Episode 601: The Black Dahlia Murder Part II - The Gangster Squad

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 601: The Black Dahlia Murder Part II - The Gangster Squad

Release Date: December 21, 2024
Host/Author: The Last Podcast Network
Description: Delving deep into one of America's most infamous unsolved murders, this episode explores the intricate web of corruption, organized crime, and the relentless efforts of the Gangster Squad to uncover the truth behind the Black Dahlia murder.

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1. Introduction

The episode kicks off with the hosts, Marcus Parks, Henry Zabrowski, and Ed Larson, setting the stage for an in-depth exploration of the Black Dahlia murder case. Their banter immediately immerses listeners into the dark and twisted world surrounding Elizabeth Short's tragic demise.

Notable Quote:

• Marcus Parks [02:43]: "Los Angeles is a town where you can walk this razor's edge of danger. And you never know when you're gonna fucking fall off."

---

2. Historical Context: Corruption and Organized Crime in Los Angeles (1930s-1950s)

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) during the mid-20th century was notorious for its rampant corruption. Unlike cities like Chicago, where gangsters paid off the police, in Los Angeles, the police themselves often acted as the gangsters.

Key Points:

• Marcus Parks [05:00]: Los Angeles promised reinvention but was also a hub for parasites seeking to exploit others.
• The LAPD collaborated closely with organized crime, creating a symbiotic relationship that allowed criminals to operate with impunity.
• Marcus Parks [10:36]: "This moral ambivalence trickled down into the very fabric of this city and gave all sorts of people tacit permission to be horrible."

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3. The Black Dahlia Murder: Overview and Significance

Elizabeth Short, known posthumously as the Black Dahlia, was brutally murdered in 1947. Her case remains one of the most infamous unsolved murders in American history, partly due to the extensive corruption that plagued the investigation.

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4. Key Figures in the Case

a. Mark Hansen

A central figure in the narrative, Mark Hansen was a nightclub owner deeply entwined with both organized crime and the LAPD. His relationship with Elizabeth Short is pivotal to the unfolding of the case.

Notable Quote:

• Ed Larson [44:21]: "He's married. I just want to break off a piece of some of them. Handsome women."

b. Finis Brown and Harry "The Hat" Hanson

The two homicide detectives assigned to Elizabeth Short's case were deeply corrupt, working as bagmen and enforcers for organized crime figures like Mark Hansen.

Notable Quote:

• Marcus Parks [20:20]: "We don't know how many people Harry the Hat killed or if he killed anybody in particular."

c. Leslie Dillon / Jeff Connors

An enigmatic character with multiple aliases, Dillon's interactions with Dr. Joseph Paul Deriver become a focal point in uncovering the case's complexities.

Notable Quote:

• Ed Larson [76:27]: "He loves dealing details. I must investigate."

d. Dr. Joseph Paul Deriver

Head of the LAPD's Sexual Offenders Unit, Deriver's unorthodox and often brutal methods play a significant role in the investigation's progression and eventual complications.

Notable Quote:

• Marcus Parks [75:04]: "He was putting this all together... eventually he was just like, I know exactly how it gets his criminal."

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5. The Investigation: Hindered by Corruption

The initial investigation into Elizabeth Short's murder was severely compromised by the corruption within the LAPD. Detectives Finis Brown and Harry Hanson prioritized silencing potential links to organized crime over genuine investigative work.

Key Points:

• Marcus Parks [09:10]: "The LAPD had absolute disregard for both the Constitution and the law itself."
• Efforts by journalists like Jimmy Richardson and Aggie Underwood were sidelined as police worked to cover up the true nature of the crime.

Notable Quote:

• Marcus Parks [31:06]: "The time in one way or another, like you're associated with them or a lot of times it is someone you know personally that kills you."

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6. The Gangster Squad: Formation and Role

In response to the rampant corruption and the botched Black Dahlia investigation, the LAPD formed the Gangster Squad—a covert unit dedicated to rooting out organized crime and purging corrupt officials from within the department.

Key Points:

• The Gangster Squad operated with little oversight, often bending or breaking laws to achieve their objectives.
• Their involvement in the Black Dahlia case marked a significant shift in the investigation, aiming to bring genuine resolution to the case.

Notable Quote:

• Henry Zabrowski [16:18]: "They had that horrible movie that came out like 10 years ago, the gangster called Gangster Squad."

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7. Theories of the Murder: Organized Crime Connections

Several theories link Elizabeth Short's murder to organized crime, with Mark Hansen being the prime suspect facilitated by his connections within the LAPD. The intricate relationships between mob figures and corrupt police officers complicated the investigation further.

Key Points:

• Marcus Parks [07:57]: "It was a decades long thing that lasted from the 20s up until around the 50s."
• The convergence of multiple criminal and corrupt elements created a tangled web that made solving the Black Dahlia case exceedingly difficult.

Notable Quote:

• Ed Larson [34:07]: "What what is the answer that is in this situation... These places are just where a lot of guys want's to talk about that they're all in the same room."

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8. Quotes and Insights

Throughout the episode, the hosts interject with insightful and sometimes humorous commentary, shedding light on the dark themes of the case.

