The Dahlia Zodiac Connection: Part Two

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Crimes of the Times"

Episode: The Dahlia Zodiac Connection: Part Two

Date: April 14, 2026
Host: Christopher Goffard (L.A. Times Studios)

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Overview

In this gripping continuation, Christopher Goffard delves into the provocative theory that connects the infamous 1947 Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short with the unsolved Zodiac killings decades later. This episode scrutinizes a nearly forgotten suspect—Marvin Margolis—a figure now emerging at the center of new research tying him to both cases. The investigation examines Margolis’s troubled background, his complicated relationship with Short, and newly unearthed evidence, including a chilling deathbed drawing. Featuring expert insights from veteran homicide detective Mitzi Roberts and amateur sleuth Alex Baber, the episode probes whether this neglected suspect could be the missing link in two of America’s most haunting mysteries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Re-examining Marvin Margolis as Prime Suspect

• Margolis’s Background & Initial Investigation

  • Margolis, a Navy corpsman at Okinawa, was taking pre-med at USC with ambitions to be a surgeon but never received operative training due to the military’s decision. He lived with Elizabeth Short briefly before her murder ([00:01]-[03:09]).
  • Despite an early investigation, Margolis’s role faded from the narrative, largely due to an alibi provided by his wife and his move to Chicago, where he changed his name ([03:09]-[03:39]).
  • Quote: “Weirdly, one of the suspects police originally found most promising was somehow memory holed by history... the name Marvin Margolis has had a miniscule presence on the lists of potential killers. Until recently, that is.” – Christopher Goffard ([00:36])

• Margolis’s Psychological Profile

  • Military psychiatrists described him as obsessive, explosive, and plagued by PTSD ([02:50], [05:26]).
  • Quote: “He was obsessive. That's in his report... and he's explosive, right? So that being said, it was a nuclear mix from from the get go.” – Alex Baber ([02:50])

2. The Complex Relationship Between Short and Margolis

• Contention and Fear

  • Some evidence, though inconclusive, suggests Short feared Margolis; she told friends an ex-Marine ex-boyfriend threatened her, and by process of elimination, Baber argues Margolis is the only candidate ([06:23]-[07:51]).
  • Goffard and Baber clarify that direct evidence of these threats naming Margolis is not extant—much is deduced ([06:45]-[07:51]).
  • Quote: “We know that Elizabeth said that he threatened her and that she feared him ... documented.” – Alex Baber ([06:45])

• Unreliable Narratives

  • Short was a “habitual teller of tall tales,” further complicating the trustworthiness of reports ([07:56]).
  • Police investigation into Margolis was hindered by his lies, his move out of state, and an unverified alibi from his spouse ([11:12]-[12:09]).

3. Why Margolis Was (and Was Not) Cleared

• A grand jury session and records show authorities remained concerned about Margolis, even as an LAPD memo stated he could be cleared ([12:09]-[13:40]).
• Quote: “The lead investigator testified at the grand jury that he couldn't be eliminated or they couldn't figure him out either way, but he wasn't eliminated.” – Mitzi Roberts ([11:42])

4. The Link to the Zodiac Case

• Cipher and Alias Clues

  • Baber claims the Zodiac’s Z13 cipher contains the name “Marvin Merrill,” one of Margolis’s later aliases ([14:02]).

• The Deathbed Drawing: "Elizabeth"

  • In a pivotal moment, Baber recounts approaching Margolis’s son, only to be shown a chilling drawing by Margolis titled “Elizabeth” ([20:29]-[22:26]):
    • The sketch depicts a naked woman, partially cut off above the navel, with one nipple severed and possibly stab wounds—uncannily similar to Short’s mutilation.
    • Quote: “He finds it, and he turns the phone to me and looks at me, and I say, holy f...” – Alex Baber ([22:11])
  • The drawing was signed “Marty Merrill, 92.” Mitzi Roberts now has possession and is having it forensically analyzed ([23:17]).
  • Roberts notes prior publication of corpse photos might explain Margolis’s knowledge, but the timing and content remain suspicious ([23:29]-[24:14]).

