The Murder That Shocked Hollywood

In post-war Hollywood, the film industry had a reputation for its dark side as much as anything happening on the big screen. So when Elizabeth Short was dramatically - and cinematically - murdered in Hollywood, the press called her the Black Dahlia and made a sensation out of her. Who was the real woman behind the terrifying headlines? What did she have to do with the film industry? And why was no one ever caught? Joining Kate today is the fantastic historian and author William Mann, to take us back to post-war Hollywood. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely Batwixers! It's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to Batwix the Sheets. Hello! Thank you for dropping by once again. But I do actually, I'm being serious this time. I know I mess about with the fair dude's warning, but I am actually a bit serious about this one, because today we're talking about murder, and a pretty fricking nasty murder. I mean, they're all nasty, but this one was particularly bad. So, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things, and adulty ways of covering adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And if you don't want to listen to today's episode, we won't take any offence whatsoever, just scroll on and we'll catch you next time.

• 1:15Kate Lister?

  We are strolling down Hollywood Boulevard at the start of 1947. The neon lights are flashing and sailors are on leave, falling in and out of bars that are full of young people, many of whom have been lured here with the promise of stardom. Amongst them is a young woman, Elizabeth Short, who will become famous, but for very tragic reasons. In the middle of Hollywood's golden age, the moralists are panicking about the sleaze and the sensation being projected in the movies, and Elizabeth's tragic murder would come to encapsulate all of those dark fears. They will name her the Black Dahlia, and this is her story.

• 2:18Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister.

• 2:24Kate Lister?

  Post-war America was a fascinating time. The soldiers had returned home and while women's roles were redefined during the war effort, they were sort of expected to go back into the kitchen once it was all done. But not everybody wanted to do that and one of the many women who didn't was Elizabeth Short, who became known as the Black Dahlia after her brutal murder. Not only was her murder incredibly shocking, but it went on to fuel the booming tabloid culture, becoming entertainment. To make sense of all this and to bring some humanity back to Elizabeth is the fantastic William Mann, historian and author of books including Tinseltown Murder, Morpheus and Madness: At the Dawn of Hollywood. All right, without further ado, let's do it.

• 3:14Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only William Mann, how are you doing?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  I'm doing very well, thank you for inviting me on to your marvellous show.

• 3:25Kate Lister?

  Well, thank you so much for coming along. I'm thrilled that you're here, but we do have quite a dark one to talk about today. The infamous Black Dahlia. Dahlia, Short, murder in Hollywood. What do you go for, Dahlia or Short?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Dahlia is usually the way I say it, but I've heard it all kinds of ways.

• 3:41Kate Lister?

  Now, we'll get on to exactly what happened here, but this is a murder that evidently fascinates you as much as it fascinates other people because you are the author of The Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters and Madness in Mid-Century Hollywood. So can I ask you, when did you first hear about this crime?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Oh, I've known about the crime for a long time and like most people, I had certain misconceptions about it. I just, you know, in the culture, we seem to think we know that there is this murder and we know about this victim. And it really wasn't until I started researching the book that I realised all the things that I thought I knew about this case were in fact not true. And that's what drew me into wanting to do a book about it.

• 4:21Kate Lister?

  All right, I'll tell you what I know. I probably also know the same misconceptions that a lot of people do. So Elizabeth Short was murdered in Hollywood, a very brutal murder. She was found... Mutilated, cut in half. She was an aspiring actress. Sometimes you hear that she was into early porn films. Sometimes you hear that she was a call girl. There was never anyone found responsible for the murder of this crime.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Well, you've got a few things correct there. I mean, she was, she was found bisected and no killer was ever found. But, but in fact, those images of her, the black Dahlia moniker that was given to her post death, I mean, this was, this was given to her by the press after she was dead. She was never called that in life, really has led to all sorts of untruths, mythologies that, as you say, people assume that she was a sex worker.

• 5:13Kate Lister?

  Heard that.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  And that, yeah, she was making porn films and she was maybe involved with gangsters and all of that. And none of that turns out to be the case. She was a young woman with curiosity and drive who was just living her life.

