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- [00:00]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
This is Crime house
- [00:12]
Vanessa Richardson
in the 1940s, cities like Los Angeles were deceivingly glamorous. Sure, there was sunshine, shoreline and nightlife, but that was just what people saw on the surface. In reality, that facade was upheld by con men, conspirators and killers. Hollywood explored its own seedy underbelly through a new genre called film noir. And while these black and white crime thrillers were mostly fiction, they drew inspiration from real life. In 1947, when 22 year old Elizabeth Short was found murdered, the details of her death seemed like they were ripped straight from a crime movie. But the more that was uncovered, the more people realized that no one was capable of inventing such horrors except for the person who did it. The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love and hate. But sometimes it drives people to commit them the unthinkable this is Serial Killers and Murderous Minds A Crime House Original I'm Vanessa Richardson.
- [01:31]
Dr. Tristan Engels
And I'm forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Engels. Every Monday and Thursday we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.
- [01:42]
Vanessa Richardson
Crime House is made possible by you. Please rate, review and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds to enhance your listening experience with ad. Free early access to each two part series. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcast Podcasts before we get started, be advised this episode contains discussion of mutilation, murder, rape and incest, so please listen with care. Today we conclude our deep dive on the murder of Elizabeth Short, AKA the Black Dahlia, a Hollywood hopeful whose mysterious life led her down a dark path. Elizabeth's gruesome murder has gone down in history, and when someone finally came forward claiming to know the truth, it was the last person anyone expected.
- [02:29]
Dr. Tristan Engels
As Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like the lasting psychological impact of extremely horrific high profile murders, the potential consequences of the media forcing law enforcement's hand, and how generational trauma can fuel people's search for the truth.
- [02:47]
Vanessa Richardson
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Dr. Tristan Engels
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Vanessa Richardson
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Dr. Tristan Engels
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- [04:39]
Vanessa Richardson
On the morning of January 15, 1947, Will Fowler, a reporter for the Los Angeles examiner, was driving back to his office with a staff photographer. They'd just finished covering an assignment nearby when all of a sudden there was chatter on the radio. Fowler's shortwave radio rested on the dashboard, set to the police channel. An officer called a code 2, which meant officers should head to the scene as quickly as possible, without lights or sirens. Usually this was to prevent drawing attention, and it was used in cases of public intoxication or indecent exposure. Fowler and his co worker rushed to the scene. They got there before law enforcement, which surprised them. They scanned the vacant lots next to the intersection, expecting to find someone stumbling around drunk. Then Fowler noticed something in the grass near the sidewalk. He looked closer and realized it was a young woman. She was naked, and she appeared to be dead. He took a step closer, then stopped in his tracks. The woman wasn't just dead, she'd been cut in half. The woman was so badly mutilated, she was unrecognizable. It looked like someone had beaten and tortured her before she died. And when they disposed of her body, they made sure to stage the scene to make a lasting impression. Because the corners of the woman's mouth were cut, and in addition to being dismembered at the torso, she was posed in a sexual manner.
- [06:12]
Dr. Tristan Engels
What was done to Elizabeth goes far beyond what was necessary to end her life, and that distinction is critical the bisection, the mutilation, the staging, none of that serves a practical purpose. It serves a psychological purpose. When violence extends past the point of death, it tells us generally that the killer's need for power and control didn't end when Elizabeth's life did. It continued after. And that's a significant psychological marker. The staging, in particular, is telling to me. Her body wasn't hidden. It was presented. That suggests that this person wanted an audience, whether that was law enforcement, the public, or even just themselves. Maybe it was a way to humiliate her even after they'd taken her life. It's postmortem posing, and it often reflects a killer who sees the victim not as a person, but as an object that they can arrange and control entirely. That's dehumanization. And it begin at the crime scene. It likely began long before. And the era matters, too. In the 1940s, this kind of staging and this kind of mutilation had almost no cultural blueprint. And by that, I mean this wasn't the work of a copycat, which means this very likely came from the perpetrator's private fantasy that they had been developing for some time before it was acted upon. Or conversely, it was part of their routine. If this person had professional access to that kind of work, like the handling, cutting, the cleaning of the body, the compartmentalization required to do that kind of work without hesitation, then the detachment we're seeing may not have been something they had to develop. It may have already been normalized or desensitized. But that's also the most unsettling part. This level of methodical, detached violence suggests someone who has rehearsed this, at the very least in their mind, long before Elizabeth ever crossed their path.
- [08:10]
Vanessa Richardson
So, unfortunately, these days, we're more desensitized to this kind of crime. But how might it have affected people back then?