5. Skepticism and Alternative Explanations

• Goffard floats the possibility that Margolis was not the killer but rather morbidly obsessed due to prior intimacy and interest in the Zodiac murders ([25:00]).
• Roberts weighs in: “It's a very sophisticated game for somebody that's not involved ... more indicative of somebody with a very sick, twisted mind, which we know Margolis was described as...” ([25:24])

6. Alibi Concerns and Challenges in Cold Case Investigation

• Margolis’s wife provided his alibi, but Roberts doubts the reliability of spousal alibis ([18:26]).
• The week-long gap (“the missing week”) between Short’s last sighting and the discovery of her body complicated the investigation ([16:51]-[17:55]).
• Detectives faced immense media and public pressure, likely contributing to tunnel vision and investigative lapses ([18:52]-[20:29]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• Christopher Goffard:

  • “Weirdly, one of the suspects police originally found most promising was somehow memory holed by history...” ([00:36])

• Alex Baber:

  • “He was obsessive. That's in his report... and he's explosive, right? So that being said, it was a nuclear mix from from the get go.” ([02:50])
  • “We know that Elizabeth said that he threatened her and that that she feared him, was in hiding of him. That is documented.” ([06:45])

• Mitzi Roberts (former LAPD Homicide Detective):

  • “The lead investigator testified at the grand jury that he couldn't be eliminated or they couldn't figure him out either way, but he wasn't eliminated.” ([11:42])
  • “I have less faith in spouses verifying alibis than official documents... Moms, children. Yeah. Spouses, lovers even to defend them even when they're the victims of the abuse.” ([18:26])
  • “What's most... interesting about that sketch is that it's a young female, naked from the torso up... And it's titled Elizabeth.” ([23:50])
  • “That is another piece of evidence, I think, that you just can't explain away—the supposed injuries, the...having that sketch named Elizabeth hanging on a wall.” ([24:37])
  • “I think it's more indicative of somebody with a very sick, twisted mind, which we know Margolis was described as when he...got out of the military.” ([25:24])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Margolis as a Suspect, Medical Background, and Alibi: [00:01] – [03:39]
• Short-Margolis Relationship, Threats, and Trauma: [05:26] – [07:51]
• Investigation Problems & Grand Jury Evidence: [11:12] – [13:40]
• Cipher/Deathbed Drawing & Zodiac Connection: [14:02], [20:29] – [25:00]
• Skepticism of Confession, Alternative Theories: [25:00] – [25:58]

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Conclusion & Next Steps

This episode delivers a convincing argument that Marvin Margolis deserves renewed scrutiny as a suspect in both the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases. The convergence of circumstantial evidence—the suspicious drawing, alias clues in Zodiac ciphers, and Margolis’s psychological profile—add fuel to the theory. Yet, as Goffard repeatedly emphasizes, much hangs on inferences, uncorroborated memories, and analysis of artifacts whose context remains murky.

Next episode: A former FBI profiler will dissect whether these two cases—so different in most respects—might really intersect, or whether the connection is another dead end in the long, winding saga of unsolved American murders.

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For further reading and to watch video versions, visit: latimes.com/crimesofthetimes

Transcript

[A]