Notable Quotes:

• Ed Larson [02:44]: "Verbal tit."
• Marcus Parks [05:38]: "In places like Chicago, the gangsters paid off the police, but the gangsters committed the crimes. In Los Angeles, the police were the gangsters."
• Ed Larson [32:27]: "You can break your face into a hideous clown, a macabre display and get sliced in half."

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9. Conclusion and Lead-In to Next Episode

The episode concludes by highlighting the intertwined relationships between key figures and the perpetual obstruction caused by corruption. As the Gangster Squad delves deeper into the Black Dahlia case, new suspects emerge, and the complexity of the investigation intensifies.

Final Remarks:

• Marcus Parks [116:17]: "We are rolling on. We're firing on all cylinders with this... Come to check out the record stores in Detroit and Toronto on May 3rd."

The hosts tease the continuation of the case, promising listeners an even more gripping exploration in the upcoming episode.

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10. Additional Insights

The hosts provide their unique perspectives and theories, debating the plausibility of multiple perpetrators and the psychological profiles of the involved individuals. The combination of historical facts, speculative theories, and engaging banter makes for a captivating narrative that both educates and entertains.

Notable Dialogue:

• Ed Larson [04:36]: "What if instead we posit it like... The LAPD came and were taught improv classes by Mafia men."
• Henry Zabrowski [90:43]: "Philobsis was larger than a 7-year-old's boy."

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Final Thoughts

"Last Podcast On The Left" masterfully blends historical analysis with engaging storytelling, bringing to life the dark underbelly of Los Angeles during one of its most tumultuous periods. Episode 601 not only revisits the notorious Black Dahlia murder but also unravels the complex tapestry of corruption and crime that continues to mystify investigators and historians alike.

Listeners are left eagerly anticipating the next installment, where the Gangster Squad's pursuit of justice will delve even deeper into the labyrinthine mysteries surrounding Elizabeth Short's death.

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Disclaimer: This summary is based on the provided transcript and aims to capture the essence and key points discussed in the podcast episode. For a complete and accurate experience, listening to the full episode is recommended.

Transcript

[Narrator]

Miami Metro catches killers and they say it takes a village to race one.

[Marcus Parks]

Anyone knows how powerful urges can be? It's me.

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Catch Dexter Morgan in a new serial killer origin story. Hunger inside of you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It needs a master.

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Featuring Patrick Gibson, Christian Slater Special guest star Sarah Michelle Geller. With Patrick Dempsey and Michael C. Hall as Dexter's inner voice. I wasn't born a killer. I was made. Dexter Original sin New series now streaming on the Paramount plus with Showtime plan. Go to paramountplus.com to try it. Free Terms Apply NetCredit is here to say yes to a personal loan or line of credit. When other lenders say no, apply in minutes and get a decision as soon as the same day. If approved, applications are typically funded the next business day or sooner. Loans offered by NetCredit or lending partner banks and serviced by NetCredit applications subject to review and approval. Learn more at netcredit.com partners NetCredit credit to the People.

[Ed Larson]

Do you want to listen to Last podcast on the left without ads. Do you want extra content? Do you want to see what it's like behind the scenes? Patreon.com lastpodcast on the left.

[Marcus Parks]

There's no place to escape to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is the last podcast on the left.

[Ed Larson]

That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Oh, those murky, murky waters. Murky, murky, Black Dahlia waters. I have been up to my nipples. That's deep. Yeah. And Black Dolly amount.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's like three feet deep.

[Ed Larson]

Eddie. I'll allow it because it's almost Christmas. It is funny because I've never. I. I never did the Black Dahlia deep dive.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I didn't either.

[Ed Larson]

That was like one of those true crime things that I kind of thought. I think it's because as we were getting deeper into true CR as a person. Yeah. First of all was like more into serial killers. Like, then I found the Zodiac and I had seen pictures of the Black Dahlia corpse and it wasn't until now that, like, it's kind of. Then last podcast got going and I started thinking, like, you know, we'll get there. Yeah, eventually, you know, so I don't need to look into it now. And now I realize, like, why it's like this. It's very confusing. I am so deep in. I'm losing my fucking mind. I'm doing the thing where I'm seeing her face everywhere. I'm talking about hacking tits off everywhere. All the. It's getting a bit of a verbal tic of mine. And then what I did What I did last night.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Verbal tit.

[Ed Larson]

I. Last night, what I did is that I wanted to really get in the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Headspace, so just started waving knives around the kitchen.

[Ed Larson]

And I was just, like, trying to measure Natalie of where I'd cut her directly in half. But I went in, I looked up the top songs of 1947 just to kind of get in the mood, and I listened to a bunch of old pop songs. And I was just sitting there, and Natalie came back. She had a dinner with a bunch of her girlfriends. She came in and she just saw, like, me, no shirt in my. In my underwear, watching. Drinking the three fingers of scotch. Yeah. Listening to.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, you never were.

[Ed Larson]

I wish you had those little belts.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That hold your socks up.

