William Mann (2:55)

Well, yeah, I think you're right. He's not only a plausible case suspect, but he's also the most plausible. In. In my opinion, if things hadn't happened the way they did in the investigation, I think Margolis would have been taken more seriously earlier on.

Christopher Goffard (3:15)

I'm Christopher Goffard. And this is crimes of the times.

Southern California Edison Announcer (3:30)

During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner, and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. The work is underway as communities rebuild across the region. And if you were impacted by the Eaton fire, support may be available through Southern California Edison's Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program. Claims can be filed directly through the program. No legal fees, no lengthy litigation. Payment in months, not years. To file or explore the program, visit sce.com directclaims communications funded by ratepayers.

William Mann (4:32)

He was pretty early in the case, considered and interviewed.

Christopher Goffard (4:37)

I'm talking to William Mann about what drew him to Marvin Margolis as a suspect in Elizabeth Short's murder.

William Mann (4:44)

His roommate, Bill Robinson, who had shared the apartment with. With him and with Elizabeth Short and Marjorie Graham. Bill Robinson came forward after seeing Elizabeth's name in the papers and said, hey, you know, I knew her. You know, I shared an apartment with her and all of that. And the cop said, okay, we need to talk to you. And who else was there? And he said, well, my roommate, Marvin Margolis. And they said, well, where is he? And he said, well, he didn't want to come in. And Finest Brown and Harry Hansen said, well, he's got to come in. You know, we got to talk to him. So he does eventually come in and talk to them reluctantly. And he's just gotten married. And I think this is a fact that not a lot of people aware of. He just got married right after the affair with Elizabeth ended. And he gets his wife to provide an alibi for him for that night. For the moment he was put aside. You know, he's got an alibi. And this is a period of time where everyone's focused on finding Robert Red Manley. He is the last one who saw Elizabeth Short alive. You know, he is seen as the very possibly the killer. And this is dragnet to find him and, you know, stakeouts and all of that. So all of the attention is on Manley as well as a number of other suspects that are mostly generated by the notoriously unreliable Los Angeles examiner and the. And the Herald Express. So every, you know, every couple of days, they've got a new theory. They've Got a new interview. You know, was it Lynn Martin? Was it a lesbian triangle? What you know, all of these kinds of things. And Harry and Finus, the two detectives were constantly being taken off their duty and to go interview these crackpots. And that's the words that they used. They called them the Confessin Sams. So months go by with all these new distractions and Marvin Margolis fell through the cracks. And it's not until the District Attorney steps in in 1948, two years later and the District Attorney's office comes in and reinvestigates everything, gets all of the papers together. Frank Jemison was the lead investigator and Finest Brown was working with him. And Jemison says to Brown, well what about this guy Marvin Margolis? And that's the point. If you go into the district attorney files, that's the point. When Financ Brown says he actually could be a very good suspect. That's a quote from him. That's what he tells the grand jury.

Christopher Goffard (7:20)

Margolis by then was living in Chicago. But when authorities went to investigate, his father in law told them he'd left town.

William Mann (7:28)

Meanwhile, other cops have found found Margolis still in Chicago. In fact they, they go to his house, they take a photograph of his mailbox with his name on it. But they're very careful to not let Margolis know that they're around asking questions because they're afraid they're going to scare him away. It's shortly thereafter that he changes his name and disappears and all of that.

Christopher Goffard (7:51)

Do we know if they ever wound up sitting down with him to interrogate him once he was in Chicago?

William Mann (7:57)

You see, that is why I did not in my book announce I've solved this case. Because there remains material within the LAPD that we have not seen. And it is very clear that Finest Brown was on the hunt. By 1948, 1949, we see that he travels to Boston to re interview Marjorie Graham and a Harvard student who he had already interviewed because he wanted to talk about the time Elizabeth was assaulted. And going back to Ann Toth's testimony, this assault probably was at the hands of Marvin Margolis. So if he's going to Boston to talk to Marjorie Graham about the assault which occurred while she was living with with Marvin and Elizabeth, it seems to me that he was there to talk to her about Margolis.

Christopher Goffard (8:50)

So the documents that you would really like to see, I imagine are Phenis Brown's reports about Margolis and what his experience in Chicago was et CETERA but those are buried in LAPD files, right?