This is an la times studios podcast. Elizabeth Short's murder in January 1947 has generated a seemingly endless parade of wild suspects who killed the young woman known as the Black Dahlia and left her bisected body in a weedy lot in Leimerd Park. Depending on the book you pick up, the killer was a bellhop or maybe a skid row alcoholic or maybe a venereal disease doctor. Other books make the case for the gangster Bugsy Siegel or the filmmaker Orson Welles. Short was a child of the Depression, a Boston native who'd come to Southern California to pursue a man. And when the relationship ended, she drifted between friends and temporary lodgings, hustling for meals and inventing stories to win sympathy. She was homeless and jobless when she died at age 22. Weirdly, one of the suspects police originally found most promising was somehow memory holed by history. Despite the massive ink spilled on the case, the name Marvin Margolis has had a miniscule presence on the lists of potential killers. Until recently, that is. The condition of her body led police to speculate that her killer possessed surgical skill. Her body had been drained of blood and left in two parts, neatly severed between the second and third lumbar vertebrae, right where it was most efficient to do so. Margolis was 21 years old at the time, and he was not a surgeon, but he was taking pre med classes at USC with ambitions of becoming a surgeon in World War II. He'd worked as a naval corpsman during the Battle of Okinawa and was bitter that the military had not allowed him to pursue surgery. He'd lived with Short in Hollywood a few months before her death.

[B]

When they first bring him in, he lies. He says, I only knew her from outings, clubs around the area. We'd be in passing, denied he ever dated her, denied he was ever her boyfriend, denied he ever resided together.

[A]

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. At first, Margolis did not tell detectives that he had lived with short for 12 days at a Hollywood Boulevard apartment three months before her January 1947 slaying. Margolis later acknowledged they had lived together in apartment 726 at the Guardian Arms Apartments.

[B]

And Marvin coming back with PTSD, right? Being discharged 50% mental, he was obsessive. That's in his report. You know, the doctor actually says that in his report. And he's explosive, right? So that being said, you know, it was a nuclear mix from from the get go.

[A]

By the time she was killed, Margolis was newly married and his wife gave him enough of an alibi that police at least at one point thought he could be eliminated as a suspect. He soon moved to Chicago and changed his name, frustrating further attempts to question him from DA investigators who thought he had been dismissed too easily. Among many suspects, a district attorney investigator would note, Margolis was, quote, the only premedical student who ever lived as a boyfriend.

[B]

With Beth Short, it was a love story that went bad and what he did to her was personal. This wasn't a one night stand or somebody that was dating somebody for a couple days. There was a lot of emotion in the mutilation. There was a lot of anger.

[A]

From the Los Angeles Times and LA Times Studios, this is Crimes of the Times. I'm Christopher Goffert.

[C]

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[A]

he was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected and utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh Mankiewicz and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all new podcast from Dateline. Listen to all episodes of Trace of Suspicion now wherever you get your podcasts. As a 20 year old Navy Corpsman in World War II Marvin Margolis found himself at the Battle of Okinawa, one of the bloodiest episodes of the Pacific campaign. He came home scarred by trauma, angry and bitter. A military psychiatrist described him as a resentful individual who shows ample evidence of open aggression.

[B]

With knowing who she is now and who he was, it was. It was bound to end bad because he wasn't going to tolerate her running around and he threatened her.

[A]

Alex Baber is describing Elizabeth Short's relationship with Margolis, who lived with her briefly in Hollywood soon before her death. Some of Baber's narrative is stitched together by inferences.

[B]

We know that Elizabeth said that he threatened her and that that she feared him, was in hiding of him. That is documented.

[A]

I want to be careful, Alex, to make sure we draw a clear line between what we know for sure and what we're speculating about.

[D]

Right.

[A]

Do we have it on record anywhere that she says Marvin in specific threatened her? Because I know she said that an ex Marine who was an ex boyfriend threatened her. Right. But do we have it anywhere on the record? Marvin Margolis by name is threatening me?

[B]

Okay. On. In the accounts that we have publicly, we do not, but we do know that in the accounts that were first released, they thought that Red Manly was the Marine, which he wasn't. He was the army saxophonist. And they were looking for the other Marine that she had lived with. Right. And she only ever. Of all the men she dated, and we got all their names and did military background checks. Right. Only one of them could ever be connected to a Marine division or the Marine Corps at all. So that was. Marvin

[A]

Margolis had not been a Marine, but as a Navy corpsman, he would have served with Marines.