[Ed Larson]

And sitting there drinking about it being like, we'll never know who killed Elizabeth the short wife. We never will know, because every mystery unlocks another mystery. And you're like, oh. And then it kind of feels nice to be here again.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it does. Welcome to last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the in too deep. Henry Zabrowski.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, just a little couch ride with my sweetheart. Gotta cut her Titan.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Let's go.

[Ed Larson]

Smile, swear like my baby.

[Marcus Parks]

And the newly traumatized Ed Larson, who just saw the Elizabeth Short crime scene photos for the first time just before walking in here.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, you just sent them to me. I asked you to.

[Ed Larson]

You asked?

[Marcus Parks]

I never send them to people without permission or direct requests.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I was like, while we're doing the show, I might as well see it. And I did not finish my lunch. It was very upsetting.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, though, Eddie, you got through most of it. I have. Oh.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh. I definitely had a couple more bites, but I officially. I think I have a good theory before we get started on who it was. World's worst magician.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he's right.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Cut the box in half, and then he's just like, oh, no.

[Ed Larson]

I just. Honestly, I looked at all the manuals, and I just thought if I believed deep enough in my heart that the magic would be real. Oh. Oh. Hot water.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, in many ways, Los Angeles is the promise of the American West. It's a place of reinvention. The farthest you can run before you hit ocean. A place where there's ample opportunity to become somebody else entirely, if that's what you so choose. But within that rebirth lies great vulnerability. And LA has always been host to parasites, constantly on the search for a cocoon to suck dry and throw away without a second thought.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. You really feel.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. He's right though it's pretty close. But it's kind of why I like it.

[Marcus Parks]

One might even say that much of the entertainment industry has been built on this very principle since day one.

[Ed Larson]

I'm. I feel nothing. The key is to have a subs inclination to be embarrassed and then the lack of shame to hold anything back. That's the key, is that you got to be able to come to Los Angeles, eat shit and like it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But since Los Angeles is known to attract desperate people.

[Ed Larson]

Not me. Not me.

[Marcus Parks]

Or at least people who are apt to become more desperate the longer they're here, it's also attracted criminals of every kind, from gangsters to rapists to murderers. And that was never more true of Los Angeles than it was during the time of the Black Dahlia murder.

[Ed Larson]

Talk. We, we've been obviously kind of going over all the theories about the murder. We, we, we last week we talked a little bit about the Black Dolly Avenger. We brought them in. We know that at this point in the case, when everyone arrives and they are shocked by the body of the. Of Elizabeth Short, the conspiracy and the COVID up kicks in immediately. Now the, what we want to do is like, we don't know necessarily. Marcus is short. Marcus has, he's, likes his suspect.

[Marcus Parks]

I like my, I like my suspect a lot. I really do.

[Ed Larson]

And then I, the magician. I went deep.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. Bingo. The. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

I wasn't supposed to do this. I was supposed to be a dentist. But I cast further, I cast a little doubt in my own mind. But really what we're trying to set up in this episode is the atmosphere that caused the Black Dahlia murder. They like, without the corruption of Los Angeles Police department and show business and all of it put together, this doesn't happen.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Well, as one mob lawyer put it, in places like Chicago, the gangsters paid off the police, but the gangsters committed the crimes. In Los Angeles, the police were the gangsters. And since the police were so corrupt, Los Angeles was an attractive place for organized crime figures who were either on the run for the law or looking for new opportunities. This moral ambivalence trickled down into the very fabric of this city and gave all sorts of people tacit permission to be horrible. Because when you mix a virtually untouchable group of powerful individuals with a never ending stream of desperate, naive people, shit's gonna get real ugly and real weird real fast.

[Ed Larson]

But right before you get your face turned into a hideous clown, you know, macabre display and get sliced in half, it's A lot of fun. Like right in those moments before.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's where LA was more than I think, like days before. It was fun.

[Ed Larson]

It was fun.

[Marcus Parks]

No, it's a razor's edge. That's the thing about Los Angeles. It's a town where you can walk this razor's edge of danger. And you never know when you're gonna fucking fall off.

[Ed Larson]

Because one way, because you could either end up Charlie Chaplin or you could end up Donnie Chaplin. And you don't want to know what happened to Donnie Chaplin.

[Marcus Parks]

And so, on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the disreputable, disgusting men who thrived in the underbelly of Los Angeles during the time of the Black Dahlia murder. Along the way, we'll also explain how these men gained enough power to possibly cover up their involvement in one of the most high profile murders in America's history. Now, while organized crime was certainly a problem, it operated hand in hand with the lapd. And in the time period we're talking about here, the 1930s to the 1950s, it's been said that the LAPD had absolute disregard for both the Constitution and the law itself.

[Ed Larson]

What if instead we posit it like. Like this is very harsh language. Right. We, and we love the lapd and we were not trying to remotely criticize the LAPD in any way. Right, Eddie?

[Henry Zabrowski]

No, this is a very long time ago.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, yes. And, but I think that more a way to kind of put this more gently is that the LAPD came and were taught improv classes by Mafia men. And then what that did was in that play acting in that. Yes. And like scenario. They then ended up committing quite a bit of crimes at the time, but it really was about staying in character.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There wasn't many checks and balances out here.

