imagine doing that in your mugshot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that second photo of her is the mugshot. And then if you go to the document, I just thought that was pretty cool. So that is the document that says, like from the FBI saying we have identified her. That is dated January 16th, 1943. So it's the day of her autopsy.
SPEAKER_03Like she has the same earrings in in her mugshot that she does in the posh photo above. I didn't realize that, but yes, she does. I just noticed because I was like, whoa, they let her keep her earrings on, and then I noticed they're in the they're in the nice photo as well.
SPEAKER_05Sorry, I was just reading that document. It says a newspaper reporter sent the prints in.
SPEAKER_00So the Los Angeles examiner, the newspaper, paid for the prints to go to the FBI because they had that sound photo machine where the police didn't have it. So that's why in the letter it says we owe our thanks to the Los Angeles examiner because they did this at a considerable cost to them.
SPEAKER_03I'm really glad you said that because when I was doing my research, I found a lot of sources that said that the newspaper, the examiner, set had the fingerprint somehow or something and sent it to the police to aid them in their research. But then I found other reports saying that it had been the FBI that had found it in a short time or whatever. So I was always like, which is it? And then when I read that bit of your script, I was like, okay, Britney's got it. That's definitely the right one. But then it seems that they actually helped fund it. That was all. Yes. Yes. So the newspaper, yeah, helped fund it and physically sent them, but it wasn't like they were the it wasn't like they were going out scrubbing for fingerprints.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. But once her identity was confirmed, reporters, not detectives, reached her family first. A team from William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles examiner tracked down Short's mother, Phoebe, back in Boston, and telephoned her under false pretenses, initially telling her that her daughter had won a beauty contest.
SPEAKER_05God, newspapers are so shit, aren't they?
SPEAKER_02This is particularly bad in it.
SPEAKER_05This is really bad.
SPEAKER_00Oh, don't worry, I've got a quote coming up. Journalist Jim Murray, who witnessed the phone call to Phoebe, would later say that moment stuck with him. Wayne called the mother and asked all these questions and took all these notes, Murray recalled. I sat there and listened to the poor dear mother telling him about her school day triumphs. I can still see him put his hand over the mouthpiece of the old fashioned upright phone and say, Now what do I tell her?
SPEAKER_03Fuck an El.
SPEAKER_00Yup.
SPEAKER_03Damn.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. And what did he? Do we know what eventually it did he did say.
SPEAKER_05By the way, just joking about the beauty contest, she's actually dead.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like crazy. Only after drawing out as many personal details and family photographs as they could did the reporters reveal the truth. Elizabeth had been murdered. Phoebe initially refused to believe it, and it was not until she received confirmation through her local police department that the reality set in. Long before she became a headline, Elizabeth Short was simply a girl from Massachusetts navigating a difficult, unsettled childhood. She was born on July 29, 1924, in the Boston area, one of several daughters in a family whose fortunes collapsed during the Great Depression. Her father had built and operated miniature golf courses, a profitable business until the 1929 stock market crash wiped out most of the family's savings. In 1930, his car was discovered abandoned along the Charlestown Bridge, and with no further sign of him, the family assumed he had taken his own life by jumping into the Charles River below.
SPEAKER_03I didn't know that, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00Believing herself a widow, Elizabeth's mother went to work as a bookkeeper to keep the family afloat. Elizabeth's childhood was also marked by serious illness. She suffered from bronchitis and severe asthma, condition serious enough that she underwent lung surgery at only 15 years old. Whoa, okay. Her doctors recommended she spend time in warmer climates to protect her respirator her respiratory health, and for three consecutive winters, her mother sent her to stay with her family friends in Miami. She never finished high school, dropping out during her sophomore year. What's that? That is second year into high school, so you're like 15, 16-ish. Okay. Then, in late 1942, the family received an unexpected and startling letter. Elizabeth's father, presumed dead for over a decade, was in fact alive. Shut up. He had quietly relocated to California and started a new life for himself. And it just so happened to be California as well. Just 18 years old and eager for a fresh start, Elizabeth moved to Vallejo, California in December of that year to live with the father she had not seen since she was six. I see, I see. But the reunion did not go smoothly. Arguments between them drove Elizabeth out of the house within a month. What followed was a restless few years. She took a job at the base exchange at Camp Cook and briefly lived with an Army Air Force sergeant who was reportedly abusive toward her. She left Lompoc by mid-1943 and settled for a time in Santa Barbara, where in September of that year she was arrested for underage drinking. Juvenile authorities sent her home to Massachusetts, but she did not stay long. She drifted instead to Florida, making only occasional trips back to see her family near Boston.
SPEAKER_05Question, how is she traveling around this much?
SPEAKER_00Probably back in the day, I don't know, probably hitchhike and people would give you rides, like it was a different time.
SPEAKER_05And was her dad or this army sergeant from Glasgow?
SPEAKER_00Not that I'm aware of. I do not think so.
SPEAKER_05Okay, good to know.
SPEAKER_00It was in Florida that Elizabeth found something a little closer to genuine romance. She met Major Matthew Michael Gordon Jr., a decorated Army Air Force officer preparing for deployment to Southeast Asia.
SPEAKER_05So she liked a uniform.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05Uh-huh. Don't we all?
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_04Moving on.
SPEAKER_00According to what get it together, guys. According to what she later told friends, Gordon proposed marriage to her by letter while recovering from injuries sustained in a plane crash in India. Elizabeth accepted. But any hope of that future ended on August 10th, 1945, when Gordon was one in half of the band swap. When Gordon was killed in a second crash.
unknownOh, okay.