[B]

So by process of elimination deducing, we come to the fact that he's the only possibility.

[A]

What complicates all of this is that Elizabeth Short was a habitual teller of tall tales. She'd fabricate stories about her life in service, of winning sympathy. So some skeptics doubt there was a Marine she was fleeing. The initial investigation uncovered evidence of MARGOLIS Psychological instability. Lt. Frank Jemison, who worked at the District Attorney's investigative unit, studied his military records. He learned that Margolis had seen immense carnage among the first wave of troops landing on Okinawa in April 1945. Three months later, Margolis was diagnosed with, quote, tremulousness, recurring battle dreams, tiredness, which is chronic and intermittent startled reactions, and periods of depressions. According to Jemison's May 1950 summary of the records, the Navy had thwarted Margolis ambition to be a surgeon. Jemison wrote, quote, he desired operation room technique, which was never granted to him. And, and this is one of the underlying bases for his resentment and disgust, end quote. Because of his mental trauma, the Navy discharged him with a 50% disability. He seemed to suggest that he would kill whoever tried to send him to war again. The next time there is a war, two of us are not going, the one who comes after me and myself, he told a military psychiatrist in August 1945. After the war, Margolis was back in Chicago, his hometown. He posed smiling with his battle ribbons and a rifle for a glowing feature story in the Chicago Garfieldian newspaper which said he had cared for the wounded as a, quote, pharmacist's mate during the war. Professionally, Margolis plans to be a surgeon, the article said. After dropping out of usc, he moved between several states and plied many trades, working as a builder, architect and portrait painter. He married twice and had four kids. He seemed to relish attention. And in 1961, he was smiling again as the subject of another glowing feature story, this time in the Wellington Daily News in Kansas City. He was now calling himself Skip Merrill. The article described him as an artist and intellectual who hoped to bring artistic culture to Kansas. He exaggerated his service record, saying he was a pilot with the Flying Tigers during the war and claimed to have studied art under Salvador Dali at usc. A few years later in Northern California, he ran a restaurant in Atascadero and and worked as an engineer at intel in Santa Clara. In the early 70s, he ran Bucksaver's automotive repair and parts supply in the Southern California city of Oceanside and got a 30 day jail term plus three years probation for defrauding customers. So what went wrong with the initial investigation into Margolis?

[D]

Yeah, I mean, initially, you know, he lied to law enforcement and then gave some lame excuse of why and then eventually moved out of California. I think that's obviously a big reason. Something that made it harder for law enforcement to have access to.

[A]

This is Mitzi Roberts, a former LAPD homicide detective. As a member of the cold case squad, she actually oversaw the Black Dolly investigation for years.

[D]

You know, it's hard when you try and go back through the files and through the information you have to, to be able to definitively say what went wrong in an investigation. And all I can say was that he was a very viable suspect. The lead investigator testified at the grand jury that he couldn't be eliminated or they couldn't figure him out either way, but he wasn't eliminated.

[A]

People who dismiss Margolis as the killer point to an LAPD document that says he was eliminated as a suspect and because he'd furnished an alibi. But a grand jury proceeding in December 1949, nearly three years after the murder, makes it clear that the LA County District Attorney's office still had serious questions about him. There is a key exchange between Deputy District Attorney Arthur Vetch and Detective Harry Hansen. The Transcript shows that ADA investigator Lt. Frank Jemison had traveled to Chicago to ask questions about Margolis. Vetch told Henson, you are aware, I presume, of the investigation with respect to the fact that within 60 days of her death, this girl roomed and stayed in the rooms of a medical student at USC, Marvin Margolis, who entered USC in September of 1946 and whose first obligation under his entry was to dissect a human corpse and that Marvin Margolis is now in Chicago and that a checkup is being made. Are you aware of that? Hanson replies, no, I am not. Not everything Vetch says is accurate. Margolis lived with her three months before she died, and not within 60 days. And it's not clear what support he has for the claim that Margolis dissected a cadaver at usc. But the gist is clear. LA authorities were still looking at him.