William Mann (9:02)

Yes. I mean, the last we know if they're still there, you know, I talked to Finest, Brown's family, and they said, yes, he went to Chicago to interview people. They weren't sure after all these years if it was Marvin Margolis, but they said he went, there was a suspect in Chicago he was looking into. Now, in the files at the lapd, there might be a report by Brown that says Marvin Margolis interviewed and exonerated. Right. I don't know if it's there. I'm not sure if that's plausible, but I don't know that because none of those records have been released. So until we get all of those records released, I don't think anyone can say for certain.

Christopher Goffard (9:45)

Can you give us a psychological profile of Marvin Margolis?

William Mann (9:49)

William? Yeah, he was a volatile young man. He, according to the family members that I interviewed, he was someone who was always berated by his father, told he would never amount to anything. Unlike his brothers, who seemed to have more going on for them. Marvin, he starts taking some university courses, drops out, decides to join the Army. He's only 20 years old, I think, at that point, when he joins the army and he is determined he's going to be a chiropractor and he wants to get surgical experience. And he's constantly denied the surgical experience. Why? We don't know. I suspect it was because he was perhaps too hot headed, too reckless. But he's constantly denied the surgical experience he wants to have. He goes to Okinawa and, you know, sees some of the worst fighting of the war. One of his jobs is he has to go out into the battlefield and pick up, you know, severed arms and legs and try to reassemble them.

Christopher Goffard (10:51)

Like many men in mid century America, he'd come home from World War II with serious psychological scars. But he also seemed to harbor a deep anger at a system he felt had cheated him.

William Mann (11:02)

And when he's discharged, the army psychiatrist says 50% disabled, psychologically disabled, and that he warned that he was dangerous, that he was hot headed, and implied that there could be some violence. He says if anybody ever tried to get him back in the war, basically he'd kill the guy. So he's, he's a powder keg at this point.

OpenTable Announcer (11:36)

Quick question. Who usually plans Mother's Day? If you're thinking mom, yeah, same. Which is exactly why this year she shouldn't have to think about it. All the times she's gotten everyone together, handled the details, made the extra effort not this year. This year you've got the plan. And finding the right place just got easier. Whether it's brunch, a spot with a view, or a table for the whole family, finding the right restaurant for Mother's Day is simple. On OpenTable, you can read real diner reviews, find the Times that work, and book in just a few taps. No calling around, no guessing what's still available. It's all in one place. So instead of asking her what she wants to do, find her a table she'll love on OpenTable. Go to OpenTable.com or download the app to get started. That's OpenTable.com Happy Mother's Day.

Christopher Goffard (12:33)

Hi, it's Christopher Goffard here reminding you that the stories you hear on this podcast are based on original reporting by LA Times journalists like myself. And with deepfakes and AI generated content on the rise, it's more important than ever to support reporters on the ground. Help support our newsroom by subscribing to the LA Times. Head to latimes.com getlat to get started. That's latimes.com getlat the Black Dahlia murder of 1947 is arguably California's most notorious unsolved case. Its only rival might be the Zodiac murders a generation later. Now an amateur sleuth is attracting attention with the claim that the same killer is responsible for both cases. I'm Christopher Goffard, host of Crimes of the Times. Check out our new season on YouTube and listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can you walk us through his relationship with Elizabeth Short?

William Mann (13:42)

It would appear that she and Margie Graham met Margolis and his friend Bill Robinson on Hollywood Boulevard. That's how she met many men and women, too. That was their hangout. So they get to talk to him. They go on a few dates. Elizabeth, according to her friends, said she was charmed by him because he had such an irreverent sense of humor. He could be very sarcastic. So I think she liked that. And at the time, she was living with Mark Hansen, who was a wealthy theater owner and nightclub investor. And Mark was always trying to control her. And, you know, he was somebody who had to live by his rules. He had a lot of strict rules. But Marvin would come in and needle mark, and it infuriated Hansen, you know, and I think Elizabeth kind of liked that he was giving it to Hansen. But then, of course, when they finally get kicked out for various reasons, the two young women move in with Margolis and Robinson at the Guardian Arms. They're only there about a week. And this is, this is most likely the period in which Elizabeth told her friend Anne Toth that she was struck and kicked out of a car. At that point, Elizabeth is Marvin Margolis's girlfriend. She then does something that I think may have sealed her fate. She decides not to go back to Boston with Marjorie Graham because Marjorie said, I've had it. I'm going back to Boston. And Elizabeth's supposed to go with her, but she changes her mind. And even though Marvin drives her to Mark Hanson's house so she can leave her bags, she then announces, I'm not leaving. And she ends up staying with Mark Hanson. And at that point, she becomes Mark Hansen's girlfriend. I can't imagine that went over very well with Marvin here. Here she was dumping him for, yet again, somebody who had, you know, had a much better deal from life than he did. Somebody who has more privilege, someone who has more money. So that may have sown the seeds of their, their discord.