[Marcus Parks]

No, you right there absolutely weren't. There really weren't. Now that's not to say that law enforcement during this time period was a paragon of virtue across America. But the LAPD were especially renowned for their lawlessness and brutality. They struck deals with anyone who could line their pockets, from lawyers to snitches to bail bondsmen. And they created a grift in which the criminals. The cops and the lawyers. Lawyers. Were all on the same side trying to squeeze as much money as they could out of the city of Los Angeles.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And how long do you think this lasted? Like 15 years?

[Ed Larson]

No, 20? 24.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, there's always going to be police corruption, but obviously at its worst.

[Marcus Parks]

It was a decades long thing that lasted from the 20s up until around the 50s. Okay.

[Ed Larson]

Where there was no law.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, none.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Lots of, you know, lots of good movies and lots of bad movies made about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Well, all this only got worse in 1933 when a man with an actual Hitler mustache named Frank Shaw was elected mayor.

[Ed Larson]

It was still in Hitler mustache in 1933 because I don't think it is. I think you'd call it a Lincoln mustache.

[Marcus Parks]

No, you call it a chaplain.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Lincoln didn't have that mustache.

[Ed Larson]

The hat. What? The mustache looks like a hat for the lips.

[Marcus Parks]

No, because there's no brim the lip. It's a chaplain mustache at this point. But in 1933 though, Hitler was a world renowned figure. So you do know that you have the same mustache as a. It's kind of like now like having the same haircut as Elon Musk.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I mean, that's easy to do.

[Ed Larson]

You just go to Turkey and you spend $8,000 to get it.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Frank Shaw was essentially bought and paid for by organized crime. And his first, first action in office was to appoint his brother, Sailor Joe Shaw as a secretary whose sole purpose was to organize and collect bribes by making an under the table payment. To Sailor Joe. A police officer or even a firefighter.

[Ed Larson]

Could easily be up there. Ar Let me tell you something funny there, Jack. I can't swim through him.

[Marcus Parks]

A police officer or even a firefighter could easily buy a promotion. And Joe is even known to sell the animals. Answers to local civil service exams to anyone who wanted them. As one person put it, everything in City hall from the furniture to the toilet paper was up for sale, just so long as you paid cash.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What kind of buying the toilet paper.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, how much funny would it be like, let's say. Yeah, I mean, this is all bad though. But at the same time, it kind of be fun to go in as a businessman. You, you're mad at the cops. Buy all the toilet paper now. They all got dry, man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Imagine 1940s toilet paper.

[Ed Larson]

I'm pretty certain it was made out of he.

[Marcus Parks]

What? Shaw was in office. He was able to flip the tables on organized crime by forcing them to pay him protection. And as long as you stayed up to date on your payments, you never had to worry about a raid on your brothels or your casinos by the biggest gang in town. That was the lapd.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, see, me come for you. Come for you. Die. See, listen, nothing Hitler about my mustache, all right? This is American mustache. Frank's mustache. That's what it needs to be called. Mustache you know that Hitler apparently shave the mustache down in order to fit into a gas mask?

[Marcus Parks]

Really?

[Ed Larson]

That's what they said. According to him, that's what Hitler said. If you couldn't, you know, and if you want to trust him, which I.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Do, why not just shave the whole mustache?

[Ed Larson]

Because you need a little bit of something.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Little something to make him fun. Hitler.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Hitler.

[Marcus Parks]

Shaw's entire operation, however, came crashing down when he got involved with the attempted murder of a private investigator in 1938. The investigator was working with a concerned private citizen to expose the LAPD as essentially a legalized Mafia.

[Ed Larson]

I just happen to notice. I. I do know. I. I feel that the. Excuse me, police. You're being naughty. And we. And I feel that you all should be ashamed for your behavior.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Stick with your mouth.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, this private investigator guy got car bombed for his trouble. The entire operation had been orchestrated by the head of the LAPD Intelligence Squad. And interestingly, that officer was convicted for his crime partly due to testimony from Jack Parsons.

[Ed Larson]

That's. Wow. Holy. Another connection.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's actually. This. This case is actually how Jack Parsons made his name. That's how Jack Parsons got famous, was by being an expert witness in this case.

[Ed Larson]

That's fascinating. I didn't even realize that that's where he shows up and. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because when I was reading about it, I was like, I know this case from somewhere. Yeah. It was Jack Parsons. And after the intelligence officer was convicted, Mayor Frank Shaw resigned along with the LAPD Chief James Two Gun Davis and dozens of LAPD officers, quote, unquote, retired to Mexico soon after to escape further scrutiny.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Frank's going down to his house. He's gonna take his mustache. Mexico's. Hey, gonna get my mustache. Taste. Valposaurs. Come on, now. Going down there. Come on, buddy.

[Marcus Parks]

Soon after, another 200 cops were demoted or fired. And the administration that followed Mayor Shah's corrupt regime appointed an elite group of cops dedicated to removing mobsters and the corrupt officials from within. That group was called the Gangster Squad.

