A (0:00)

Guys, I'm gonna cry. I just recorded this entire episode and the audio wasn't recording. I have been sitting here for two hours recording this episode. I just clicked stop. Didn't record anything. Here we go again. Have not moved from this spot. My butt hurts. I can't believe that this happened. I can't believe that this happened. Anyway, I hope you guys are all doing well. My day is starting off like this, but that's okay. Also, my mom, bless her, she. You know how you guys sometimes call me mother on Tick Tock? She called me yesterday. She's like, why are people calling you mother on social media? What's going on? I'm like, mommy, you don't get it. I am mommy. I am mother. I'm just kidding. I was like, I don't know. They're being weirdos. I don't know why they're calling me mommy. Okay? No, I am mother. I am other. It's what I said. My mom, she. She doesn't get it. Anyway, that's off topic. Well, second time is a charm. Is that what they say? Is that what the people say? Let's go. It was just like any other morning. It was a quiet January morning when a woman walking her child in a South Los Angeles neighborhood spotted what she thought was a discarded mannequin in a vacant lot. It was pale, it was lifeless, and it was early post. Split very clearly and cleanly in two pieces. But as she stepped closer, she looked closer, her stomach sunk. This was no mannequin. It was a human body. And it had been gruesomely mutilated, completely drained of blood and left with a sinister kind of precision. That kind of scene doesn't only shock a city, it haunts it. But who was this girl? Who was she really? Was she simply another starry eyed dreamer chasing fame in Hollywood's golden age or something? More and more importantly, who wanted her silenced so badly they carved it into history. Welcome to episode five of I wish you were here. This is the story of Elizabeth Short, otherwise known as the Black Dahlia. I feel like if you know true crime, you know or have at the very least heard of the Black Dahlia. I was talking to my fiance last night. I said, I was telling him that the next episode coming out is about the Black Dahlia. And he said, who's the Black Dahlia? I said, sorry, have you been living under a rock? I feel like it's just a well known case, is it not? I don't know. I feel like at one point in your life, you You've heard of it somewhere, somehow, but it is one of Hollywood's most gruesome, most well known unsolved murders. And in my opinion, it's unfortunately the kind of case that leaves you with more questions than answers. And I feel like I've been covering lately so many of the cases on TikTok as well of cases that leave us with more questions than answers. And it's so unsettling to me. I've said this before, but just the fact that there could be a murder, something extremely gruesome and we have no idea who it is and the person is just either no longer life and took it to their grave or they're just walking amongst us knowing what they did. Like somebody in the world knows what they did and they're not saying anything. And I hate that thought, I hate it. But with that being said, here is my best attempt at explaining this case and everything that comes along with it in a way that hopefully makes sense. Hollywood in the 1940s was a glittering dream machine. It was glamorous, it was seductive, it was attractive, it. It was the golden age of cinema where studios ruled the city like kingdoms. Moviegoers packed themselves into theaters to watch and escape into black and white fantasies. It was the place that people moved to, to walk the streets, hoping to be discovered, craving fame and doing everything they could to try and make their dreams come true. That being said, however, when this case took place, it was 1947, meaning the world was right out of the Great Depression and right out of World War II. And the general atmosphere and lasting effects of those two major events was also something that of course, you could almost feel in the air in Hollywood at the time. And beneath the sparkle, beneath all the glamour, there was a darker energy to Hollywood. And honestly, I feel like that kind of comes with any big city. And you can make any big city sound grand and big and fabulous. But every big city has secrets and a dark side to it because does it just come with having a lot of people living in the same place? I don't know. But big cities hold secrets. And with this big city Hollywood came secrets, quiet whispers and the quiet desperation of those chasing fame in a place that could just as easily chew you up and spit you right back out. It was early morning In Los Angeles, January 15, 1947. It was a Wednesday, just after 10am A woman was out walking the streets in her neighborhood with her three year old daughter, just like she did most mornings. Her name was Betty. And that day started off like any other. Their Walk down a quiet stretch of land off South Norton Avenue was routine for them. They did it pretty often. But this morning was all fine and well until Betty saw something. It was lying in the grass, right near the sidewalk. It looked to be something shaped. Shaped as a human body with arms and legs. At first, she thought it was a mannequin, one