Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 179. Black Dahlia - Part 2

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179. Black Dahlia - Part 2 · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: The history podcast That's not Your History class with me
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: your host, Katie Charlewood, history harlote and reader of books.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: So it has been a month. It has been a month,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and that month has felt like an entire fucking year,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: like so much has happened in one month, and it
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: is filling me with fear, dread, and undiluted rage. Now
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know how else to explain it, because as
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: a historian and sociologist who was watching events unfold on
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: this planet, I have to say things are not looking good. Okay.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And to top it all of I was already stressed. Okay,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I was already stressed. And then Catherine O'Hara died. Now
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I can not explain how much this woman means to me.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: And you can be like, oh, Paris social blah blah blah.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I don't give a fuck, okay, because I love Katherine O'Hara.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: She was amazing and creative and funny. She was so
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: funny and I loved her in like Home Alone and
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Beegle Juice and Best in Show in Shit's Creek got
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: me through some tough damn times. Let me tell you.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So when I am not recording this, I am just
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: gonna go and watch everything everything Katherine O'Hara has ever
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: been in. I don't care if it's a bit part.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I just need some joy right now. Anyway, I know
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: what you're thinking. You're thinking, Katie quite lit up dabbah
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: in fact me and I'd love to factor you. But
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: all of her sources are actually in Part one, so
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to part one, you're gonna want
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to go do that. So that's got a bit more
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: information on the timeline leading up to Elizabeth Short's death.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: So we have Elizabeth Short's life really in the last episode,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and this episode is alas with shorts death. I wasn't
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: intentionally splitting them thusly, but the chips just fell where
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: they may and so without further ado, I also did
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: incomfortably good. Then let's begin, and yes, welcome to the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: second half of the Black Dahlia. Okay, that was not
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: actually an intentional pun, but we're just gonna leave it
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: in there because life, guys, life, If you haven't listened
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to part one, I'm going to suggest that you get
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: all caught up and then come back after and I'm
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: going to say it now, But the last episode was
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: much gentler because I'm going to be discussing the crime
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: scene of Elizabeth Short's injuries and what information has been
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: deduced about her torture and murder. Now, I say what
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: information has been deduced because although we have information, some
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: limited information from the act reports, we also have a
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: modern forensic and criminal analysis, but we do not have
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: certain pieces of information. These have still been withheld from
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: the public, whether they have been lost forever or whether
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: they're in somebody's trunk. Whom's to say, But that's where
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: we are. As always, I will be as clinical as
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: possible when describing the information regarding injuries sustained, pre and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: post mortem. But if that is too much for you,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I'm going to suggest that you exit stage left and
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: we'll see you next time. Okay, same bad time, same
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: bat channel. So on the morning of February fifteenth of
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: January nineteen forty seven, missus Bertie Beerzinger was walking south
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: down the west side of Norton Avenue with her three
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: year old daughter Anne, and as she's walking, some pale
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: catches her eye. It sort of threw the tall grass
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: on an empty lot in the three eight hundred block.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Now it wasn't just you know, stuff was there, like
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: there was things kicking about. There was sort of rubbish
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: or string like trash. There was trash all about for
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: my American friends. So there was like rusted old bedframes
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and just litter and just stuff, you know, debris, And
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: so it wasn't unusual for her to walk down the
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: street and see things just in that general area. And
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: vacant lots like this weren't unusual throughout the city either,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: because Los Angeles was a booming city and it had
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: been growing, but the infrastructure was yet to catch up.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Housing had been put on hold during the Second World War,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: and all over LA there were residential areas with both
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: homes and empty lots, and not in alone. Some houses
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: were and not in alone. Some houses were built as
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: early as nineteen forty two, while others weren't constructed until
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the mid fifties. In fact, on that vacant lot, the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: very one that was catching missus Bezinger's eye, a home
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: would not be built on that until nineteen fifty six
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: three eight two five South Norton Avenue. Like now, I
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: believe this to be that specific lot, just with the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: information you know, provided between the newspapers and the case
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: notes themselves, and from the corners in quest like that
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: seems to be this spot. Oh and as far as
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I can see, it's currently priced at under a million dollars.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Just there was just a fact for you. At first,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: missus Bezinger thought that someone had dumped a mannequin or
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: a tailor's dummy. But as she grew closer and it
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: came into view, it was very clear that this was
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: not a mannequin. It is never ever a mannequin. It was,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: in fact, the body of a woman cut in half,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: just feet off of the sidewalk, feet as in inches
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and feet, not fee as in the bodily appendage. I
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: feel the need to confirm that. Because it was clear
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: that this was a corpse on the side of the street,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the mother scoops up her daughter and bolted to the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: nearest home and used their telephone to call the police.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: She calls the University division at the LAPD and they
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: send one squad car down. The two officers see quite
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: squarely that this is a dead body inches from this
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: sidewalk and call it in. This is the most widely
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: excited timeline of events, but for the sake of a
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: fully rounded understanding of the scene, we have to consider
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: all the information. If you've seen the crime scene photographs,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: you'll see that the body is inches from the sidewalk, right,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: you can go look them up. And the thing is,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: there were so many reporters at the scene, so many
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: photographers along with like the crime scene photographers. You have
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: like every angle, like you can see this from across
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the street, you can see it from the sidewalk, you
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: can see it from the grass of the vacant lot,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: like you have probably one of the best documented crime scenes.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's tarnished completely because you know, people are
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: walking all over it. But anyway, So there was an
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: interview with Betty Louise Beersinger at the Ripe Old Age
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of one hundred and one, and in this interview, she
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: claims that when she approached the vacant lot, she saw
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: something pale in the long grass and weeds, and it
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: was about twelve feet from the sidewalk, not inches feet.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: That it was just like further in the garden or
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: say garden in the sort of grassy lot, and she
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: actually had to go into the grass, like she had
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: to step off the sidewalk to look at it, like
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: she was like, what is that And took a few
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: steps and she saw the top half of a torso,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: but the back of it, not the front, and she
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: still thought it was a mannequin, and pushing a stroller,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: walked calmly to the nearest home and called the eliped
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: from there. And she did it to warn them as
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: she was worried that it might scare the children, you know,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: because it's a street, you know, it's quite a busy
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: residential area, and as a through pass, it's quite busy,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and so kids would cycle their bike and they go past,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: and like she would say this, and she was like, oh,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: I don't want to scare these kids. And that's about that,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and she goes along with her day. And according to
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: this version of events, the body was faced down, half
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: hidden by weeds, and was then moved closer to the
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: sidewalk by the next people on the scene, Frank S.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Perkins and William E. Fitzgerald. I also want to confirm
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: that you'll see sometimes it, you know, put down as
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Wayne Fitzgerald. It's William. His name is William Fitzgerald. If
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: you look at any of the LAPD information it's William. So.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, this situation, if it's like this,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: this would explain a few things, like why the dispatcher thought,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: you know, to send one squad car not homicide to
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the three ninety A stuporous drunk, right, that's the code.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Code three ninety is the code for a stuporous drunk,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: somebody who's all boozed up and they're just kind of
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: jack sparrowing their way through the streets. Right. It would
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: explain also why the body wasn't noticed nearly eleven am
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: on a busy Los Angeles street. Snapera. This time was
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: about six am. People would have driven past children's cycle
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: to school, et cetera, et cetera. On the other hand,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: this was a discussion with a centennial woman. The human
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: memory is unreliable. In fact, this is actually a fun fact.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Maybe not so fun. I don't know if this is
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: fun for you, it was fun for me. We don't
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: remember the memory, we remember the last time we remembered
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that memory like a photocopy of a photocopy, and eventually,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: for most people it gets fuzzy. You know, a drawing
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: of a drawing is never quite the same, and you
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: know it had been over seventy years, and there's always
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the possibility that this was a way of her dealing
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: with it and being okay with it, that she never
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: actually thought she saw a dead body. It was actually
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: further away, it was hidden in the weeds. You know,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: that's a consideration like making the memory more palatable over
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: the years, you know. And if it is true, then
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: what this does is it throws you know, some of
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the criminology up in the air, because a lot of
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: what we base the criminology on is the very specific
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: posing of Elizabeth Short's body. Now, I am both dubious
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and curious, but I do think perspective is necessary. Also
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: in addition, furthermore, we don't have tapes of the recordings,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: only the alleged transcript by a reality TV producer turned writer.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Consider it, but pinchacl, you know, pinchacl. So with this theory,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the two officers who arrived on the scene would have
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: moved the body from the depths of the vacant lot,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: moved it closer to the sidewalk, and then flipped it
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: round the right way, thus posing the body in this position,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: which again changes a lot of criminology. Curious and dubious. Sorry,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: one more thing actually, because I read the damn book, right,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: he says in this interview, like he's like, why didn't
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: you tell people before? And she's like, nobody asked, And
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I feel like they did. I feel like
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: they would have. If you know, oh, you're the person
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: who discovered the black dahlia, people would question that. People
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: would ask you. Right, whether or not you wanted to answer,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: it would be a different thing. But I feel like
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: people would ask that question because we are nosy. Okay,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: we're a nosy bunch. Okay, that's what we're like. And
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I just I just don't think it's right. I just
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: feel like it's another little twist and a little push
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: to try and sell books. But that's because I am
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a skeptic. And another thing, Okay, a lot of the
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: crime scene photos, they are taken very close to the
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: victim in black and white cameras, so like it's not
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: always going to be the best quality. Obviously degradation over
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: time as well. So you've got these photos and a
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: lot of them are very very close. Now, there are
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: other photos of this scene that are further back, and
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: like from the road, you might not necessarily see the body.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: You might see something's there, but it might not catch
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: your eye. You know, I would notice more things as