• 5:27Kate Lister?

  Wow. When I was about 18, I read James Elmore's book on the, on the black Dahlia.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Excellent novel. James Elroy is the master of Los Angeles noir. And, you know, it's a great book, but it has literally nothing to do with the case. I mean,

• 5:45Kate Lister?

  Right. That's where most of my information has come from then.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Right, exactly, exactly. Yeah, literally nothing. The only thing they use is her name and the, and the nickname.

• 5:53Kate Lister?

  Right. Okay. So can you put us straight then? Can you tell us, who was Elizabeth Short? What happened to her?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  She was a young woman of, she was 22 when she was killed.

• 6:03Kate Lister?

  22.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  22, only 22. And that's important to remember because, you know, we sometimes forget that she was that young and she's couch surfing, you know, among friends, as many 22 year olds do, take a gap year. Anyways, she was a young woman of curiosity and drive and she had a wanderlust to see the world. She was born in a small suburb of Boston in New England and where the winters were very cold, she suffered from asthma and she'd been, she had an operation for pleurisy. So she used to go to Florida for the winters. Her mother would send her down there so she could get out of the cold. And that really gave her a sense of wanting to see the world. And, you know, she had been abandoned by her father.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  I mean, there's no better word to say it. She, her father had abandoned the entire family when Elizabeth was only six. And in her mind, he was out there seeing the world. He was this glamorous figure. Her mother had certain, certainly different impressions of the father who left her with five girls. But Elizabeth thought, oh, he must be living the life. So she's always had this sense of wanting to get out there and be like him and find the world. And so she finally does.

• 7:17Kate Lister?

  Twenty-two, I'm trying to think what I was doing at twenty-two. It's so young and your, I mean, your brain hasn't even finished developing yet. So she's

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:26Kate Lister?

  She's, is she on her own when she goes to California? She, how does she even end up there? Because that, that to me sounds quite dangerous even today.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, she was on her own. She did go out at the invitation of a, a young man that she had dated for a while. He was in the army and he was stationed in Long Beach. So he sent her a letter and maybe the bus fare. And he said, come out and join me. So she did. Of course, she tells her

• 7:49Kate Lister?

  That's very twenty-two-year-old, isn't it?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Very twenty-two.

• 7:51Kate Lister?

  That's very twenty-two-year-old.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And even more so, she decides, well, since I'm going across country, I might as well stop in Indianapolis. Then I'm going to stop in Chicago and see what the world is like there. And then she finally does get out to Long Beach to meet this young man. She's somebody who was defying the post-war expectations of women.

• 8:13Kate Lister?

  Yeah, she sounds it.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, you know, during the war, women saved the economy by going into the offices and the factories. And because all the men were off fighting overseas. And then the men come home in nineteen forty-five and the women are expected to go back home and put on their aprons and you have more babies. And Elizabeth, even though she's, you know, she's not quite ready to get married or anything like that. She is, she's not the type of person who's sitting there waiting for Mr. Right to come along. And she doesn't want her mother's life. She doesn't want her mother had to work all the time to support the family. And so Elizabeth goes off. And this is, this is a period of time where the role of women in society is being challenged. You know, people are uncomfortable by how many single women are now moving into cities.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  And, you know, what are they up to? They must be up to no good. And, and that follows Elizabeth short even past her death.

• 9:06Kate Lister?

  What was she doing in the war? Do we have record of what she would do? How old would she have been? Still very young, teenager?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yes, she was still a teenager. Her sister, however, was in the service and was one of the ones who was working on decrypting Nazi codes. So she actually had, she, her sister had actually been a war hero. But Elizabeth was a little too young and she did have a fiance who was in the war. He was a flyer. He flew with the Flying Tigers, which was a battalion that was kind of an independent maverick battalion that President Roosevelt supported because they were, they were defending mainland China. So he was, he was a bit of a war hero and she admired that. He, of course, dies in, in, in an accident, a flying accident.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  And that's maybe also part of the reason why Elizabeth decides to, well, I think it's time for me to go see the world.

• 10:00Kate Lister?