of those department store display models. Pale and perfectly still, Betty thought it had to be a mannequin. It was no question it had to be a mannequin, because no real human body looked like that. But Betty took a few more steps closer, and that's when it hit her. This wasn't a mannequin. It was a woman. It was the body of a woman who had been butchered, cut clean in half at the waist. Her arms raced above her head. Her mouth sliced into a permanent, grotesque smile. She had no blood on her, not a single drop. She was drained of it all, like whoever did this had drained her completely. And I don't. I. I'm not gonna Google right now. I don't know how much the average human body holds how much blood, but to be able to drain a human body completely for there not to be a single drop of blood is crazy. Like this. Whoever did this was hard at work. She had been posed in what some people have been described as a very theatrical way. To me, it feels that she was posed in a very threatening way, almost like it was a message. It kind of felt like Betty was alarmed as soon as she saw this. Of course she was. She grabbed her daughter and walked off to the nearest house to borrow phone and call authorities. Police arrived, and what they saw would go on to haunt them forever. Even the most seasoned detectives, detectives who had years of experience, who had seen the worst of the worst cases, even they were stunned into silence. Lying in the dirt was the naked body of a young woman, severed cleanly at the waist, her two halves placed a foot apart with such precision, it almost looked surgical. Like I mentioned before, her arms were raised above her head. Rope marks were found on her wrists, ankles, and neck, pointing to a brutal period of restraint. Pieces of flesh were completely missing in parts of her thighs and chest. And there were deep lacerations and injuries pretty much all across her body, including gashes on her breast, with, again, bruising all over her. And the bruising, you guys, was an indicator that she was still alive. At some point when she was enduring some of these injuries, she was still alive. I'm not. I do not have any medical knowledge, but I think that the fact that Bruising started meant that blood was still circulating in her body. She was still alive, which is why we assume that. But one of her breasts had been partially mutilated. Her mouth had been slashed from ear to ear with what I would describe to look like a joker smile. And again, I sound like a broken record. But there was not a single drop of blood at the scene of the crime, which told police straight away that this was not where this poor girl had been killed. Whoever did this to her, they took their time. They cleaned her, they drained her and they moved her, then left her laid out like a message for the world to find. Reporters quickly swarmed the scene. They were already brainstorming how they were going to present this unbelievable, despicable crime to the world. Already thinking in their head all the different kind of headlines that they could use to report this story. And within what felt like 30 seconds, they. The headlines exploded. Using her fingerprints, authorities were able to confirm the identity of this young woman. It was 22 year old Elizabeth Short. But soon the world would know this woman by a name that to this day sends a chill down Hollywood spine. The public would give her the name of the Black Dahlia. It was chaos at the crime scene, as I'm sure you could imagine. But while police were scrambling and deciding what they were going to do about this discovery and how they were exactly going to handle this in investigation, Elizabeth Short's family had no idea that she was gone. Elizabeth was one of five children. Her mother, Phoebe Short, was back home in Massachusetts when she got a call from a reporter at the Los Angeles Examiner. He told her that her daughter Elizabeth had just won a beauty contest, that she was doing well, she was very happy, very excited, and that she was going to be in the paper. He asked her to share a few stories about her daughter's life. What she was like, what her childhood was like, the things that she liked, disliked. Just learn a little bit more about her for allegedly writing this report that she was gonna be on the paper for. And she did. Of course she did. She was a proud mother. Phoebe spoke of her daughter proudly, sweetly, about her hopes and dreams of becoming a movie star. You could feel the love in the words that Phoebe spoke about Elizabeth. And she was completely unaware that on the other end of the line, the reporter already knew the truth. Once he had everything that he needed, the reporter's tone changed. And that's when he told Phoebe the truth and the real reason for his call. Her daughter didn't win a contest. Elizabeth Short was dead. Brutally murdered and found in A vacant lot earlier that morning. And by the way, oh, my blood boils on this part because that is sick. That is sickening. What a sickening person. To call the mother of a murder victim, knowing for a fact that she thought nothing was wrong at the time. To call her under false circumstances, pretending to be interested in her daughter, when in reality the sole