- [08:17]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Well, like we talked about, there's no real blueprint for this level of violence. Serial violence wasn't yet a household concept, and the term serial killer wouldn't even be coined for another three decades. So when Elizabeth was discovered, they had no mental category to place it in. And psychologically, that's significant, because when we can't make sense of something, we can't protect ourselves from it emotionally. For many people, this is a significant threat to their sense of safety and their understanding of what human beings are capable of. And that tends to stay with a community, and it changes how safe the world feels. And sometimes permanently. I think a lot of people were permanently affected by this case.
- [09:01]
Vanessa Richardson
Well, once the shock wore off, Fowler and his colleague quickly took notes and photographs. One thing they noticed was that despite how gory this murder was, there wasn't a drop of blood at the scene. As officers and other reporters swarmed the area, Fowler and his photographer rushed back to their office to work on their breaking story. Meanwhile, the investigation heated up. When Detective Harry Hansen arrived at the crime scene, he was immediately angered by how many people were there. Hansen wasn't just concerned about the evidence being compromised. He felt the commotion was disrespectful to the victim, especially when he saw the state of her body. Hansen could tell this was a rage killing. However, most rage killers dumped their victims bodies carelessly. But not this one. Hansen's next step was getting a forensic assessment before the scene became any more compromised. So he called the head of the crime lab, Ray Pinker, who showed up around noon. Pinker quickly determined that the victim had been dead for at least 10 hours. He noted the surgical precision of her dismemberment, most notably the accurate spinal bisection. Based on this detail, Pinker believed the suspect must have been a trained surgeon, one with evil intent. Pinker also found rope marks around the victim's neck and signs of blunt force trauma to her head. It appeared she'd been tortured for hours before he killed her. And not just physically, but psychologically. Okay, this next detail is pretty disturbing. If you want to skip ahead 15 seconds, please do. As well as the beatings, Pinker found evidence that the killer had forced the woman to eat feces before she died. Pinker felt like he was learning more about the suspect. But as for the victim, the only identifying feature he could discern was a small amount of wax she'd used to conceal her dental cavities. This told investigators that she didn't have a lot of money. With hardly anything to go on, investigators now faced the challenge of identifying their Jane Doe. Detective Hansen believed her extensive facial injuries were the killer's way of preventing anyone from recognizing her.
- [11:15]
Dr. Tristan Engels
The deliberate mutilation of Elizabeth's face is definitely telling us something. If we are basing it on what Pinker theorizes, then that's a reflection of the offender's degree of dehumanization or their need to unmake someone entirely to reduce them from a person with a name and a history to an object without either and like you said, taking away her identity. But I have long suspected something else with regard to this case which is more specific to Elizabeth's story. The way in which he staged her and prepared her body seems less like erasure to me and more like presenting her exactly the way he wanted her to be seen. There's a particular kind of misogynistic violence that is about owning ownership. A final, grotesque act of control over a woman is displayed to the world. Remember, Elizabeth had modeling and acting aspirations, and so much of her life revolved around appearances. She had very nice clothing. She revolved her life around performance and evaluation. This offender tortured her first, then bisected and mutilated her. He meticulously cleaned her body of any blood. He likely moved her to another location and then posed her in a provocative way that, to me, reads as a display oriented offender. But what's also interesting about this is that display oriented offenders don't typically clean the body like this. And those who do clean the body often try to conceal the body, not display it. And if erasure was truly the goal, like Pinker suggests, the execution doesn't fully support that. To me, if he wanted Elizabeth to never be identified, he had the skill and the precision to truly make that happen. Someone capable of an accurate spinal bisection is capable of more like dismemberment and disposal. And it's not like practical constraints or like time, for example, prevented them from disposing her body fully because they had plenty of time to mutilate Elizabeth and then transport Elizabeth to this very location and pose her suggestively because of this, the staging, at least to me, feels meant for display, not erasure. And it reads as if he's saying, smile now. Here's your final performance, but it's on my terms.