[D]

I can't say with 100% certainty why the investigation into him sort of dropped off. It's unfortunate. The case has been investigated by numerous detectives throughout the years, and the older it gets, the harder it is to solve.

[A]

So what happened to persuade her the case had been cracked? It wasn't just the breaking of the Z13 cipher, the cryptogram that the Zodiac Killer sent to the San Francisco Chronicle promising to reveal his identity, which Alex Baber found to contain the name Marvin Merrill, one of Margolis aliases. There was another key discovery, evidence suggesting that Margolis had been thinking about his murdered former girlfriend as he lay on his deathbed.

[C]

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[A]

It's never been established exactly when Elizabeth Short was abducted by her killer. She was last seen for certain at the Biltmore hotel in downtown LA on January 9, 1947. Her body was found on January 15. Where was she during the week in between? Was she alive and free most of that time? Detectives suspected she had spent that week in her killer's captivity. No definitive proof of that has ever emerged, but if you assume that's true, you give any potential suspect a huge window in which to furnish an alibi. There was a policewoman who said she saw Elizabeth Short on January 14, the day before the body's discovery. She said she ran into Short at the downtown bus station, sobbing in fear that an ex boyfriend was stalking her and wanted to kill her. Although this policewoman Myrtle McBride later said she was unsure it had been short. Mitzi Roberts notes that there were people who said they saw her during the so called missing week.

[D]

I do think that that was a problem for the investigators during the initial investigation because there was that time lapse in between when she was last seen and when the body was found.

[A]

Exactly what Margolis gave detectives for his alibi and how thoroughly they bother to check it out is not clear. The answers may be buried in LAPD files that even Roberts no longer has access to, but she knows it hinged on Margolis wife.

[D]

I know that Margolis wife verified his alibi, but I don't have the information about what she was asked and what the time period was and how it was narrowed down. And honestly, I have less faith in spouses verifying alibis than official documents. Like a punch in card at work where you, you know exactly he was there because he punched in at work or something like that, so.

[A]

And in your experience, it's not uncommon for a wife to give a false alibi to protect her husband. Right?

[D]

Right. Moms, children. Yeah. Spouses, lovers even to defend them even when they're the victims of the abuse. You know, they defend and makes excuse. So yeah, I'm not the alibi doesn't. It doesn't bother me as much as it bothers some because I look at a case in the totality and I try to see things as what makes sense, what is probable, what is likely in the case. There's confirmation bias too. And that's just so common in law enforcement. You know, you're working on a case and you get locked into a certain fact and sometimes you just can't see past that. And I imagine in this case, I don't think they were prepared for the amount of media that was going to come, you know, that was going to attach itself to, you know, they even gave her the name of the Black Dahlia. And it just took off. And I can only imagine back then being the investigator assigned to a case like that and the amount of pressure coming from the public, from the media, from the chief, from the D A, from, from your peers, from the family, and just trying to move the ball closer to the goal post. And if you get the wife that says no, he was here, you're gonna just accept that and let's go to the next one. You know, I've seen it happen and it's in the nature of the beast. On some of these bigger cases, you

[A]

know, As Alex Baber pursued his Theory that Margolis was Elizabeth Short's killer. He approached one of his surviving sons with a ruse. He said he wanted to talk about Margolis experience in World War II, but soon admitted he was interested in his relationship with Short.