[Ed Larson]

And the Gangster Squad is interesting because a lot of them pretty fat, which actually, I like a fat cop. I think a fat cop is great because it means they think a lot.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And you can get away from them.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah. But these guys weren't the runners.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They weren't first responders. They were like third and fourth responders.

[Marcus Parks]

They will call me when you get them. Respond.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, we respond from the office and my toilet. But the. These guys were very. It's going to get deep into the murky worlds. Because these were now supposed to be the new good guys.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Right. These are the new good guys.

[Marcus Parks]

They handpick recruits. These are like. This is like Gotham City. This is. This is Commissioner Gordon combing the ranks of the police department to find the few guys. Guys who are paying the. Oswald Cobblepot.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Who's not on the take. But then it turns out a lot of those guys. What is the terms that you have to be careful when fighting monsters. To not become one yourself.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Of course.

[Ed Larson]

And so the Gangster Squad would then go to bend quite a bit of the rules.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

To do this very honest work.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They had that horrible movie that came out like 10 years ago, the gangster called Gangster Squad.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, is it like Jeremy Renner in it? He plays like the flute in it or something?

[Henry Zabrowski]

I think Sean Pen plays Mickey Cohen or something like that.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But then they had the. To halt the release of it because they had this scene where it was in the preview where they came out and they just shot everyone in a movie theater. And then the Batman thing happened.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And so they're like, okay, I guess this movie's coming out in winter instead of summer. And they had to go like, reshoot a bunch of.

[Marcus Parks]

Jesus.

[Ed Larson]

It's just them handing out gum to a bunch of people in the theater being like, don't say we didn't give him anything. You see, There you go. Enjoy some sugar free gum, man. I won't hurt your teeth.

[Marcus Parks]

See, no. Mickey Cohen hated the Gangster Squad. He called him more like the stupidity Squ. Not the mobsters aren't super clever when it comes to names.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Especially not then.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Working deep undercover, the seven man Gangster Squad operated solely out of two unmarked sedan. They had no offices. And they began making a name for themselves as crack investigators who were just as unconcerned with the Constitution as the men they were hunting. As such, the Gangster Squad was sometimes given special assignments outside of their purview. Which is how they came to be involved in the investigation into the Black Dahlia murder.

[Ed Larson]

It's kind of like using a dental dam. Right? To. When you can, you know, you want to get at that. You brought it back up into my mind. You brought it. That's all the Constitution is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Right. Because the pussy is crime. Right?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. In America is the.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. America's the. And the crime is the clit. The tongue in the mouth of the police. A dental jam is the Constitution. Get in between them and the crime. We have to remove the Constitution them. To get right up inside of the pussy hole. Of America and at the clit of criminality.

[Marcus Parks]

Perfect. Perfect analogy.

[Ed Larson]

Thank you.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, the seven men of the gangster squad could only do so much to root out police corruption because they kept arresting themselves. So in 1947, when the black Dahlia murder occurred, there were still plenty of LAPD officers on the take at every level. Unfortunately for Elizabeth Short, it just so happened that the two homicide detectives in charge of her case, Finis Brown and Harry the Hat Hanson, were just about as corrupt as they come. Oh, we so we may think around the offices of Los Angeles Held Express, Finnis and Hansen were called the Ego Stoops, which was a portmanteau, meaning they were a combination of egotistical, arrogant and stupid.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, I'm not arrogant.

[Marcus Parks]

Lt. Harry Hansen was described by author Pew Eatwell as a tall, balding redhead with a basset hound face, Mickey Mouse ears, and sleepy eyes.

[Ed Larson]

Sorry about that, y'all.

[Marcus Parks]

Along with his pinstripe suit and loud ties, Hansen also never took off his fedora for anything, which is why they called him the Hat.

[Ed Larson]

You don't want me to take my hat off because then unfortunately, you would see my brain. I lost the top of my eyebrows in World War I. So the hat is unfortunately my head.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Medicinal hat.

[Ed Larson]

It's my medicinal hat. It keeps my brain away from the wind.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Is that what some people get? Half a face? You know, we give it after they get blown off in the war. He got a hat.

[Ed Larson]

I got a scalp that I have to screw on.

[Marcus Parks]

A nearly 20 year veteran of the LAPD, by the time of the Black Dahlia murder, Hansen was known as a brute who beat suspects mercilessly and would pressure newspaper photographers to edit photos of suspects faces to remove the blood produced by his enhanced interrogation techniques. Hansen was particularly proud of what he called his third Street Bridge confessions, where he dangle suspects over the third street bridge if they didn't cooperate. Hansen was also known to call a suspect's bluff, often dropping them to the concrete below if they didn't tell him what he wanted to hear.

[Ed Larson]

I'm sorry, I got slipped. I had dish soap on my hands from earlier today.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So he's like a serial killer.

[Marcus Parks]

Mass murderer, kind of. We don't know how many people Harry the Hat killed or if he killed anybody in particular.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He said he dropped people off the fucking bridge all the time.

[Marcus Parks]

It wasn't that tall of a bridge.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also when they lived.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, okay.

[Ed Larson]

Cops also, we know they don't ever tell fish fishermen's tales of the things that they've done in the past and have exaggerated how powerful and masculine they are. They never do that.