- [13:46]
Vanessa Richardson
Despite the challenges, Pinker racked his brain for a way to ID the woman. It didn't help that her fingerprints were too wrinkled to get an accurate record. Pinker determined that her entire body was, quote, immersed in water for an extended period of time at some point before her murder. But there was no other way to ID her. But Pinker had an idea. He took her prints anyway and transferred them to a card. Since the LAPD had no way to cross analyze fingerprints at that time, he mailed the card to the FBI. This gave Jim Richardson of the Los Angeles examiner newspaper an idea. He'd somehow caught wind that the LAPD had enlisted the help of the FBI. And on January 16, he contacted Captain Jack Donahoe, the chief of homicide at the LAPD, and said the paper could help. Richardson knew there were snowstorms on the east coast and it would be a while before the FBI received the prints. So he offered to let Donahoe wire a copy of Them to the FBI Using the paper's sound photo machine, which was the newest, fastest way to wire images. Like an early fax machine. Donohoe took Richardson up on his offer. And once the FBI received a clear image of the prints, it only took them one hour to identify the victim. Four years earlier, back in 1943, a young woman had been caught drinking underage on an army base just outside Santa Barbara, and her fingerprints were shared with the FBI. Which meant that now they had a match. Jane Doe's real name was Elizabeth Short.
- [15:24]
Dr. Tristan Engels
It's worth noting just how lucky they were. This was 1947, and to have found a match Was entirely by chance. There was no digital databases. If Elizabeth didn't have that one minor infraction, she may have remained a Jane Doe indefinitely.
- [15:41]
Vanessa Richardson
Detectives tried to keep this under wraps. They needed to contact Elizabeth's family before the public caught wind of what happened. The news of her death would be excruciating. Excruciating. And they wanted to handle the matter with care. Unfortunately, the examiner worked faster than detectives. A couple days later, Jim Richardson told one of his reporters, Wayne Sutton, to track down the short family. Wayne found the phone number for Elizabeth's mother, Phoebe, and tricked her into giving him background information on Elizabeth before revealing that her daughter was dead. It was a disgusting strategy that completely ignored how traumatic Elizabeth's murder was for her family. And things only got worse for the shorts as the story made waves across the country. Detectives had feared that Elizabeth's name would spread beyond their control, but they didn't expect the media to rob her of her name so quickly. The papers quickly dubbed Elizabeth the Black dahlia Based on her ink black hair, the black clothing she was known to wear, and the fact that the film the blue dahlia was popular at the time.
- [16:47]
Dr. Tristan Engels
I would love to do a poll asking how many people knew Elizabeth Short's real name or if they only knew her as the Black dahlia. Before I knew this case and the case factors, I thought the name the Black Dahlia Referred to the actual killer. I didn't know until I dug into this case for the very first time, obviously, years ago that it was the name given to Elizabeth, the victim. And that's because victims typically aren't given sensationalized names like this. It's the killers who get those names. This case is so heartbreaking in so many different ways. But when it comes to this, that nickname wasn't given to her by someone who loved her. It was given to her by a press that showed up before law enforcement manipulated her grieving mother for information and decided that a cinematic label was more valuable than her actual name. What they should have done is withheld any identifying information until they had confirmation of it and the family was notified first. We use Jane or John Doe for procedural purposes so administratively cases can be assigned and move forward in their investigation until a person can be identified. And even that is still dehumanizing in some ways, though not nearly to this degree. And the film that her nickname came from, the Blue Dahlia movie that you mentioned, that movie is about a woman who cheated on her husband and was murdered for it. That's the story people are unconsciously associating when they hear Elizabeth's nickname. Not her story, a fictional one. And that can shape how much sympathy people extend, how quickly they judge, and whether they see her as a victim. It can also open the door for victim blaming and shaming. They took her murder and they made it a brand. And in doing that, they didn't just take her life. They took her identity, her narrative, and her legacy. While the people who loved her were trying to make sense of such a senseless act, the press was writing about her death like it was entertainment. And I was. I want to be honest with you. We're also a podcast. This is also a form of media and entertainment. The difference, I hope, is recognized in the intention and the care we take and how we do our best to honor the victims. We say their names here. Elizabeth Short.
- [19:03]
Vanessa Richardson
How might using that nickname impact the investigation?
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Dr. Tristan Engels
It can certainly turn the case into a spectacle and influence the types of tips investigators and reporters receive. Once a case becomes sensationalized, people may begin inserting themselves into it by offering unreliable information, false confessions, or rumors that investigators then have to spend time sorting through. It can also affect how Elizabeth herself is treated by history. Even, like I mentioned, this nickname can encourage myths and victim blaming, narratives that complicate both the investigation and how the case is understood. And that can shape how people interpret what they know. If someone has internalized those myths about Elizabeth, they minimize what they witnessed or convince themselves it isn't important enough to report, or worse, choose to protect someone else entirely because they've already decided she was somehow responsible. And these are just some examples.