  And this was a time when people were doing that. I mean, this is the, this is like the, the long lead into the 1960s and not even that, the 50s, where the beatniks generation appears and then we've got free love. But it's rooted in post-war culture of people. And you can understand after being through something like that, that the attitude might be, maybe we can do this differently.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And, you know, people expected after the war that, you know, there's going to be a new sense of tranquility and security. But that didn't happen, you know, because immediately the arms race begins, the nuclear arms race. Now we have to worry about atomic bombs. And then the fact that there were so many social changes as well. So many African-American soldiers came back, sailors as well, and expected to have the same kind of benefits and reception that their white comrades had, had received and they didn't. And so there was racial unrest in the country. Housing covenants were being challenged by African-Americans moving into white neighborhoods. This was the rise of the queer movement.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  So it would be anti-sea, more people being visible in their sexual non-conformity. And of course, all of these women who are saying, I'm gonna, I'm gonna delay marriage. I'm gonna go out and have my world. Yeah. And so the country's in a, you know, in a conflict with itself.

• 11:21Kate Lister?

  So she is kind of moving around America, but doing seeing some sights. I'm curious, how is she paying for this? Because it doesn't sound like she came from money.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, she did not.

• 11:33Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  And she did rely on the kindness of strangers. You know, and one of the things I write in the book is that that quality of hers, you know, to meet someone, to flash her eyes, get a hamburger bought for her. And both men and women, she would, you know, she would befriend and then they would take care of her. And that's, that has worked against her in the myth that grew up about her, that she was somehow shiftless and a user, that she wasn't, you know, you know, she wasn't honest with people. Yeah, but young men have been doing that same thing for decades, right? Since, since centuries, you know, taking off, seeing the world, getting by on their

• 12:14Speaker 01

  wits and their charm, you know, telling tall tales to get what they wanted. But when a woman does it, she seems somehow devious or up to no good. And, and that's one of the things I try in the book to say, hey, look, listen, this is, this is a young woman, 22 years old, who's, you know, staying with friends, going out and seeing the world. And yeah, sometimes she pulls a few, you know, sad eyes to get a dinner bought for her. But I actually find that kind of admirable. I mean, at least, at least charming, you know, that she was able to get by on her wits.

• 12:49Kate Lister?

  Yeah, she's hustling. You leave her alone. Like, she's all right, buy her a few hamburgers, a dinner, that's not the end of the world, is it?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right.

• 12:58Kate Lister?

  But is this partly where the kind of the myth comes from? Because I've heard all kinds of things about this, this woman. I've heard that she was a showgirl, that she was a gangster's moll, that she was selling sex, that she was into porn, all, all of these stories about her.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, it does. I mean, having this story after she dies and the investigation shows what she had been doing, who she had been with, where she'd been living, this kind of peripatetic lifestyle, lifestyle, people began to pass judgment, you know, well, that she couldn't have been a good girl if she was doing that, that she, you know, and implication is that she somehow. Responsible for her fate. Yeah, she deserved it. You know, there's even a newspaper article about two months after her death, where the the the question is asked in a headline, is the Dahlia to blame?

• 13:46Kate Lister?

  Oh, my God.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  And the answer is kind of inconclusive. Because a lot of people are saying like, well, yeah, she shouldn't have been out there. She was teasing too many men. She, you know.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  So, you know, and that's a story that we still see today. You know, women are blamed for their assaults that they somehow must have been complicit in this. So Elizabeth Short, you know, she should be treated as as anyone else, as any man who is also exploring the world.

• 14:14Kate Lister?

  So she arrives in California. She's kind of, do you want to say homeless at this point? Like, how is she like, she's kind of getting by on her looks, no wits and, you know, but like, where's she staying?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Well, in the beginning, she stays with her boyfriend until she decides.

• 14:30Kate Lister?

  Forgotten about him.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And then she, you know, he's in Long Beach and Long Beach isn't isn't very exciting. So she says she wants to go to Hollywood. She runs into an old girlfriend in Hollywood, so they decide to move to move in together. And the boyfriend is goodbye. And and she that's how it goes with her for the next three or four months. She, you know, she finds girlfriends who let her stay there. She at one point finds another boyfriend, a gentleman sponsor, though there was no sex involved. He was certainly taking care of her, so she moves in with him. So, yeah, it's it's it's all of that, you know, she's couch surfing is what I what I say.