[B]

We came to him under the pretense that we were investigating or building a story surrounding Okinawa, which is one of the bloodiest conflicts in World War II on history. We knew his father was there because of newspaper clipping, but at the time that we came there, we came there to show him evidence of the Zodiac case, not the Black Dahlia case. So we opened up with the cipher with the letters, which he identified to handwriting as that of his fathers or resembling his fathers. And he became emotional. I could see the. The moment where he reached out and initiated physical contact with me, which is very rare in all the interviews I've done. And at that moment, I saw an opening to expose the Elizabeth Short. And not to my surprise, he said, well, I don't know anything about that. And I said, well, here, let me show you the grand jury in quest records and picture of your father. And you know what he said? He was the last known boyfriend and the medical student and all this other stuff.

[D]

So.

[B]

And he says, wait, her name's Elizabeth? I said, yeah, Elizabeth. He said, I got something I need to show you. So he pulls his phone out, and I see him starting to, you know, flick his finger through these photographs. And it takes a minute. And. And. And the first thing that came to my mind, I'm like, did he. Did he paint something? Because I knew his dad had had a background in artistry. And he said. I said, no, a sketch. And he finds it, and he turns the phone to me and looks at me, and I say, holy f.

[A]

Marvin Margolis son had inherited a peculiar drawing from his father and kept it on his office wall. His father had sketched it as cancer was killing him. The sketch, called Elizabeth, depicts a woman who is peering with one eye through a curtain of hair that hangs over her face. She is naked from the waist up. Her lower half is not visible, as if cut off above the navel. One of the nipples appears to be severed. The torso bears a series of marks that might be stab wounds amid an area of shading that suggests blood. It is signed Marty Merrill, 92, reflecting still another alias Margolis used and who has possession of that drawing now.

[B]

Currently, it is in possession of Mitzi Roberts, and it's being released to a forensic expert for imaging analysis. So we're going to have him validate

[A]

our findings to Mitzi Roberts. The similarities it bears to Short's bisected and mutilated body are hard to ignore, suggesting firsthand knowledge of the killing. This claim is hard to prove. Graphic photos of her corpse went public as early as the mid-1980s in Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon 2.

[D]

What's most, I think, interesting about that sketch is that it's a young female, naked from the torso up, with dark hair, pretty, you know, drawn by a person that was in the top 10 suspects. And it's titled Elizabeth.

[A]

Because Margolis died in 1993 and the drawing was seemingly made in 92, she sees the drawing as a kind of deathbed confession to Short slaying. More than that, though, she sees it as a confession to the Zodiac crime. That's because when Baber applied filters to the sketch, he found the word Zodiac appeared to be hiding in the shading.

[D]

That is another piece of evidence, I think, that you just can't explain away the supposed injuries, the. The drawing and having similarities to the injuries on the body and stuff like that. If you believe that's what it. What it is, and that's just icing. I don't even really need that stuff stuff. It's just having that sketch named Elizabeth hanging on a wall.

[A]

It's unbelievably creepy. But let me propose an alternate theory to you. What if this guy Margolis, because she was his ex and she got murdered, just became kind of fixated on the case in some crazy, morbid way and also became fixated on the Zodiac case? Is it possible that he wasn't the killer, but just obsessed with the killings?

[D]

There's just things that are beyond, in my opinion, what somebody would do to take credit. It's a very sophisticated game for somebody that's not involved. I think. I think it's more indicative of somebody with a very sick, twisted mind, which we know Margolis was described as when he, you know, when he got out of the military.

[A]

This is not the first time someone has seen a connection between the Short and Zodiac murders. For years, a former cop turned writer named Steve Hodel has been arguing that his own father was the killer in both cases. At first glance, the intensely personal hatred that seems at work in Short's death and the seemingly impersonal targets of the Zodiac look like the work of very different hands. On the next episode, we'll talk to a former FBI profiler about where the cases might intersect and where they diverge. From LA Times Studios, this is Crimes of the Times. To read more about these cases, check out Crimes of the [e-mail] 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 Knauff and Jonathan Shiflet of Studio 4. Our editor is Cindy Chang and our Associate Producer is Jordan Patterson. 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 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 Derekshan and me Christopher for Goffard.