- [20:03]
Vanessa Richardson
It's possible that Phoebe had seen the news, but since newspapers used a nickname, she didn't know who the Black Dahlia really was. And when she found out the truth from Wayne, she was in shock. She might have been processing things out loud because despite Wayne's cruel tactics, Phoebe told him that on January 8, a man her daughter referred to as Red picked her up in San Diego and drove her back to Los Angeles. Richardson wasted no time. He enlisted two other reporters to drive south to San Diego and it didn't take long for them to make a game changing discovery. You're a pro at running your life. At committing to your workout, at showing up every day.
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Vanessa Richardson
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- [21:19]
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- [21:48]
Vanessa Richardson
On January 18, 1947, two reporters from the Los Angeles examiner drove from LA to San Diego in pursuit of a man named Red. They'd received a tip that this man knew Elizabeth Short, and they wondered if he was involved in her murder. The reporters stopped at motels along the route, checking the guest registers in case Elizabeth and Red had checked in. Eventually, they spoke to an employee who remembered Elizabeth, but he'd met her much earlier than they'd expected. Apparently she'd been there in mid December, about a month before she was killed with a man named Robert Morris Manley. Manley had given the motel his home address when he checked in, and the employee handed it over. Then the reporters hopped back into their car and raced to Manley's house in San Diego. While they were on the road, their colleagues interviewed some of Elizabeth's acquaintances and learned that she'd checked luggage at a bus station while visiting San Diego. The examiner then contacted Captain Donahoe and said they would tell him where the luggage was, but only if officers opened the bags in the newsroom so reporters could Document everything.
- [22:58]
Dr. Tristan Engels
What we're seeing here unfold is essentially an unregulated parallel investigation, which started at the very beginning with a tampering at the crime scene. That's deeply problematic from a forensic standpoint. Every time a reporter speaks to a witness before law enforcement does, that witness's memory becomes compromised. There's a well documented psychological phenomenon called memory contamination, where the questions someone is asked and the way they're asked can slightly alter what the person remembers. By the time investigators got to those same witnesses, their accounts had likely already been affected. I'm not saying it's a certainty, but it's an extreme possibility. The luggage negotiation is perhaps one of the more striking examples. Evidence being held as a bargaining chip is an ethical concern, but it's a crime scene integrity issue. Also, the moment that luggage entered a newsroom, its chain of custody was broken. Anything found inside would be significantly harder to use in a prosecution. Much in the same way, a lot of the evidence at the crime scene might also be because they arrived there first. Today, shield laws, chain of custody protocols, and obstruction statutes exist largely because of cases like this one, where media involvement complicated an investigation or actively competed with one. Journalists now operate under a larger legal boundary, but that wasn't the case then. In fact, I don't think anything these reporters did that you described. Vanessa, was actually considered illegal in 1947. I could be wrong, but from what I understand, I don't think it was. Which means that whatever evidence existed in Elizabeth's case was being handled, filtered, and in some cases, controlled by people whose primary interest was selling newspapers, which could have contributed, at least in some ways, to why this case has never been solved.
- [25:01]
Vanessa Richardson
Donahoe was indignant, but he knew the luggage could be a huge break in the case, so he caved. Inside the luggage, they found some of Elizabeth's clothes, photos of her, and letters from several boyfriends. For investigators, the letters didn't shed light on anything useful. But to the reporters, the fact that Elizabeth had so many admirers was a sign that her murder must have been a crime of passion. And they told Donahoe that they'd tracked down Robert Manley. And the next day, on January 19th, LAPD officers apprehended him and brought him in for questioning. Manley maintained his innocence, and in the interrogation room, he explained that he'd met Elizabeth randomly about a month earlier in San Diego. Even though he was married, he took her out on a few dates. It's unclear whether he admitted to a physical relationship, but Manley did tell detectives that on January 9th. About a week before Elizabeth's body was found, he drove her back to LA and dropped her off at the Biltmore, a luxurious hotel that had hosted the Academy Awards. Elizabeth had told Manley she was meeting her sister there. And at 6:30pm on the 9th, Manley left LA and went back to San Diego. He told detectives that he hadn't spoken to Elizabeth since, and he was adamant he didn't kill her. In the end, his story checked out and he was clear cleared of suspicion. From there, investigators put out more feelers. Soon they heard from someone who saw Elizabeth just one day before her body was found. LAPD officer Meryl McBride had been patrolling the downtown area when Elizabeth came running out of a nearby bar. She was sobbing and appeared frightened. McBride tried to calm her down. Through tears, she told him that one of her former suitors had just threatened to kill her. McBride took Elizabeth back into the bar to find the man, but he was gone.