intention was to get information for your article for pure personal gain. That is despicable, that is vile, and that is so incredibly messed up. I don't know what kind of person does that. I don't know how. That reporter said slept peacefully that night. Elizabeth had only been in California for a short amount of time. She had moved there. She had gotten a job as a waitress and was kind of bouncing around from city to city, chasing the dream that so many others were chasing. Fame, love, and a shot at Hollywood. She had been staying with friends, sleeping with couches, working at her restaurant job, trying to make ends meet, sometimes disappearing for days at a time. She didn't really have the most stable routine, so she didn't always keep in touch. Which is why when she stopped calling, her family didn't panic. Not immediately, at least. But now it was clear Elizabeth hadn't vanished. She wasn't just busy with her friends or busy with work. She had been taken. And discovering and unraveling whatever happened to her in her final days would prove to be a very, very difficult task for investigators. The name of the Black Dahlia, it came pretty on early in the investigation, but it didn't come from police. It wasn't part of the investigation. It came from the press. But it stuck like glue. In the weeks after Elizabeth Short's body was discovered, the media pounced on the story and her striking looks. She was absolutely beautiful. Dark hair, fair skin, red lips. It made her instantly captivating. She had jet black hair. She often wore it curled. It was very bouncy, very beautiful. And at the time as well, a popular film was playing in theaters called the Blue Dahlia. I believe it was a crime thriller, actually, coincidentally enough. But it's been said that because of that movie, that's how the press came up with the nickname the Black Dahlia. And it almost felt like a twisted spin on Hollywood glamour meets brutal tragedy. Following the gruesome discovery, Los Angeles was in a full blown state of panic. But also in a twisted way, with the panic came a very strange question mark and strong obsession. People were glued to their newspapers. They were desperate for updates on the case, unable to look away from the horror that had just unfolded. In their city, there was a woman cut in half, drained of blood, completely left out in broad daylight for them to find. And the killer, they were still out there, roaming free amongst the people of la. Immediately, police fell under immense pressure to find whoever did this. The LAPD launched what would become one of the largest investigations in the city's history at the time. At first, they assigned over 50 officers and detectives to the case, but at its peak, at its height, there were 750 detectives assigned to this case. Tip lines were set up. Leads were chased. Every hotel, every store, every diner, every apartment building Elizabeth might have stepped foot in was questioned. Over 150 suspects were interrogated. But even then, nothing seemed to stick. Meanwhile, as the press does, the press was turning this story into an absolute circus. Papers were running wild with rumors, theories, assumptions and half truths. Some, they were saying the craziest thing. Some were calling Elizabeth a prostitute. Others painted her as this crazy, out of control party girl who moved to la, desperate to become famous. And some of the articles that were written when this happened were, quite frankly, disgusting. Really. I think it would have been noticeable to anyone that saw the headlines that they seem to focus way more on the way that Elizabeth looked physically rather than her life that she lost tragically. And we all know just how much the media can turn a story and give it their own narrative and paint it in a way that they want it to be perceived. And in this case, it felt a lot like the media was spinning a tragic victim into something almost fictional, like a fictional character in her own murder story. It was almost like they weren't even looking at her as a real human being. On January 21st of 1947, just six days after Elizabeth Short's body was discovered, the LAPD received a call. Phone rang. Officer picked up. There was a man on the phone. The man called to speak to the editor of the Los Angeles Examiner. His voice was weirdly calm, almost casual, like as if he was talking about the weather. And he called to congratulate this editor on the newspaper's coverage of the case. This man on the phone stated that he was the one responsible for this crime. He was the one responsible for Elizabeth Short's death. And he said that eventually, one day soon, he was planning on turning himself in, but not before allowing the police to chase him for just a little bit longer. He wanted to play a game. And before ending that phone call, he said, quote, expect some souvenirs from the Dahlia. End quote. And then he hung up, exactly as promised. Just a few days later, a Manila envelope arrived at the examiner's office. The envelope appeared to be very carefully assembled. I don't know how else to describe it other than everything inside of that envelope seemed to be very precise. Everything about it was done. It felt very organized. The address was