• 15:09Kate Lister?

  Yes, she is. It sounds very much like what they were doing in the 60s, you know, hitchhiking on your way to San Francisco. And, you know, I just met up with a group of cats and and we're heading off to do this, that and the other. And

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:21Kate Lister?

  It's that's what she's doing, but it's in the 40s.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And and it's a time where the, you know, during these first years after the war, the the economy is is not very strong. And so there's a lot of people out of work, a lot of GIs out of work, returning GIs. And so she she moves with a crowd of people who are all kind of just restless and not, you know, grounded in any one particular place. And she moves through that world.

• 15:51Kate Lister?

  That must have been quite difficult for you to track as a historian. Did you keep like losing her in the records as she's moving around?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yes, you know, you're right. It was very difficult. And there's only a couple of times where I'm absolutely not certain where she was. But for the most part, I can pretty much pinpoint her from day to day.

• 16:18Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with William after this short break.

• 16:25Speaker 02

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• 17:33Kate Lister?

  So she's in Hollywood. Now, my image of Hollywood in the 1940s is very much coloured by the films from Hollywood in the 1940s. That's what I think it's like. I don't imagine that I'm right on that point. So what was Hollywood like at this, at this point in history when she arrived?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Well, it's a, it's an industry in transition because we're seeing the rise of television and we're seeing the attempt by the government to break up the trusts that movie studios had. They owned all the theatres. So the, you know, the government was saying, this is a trust, we need a monopoly, we need to break this up. So there was a lot of kind of transition about how, how is this industry going to continue? But it's also a period of time where the movies are... Shaking off some of the puritanical vestiges of the production code. And the production code was established in nineteen thirty four and dictated what could be shown on screen. And so the movies are starting to become a little more edgy, a little more adult. And I think that reflects the population too.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  So the population in Hollywood is now younger than it was and less settled. I'm talking actors, I'm talking just hangers on, I'm talking directors, all, everybody. There's a new generation moving in. It's a place in flux. And also, you know, it's a period of of growth. This is when the freeways begin to be built around Los Angeles, which means the whole city is just in in transition, in change.

• 19:04Kate Lister?

  I bet it was quite exciting too. You know, like I'm going to Hollywood, I'm moving to Hollywood.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that was still there. And, you know, Elizabeth did become friends with some women who were bit players in in the pictures. And, you know, and they shared with her how exciting it was. And, you know, why don't you come and join us there? And Elizabeth said, no, I'm good. I can continue just the way I'm doing.

• 19:27Kate Lister?

  Did she do any acting at all? Is that a complete myth?

• 19:30Speaker 01

  That's a complete myth.

• 19:31Kate Lister?

  Wow, okay.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  You know, it started because she would write back to her mother, who she adored. And she'd write back to her mother in New England and say, oh, I've gotten a job, you know, playing a bit part. Because she didn't want her mother to worry. And then that, of course, gets reported in the press later. And then they assume she she did. But there's no record of her ever working for any of the screen actors or the screen extra guilds. Yeah.

• 19:54Kate Lister?

  Do we know, like, leading up to the murder, who she was associating with, like where she was staying? I'm just trying to get a sense of, like, the events leading up to this.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  For a time, she was living with a wealthy man by the name of Mark Hanson. He owned the Florentine Gardens, a nightclub. He owned several theaters, independent theaters.

• 20:16Kate Lister?

  Oh, Elizabeth, well done.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. And and she told him, you know, and she becomes very good friends with another woman who's living in the compound where he lives. And she says, you know, the woman warns her, look, Mark is going to make a pass at you at some point. And if you don't want that, you know, you've just got to be ready. And so Elizabeth says, I'm going to tell him I'm a virgin. And she does. And that makes him stand back. Oh, okay. I won't go there. And Elizabeth gets to live there rent free, hassle free. And until, of course, Mark gets tired of waiting and kicks her out because, you know, eventually he expects all the women who stay there to put out for him. But she, Elizabeth at least gets, gets away with that.

