This week, Gina covers the unsolved 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, a.k.a The Black Dahlia. More than 70 years have passed and the case remains one of the most infamous unsolved murder cases of all time.
*This post contains graphic content, some may find disturbing.*
Elizabeth Short was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 29th, 1924, she would be the third daughter out of five, born to Cleo and Phoebe Short. Though the family had briefly relocated to Portland, Maine In 1927, the family settled down in Medford Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, which is where Elizabeth would spend her childhood. During her childhood she suffered from chronic bronchitis and asthma. Doctors suggested Elizabeth look into relocating to a climate where the winter would not be so harsh, so that she could prevent future respiratory challenges.
After dropping out of high school, in 1942 Elizabeth briefly moved to Vallejo, California to live with her father. One month later, Elizabeth moved out in January of 1943. She took up a job at a nearby army base, and moved with a couple of friends. A few months later she moved to Santa Barbara, California, and was arrested on September 23rd for underage drinking. In July, 1946, Elizabeth moved to Los Angeles, California. She got a job waitressing and rented a room near nightlife hotspots on Hollywood Boulevard. She had a bit of a bug for the spotlight, and became an aspiring actress, though she did not seem to book any roles during this time.
On the evening of January 9th, 1947, Elizabeth returned to Los Angeles after a brief trip to San Diego with a married man she had been seeing, 25 year old, Robert Manley. Manley dropped Elizabeth off at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown L.A. At some point in the evening, Elizabeth used one of the phones in the Biltmore’s lobby, before reportedly heading about half a mile away from the Biltmore to the Crown Grill Cocktail Lounge, located at 754 South Olive Street.
On January 15th, 1947, around 10 a.m. Betty Bersinger and her three year old daughter headed out for their typical morning walk in the neighborhood of Leimert Park, on the westside of Los Angeles. Bersinger and her daughter were walking by a vacant lot on South Norton Avenue, in between Coliseum Street and West 39th street, when they saw what appeared to be a mannequin in pieces. But once they got closer, Bersinger had the horrible realization that it was not a mannequin, it was a dead body. She ran to a neighbors house and immediately called the police.
When police arrived to the scene, they discovered the mutilated body of Elizabeth Short. Her body had been severed at the waist and completely drained of blood. Her face had been cut from the corners of her mouth to her ears, which was known as an effect called the “Glasgow smile.” She cuts all over her thighs and breasts, and in some areas of her body small portions of flesh had been sliced away. The lower portion of her body was a foot away from the upper portion, and her intestines had been carefully tucked beneath her buttocks. It was immediately clear to investigators that the killer had positioned the body. Her hands were posed over her head, her elbows were bent, and her legs had been spread apart. It had also appeared that the killer had washed her body and cleaned it with gasoline. A medical examiner found that Elizabeth had been dead for close to ten hours before her body was discovered, meaning she would have been murdered sometime in the evening of January 14th or very early in the morning on January 15th.
On January 21st, 1947, about a week after Elizabeth’s body was discovered, someone placed a call to the editor of the Los Angeles Examiner, James Richardson. The individual said they were calling because they wanted to express their congratulations to Richardson on the Examiner’s coverage of the murder. The individual then said that they are planning on turning themselves in after the police did a little more work on the case, and that Richardson should expect to get some “souvenirs” of Elizabeth’s in the mail.
On January 24th, a Postal Service employee, found a large envelope addressed to “The Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers.” Inside the envelope was Elizabeth Short’s birth certificate, business cards, photographs, signatures, and an address book that had the name Mark Hansen on the cover. Like with her body, the contents of the envelope had been cleaned off with gasoline, which made police almost certain that the killer had been the one to send the items.
On January 26th 1947, the Los Angeles Examiner received another letter. It read, “Here it is. Turning in Wed., Jan. 29, 10 am. Had my fun with the police. Black Dahlia Avenger" It also listed the meeting location. Police showed up on the 29th, at the time and place the letter stated, but no one ever showed. At 1:00pm on the 29th, the Examiner got another letter that one read, “Have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing was justified.”
By February of 1947, the case went cold. The LAPD was still actively investigating the case but they did not have any promising investigative avenues. However, officials did have two main theories about the murderer. They thought that Elizabeth had either never met the killer prior to the murder or she knew them fairly beforehand, and they were more convinced that she did know her killer based on her injuries and the way she was killed. It was pretty personal. The LAPD also felt that based on the way in which Elizabeth’s body had been mutilated, they felt very strongly that the killer had some kind of medical background and knowledge. They felt so strongly about this theory that they essentially investigated all L.A. area medical students, but unfortunately it didn’t turn up anything promising.
By 1948 investigators had a list of 192 suspects. Over the years 60 people would confess to the crime, of those 60, 22 were considered potential suspects by the District Attorney's office, but nothing ever came from those investigations.
In the decades that have passed since the murder of Elizabeth Short, a number of suspect have garnered suspicion over the years. The suspects we discuss in the episode include: Walter Bayley, Norman Chandler, Robert Manley, Leslie Dillon, Joseph Dumais, Mark Hansen, Patrick O'Reilly, Jack Anderson Wilson, and George Knowlton.
We also discussed two other prominent suspects.
If we go back to the envelope that was sent to the newspapers, some personal photographs of Elizabeth Short's were included. Police were able to identify all the individuals in these photos with the exception of one man, who they labeled the “unidentified man.” In the years following the murder, a man named John F. Kohne grew fascinated with the case, and spent hours of his free time dissecting any information he could. He had actually been employed as a mathematician for more than three decades, and had great interest in decryption. Kohne spent years working to decipher the letters the killer had sent to the press, in the hopes he could solve the case, and through this work he came up with a theory he believed was true. Kohne identified a man named Ed Burns as his suspect, and this is what he believes happened.
In January of 1946, a six year old had been kidnapped in Chicago. In the days that followed various parts of her body would be found in the sewers near where she was taken from. A man named William Heirens was arrested and he confessed to the crime. Investigators were also able to tie Heirens to two additional murders from years prior. Heirens was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to life in prison. Life Magazine wrote about the case, which brought it to nationwide attention. Elizabeth had read about the case and was fascinated. As she often visited bars and other social joints in her free time, she would make up a story that she was a reporter in from Boston, and would tell anyone who listened about the young girls murder. During this time, Elizabeth still had a very active romantic life, and she met a former medical student, named Ed Burns. Elizabeth loved how Ed would listen to her stories especially about the young girls murder, and how established Ed was. Now the two seemed to get along quite well, Burns reportedly was not too attractive, and it's thought Elizabeth did not introduce him to her social circle because essentially she was dating down, but the two continued to see each other, even spending the night together a few times. But maybe Ed was growing frustrated with Elizabeth’s obsession with the Chicago murder. One night Elizabeth convinced Ed to drive out to Leimert Park. On the drive she could have mentioned how interesting it was that they were driving by Degan Boulevard, Degnan was the last name of the girl murdered in Chicago. Maybe Ed grew angry with Elizabeth, thinking she somehow idolized William Heirens more than Ed, and that's when he snapped. He tied Elizabeth up, killed her, and mutilated her body, in the same way the young girl from Chicago had.
On March 14th, 1947, investigators found a note written on a scrap piece of paper that had been tucked inside a men’s shoe, placed next to mens clothing, and left on Breeze Ave. The letter read, “To whom it may concern: I have waited for the police to capture me for the Black Dahlia killing, but have not. I am too much of a coward to turn myself in, so this is the best way out for me. I couldn’t help myself for that, or this. Sorry, Mary.”
Every other letter that the killer had sent to either police or the media all had hidden messages that had to be deciphered. So when John Kohne saw this suicide note, he spent a lot of time trying to decipher, and when he finally did, the letters shows the name Ed Burns.
Kohne believes the man named Ed Burns killed himself on March 15th, 1947, two months to the day after Elizabeth’s murder. Kohne thinks that the LAPD found and easily identified Ed Burns after he committed suicide. If the LAPD did decipher the letter in the same way Kohne had they would have obviously revisited the Dahlia case, and maybe if they would have gone back to those photographs where they only one unidentified man, they would have been able to confirm it was Ed Burns. But, Kohne thinks that because the case had been so sentalionlized and heavily covered in the media, they couldn’t have come out a said that the murderer was now dead, so not wanting to further tarnish the department's reputation at a time where they already didn’t have a good one, they kept the truth about the case hidden. Ed Burns has never been mentioned in any FBI reports or LAPD files that have been made public.
We then discussed Dr. George Hodel.
The LAPD was not really familiar with George Hodel until 1949, when he was accused of molesting his 14-year-old daughter. The case went to trial, where three individuals stated that they had witnessed Hodel engaging in sexual activities with his daughter. While he for some reason was acquitted of these charges, this case led the LAPD to look into him a bit further, so much so that officials had Hodel under surveillance from mid February of 1950 to the end of March 1950. They bugged his home with microphones and he was monitored by nearly 20 detectives. So, the reason they wanted to monitor him, was to see if he would make any comments implicating him for involvement in any crimes. At first it seemed that nothing out of the ordinary was happening, he talked about money problems or he would be screaming at his assistant, but in one of the recordings an interesting exchange took place. Out of nowhere a woman suddenly was heard screaming and suddenly stopped. A few hours later Hodel said the following to an associate. “I realized there was nothing I could do, I put a pillow over her head and covered her with a blanket. Get a taxi. Expired 12:59. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Killed her.” In another recording he was heard saying, “Supposin’ I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn’t prove it now. They can’t talk to my secretary any more because she’s dead.”
His secretary, Ruth Spaulding, had recently died from a drug overdose. But because of the statements Hodel made on the surveillance tapes, the LAPD started to investigate him in her murder. Turned out he had been with her when she died and had for some reason burnt a few of her personal belongings before officials were called to the scene. They murder case for Ruth Spaulding was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. But in the years following, some papers would be found revealing that Ruth was planning on blackmailing Hodel, over his fraudulent practices for his patients, such as charging them for unnecessary lab tests and treatments, and overcharging for prescriptions.
In recent years, Hodels son, a former LAPD homicide detective, Steve Hodel has come out publicly that he believes Elizabeth Short was one of his fathers victimized patients. There was a report given to a Grand Jury in 1951, that basically stated a woman that lived with George Hodel, identified Elizabeth as one of his romantic partners. The woman also stated that Hodel frequented the Biltmore Hotel, and other witnesses said that George had been out on the town the night Elizabeth was murdered. Investigators searched Hodel’s belongings and found a nude picture thought to be of Elizabeth and a nude picture of a model named Mattie Comfort. She said she had knowledge of Elizabeth and George being acquainted and other witnesses also came forward to say they had never seen the two together. While he remained a prime suspect throughout the years, officials were never able to find sufficient evidence to charge him with Elizabeth’s murder, and George Hodel passed away in 1999.
Going back to his son Steve Hodel. In the early 2000’s after he retired from the LAPD, he published a book he wrote about the Black Dahlia case where he stated his father was Elizabeth’s murderer and was also responsible for a couple other unsolved murders from the time. His big evidence supporting his theory is that he found two photos in his father's belongings that he feels resembles Elizabeth. One of the photos was revealed to be of a former friend of George Hodel, but the other photo remains unidentified. Steve still believes it is Elizabeth, but her family has insisted throughout the years that it is not her. LAPD investigators have publicly said that Steve Hodel’s case is so weak that if a detective took it to the D.A. they would be laughed out of the office.
If Elizabeth Short was still alive today she would be 96 years old. Unfortunately we will most likely never know who was responsible for her death, but maybe one day some kind of justice can be served but probably not in a court of law, more in a symbolic sense.
Sources
Korzik, Morgan. “The Black Dahlia – The 1947 Murder of Elizabeth Short.” Unc.Edu, 23 Dec. 2017, blackdahlia.web.unc.edu/.
Latson, Jennifer. “Black Dahlia Murder Case Hits 68 Years Unsolved.” Time, 15 Jan. 2015, time.com/3657606/black-dahlia-murder-case/.
U.S. Department of Justice. “The Black Dahlia | Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2016, www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/the-black-dahlia.
Wikipedia Contributors. “Black Dahlia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Jan. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dahlia.
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