cut out from magazine clippings like some old school ransom note. And. And inside the envelope were Elizabeth Short's birth certificate, her Social Security card, some personal photos, and an address books with pages torn out. And everything inside of that envelope had been carefully wiped clean with gasoline. This, of course, was done on purpose, making it nearly impossible to pull any fingerprints. Whoever sent this envelope, they knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted attention. They wanted control. And. And they wanted authorities to know that they were watching. Just days after that disturbing package arrived, two more letters showed up again mailed to the Los Angeles examiner with the same cut and paste ransom style lettering. I lied. I just told you a lie. The second letter was handwritten, and the third also had the cutout newspaper clippings. But the first read, quote, here it is, turning in. Wednesday, January 29, 10:00am had my fun at police. Black Dahlia Avenger. End quote. That was the very first time the killer, or at least the person who we can assume, or the person who was claiming to be the killer, used that name. The Black Dahlia Avenger. That letter also made it sound like he was ready to turn himself in. He was done playing his stupid little game. He was even giving police a time and a date in which they could expect him. At least that's what it sounded like. But that never happened, of course. And then came the second letter. It simply said, quote, have changed my mind. You will not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing was justified. End quote. Justified. He used the word justified. He was taunting the police. He was having fun. He was dictating this investigation and using the narrative that he wanted and giving officers false hope. And I say he because I personally believe that he was a man. We don't know, though. Could be a she, could be a she. Who knows? And just like the initial letter, the second and the third had been wiped clean with gasoline. And they were honestly proven to be kind of a little bit useless to police. At least that's what it felt like. As part of their investigation, as they often do, police decided to try and retrace Elizabeth's step leading up to the murder. And in doing that, the name Robert Red Manley came up. Robert was one of the earliest and most high profile suspects in the Black Dahlia investigation. And for a Long while there, he was the man that everyone thought might have done it. He was a 25 year old traveling salesman from Los Angeles. He was married. And if you looked at him, there really would be nothing about him that stood out. Nothing unusual. But his name mattered a lot to authorities because he was the last known person to see Elizabeth Short alive. Robert had met Elizabeth weeks before her murder, and they started a friendship, quote, unquote friendship, because it was quite a flirty one. So it was honestly more on a romantic level than just a friendship level. They were pretty much dating. I think Elizabeth was pretty much his girlfriend. But he ended up driving her from San Diego to LA on January 9th of 1947. That was only six days before her body was found mutilated. Robert said that he dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel, which at the time was one of the grandest spots in downtown la. And after dropping her off, according to him, Elizabeth told him that she had plans to meet up with her sister at said hotel, but nobody ever saw her alive again after that. Naturally, police zeroed in on him for two reasons. One, one, because there could have been a possible motive there. He was a married man, and he was spending time with another woman who was practically his girlfriend. He also would have had the opportunity because he was with her in the final hours before she disappeared, reported missing, and then found dead. Robert Manley passed two lie detector tests. He also happened to have a solid alibi, which is a little bit surprising to me. I tried to find what the alibi was. I couldn't. And after days of intense questioning and even being held in custody for some time, police eventually had no other option but to clear him as a suspect. Eventually, in the investigation, weeks turned into months. Months turned into years. Leads dried up. Suspects were questioned, released, and then forgotten. The LAPD chased tip after tip. Some real but most completely insane and totally false men were falsely confessing left and right only to see their names in the paper. And through it all, it felt like the one person who actually mattered, Elizabeth Short, was slowly fading into the background. I need to make a note for myself to ask my mom about this, because she's a psychologist, because I want to understand what the psycho. What. What's the thought process of psychology behind falsely confessing to a crime? What, do you just want to see your name in the news? Why? Why would you want people to think that you committed a heinous desp. Act of violence if you didn't? That's insane to me. And so many people do it all the time the truth was, the longer the case dragged on, the messier it got. The crime scene had been compromised from day one. Evidence had