• 21:01Kate Lister?

  See, that's, that's a very sassy, very confident, slightly risky.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:08Kate Lister?

  Perhaps a little bit reckless, young woman there.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. All those adjectives, risky, reckless, crafty.

• 21:15Kate Lister?

  Young, she's just young. You're stupid when you're young, aren't you? You look back at some of the stuff I used to do. I'm just like, oh, my God.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Oh, exactly, exactly. Yeah. But that's the thing is we have to keep remembering she's 21 and 22 years old.

• 21:26Kate Lister?

  Really young. So it's horrible what happens to her, but could you just explain a little bit? Not to be too gratuitous, but I think the father was such a shocking murder is what has made it last in the public imagination. So can you just take us through like when she was last seen and what happens to her?

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Sure. So she goes to San Diego at a certain point. We're not really sure why she went to San Diego, but she, she's there for about a month and then comes back. She comes back on, I think it's January the 8th. And the last time she's seen is when a companion drops her off at the Biltmore Hotel. And she's seen there in the lobby, making some phone calls, kind of walking around, apparently hoping to either meet someone or someone can buy to pick her up because she has no place to stay that night. And the doorman finally sees her walk out into the night, and that's the last confirmed

• 22:26Speaker 01

  sighting of her until a week later, when her, when her body is found in a vacant lot. And it's, it's, um, as you say, I mean, the, uh, the murder was so grisly and gruesome that, that, that alone has ensured that this case would stay in the public mind. Uh, she was, she was, she was bisected, her, she was drained of all her blood. She was mutilated in, in various ways, given a Glasgow smile, you know, with the, the knife cutting from her mouth up towards her ears. So she's, um, uh, you know, it's, it's a horrible death. Um, the, the one mercy that I think is that she was clear from the autopsy that she had not been sexually assaulted. So that's a small mercy. And also that the, the actual

• 23:10Speaker 01

  cause of death had been a blow to her head. So we can hope that she didn't experience any further pain from that.

• 23:18Kate Lister?

  She was discovered naked as well and quite clearly posed in a very public place.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. The body had been scrubbed clean. So there was, there was no fingerprints, nothing, no blood. And it almost looked like a mannequin, two pieces of mannequin when police arrived. And, and yes, you're right. It was posed. This, whoever had done this wasn't trying to hide the fact that they had done it. If they had, they would have just dumped the body in the river or something like that. They posed this body in a very provocative way in a vacant lot that was surrounded by, uh, new trapped homes that were being built for returning GIs. So it was all of these young families with children. And so it was a, a direct confrontation with society. The body was put there to terrify, to shock and offend.

• 24:08Kate Lister?

  And it, how do you say this? It's sounding horribly callous and brutal. I don't want it to, but, um, it probably will. But whoever did this, this sounds like it took a lot of work and a lot of effort. This isn't just. You hit someone on the back of the head and then you run away or you try and dispose of the body to actually go through the process of, as you said, there was no blood in the body. So where's that gone to cut somebody in half? I've never done that, but I understand that's it's not an easy thing to do to carry the body, to transport it, to take it to a high risk area where you can risk being seen and then to pose it.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, it did. It took some time. Detectives, you know, estimated it took several hours at least to do all of this. Yeah. And whoever did it had some surgical knowledge, had some working knowledge of anatomy because none of the internal organs were damaged by the bissection, which is pretty amazing. The only, the only one that was damaged was the intestine. But everything else, the stomach, the liver, the kidney, all of those were intact. So the killer knew what they were doing. They also knew what vertebrae in the spinal cord was the easiest to slice through. So

• 25:24Kate Lister?

  Okay, yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Graphic, graphic, but in the sense that this, this killer had some surgical experience, which is one of the qualifications that investigators looked for. We have to have somebody who has some surgical experience.

• 25:39Kate Lister?

  Did anyone report Elizabeth missing?