Christopher Goffard (15:58)

Doesn't the condition of the body, though, suggest some kind of really over the top rage?

William Mann (16:05)

Oh, absolutely. The, the, the only way to understand what was done to Elizabeth Short's body is to consider the fact that the perpetrator was fueled with a rage at society, at women, perhaps at his own lack of achievements. Detectives that I've interviewed have said this murder has no parallel. There is nothing else like it out there. And this suggests that whoever did it wanted to unleash his rage and his fury and then to display it to the world. Let's remember where this body was placed after the murder. It was placed in a vacant lot. And when people say that, they don't often realize that all around that vacant lot was an up and coming new housing development. New homes with young families, with children. Most of the men in that neighborhood had been veterans of the war. They had, you know, they had come out with, you know, honorary discharges. They get married, they have children. And Marvin, if Marvin Margolis is indeed the killer, he's looking around at all these people and saying, screw you all with your perfect lives. And I'm going to leave this body right here so you can all see it and you can see how I feel. And also look what I was able to do. Those, those, those bastards in the army never gave me a chance to prove what I could do on the operating table here. Look at my surgery. In fact, the, the LA coroner said to Harry Hansen at one point, that is one fine piece of surgery. So Marvin was Showing off if indeed this was him.

Christopher Goffard (17:59)

You describe him as a shape shifter and we know that he was kind of a petty con man. He did some time in San Diego county and he defrauded people in his auto parts business and all that. But do you know of any record that he might have for sexual violence against women or any other kind of violence?

William Mann (18:17)

The only information I have regarding the violence towards women is the possible assault against Elizabeth Short when he, he or Bill Robinson slapped her and pushed her out of a car. I also knew from talking to the family that he threatened violence to members of his own family, specifically to the women in his family.

Christopher Goffard (18:40)

One of the big arguments among people who study the Black Dahlia case is about the so called missing week. Where was Elizabeth Short in the week before her body was found? Was she in the killer's captivity that whole time? How reliable are accounts of people who claim they saw her? Mann says he doesn't give a lot of weight to such sightings.

William Mann (19:02)

So the examiner and the Herald Express were always coming up with new stories. They, they needed those Dahlia stories because they sold papers and they, they were in a bit in the business of selling stories, not really about reporting the news. That was secondary. It was selling newspapers. That was first. So of course they're going to give a lot of credence to these sightings after, after her body was found. You know, none of them hold up under any kind of scrutiny, including the Merle McBride story. Now, nothing against Officer McBride. She was doing her job. Right. And so when Elizabeth is, her body is found, but yet she has not yet been identified. Merle McBride tells Homicide that, look, I talked to this young woman last night and you know, she was, she was, seemed to be in distress and she was frightened. It could have been her. And she's, she's going by the sketch that had been done by the examiner of Elizabeth based on her, on her corpse the next day, once they get it identified, once they get the body identified and we have a name for Elizabeth Short and we have photos of her. Merle McBride says, no, that's not the woman I saw.

Christopher Goffard (20:12)

So this still leaves us though at the question of where she was for that whole week.

William Mann (20:16)

Yes. So probably impossible to know everything. I mean, you know, she, she calls somebody from the Biltmore or if she, if she doesn't call someone, she then walks to, to a nearby bar or cafe, meets someone. Maybe the first night she's fine. Maybe somebody says, yeah, I'll give you a room. But at some point my theory is Is that she called Marvin Margolis. Now, Marvin has a wife, so unless the wife is out of town, he can't bring her to their house. Could he have taken her to the Guardian Arms where she had lived with him previously? You know, anybody who says, I can tell you exactly every step of the way isn't telling you the truth. Because we don't know.

Southern California Edison Announcer (21:06)

They knew it had to be somewhere isolated. Running water, a tub to bleeder bisector. Right. And be able to perform the mutilation without being caught.