[Marcus Parks]

Harry Hansen's partner, though Finis Brown, was Hansen's polar opposite in both looks and demeanor. While Hanson was a smooth talker, Finis Brown was clumsy and strange, a squat and swarthy cop with heavy jowls and rumpled suits.

[Ed Larson]

That picture of the two of them looking at the bodies like. So they're just like. Why are you even. Why are you crouching like that? You obviously can't crouch on a hill.

[Marcus Parks]

No, that's a sloped hill.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you're gonna fall over. They both. Yeah, they both look like Rumpty Dumptys.

[Marcus Parks]

While Harry Hansen got the relatively flattering nickname of the Hat, Finis Brown, the other guy in charge of investigating Elizabeth Short's murder was called FA or Fat Ass.

[Ed Larson]

I don't think he approved of the nickname. And I don't know, people said it out loud.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It might have been more accepting to be called Fat Pack then.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, sure it was. Yeah, it was. I think it was a compliment. It was a compliment because it meant you were rich, charismatic.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

You were healthy, you were safe.

[Marcus Parks]

Charismatic, yeah. Now, in addition to being corrupt, Finis Brown also moonlit as a bookie and a bagman for the mob, collecting money from shakedowns and protection rackets throughout Los Angeles. Finnis's brother Thaddeus, however, was known as a cops cop. Thaddeus was a beloved figure in the department who didn't have much regard for the Constitution either, due to his obsessive hatred of communists and his obsessive love for cops.

[Ed Larson]

And this is a very. It's like a combo of like, Thaddeus is the good son, right. That Thaddeus is the son, quote, unquote, goods.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, he's like. He's like lawful evil.

[Ed Larson]

That's how I view him. I view him as the. He's the face. He's the front facing one.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He's the one that murdering cowboys.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

He is the political sweetheart of the lapd. That's why they like him, is because politically he makes. He looks good. He is much more handsome than his brother. And because of his rapport with all the police and the fact that he's here to firmly establish what he believes is a lawful boys club. And I think that Thaddeus Brown had a problem with Finis Brown because Finis Brown is, to be honest. Honest, He's a mystery.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

This man is a. An unfathomable.

[Marcus Parks]

His name is Finnis Brown.

[Ed Larson]

It's very interesting, but he's a. He's a. We don't know really what this man's agenda was and what he had to gain from jamming up the process of the Black Dahlia murder. We also know that he. He might have been on the take. He also might have been deeply undercover.

[Marcus Parks]

He was definitely on the tape.

[Ed Larson]

But they're also saying that he was undercover cover telling people who he was taking take from and that this is. This is this game. This is what happened in jfk. This is why JFK is like the way it is. This is why. Because once assets become an asset, once a cop becomes an informant for themselves and like, once they are corrupt and then double teaming and everybody's on two separate teams, they're on their own team and somebody else's team, it doesn't begin to muddy the waters very significantly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You get paid twice.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

And that's what makes Black Dahlia so interesting and so confusing, is because every person in this story is running a game within a game within a game because it is so corrupt and there is so much crime going on here from the top to the bottom. There are a million games being played at all times and nobody trusts each other.

[Ed Larson]

Next episode, we are going to go into this idea of like, I think truly what's going on here is like, it's. There's like seven mafias of different industries all fighting at once.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, well, cuz if you were committing crimes, you weren't able to get anything done.

[Ed Larson]

Exactly. You l. It's like Lance Armstrong. He wasn't cheating, he was competing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, who did their mother love more, though? That's what I want to know.

[Marcus Parks]

Thius Finis. No, the mother always loves the up more.

[Ed Larson]

I guess they're forced to. They're forced to.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Thaddeus Brown, he was such a looming figure in Los Angeles that on the radio version of Dragon Joe Friday referenced Tad Brown as his boss. And Orson Welles based the character of Hank Quinlan in the film noir classic Touch of Evil off Tad Brown as well.

[Ed Larson]

Which is not a compliment.

[Marcus Parks]

No, it's not. And so with Finis Brown working directly with organized crime and Tad Brown working solely for the interests of the cops, they made an extremely powerful pair that were difficult to stand against if you thought they might not be doing their job correctly.

[Ed Larson]

And it's probably not a coincidence. They were tossed on one of the most high profile cases to ever hit the city.

[Marcus Parks]

And they, or at least finish was tossed on it. Thaddeus was doing his own thing.

[Ed Larson]

That's what I mean. He was sauce because of his connection to Thaddeus was he was tossed on the case. But why and. And who's involved? And now that's.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Were they the first people to show up?

[Marcus Parks]

They were the cops to show up. Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They were told to go take care of this body we put there.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, you know. Yeah, we don't know. Like they, it might have just been their turn in the rotation and it just so happened. Like there's. That's the thing is that they're. There is the room for coincidence in this case is astronomical. Like there really is so much room for coincidence.

[Ed Larson]

Kind of small. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It was much smaller. Yeah. LA at this point was half the size that it is now. It's half the population that it is now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. And it's just a bunch of vacant lots.