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: a passenger of a car than the drivers would a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: lot of the time, because I noticed that a lot
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: of drivers don't notice things on the side of the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: road because you know they're actually looking at it. You know,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: to drive, So it's just one of those things. I
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: don't drive, so I could be wrong. Feel free to
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: correct me. But you look at the road, right, You're
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: not looking at the houses and the you know a
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: place that's known to have trash at the trash out
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: the side of the road, Like, that's not a thing.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Is that a thing? I feel like that's not a thing.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: But if people are sort of minding their own business
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and they're going along the road, then I can understand
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: them not seeing the body. But if someone's on the sidewalk,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: on that sidewalk, especially on the other side of the road,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily spot it, I don't believe. But on
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: this side, that's when you'd come across it. And I
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: feel like that's something to take into consideration in this area.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: So either way, with this phone call, like yeah, because
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the other version with the phone call is she sees
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the body, she goes up and she gets into the
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: house and she's sort of panicked and distressed. And I
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: covered this in the last week's episode. And she's sort
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of stressed and whatnot. And because of this, there's, you know,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a miscommunication, and that's where the squad car gets sent
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: instead of homicide. But either way, Berry makes the call
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and the communication officer sends a patrol car Unit thirty four,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Frank S. Perkins number four or five seven, and William E.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Fitzgerald three nine four zero show up at the crime scene.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Again his name is William not when because I checked
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the LAPD officers memorandum, Okay, I looked it up. Fun fact. Also,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: did you know there are less archival files available on
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: the FBI archives for the Black Dhia than the text
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: are Kanad of Moonlight Murders. So the text A kind
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: of Moonlight Murders has one thousand, one hundred and eighteen
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: sort of documents in the archive. The Black Dahlia has
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: two hundred and four like much much less. Now. I
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: don't know if just less things were sent to the
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: FBI or this is just it's just it's just interesting
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and I know this because I read them, so Perkins
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: and Fitzgerald. They arrive at eleven oh nine. So Betty
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: timeline Betty's laser house, but ten thirty, it's about almost
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: eleven by the time she sees the body, gets to
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: the next house, makes the phone call eleven or nine, Right,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: they see it in pretty sharpish. They request backup five
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: minutes later. Now I saw them in query like, why
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: did it take a whole five minutes to radio for backup?
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: First of all, these are not homicide detectives, let alone
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: seasoned ones. Right, They're expecting to find a drunkard swaning about. Instead,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: it is a mutilated, bisected corpse of what looks like
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: to be a teenage girl. That's gonna be hard on anybody,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: So they call her in and reporters are on the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: scene before homicide are both Aggie Underwood and Will Fowler.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Claimed to be the first on the scene, right Will
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Fowler actually in his book he says that he was,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you know, the first one on the scene. And he
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: tells this photographer Pagel. He says, oh, though, no, the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: girl's cut in half, and so he ends up being
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: you know, showing some respect and closes her eyes. Now,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I understand forensics are not where where you know we are. Now, However,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: don't touch the corpse. I feel like, don't touch the
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: body is a very basic thing when that body is
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: definitely of a dead person, Okay, especially one who appears
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: to have been murdered. Now, the whole thing is like
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: life saving techniques are always necessary, but again, mutilated bisected corpse, Okay,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: you're not saving anybody. And it's like, oh, I closed
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: her eyes. You know how they close the eyes of
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: a corpse, right, They put pins in there, That's how
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: they do it. Okay, And the thing is like, to
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: close a person's eyes, you you really should be doing it.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Like if it's close to death and you sort of
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: gently close the eyes and you hold them there for
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: a while, then they might they might stay there. Most
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of the time. They will open, like at least a
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: little bit, right, at least slightly. Most of the time
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: they're gonna just like a little bit of a boying up.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I feel like you're not You're not closing those eyes.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: But also, don't touch the fucking body. So back to
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the press contaminating the crime scene. See press would show
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: up to crime scenes all the time trying to get
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the scoope right. You can see the crime scene photos,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: and again it's really useful because we can see the layout,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: but also no because again crime scene contamination, and like
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: in those crimescene photos you can see all of the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: reporters that have shown up. So you basically just have
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: this massive, massive, just group of just watchers at this point,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: just watching this situation. Now again people are nosy. So
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: the corner corner arrived and noted that the body was
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: fifty four feet from the fire hydrant. So again that's
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: where it makes that three eight two five house. That's
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: why I think it's that location. The body was posed
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the arms a kimbal, bent to the elbow and raised
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: above the shoulders. Can I like a dancer's pose, or
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: if you lie back on a bed and you put
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: your arms like above your head, sort of like kind
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: of sixy and actually lifts the bosom up if you
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: put your hands above your head, which I think is
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: why it's such a prominent sort of sch mix, shy,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: silty pose. So she's posed in this very open, very
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: submissive way. Her hair was matted with blood, the face
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: was covered in bruises, and lacerations. She had cuts from
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the corner of her mouth into her cheeks and nearly
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: at her ears. So they say there are cuts from
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: the corner of her mouth into her cheeks. Now they
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: actually refer to this at the time as they call
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: it a Glasgow smile, right, which is supposed to be
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: a technique for splitting splitting the mouth. Now, I would
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: actually know that as a chelsea grin. So the chelsea
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: grin is a very sharp high grin and it can
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: be done by No I'm going to tell you how
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to do it. Actually, I'm not going to tell you
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: how to cut someone's mouth open. On top of this,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: her front teeth were missing. There were ligature marks on
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: her wrists, ankles, and neck. The liver was hanging out
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: of the torso the top half was more than twelve
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: inches like a foot apart from the bottom half, but
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: not directly. It was asymmetrical, so the bottom was a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: little to the right of the top, like if you're
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: facing the body, so effectively, her left side was further out.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: The lower half was mutilated, cut to the pubic region,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: lacerations on her thigh, and her attestines had been tucked
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: neatly under her buttocks. Rigor mortis had not set in.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Libidity was observable on the top half of the body.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: For the sake of modice dy, the victim was covered
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: with a blanket, although I suspect that it was more
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: to make the murder more printable. You can't exactly put
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: a naked body on the front page of a nineteen
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: forties newspaper. By covering her with a blanket, it made
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: it more newspaper friendly. I get Underwood noted a male
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: heel print bloody near the scene, like they mention. They
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: mentioned tire tracks too, but no one takes a photo
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: of them. So like, there's tire tracks near the scene,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: and like a muddy heel print with blood in it,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Like it's there, it's there. The evidence of the crime
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: scene is minimal, there's and there's something like very important
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: missing blood. There were a few drops on the sidewalk,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: but if the murder occurred at the location, there would
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: be blood all over all over the crime scene. Because
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: that's a bisected body. The body was drained of blood
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: before being deposited at the crime scene, so that meant
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the murder must have happened elsewhere and then the body
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: brought here. Like they do find as they're searching the
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: area a bag an empty bag of Ajax brand cement
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: with a few drops of blood on it. Detectives Harry
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Hansen and Venis Brown, they get a sign to the case,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and like detectives, they actually end up making a human
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: perimeter around the crime scene just because so many people
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: are showing up and they need to protect it. So
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: they're like, we need to actually block off this area,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: so human wall. Uniformed officers were sent out to canvas
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the area searching for in information and clues. Reporters got
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: a sketch of the victim and chased their wrong leads
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: about Jane do number one well canvassing, several residents reported
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: seeing a dark or black nineteen thirties forward sedan, so
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I think most of them say it was like a
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: thirty six or thirty seven, that it was near the
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: crime scene early in the morning, between like six thirty
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and seven am. Everyone was also searching for the woman
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: who called in, but it would take them ten days
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: to find missus Betty Louise Beerzinger. Like okay, sidebark one
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: of the things they used to do in the old
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: papers was recreate scenarios. So they were photos of her
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: on the telephone. She's got her hair done, she's in
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: a fur coat right, and also like so she's on
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the phone and she's kind of hot. I'm like looking
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: at this woman, going Wow, Berry Perry's gonna going on, God,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: she's just gorgeous. Uh listen that I may just thirsting
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: over centennial women here, so they would like boast. You
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: can see these photos like they're great. They're like, they're
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: my favorite type of like recreation photos. But everyone's like
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: super dolled up in the oh, it's factules. So back
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: to the case that evening, the victim's fingerprints were sent
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: to the FBI via sound photo. Like this was covered
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: in our last episode, so I've got more details on that.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Sound photo is basically an old type of fax nails
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: a fax machine, which is like an old timey scanner
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: mm hmm. And while that's going on, Los Angeles County
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Corner Frederick Newbar performed the autopsy on the sixteenth of
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: January nineteen forty seven. Frederick Neubar, the county coroner, noted
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: that the victim was five foot five inches tall and
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: weighed around one hundred and fifteen pounds, had brown hair
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: dyed with hennah, and her teeth were badly decayed. Front
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: teeth missing, So the victim had a description a sketch,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: but thanks to the Elae Examiner, she also had a name,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short. Out of over one hundred and four million files,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Beth shorts prints are found twice, the first being her
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: job application at Camp Cook and the other for when
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: she was arrested for underway drinking in nineteen forty three.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: So Elizabeth Short, who they initially thought was fifteen or sixteen,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: was twenty two. The LAPADA have a deal with the
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: examiner thanks to the whole use of the sound photo
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: machines situation, Basically, the LPD kind of got extorted and
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the paper got first steps on information. So one of
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: the reporters calls Beth Short's mum, Phoebe Short, and gets
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: all this info from her, right because he rings her
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: up and he tells her that Elizabeth has one a
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: beauty contest and like, once he's got this information, like
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: one of the other reporters is like, what the actual
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: fuck are you doing, Like you need to tell her,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: And after that he just basically goes, yeah, your daughter
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: was murdered. Actually, like he doesn't tell her, Like he
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: gets all this information and then he goes, oh, yeah,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and she's dead, the prick. And it wasn't until later
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: on either that this was confirmed by the LPD. So
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: they told her first, okay, And so she ends up
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: maintaining like really good composure during this because this is
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: shocking information. And then the LAPD they inform her and
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: the examiner just ends up offering to flag her out
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: like to Los Angeles. And they do this obviously because
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: they want to get to her first, but they make
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: it seem like, oh, look, we're sorry, we're helping you, prick.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And now the autopsy. Something I want to make clear
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: is we do not have a copy of the nineteen
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: forty seven autopsy report. That information is not on file,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: at least not an accessible one. Anyway, the LAPD have
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: never released the official autopsy on Elizabeth's short All we
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: have are snippets of information that we've received from you know,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the fills that have actually been uploaded, and discussions and
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: interviews with people who had previously worked on the case.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Like that is what we have. We do not have
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the original nineteen forty seven autopsy report. We do have
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the quarter's inquest and things like that too, but just
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: to be clear, we don't have that information. So yes,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Frederick Nubar's autopsy on Elizabeth Short on the sixteenth of
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: January nineteen forty seven. Victim was five foot five, approximately
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifteen pounds, dark brown hair colored with
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: hennah light green eyes, so gray green often comes up
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: when describing Elizabeth Short's eyes. You may see people say
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: that they're blue. They weren't blue. They were sort of
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: a very light green, almost a gray green, kind of
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: like mine. Actually, okay, that's yeah. Cuts went from the
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: side of the mouth, not to the ears like people say.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: They go like almost the ears. They stop basically where
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the jawbones connect. Like this is visible from the autopsy photographs,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: especially the ones that are taken side on of Beth
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Short's head. Superficial lacerations on the face, also forehead and
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: on the right side of the scalp. It is bruised.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Front teeth are broken, many other teeth in the mouth
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: had cavities, some were even black. Ligature marks were present
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: on the neck, wrists, and ankles. These were light ligature marks.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: She was not strung up by these, which I think
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: is going to be relevant later. This was more of
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: a bound down situation. There was a scar present, a
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: three and a half inch scar on the right side
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: of her back, presumably from lung surgery. Sidebar. Again, we
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: know that she had lung surgery, we do not have
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: documentation regarding what type. Now I do believe, okay, that
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: we can probably roll out numinectomy the removal of a lung.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: As you know, both are listed in the autopsy thorocoplasty,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: which is the removal of ribs to collapse a lung
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: because still at all the ribs a litbittomy. Nope, because
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: neither of the lung lobes are missing. They're both accounted for.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Most likely given her scar and you know the plural
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: adhesions on her lungs, I'd say it's either probably like
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: artificial neumothorax, which is like a lung collapse therapy, or
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: sort of drainage long drainage. So the right forearm had
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: superficial in sized laceration, so their shallow and their linear,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and the left upper arm had similar cuts. So these
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: are controlled cuts that showed no tearing, crushing, or deep penetration,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: so it's not getting near the muscle. It is very
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: much going through that sort of dermis and epidermis. Yeah,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the right breast. So you see it more again on
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: the crimson and autopsy photos. Right, there's what I can
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: only describe as an irregular laceration with superficial tissue loss.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: This means that the cut removed surface tissue, not just
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: splitting the skin. However, it did not penetrate deeply into
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the chest cavity. Once in, the cut is quite smooth
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and the other is floated. Now, okay, I've seen similar
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: when you're cutting skin from meat. So if you pull
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: it quite taut and then cut one side, so when
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: you're pulling it up, so one side's going to be
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: a smooth cut and the other side's going to be
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: more fluted or maybe even like puckering you could even
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: call it on the other side. So the right nipple
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: is also missing, So it could be surmised, according to
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: this evidence, that the nipple was pulled and then sliced off,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: Like there's actually quite a lot of breast tissue missing,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: so it seems like there was pulled and then cut.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: This injury was sustained close to death, so it was
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: definitely pre mortem, but it was very close to death.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: There are superficial in sized wounds to the skin and
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: subcontaneous tissue of the thoracic wall, so the lower left chest.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: This was a deliberate placement and did not enter the
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: webcage or damage internal organs. It is very much on
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: the outside, so when you see superficial superficial cuts, it
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: just means that it's on the top of the skin.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: It didn't go that deep. Okay. A large insized wind
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: a four and a half inch cut was from the
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: navel so the belly button, running vertically down to the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: pubic region. This again was a deliberate controlled cut. Like
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the breast laceration, arm lacerations, and the chest wall cuts,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: these are precise, they're not exploratory. This is intentional mutilation.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: The killer had time, and they had time, and these
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: happened very close to her death. Present on the upper
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: part of the body and upper thigh suggested that the
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: victim was placed face down for some time post mortem.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: So if the body was placed down for some time,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: this would lead querence to that initial sort of plot
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: to us theory that we had earlier about berry that
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: the body was upside down, but the body could have
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: just been placed in certain ways for ease, especially if
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: you're trying to do certain things. Body was bisected post mortem.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: This also resulted in the intestines being cut at the duodenum.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: The anal canal was dilated by one in three quarter inches.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: They tested for seminal fluid and sperm. However, no sperm
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: was found in the amis. This suggested foreign object penetration.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Her pubic hair was shaved and found inside the anal canal.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: The victim had a rose tattoo on her leg. This
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: had been carved off of her body and found within
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: the vagina. The area where the pubic hair had been
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: shaved was cut in a criss cross fashion, like cross
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: hatching when you're drawing. When you're shading, it kind of
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: has that effect. Now I'm a pointism gal. I've never
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: been a cross hatch person. When it came to art.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I was always pointism when I did my when I
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: did my shading and art, listen listen that or everything
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: was painted blue underneath because blue makes shadows anyway, toenails
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: were painted pink, and the body had been cleaned, possibly
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: with gasoline. It cannot be confirmed, but there have been
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: reports of fecal matter and grayish brown substance within Elizabeth's
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: shorts stomach. All organs are present and accounted for. The
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: womb was small, Like, that's pretty standard. I mean, she's
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: only five to five, and if she had a small frame,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: like she's described as having a very neat frame, a
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: very small person is going to have smaller organs. But yeah,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: so she had a small womb, body bisected at the waist,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: severed through vertebrae. There is no evidence. Okay, here we go.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: There is no evidence that the pubic region was underdeveloped,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: nor were there cigarette burns on her body. The autopsy
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: also confirmed that Elizabeth Short was not pregnant at the
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: time of death, nor had she ever been pregnant. Cause
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: of death was believed to be shock and hemorrhaging from
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the deep cuts on her face. Right. Something I always
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: quite interesting about this, specifically is that there's no mention
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: of those broken front teeth, Like we know that the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: teeth are broken, but there's no mention of them like
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: in the mouth or the throat, like they're not you know,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: stuck in the esophagus or the trachea or in the
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: stomach contents like they're just gone. So the bisection of
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: the body, which okay, first of all, it appears that
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: the body was in a recumbent or like a semi
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: recumbent position, so like almost kind of kind of setting
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: but kind of lying down like if you're in a bath,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: you know, And that the body was cut this way,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: which honestly just makes a lot of sense because a trough,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: like an animal trough, like the big long one, or
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: like a bath would make a lot more sense because
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: it would hold the blood, it would drain it like that.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Just it's just logical, really, isn't it. Like it's control.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: So and also the bisection of the body, the cutting
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: in two is often credited to be being by someone
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: who has medical training. Now, I think this theory exists
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: because there was a popular procedure at the time called
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: a hemicopectomy, right, and this was the amputation of the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: body below the waist, transacting the lumber spine right while
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: the person is still alive. And so there was a
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: lot of things so you would be removing like intestines
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: and genitals, and so there's a lot of work to do,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and it was a very new and interesting because they
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: were doing it and people were living through it like
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: they were surviving. And so when this is happening at
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: the same time and this person is also found cut
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: in half, well, I mean, correlation does not equal causation,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: but you can see where they made that leap, right,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: And I think also as well, is there's an assumption
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: that if somebody is going to, you know, treat a
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: body like its meat, if someone's happy to just cut
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: into it and treat a human like that, that there's
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: an assumption that that's certainly just perceive a body as
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: a body, not as a human like a human person body,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: that it's just something that needs to be done, a
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: task as opposed to a person. So here's here's my Tuppensworth. Right,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: you do not need medical training to use a sharp
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: knife to cut through a corpse. Granted a surgeon could
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: do it, but so could any decent hunter, a butcher,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: a vet, even a farmer, a slaughterhouse worker or a
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: cook right right or throwing this out there, just someone
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: who had had practice. Right, those serial killers you start
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: off like hearting animals, Like if you're trying to cut
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: a body like you cut it at the smallest part, right,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the easy part, which is the waste, the waste of
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: the smallest part. You don't want to cut through the
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: ribs because the ribs are bone, the hips are bone.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: So the easiest part is when you get to the spine.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: The reason you go through the ver deebras is because
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: that's the bit's the move, right. You don't want to
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: you don't want to try and to hack through the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: bone when you can go through the bit that's coming
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: apart anyway, you know. So again, in the manner in
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: which the body is and half suggests that it was
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: almost seated again like that bathtub idea. The body was
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: drained of blood and clean. Now, I don't know if
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: this was like an intentional and sanguination like a deliberate
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: like we need to dround the body of blood situation,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: or whether this was just a practical aspect, like you're
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: gonna lose blood in the body wasn't completely drained of blood,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: It wasn't completely insanguinated anyway. So a lot of blood
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: loss is going to happen when you bisect a body,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: like you cut a body in half, Like blood's gonna
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: come out of both ends. You know, but there's gonna
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: be like reservoirs of blood throughout the body. It's just
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: going to kind of be around now and then that's
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: where you get that sort of blood span or like
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: on the sidewalk and things like that. So like there's
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: a theory as well that the AJAX, like the bloody
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: bag that the body was transported in, like two cement bags,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: where is the other one did want to blow away?
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Like hmm, could have nothing to do with the case whatsoever.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Very possibly. So there is a ritual aspect to this
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: because the body is cleaned now you're watching it for
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: fingerprints because that's really all they had. I mean, they
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: didn't have DNA testings, but they knew like oh they
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: could tell of you know, what a blood type was,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: like what it was AB, Like Elizabeth Short had AB
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: blood blood type. But you know, fingerprints is what they're
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: looking out for, you know. And the question is why
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: cut out her tattoo? Is it removing an identifier like which,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: if that's your plan, you put it inside her? So
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: is this a sort of humiliation ritual? So even in death,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's this sort of sexual sadism and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: this concept of shame, which is even the way the
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: body is posed. It's posed legs, bread arms, akimbo, a
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: very submissive and a very shameful position to put a
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: woman in, especially in this society. And it's also look
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: at what I did you know? There's that sort of
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: side of it too. The killer then took the time,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: both with the torture, the cleaning, the posing, and the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: body again wasn't just dumped like it wasn't a quick
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: chuck it hear, that is a deliberate posing, that is
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: trying to shock, that is trying to get attention. And
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: this was a murderer, the legs of which had not
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: been seen in Los Angeles. It was grim even for
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: the streets of Sin City. Sergeant Phinis Brown and Detective
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Harry Hansen were assigned the case by Captain Jack Donaho.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: But this investigation was bigger than this. It was huge.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: In fact, it was massive. Right. They were over seven
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty investigators from the LPD, four hundred from
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: the Sheriff's Department, and two hundred and fifty California State
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: Patrol officers involved in this. Right, and this becomes one
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: of the largest investigations undertaken by the LPD like especially
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: in this era, and within hours of Elizabeth Shortz discovery,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: police picked up Cecil French at a downtown bus station.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Twenty three year old Cecil was arrested on a morals charge,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: which is old time you speak, for sexually assaulting a
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: woman at the bus station. The LAPD had definitely deemed
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Shorts murder as a sexual crime, and so this
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: very suspicious to them. Number one. The second very suspicious
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: thing about Cecil French was that the backseat of his
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: car had been removed and when police searched the vehicle,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: they thought they saw blood splatter in the car, but
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: police chemist Ray Pinker tested the vehicle and came out
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: empty handed, and there was still the matter. At this
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: point of officially identifying Elizabeth Short, the Los Angeles Examiner, Yes,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: owned by the Hearst Newspaper Corps, paid to fly Beth's
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: mother to Los Angeles. They did this to keep themselves
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: in the lip to make sure they had this scoop.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: And on the eighteenth of January nineteen forty seven, Phoebe
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Short and Virginia West and Virginia's husband Adrian, traveled to
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: the city. Phoebe and Jenny didn't want to go into
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the morgue. They didn't want to go in and identify Elizabeth.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: They wanted to remember her as she was, not what
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: had happened to her, but a formal identification had to
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: be made. Adrian and Jenny had been married, but he
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: didn't know Beth, so he couldn't do it. And so
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Phoebe and Virginia they entered the morgue and they confirmed
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: that this was their daughter and their sister. The examiner
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: had also managed to, and I'm going to say it,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: manipulate Phoebe into providing letters written to her by her daughter.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: These were often filled with falsehoods. Now these are usually
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: used to portray Beth Short as a liar, but I
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: think it's more nuanced than that. It's a girl writing
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: to her mother and letting her know that things were
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: going better than they were, and like I wouldn't consider
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: it a lie per se. It's just like the tooth Fairy,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: a little bit of dusting of optimism. She talked about
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: meeting a pilot in Florida and that she was going
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: to marry him. She talked about getting a job here
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: and working there. Like that she had been an extra
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: on a film, and that she had been and doing
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: some waitress saying and doing this and that, and and
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: she wrote to her mother fairly often. Now there was
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: a few weeks and then two weeks before her death,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Beth wrote to Phoebe that she got a job in
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: a naval hospital in San Diego. It was around about
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: this time that Beth had told many of her acquaintances
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: that she was going to go to Berkeley. Now Ginny
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: and Adrian West they lived in Berkeley, and so Phoebe
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: stayed with them to plan Beth's funeral, and so eventually
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: they would travel together and they would bury Elizabeth Short.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: The Examiner, with info of Beth's last known whereabouts, sent
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: reporter Tommy Devlin to San Diego. He managed to find
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Elvira and Dorothy French, who Beth was staying with in
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: San Diego. Dorothy shared that Beth had stayed with him
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: from like the eighth or ninth of December nineteen forty
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: six and then left on the eighth of January nineteen
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: forty seven. So Dorothy, she actually worked in a movie theater,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: so she was there and she noticed that people would
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: buy late tickets to the theater and they would sleep there,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: like it was a very common thing. And when Elizabeth
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Short had arrived and she had her luggage and her
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: hat box, like, she's like, okay, yeah, she's going to
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: do this. And so she's like, hey, don't sleep in
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: the movie theater. Come and stay on my couch. So
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: she was supposed to be there for a night. She
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: stayed like a month, and eventually they just had to
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: ask her to leave. So she had said to Dorothy
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: that Bob, a pilot, had gotten Beth a job as
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: a stenographer for an air transport company. On the seventh
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: of January, Short received a telegram saying that he was
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: coming to see her. The telegram was signed red. So
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: the Examiner sends a reporter to Huntington Park and read
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: the telegram. Be there tomorrow after anon light stop would
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: like to see you. Stop read stop. Police find Robert Manley,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: who spent a night in a motel with Betty and
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: who drove her from San Diego to La Red. Manley
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: also happened to be married with a four month old
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: baby boy. The police found him because he used his
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: real name to send into the motel, and the manager
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: was wise enough also to take note of the car
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: registration plate, so the number plate of the car. Oh,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: so it's like a cream colored study Baker's, you know.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: A description of Beth Short's luggage her two cases in
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: a hat box were then sent to Examiner's editor Jim Richardson,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: who did pass that information on to the police. They
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: searched bus depots and railway stations, and police managed to
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: find her luggage at the Greyhound bus station in downtown
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles. It had been impounded basically for lack of payment.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: So and Robert Manley he confirmed that that was her luggage.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: So he was taken to Hollenbeck Station where a witness
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: claimed that he had seen Beth and Read at Union
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Station on the fourteenth of January, the day before the
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: body was found. So this is actually really important because
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: the coroner says that Bethshort died around about ten hours
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: before she was discovered, So within twenty four hours definitely,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: but ten hours as their sort of typical guess. Now,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: within that if she had you know, that's within ten
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: hours the body was cut and cleaned and sported and posed.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: So yeah, fourteenth of January. This guy, I think it's William,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: his name is and he's like, oh, I definitely saw him,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and there was an argument between him and the Badahlia. Now,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: a woman would later come forward to state that it
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: was Hard, not Beth that had been seen that day
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: chatting to another man with red hair. So Red was
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: charged with the murder of Elizabeth Short. He was brought
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: into station, he was questioned, and he was cooperative with
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: the police. He took a series of light detector tests,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: which I know now were like, you know, they're not
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: a thing. It's not a real thing. It's just a
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: stress indicator more than anything else. Like it's not the
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: kind of thing that's admissible in court. But Red, he's
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: doing all these light detector tests, he passes them all,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: and like he's being questioned so much and he's staying
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: up that he ends up like falling asleep during the
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: lie detector tests. Like when they're doing it, he's just crashing,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: just crashing out, just out of it because he's so tired. Right,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Which of all the times to fall asleep hooked up
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: to a lie detector is an interesting one. Meanwhile, authorities
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: are coming through Los Angeles searching for a torture dungeon
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: or a murder room. Now, Okay, I'm just saying, wouldn't
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: the most logical place to hide blood is a place
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: where there's loads of blood, like a slaughterhouse. Wouldn't like
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: a slaughterhouse be the most reasonable place a surgery, like
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: an actual surgery, like those two places, places where you
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: expect that to be it Just I'm just saying, like
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: a slaughterhouse is my bet, because it's very easy to
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: hide that there. But if the body was dray, which
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: again maybe more for like a practical side of things,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: because trying to move a whole body is difficult, especially
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: depending on the type of car you have, because you
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: have to be able to hide it and transport it.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm just floating ideas. So Red was officially the
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: last person seen with Beth, and he had an alibi
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: for the night of the fourteenth playing cards. On the
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: twenty first of January, six days after the body was discovered,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: the Examiner's editor got a phone call Allegedly's telling him
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: to expect souvenirs. Three days later, a package addressed to
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers is found. Basically,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: there's this Milliam clerk and she's looking at this stuff,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: and she sees this and she's like, that's suspicious, right,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: it's a bit weird, and so this gets brought up.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: An inside was a series of documents and other items
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: belonging to Elizabeth Short. It had Beth Shorts birth certificate,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: photos of Beth with like various companions so like different
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: like soldiers and airmen and things like that, her social
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Security card, a gold embossed ad dress book with several
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: pages torn out, and it had the initials mh on it,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: so it actually belonged to Mark Hansen when we discussed
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: him in the previous episode. There were business cards, obituary
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: clippings of Major Matt Gordon, and a note to the
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: press with newspaper cuttings that read like you know that
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: sort of the serial killer. Writing of the cutout letters
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: from the newspaper, it said, here is Dahlia's belong letter
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: to follow. So everything had been cleaned with gasoline and
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: there were partial fingerprints, but nothing really usable. I should
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: know it actually, seeing as we're talking about Beth's possessions,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: that the contents of Beth Short, two cases and the
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: hat box have never been disclosed, Like we don't know
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: what possessions were in those two cases and her hat box.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: We don't know what that evidence is. Two days later,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: another letter arrived and it read here it is turning
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: it in went January twenty ninth, ten am had my
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: fun at police dash black Dahlia avenger. So that one's
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: in sort of scratchy handwriting. It's in capital letters, and
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: so they go, they wait for him. He doesn't show,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: and then another newspaper cut out appears like another postcard,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: and it's have changed my mind. You would not give
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: me a square deal. Dalia killing justified. Now here's the thing.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: This case was huge. It was big news and the
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: LAPD had I think all in all like one hundred
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: and ninety two suspects like and that's in the initial investigation.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: But with all of this notoriety leads to false leads,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: dead ends and false confessions. Right, so'm i gonnas. The
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: same day as well that the examiner got this letter,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: a handbag in black sweat shoe were spotted on top
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: of this garbage can and this alley two miles from
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: the murder scene. Yep. So like the guy who owns
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the restaurant, he's out back and he sees it, and
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: he calls it in because it's a weird thing, like
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: this should not be there, so he calls it in.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: The police come, but when the police come, the garbage
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: had been collected and it'd been taken to the dump. Okay,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: So they go there. The cops go there and they
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: start like looking through the trash and they find it.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: They find this shoe and they find the handbag. Right,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't there before, it wasn't there earlier in
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: the day, and then it just showed up. Okay. So
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Red manly he confirmed that these were her belongings. And
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: he's even like, ooh, this still smells like her perfume.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Like it hasn't been at a trash site. It's been
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: at the dump okay, And you're telling me that it
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: smells like her perfume. Anyway, not get into it. I'm
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: not gonna get into it, okay. So her friends as well,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: people who knew her, they're like, that's not her bag,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: that's not her shoes, And this dude's like definitely, yeah, okay,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Like there's there's actual photos of it. By the way,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: you can see the photos of him just like smoking
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: a cigarette and holding the bag, which is just not
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: how one collects evidence. The chain of evidence. If there
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: was the any on it, it's not there now. I
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: mean it's obviously contaminated by like the whole dump situation.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: But also so back to Elizabeth Short. On the twenty
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: fifth of January nineteen forty seven, Elizabeth Short was buried
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. Now she
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: was led to rest, but what about her killer? But
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: before we go into suspects properly, I want to talk
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: about this whole letter writing scenario. Like I am a
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: suspicious person, especially when it comes to media. So as
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: many of you know, my expertise as in sensationalism, misinformation,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: disinformation and propaganda and the late modern period. So a
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: lot of what I do focus is on to the
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: newspapers is quite a big part of that. So I
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: feel like this might be taking a leaf out of
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: out of the Jack the Ripper scenario because it's not
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: entirely dissimilar to the Dear Boss letter. So the Dear
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: Boss scenario where a reporter, like we've kind of all
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: assessed now from the information that it was probably a
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: reporter who wrote the Dear Boss letter and so it
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: was set into the newspapers and the police, and you know,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: quote effects would start showing up in people's livers and whatnot.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: But it was just a sort of tactic by the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: newspapers to just keep the story going into selling more papers.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: And I feel like this this initially could be something
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: like that. That being said, there's always a possibility of
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: people who try and insert themselves into investigations, and they
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: try and taunt and show boat. There's all these different options,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: but I again dubious, Okay, dubious. So suspects. First of all,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Cecil French. He's out sexually assaulting women in bus stations
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: and the back of his car's missing, and he's like, oh,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: it's for actually collecting furniture, and what do you know,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: his alibi actually checks out. Then, of course we have
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Robert Manley, the last known person seen with Beth Short.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: What's interesting as well is he calls her Betty, right,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: He calls her Betty and Elizabeth. She would have been
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: called Betty when she was younger, but as she got
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: older to be called Beth, so as she got older
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: she would change it. But for this man, he called
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: her bery like, which is a little I just thought
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: it was interesting that she chose that name with him specifically,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: so he had an alibi for the agreed time of
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: death and for the time that the body was left
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: on South Norton Avenue. Like he has an alibi for
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: both of those situations. Now, was he a ship person? Also? Yes,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: everybody here is bad, by the way. So like you've
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: got Cecil there, who's just again moral crimes. And then
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: you've got Robert Manley here who cheats on his you know,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: wife of less than a year, who has a four
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: month old baby, and he's like, oh, it was just
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: like a test to see if I loved my wife.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: And it's like, all right, Red, you motherfucker. Even though
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: he says he says they kissed, like like he kissed her,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: and she's like responding quote in the normal way, if
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: a little cold. But they never have sex. And I'm
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: inclined to believe that because of what her friends say,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: like or even people who don't like her, like there
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: are girls who roomed with her and they're like, oh, well,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: she used to lead men on a little bit and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: she would try and like flirt and whatnot, but she
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: never never actually had sex with them. And it's like okay, cool.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: And like one of the theories again that you'll see
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: floating about is that she didn't have sex because she
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: had underdeveloped genitals, And no, that's not the case. She
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: had perfectly normal genitals. She just maybe didn't have sex.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe that just wasn't something she did, or maybe floating
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: idea asexual just putting it out there. Nobody ever considers
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: that fat anyway. Anyway, maybe she just was not interested
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: in sex. So here's the thing about the address book
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: that was sent in. It had I think ninety five
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: names on it, and so detectives they're just looking through
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: all of these names. They're ticking them all off. They're
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: trying to find them all because they think it's highly
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: probable that these are connected to Elizabeth Short. So they're
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: checking everybody out. Boyfriends, friends, acquaintances, just everybody who may
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: have known her, everybody on this address book. Another suspect
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: was Mark Hanson. He was a nightclub owner and he
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: sort of had sort of sneaky delons. He had been
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: separated from his wife at this point. He was Danish,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: I believe, and he rented basically cheap, cheap sort of
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: beds in his house in this little bungalow he had,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: and he rented room out for girls who were down
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: on their luck, and it was very like embarrassing to
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: stay with him. And allegedly he would, you know, approach
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the women there and shag them effectively just abuse. Really,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: it's just rent abuse with the technical term, I feel
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: like there is one and so, like we chat about
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: him in the previous episode as well. So he allegedly
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: didn't go near two women that had stayed there, So
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: and Tooth and Elizabeth Short now and Tooth he was
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: friends with her boyfriend, which is how she ended up
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: rooming there. And Elizabeth Short well, well, Elizabeth Short he
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: had been informed was a virgin, and he was like,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing that, which I think is I'm gonna
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: kind of consider it, like I'm glad that you've chosen
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: not to bother with her. So, so, like, one thing
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: he didn't like was girls that were drinking coming back
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: to his bungalow. And he didn't like the kind of
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: sorts quote that Beth was hanging around with, so because
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: she was always on dates with men and he he
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: wasn't keen about all those men that she was hanging
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: around with and so there was this theory that it
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: could have been jealous, say your rejection, but there's like
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: no evidence other than that other than him being you know,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: equeepy old landlord, to anything that would link him to
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: this crime. And also the circles that he was in,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: he could have very easily got rid of the five
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: foot five women without a lot of hassle or fuss,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: like he could have done it, but like this, this
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: is something different. And then we have doctor Walter Alonzo Bailey.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: So he was a surgeon in la and his house
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: or he had lived in a house that was just
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: one block south of the vacant lot where Beth Short's
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: body was discovered. Now I say he did live there
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: because he had lived there up until October nineteen forty six,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: when he'd left his wife, so three months before Elizabeth
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: Short was discovered. Now his wife still lived in the home.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: And just I don't know if this is a crazy
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: random happenstance, but his wife or someone who had the
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: same name as his wife, was listed as a witness
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: to the wedding of Virginia Short and Adrian West. Now,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: like some weird coincidence has happened I just thought that
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: was really weird and interesting, and what I did to
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: share with you now I think about Walter Bailey as well,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: is that he was in the sort of early stages
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: of a neurological disorder, which is why some people think
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: that he's more likely to have been involved in this,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: like you know, the reason for all of his like
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: change in behavior at the time. Now, at the time,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: like Bailey was never ever a suspect. He only became
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: one sort of in later years when sort of people
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: went back and started digging. But at the time, he
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: was never a suspect, and he was sixty seven at
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: the time of the murder. And yeah, I just don't think.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: I don't think he was going to be lugging around
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: a dead body, although it would make sense to you know,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: to make it lighter by severing and half. Then we
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: have Jack Wilson, also known as Arnold Smith, so he
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't again named at the time. This came out later
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: in investigative journalism, and so he was alleged to have
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: violent tendencies and possible links to Elizabeth Short. Now again,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: it's one of those things where's like he kend of
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: knew are he was around like was he do we
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: really have that? He's just one of the ones that
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: I just don't really hold a lot of weight with,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: but I'm going to mention him anyway for you. Another
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: suspect is William Aerns. So he was a convicted serial
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: killer who was active in Chicago and it was like
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: round about the same era, and he was rumored to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: have confessed to other murders and he was like Lucy
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: linked otherwise by speculation, but like it's more like I
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: suppose more like trolling than anything else, And there is
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: no evidence to place him in la at the time,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: and investigators mainly have just sort of pu put it.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: It's been dismissed. Then there's this sort of it's like
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: a bellhop and he wants to be a writer, but
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: he's also wants to be a mortician's assistant, which is
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: a very specific goal to have. So he became a
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: suspect in nineteen forty nine, so it's like a little
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: bit later, and the theory is that he ends up
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: being involved in the murder because like he's asked to
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: do that by Mark Hanson. Like it's a very sort
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: of it's a little reethings a little link. But again
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: it's just one of those ideas that didn't really pan out.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: It didn't really fall through. Then we have Carl Balsager.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: So he's another military man, right, So he had been
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: at Camp Cook around about the same time that Elizabeth
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: Short had been, Like they had overlapped a little bit.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Now he had actually seen her again, like in Los
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: Angeles sort of not long before she died, you know,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: and he had actually given her like a ride to
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: the bus station, and she said she was going to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: the Bay area, but then she'd gone to San Diego instead.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Like she kept telling people that she was going to
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: different places, and then she would just go places. Now,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: when Elizabeth Short was murdered and when her body was discovered,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: he was stationed at McCord Field in Washington, and there
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: are witnesses to say that he was there. So drive
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: to the bus station, never sees her again. He is cleared.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: Another suspect I want to talk about is George Knowlton.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: Now we don't have that much information about him apart
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: from the fact that he used to live in la
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: and he died in like nineteen sixty two, I think
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: it's sixty two. He was in a car accident, but
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: his daughter Janice, in the early nineteen nineties was doing
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: this recovered memories therapy because she had hysterectomy. She was
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: feeling depressed because like your hormones go crazy when you
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: do things like that, like your body disregulates, and so
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: therapy is one of the things they do. And I
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: don't like recovered memory therapy because I don't necessarily think
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: that it makes sense. I think it's very leading and
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: it's easier to invent a situation in someone's mind. That
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: being said, somebody could remember something, but it's it's I've
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: never seen a case. Really, I don't recall seeing a
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: case where it's actually been confirmed, but I need to
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: double check. So Janie, so she claims that as a
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: child that she saw her father murder Beth Short, so
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: she saw like the actual face cutting in murder. And
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: I have issues with this theory apart from the fact
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: that I think that she has been manipulated into believing this.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: First of all. Secondly, she basically says that you know,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: her dad had been having an affair with Beth and
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: that who had been staying in this sort of oh goodness,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: like in their garage, right her garage. They were staying
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: in there and she ends up having a miscarriage. So
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: she has a miscarriage and so he kills her. Yeah,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: that's basically the story. Cuts her in half in the
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: sink and then makes the daughter help him dispose of
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: the body. Right, And that's the theory. She also says
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: that Zabeth Short was working for a child trafficking ring,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: like procuring children for it. But if that was the case,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think Elizabeth Short would have been as poor
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: as she was. Like when she comes back to La,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: she has one dollar to her name, and the reason
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: she has that one dollar is because Dorothy French gave
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: it to her. Like that's it. We have another surgeon
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: for you, doctor Patrick Shane o'rightley. So he was an
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: orthopedic surgeon in LA and he was a suspect because
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: apparently he had like he was friends with people who
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: knew Beth Short, so he knew mac Mark Hanston and
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: then like some other person. So partly he was you know,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: he's a surgeon. One, he's an orthopedic surgeon. Two and
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: three he physically assaulted his secretary in nineteen thirty nine.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: Right he also this is a wild One surgically removed
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: part of his right breast, which was similar to you know,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: obviously the slicing of Elizabeth Shorts breast. But like he
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: was a suspect because he was also like a surgeon,
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: and so this other stuff just kind of added to it.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: And what's funny about him is like he's not even
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: called O'Reilly, Like he lies about who he is. His
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: name is place of birth. Like he becomes like a
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: really great surgeon, like he saves lives, right, But he
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: had changed his identity and he was discovered, I think
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: like three years ago. He was discovered to have a
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: long history of just like lying. So he would just
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: tell just make stuff up and just say it to
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: like newspapers and to the police and so on and
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: so forth. Another interesting subject is Norman Chandler, that is.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: Right, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and that's
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: from nineteen forty five up until nineteen sixty. Like there's
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: this theory that he impregnated Elizabeth Short when she was
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: working as a sex worker. Like there's this whole theory.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: Many of the theories they revolver in her being a
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: sex worker and or pregnant. She was never pregnant. So anyway,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: so basically she's supposed to be working for all these
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: people and then she's discovered and then this leads to
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: her being murdered effectively, It's yeah, it's again more nonsense.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: Then we have Leslie Dillon. So basically he had been
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: writing letters which basically showed or allegedly showed detailed knowledge
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: of the crime and discussing sort of ideas about the
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: killer psychology. Now he could have just been again really
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: interested in the case because all of the information is
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: out there, and so he gets the polygraph test, the
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: lie detector he passes, and he also had an alibi
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: for like all of it. He was just like, I
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: think the killer does this, and it's like, yeah, I
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: feel like dude might have just been a True crime fan.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: He could have done it, but there wasn't enough evidence
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: that linked him to like any of it. Really Okay,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: So okay, So I do have to talk about the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: celebrity suspects idea, because there's no idea that it has
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: to be someone famous, Like it's a big thing there.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: It's a weird obsession that happens all through True crime.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: One of them is Bugsy Seagull, the mobster, right, so
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: he's allegedly a suspect. Well one, he's a criminal, so
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: if they can pin anything on him, they're just like, yeah,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: that'll do. It's such a weird one to pin on
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: him specifically because he wasn't known for being violent to
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: women necessarily, and if he was involved in the murder,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: like he wouldn't have been the one to do it himself.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: Like you don't get to that level of notoriety and
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: that level of hierarchy within the mob and not have
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: like people to do your dirty work for you. And
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: like it's very I mean, I know, the mob of
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: the past is at least like they're not afraid to
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: do a bit of showboating and to be like Trana,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: don't fuck with us. But that it does seem and
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it overkill, overkill. Now another another one.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: I read a theory about Orson Wells. Orson Wells, I mean,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: I mean that the man who traveled to Spain to
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: punch fascists in the face. Another suspect was Woody Guthrie,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: a folk singer right basically because of like the letters
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: that were sent to the press, some believe the handwriting
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: match like that's that was their connection. But yeah, then
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: we have some false confessions like Daniel vorhes So, Daniel Vorhees,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: he said that he had met Elizabeth Sharp back in
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty one. They'd gone on a couple of dates
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: and then just sort of disappeared into the ether. So
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: he's asked for more details. He says nothing else, but
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: he's like, I killed Elizabeth Short and so he's taken in.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: He's charged obviously, and they're like they're kind of suspicious
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: about him because they don't really think he's that, but
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: they plan a polygraph test anyway, and basically they're waiting
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: to see if he will recover from his bewildered and
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: be fuddled state, Like he's not quite with it. So
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: his confession it's it's not really believed by detectives. They're
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: really really skeptical, and he's not giving any details about
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: how he knows Elizabeth properly or like about the murder,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: and it's just kind of like he's kind of talking
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: in circles, like he's full of contradictions and confusion, and
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: it's very much all over the place. And he was
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: like known to police, like not no known, but he
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: had like a whole list of you know, like offenses
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: here and there, So yeah, they weren't weren't two and
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: on that one because like, yeah, he couldn't even lead
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: the police to the scene of the murderer. Like he
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: couldn't bring them to the crime scene, either of them.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: Another thing that happens is that they get tips all
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: over the country, right, so you've got people confessing like
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: for he's here, and then you've got you basically have
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: this military personnel who phones the LAPD Like it's officials
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: at Fort Dix right in New Jersey, and basically Joseph
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: DeMay he's one of their soldiers. He said that he
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: had been on a date with Beth Short the night
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: she disappeared, and like at this point he's in New Jersey,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: so he's like on January ninth, they'd gone on a
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: day and then his mind had gone blank, and the
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: next thing he knows, he's in New York and Pennsylvania's
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: station just like across the country. So basically, these investigators Dix,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: they had gone through the uniform that he had been
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: wearing at the time, and like one of the pockets
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: on his trousers had bloodstains. On it, and so they
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: just are digging, they start looking into him. Basically, he's
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: twenty nine years old, he's been married three times, and
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: he had previously been examined by a psychiatrists who you know,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: recommended hospitalization, hospitalization, like for psychological reasons. Effectively, like he
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: says that he'd been in California, but other soldiers at
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: the base were like, no, actually he was here, like
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: he was in show, he was in this location. He
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: wasn't there, And so it just seemed to be a
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: thing of sort of like the tigs are kind of
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: moonlight murders. It just seemed to be this false idea,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: this blank memory and filling in the blanks, combined with
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: whatever psychological issues he had. And then of course we
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: have the three main theories, the torture doctor theory, the
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: unknown local killer theory, and the butcher or the medical
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: or a butcher skill theory. So doctor George Hodell, who
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: is this LA doctor. He specializes in venereal diseases, and
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: so he's he's known as being this well he's not
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: in LA well one because he's a doctor who deals
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: with Sti's right, so he is people know it, okay,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: but he's respectable because he's a doctor, but he's also
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: not respectable because his chosen field is sexually transmitted infections
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: venereal diseases as they would sometimes be called, or they
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: would have been called back then. So there's also this,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: I mean quite probable, quite probable theory that he was
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: also a back ali abortionist because abortion was illegal back then.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: So this is all part of it. Now there's a
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: lot of i'm gonna call it, I don't want to
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: call it smoke and mirrors, but there's lots of confetti
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: and trumpets, right, there's a lot of hooplain going around
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: for the George Hodel theory. Now, I mind dain that
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: doctor George Hodell was a pretty shitty person. He was
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: a terrible person. He was a sexual sadist, He was
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: an incestuous pedophile, but a murderer of Elizabeth Short specifically,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: I don't subscribe to that particular to that particular theory.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: So his daughter, his daughter basically reported the fact that
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: she had been raped by her father. Other people had
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: claimed that they had claimed that they had seen it,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: they were witnesses to the event, and it was all
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: swept under the rug because she also claimed that her
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: father had killed the black Itttalia. Now there are there
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: is like reasonable evidence, there is reasonable evidence to say
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: that he had like a sex dungeon in his weird
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: little pyramid house and so on and so forth, and
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: that he would be engaged in like BDSM and things
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: like that, although he would be now the kind of
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: domb you'd actually want to be leading, leading the situation,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: like that's not it's not a no, but there were
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: you know, there's photographs and things of that nature. And
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: his son wrote a book. I mean, there's a there's
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: a podcast covered of evil. It's very good, is very compelling.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: And his son, Steve Odell, he wrote a book and
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: he was an laped detective now and he's like, my
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: father did it. And one of the things that really
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: threw me off of this was I was looking at
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: the website specifically, and there were photos of the dahlia
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Short and of this other woman who had
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: been photographed naked, right, which is like whatever, the naked
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: photographs like nah nudes or whatever. But I mean, if
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: they're consensual nuds, they're fine, Okay, Like that's fine. If
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: they're non consentual nudes, that's shitty. Okay, let's just lay
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: that on the table. So there's this naked woman and
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: Steve Odell She's like, this is her. This is definitely
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: like look at this, look at this, look at this ear,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: it's definitely this woman. It's definitely best short like she's
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: the woman from photograph. And I'm like, mmm mmm mmmmm.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: I've seen enough photos of Bethshore, both alive and deceased, right,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: both alive and deceased, that she is not the woman
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: in this photograph. And out of all the photographs I'd
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: seen from this collection, none of them are her. Like.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: She has a quite like, it's not our face, it's
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: not the same shape. That is a different woman. I
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of time looking at face shapes. You'd
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: be surprised how often I look at face shapes. But
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: it's so not the same woman. It's a lot of
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: confirmation bias, and the circumstantial evidence all relies on confirmation bias.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: And that's where my issue is. And so that's the
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: first part that kind of threw me off. The second
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: one was Steve Adell has not only accused as far
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: as being like the Black Dahlia Killer, but of being
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: like several other serial killers, which honestly is is pick
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: one pickle lane, because like all of this doesn't make sense. Now,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: there are reasons why he's you know, he's saying this
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: like he his dad is clearly just a terrible person
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: at the best of times. But you know, there's this
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: whole thing just because he has medical training, they assume
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: that he would do it. There's this whole theory that
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: he was performing an abortion it was botched, blah blah
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah. And like he he gets his house bugged,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: like in the nineteen fifties, Right in nineteen fifty I think,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: actually his house is bugged and it's the wires tapped
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: and there's there's a phone call and it's again it's
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: one of those pinch of salt thing because he's like
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: supposing I killer, right, supposing I did kill the Black
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: Dahlia police. They aren't gonna do anything, now, are they?
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: Are they gonna ask my secretary she's dead. Like it's
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: someone with pretty gallows humor. I can see someone being
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: in his situation and doing that just because you think
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: it's funny or b because you know you're being listened to,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: Like those are kind of options there, you know, and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: it could be and it just sounds very sarcastic to me.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: He's like, suppose and I did suppose, and added suppose
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: you did suppose you didn't like It's very I found
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: it a bit wishy washy, you know what I mean.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not fully sold on this concept, to be honest,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not fully sold on it. And I think because
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: of all the horrible things he did and because he
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: was under scrutiny continuously, he leaves the country like very sharply.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: He's like being investigated by police and he just leaves.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: I think he was up to shit anyway, bad stuff.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: He was doing bad stuff. And also, if you want
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: to run your little BDSM dungeon, if you want to,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: you know, do all the things you want to do,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: you can't really do that if you're perpetually under police surveillance.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: And you know, paranoia is also a thing. Like the
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: thing about doctors is a lot of them, there's there's
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: a superiority complex there for a lot of people, and
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: they don't like being challenged and losing controls like a
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: whole thing. But all of the evidence, I mean, read
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: the book, listen to listen to the podcast. I mean
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: I could, I could literally I could do an episode.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: I could do a full episode just on George Hodell
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: because but also I'm kind of I'm kind of done
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: talking about horrible men for a little while. I'd rather not,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: you know, for a spell. Now, again, there is no
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: physical evidence that directly links him to Elizabeth Short, and
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: it just feels like it feels like just you're so
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: desperate for that to be the answer that you're just
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: trying to load as much sort of opinion and bias
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: towards it. You know, there's this there's a theory in science.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the correct term. We used to call
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: it this Swan theory. I don't remember the proper name, right,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: And it's basically, if you want to prove something to
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: in order to remove bias, you have to try and
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: do the opposite. So if you want to prove that
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: there are no black swans, like the al Swans are white,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: in order to do that, you have to go and
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: search for the black swan, right. That is your goal.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: Your goal is to find the black swat right, and
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: that is how you prove it. And so like I
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: do that a lot with my research, which is why sidebar.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I will, you know, I'll you know, read the
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: information that allegedly contradicts you know, what I'm trying to say.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: So I will try and look for the opposite evidence,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: which is always really handy whenever I have to talk
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: about something specifically controversial, and like whenever I discuss mother Teresa,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: because I'll have her own letters in it, and I
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: will have you know, things that she wrote, and I
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: will have proper like catholic you know, opinions like articles
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: like I'll have that in my sources. And I do
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: that so that when someone turns around and goes, oh,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: your sources are lies, and I'm like, oh, it's mother
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: to Raisa's own letters a lie because I'm a bitch
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: so and a petty one at that. So that's what
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: I do there. So George Hodell, the George Hodell theory
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: basically tortured her so she died, couldn't have posed her.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: Then we have the unknown local killer theory. Basically this
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: means that Elizabeth Short was murdered by some dude who
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: escaped identification. Like again, it's post war LA, there's a
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: lot of people with a lot of people moving back
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: and forth, and so he's there, he commits the murder,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: he gets to know Elizabeth short. Maybe he offers her
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: somewhere to stay, which is why she just kind of disappears,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: but he doesn't take her to go back and get
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: her luggage. You have all of these false confessions, all
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: of this that's just pouring in. It's easy if someone
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: did do that for it to slip between the cracks.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: And of course we didn't have the same sort of
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: DNA profiling. The forensic science just wasn't where it would
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: need to be. And also the body was washed with gasoline,
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: which is like that's something I actually don't know, which
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: I think will be interesting to find out. It is like,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: how easy was it to have like a high amount
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: of gasoline around, Like like would it be normal for
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: it to be stored somewhere, you know, especially in like
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: nineteen forties la My brain just goes flammable. So the
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: person that would have known the area like some kind
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: of familiarity, but you could be anyone from like a
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: traveling salesman to a local like you've got options and
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: you're there and you can leave, you know, maybe you
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: were a surgeon in the army, maybe you were, goodness,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: a hunter passing through like I. Actually I don't. The
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: reason I don't believe it's a hunter actually is because
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: the body isn't drained correctly. Because if you wanted to
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: drain a body of blood, like for ease, the first
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: thing you do is like string it up upside down
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: and cut the throat. But the ligature marks on Elizabeth
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: shorts like wrists, ankles, and neck, none of them are
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: tight enough to do that. There's the pressure, isn't there.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: Then of course we have the medical uh Bitcher theory,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: effectively that the killer had anatomical training and or professional
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: experience with chopping bodies. So by set to cleanly. Now
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: they say cleanly right, bodies are heavy. The heavier thing
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: is the easier it is to cut right. You're not
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: moving up and down a lot. It's not like you're
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: trying to cut a grape. When you can cut a potato.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: You know, it's bigger the mass. And if you get
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: a sharp enough knife you can cut through anything. You know,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: if you're doing it with a sharp enough blade, it's
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: not like you're you know, I was gonna say axing
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: and hatching, I was like hatcheting but like it's not
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: like you're, you know, chopping it with an axe. If
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: you're cutting through flesh, then that's a fairly easier option.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: You could have had a sword. Maybe you could have
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: just had a sword collection. Now you don't really need
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: again medical training to be able to cut things cleanly.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: But if you're a butcher, you know, or if you're
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: a surgeon, like if you're used to dealing with like
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: a corpse, like if you're a mortician and you're doing autopsies, like,
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: that's also a very reasonable theory, Like there are options,
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: you're not limited to surgeon, which I know, I know.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: I think again, I think it's all because of that hemicopectomy.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: Like that's what I think. I think it's all because
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: of that. Finally, we have this serial killer theory. So
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: the idea is that this is an escalation. Like here's
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: the thing. You don't start off with this level of murder, right,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: you don't start off that way like you build up. Now,
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: if she died because her mouth was cut open because
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: of the hemorrhage there, that could have been an accident,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: that could have been something they weren't expecting. It was
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: a step too far. But again there's an escalation because
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: of all the type of cuts and mutilation that was
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: done like pre mortem, like when she was still alive.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: So this could have been an escalation. And there's an
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: idea that this is like a serial killer who's all
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: over California and this is like ritualistic because the body
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: is posed in a particular way. Now I haven't seen
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: any cases that are as similar, but like there's a
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: theory that you know, it's an escalation and they're working through.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: But I haven't seen anything like this. Now. I did
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: hear your theory about the was it the Cleveland Torso murders?
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: But I would need to look into that more. I haven't.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: I don't actually know much about that case specifically, so
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: I would need to delve into that. And this case
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: was always going to be a tough one because there
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: was just so much that went wrong. It was such
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: a big case. You have this crime scene contamination, There
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: are records that are either incomplete or lost. Like again,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: there's so many things that we don't have, information that
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: was never put out there. You've got four confessions. You know,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: Danna is not preserved, like a bunch of stuff is missing,
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: and the whole media circus that revolved around it. The sensationalism,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: it really just it really just twisted the narrative about
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: what happened, and a lot of people wanted to see
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short as just silacious, Like it's a very sillacious crime.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: That's why a lot of the theories revolve around her
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: being pregnant or a sex worker. It's always this way
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: to make her seem slightly more I'm not going to
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: say deserving of murder, but it's kind of that, you know,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: victim blaming. And we know so much about Elizabeth Short
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: because we talk about not even her so but the
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: Black Dahlia. And it's just the continuation of women, especially
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: victims of course, but women, especially victims of violent crimes,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: becoming footnotes in their own stories. Like I discussed this
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: when we were talking about the whole Jack the Ripper theory,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: and it's just it just makes me angry. And I
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: was actually thinking earlier, I was like, I know that
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: I have to finish writing this damn book of mine.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: But I was like, oh, I had a plan for
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: book number two, but now I knew how a new
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: plan for book number two. But I need to finish
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: book number one first, because I was like, wow, what
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: if I talked about all over the myths revolving all
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: around these old timey crimes. I was like, that's something
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: I could do because that's in my wheelhouse. But that
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: would be like a lot more in depth and a
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: lot more at work. And yeah, like murderers typically happen,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: they're usually caused by someone close to the victim. That's
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: typically how it goes. Now, this could be something else,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: but that is usually how it works, and that's why
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: obviously they were going to this address book. That being said,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: if that address book was planted, then that like is
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: another web. I just the killer's taunting and then he's not,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: and then you've got so many false leads and so
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: many copycats coming in that if they wanted to do
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: anything else and mess with the press, it's just gone now.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: I heard as well as somebody somebody compared the zodiac
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: to the black Dahlia, and it's like, please stop. It's like,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: stop comparing everything to the zodiac, okay, because like the
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: Tigus are kind of moonlight. Murderers were compared and this
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: was compared, and it's like one the timeline is quite
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: quite a large time difference, first of all, and then
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: the ms are completely different, the moos are completely different.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: Like pay attention to this, Like just look at the crime,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: look at the crime committed. They're different crimes. It's it's
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: just anyway. But yes, Beth Short, Betty Elizabeth. You know,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: there's so many, so many tales, so many stories, so
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: many myths about her, and she's become this sort of
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: yeah myth, really legend, an infamous legend, and even in death,
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: she'll never get peace, you know. And one other thing
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: that bothers me is people want a good answer. They
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: want a juicy, meaty answer. It's what they want. They
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: want something tantalizing and sensational, and they'll take something sneaky
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: or tricky or cruel and violent when it could be
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: something so much more mundane. It's just some dude out there.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: And I don't subscribe to that whole There was definitely
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: a woman who did it, Like I mean, maybe maybe actually, well,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: someone out a car anyway, someone who could afford a
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: car in nineteen forty seven, so someone who had I
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: would assume the person would have to have a job
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: right in order to get a car in nineteen forty
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: seven again, La, I need to look it up, but yeah,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: we'll never know who did it. It's one of those
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: stories that just kind of float into the ether. Now.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: One of the things actually before I before we end
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: is people always like ask You're like, oh, if you
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: could go back in time, like what crime would you
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: like you like to you know, what would you like
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: to know? But like, what's really weird is the way
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: they phrase it, right, They're like, oh, what crime would
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: you like to go back in time? And like, so, right,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: what would you like to go back in time and
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: get the answer to? And I'm like, one, if I'm
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: going back in time, that is an interesting plot point,
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: but like it's so weird. It's such a weird one.
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people will say I'd love to
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: go back in time and find out what happened to
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: the Black Dahlia, And I'm like, or you could just
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: not go back in time and find out what happened
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: to the Black Dahia if we're doing magical wishes, like
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: I don't need to see that in real life, you know. Anyway.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short lived a life that was at the time unremarkable.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: She struggled for money, her family were poor, her sisters
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: were married. She searched for love and didn't receive it.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: She flopped from A to B just trying to survive
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: a little dusting along the way. A life and death
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: shrouded in myth and mystery, and a case that will
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: never have a satisfying conclusion because y'all just love the drama.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: Well not y'all, if you're listening to me, maybe you
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: just did want the evidence. But so ends our story
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: on Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. If you liked my
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: retelling of this really fucking horrible story, feel free to
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: rate in review five stars. If you didn't like it,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: you can just keep your mouth stup. I don't need
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: to hear it. And so, yeah, it's been a long one,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: this has, I mean, so follow me on the socials,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: you know where to go. And it's recommendation time for
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: watching She's creak. Watch She's creak. Just go watch it.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. It's fabulous. Katherine Hower for reading Rebel of
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: the Regency by Anne Foster. Read it. Anne is amazing.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: She's from vulgar history. She's fabulous. It's just she knows
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: more about Caroline of Brunswick than I think any other
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: person on the planet. It's just it's amazing. I don't
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: know if it's still on pre order or if you
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: can just like buy it now, but go buy it.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: Go support her. She's an amazing historian and I love
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: her so much. Okay, so listening is finally, you know,
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: listen to some Kate Bush. Listen to some Kate Bush.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: That's that's what I've got now. So with that, I
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: shall bid you and you adios. Au revoir zem My
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: Friends by