Christopher Goffard (21:18)

I'm talking to Alex Baber, the amateur sleuth who believes he's connected Margolis definitively not just to Short's murder, but to the Zodiac killings a generation later. As part of his probe into the case, Alex Baber also believes he found the so called murder room that has eluded investigators for nearly 80 years. The place Short was killed, drained of blood and cut in half. He thinks it was at 2615 Santa Fe Avenue in Compton, a cluster of standalone bungalows. Crucially, it had a bathtub. This wasn't always the case. In 1947, on the night before the killing, newspaper accounts say a nervous young man had been driving between motels in the area, desperately seeking a room with a bathtub and claiming his wife needed it. At the time, the Compton bungalow complex was called the Zodiac Motel, a fact Baber discovered by using AI to unearth a newspaper ad. You think the name of that hotel is what inspired the Zodiac moniker, Which he adopted 21 years later?

William Mann (22:27)

I honestly do.

Christopher Goffard (22:32)

Mitzi Roberts is a former LAPD homicide detective who at one point had the Black Dahlia case. I asked her if she thinks Margolis killed and mutilated Elizabeth Short there. She said such a scenario makes sense.

Mitzi Roberts (22:46)

If you were going to dispose or, you know, attempt to mutilate a body like they did. It would be the perfect type of place. Just because there's no connected walls, you know, you're like, in these individual bungalows, there's these little driveways where you can secrete your car. And if it did have a bathtub, then that would, you know, that makes sense, too.

Christopher Goffard (23:12)

In his book, Mann posits a different theory from Baber's. He speculates that Margolis took her body to the cadaver lab at USC and bisected her there as a student. He says Margolis would have had access to the lab. And the week happened to coincide with a quiet time on campus, a study break before finals.

William Mann (23:34)

The coroner said she died from the blow to her head and Then she suffocated on her own blood when her cheeks were cut in that horrible Glasgow smile. So was the initial assault, you know, impulsive? Did she. Did she make fun of Marvin? Did she say that he wasn't as good a veteran, that he wasn't as heroic as her fiance, Matt Gordon? Did he strike her? Were they somewhere near the campus of usc? Were they actually there on campus when it happened? And then did he take her up to the lab and finish the deal? Because no one would have been there, but he would have had access. Now, I don't have any hard proof of this. It wouldn't stand up in court. It's a theory.

Christopher Goffard (24:23)

Mann's cadaver lab theory diverges sharply from the views of Alex Baber, and so do his thoughts on Margolis also being the Zodiac killer.

William Mann (24:32)

You know, one of the things we have to be careful about is confirmation bias. So if you already think that your killer is also the Zodiac Killer, and then you find, oh, look, here's the Zodiac Hotel, you know, that's confirmation bias, and that's something we have to be careful about.

Christopher Goffard (24:47)

So what's interesting is you guys landed on the same killer, but your. Your view of how he did it differs dramatically.

William Mann (24:58)

Yeah, I mean, I think. I think Marvin Margolis, to anyone who's really reading this, seriously, is going to come across as the most likely killer. And I know there's people out there who are going to say, oh, no, no way. Marvin Margolis. It was George Hodel or it was Walter Bailey or somebody who has. There's no connection at all. There's no evidence at all that put those people in place. There is evidence for Marvin Margolis, so I. I agree. And, you know, if it turns out that he's a Zodiac killer, hey, I'm not surprised. Right? I look forward to that. I would. I. You know, he had the ability to do it. They're very different cases, and they're very different signatures and, you know, long years in between. That doesn't mean it's not possible. One of the detectives I interviewed said, look, you can't. You can't classify killers, right? So one killer, you might say, well, there's no other signature that's like this. Well, you know what? Maybe they. They did something different next time. He said, we can't. We can't type killers. There's. There are always going to be differences.

Christopher Goffard (26:00)

One thing that seems to maybe argue that it's the same guy who did both is Marvin Margolis's apparent lifelong need for attention. The family told me, yeah, he was a genius. He was incredibly bright. Everybody said how brilliant he was. And yet he jumps from job to job, profession to profession, state to state, never able to really stick to one thing for long. He runs auto shops. He scams people out of it. He may have been a person of great intelligence or someone who had a talent for convincing people that he was intelligent, but never was able to do anything with it. And something about the gap between his achievement and his ego became toxic to him. And I've seen that in profiles of killers more than once.

William Mann (27:00)

He was antisocial. I mean, he had antisocial personality. He had both an inferiority complex and a superiority complex. He was better than these people, but these people always made him feel inferior. Like, everywhere I go, people are trying to stop me from being great, stop me from achieving right. And so rather than blame himself, which is the case for a lot of these people with these pathological personalities, they blame other people that their mistakes and their failures and their inadequacies are always other people's faults.