been leaked to the press, and public. Pressure was pushing detectives in 100 million different directions. Everyone had a theory, but that's all that it was. A theory. And slowly but surely, the story of the Black Dahlia became exactly that. A story. Not a case, not an investigation, not a pursuit of justice. Just a story. And eventually, the case went cold. Elizabeth Short's murder remains to this day one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in American history. But let's talk about one of those believed theories that circles around this case, and probably the one that most people believe claims could be true. Decades after the Dalia murder, a retired LAPD homicide detective, Steve Hodel, stumbled across something inexplicable that he thought tied the Black Dahlia to his own father, Dr. George Hodel. Not long after his father passed away, Steve found himself doing something a lot of us eventually have to do. Going through a parent's things, cleaning out their house. Steve had a complicated relationship, by the sounds of it, with his father, George Hodel, when he was still alive. It's been said that George left the family, walked out of the family when Steve was only nine years old, packed up and moved to the Philippines to start a new life. George was known as a brilliant man. He was a very well respected doctor. But he also had some weird stuff going on, you guys. He was. He was giving a little bit Jeffrey Epstein, if I do say so myself. And as Steve sifted through boxes at his house after his passing, tucked away in between off the clutter, was a small wooden photo album. It was so small, it was. The size of it could fit in the palm of his hand. He flipped it open, expecting to see old family photos, and found just that lot of pictures of his mother, his brothers, his family members. But then, near the back of the album were two photos that he didn't recognize. They were photos of a young woman. Her head was tilted down. She had deep black curls framing her face. And when he was looking at those photos, the only thought that Steve could think was, this is the Black Dahlia. Finding those pictures led Steve down a puzzle of digging into his father's past. And the more he did, the more red flags he found. Neon red flags. George Hodel wasn't only a doctor, he was a surgeon with specialized medical training. And. And he had happened to have a lot of knowledge, specifically in the exact procedure that is believed to have been used to sever Elizabeth Short's body. Sorry, guys. Just had to do a quick pause to legit Google the pronunciation of this word. The procedure called a hemicorporectomy. Also so curious, why is that a procedure cutting someone in half? So I Googled that, right? Google says hemicorporectomy. Wait, hemicorporectomy. Am I saying that right? Hemicorporectomy, also known as translumber amputation, is a surgical procedure where the lower half of the body, including the pelvis and legs, is removed. Blah, blah, blah. Or amputation are insufficient to address a severe condition. In other words, a radical surgery in which the body below the waist is amputated. That's a little bit crazy to me. I've never heard of that procedure before. Regardless, remember, because of the way Elizabeth's body was found, very quickly, a lot of people theorized that whoever did it had to have at least some level of medical knowledge. Because of the way that her body was cut in half. Her torso had been severed at the waist with surgical precision right through the second and third lumbar vertebrae, which is that specific medical procedure called a hemicorporectomy. That type of precision is, first of all rare, and it is one that was only taught in medical schools at the time. Add to that the fact that her body had been completely drained of blood and washed clean with certain sections surgically mutilated or removed, and it starts to look a lot less like a crime of passion and a lot more like a calculated dissection. George Hodel had the medical knowledge it would have taken to pull off that kind of mutilation. Majority of his patients. I don't know about majority. A lot of his patients were often young women as well, because he specialized in gynecology. Then there were the LAPD surveillance tapes. In 1950, just a few years after the Dahlia murder, the police bugged George Hodel's house while he was under investigation for a different crime. On those recordings, he was caught saying, quote, supposing I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it. Now they can't talk to my secretary because she is dead. End quote. And that wasn't only a creepy coincidence, guys. His secretary had died. Had just died mysteriously right before she was supposed to speak to the police. A lot of people believe, myself included, that she didn't die. She was killed because she probably knew too much. And George didn't want his personal business. Business being spread out there. Steve also uncovered receipts showing George had bought the same brand of concrete Bags that were found near Elizabeth's body at the scene of the crime. Handwriting experts linked George to the taunting letters that were sent to the press. And witnesses from the time placed him in the exact same