• 25:42Speaker 01

  No. That's, that is, it's very sad. It's very sad. I think it's partly because she, she had gone to San Diego. So her friends in Los Angeles weren't quite sure when she was coming back. And it took a while for the, for the police to identify the body. And then when they finally did, of course, and the people who knew her came forward.

• 26:05Kate Lister?

  And what's the police reaction to this? I mean, was it immediately a huge scandal and a huge story? I suppose the press is something slightly different to the police, actually. We'll start with the police. What did the police think about this?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  The police were stunned as anybody else because even these very experienced homicide detectives had never seen anything like this. And they felt, but they felt pretty strongly that they'd find somebody pretty quickly because this was so like nothing else.

• 26:38Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  That they felt that somehow someone must know about this, someone must have seen this, and they thought they'd find somebody. Of course, they don't.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  And, you know, and then, of course, when they don't, then the press, as you mentioned, the press has its own reaction and just begins, you know, putting in every single possibility, every crazy theory, all the, you know, as now people start coming forward and confessing, even though they had nothing to do with the case. So, yeah, it becomes, it becomes a circus pretty quickly.

• 27:09Kate Lister?

  It doesn't help, does it, the press? I mean, there are, there are sort of rules and restrictions-ish today, a little bit, but in the 1940s, this is very much the, well, the press had been around for a while, but this is kind of the heyday of the scandal press, and they did not help. Or maybe they did, you tell me. What, how did the press interference with this crime play out?

• 27:35Speaker 01

  I think the police were hoping that they would help because they were keeping the story on the front page every day, and so they were, they were thinking more leads might come in. But what happened is, Los Angeles at the time, like most cities at the time, had four or five dailies, all, you know, highly competitive with each other. So, everybody was trying to jump on the other. It was all about selling newspapers.

• 27:59Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  The, they all kept space on their front page every day for Dahlia News. And when there wasn't any Dahlia News, they made it up. And so, yeah, ultimately, I think the press was a hindrance because it diverted the police's resources because they had to go and talk to all of these crazy confessors when they should have been doing other things. You know, but, you know, as Jimmy Richardson, the editor of the Los Angeles Examiner, said, you know, "The Dahlia case is selling more papers than Pearl Harbor." So, you know, they were making money here.

• 28:31Kate Lister?

  Oh dear, that's not good. That's not good at all. Did they ever come close to finding anybody? Were there suspects? Was there like anyone in the frame for this?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. They had they had quite a few suspects, including the the wealthy man that Elizabeth lived with for a while.

• 28:47Kate Lister?

  We had forgotten about him.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he was a suspect and her various boyfriends, you know, briefly were suspects. Then they then they began thinking that she may have been a lesbian and so her roommate must have been a jealous, you know, because she was friends with some other woman, you know. So they had all of these theories that just basically came out of nowhere. And but they were investigated both by the police and also in the press because these these reporters are out there trying to dig up their own their own material.

• 29:18Kate Lister?

  Were any of them viable or did they all get ruled out pretty quick?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, some of them seemed more viable because, you know, especially the last person had seen Elizabeth alive, who had dropped her off at Biltmore. So he was investigated. There was a manhunt for him. And then he was exonerated. But yeah, some of them seemed like very good leads at the time. I talked to the family of the original detectives and they both said to me that there was the constant belief that the answer was right around the corner because they kept getting these leads that seemed to be legitimate and viable. And then they pursue it and they turn out to lead nowhere. So this happened in January. By March and April, they're starting to run out of leads.

• 30:13Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with William after this short break.

• 30:19Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixter Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 31:01Kate Lister?

  I feel the same way that the police do in the early beginning. It's like, how could, how could you not have solved that? How could you not have figured that out? It was so extraordinary. Surely, there must be somebody, somewhere, running around Hollywood, covered in blood and howling at the moon. That must...

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Yes, you would think.

• 31:16Kate Lister?

  Where is this person?