- [26:57]
Dr. Tristan Engels
I am not a law enforcement official, but I do know this. In California, mandated reporters, and that includes myself and law enforcement, are bound by a duty to protect. That law, though, didn't come into effect until about 1976. But if someone alleges that they were threatened, or if someone tells us they plan to kill another person, we have a legal and ethical duty to protect the intended target from harm. But back in 1947, regardless of a duty to protect law, whether or not that existed, the likely protocol would be not to bring her face to face with the individual threatening her life, but rather to ensure her safety, get a description of the person, find that person, and have her identify them from a lineup or from the safety of a patrol car. Bringing her face to face with him would be subjecting her to potential psychological and physical harm. There's also no indication that Officer McBride took a formal report of this. He didn't document Elizabeth's account or recorded a description of the man she identified or connected her with any resources. Today, that report would be mandatory. It would have created a paper trail that investigators would have had in hand the moment Elizabeth's body was identified, and they would have had a person of interest to question immediately. There's also a broader systemic issue, too. It was in 1944, and women's safety wasn't a serious concern. The development of domestic violence and threat assessment frameworks over the past several decades exists in large part because of cases like Elizabeth's. They demonstrated the cost of that indifference, and tragically, that cost her everything.
- [28:42]
Vanessa Richardson
This may seem a little obvious, but what are the risks of Elizabeth receiving no further care or supervision.
- [28:48]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Based on what Officer McBride described, Elizabeth was in an acute crisis situation. And when someone in that state is left without support, their ability to make safe decisions becomes significantly compromised. Because fear at that level floods the system, it impairs judgment, it narrows options, and it can push someone toward choices that look irrational from the outside, but it feels like the only available ones in the moment. Like the movie theater example from episode one, the practical risk is just as significant. Threat assessment research consistently shows that verbalized death threats, particularly from someone known to the victim, are one of the strongest predictors of lethal violence. And less than 24 hours later, Elizabeth was gone.
- [29:39]
Vanessa Richardson
Well after that, Elizabeth and Officer McBride parted ways. He didn't learn her real name until it was on the front page of every newspaper. And no one ever learned who the man man was that scared her. After that incident, Elizabeth's movements were a mystery. Then, on January 25, detectives received a shocking new piece of evidence. Someone mailed a suspicious envelope to the examiner. Inside they found Elizabeth's birth certificate, Social Security card and an address book with contact information for 75 men. As usual, reporters had documented everything before handing the items over to the authorities. This infuriated the FBI because the reporters fingerprints were all over the package. Federal agents were getting tired of the media's involvement in the case. And they started to wonder if LAPD officers were leaking information to the press. So they ordered the LA authorities to stop giving reporters access. Fortunately, they still got some useful information from the envelope. The COVID of the address book had a name spelled out in gold letters. Mark Hansen. Not to be confused with Detective Harry Hansen, Mark Hansen was a well known LA nightclub owner. He was also good friends with another homicide detective. One day after Elizabeth's body was found, Mark had come into the station to give a statement. He told the police that he and Elizabeth were friends. She'd even stayed at his house before. But detectives had no reasonable cause to keep Mark there, so. So they let him go. And it's not clear whether they spoke to him again after they received the address book. However, over the next year, they questioned hundreds of potential suspects, including the men listed in the address book. But none were charged in relation to Elizabeth's murder. Detective Hansen even tracked down her father, Cleo Short, but didn't learn anything useful from him either. In October 1948, over a year since Elizabeth's murder, the LAPD decided decided to change tactics. They had Dr. Paul Deriver, a psychiatric consultant to the LAPD, write a cover story for the pulp Crime magazine True Detective. Deriver intentionally baited Elizabeth's killer by describing them as studious and scientific. Shortly after, he received a letter from a reader who knew gruesome details about the murder that hadn't been revealed to the public.
- [32:10]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Well, let's recap. The offender tortured Elizabeth in horrific ways. From what we understand, that suggests that they enjoyed that and the presence of sadistic traits. Then they took considerable time bisecting and mutilating her, but also cleaning her so meticulously there was not a drop of blood found. He then transported her body, imposed her in a very specific and suggestive way. He displayed her. That was a message and an artwork of his own. He likely took pride in that level of sophistication and planning to carry something like this out. The offender likely possesses at least the following lack of empathy, lack of remorse, callousness, dehumanization, compartmentalization, grandiosity and superiority. Appealing to his ego would be irresistible because it's essentially showing him the image they had of themselves. Recognition is something someone with this personality profile would likely struggle to ignore, especially when they have been watching for a year as this investigation unfolded. But at the same time, this offender is likely very intelligent and because of that would not fall into a trap very easily either. So it's possible that he sees right through what Deriver is doing and responds anyway because he believes himself too smart to be caught, or this is someone pretending to be him.
- [33:35]
Vanessa Richardson
Deriver wrote back and forth with the person for a while. Over time, he managed to gather enough personal information for authorities to determine the reader was a 27 year old man named Leslie Dylan. It seemed like a major breakthrough. The only problem was that they had no idea where to find Dylan.
- [33:53]
Dr. Tristan Engels
I have to say I strongly believe that whoever is writing this is likely not the real killer. I think the real killer would likely not be giving enough identifiable personal information so freely. That behavior seems to contrast with everything we've discussed about the killer's profile.
- [34:12]
Vanessa Richardson
Detectives questioned Elizabeth's friends and associates about him, and at least one person remembered seeing them together at the Astor Motel in la. The motel had a seedy reputation. The owner, Henry Hoffman, had a history of evading the law. But when officers showed up to ask him about Elizabeth and Dylan, he had no problem talking. Little did they know it would topple the entire investigation.
- [34:42]
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Vanessa Richardson
you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policy. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers and if you're like me and grew up watching America's Most Wanted and reading Nancy Drew, then hi, you're a crime junkie. And I bet that passion for solving mysteries never went away. Which is why we've assembled a team of reporters to dig deep into all the cases we still obsessed over. Each Monday, my best friend Britt and I will bring you a case that you won't be able to stop thinking and talking about. So join us by listening to Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts. In late 1949, LAPD investigators spoke with the owner of the Astor Motel, Henry Hoffman. They wanted to know if Elizabeth Short had ever visited the motel with Leslie Dillon, their latest suspect. Detectives asked Hoffman to think back to mid January 1947, when Elizabeth was killed. Hoffman didn't have to think long. He explained that he would never forget what he saw the day she was murdered. This next detail is pretty disturbing if you want to skip ahead 15 seconds. He told them that on January 15th he opened the door to room three. It was covered in blood and fecal matter matter if you recall. The LAPD Crime lab had determined that Elizabeth was forced to eat feces before she was killed. Hoffman explained that he didn't call the police because he was already in trouble over a domestic dispute with his wife.
- [37:22]
Dr. Tristan Engels
This is a pattern that we actually see quite frequently when someone is already navigating legal trouble. They're often very risk averse Their thinking becomes focused on avoiding additional consequences, even if that means ignoring something they should probably report. There's also something worth considering about holding onto a secret like this for nearly three years. Psychologically, the longer someone sits on information like this, the harder it becomes to come forward. Because now you're not just explaining what you saw. You're now having to explain why you didn't say anything sooner. The silence itself becomes its own liability. And what's interesting about Hoffman's account, though, is that he didn't minimize what he saw. He gave a very detailed description. That's typical when someone is trying to unburden themselves. But there's also. Also a part of me that's actually skeptical of this. If someone truly opened a motel room and saw a scene as severe as the one Hoffman described, simply ignoring it would be very difficult. A motel owner still has to deal with the practical reality of cleaning and repairing it, which likely involved other people. Once additional people become involved, that creates more witnesses. I feel like there are follow up questions that are vital here that could ensure that this explanation holds up. I think that's important in general and. But definitely given the circumstances that led them here also, this could be opportunistic. Hoffman's running a business, and if it gets out that the Black Dahlia might have been murdered there, it might be good for business. It can become a tourist attraction, much in the same way the Lizzie Borden home is now a bed and breakfast. It's speculative, obviously, but I just find this highly suspicious. Like, there's got to be more to this.
- [39:08]
Vanessa Richardson
Well, we don't know whether Elizabeth and Leslie Dylan checked into this room because Hoffman didn't keep records. But the scene Hoffman described sounded exactly like the way detectives imagined Elizabeth's murder. So they devised a way to apprehend Dylan. Dr. Paul Deriver, the LAPD psychiatric consultant, wrote to Dylan again. He said he wanted to pick his brain about the case, and the two agreed to meet in person. Person. In January 1949, Deriver sat down with Dylan. Pretty soon, Dylan realized Deriver wasn't consulting with him. He was questioning him. And he got pretty aggressive. He even made Dylan take his shirt off to see if he was strong enough to bisect and move a body. Eventually, he let Dylan go. But Deriver had lost any chance of the LAPD getting a confession from Dylan, who filed a $100,000 damage claim against the city City and won. It was a harsh blow to law enforcement, and their reputation was only about to get worse. That same year, a grand jury started Investigating police corruption in the city. Public outrage had grown over the high rates of crime and violence. Even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover accused city officials of corruption. When the grand jury started looking into the Elizabeth short investigation, they realized just how disorganized and poorly managed it had been. For example, they uncovered ties between Leslie Dillon and Mark Hansen, the nightclub owner whose name was on Elizabeth's address book. But the LAPD had never looked into how Leslie and Mark were connected. And surprisingly, detective Harry Hansen didn't even know who Leslie was, which was a very bad look for the LAPD. Despite these findings, in late 1949, the grand jury was forced to close their investigation, and all their files were hauled off to a warehouse. By 1950, Elizabeth's case went cold, and it stayed that way for 50 years.
- [41:13]
Dr. Tristan Engels
An absence of a resolution or justice creates ambiguous loss or grief for loved ones, even the public. Most people understand grief as something that moves through stages, something that eventually softens but never fully goes away. But when a murder goes unsolved, that process gets interrupted. And that kind of prolonged, unresolved grief can have serious, long term consequences on mental health, on relationships, on a person's ability to feel safe in the world. But there's a particular painful quality when a case is so public like Elizabeth's. Her family had to watch her story be told, retold, sensationalized, and mythologized for decades, Often without their input and without their consent. That kind of secondary exposure to trauma is its own wound. And when a case goes unsolved because of corruption and mishandling by law enforcement, it affects public trust. And especially for women, A case like Elizabeth's can create fear that violence against women may go unresolved like this and ultimately unpunished. And that fear isn't irrational. It's a reality, especially back then, and it still is today. Nearly three women are murdered by an intimate partner every single day in this country.
- [42:27]
Vanessa Richardson
Why do you think cases like this one stay on our minds and have such a lasting impact?
- [42:32]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Well, speaking for myself, it's because it was never solved and because of how Elizabeth was treated. But in general, people don't like uncertainty. There's something called the Zeigarnik effect. It's the tendency for unfinished tasks and unresolved situations to occupy our minds far more than resolved ones. And there's a human element, too. Elizabeth was young, ambitious, and vulnerable. She died in a truly horrendous way, and she was failed at every turn. She was failed by the people around her, by law enforcement, by the media, and by the system entirely. And that combination captures people's attention and it captures their empathy in a way that's hard to shake. But also, her case is fascinating given the era it happened in. It's a case that experts have genuinely learned from. But at the core, I think what keeps us here is something more fundamental than fascination. It's a collective desire for accountability, especially for something this depraved. Elizabeth deserved better, and she still does.
- [43:34]
Vanessa Richardson
It seemed like the authorities had given up until May of 1999, when a former LAPD detective named Steve Hodel made a shocking discovery. With direct ties to his own past, Steve grew up in LA during the 1940s. His father, George Hodel, was a renowned physician. He served as LA County's public health administrator and ran an STD clinic. He was also a prominent member of LA society. But some people questioned his success. They thought he'd lied about his qualifications to open the clinic and gain access to people's private sexual information. George's life was marred by other scandals too. He hosted sex and drug fueled parties where he allegedly forced women to engage in sexual activity while others watched. But since he was friends with celebrities, government officials and members of the lapd, he likely used his connections to evade consequences. The first time George faced any type of justice was thanks to his own daughter, who was Steve's half sister. Sister. In 1949, two years after Elizabeth Short's murder, George's daughter Tamar told the authorities that he'd raped and impregnated her. She said that when she told him about the pregnancy, he laughed and later on he performed an illegal abortion. George was taken to trial. On the stand, Tamar made another shocking claim. She connected George to Elizabeth Short. Tamar said George's mansion had secret passageways which he used to carry out horrific crimes like torturing and killing Elizabeth. Multiple witnesses corroborated this. But in the end, George was acquitted. Steve Hodel was only 8 years old at the time, so he likely didn't know about Tamar's accusation. But as he got older, he started piecing things together. As a detective, Steve worked on over 300 high profile cases. He had one of the department's highest solve rates and achieved the highest rank for a detective before retiring in 1986. But in 1999, he put his investigator hat back on. That year, George died. And among his belongings, Steve discovered two photographs of a woman who resembled Elizabeth Short. He sent them to facial recognition experts who believed it was her. Her. After that, Steve found court documents from Tamar's lawsuit From there, Steve filed a Freedom of Information act request for the old case files on Elizabeth's murder. But an officer he spoke to admitted that most of the evidence was lost. Fortunately, Steve had other options. Apparently, the LA County DA's office had bugged George's mansion. And in February 1950, about three years after Elizabeth died, they'd picked up the sound of a woman's screams coming from one of the rooms in the mansion. Then they heard George talking to someone. He not only admitted that he'd just killed a woman, but he insinuated that he'd killed Elizabeth, too. He then went on to say that he'd never be caught for Elizabeth's murder because the only person who could prove he'd done it was also dead. His own secretary. The DA's office was stunned, but for whatever reason, they never followed up. It wasn't until 2012, when Steve got his hands on the recordings that anyone looked into the matter. And the first thing Steve did was figure out what Secretary George had been referring to. Her name was Ruth Spalding, and she'd accused George of intentionally misdiagnosing patients for the money. Shortly afterward, Ruth died. At the time, authorities determined she'd taken her own life. But based on the details of her death, Steve surmised that George had forcibly drugged her and staged it to look like suicide so that she couldn't go public with her accusations. Steve was overwhelmed with all the evidence against his father. But there was one more damning detail for him to uncover. Apparently, even though George was an internist, he'd completed about 800 hours of surgical training. If you recall, Elizabeth's spine was bisected with such precision, investigators believed only a trained surgeon could have murdered her. Once he figured that out, Steve became convinced that his father had killed Elizabeth Short and that someone had destroyed evidence to protect him.