areas where Elizabeth was last seen. On top of all of that, George Hodel was overall. I mean, I compared him to Jeffrey Epstein. He was overall a deeply, deeply disturbing man. He had been accused of. Wait, brief context. He had so many kids. He had upwards of 15 children, all with different women. He was just an awful guy. He had been accused of essaying his own daughter. And the trial, even though it fell apart and was never seen through, was enough to convince his son Steve that his father was capable of doing horrific things. George was also known for throwing grand, lavish parties at his house. And. And a person who attended those parties has been quoted saying, quote, women were tortured for sport there. Murders happened there. End quote. I'm sorry, what? Piece by piece, in Steve's minds, it all added up. Everything was coming together, and every single thing was pointing to his father. George Hodel passed away in 1999. But in 2001, after two solid years of obsessively digging into the Black Dahlia case, Steve Hodel took a leap. He reached out to someone he knew, a man called Stephen K. Who was a seasoned prosecutor with the LA County District Attorney's office. And he filled him in. He told him everything that he had uncovered and said he believed that all this new evidence that he had was enough to justify reopening the case, or at the very least, to force law enforcement to look at it again. Stephen K. Who at the time was an assistant da Agreed to go through the mountain of research that Steve had compiled from the last two years. And six weeks later, he responded. And to Steve's surprise, Steven validated his suspicions. He agreed with him. In a letter, Steven praised Steve's work, calling it bold, thorough, and brave. He even said, thanks to some great detective work by his courageous son Steve, the name of Dr. George Hodel will live in infamy. He went on to say that if George Hodel was still alive, he would have filed a murder charge against him without a question. The validation and the fact that he presented everything he had collected to an assistant district attorney who believed him, gave Steve the confidence that he needed to write a book. The book was published in 2003. It's called the Black Dahlia, A Genius for Murder. And it lays out a case against his own father that is both disturbing and meticulously detailed. In the book, Steve compiles and Pulls together a lot of police reports, crime scene photos, FBI files, handwriting analysis, family history, and the now infamous 1950 LAPD wiretaps that caught George saying very suspicious things. But it didn't stop at Elizabeth Shore. In Steve's head, Steve also connects his father to a handful of other unsolved murders, suggesting George Hodel may have been a serial killer operating under the radar, protected by wealth status in a corrupt system that never held him accountable. The book became a New York Times bestseller and even led to the renewed public interest in the Black Dahlia case, spawning documentaries podcast, Cough Cough Podcast. Here we are. And heated debates about whether Steve's theory holds any truth to it or not. Whether people believe every detail that's in that book or not. Black Dahlia Avenger changed the conversation. Because for the very first time, someone wasn't just speculating about who could have killed Elizabeth Short. They were saying. Steve was saying, I know who did it, and it was my father. And just like that, we are left yet again with more questions than answers. Over 75 years have passed, and still no arrest, no official suspect, no justice. Just a young woman's name, Elizabeth Short, buried beneath headlines, myths, and mystery. Elizabeth was not the Black Dahlia. She was a daughter. She was a friend. She was a woman who went to Hollywood chasing a dream and met a nightmare instead. And the saddest part about it all, her story was never really hers. It was taken away from her, and it was twisted and sensationalized while her killer slipped through the cracks of a broken system. Maybe it was George Hodel. Or maybe it wasn't. But someone out there knows what they did. Someone carved that permanent smile in her face. Someone drained her completely of her blood. And someone walked away free. This story feels to me like a horrific story about power and control. It's a terrible story that shows just how easy it is for a young woman to disappear in a city that promises everything and delivers nothing. And I want to end the story by remembering Elizabeth Short. She was way more than just a headline. She was a human being who deserved a lot better. That is all I have for episode five. Thank you guys for spending time with me today and for listening to Elizabeth's story. I hope you're having the best day. And if you're not, go do something to make it the best day. Make somebody happy. And I will see you in my next video. Massive kiss on the forehead to every single one of you. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to episode five of I wish you were here. Not sure how we're already five episodes in, but I'm already excited for the Sig. As a reminder, you can listen to this podcast anywhere. You get your podcast video version also available on YouTube. Love you.