• 31:17Speaker 01

  You would think. And because, you know, the work, the grisly work of bisecting the body and draining the blood, would leave some trace, somewhere. And, you know, people, people said, well, it must have been done in a bathtub, you know. So all of the motels that had bathtubs were searched, you know, hotels, motels, apartment buildings, trailer parks, they were all searched. And there was no, no sign of blood. And to give the LAPD their due, at least on this, is they had the most state of the art scientific lab in the country. And the, the police scientist was very good at detecting blood, even the slightest, you know, speck of blood, and found nothing. And when he would find blood,

• 32:02Speaker 01

  it would turn out that it had nothing to do with Elizabeth Short.

• 32:06Kate Lister?

  Didn't somebody write in letters claiming to be from the killer?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yes, indeed. There was a packet of Elizabeth's belongings. So basically, what she had been carrying in her purse when she was killed.

• 32:20Kate Lister?

  That really was the killer?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Well, well, people have assumed it was the killer. And I think it's a likelihood that it was the killer. But the police never officially confirmed that because all it said was, here are belongings from Elizabeth Short. Now, it could have been somebody who found her purse. It could have been somebody who knew about the killing, you know, so we don't know. But the killer, it seems likely that the killer was the one to do that because of the, it fits with the grandiose display of the body in the vacant lot. And now here it is again. Now I'm sending you her materials. It was her address book and her, her birth certificate and, you know, some photographs of her mother. So it's, it's heartbreaking. But those were, those were vital pieces of evidence for the, for the detectives to use.

• 33:03Kate Lister?

  And they sent them in, was it to the police or to the press?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  They sent it to the press, actually, yeah.

• 33:08Kate Lister?

  Wow. And that led nowhere.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  No, it it it helped flush out her life and her movements because we, you know, there's so many names in the address book and we, when they chased them down and and then I did that as well as my book because I did deeper dives onto all of the people that were in in her address book and it's, you know, it gives us a more complete picture of her, her last four or five months.

• 33:33Kate Lister?

  But no, nothing, no.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  But nothing for the killer, no.

• 33:36Kate Lister?

  God, that's so frustrating, isn't it? That's it. So they find her belongings and I'm guessing after a while, the story just starts to fade from the prep, starts to fade.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 33:48Kate Lister?

  Did it ever get closed? Like, did the police ever close the case?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  No, in fact, a couple of years later, they, there's a new attempt to find the killer and it completely goes off the rails. And so the district, district attorney's office has to step in and they reinvestigate the case. Those records are available to us, very comprehensive records from the district attorney. But the records of the Los Angeles Police Department are still held under lock and key because it's technically still an open case and, which is bizarre, 80 years later, everybody, suspects, witnesses, everybody is dead, the families are dead, but it's still technically an open case. So perhaps there's something in those files that would tell us something.

• 34:33Kate Lister?

  Was there any other crimes like this that would fit a pattern that we found with the advantage of, you know, online research and things like that now that you can join up police investigations, anything like that?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, there had been a case in about 10 years earlier, 12 years earlier in San Diego of a similar mutilation case, but it had nothing that was specifically link, linked to the Dahlia case. And I've talked to a number of detectives who looked at all these cases and they said, there's really nothing. The signature is different in in these cases, you know, there's nothing we can compare to the the Black Dahlia case. I do, you know, in the book, I do speculate on who might have done this. And there, there is some kind of circumstantial evidence about that. But until we get records from the LEPD,

• 35:31Speaker 01

  if and when that ever happens, we, we're not ever going to be able to confidently, confidently say that.

• 35:37Kate Lister?

  Who do you think may have done it of all the the people in the in the frame for this?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:42Kate Lister?

  Bearing in mind it's circumstantial.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  It's circumstantial, yeah. Well, given, you know, given the

• 35:50Speaker 01

  a few things we know about the killer, that they had some kind of surgical experience.