SPEAKER_03Oh my good God. Genuinely, though, the tragedy that this woman has gone through early, early very sad. Short, short life. I know. I mean, it's crazy. It's actually such a tragic story. Isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Sorry, it sounded like my film is going to be sorry.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, really tragic anyway.
SPEAKER_06Sorry.
SPEAKER_01Oh God. Yeah, that's very tragic. Did no one else hear that though?
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_00By July 1946, Elizabeth had made her way to Los Angeles to visit another acquaintance from her Florida days, Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Ficling, who was stationed at the Naval Reserve Air Base in Long Beach. She would spend the final six months of her life mostly in and around Los Angeles. Though she has often been described, both at the time and in the decades since, as an aspiring actress chasing a career in Hollywood, no evidence has ever surfaced that she held any acting job or credits. Well, she certainly looked like she was She looked like she wanted to do and she was maybe but maybe it just wasn't She looks like a hoarding bombshot. Right, right. Maybe we just don't have anything surviving. Who knows how many maybe auditions she went for? We just don't know because it's not recorded.
SPEAKER_03I know that you can pontificate about these things, but I think that if she hadn't been murdered, she would have been like a man Marilyn Monroe situation. Like she has such a unique, beautiful look. Oh yeah. I also think that's why this case is so famous, you know, because it's like, wow, how could it be this so famous and she was murdered this way and she's also so beautiful? Well, I think those things all sort of tie in together, but yeah, no question, she'd have made it, I think.
SPEAKER_05But also she was trying for a while and she never made it.
SPEAKER_03Well, we don't really know. Okay, Christopher, she was 22 when she died. Like, how long is a while?
SPEAKER_00Okay. Some people don't make it until they're 60s. Like, true.
SPEAKER_05True, true, true. All right. Okay.
SPEAKER_00Shut up over.
SPEAKER_05You just made it sound like she'd been trying for a while.
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe she had, we just don't know. And that's okay if she was. One day she would have had her big break. I think so.
SPEAKER_05I believe in her.
SPEAKER_00I same. In her last weeks, she worked as a waitress and rented a room behind the Florentine Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard. I'm now going to hand it over to Jacoa to do the second half of part one.
SPEAKER_03It was common for newspapers to give victims and perpetrators nicknames at this time. And initially, Elizabeth Short's death was dubbed the werewolf murder. I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_05Interesting.
SPEAKER_03But that sharply fizzled out after two newspapers, the Herald Express and the LA Daily News, printed the story of the murder on the 17th of January with Elizabeth's now infamous name, the Black Dahlia.
SPEAKER_05And where did that come from?
SPEAKER_03So glad you asked. According to one newspaper, Elizabeth was known amongst her friends as Black Dahlia because she always wore black clothes to match her jet black hair. However, other reports say that the name was given as a play on the title of the 1946 movie The Blue Dahlia.
SPEAKER_00Wait, can I just make a comment there? So you said like her friends gave her the name the Black Dahlia to go with her jet black hair.
SPEAKER_03I said according to one newspaper.
SPEAKER_00Right. See, that contradicts the autopsy that said she had brown hair. Just a thought. So we can't trust the newspapers.
SPEAKER_05Why are we saying Dahlia when it's clearly Dahlia?
SPEAKER_00It's Dahlia.
SPEAKER_02It's Dahlia.
SPEAKER_04Wrong. Oh, you're wrong.
SPEAKER_02The flower is, yeah, I would say Dahlia's.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but this is Dahlia. This is Dahlia.
SPEAKER_05The Black Dahlia case.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that sounds awful.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it doesn't sound as well.
SPEAKER_05I need to be saying the Black Dahlia case from now on.
SPEAKER_02You're gonna be banned.
SPEAKER_03Everyone says Dahlia, but no, you're right. I would say dahlias.
SPEAKER_05I think even Americans say dahlias, do they not?
SPEAKER_00I genuinely don't know.
SPEAKER_05Oh my god, look at my dahlias.
SPEAKER_03Are we all saying it wrong?
SPEAKER_00No, no, no. Because I grew up watching True Crime. Like I have seen this on probably every show you can imagine, and it's always been the Black Dahlia.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Okay. Always sorted. However, other reports say that the name was given as a play on the title of the 1946 movie, The Blue Dahlia. Again, the black is because of her tendency to wear black, but she was actually mostly known throughout her friends as Betty or Beth. The LA Times reported in 2003 that Elizabeth was given the nickname by customers of a Long Beach drugstore that she had frequented whilst living for a short time in a local hotel. They don't give any more information on that though, so I'm not sure where that came from or why.
SPEAKER_05Can you imagine going to a boot so much that they come up with a nickname for you when you were only living there for like a month?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it didn't make sense to me either.
SPEAKER_05Hmm. Okay.
SPEAKER_03On the 22nd of January, the editor of the newspaper, The Examiner, James Richardson, received an anonymous phone call. On the other end of the phone was a man who claimed he was in possession of some items that belonged to Elizabeth. He apparently told James that he thought the items should spice up the case.
SPEAKER_05Weird.
SPEAKER_03Two days later, the post office received a package. This package was addressed to the Los Angeles examiner and other newspapers. It was doused in gasoline and contained pictures, Elizabeth's birth certificate, social security card, and a brown leather address book.
SPEAKER_05Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Right?
SPEAKER_05That's wild.
SPEAKER_03In the address book, one page had been torn out. Police suspected that that page may have contained the name of Elizabeth's killer.
SPEAKER_05That's so interesting, because I would have just left it. Because then I'm thinking if you tear it out, maybe you get an impression from the next page or something. You know what I mean? When you write a page and you interesting.
SPEAKER_03But even so, we don't know why it was torn out. We don't even know if the killer Maybe she tore it out. Yeah, yeah. So but as far as my research went, I don't think they found any imprints of what was written, although that would have been a great idea to look. Fifty-five-year-old Mark Hansen had given the book to Elizabeth. He was a burlesque nightclub owner and knew her well. He had also been one of the last people to speak to Elizabeth, as he told police that he had received a phone call from her on the 8th or 9th of January. This led to Hansen becoming a prime suspect initially. If you turn to your document, you can see a photo of Mark Hansen.
SPEAKER_05I mean he does look pretty shifty, doesn't he? Okay. Interesting.
SPEAKER_03Along with his burlesque nightclub, he often would attend sex parties, but he had no history of violence or criminality, and there wasn't anything concrete to tie him to the case. He remained a suspect until 1951 and died of natural causes in 1964. It is believed that the items in the anonymous package were the contents of Elizabeth's purse. Next in your document, you can see a picture of the note that was encased within the package. It reads Black Dahlia's belongings, letter to follow.
SPEAKER_05Wow. I love that. That's so creepy.
SPEAKER_03So creepy.
SPEAKER_00I'm glad you included that.
SPEAKER_05It looks like are those like bloodstains or fingerprints on the right of the follow and below the dahlia?
SPEAKER_00I don't know.
SPEAKER_05Or is that just grubbiness? I guess it could be like glue marks, wouldn't it? But you think if you glued stuff, you'd find a fingerprint in there, maybe more gloves. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03So I didn't put this in because we can't be sure, but a lot of sources say that it was dousting glassol gasoline to remove the fingerprints. And but obviously we don't know who sent it, so we can't be sure of their intentions around the gasoline, so I didn't keep it in.
SPEAKER_05But No, that makes sense though.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So there wouldn't be any fingerprints on it, but yeah, maybe a lot of it.
SPEAKER_05I suppose the gasoline didn't like unstick the uh glue. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03Totally. It's it's really weird.
SPEAKER_05Hmm.
SPEAKER_03The police received other letters from people saying they were the killer with notes like, We're fleeing to Mexico, catch us if you can. But those were deemed as hoaxes, including a letter from the self-proclaimed Black Dahlia Avenger. The package that contained her belongings though is still considered to be authentic.
SPEAKER_05Well, it would have to be, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yes. Where else are you getting a social security card? Mm-hmm. And a birth certificate.
SPEAKER_05And even if you had killed her, where the fuck are you getting her birth certificate from?
SPEAKER_03In it was in her purse. That's what they say.
SPEAKER_05Oh wow, okay.
SPEAKER_03Hey, it does m the father, though. Would he have it? Maybe.
SPEAKER_02Who carries their birth certificate around with them? This was the 40s, though.
SPEAKER_05What do you use for ID in the forties? Do you use your birth certificate?
SPEAKER_00Well, I can tell you just from doing genealogy and hearing like stories from my family. My grandmother's mother never had a birth certificate, so she just got baptized and she carried around her baptism like thing from the church. Okay, so you never know.
SPEAKER_03Fair enough.
SPEAKER_00Fair enough. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03According to FBI correspondence, it would appear that a photograph contained within this package was of an unidentified man, and police set about trying to find his identity. The rest of the snapshots included a photograph of two people near an aircraft, another photograph apparently involving an aircraft, and photography showing Elizabeth's sister Virginia, a photo of an army flyer, and at least one photograph showed a man standing outdoors. You can now see a photo of the belongings. This may be a legit original photograph or it may be a reconstruction. I couldn't absolutely verify that it was original. There were definitely reconstructions made, and this may be just that, but the reconstructions are apparently accurate to the actual belongings. You can also see an image of the telegram that was with the belongings. That is an actual photo of the real telegram.
SPEAKER_05If that's a reconstruction, it's very well done.
SPEAKER_03It may not be, I just couldn't be a hundred percent sure.
SPEAKER_05Sorry, what was this Western Union thing?
SPEAKER_03It was a telegram found with a in the package.
SPEAKER_05Oh right, okay. Sorry. I thought this was like a second thing. Right, okay, I'm with you. Okay. And is that meant to give us any clues? Replying your telegram of third. Trunk in carton. Advised by wire. Date of shipment where from. If on hand, give reference number so we can locate. Is that does that sound like she left a trunk on a train?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, something like that.
SPEAKER_05What I'm w wondering about is like why is this telegram?
SPEAKER_00Right?
SPEAKER_03Like what's the significance of this? It just sound like anything. It was it may have just been another thing in her purse. Maybe.
SPEAKER_05I'm just thinking, like, if I had a postage receipt in my in my pocket when I was murdered, like, would that be like scrutinized in such a Yes, of course it would. I guess.
SPEAKER_03It looks like her she is this a missing luggage situation. That's what I'm thinking.
SPEAKER_00Either missing, she forgot it on a train. Yeah, it's not a good thing.
SPEAKER_05So it sounds like she's sending something to them. Oh, maybe she sent something by rail to people do it was that a thing? Oh yeah, that was a thing. Right, so maybe she sent something, it would never turn up, and she's like, yo, where's this package?
SPEAKER_03That makes more sense. Yeah, thank you. It could be that. Ten days after the discovery of her body, Elizabeth's small handbag and one black shoe were found when police combed a trash dump a few miles from the crime scene. They were identified by Robert Manley, who was the last person to see Elizabeth six days before her murder. You can see a photo of the black bag and shoe on the next page of your document.
SPEAKER_05Okay, I have many questions. Why are they shoe and bag covered with ashes?
SPEAKER_03Because it was in a dumpster and someone had dumped ashes on top.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Why did Robert Manley firstly take her there from San Diego and then secondly leave her at a hotel? Were they smashing?
SPEAKER_03We will get to Robert. Oh. Your questions shall be answered.
SPEAKER_05Were they smashing?
SPEAKER_03Your questions shall be answered. LAPD took an all-hands-on deck approach to the murder. Bringing in police from nearby jurisdictions to aid in interviews and sourcing people who were close to Elizabeth, starting with any former boyfriends. There were varying witness reports of vehicles behaving strangely in the area on the evening of the murder. One report was that of a black sedan driving slowly along the empty lot at around 6 a.m. without any lights on. The car stopped and idled for some time, but the witness never saw the driver. Sources say there were around 75 names of men that Elizabeth had become acquainted with over time in the address book. Now, the thing about this 75 men is that that doesn't appear in the FBI records at all.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so this was like a sensationalist thing.
SPEAKER_03Possibly. I think so.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_03It may not have been that many. So the police investigated all of how many of the names were in there.
SPEAKER_06Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03None of them could be tied to the case, but interestingly, many of the men seemed to have a very similar story of how they knew Elizabeth. It went like this they had met her in a bar, bought her a drink, they'd chatted, and then she had expressed that she wasn't interested in them, and they went their separate ways.
SPEAKER_05But she wrote their name and address down.
SPEAKER_03She was just trying to get free drinks.
SPEAKER_00Why is she writing their name down?
SPEAKER_05Maybe it's just like seeing how many drinks you can get. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Ah, like something like how many men can I yeah, like you said, like how many people can buy me notches on the bedposts could be. But they weren't smashing, they were just no, but still she could be keeping track.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00Why? I don't know. I don't know either.
SPEAKER_05Maybe it's just like an ego thing. You know, I'm so beautiful, buy buy me drinks all the time.
SPEAKER_00Like a for funsies kind of thing.
SPEAKER_05Look, here's my list of people that every time someone buys me a drink, I get their name and address, and I write them down in my little black book.
SPEAKER_03Or maybe it was some sort of ruse to get the drink. Like maybe she found if she wrote their name and address down, they'd be more likely to then buy her a drink.
SPEAKER_05But is that not your first thing when you go up to someone and you say, Oh, can I buy you a drink?
SPEAKER_03Maybe you get your name and number.
unknownLiterally.
SPEAKER_05That's so odd. Hmm. Okay. It's odd. Yeah. So she yeah.
SPEAKER_03We get no answer to that, sorry.
SPEAKER_05But like she was to get 75 guys' different addresses and numbers. Allegedly. When she was how old? Twenty two. Twenty-two when she died. She was on she was busy. That's just the one she didn't fuck. Jesus.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
SPEAKER_05Do you think she erased the ones she did go home with? Maybe she just didn't write them down.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Imagine if like she was some amazing super sleuth burglar and would only write the addresses down of the ones that looked like they had a lot of money, and it was like then she was burgling people.
SPEAKER_05I like that.
SPEAKER_03And maybe she burgled the wrong guy.
SPEAKER_00I wonder what those names were.
SPEAKER_03Uh fuck yeah, so does everyone. Oh my god, who were those people? Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Oh, so they haven't been released.
SPEAKER_03Uh-uh.
SPEAKER_00Nope.
SPEAKER_0580 years, come on.
SPEAKER_00I know. That's what I'm saying. There's so much about this case that either quiet. Well, it's still not open. Like it's not an open case.
SPEAKER_03A neighbour of the area where Elizabeth's body was found had passed the empty lot at around 9 PM on the night before she was discovered, on his way to dump some garden clippings. He told police that he had witnessed a light-coloured 1935 sedan on the west side of the street with its rear door open, and there was a man standing by it. He described the man as of medium height, thin, in his mid-40s, wearing a tan coloured top coat and a dark hat which he had pulled over his face. Like pulled low, not like on, but like pulled low.
SPEAKER_05God, he was observant, wasn't he? A 1935 specifically sedan. Uh-huh. Maybe in his forties.
SPEAKER_03Well, he gets a good look at this guy. So he drove a little past the man and parked on the east side of the street. He said he thought he had startled the tall, thin man who walked over the street and peered into his car, checking out the inside and staring at the neighbour. Then he simply walked on, crossed back over the street, and returned to his sedan.
SPEAKER_04Okay, that's weird. Weird.
SPEAKER_03The neighbour said he was scared and thought he was about to be robbed, so he quickly drove away from the street but did a circle around before going home, and he drove past the sedan again. This time the rear door had been closed and the man was in the driver's seat. According to the newspaper that reported on this sighting, when the man saw the neighbour come back around again, he hit the gas and sped off, spinning his wheels as he went.
SPEAKER_02Interesting.
SPEAKER_05Do we think this guy was making it up?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_05Why don't we think this guy was making it up? Just vibes.
SPEAKER_00No, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03I I think this was a real eyewitness account. He told the police he was, you know.
SPEAKER_05Fine. He What I'm not understanding is if the car was sitting on the street, how did those time arts get to be there?
SPEAKER_03Oh, into the crime scene. Yeah. Well, I mean, this guy may or may not have been connected to the crime.
SPEAKER_05Right. I guess, yeah.