Christopher Goffard (27:34)

I asked him what he thought of the drawing entitled Elizabeth that Margolis made in 1992, soon before he died. He said Margolis's family told him it might represent another woman named Elizabeth that he'd been dating.

William Mann (27:47)

I mean, who knows when the picture was drawn? And maybe it was Elizabeth. You know, I wouldn't call it a deathbed confession because there's just not enough to hold that up in court and say, this is it. But it's definitely intriguing. If I'd had that piece of evidence, I would have included it in the book.

Christopher Goffard (28:09)

Part of Mann's ambition in his book is to reclaim Elizabeth Short's name from the many myths that surround it.

William Mann (28:17)

I have to just say one word about Elizabeth herself, because it's more important to find Elizabeth Short than it is to find her killer. And for too long, she's been mythologized into this dark, slinky, seductive, wicked character who is out there, you know, seducing men and leaving them and when in fact, she was just a young woman with agency and curiosity and wanted to see the world. And, you know, men are applauded when they go off on their own and, you know, live by their wits and, you know, con people sometimes to get something to eat. Hey, you know, they're Butchgassing, the Sundance Kid, they're Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn. But Elizabeth does it, women do it, and they're seen as somehow decadent or immoral. And she was A good person. You know, there's nothing about her. She didn't deserve this in the slightest.

Christopher Goffard (29:10)

Marvin Margolis is buried at Riverside National Cemetery under his real name. Whether there's more evidence linking him to the killings may be buried in police reports to which we don't have access. Neither currently does Mitzi Roberts. What is the LAPD telling you about where they stand in looking into this?

Mitzi Roberts (29:31)

If they are, yes, they are. There is an investigator that is assigned to the case, but again, it's an ancillary duty and it's when they have time to do it. And how much time are they going to put into it and how much, especially how short they are now. But they are assigned and they are looking into it.

Christopher Goffard (29:51)

I mean, I'm sure they'd like to be able to say this is behind us once and for all. Right.

Mitzi Roberts (29:56)

I think they would love to never have to open those files again. It will be a hard one to close because of the age of it. And although I think this is the correct suspect, I think it will be easier if the Bay Area folks decide to get on board and maybe look at, test some evidence against their evidence. But it's harder for LAPD because we don't have the evidence to test. You know, we, we could very likely get, try and get DNA from a family member, but for what reason? There's no info. There's no evidence to test it against. So number one, there's no, there's no

Christopher Goffard (30:39)

DNA or fingerprints in the Dahlia case at all.

Mitzi Roberts (30:41)

Not. No, not in the Dahlia case.

Christopher Goffard (30:43)

So what about San Francisco pd, The Bay Area folks? What's their posture on this?

Mitzi Roberts (30:49)

So I think they're very interested, but it's very much. It feels like the two agencies, the Bay Area and la, are waiting to see what the other one does. And so, yeah, I thought things were

Christopher Goffard (31:03)

going to start getting them, but it sounds like they've grown to a halt.

Mitzi Roberts (31:09)

No, I think we have a little momentum, but it's, it's very slow momentum.

Christopher Goffard (31:18)

The LAPD has been tight lipped about the investigation, although they will say it remains an open case and that they expect to meet with Alex Baber's team. From LA Times Studios. This is Crimes of the Times. To read more about these cases, check out crimesofthetimesotimes.com we also have a link to our video episodes in the show Notes. This episode was written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Goffard. Our senior producers are Mary Knoth and Jonathan Shiflett of Studio Phonic. Our Editor is Cindy Chang and our Associate producer is Jordan Patterson. Special thanks to my colleague Richard Winton who contributed reporting to this podcast. Our camera operators are Michael Siegel, Josh Summers, and Peter Grayson. Our Director of Post Production is Patrick Stewart and our Senior Sound Recording Engineer is Nick Norton, with additional engineering by Jordan Patterson. Our Podcast Marketing Manager is Bryn Jura, our Senior Media Marketing Manager is Will Dobson, and our Product Marketing Director is Becca Dorman. Our podcast its Senior Finance Manager is Jenner Canaleo. Special thanks to LA Times Studio President Anna Magzanian, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argenteri and Executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Crimes of the Times is executive produced and co created by Darius, Derek Schon and me, Christopher Gofford

Mitzi Roberts (32:55)

SA.