• 35:54Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  And to be able to do this, and they had this sort of rage and resentment at the world. We know that because of the display of the body and the severity of the killing. There's only one person that fits both of those in Elizabeth's life, and he was a suspect early on. He had been a boyfriend and apparently Elizabeth had broken up with him so she could move back in with the wealthy guy, which probably didn't leave him very happy. But he had also been in the in the army and had surgical training. He worked, he was in Okinawa and, you know, saw some fierce fighting and saw a lot of blood and bodies being pulled apart. And he was, you know, he was in the operating room on there.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  So he has the qualities, you know, he was discharged with a fifty percent psychiatric disability. The psychiatrist said he has a lot of rage and, you know, could potentially dangerous. So he is, he is a possibility. But of course, I, I, when I set out to write this book, I wanted to write about Elizabeth. I was more interested in finding the victim than finding the killer. So, you know, I don't claim to have solved it. I think that's kind of hubristic at this point, but but I do think that he's a very possible candidate.

• 37:07Kate Lister?

  Why do you think that this story has been mythologized the way that it has? Because unfortunately murders are ten a penny. Young people going to Hollywood, losing their way, coming into danger and being hurt. That's not a new story. Why this one?

• 37:24Speaker 01

  I think it's because, first of all, it's because of the name, The Black Dahlia, that the press puts on Elizabeth Short. And so that's, that's very, you know, sexy and mysterious. It fits right into the film noir, which the first film noirs come out the year of Elizabeth's murder. And you can see shadows of her story in so many of those films. And sometimes, obviously, sometimes more implicitly. And so it kind of seeps into the public consciousness in many ways. Hollywood is a place where dreams come true, but it's also a place where dreams are shattered. And so. Elizabeth's story becomes perfect for that part of the mythology of Hollywood.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  You know, see what happens when when innocent young girls go to Hollywood, they can be destroyed by the, you know, even though Elizabeth wasn't there to become a movie star or anything, but but she fits that narrative and it becomes almost a trope in in telling Hollywood stories. And I think that's why this story just endures because she becomes part of the cultural understanding of Hollywood and and of Los Angeles. And, you know, she gets forgotten, Elizabeth Short gets forgotten, but the Black Dahlia remains. A few years after the the killing, the Black Dahlia has now become just this nebulous,

• 38:50Speaker 01

  scary phantom, and some people actually mistake the killer for the Black Dahlia. So they all watch out, the Black Dahlia will get you too, you know. So, you know, the the young woman has been completely lost and been subsumed into this fictional mythological character.

• 39:07Kate Lister?

  So the final question then, as somebody that has researched Elizabeth's life, her short life, how do you think she would want to be remembered? Because no one wants to be remembered as a murder victim, do they? That's awful.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I think it's important to, you know, listen to her friends and and her family, who who described her after the death. I I saw letters from her sister, who remembered her as being very kind. She was, she had a soft spot for stray dogs. She would always adopt stray dogs, bring them into the house. Her mother would say, you can't do that, you have asthma. You know, she was very kind to a little girl in the neighborhood who had been sexually assaulted and the town wasn't sure how to treat this little girl. And Elizabeth went over there and said, come on, let's go to the movies. And and that meant so much to the little girl that she wrote about it years later.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  So she was very kind and she was very compassionate and but she also had adventure. She wanted to to have an adventure in her life. There's a letter she wrote to Her fiance, who I mentioned, was the the air flyer in the war, in the in the Army Air Force, but the Flying Tigers. And he was, he wrote her a letter describing all his exploits in the air and how exciting it was to zip around in this airplane. And Elizabeth replies to him and she says, I'd like to fly too. And when I read that line, I said, that's not just about her wishing she could be a pilot, you know, she wanted to, she wanted

• 40:43Speaker 01

  that experience of seeing the world and, and exploring the world on her own and on her own terms. So I think that's how she'd want to be remembered, that she was an explorer and an adventurer and a curiosity seeker. I just, I think that's what defines her most.

• 40:59Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Oh, William, thank you so much. You've been marvelous to talk to. And you've really helped give life and flesh out this often forgotten person in the history of Hollywood. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  I have a website, williamjman.com. And on Instagram, I'm the real Mr. Man.

• 41:19Kate Lister?

  Fabulous. And give us the title of the book again?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness at Mid-Century Hollywood.

• 41:27Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much. You've been fantastic.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 41:34Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to William for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review, and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we're going to be hearing about the golden age of Hollywood's first sex symbols, as well as taking you back to ancient Rome to Tiberius' island of depravity. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Fyodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit.