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178. Black Dahlia - Part 1 · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

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Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
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Speaker 1: The history podcast that is not your history class with
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Speaker 1: me your host Katie Charlwood, history harlote and reader of books. Now,
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Speaker 1: as a millennial, I'd say that I've lived through, you know,
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Speaker 1: a good amount of major historical events. Some might say
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Speaker 1: an abundance of major historical events, and frankly, we can
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Speaker 1: just be chill for a while. Maybe, Like I'm just
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Speaker 1: saying that, it would be great if we could just
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Speaker 1: not have to live through yet another major historical event,
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Speaker 1: unless that major historical event was a great time of
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Speaker 1: peace and kindness and consideration and love for our fellow
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Speaker 1: man women at C right, that would be great. That
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Speaker 1: would be great to have. I would like to not
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Speaker 1: have to worry about my kids growing up any world
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Speaker 1: that is on fire, both literally and metaphorically. So a
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Speaker 1: lot has happened, she says, gesturing vaguely at the world,
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Speaker 1: a lot of terrible things. And as a historian had sociologist,
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Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you, I'm worried. I'm worried, and
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Speaker 1: because of everything that's going on, I very nearly didn't
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Speaker 1: almost make this episode. Like my original plan was always
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Speaker 1: to end you know my nineteen forties crime series with
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Speaker 1: the Black Dahlia, Like it's such a famous slash infamous case.
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Speaker 1: You know, it has been mythologized over the years. It's
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Speaker 1: like almost fictional. I mean, it has been fictionalized in
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Speaker 1: across the board really and within that. You know, Elizabeth Short,
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Speaker 1: the victim, is a footnote in her own story, and
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Speaker 1: I thought, I hate it. I hate it so much.
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Speaker 1: This happens all the time when it comes to crime,
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Speaker 1: especially when women are the victims. And it's this historically,
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Speaker 1: you know, and they're just an addition. They're like morsels
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Speaker 1: and the meal, like a bit to nibble. Honors are
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Speaker 1: going through and I find that really offensive. And I'm
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Speaker 1: sorry I've been losing my voice for a little bit.
2:45
Speaker 1: But I sorry, I've been losing my voice a little bit.
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Speaker 1: But this is part one. I did a vote on
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Speaker 1: my Instagram about whether to do this is one, like
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Speaker 1: just really long episode, and everybody voted. All the people
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Speaker 1: who voted, it was like seventy thirty almost with two parts.
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Speaker 1: So I'm going to do two parts and I'm going
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Speaker 1: to try and cover as much in depth information as possible.
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Speaker 1: And Okay, I live for drama. But I live for
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Speaker 1: like sneaky drama, snidy drama, like heists and you know,
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Speaker 1: sassy remarks and all that jazz. Right. What I don't
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Speaker 1: like is the dramatization and the grotesque great and gratuous. Nope,
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Speaker 1: the gratuitousness. Gratuitousness, No gratuitous, it's just gratuitous. That's that's great.
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Speaker 1: I'm really good at the words, guys. But I will
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Speaker 1: provide details. I will provide accurate information when it comes
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Speaker 1: to the autopsy and things. I will be as clinical
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Speaker 1: as possible to provide as much accurate informed without being
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Speaker 1: fucking salacious about him. Also, I will probably swear at
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Speaker 1: parts of this due to undiluted rage. So if you're
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Speaker 1: not okay with you know, the discussion of murder and
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Speaker 1: also autopsies and things like that, you might want to
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Speaker 1: exit stage left. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Kerrie,
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Speaker 1: you are four minutes in quite your Jebel Jabba, in
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Speaker 1: fact me, in fact you. I will. But first we've
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Speaker 1: got to get our source on hard boiled Hollywood Crime
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Speaker 1: and Punishment in post war Los Angeles by John Lewis.
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Speaker 1: The Black Dahlia, los Angeles' most Famous Unsolved Murder by
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Speaker 1: Jim Bartlett. Severed, The True Story of the Black Dahlia
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Speaker 1: by John Gilmore. Cold Cases, Famous Unsolved Mysteries, Crimes and
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Speaker 1: Disappearances in America by Helena Katz. Black Dahlia Avenger, A
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Speaker 1: Genius for Murder by Steve Hodell. Sisters and Death the
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Speaker 1: Black Dahlia, The Prairie Heiress and their Hunter by Eli Rankel.
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Speaker 1: Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer by Janis Norton and
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Speaker 1: Michael Newton. FBI Archives, Black Dahlia a short on the
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Speaker 1: FBI Vault. There are also many, many, many, just newspaper articles.
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Speaker 1: We've got the Los Angeles Times, the Examiner, the Herald,
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Speaker 1: We've got United Press, the Times and the Daily News. Right,
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Speaker 1: It's just it's just everywhere. There's there's a reason I
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Speaker 1: have subscription to newspapers dot com. I was it in
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Speaker 1: comfortably good? Then let's begin. It was a Friday morning,
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Speaker 1: jan fifteenth, nineteen forty seven, and missus Bertie Beerzinger. She
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Speaker 1: had left her home at three seven oh five South
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Speaker 1: Norton Street with her three year old daughter Anne, on
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Speaker 1: their way to a cobbler to get a pair of
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Speaker 1: shoes repaired. They walked south down Norton Avenue in Lambert Park.
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Speaker 1: It was around ten thirty am that they were nearing
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Speaker 1: a vacant lot in the three eight hundred block of Norton.
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Speaker 1: It was here that Missus Beersinger spotted something pale in
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Speaker 1: the tall grass ahead. At first she thought it was
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Speaker 1: a mannequin. Spoiler alerked it was not a mannequin. As
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Speaker 1: the gut closer, she realized that laying just a foot
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Speaker 1: away from the sidewalk was a female body mutilated and
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Speaker 1: cut in half. She rushes with her daughter to the
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Speaker 1: nearest so that she could call the police. And like,
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Speaker 1: if you look at the crime scene photographs right, you
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Speaker 1: can see there's a good distance, like it's an empty space,
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Speaker 1: Like there's a good distance before you see houses in
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Speaker 1: the distance. So like she gets there because like that's
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Speaker 1: not the thing one sees on the regular. And we
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Speaker 1: will discuss this more later on, but there are basically
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Speaker 1: two versions as to what happens next. One is that
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Speaker 1: she's like super calm and collected and she's just trying
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Speaker 1: to explain that you know, there's a mannequin or a
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Speaker 1: naked woman just like out in the grass, you know,
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Speaker 1: go deal with it. The other is is that she
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Speaker 1: is absolutely terrified because she's just come across a bisected corpse,
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Speaker 1: and because she's just all like freaking out, she ends
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Speaker 1: up just trying to explain it but not doing a
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Speaker 1: very good job of it. And so there's this communication
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Speaker 1: issue with the University division of the LAPD. So the
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Speaker 1: communication officer like, they end up calling a patrol car
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Speaker 1: to the scene a possible three ninety at thirty ninth
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Speaker 1: and Norton Avenue. When officers Frank Perkins and William Fitzgerald
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Speaker 1: arrive on the scene, it's clear that this is not
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Speaker 1: a three to ninety code for a stuporous drunk. Oh
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Speaker 1: and Betty, her name and phone number were not taken
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Speaker 1: by the dispatch officer like either, So they know that
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Speaker 1: somebody made the call. They know a woman made the call.
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Speaker 1: They don't know who this woman is. So these two
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Speaker 1: officers they arrive, they're not homicide detectives. They're just a
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Speaker 1: patrol car that was told to go get a drunk
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Speaker 1: person that was just all over the place, right, And
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Speaker 1: so reporters and journalists they're like listening to the police
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Speaker 1: radio as well. Yeah, so they hear you know, stripper
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Speaker 1: is drunk, possible naked lady. They're like, okay, this is weird.
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Speaker 1: Let's get in on this because if nothing else, you know,
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Speaker 1: it's January slow news day. Off they go. So they
9:33
Speaker 1: radio the boys, the two cops, they radio for backup, right,
9:37
Speaker 1: because they're just like, hey, this is this is clearly
9:43
Speaker 1: a bisected corpse. So it wouldn't be long before investigators
9:48
Speaker 1: and the press would be swarming all over the scene
9:53
Speaker 1: because yeah, you've got these journalists listening in for like
9:56
Speaker 1: interesting calls over the police radio. And so when they could,
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Speaker 1: they would try to be first on the scene so
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Speaker 1: that they could get the story to the press. They
10:06
Speaker 1: wanted to like get the scoop. And it wasn't surprising
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Speaker 1: to see like journalists at crime scenes like so much
10:15
Speaker 1: so that like when you look at these sort of
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Speaker 1: old timy crimes, there were so many more like photographs
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Speaker 1: because they were physically developed that give you so much
10:28
Speaker 1: perspective of the crime scene. But yeah, some of the reporters,
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Speaker 1: because like they'd called homicide and so some of these
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Speaker 1: reporters right got there before the homicide detectives did. Now,
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Speaker 1: Aggie Underwood claims to have been the first reporter on
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Speaker 1: the scene. Meanwhile, reporter Will Fowler and photographer Felix Preego
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Speaker 1: say that they were the first to arrive. Between officers, detectives, journalists,
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Speaker 1: photographers and just you know, nosy people, the crime scene
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Speaker 1: was very much contaminated. They actually had at one point
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Speaker 1: to make a human change, just like around the perimeter,
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Speaker 1: just to stop more people from like trampling all over
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Speaker 1: the crime scene. Like they had to make a human
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Speaker 1: wall because too many people were getting on top of
11:35
Speaker 1: the active crime scene. Investigators weren't exactly new to a
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Speaker 1: body dump. It's Los Angeles. It was a growing city
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Speaker 1: and vacant lots were a fairly standard option. However, typically
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Speaker 1: the body would be hidden like, it wouldn't be out
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Speaker 1: in the open. There would be an attempt to disguise
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Speaker 1: and cover up, you know. And this was different. This
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Speaker 1: body had been posed elbows bent, legs spread, a shocking
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Speaker 1: sight designed to send a message. Detective PW. Freestone told
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Speaker 1: reporters that this was the most brutal example of a
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Speaker 1: sex crime that he had ever seen. And this was
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Speaker 1: no spring chick, you know. This fellow was long in
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Speaker 1: the tooth. The victim had been cleanly cut in half,
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Speaker 1: drained of blood. There were cuts all over her body.
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Speaker 1: Her face had been beaten, and she had been cut
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Speaker 1: from ear to ear. Her lower half had been for
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Speaker 1: a lack of a better term, mutilated. Initially because of
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Speaker 1: her her height and you know, her petite frame, investigators
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Speaker 1: initially thought that she might be a teenager around fifteen sixteen,
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Speaker 1: and so at the scene, the Los Angeles County Coroner
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Speaker 1: Frederick Nubar recorded the bisected victim as Jane Doe number one.
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Speaker 1: So this was the first unidentified female corpse that they
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Speaker 1: had discovered in nineteen forty seven, So that would be well,
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Speaker 1: I mean, it's the fifteenth of January, they're halfway through
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Speaker 1: the month. You know. Doctor Nuber would perform an autopsy
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Speaker 1: the following day, but the victim's fingerprints were taken at
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Speaker 1: the crime scene. News about the murders spread like wildfire,
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Speaker 1: and soon calls flirted into the LAPD central station, you know,
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Speaker 1: fearing that this Jane Doe was their missing friend or
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Speaker 1: family member. Reporters had put together a description and there
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Speaker 1: was a sketch taken at the scene as well, and like,
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Speaker 1: the one thing that always sticks in my head was
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Speaker 1: one of one of the reporters described this again bisected
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Speaker 1: women is having and I quote trim legs. And this
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Speaker 1: was when they thought she was a teenager. Like this
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Speaker 1: teenager has trim legs. Sorry, this teenage murdyr victim has
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Speaker 1: trim legs. I feel like an appropriate language even for
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Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. So the cops thought they had a
14:55
Speaker 1: lead when women's clothing had been discovered stashed behind a
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Speaker 1: used car lot on West Adams Boulevard, because, like Jane Do,
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Speaker 1: she had been found in the nip completely naked, and
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Speaker 1: this car lot was only three and a half miles
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Speaker 1: from the crime scene. But their hopes were quickly dashed
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Speaker 1: when they searched this like bundle and they found a
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Speaker 1: dry cleaning tag of the women's info on right, a
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Speaker 1: woman who informed them that her laundry had been stolen
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Speaker 1: from her car a few days earlier. This case had
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Speaker 1: happened in the morning and then later in the afternoon.
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Speaker 1: They thought, wow, we've got this clue, and it turned
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Speaker 1: out to just be a dead end. That afternoon, Aggie
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Speaker 1: Underwood story front page story, I might add, in the
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Speaker 1: Herald Express newspaper hit the stands. So there used to
15:53
Speaker 1: be like a morning edition of the newspaper and an
15:56
Speaker 1: afternoon edition of the newspaper, so like you would get
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Speaker 1: news twice a day. Now, like newspapers were printing. It
16:04
Speaker 1: was it was the main source of information, and not
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Speaker 1: only because you got like the story, but you also
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Speaker 1: got pictures. So the newspapers were big business and they
16:17
Speaker 1: were huge for this time period. And so there it
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Speaker 1: is in black and white. Girl found sline near LA Coliseum,
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Speaker 1: and so began the public subsession with one of LA's
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Speaker 1: oldest unsolved murders. Gendo's fingerprints had been taken earlier at
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Speaker 1: the crime scene, and so they were compared with the
16:44
Speaker 1: prints on file at the Sheriff's Department and of course
16:48
Speaker 1: the LAPD, but nada, No matches were found. The next step,
16:54
Speaker 1: of course, was the FBI. So their plan was to
16:58
Speaker 1: send the prints by airmail to Washington, d C. But
17:04
Speaker 1: the best led plans of mice and men because a
17:08
Speaker 1: snowstorm had shut down everything east of Saint Louis. Aircraft
17:14
Speaker 1: had been grounded and it would take days for snow
17:18
Speaker 1: to clear and for it to be safe for any
17:20
Speaker 1: air traffic to resume. So detectives Harry Hansen and Phinnis
17:25
Speaker 1: Brown were offered a solution when they stopped by the
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Speaker 1: Los Angeles Examiner's office because they'd gone to pick up
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Speaker 1: a copy of the newspaper sketch of Jane Doe number
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Speaker 1: one sidebar. The Examiner was owned by none other than
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Speaker 1: William Randolph Hurst, who also owned the Herald that Aggie
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Speaker 1: Underwood was writing for, along with like twenty six other
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Speaker 1: papers across the US. He was a newspaper. Newspaper was
18:01
Speaker 1: big business. Also, what somebody controlling the news narrative? What
18:07
Speaker 1: a silly thing to bring up for no reason. So anyway,
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Speaker 1: the assisting managing editor, Waldo Willard, offered the LP detectives
18:20
Speaker 1: the use of their sound photo an early facsimile or
18:25
Speaker 1: fax machine. It had never been used to send fingerprints,
18:30
Speaker 1: but they didn't really see any reason why it wouldn't work,
18:35
Speaker 1: So Captain Jack Donaghue agreed to a deal. In exchange
18:40
Speaker 1: for sending the victim's fingerprints, the Examiner would receive exclusives
18:44
Speaker 1: in the case. Now, it wasn't uncommon for the press
18:51
Speaker 1: and the police to work together like especially back then. Now,
18:56
Speaker 1: you know, police hold information back more like they don't
19:01
Speaker 1: get out as many details of the crime. You know,
19:05
Speaker 1: until after, but yeah, back then less so. So Wollard
19:12
Speaker 1: called the Washington Bureau of Hearst Newspapers. He relayed the
19:16
Speaker 1: information to Ray Richards, the director of the DC office.
19:23
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but so many of these names have alliteration.
19:28
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just saying that they sound like they've
19:31
Speaker 1: been written by Stanley. Ray Richards then contacted the FBI
19:36
Speaker 1: and arranged for the bureau to receive the fingerprints in
19:39
Speaker 1: the morning. So like it took them a couple of
19:43
Speaker 1: goos for a clear image of the Prince to be transmitted,
19:47
Speaker 1: but they made it to the Examiner's office before dawn
19:51
Speaker 1: and Washington, DC, So when the Prince got to DC,
19:58
Speaker 1: it took less than an hour for the FBI to
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Speaker 1: find a match in their database of over one hundred
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Speaker 1: million fingerprint records. In fact, they found two. The first
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Speaker 1: was from an application for a job as a clerk
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Speaker 1: at the Campcook Army PX near Lompoc in January nineteen
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Speaker 1: forty three. I had to look up what PX was
20:24
Speaker 1: because I didn't recognize it because PX, to me, because
20:30
Speaker 1: I'm used to reading Miracle records, would mean patient like
20:34
Speaker 1: px's patient. But PX is post exchange, which is it
20:41
Speaker 1: comes from like the frontier times and there would be
20:46
Speaker 1: like a military post. It was just it all comes
20:50
Speaker 1: from that. We'll go into that more another time. The
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Speaker 1: second set of fingerprints was when the victim was arrested
21:00
Speaker 1: were underrated drinking on the twenty third of September nineteen
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Speaker 1: forty three, So they're both from the same year. So
21:10
Speaker 1: because they had this, because she was arrested, they had
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Speaker 1: a print of a mugshot and most importantly, a name,
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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short. But who was Elizabeth Short? Elizabeth Short was
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Speaker 1: born on the twenty ninth of July nineteen twenty four
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Speaker 1: in Hyde Park, Boston, Massachusetts, to Cleo Alvin Short Junior,
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Speaker 1: a United States Navy sailor, and Phoebe May Sawyer, a housewife.
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Speaker 1: Elizabeth was the third of five daughters to the couple.
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Speaker 1: Her two older sisters were Virginia May and Dorothea, and
22:05
Speaker 1: her younger sisters were el Nora and Muriel. You know what,
22:11
Speaker 1: we don't say the name Dorothea much anymore, or Muriel
22:16
Speaker 1: or Mariol for that matter, el Nora. Also, let's bring
22:22
Speaker 1: el Nora back. Like I love I love old names.
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Speaker 1: Let's bring old names back. Raised in Medford, Massachusetts. Elizabeth,
22:31
Speaker 1: who also went by Beth or Betty, had a pretty
22:37
Speaker 1: comfortable childhood, at least in her early years. When her
22:41
Speaker 1: father Cleo left the navy, he had a fairly successful
22:45
Speaker 1: business building miniature golf courses. Like this wasn't a random thing.
22:51
Speaker 1: He wasn't just like I really need to build a
22:53
Speaker 1: golf course. No, Like, miniature golf was like this big
22:58
Speaker 1: craze in the nineteen twenty and things were going, you know,
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Speaker 1: well for him. That was until the nineteen twenty nine
23:07
Speaker 1: stock market crash. When the markets fall and people are
23:12
Speaker 1: struggling to buy food, you know, they're not really interested
23:16
Speaker 1: in playing miniature golf, and so his business failed. The
23:22
Speaker 1: family were in financial trouble. In one day, he left
23:26
Speaker 1: the house and just didn't come back. It was in
23:32
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, so, a few months after the crash, and
23:37
Speaker 1: his car was found abandoned on the Charleston Bridge, and
23:42
Speaker 1: it was assumed that, you know, with everything that was
23:45
Speaker 1: going on, and like many other businessmen at the time,
23:50
Speaker 1: but he had just ended his own life by jumping
23:53
Speaker 1: into the Charles River. And Phoebe, now considered a widow,
24:00
Speaker 1: had to support her family, all her daughters by herself,
24:05
Speaker 1: so she gets a job as a bookkeeper, you know,
24:08
Speaker 1: just to keep their heads above water, so that she
24:11
Speaker 1: can support her five children, who most, if not all
24:16
Speaker 1: of them, are under the age of ten. And at
24:22
Speaker 1: the age of six years old, Beth Short's father had gone.
24:28
Speaker 1: He had disappeared from her life, and her life went
24:32
Speaker 1: from relative comfort to one pressed under financial stress, like
24:40
Speaker 1: she's lost a parent, her family are struggling through economic hardship,
24:45
Speaker 1: and on top of this, she's suffering from respiratory issues.
24:52
Speaker 1: She had bronchitis and asthma, and at fifteen, had to
24:57
Speaker 1: undergo lung surgery. The surgery doctor suggested that Beth would
25:02
Speaker 1: benefit from, you know, not being in a cold place
25:06
Speaker 1: during the winter months. So whenever you have respiratory issues,
25:10
Speaker 1: whether it's like bronchitis, asthma, copd, et cetera, that you know,
25:17
Speaker 1: the cold can trigger things like coughs and other breathing issues,
25:21
Speaker 1: and it's not exactly you know, optimum for you. So
25:28
Speaker 1: warmer climates, you know, in those colder months, would be
25:31
Speaker 1: better for her, you know. Now, in order to reduce
25:36
Speaker 1: her respiratory problems, Phoebe May sent Beth to stay with
25:40
Speaker 1: family and friends in Miami, Florida. Now, now, okay, I
25:47
Speaker 1: know I'm not super great at geography. However, like I
25:52
Speaker 1: always thought Miami was like, you know, Florida wise was
25:56
Speaker 1: sort of humid. I thought Florida was like a mid state,
26:02
Speaker 1: like you have moisture in the air, and like moisture
26:06
Speaker 1: effects like respiratory issues too, So like somewhere with a
26:12
Speaker 1: dry heat I would assume would be more beneficial. So
26:15
Speaker 1: like it's kind of moist over there in Florida. And
26:19
Speaker 1: then on like the East Coast. Did I just go
26:23
Speaker 1: like never eat readed weight to remember what the East
26:26
Speaker 1: Coast woods? Yeah, yeah, I did, so California dry heat
26:30
Speaker 1: would be better for the lungs. No, I feel like
26:35
Speaker 1: that's a thing. Anyhow, Beth would do this trip, spending
26:41
Speaker 1: time those like winter, those really cold Massachusett winters, like
26:47
Speaker 1: she wouldn't she wouldn't be dealing with that. She instead
26:50
Speaker 1: would be in Miami, Florida, where she would stay for
26:53
Speaker 1: the next three years. Beth would drop out of Medford
26:59
Speaker 1: High School during her sophomore year. Whether it was you know,
27:04
Speaker 1: all of the travel disruption, or maybe she just didn't
27:08
Speaker 1: enjoy school, maybe she didn't form friendships very well, like
27:13
Speaker 1: she was done for whatever reason, she was just not
27:17
Speaker 1: in it anymore. And so they're just kind of getting by.
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Speaker 1: And then in nineteen forty two, Phoebe received a letter
27:30
Speaker 1: one she was certainly not expecting to receive. It was
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Speaker 1: from Cleo, her husband, who was not dead. No, he
27:41
Speaker 1: had not thrown himself off a bridge and into the
27:43
Speaker 1: Charles River twelve years earlier. No, he was not only
27:49
Speaker 1: alive and well, but he had a new life and
27:54
Speaker 1: a new family to boot. Turns out he just abandoned
27:58
Speaker 1: his car and took the midnight train going anywhere, and
28:02
Speaker 1: by anywhere, I mean Vallejo, California. So Cleo apologizes in
28:08
Speaker 1: this letter, and she also asks Phoebe for forgiveness, and yeah,
28:16
Speaker 1: Phoebe said, absolutely fucking not not a hope. Now, Beth,
28:23
Speaker 1: she was eighteen at this point, and she already had
28:27
Speaker 1: to go to warmer places in the winter anyway, and
28:30
Speaker 1: so she said fuck this for a game of soldiers
28:33
Speaker 1: and decided that she was going to go to California
28:36
Speaker 1: to stay with the father that she had not seen
28:38
Speaker 1: since she was six years old. Now, his abandonment of
28:45
Speaker 1: the family, like it really affected her deeply, like it
28:49
Speaker 1: was an issue for her, which of course it was
28:53
Speaker 1: because she was abandoned by her father at six, and
28:59
Speaker 1: on top of that, is well, like so eighteen years old,
29:02
Speaker 1: Like she's a teenager and she's just found out that
29:06
Speaker 1: her dad didn't die, which is like she's already grieved
29:10
Speaker 1: for that, she's already dealt through that emotion, and now
29:14
Speaker 1: she has to deal with the fact that he is
29:15
Speaker 1: not only alive, but for over a decade he chose
29:21
Speaker 1: to not communicate with the family, to not mention anything,
29:25
Speaker 1: to leave them to struggle alone. Now, so let me
29:33
Speaker 1: talk about daddy issues. And it's like, oh, a man
29:36
Speaker 1: abandoned his family and it's somehow the girl's fault, Like
29:41
Speaker 1: get a fucking grip, Like that is zero accountability, Like
29:46
Speaker 1: you pass the buck every single time, as if, oh,
29:49
Speaker 1: we've created this problem, but we're gonna blame you know,
29:52
Speaker 1: the people who have to deal with the problem. Like
29:56
Speaker 1: that's that's how we're playing this motherfuckers, is it? Oh? Now,
30:04
Speaker 1: she had hoped for a relationship with her father, but
30:09
Speaker 1: he was not a shining example of a doting dad
30:14
Speaker 1: who knew Instead of this budding father daughter relationship that
30:19
Speaker 1: she'd probably imagined up a thousand times in her head
30:24
Speaker 1: instead of that he was a mean drunk and he
30:29
Speaker 1: wanted her around to be a housekeeper, not to foster
30:32
Speaker 1: a relationship. So he got mad that she wouldn't stay
30:40
Speaker 1: in and keep house like, he got mad that she
30:43
Speaker 1: wanted to go out and do things, and you know,
30:47
Speaker 1: instead of darning his socks. Right, he was working at
30:52
Speaker 1: the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in the San Francisco Bay,
30:56
Speaker 1: So like nowadays, that's like a forty minute commute, so
30:59
Speaker 1: I'm gonna assume it would be longer then, So he
31:04
Speaker 1: would be working, and he now he allegedly had a
31:09
Speaker 1: new family, like he claimed they had a new family,
31:11
Speaker 1: but clearly this family he didn't care for them very much.
31:18
Speaker 1: I have a sneaking suspicion that basically, like it was
31:22
Speaker 1: a shit show. And eventually his family just like left
31:25
Speaker 1: him and didn't want to deal with him anymore. And
31:28
Speaker 1: so he writes back to you know, the family he
31:32
Speaker 1: abandoned twelve years earlier, to go like, oh, I'm doing
31:36
Speaker 1: great love to reconnect with you, you know how like sometimes
31:43
Speaker 1: an ex will message you at Christmas time like that.
31:48
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Claio and Beth were arguing so much
31:55
Speaker 1: that Beth moved out a month later in January nineteen
31:59
Speaker 1: forty so like December nineteen forty two, she's there. She
32:07
Speaker 1: lasts a month like they are fighting. They are just
32:12
Speaker 1: it's intense. They're just not getting wrong with each other.
32:15
Speaker 1: And Cleo he makes her leave. He said that he
32:19
Speaker 1: didn't want anything to do with her or the rest
32:21
Speaker 1: of the family again. So she goes and you know,
32:27
Speaker 1: she's got like some education, and she goes out and
32:33
Speaker 1: gets a job. She gets to Camp Cook and she
32:38
Speaker 1: gets a job there as a civilian clerk. So Camp
32:42
Speaker 1: Cook is now the Vandenberg Air Force Base, and so
32:46
Speaker 1: she's not there for very long. She's there and she
32:49
Speaker 1: gets voted camp cook camp cutie. You know, I'm genuinely
32:56
Speaker 1: surprised that someone somewhere doesn't have like a bum poor
33:00
Speaker 1: sticker that says like camp Cook, Camp Qurie nineteen body three,
33:06
Speaker 1: like somewhere. But yeah, it's like when she applies for
33:10
Speaker 1: the job, that's when she gets, you know, the fingerprints
33:15
Speaker 1: taken for the first time. So as she's working there,
33:18
Speaker 1: like the first well, she's pretty quiet, she's pretty shy
33:21
Speaker 1: and reserved, like everyone thinks she's really refined and respectful.
33:28
Speaker 1: You know, she doesn't really you know, make noise. After
33:34
Speaker 1: a few weeks, she does start spending time with soldiers,
33:37
Speaker 1: so she goes out in dates and you know, she's
33:41
Speaker 1: seen in their company. There's not a lot of information
33:45
Speaker 1: out with that, but that's basically basically the story. So
33:51
Speaker 1: other women who are working there, they're not too keen
33:53
Speaker 1: with this teenage girl going on these dates with these
33:57
Speaker 1: like different Air forcemen or whatever other type of army
34:02
Speaker 1: people are at the base, I guess. So after she
34:05
Speaker 1: leaves campcook, which is like February marchish, you know, she
34:10
Speaker 1: does end up getting like other jobs. So she does
34:13
Speaker 1: like waitressing and stuff. And now for the second set
34:19
Speaker 1: of fingerprints. On the twenty third of September nineteen forty three,
34:25
Speaker 1: the then nineteen year old Beth was arrested for underage
34:29
Speaker 1: drinking in Santa Barbara. She was in a restaurant called
34:33
Speaker 1: El Pasio. Like she had gone out with some soldiers
34:37
Speaker 1: and they were in this restaurant and they were having
34:39
Speaker 1: drinks and that's when like this officer is like no,
34:43
Speaker 1: just no, And so the judge they sentenced her to
34:49
Speaker 1: probation for violating juvenile court law and gave her a
34:53
Speaker 1: ticket to Medford, Massachusetts, and Beth agreed to go home
34:57
Speaker 1: to her mother, but instead didn't do that. She went
35:02
Speaker 1: to Miami, and it was in Miami that Beth met
35:07
Speaker 1: Major Matt Gordon, a decorated fighter pilot, while he was
35:12
Speaker 1: on leave. Now there's a bit of inconsistency here when
35:17
Speaker 1: it comes to Matt. Some say that she met him
35:20
Speaker 1: the year before and then reunited in forty four, while
35:24
Speaker 1: others suggest that they met in forty four for the
35:26
Speaker 1: first time. Like version one has the meet while he's
35:31
Speaker 1: on leave and then he's injured in forty four, which
35:35
Speaker 1: is why is on leave again. In version two is
35:39
Speaker 1: that the meet in forty four and initially smitten like
35:42
Speaker 1: sparks are flying, and then Major Matthew Michael Gordon proposed
35:49
Speaker 1: to her after an injury from a plane crash. So
35:54
Speaker 1: Matt Gordon had trained with the American volunteer group, the
35:57
Speaker 1: Flying Tigers. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for
36:02
Speaker 1: participation in more than fifty combat missions and destroying two
36:07
Speaker 1: Japanese zeros. Those are planes. He named his p forty
36:14
Speaker 1: the Nipanese Nemesis, which which is weird because like as
36:22
Speaker 1: far as I know, like Nippon is like the traditional
36:25
Speaker 1: name for Japan, and so it's weirdly the literation, like
36:34
Speaker 1: is it. I don't know if it's more or less respectful,
36:39
Speaker 1: Like I was trying to think of another word for
36:40
Speaker 1: like enemy that begins with J. My brain's not doing it.
36:46
Speaker 1: On the twenty fifth of February nineteen forty four, he
36:49
Speaker 1: was injured in a plane crash while flying inn LSB
36:52
Speaker 1: sent an O reconnaissance plane. He was searching for a
36:56
Speaker 1: down pilot when he went down. He survived and turn
37:00
Speaker 1: to active duty. So according to Major Gordon's mother, like
37:06
Speaker 1: she first heard about Beth in nineteen forty four, and
37:11
Speaker 1: that Matt in Beth's romance blossomed through letters, like he's
37:18
Speaker 1: in Georgia at one point, and so Beth short she
37:22
Speaker 1: traveled to see him in Georgia, like after the crash,
37:26
Speaker 1: and it's like after like he proposes afterwards. But it's
37:30
Speaker 1: also be a letter. So they wrote to each other
37:35
Speaker 1: a lot, and I mean a lot, like it's it's intense,
37:40
Speaker 1: like at one point she writes him twenty seven letters
37:44
Speaker 1: in eleven days. Now it's easy to look back in
37:52
Speaker 1: that but that's like, you know, instant messages are not
37:58
Speaker 1: really a thing back then. I mean, if you sent
38:02
Speaker 1: someone twenty seven messages in eleven days, you wouldn't think
38:07
Speaker 1: that's weird like context of the I mean, I still
38:10
Speaker 1: think it's a lot, because that's more than two per day.
38:13
Speaker 1: I mean, what have you got to say that it's new.
38:18
Speaker 1: I say that as if I don't spend quite a
38:21
Speaker 1: lot of time providing information on the internet. So when
38:30
Speaker 1: Major meth through Michael Gordon was stationed in India, he
38:34
Speaker 1: asked his mum if he thought that Beth loved him,
38:37
Speaker 1: and she told him that he was old enough to
38:40
Speaker 1: make his own decisions and she trusted his judgment in
38:43
Speaker 1: picking a bride. So because he's away, he's you know,
38:46
Speaker 1: he's flying on the other side of the world. He
38:51
Speaker 1: asked his sister in law to correspond with Elizabeth, and
38:56
Speaker 1: you know, she ends up telling him that she thinks
38:58
Speaker 1: that she's refined and educated. You know, she's a good girl.
39:05
Speaker 1: And on the twenty ninth of July nineteen forty five,
39:08
Speaker 1: he wrote home and he told his mother that he
39:11
Speaker 1: would be back in September with his bride and that
39:15
Speaker 1: he intended to marry her in Medford, Massachusetts. On the
39:19
Speaker 1: tenth of August nineteen forty five, Major Matthew Michael Gordon
39:23
Speaker 1: was piloting a P fifty one Mustang near Kalikunda in
39:27
Speaker 1: West Bengal, India. His plane went down and he died
39:32
Speaker 1: at twenty six years old, just weeks before Japan surrendered.
39:39
Speaker 1: Missus Gordon sent a telegram to Beth informing her of
39:42
Speaker 1: Matt's death. One of Matt's fellow officers sent an engagement
39:47
Speaker 1: ring to Beth, but the wedding ring was sent to
39:50
Speaker 1: his mother. Beth and the Gordons would correspond for a time,
39:55
Speaker 1: but the family cut ties when Beth con act them
40:00
Speaker 1: asking for money, Like they thought this was uncouth. You
40:05
Speaker 1: know that this was a very upsetting thing for her
40:08
Speaker 1: to do, for her to ask them for help. You know,
40:13
Speaker 1: the woman who was supposed to be marrying their son
40:16
Speaker 1: now a woman who was supposed to become part of
40:19
Speaker 1: their extended family, and they've just gone, oh, I'm sorry,
40:22
Speaker 1: you wanted something from us, Like no. Beth had a
40:26
Speaker 1: photo of her and Matt from nineteen forty four. They
40:30
Speaker 1: were like sitting at a table. They're dressed up to
40:32
Speaker 1: the nines. He's in his uniform, she's in a gorgeous gunna.
40:37
Speaker 1: Like their arm and arm and their eyes are full
40:40
Speaker 1: of joy and young love. Now, over the years, Beth
40:47
Speaker 1: would refer to Major Gordon as her fiance, sometimes even
40:52
Speaker 1: her husband. Now I get why she would. Like he
40:57
Speaker 1: died in August. They were supposed to be married in September,
41:00
Speaker 1: and she wrote letters about how how she looked forward
41:05
Speaker 1: to marrying him and how she would like not date
41:10
Speaker 1: other people if she knew that he was going to propose,
41:12
Speaker 1: and this whole thing, and he was gonna and they
41:16
Speaker 1: were going to be together, and yeah, like she had
41:21
Speaker 1: a paper clipping of his you know, in the paper
41:25
Speaker 1: of his death, and she would show people this paper
41:29
Speaker 1: clipping of Matt and say that, you know, she was
41:32
Speaker 1: his fiance or whatever. But the paper printed the wrong
41:37
Speaker 1: name for the fiance, and so she'd scratched out the
41:40
Speaker 1: other name. And like this didn't exactly help her credibility,
41:45
Speaker 1: Like people just assumed she was lying when like, no,
41:52
Speaker 1: And the thing is as well, if they had been intimate,
41:55
Speaker 1: if her and Matt had had sexual relations, because they
42:00
Speaker 1: were engaged, because they were due to be married, Like
42:03
Speaker 1: that's more socially acceptable and it protects her reputation, which
42:08
Speaker 1: was like a massive deal at the time. Like there's
42:11
Speaker 1: such a huge value put on virginity, especially female virginity,
42:18
Speaker 1: and it has done for like centuries. But her whole
42:23
Speaker 1: life could be ruined, Like that was the whole thing,
42:26
Speaker 1: Like you could ruin someone, You could ruin a woman
42:28
Speaker 1: by accusing her of sex before marriage. So while she
42:34
Speaker 1: was in Miami and she was writing back and forth
42:36
Speaker 1: to you know, she was working as a waitress, and
42:39
Speaker 1: she was staying in the Elmar apartments and so she's
42:42
Speaker 1: on Miami Beach, that's where she's loving and then when
42:46
Speaker 1: she gets the news of his death, she is heartbroken.
42:51
Speaker 1: She's disheartened, and she leaves her job and returns back
42:56
Speaker 1: to her mum in Medford, Massachusetts, and she's there for
43:00
Speaker 1: a while before returning back to Florida. And this time
43:04
Speaker 1: she's staying in the Colonial Inn in Jacksonville. But she
43:09
Speaker 1: wasn't working at this point. She just didn't quite have
43:13
Speaker 1: it inner and she just seemed to like stop for
43:17
Speaker 1: a while after her fiance's death. And so this was
43:21
Speaker 1: the address that Phoebe was sending checks to. And this
43:24
Speaker 1: is probably about the time that she's asking for money
43:27
Speaker 1: from the Gordons because she's not working. And you know,
43:33
Speaker 1: now we can understand, we can understand that grief and
43:35
Speaker 1: that depression. But then, you know, because they weren't married,
43:41
Speaker 1: because she wasn't a widow, it wasn't really she wasn't
43:44
Speaker 1: exactly afforded the same grace. So she's there for you know,
43:51
Speaker 1: a little while, and then she goes back to Medford
43:53
Speaker 1: for a few months before heading to Chicago in April.
43:58
Speaker 1: So she'd stayed at the Point Marco Hotel and Blackstone
44:02
Speaker 1: and it was in Chicago that she reunited with Joseph
44:06
Speaker 1: Gordon Fickling, an Army Air Force lieutenant that she had
44:10
Speaker 1: known in Florida. So there's a bit of i'm gonna
44:15
Speaker 1: say overlap. So when she was like living in Florida,
44:20
Speaker 1: you know, if someone wanted to take her out, like
44:23
Speaker 1: she would double date and she would go out with men,
44:25
Speaker 1: but she wouldn't do anything because she was just you know,
44:30
Speaker 1: the girl liked a free meal. And I can't fault
44:34
Speaker 1: her for that because you know, it's the nineteen forties
44:38
Speaker 1: and if you've grown up in any sort of food poverty, like, yeah,
44:42
Speaker 1: she's she's getting her lunch, and you know what if
44:47
Speaker 1: the men wanted to buy her lunch just to enjoy
44:50
Speaker 1: her company, so be it. So yeah, she reunites with him,
44:57
Speaker 1: and in July nineteen forty six, Fickling was relocated and
45:03
Speaker 1: stationed at the Naval Reserve Airbase in Long Beach, California,
45:10
Speaker 1: and Beth she decided to follow him there. So like
45:15
Speaker 1: it's when she's in Long Beach that she gets the nickname,
45:19
Speaker 1: allegedly gets the nickname the Black Dahlia because she would
45:23
Speaker 1: wear a flour in her hair, just like the main
45:27
Speaker 1: character in the movie The Blue Dahlia, which had come
45:30
Speaker 1: out that year, and it was like super popular. So
45:36
Speaker 1: it's easy to look back and see Beth short and go,
45:40
Speaker 1: you went across the country for a man, And it's
45:44
Speaker 1: easy to judge her on modern standards. When she was
45:48
Speaker 1: young and in that era, it was expected that a
45:51
Speaker 1: girl would get married and start a family, like it's
45:55
Speaker 1: what you did. Like two of her sisters at least
45:59
Speaker 1: they were were married at this point and started having kids,
46:02
Speaker 1: and so she wanted that too, and her dreams had
46:08
Speaker 1: already been dashed once. And it's not just the relationship
46:13
Speaker 1: people forget that. It's not just the ending of a
46:15
Speaker 1: relationship itself. It's heartbreaks, sure, but there's a grief, a
46:22
Speaker 1: grief over the loss of not only the person, but
46:27
Speaker 1: the life you were expecting, the future you had planned,
46:31
Speaker 1: you know, everything that you had built up in your
46:33
Speaker 1: head that you were going to, that you were leading to.
46:37
Speaker 1: All of that dreams and plans and everything when you
46:43
Speaker 1: would pend your hopes on had all come crashing down.
46:49
Speaker 1: And for Beth this also included a security and comfort
46:55
Speaker 1: that she had been missing. In August, the couple would
46:59
Speaker 1: check in to the brief Word Apartments on Lexington Avenue
47:03
Speaker 1: as husband and wife like. They were not married, by
47:08
Speaker 1: the way, but it meant that they could, you know,
47:11
Speaker 1: share the same room like without judgment. When he returned
47:18
Speaker 1: to base, she moved to the Hawthorne Hotel on North
47:22
Speaker 1: Orange Avenue. When Fickling was relocated to Colorado, Beth decided
47:29
Speaker 1: that she didn't want to go there and she chose
47:32
Speaker 1: not to follow now. Initially, when the two had been
47:37
Speaker 1: writing to each other like, she had told him that
47:40
Speaker 1: she had a ring and there was this other pilot,
47:46
Speaker 1: and he told her to really decide if he was
47:51
Speaker 1: what she wanted, you know, if you know, if Fickling,
47:56
Speaker 1: if he was the man for her, or whether she
47:59
Speaker 1: did love him or not, and it seems that she didn't.
48:06
Speaker 1: So when Beth is in Los Angeles, she is, you know,
48:10
Speaker 1: taking odd waitressing jobs here and there, like she's working
48:14
Speaker 1: a little, but not really enough to sustain herself. Now
48:20
Speaker 1: you'll hear quite often that you know, she'd gone to
48:24
Speaker 1: LA with aspirations of being an actress, but there was
48:29
Speaker 1: literally no record anywhere of her auditioning or you know,
48:37
Speaker 1: waiting with extras or anything like that. There's nothing, you know,
48:43
Speaker 1: which you know, if there was, we'd have something. I mean,
48:47
Speaker 1: this is you know, nineteen forties Hollywood, we'd have information.
48:53
Speaker 1: I mean, if nothing else, you'd have you know, film
48:57
Speaker 1: studios trying to like boost being like, oh we totally
49:00
Speaker 1: had her common audition this one time, but like she
49:05
Speaker 1: didn't take an acting class. She didn't. She didn't have
49:09
Speaker 1: any credits to her name, and no actor or actress like,
49:15
Speaker 1: no extra even ever remembers her, like, not one ever,
49:23
Speaker 1: which there'd be one like and somebody would be out
49:26
Speaker 1: there to sell their story to the papers. You know,
49:29
Speaker 1: they would for that, you know, glory of fame. Now,
49:35
Speaker 1: if she did want to be an actress, if that
49:37
Speaker 1: was her plan, you know, it never materialized, and that's
49:41
Speaker 1: a shame. But there is nothing to say she did.
49:45
Speaker 1: And you know, there's lots that draws people there. I
49:51
Speaker 1: think more so it was all of the Soldier Station
49:54
Speaker 1: more than anything else, because there's you know, eligible bachelors
49:59
Speaker 1: and the warm weather that she needs for her lungs.
50:05
Speaker 1: So she's bouncing around hotels and boarding houses throughout LA
50:09
Speaker 1: and like it's often portrayed as weird, right or unusual,
50:16
Speaker 1: but post war Los Angeles had a housing crisis and
50:20
Speaker 1: those without a fixed address had a limited stay in
50:23
Speaker 1: a hotel. Now I've seen I've seen different sort of
50:29
Speaker 1: stays listed. I've seen some as being five days, others
50:32
Speaker 1: being seven, sometimes a little more, you know, but there's
50:36
Speaker 1: a limit that you can stay in a hotel. And
50:40
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of human transit during this period.
50:44
Speaker 1: Like at one point she rents a room behind a
50:46
Speaker 1: nightclub in the Hollywood Boulevard, and so she stayed at
50:50
Speaker 1: the Sunset Motel, the Hawthorn, the Hotel Figaro, Guardian Arms,
50:56
Speaker 1: the Chancellor Apartments, and possibly the Biltmore Hotel. Another place
51:04
Speaker 1: she stayed was Mark Hansen's home. Now. Mark Hansen was
51:10
Speaker 1: a nightclub owner, a nightclub that was allegedly a mob front,
51:15
Speaker 1: and so his home is interesting, definitely interesting. Mark Hansen's
51:30
Speaker 1: bungalow was a block north of Hollywood Boulevard, behind the
51:35
Speaker 1: Markall Theater at six h two four Carlos Avenue. It
51:40
Speaker 1: was a place to stay for girls who were down
51:43
Speaker 1: on their luck. These women were quote financially embarrassed to
51:48
Speaker 1: stay there. They were crammed into bunks and more often
51:53
Speaker 1: than not approached by the landlord. One of the residents
51:59
Speaker 1: an aspiring more Oh slash actress and Tooth was never
52:03
Speaker 1: propositioned by Hansen because he was friends with her boyfriend
52:09
Speaker 1: and Beth he wasn't interested in when he found out
52:14
Speaker 1: that she was a virgin, or at least he was
52:17
Speaker 1: informed that she was a virgin. And this is you know,
52:24
Speaker 1: something that she shares with the other women that are
52:27
Speaker 1: staying there, Like they're all crammed into these bunks, like
52:30
Speaker 1: there are a lot there. And Mark Hansen he's staying
52:35
Speaker 1: in this house too, but also like he's married, but
52:41
Speaker 1: he's separated from his wife at this point. So an
52:44
Speaker 1: tot and she becomes you know, quite good friends with
52:49
Speaker 1: Beth more than anyone else really that she's been around,
52:54
Speaker 1: Like she gets to know her, she's more understanding. Like
53:00
Speaker 1: a lot of the times when Beth stayed in a hotel,
53:03
Speaker 1: for example, like a lot of the other girls there
53:06
Speaker 1: that she would be sharing with because they'd be sharing rooms,
53:10
Speaker 1: is like, they would be all struggling, and they would
53:14
Speaker 1: put in money when they did, and it was rare
53:17
Speaker 1: that Beth, ever, financially contributed. Now we don't have beth
53:22
Speaker 1: side of the story for this, we have just what
53:25
Speaker 1: these other ladies are saying. Now. They said that every
53:30
Speaker 1: now and again she'd manage to get a man to
53:32
Speaker 1: pay a bill for her, like they would cover her costs.
53:37
Speaker 1: So a lot of the times she would like struggle
53:40
Speaker 1: and get you know, behind on payments, and then some
53:43
Speaker 1: guy would swip in and pay stuff all for her,
53:46
Speaker 1: like different ones every now and again, and eventually people
53:49
Speaker 1: would just get like sick of her, and so Beth
53:53
Speaker 1: would just have to you know, leave and go somewhere else.
53:56
Speaker 1: And she didn't really bond well with other women but
54:02
Speaker 1: her and Anne there seems to be like a genuine
54:04
Speaker 1: friendship there. And what's interesting is Anne believes one hundred
54:09
Speaker 1: percent that Beth Short is a virgin, which is interesting
54:16
Speaker 1: because she's always portrayed as this sort of fluozy like
54:22
Speaker 1: like she goes on all these dates with all of
54:24
Speaker 1: these like soldiers, sailors, butchers, bigger as candlestick makers, you know,
54:30
Speaker 1: and she's out every night with men, which is probably
54:34
Speaker 1: partly to be fed and partly because she's looking for
54:38
Speaker 1: a husband, because she's in her twenties in the forties,
54:45
Speaker 1: you know. And you've got Beth going out all this time,
54:49
Speaker 1: and you know, everyone's complaining on all these tales of
54:52
Speaker 1: her going out with all these dudes, and then you
54:55
Speaker 1: have Beth here and no actual evidence that she had
55:01
Speaker 1: ever had sex. I mean, she may have done other stuff,
55:06
Speaker 1: but maybe she was in fact saving herself for marriage.
55:11
Speaker 1: No I'm not saying she did or she didn't, but
55:13
Speaker 1: there's this disdain for Beth when she was poor and
55:18
Speaker 1: hungry and spent time with men, maybe companionship, maybe survival.
55:26
Speaker 1: It's nineteen forty six, right, you've survived a war and
55:31
Speaker 1: you want the life you were told your whole life
55:34
Speaker 1: that you should have. And again, she's also twenty two.
55:40
Speaker 1: Her sisters are married you know, everyone else seems to
55:44
Speaker 1: be having a life, and she's in this sort of stasis.
55:50
Speaker 1: She's bouncing around from house to room to home to
55:56
Speaker 1: apartment to another room. And also, like I think about
56:05
Speaker 1: a dating one last thing. You don't get to swipe
56:10
Speaker 1: right on every single gal that you see on a
56:14
Speaker 1: dating app and then complain that women are dating people
56:18
Speaker 1: in a roster, and like this isn't a personal thing,
56:21
Speaker 1: Like I don't date people who are dating other people.
56:24
Speaker 1: It's just does not a thing I do. But I'm
56:26
Speaker 1: also not dating people. I'm not dating person aggressively single.
56:34
Speaker 1: But yeah, I couldn't date on a roster because I
56:38
Speaker 1: simply do not have the organizational skills. Also, I'm greedy
56:43
Speaker 1: and like to have one personal to myself. But if
56:46
Speaker 1: you have that mental capacity, that organizational skills, that you
56:49
Speaker 1: can roster people and you're all happy and accepting all
56:54
Speaker 1: of it, go live your best life. Okay. Another thing
56:58
Speaker 1: that's brought up by not just Anne but by Mark
57:02
Speaker 1: as well is that Beth doesn't really have any vices,
57:07
Speaker 1: Like she doesn't smoke, and she doesn't drink, and she
57:12
Speaker 1: would just kind of go to dinner with men, but
57:15
Speaker 1: she wouldn't be she wouldn't be drinking, Like she's very
57:19
Speaker 1: careful not to lose her inhibitions. You know, Beth would
57:24
Speaker 1: be kicked out of Mark Hansen's house twice. Once was
57:29
Speaker 1: because she had made a call to Texas, right, So
57:33
Speaker 1: she'd made this long distance call to Texas. Like he
57:38
Speaker 1: finds out about it, and she gets caught and you know,
57:43
Speaker 1: she can't afford to pay this like long long distance
57:47
Speaker 1: call and so like that's like strike one, and so
57:52
Speaker 1: he's already annoyed about this, and she is also having
57:57
Speaker 1: this like she has this big set to with this
57:58
Speaker 1: other girl. Like fight happens, and so they both get
58:02
Speaker 1: kicked out, and like what like he would kick people
58:07
Speaker 1: out of the house like all the time. So like
58:09
Speaker 1: if somebody was drinking, if they had a lot. I
58:13
Speaker 1: think what he said was like they came in and
58:16
Speaker 1: they liked their liquor, like he would just not have them.
58:19
Speaker 1: He would kick him out. Now, I know he is
58:22
Speaker 1: a creepy landlord and he's propositioning his his tenants, but
58:26
Speaker 1: I kind of appreciate the fact that he's not such
58:29
Speaker 1: a creepient landlord that he's you know, try and go
58:33
Speaker 1: on with drunk tenants. Like I feel like that, like
58:38
Speaker 1: you know, someone's just like he's still shitty, but he's
58:40
Speaker 1: just not as shitty. You know. It's like bird poo
58:45
Speaker 1: and elephant down. It's like different levels. So, like Key
58:50
Speaker 1: gets questioned at one point about whether he would have
58:54
Speaker 1: like been interested in Elizabeth Short and so he explains that,
58:59
Speaker 1: you know, I mean she was always like neat and
59:01
Speaker 1: tidy and pretty. She was always clean and you know,
59:05
Speaker 1: her clothes were always nice. However, she had terrible teeth.
59:11
Speaker 1: He said her teeth were black, and that was just
59:14
Speaker 1: not for him. So anyway, this time he kicks her
59:19
Speaker 1: at the house. She goes in up staying somewhere else,
59:22
Speaker 1: and she comes back at one point with a suitcase
59:29
Speaker 1: and and just saying to Mark, like can her suitcase stage?
59:35
Speaker 1: She needs to hold her suitcase like overnight, And he's like, yeah,
59:38
Speaker 1: the suitcase can stay. Like she isn't staying, so he
59:45
Speaker 1: goes out. He comes back Bethshot is still in his
59:48
Speaker 1: bungalow and he's just like absolutely not and she's crying.
59:52
Speaker 1: She says she's scared, and he's just no, I don't
59:56
Speaker 1: want you, hear, get out. So she ends up staying
59:59
Speaker 1: that one night like thanks to Antof And she actually
1:00:03
Speaker 1: thinks of her room at the Chancellor now when she's
1:00:06
Speaker 1: staying at the Chancellor like that on the chancellor apartments,
1:00:10
Speaker 1: so she's like sharing a room with girls again. So
1:00:15
Speaker 1: the girls she roomed with there would talk about how
1:00:18
Speaker 1: she would melt candlewax and put it on her teeth
1:00:22
Speaker 1: to basically cover up the black tips and so like
1:00:28
Speaker 1: this was just a way of covering up like she'd
1:00:31
Speaker 1: really bad cavities. Her teeth were again, they were black,
1:00:35
Speaker 1: Like we're past the point of colgate here. And so
1:00:41
Speaker 1: she's there for a while. Things don't go great, and
1:00:44
Speaker 1: she leaves the Chancellor and she was dropped off at
1:00:49
Speaker 1: the bus station in Hollywood, and that was in late
1:00:53
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, and she ends up traveling to San
1:00:56
Speaker 1: Diego where she's in a movie theater. And so she
1:01:02
Speaker 1: ends up befriending Dorothy French. Right, So she's there, Dorothy
1:01:10
Speaker 1: French's his cashier at the movie theater and they get
1:01:14
Speaker 1: on and she tells her story and so and Dorothy's like, okay,
1:01:19
Speaker 1: you know what, no come with me tonight. You can
1:01:21
Speaker 1: crash on my couch. You'll be okay, you know, good
1:01:25
Speaker 1: smart and type thing. And so she and her mother, Elvira,
1:01:31
Speaker 1: and her brother Carrie. Now her dad was mister French.
1:01:35
Speaker 1: He was out of the picture. He was kicked out
1:01:37
Speaker 1: the house for whatever reason. And Elvira, Dorothy and Carrie
1:01:43
Speaker 1: they were all just living in there. So Elvira was working,
1:01:48
Speaker 1: she was a nurse, and Carrie, like he was just
1:01:51
Speaker 1: a teenager. So they thought like she was just going
1:01:55
Speaker 1: to be there and gone. It was gonna be like
1:01:57
Speaker 1: a one night situation. But she stayed for weeks, and
1:02:03
Speaker 1: she ended up staying for Christmas because it was not
1:02:07
Speaker 1: the most joyous Christmas because there's just this other person,
1:02:11
Speaker 1: but you weren't expecting to still be there. Like Elvira
1:02:15
Speaker 1: at one point said that having Beth in the house
1:02:19
Speaker 1: was like having a shadow, not a guest. Like she
1:02:23
Speaker 1: didn't go out much, like she went out a little bit,
1:02:26
Speaker 1: but she would sleep most of the day, and so
1:02:30
Speaker 1: the family would just kind of tiptoe around the house
1:02:33
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to disturb her, because you know,
1:02:37
Speaker 1: they had matters for the person who was in their house,
1:02:41
Speaker 1: staying on their couch, eating their food, and so like
1:02:46
Speaker 1: when she wasn't sleeping, she was writing letters that she
1:02:50
Speaker 1: didn't send or at least no one ever saw her
1:02:53
Speaker 1: post a letter. And then there's one night or she's
1:02:58
Speaker 1: out and she's like standing on a street corner and
1:03:02
Speaker 1: she's approached by Red Red is this man And at
1:03:09
Speaker 1: first she didn't want to talk to this strange man
1:03:12
Speaker 1: in the street, which I feel is fairly reasonable, but
1:03:16
Speaker 1: he offered her a ride and they ended up having
1:03:19
Speaker 1: dinner and a few drinks. At the end of the evening,
1:03:23
Speaker 1: he kissed her and like she kind of kissed back,
1:03:32
Speaker 1: like he said that she responded in the normal way,
1:03:35
Speaker 1: if a little cold, and like maybe like part of
1:03:42
Speaker 1: me thinks that she was just sober and there was
1:03:45
Speaker 1: this tipsy dude trying to like mac on her now
1:03:52
Speaker 1: on the ninth of December, like she arrived on the
1:03:55
Speaker 1: ninth of December, and what was supposed to be a
1:03:59
Speaker 1: one now thing lasted a month or at least like
1:04:03
Speaker 1: almost a month. Basically, it gets to the point where
1:04:06
Speaker 1: they're like they're just telling her that she needs to go.
1:04:09
Speaker 1: They're like, it's been swell having you here, but we
1:04:13
Speaker 1: feel like your time has passed. And so basically around
1:04:19
Speaker 1: about the tan they tell her that she has to leave.
1:04:23
Speaker 1: Two men and a woman show up at the house
1:04:25
Speaker 1: looking for Beth, like who knew she was there? Like
1:04:34
Speaker 1: two men and a blonde woman, they're looking for Beth,
1:04:38
Speaker 1: and she's hiding like she would actually like during the
1:04:43
Speaker 1: day if someone came to the door, like she would
1:04:45
Speaker 1: be pretty scared. She would kind of hide away and
1:04:48
Speaker 1: not want to answer it. And so when this happens
1:04:51
Speaker 1: and someone's actually naming her, they're looking for her, like,
1:04:56
Speaker 1: you know, it's weird, but they kind of brush them
1:04:58
Speaker 1: off and they're like, no by now, and Beth is
1:05:03
Speaker 1: just like sobbing and crying, like she's talking about like
1:05:09
Speaker 1: how scared they are, like this trio come like and
1:05:13
Speaker 1: after this, she's just a wreck, you know. And again,
1:05:18
Speaker 1: how did they know she was there? Did she actually
1:05:21
Speaker 1: post a letter whether it didn't have a return address,
1:05:24
Speaker 1: did she make a phone call from there and it
1:05:26
Speaker 1: was traced back? Like what is it? Who are these people?
1:05:32
Speaker 1: So the next day she's like, okay, French family, thank
1:05:38
Speaker 1: you very much, but no, you're right, I do need
1:05:40
Speaker 1: to go. And so she calls Matt Hanson of all people, right,
1:05:45
Speaker 1: and she calls and asks if she can stay because
1:05:49
Speaker 1: she's scared, and she just needs to stay somewhere, and
1:05:54
Speaker 1: so he ends up telling her that, like, you know,
1:05:57
Speaker 1: she can stay, but only when Anne gets back from
1:06:00
Speaker 1: visiting family. So Beth then calls Redd. He picks her up,
1:06:08
Speaker 1: and Red picks Beth up from the French residence on
1:06:13
Speaker 1: the eighth of January nineteen forty seven. He put her
1:06:17
Speaker 1: trunk and her hat box into his cream colored studebaker
1:06:21
Speaker 1: and the two and later the two would check into
1:06:25
Speaker 1: a motel on the Pacific Coast Highway. Red would later
1:06:29
Speaker 1: claim that nothing happened between himself and Betty. You see,
1:06:35
Speaker 1: Robert Morris Manley, or read to his friends, was married
1:06:41
Speaker 1: and had been for fourteen months and had a four
1:06:47
Speaker 1: month old son. Whether Betty knew any of this information,
1:06:54
Speaker 1: Whom's to say. Beth short had called Red and asked
1:06:59
Speaker 1: him to drive her from San Diego to Los Angeles.
1:07:04
Speaker 1: When he picks her up, you know, she's like, I'm
1:07:07
Speaker 1: already packed, and so details her like, oh, well, I've
1:07:11
Speaker 1: got stuff I need to do in San Diego, like
1:07:13
Speaker 1: he's got business calls and whatnot. And so when he
1:07:18
Speaker 1: tells her that, she's like, great, take me to the
1:07:20
Speaker 1: bus station. Plot twist, he did not take her to
1:07:26
Speaker 1: the bus station. Instead they checked into that motel. They
1:07:30
Speaker 1: went for like a bit to eat. So they go
1:07:32
Speaker 1: there and they get freshened up and they check into
1:07:35
Speaker 1: the same room. Because he's like, well, it would have
1:07:38
Speaker 1: been suspicious if I showed up with a girl in
1:07:41
Speaker 1: a motel and we booked into separate rooms. Would it
1:07:46
Speaker 1: be suspicious? Or did you just not want to waste
1:07:48
Speaker 1: the money? Right? What were you hoping for here? Read? So,
1:07:54
Speaker 1: like they go there, they go for a bit to eat,
1:07:58
Speaker 1: and then like they go to this like other hotel
1:08:02
Speaker 1: and it's you know, like the restaurant a bar of
1:08:04
Speaker 1: a hotel, and it's caughte dead and so they end
1:08:08
Speaker 1: up getting some sandwiches and they go back to the room.
1:08:12
Speaker 1: Like he lights a fire in the room, and she's
1:08:14
Speaker 1: like covered in blankets and cold, and so she's like,
1:08:17
Speaker 1: I'm too cold, and so she's wrapped up in like everything,
1:08:21
Speaker 1: and he's sleeping in like a chair and she's or
1:08:25
Speaker 1: the rare leaves, they're like in separate parts, like there's
1:08:28
Speaker 1: a distance between them. Now, if this is true, I
1:08:32
Speaker 1: like to think that she's just like, m no, I'm
1:08:35
Speaker 1: not gonna do that. This is I'll just say I'm
1:08:37
Speaker 1: cold and that I don't want to be like touched.
1:08:42
Speaker 1: So like, they stay there for the evening, they go
1:08:48
Speaker 1: to sleep, and this is all according to Red, like
1:08:51
Speaker 1: we only have Red's version of events here. The next morning,
1:08:56
Speaker 1: he did his business calls and then went back to
1:08:58
Speaker 1: the hotel and collected Beth around twelve twenty, after which
1:09:03
Speaker 1: they headed to Los Angeles. They stopped twice, the first
1:09:08
Speaker 1: time for lunch and the second to get gas at
1:09:12
Speaker 1: Laguna Beach. Like as they're approaching La Beth tells RHDD
1:09:17
Speaker 1: that her sister is meeting her at the Biltmore Hotel.
1:09:22
Speaker 1: But before they get there, she asked if they could
1:09:25
Speaker 1: take her to the Greyhound bus station so that she
1:09:28
Speaker 1: could check in her trunk and hat box. Which is
1:09:33
Speaker 1: weird because if our sister was coming, if her sister
1:09:40
Speaker 1: was coming to visit, then why not leave the luggage
1:09:44
Speaker 1: with her, you know, why leave it at the bus station?
1:09:49
Speaker 1: Like are they going to be traveling together on the
1:09:51
Speaker 1: bus Anyway, They get to the Biltmore around five pm,
1:09:58
Speaker 1: and Beth told Red that she needed to go up
1:10:00
Speaker 1: to her room, you know, to freshen up, and which
1:10:05
Speaker 1: is weird because you've already got a room at the
1:10:08
Speaker 1: Biltmore or your luggage is somewhere else. Don't you need
1:10:11
Speaker 1: your luggage to get ready? Yeah, so she asks Red to,
1:10:17
Speaker 1: you know, to see if her sisters arrived while she
1:10:20
Speaker 1: goes and gets ready, And so he checks to see
1:10:24
Speaker 1: if you know, Virginia West had checked into the hotel.
1:10:30
Speaker 1: The front desk had no reservation for a missus Virginia West.
1:10:37
Speaker 1: So he thinks, maybe she's going by a different name,
1:10:40
Speaker 1: because like everyone calls her Ginny, maybe she's using her
1:10:43
Speaker 1: maiden name, you know, maybe, And like Elizabeth had told
1:10:50
Speaker 1: her that Ginny was short and blonde. So this guy,
1:10:54
Speaker 1: he's in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel and he's
1:10:57
Speaker 1: going up to every short blonde he sees, and he's like,
1:11:01
Speaker 1: are you are you Virginia West? Are you Beth's sister
1:11:06
Speaker 1: or Betty's sister? He called her Betty and none of them,
1:11:11
Speaker 1: none of them are there. And like when she comes
1:11:14
Speaker 1: back down from upstairs, when Beth comes down, like it's
1:11:18
Speaker 1: after five, he tells her he has to go right.
1:11:22
Speaker 1: He says to everyone like this is his like officially,
1:11:25
Speaker 1: he says that this is the last time that he
1:11:28
Speaker 1: ever saw Betty short. So the thing about our sister,
1:11:34
Speaker 1: about Virginia is that Jenny, like she confirmed that she
1:11:40
Speaker 1: was not coming, like she had never planned to come
1:11:45
Speaker 1: to Ellie, she wasn't staying at the bilt More like,
1:11:48
Speaker 1: none of that, So like, was this an excuse to
1:11:51
Speaker 1: just kind of get rid of Red, Like, Oh, I
1:11:55
Speaker 1: have to go and meet my sister, so I can't
1:11:57
Speaker 1: spend more time with you, you know, But also made
1:12:01
Speaker 1: him look for her, which is also weird, Like that's
1:12:06
Speaker 1: a weird thing to make him do. And yeah, yeah,
1:12:15
Speaker 1: so like he is the last person like officially that
1:12:21
Speaker 1: was seen with Beth Short. Now Beth is seen like
1:12:26
Speaker 1: in the Biltmore lobby using the lobby telephones like a
1:12:29
Speaker 1: good number of times over the next few hours before
1:12:33
Speaker 1: she left the hotel. Around ten pm, she walked out
1:12:39
Speaker 1: of the Biltmore Hotel in a black suit, no collar,
1:12:43
Speaker 1: a black pencil skirt, a white blouse with frills, nylon stockings,
1:12:51
Speaker 1: white gloves, and a long beige top coat. Clasping her
1:12:57
Speaker 1: black patant handbag. She stepped out in her black sweat
1:12:59
Speaker 1: hail and this is the last confirmed time anyone saw
1:13:07
Speaker 1: her alive. From January ninth to fifteenth, Elizabeth Short just vanished.
1:13:19
Speaker 1: It's the missing week she disappeared, only to show up
1:13:25
Speaker 1: bisected in a vacant lot on a dull Friday morning
1:13:33
Speaker 1: nearly a week later, And so ends Part one of
1:13:38
Speaker 1: the Black Dahlia. Part two will be coming soon. If
1:13:46
Speaker 1: it's not tomorrow, it'll be the day after. It will
1:13:50
Speaker 1: be coming this week, because I don't like to give
1:13:52
Speaker 1: two big a timeframe when I do two parts, because
1:13:56
Speaker 1: it feels crappy to me, and I'm the kind of
1:13:59
Speaker 1: person that always waits for both parts to be released
1:14:02
Speaker 1: before I listen to like a fill story, because I
1:14:04
Speaker 1: just I don't like half a story. I like a
1:14:07
Speaker 1: fill story. And with that, sorry, my voice is really
1:14:12
Speaker 1: going as well. So I'm gonna like get my Throat
1:14:15
Speaker 1: Goat Tea out, which I'll be picking up more of
1:14:17
Speaker 1: next time I'm in the States. So with that recommendation
1:14:24
Speaker 1: time before I go anywhere else. For reading, I'm gonna
1:14:30
Speaker 1: recommend no Bed of her Own by vow Lttin. For
1:14:35
Speaker 1: watching the Maltese Falcon, are you send an a theme?
1:14:42
Speaker 1: And for listening, I'm going to suggest Fireside Mystery Theater.
1:14:50
Speaker 1: It's like audio dramas, kind of like polp noir it's
1:14:57
Speaker 1: very much a vibe, and so that is that. And
1:15:01
Speaker 1: I will see you for part two of the Black
1:15:04
Speaker 1: Dahlia Case very soon. Adios au revoir and avoid as
1:15:10
Speaker 1: my friends. Bye bye,