SPEAKER_03This may have been the killer leaving the scene, so he's driven on to the property, he's driven on to the vacant lot, and then he's he may have even come off the lot and circled around himself to make sure no one was there, and then he's parked up to make sure there's no activity, make sure no one's gonna find the body too soon, whatever.
SPEAKER_06Gotcha.
SPEAKER_03Maybe he left the body a couple of hours ago, and this is him returning to the scene of the crime.
SPEAKER_05They always do that.
SPEAKER_03They do. So there's a million reasons why.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_03Okay. The neighbor gave his account to the then 26-year-old detective Ralph Asdall, who went on to pin down a suspect that he thought was the man that the neighbour saw that night by the sedan. The suspect was a man working in a restaurant just a few blocks from where Elizabeth's body would be found. He interviewed the suspect and discovered through his interview that the man had just recently painted his sedan black. But this is weird because the other eyewitness says it was a black sedan, but the neighbour said it was a light-coloured 1935 sedan. So are these two witnesses seeing the same car, but it's after the suspect has painted it black? Like, how is this? It's weird. So Asdal took his evidence to his superiors, but there wasn't enough evidence to tie the suspect to the crime, and he wasn't ever further looked into.
SPEAKER_05Weird. Question Did they have like license plates in those days? Like or no?
SPEAKER_02Did they though?
SPEAKER_00I want to say yes, but that's just me like.
SPEAKER_05Would you not take the license plate?
SPEAKER_00I I don't know.
SPEAKER_05Maybe it was dark. Maybe they didn't have reflective license plates.
SPEAKER_03Also, he doesn't know this murder's happened at this point. So this is all after the.
SPEAKER_05But it was a guy hanging around who he thought was gonna rob him.
SPEAKER_03Maybe in the moment you just didn't you just didn't have time to like maybe this is another thing the police haven't given to the public.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_05And do we think there's a lot that isn't being released? Oh yeah. Okay, right.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. So this guy hung around rent-free in Asdell's mind, and he couldn't shift the unease that he had around the painted car. He told the LA Times in an interview in 1997 that sometimes the good lord gives you these hunches, the hair stands on the back of your neck, and you just know. He said, I could be way off base, but I don't think so. Asdill died in 2002 and to that point had always maintained that he thought he interviewed the killer of the Black Dahlia.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_03I mentioned that Robert Manley was the last person to see Elizabeth before her death on the 9th of January 1947. So where was Elizabeth for those six days? Saying they had seen, spoken to, or hung out with her between the 9th and the 15th. However, all reports were ultimately dismissed as these people either didn't know Elizabeth at all or had mistaken her for other women who looked very similar. A policewoman said she had spoken to Elizabeth on the 14th of January. She relayed that she had encountered a distressed young woman in downtown LA who fit the description, but she became less certain after being presented with an actual photo of Elizabeth to compare to. So this sighting was discounted in the police investigation.
SPEAKER_05See, I'm thinking in both the fo the photos that you've shown us of her, her hair is like poof. Could her hair not have been poof, or is that, you know, was it always poofed up?
SPEAKER_00I'm just thinking in terms of weather, it's it's hot. There's not like I wouldn't say it's crazy humidity there. It's warm though. It may still have been like they looked like well, I don't know, maybe they weren't natural curls. Because a lot of people just curled their hair back then.
SPEAKER_05I'm just thinking that the first photo is like a model shot. Yeah. Which obviously is not always gonna look like. But the second was a mug shot. On like the worst day of her life.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Would you like to see a photo of her face after she died?
SPEAKER_05Is it bad?
SPEAKER_00I don't know, I've not seen it.
SPEAKER_03It's it's not go, hit me. It's no worse than the other one you saw before, but it has her hair in it.
SPEAKER_05Okay. I I've I'm a big strong boy. That's not as bad as I thought.
SPEAKER_00Let me see, let me see, let me see, let me see.
unknownAh.
SPEAKER_00Oh god.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's I thought the eyes were gonna be fucked up.
SPEAKER_05That's that's what gets me.
SPEAKER_03So her hair is still quite poof. What was the word you used? Poof. That's the mugshot.
SPEAKER_05Oh, it's it's quite similar then, isn't it? Considering she's been sawn in half. Like, it's probably not your best hair day.
SPEAKER_03We're all going to hell. So given that we've now seen that photograph, um, guys, can I just say you can't unsee it once you've seen it, so don't go Google it if you're of a sensitive yeah.
SPEAKER_05Also, it's not that bad.
SPEAKER_03It's not that subjective. Um, but yes, it's not being a pussy and going. But it's not like um Just be mindful if you go and Google it. Yeah. But her hair isn't vastly different. No. So it could have still, I think, been an identifying factor before she died. Yes. Cause I was even thinking if she hasn't had a place of residence, if she's been out on the streets for that long, I was wondering maybe it's very greasy and maybe it's tied up or gone flat.
SPEAKER_00If she weren't to curl it, the curls would come out if that wasn't natural.
SPEAKER_05Sorry, she was on the street for those six days. No, we don't know. We don't know.
SPEAKER_03The point is, we have no idea. I was hypothesizing. No, I wasn't theorizing.
SPEAKER_05Oh, it's an even better word.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, we have no idea where she was. There are many unconfirmed accounts of sightings at or near the Biltmore Hotel on the 9th of January, although these are factually hazy. So the idea is that because I haven't written this down. The idea is that Robert Manley, when we get to him later, um his account is that he dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA. And that's the last sighting. So some accounts report that the staff at the Biltmore Hotel saw Elizabeth use the hotel phone in the lobby. Some said they were residents of the hotel and also saw her in the lobby, and some said they saw her in the Crown Grill cocktail lounge that evening. That place is just a few a few blocks away from the Biltmore. But did people really see Elizabeth Short in these sightings? Chris is shaking his head.
SPEAKER_05I think that hair was like very en vogue, right? And this is Los Angeles, quite a like a fancy kind of place. People were fashionable.
SPEAKER_03You're suggesting there's a lot of women with this puff.
SPEAKER_05There's a lot of people with puffy brown black hair.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm sure there was. Did they really even report it at the time? Or are these fabricated memories of people who thought they'd seen something after the fact, or is it even just made-up newspaper headlines?
SPEAKER_05Well, considering we've just seen them make up you know random shit about her for no reason.
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm. Exactly, yeah. There is another story reported about the doorman of the Biltmore. He apparently said he saw Elizabeth leaving the hotel at 10 PM the same day that Manley dropped her off, and he tipped his hat to her. However, when the LA Times investigated this sighting in 1997, it would appear that this interaction was never reported until much later, even though at the time almost every minor interaction that anyone had had with Elizabeth seemingly ended up in a paper somewhere. So why would this have never made the rounds until decades later? It would seem that this widely reported sighting is just another false lead.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Wild they're still investigating this fifty years on. Are they investigating it because it became such like a a big true crime thing? Or do they investigate every unsolved case this widely? So when 50 years after it happened.
SPEAKER_03When you say investigate, do you mean j when I've just said it before? Because that was actually a journalist investigation.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay. Right. I thought you said it was the LAPD.
SPEAKER_03No, the LA Times.
SPEAKER_05Sorry, I'm with you. Okay.
SPEAKER_03The Black Dahlia case went to a grand jury for investigation.
SPEAKER_05I thought if it went to a grand jury they needed to have someone who they were planning on charging with an indictment, no?
SPEAKER_03So if you're not sure what a grand jury is, it's different from a trial jury. The purpose of a grand jury is more investigative than decisive. And don't worry, Chris, I'll get to your question in a second. It is a body of citizens who come together behind closed doors to assess evidence. In California, which is where we are in this case, jurors are selected periodically and randomly. Nineteen grand jurors and three stand-ins are chosen and they must serve for one whole year or a maximum of six indictment hearings. Twelve jurors in total would serve on a grand jury for an indictment and all have to agree for an indictment to go forward. Grand jurors are paid £15 a day plus mileage.
SPEAKER_00At the time or today.
SPEAKER_03Today.
SPEAKER_00Today, right.
SPEAKER_05Fun fact about juries, not in America, but in this country, if no one turns up for jury duty, judges have the power in our courts to just go and grab random people off the street and force them to serve in juries.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's funny.
SPEAKER_05I don't know why I know that, but I do know that. You're welcome.
SPEAKER_03Has that ever happened?
SPEAKER_05I'm sure it must have, right? There must have been a reason they put it into law.
SPEAKER_03All jurors, no one turns up.
SPEAKER_05Well, I obviously you can get postal requisitions. Say jury service, come in and do it. But there is like a you know, in case no one does show up. What? They yeah, you can go in and grab people off the street and force them to serve.
SPEAKER_03Well, what's the difference, I guess?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, well true.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Anyway, there you go.
SPEAKER_03So importantly, a grand jury isn't there to decide who is guilty. They are deciding if there is probable cause to believe a person or persons committed a crime, so to prosecute, basically. If they do, then they can bring forth an indictment. This is a written statement saying they do believe there is probable cause to bring a charge against the person or persons. I think this links us back to the Mary Kay Hesse case, doesn't it? Where Joseph Ambrose was indicted by a grand jury in Nebraska and sent to trial for her murder. However, if the grand jury do decide to indict, before anyone can be prosecuted, the statement has to be signed by the US attorney if it's a federal case, or the district attorney if it's a state criminal case. Once that's done, the person would then go on to face a trial. I will also note here that a Colorado grand jury voted to indict John Binet Ramsey's parents, but the Boulder District Attorney declined to proceed with the prosecution. So he would not sign that indictment.
SPEAKER_00That's so interesting.
SPEAKER_05That isn't I would have thought you need the district attorney to sign off on it just to get it in front of a jury in the first place, but I guess not. So the police can do that on their own.
SPEAKER_03Well, it mustn't be if they can then not sign it to go anywhere.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, no, that makes sense. But I'd yeah.
SPEAKER_03Unless in that time the district attorney changes. Today, all but three states use grand juries to indict and begin criminal trials. They do use grand juries for investigative purposes, but they can't indict and can't begin a criminal trial. These states are Connecticut, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania.
SPEAKER_05What a clingy ding.
SPEAKER_00Can I make a little correction there? Yeah? Just for listeners. Uh-huh. DC's not a state. It's it's a region.
SPEAKER_02Because I was like, what's District of Direct?
SPEAKER_03I was like, I've never seen District of Columbia before. What is it? And then Google was like, bitch, it's Washington, you dum-dum. And I was like, oh, okay. So what and I didn't so that's not a state. No, okay.
SPEAKER_05Washington's a state. That's all the way up there.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so wh okay. So Washington is a state, right? That's one that's like all the way in the top left corner, like of the US, like Pacific Northwest, okay? But then you have Washington, D.C., District of Columbia, which is in between like Maryland and Virginia. It's literally a region. It's like I think it came about the opposite side.
SPEAKER_05Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was because no one wanted the capital of America to be in a state. Because people were like, oh, but that state will be favorite, favoritized.
SPEAKER_00Okay. It's technically not a state. Sorry, that was so nitpicky, but I knew like someone may have said that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, of course. So the state is district of Commodore. No, it's not even a state. It's literally just a district. So there's two states then that don't use this, and then Washington, D.C. And then Washington, D.C. is by itself.
SPEAKER_00Okay, okay. Just an area of land. Right. Sorry. That was so incredibly nitpicky.
SPEAKER_05Well you're gonna say that technically Pennsylvania's a commonwealth.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, I wasn't gonna go there.
SPEAKER_03Whatever that means. Okay.
SPEAKER_06I don't even know what that means.
SPEAKER_03That last bit about those states only using the grand jury for investigative purposes links us back to Elizabeth Short's case. So when her case was put before a grand jury in California, it was for investigative purposes only. So the prosecution weren't putting forward one specific person that they believed was a good enough suspect for prosecution. They were actually examining the broader problem of unsolved murders and the way investigations were being. Handled.
SPEAKER_05I'm imagining this went down like some of our murder club episodes went down. Like we come up with all sorts of random theories, none of which are anywhere close to being true. Like, d does it really help getting twelve random people to theorize about a case?
SPEAKER_03It wasn't just about this case, it was about how the LAPD were handling many cases. Okay. So in fact, there had been nine high-profile mutilation murders of women throughout LA since the infamous Black Dahlia case two years prior. So the LAPD were getting a lot of heat about how they were dealing with their investigations. And were these did uh were they linked or were they This is a a huge question that no one really knows So it could have been the same guy, could have been copycats, could have been right okay, cool.
SPEAKER_05Yes, could have just been random people.
SPEAKER_03We're gonna get into one of them specifically in part two.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, it's like the um Cleveland Axe murders where there's similar but not similar enough, and then is it copycats and is it all of this? So yeah, but the problem is is that now in 1949 LA we have nine and none of them are solved.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha. Okay. Makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Harry Lawson, the foreman of the grand jury, told a newspaper, we find it odd that there are on the books of the LAPD so many unsolved murders of this type.
SPEAKER_05Fair enough.
SPEAKER_03Witnesses connected to Elizabeth gave testimonies, and detective Harry Hansen gave sworn testimony in which he doubled down on his opinion that the way Elizabeth had been bisected indicated the killer had come from a medical background. Chris is shaking his head again.
SPEAKER_05I agree if it was done with a scalpel, maybe. But it could have just been done with like a big sawmill blade or a bandsaw or a I don't know. What do you think?
SPEAKER_03And and genuinely there isn't anything else that I've seen that further indicates a medical background. So so I agree. I don't think we can determine this at all.
SPEAKER_05Like, are we just overestimating how easy it is to cut a body in half?
SPEAKER_03I think it had to do with a medical background.
SPEAKER_05You do?
SPEAKER_03Ah now she is, I think, gonna get to it in part two. Why you think that?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Okay, we'll leave it there for now then. Interesting.
SPEAKER_03Tune it in next week. But I'm not done yet.
SPEAKER_00So don't tune it in next week yet. But still do tune her in. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So Hansen also said in an interview in 1971, after his retirement, that the black Dahlia was just asking for trouble, and that she probably went too far this time and set some guy off into a blind rage. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_05Victim blaming. So she was having a great time.
SPEAKER_00Writing down people's names who bought her drinks.
SPEAKER_03Asking for it, yeah. Am I right? Gagging for it. Gagging for it. Awful. The 1949 jury said they had come across areas of concern within the police investigations, but didn't have enough time to reach a conclusion. So this is what we're saying when they were periodically chosen, so it was every year. Okay. So they'd come to the end of their year. Right. So they advised that the 1950 grand jury continue their investigations further, which they did, although the investigation seemed to lose momentum after the change in jury. They did, however, highlight definite issues throughout the LAPD, such as untrained police officers making inexcusable mistakes, deficiencies in effectiveness, problems in cooperation between forces, police corruption, and misconduct, and they finally concluded that the number of unsolved murders was unacceptable.
SPEAKER_05That is so crazy. I mean, thank God we don't have those problems nowadays.
SPEAKER_03Eh? I think that the Mets WhatsApp group might disagree with you. So I should say though that the police corruption, it wasn't directly linked to Elizabeth Short or the other murders. It was broader and more about infighting amongst departments. So we don't have any evidence that the murders going unsolved was a direct consequence of police corruption. So it's not like there was one or two or three people deliberately withholding this investigation back. It's just that it was a broader corruption issue throughout the LAPD at the time. So it wasn't helping.
SPEAKER_05Gotcha.
SPEAKER_03But it wasn't direct. John Douglas, former head of the FBI's serial crimes division, said that if this case happened today, it would be very solvable.
SPEAKER_00I I like I'd like to hope so. But do you know how many unsolved cases are out there that people think, oh, that's very easy to solve?
SPEAKER_05I don't know. I think you can find DNA.
SPEAKER_00Think about all the unsolved cases out there though.
SPEAKER_03That are modern.
SPEAKER_05I guess.
SPEAKER_03And our body was totally washed. I mean, I guess where would you find that DNA?
SPEAKER_05What about the um ransom note that was sent through with all the belongings?
SPEAKER_03I guess.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. Okay.
SPEAKER_05I'm just thinking if there was gluing on the newspaper letter, sure there's a skin flake or something in there.
SPEAKER_03I know. Maybe he wore gloves. Aye. He was asked, so this is John Douglas, former head of the FBI's serial crimes division, was asked by the LA Times to review the case and develop a profile of the killer, which he did. Are you ready?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, hit me.
SPEAKER_03So Douglas said the killer was most likely to be a white man in the late twenties or older with a high school education. He was likely to be living alone and in a job that was mostly working with his hands and not his brain, but would be capable with a knife and was, quote, comfortable wallowing in blood. How did he get to this conclusion? This is just him reviewing the case and doing a little profiling.
SPEAKER_05I don't believe it. What don't you believe? I can't see anything to disagree with her.
SPEAKER_00I know more than you do about this. Oh, okay. Well, and You're just racist.
SPEAKER_05It wasn't a white person, is that what you said?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I think it was. I I mean, this is the thing with this kind of profiling, like these people that do this are very good at what they do, but at the end of the day, it's guesswork. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And we can say he's very good at what he does does because we haven't found the killer, you know.
SPEAKER_03Well, and it's educated guesswork, don't get me wrong, but it's still guesswork.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I'd like to know what made him say it was the 20s. The killer was in his twenties.
SPEAKER_03He's literally, he said late 20s or older, so that's what I mean. That could be anyone. No, not 25 or under.
SPEAKER_00That's why immediately I was like, okay, well, that's helpful, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00How do you know the guy was white?
SPEAKER_03He went on. So he went into great detail with this killer profile. He said that the killer would have been under some sort of great stress, having something like a financial stressor. He'd have gone out with short, likely drinking, and had been rejected. These facts would then lead him to a murderous explosion.
SPEAKER_05I wonder if he said he's white because it was still segregated, so blacks wouldn't have been drinking with white people. Could that have been a thing? Right. So his theory is that the the guy got rejected and decided to chop her up. Thoughts.
SPEAKER_03I think murder after rejection is definitely a thing.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_05Um yeah, if Brittany had swiped left, well.
SPEAKER_03But this is really detailed, and I think he's just I I don't know if I believe it. And it's a bit Occam's razor as well. Like, yeah, probably went out, met her in a bar, got rejected, and had an explosion.
SPEAKER_00And at what point did he make this like um profiling about the person? Did he know how she would go out and like have men buy her drinks and then say, Oh, I don't want anything to go any further? Did he know that? Yeah and just think, oh well, she rejected the wrong guy. Yeah. I don't think that's true at all. Right. Well, we'll get to it. At least his profiling, I don't necessarily believe.
SPEAKER_03He went on. He said that the bisection of the body was purely for transporting purposes, and the mutilation was reflective of his rage on being rejected.
SPEAKER_00Wrong.
SPEAKER_05Really? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00You can fit a human body that's not bisected into a car. Yes.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you can. And it would make it very messy. Like if you just had your car balloted, you don't want to have half a human body.
SPEAKER_03Maybe that's why I was trained with blood.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I was gonna say that. True.
SPEAKER_03He also theorized that the location for disposing the body was a direct message to the neighborhood. He said he wanted to put the fear of God into them.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Would you not left it in more of a well, I guess not someone's front lawn, perhaps? Okay. Or on someone's driveway or on an empty lot where it might not be found for a while.
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm. I can agree with the rest, but I think this one's a stretch. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05Okay. I mean Yeah, it's just I to me it's just a random place to dump it, isn't it? Right. If you weren't trying to have it found, you'd chuck it in a river.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or somewhere hidden. I think he did whoever this perpetrator is. I do think the killer wanted it to be found. Because I do, because she was stage. Yeah. Yes. And then as well, like sending in her documents, like deaf yet and taunting the police.
SPEAKER_04Uh-huh. True.
SPEAKER_00So I don't think he wanted it immediately, like, oh look, I did this, but I want someone to find it. I want someone to know that I'm aware the police found it. I'm going to send in her documents, but I don't want the police to find me. That's my theory. Yep.
SPEAKER_03So you're going to have to help me out with this surname. So it's H A R N I S C H. I'm going to end up saying this name a lot. Harnish. Larry Harnish, the top LA Times reporter and investigator. This is the investigator from the 1997 investigation from early.
SPEAKER_05Oh, right, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So he apparently found a link between Elizabeth Short and the Norton Road neighbourhood. Was Norton Road, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_00I think so.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think I just took that out at the beginning, but yes. This link wouldn't be made until his 1997 investigations for the paper, and he found that Elizabeth's sister knew a surgeon named Walter Bailey. Ooh. Whose estranged wife lived on a block from the crime scene. Huh.
SPEAKER_05Okay. This is becoming more tenuous.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I thought it was gonna say it was the next door neighbour was the surgeon. Uh-huh. Sorry, so she knew someone who's wait, say that again.
SPEAKER_00So her sister. Sorry. Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_05Her sister was dating a surgeon whose wife No.
SPEAKER_03So Elizabeth's sister knew a surgeon named Walter.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Whose estranged wife lived a block from the crime scene. We get into him later.
SPEAKER_05Seems tenuous to me.
SPEAKER_03At the minute. Do you not think? At the minute. But I have more to say about Dr. Walter.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER_03So who murdered Elizabeth Short? We'll find out next week in part two, where we will put forth the major suspects of the case, and Chris gets to decide on the killer's identity.
SPEAKER_05Oh, amazing.
SPEAKER_03Once and for all.
SPEAKER_05Wow. I have to condemn someone.
SPEAKER_03No pressure, honey. Tune it in next week for a real good tale.
SPEAKER_00Are you okay? Sorry, I'm really trying to alter in. Come on. Okay. Come on.
SPEAKER_01All right, let me start in.
SPEAKER_04Not funny. Someone's died. Terrible.
SPEAKER_01Tragic. I think my phone's going off. All right.
SPEAKER_04Okay.