[Marcus Parks]

At least in places like Leimert Park.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

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[Narrator]

Miami Metro catches killers and they say it takes a village to race one.

[Marcus Parks]

If anyone knows how powerful urges can be, it's me.

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Catch Dexter Morgan in a new serial killer origin story. Hunger inside of you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It needs a master.

[Narrator]

Featuring Patrick Gibson, Kristen Slater special guest star Sarah Michelle Geller. With Patrick Dempsey and Michael C. Hall as Dexter's inner voice. I wasn't born a killer. I was made Dexter Original sin. New series now streaming on the Paramount plus with Showtime plan. Go to paramountplus.com to try it. Free terms apply.

[Ed Larson]

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[Marcus Parks]

Now, to the press, it seemed like the cops really weren't trying all that hard when it came to investigating the Black Dahlia murder. Because as we established last episode, all the most important aspects of the case have been uncovered by journalists like Jimmy Richardson and Aggie Underwood. Jimmy's people had discovered all the weird shit that had gone down in San Diego just before Elizabeth's death, for example. And Aggie Underwood had put together a clear timeline of Elizabeth's last days during her interview with Red Manley. The cops hadn't done any of this. Therefore, rumors that the Black Dahlia investigation was being shut down and covered up were being spread as early as late January 1947, about a week or two after the murder.

[Ed Larson]

Well, it sounds like also partially was the issue of all the confessing Sams is that they got this influx we talked about last week of all of these people wanting to jump in and insert themselves into this case. Because, again, I think that where Los Angeles comes into play is that you have the. Because everybody's an actor in the population. There's a lot of people looking to be like, I put my mark on this case. Oh, I get my picture on the paper. Which I do think is true. I think there's a little bit of the beginnings of this idea of, like, any publicity is good publicity.

[Marcus Parks]

Everyone thinks they're living in Chicago to play, you know, the musical, you know, like that.

[Ed Larson]

So now they're calling in, and so everything got gummed up. They don't have no necessity. They have no specific forensics, because at the time, it was a backward science. The body was completely Washed clean, they can't figure out what to do. And so now it's, I think that's where we're at.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also when a murder is this elaborate, it's probably easier to solve. And so I imagine when you go two weeks without no fucking clues or no answers, people are definitely asking questions.

[Ed Larson]

You think it'd be easier to solve. But what we've talked about on the show time and time again, if it's not somebody that knows the persons directly, it's extremely difficult to figure out murder.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Right.

[Ed Larson]

Most murder is done by somebody that you know. Yeah, most of it like 95 of.

[Marcus Parks]

The time in one way or another, like you're associated with them or a lot of times it is someone you know personally that kills you.

[Ed Larson]

That's why it's always a husband, it's always the wife. They always do they, that's what they look for. But when it's a problem, which is in this case probably true, close to a complete stranger, it's hard to figure it out.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Jimmy Richardson in particular began to believe that the investigation was being purposefully stalled. And it was his theory that the LAPD wanted it gone because of its possible connections to organized crime and the Los Angeles political elite. Furthermore, the LAPD were trying their best to distance themselves from even putting work into the investigation, going so far as to say that the murder had probably taken place outside the LA city limits and was therefore none of their business. The chief homicide detective in the city, Captain Jack Donahoe, was likewise drawing criticism because of his ridiculous public statements like his assertion that Elizabeth Short was cut in half solely so the body could be carried more easily, despite the fact that Elizabeth short only weighed 123 pounds.

[Ed Larson]

But I do think that there's a theory that holds of that she was cut for transport because of where she was dumped, specifically because she was in a high populous area. There were people lived around. Yes, there were vacant lots, but she was discovered by people just walking through. People walk through La Mer park all the time. So there is, I do think that there might actually be reason that she was cut in half. And that's why my main theory is that it was done by several people. But we'll get there, we'll get, we'll get.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But they could have just put straps on her and car. That's what I do at Rambo, you know, £70 and I put these straps on.

[Ed Larson]

But how does Julie get you into the bath?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh my God.

[Henry Zabrowski]

That's a pulley system.

[Marcus Parks]

But the problem with that though is the Clean surgical nature of the cut is that if they're just cutting her in half solely to transport her body, why did they take so much care in cutting the body?

[Ed Larson]

Because of the guy they brought her to.

[Marcus Parks]

But that's the thing. But that doesn't make sense because why are they bringing her to a guy to cut her in half so they can transport her somewhere else. They're transporting her to transport her.

[Ed Larson]

Guy went to her. It was.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, like a doctor.

[Ed Larson]

I think that one connection could be to the. The legal abortion. Abortion circuit and that they have a guy. If this is a mafia hit, which I do think that is correct. I think that it is involving the mafia on some level, is that they bring in an abortion doctor to essentially who's also in the cut to being like, how the fuck do we got this psychopath did this to her. We need to get rid of this right now. We need to do it right now. And his first thing is like, oh, we put her in two burlap sacks and we. We go drop her off somewhere.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure. But let's not get too hard.