- [48:15]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Since Steve hasn't been able to conclusively prove that his father killed Elizabeth, we know at the very least from the evidence he did present. Like those recording and transcripts, though, Elizabeth is a very common name, especially back then. So we don't know if it was Elizabeth Short that George was referring to in those recordings. We know that George Hodel did some very egregious things, said some very disturbing things, and by any measure, was not a man of good character whatsoever. But while that psychological framing is real and valid, it assumes that Steve's primary motivation was true. This would not be the first time someone in law enforcement, or in general, has revisited a famous unsolved case with a compelling narrative attached to it. He's got a combination of a sensational cold case, a family connection, and a former detective's credentials. And that's a very effective formula for attention, book deals, financial opportunity. That doesn't mean he's wrong, and it definitely doesn't mean the psychological toll wasn't real. George Hodel was definitely a very abusive and violent man. But objectively, we have to ask, is this a son in search of truth or someone who found a story and needed it to be true? And the reality is, more than one thing can be true at once. That said, he has quite a bit to gain and the person he's accusing is no longer alive. That doesn't make Steve wrong, but it does remove a significant check on his theory. It reminds me of the Happy Face Killer episode that I guessed spot on with conspiracy theories, cults, and crimes. With you, Vanessa. That's been actively pursued by two retired detectives, despite being debunked by experts, the FBI and the center for Homicide Research. Their backgrounds in law enforcement come with assumed trust, and that can have very real, significant implications. And I want to be respectful here. What Steve has shared about his childhood, about his family, about who his father was behind closed doors is real, and it matters. I'm not just missing any of that, but a good investigator and a good forensic psychologist asks questions, especially when the narrative is compelling, because compelling isn't the same as conclusive. And part of my training involves assessing for malingering, which is evaluating whether someone is presenting information in a way that serves a particular outcome. Consciously or not, those skills transfer directly here. So has the conclusion come first and the evidence been arranged around it? Because the older a case gets and the more mythology that it surrounds it, like we've been talking about, the easier it becomes to find patterns that confirm what you already believe to be true, and then you call it evidence. And that's just the point I'm trying to make. It doesn't mean I'm right. It doesn't mean Steve's right. It's just something to think about.
- [51:01]
Vanessa Richardson
Well, Steve refuses to give up, and as of this recording, he's still trying to get Elizabeth's case reopened. There's no way to know whether that'll happen, but we can still do our part to honor her. Elizabeth's family laid her to rest in California. She's immortalized by podcasts, books, and movies. It's strange and a little sad to think that this is how Elizabeth finally ended up on the big screen. But we don't have to remember her. That way because before Elizabeth Short became known as the Black Dahlia, before she ever stepped foot on Hollywood Boulevard, she was a little girl playing dress up with her sisters and looking starry eyed at the silver screen. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time for a deep dive into the mind of another murderer.
- [52:03]
Dr. Tristan Engels
Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House original Powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media rimehouse. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Serial Killers and Murderous Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference and
- [52:26]
Vanessa Richardson
to enhance your listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of Serial Killers and Murderous Minds ad free along with early access to each thrilling two part series. Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson and forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Engels and is a Crime House original powered by Page Cave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Serial Killers and Murderous Minds team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Lori Marinelli, Natalie Pertzovsky, Sarah Camp, Alyssa Fox, Sarah Batchelor and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Not sure what to listen to next? Check out America's Most Infamous Crimes, hosted by Katie Ring. From serial killers to unsolved mysteries and game changing investigations, each week Katie takes on a notorious criminal case in American history. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes now wherever you listen to podcasts.