[Ed Larson]

This is just. What is the dates of this?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So you think it's an even evil doctor?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, no, I think he's doctor.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It wouldn't be so straight if it was Dr. Giggles, Dr. Sirius, Dr. Rulers. Was the spine cut cleanly?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, it was like the spine was cut very cleanly and very deliberately.

[Ed Larson]

Specifically cut very nicely.

[Marcus Parks]

But yeah. And that's the thing, is that we're gonna really try really hard in this episode. There's so many different lines. Of course, we really have to keep stay, like, laser focused.

[Ed Larson]

All right.

[Marcus Parks]

And the investigative lines that Don Ho pushed were even more ludicrous.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The Hawaiian guy?

[Ed Larson]

No. Are you not listening, Jack?

[Marcus Parks]

Not Don Ho. Well, as Donahoe, he had become a big proponent of the homicidal lesbian angle. This was a line of investigation that was sure to go nowhere except to the harassment of LA's LGBT community, which was at the time a target of the lapd. Anyway, now you may ask why the head of Homicide would be so invested in derailing the murder investigation of one young woman, especially when leaving the case unsolved made his department look that much more incompetent. Because people were getting killed every fucking day in Los Angeles. It was a bloodbath out here. Fucking innocent citizens were getting caught in the crossfire of all these fucking gang wars. Women were getting killed. Hell, we talked about two murders last week that occurred just after Elizabeth Short that also went unsolved. Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Cause we all say what the werewolf murders, which we don't haven't even really factored into any of this. That's a whole. That's a whole book about the Black Dolly that we not even get to about the werewolf murders and about. And then how it connected Back to the three Frankenstein murders. They were the Dr. Frankenstein murderers.

[Marcus Parks]

The answer is that Captain Jack Donahoe was one of the men who arranged bribes for the organized crime syndicate that had Los Angeles in a stranglehold in the late 1920s-40s. And the more that investigators looked into Elizabeth Short's death, the more it led them to organized crime figures. Now, organized crime was such a fact of life in Los Angeles during the time of the Black Dahlia murder that mobsters were hired as consultants on noir movies for accuracy. And in some cases, they even got producer credits.

[Ed Larson]

That's kind of amazing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, it still happens, especially with military movies.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I mean, we had a deal on Wolf of Wall street where they had to keep Jordan Belford offset because he kept trying to shoot Show Up. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Mobster Johnny Roselli, for example, produced a prison break movie called Canon City. And this was in addition to Johnny being responsible for getting Marilyn Monroe some of her first roles, as well as Johnny being involved in CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. And he was also quite possibly the man in the sewer at Dilley Plaza when JFK was killed.

[Ed Larson]

That's just where I was, okay? Nothing to do. I love jfk, Maron, you know, I love Jesus Christ. Christ, it's the only Catholic president. I would never kill a Catholic president. I'd never do that. Okay? I was down there because I like slime.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that is true. Johnny Roselli, he was responsible for getting Marilyn Monroe some of her first roles. He was in the business and he was heavily involved in a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. In other words, people like Johnny Roselli, the ones involved in both organized crime and the movies, they had connections to the government on both a local and national level, and they had the power to pull strings if they wanted something covered up.

[Ed Larson]

Remember, I just always want to say this. These what we consider to be big coverups, my belief will always be that they're small and that the we're looking at as human. It's like this makes me wonder whether or not Marilyn Monroe was actually killed just because of the fact that she was connected to. Like it's human. It's a lady that is a famous kind of like a mess at this point. Like, she seems to be Kind of like an out of pocket person that you'd want to get whacked. Just like Elizabeth Short. And then she's been shipping to Pres. President and his brother. And she maybe probably been around a bunch of different shit and probably was popping off saying all the stuff that she was going to say about the time when she was fucking the president and fucking his brother at the same time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. But she's out of pocket because they were filling her full of drugs.

[Ed Larson]

It's not her fault. You're right. But still you get whacked for it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that it really is. And. And the things about these. These conspiracies is that I think it really does start with, like, one guy telling another guy, take care of it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And it's like. And then another guy tells another guy, why don't you take care of it? And then just like, it's just. And it gets.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The first guy's like, I didn't say killer.

[Ed Larson]

That's the problem. He's like, you did one. I thought you were going to get her a bus ticket.

[Marcus Parks]

Now. Bombings, shootings, and murder of all stripes were committed by the mob with near impunity during this time period, giving Los Angeles the reputation as the gang capital of the nation to being the center of the world's entertainment industry. Such was the prominence of mob violence in Los Angeles that coverage of the Black Dahlia murder shared headlines with a gang war that ultimately culminated in the assassination of infamous gangster Bugsy Siegel just five months after Elizabeth Short's body was found. Have you ever heard about how Bugsy Siegel was assassinated?

[Ed Larson]

We have to do all. We got to do the series, buddy.

[Marcus Parks]

God. He was sitting in his house and some guy from outside shot him in the head with such accuracy that the bullet ricocheted off his nose and blew Bugsy Siegel's eye across. Across the room. Whoa.

[Ed Larson]

This is like, you say you don't like mafia stuff, but then some of these things are really fun.

[Marcus Parks]

I like the Mafia murders. I just don't like the. Hey, we gotta go check out the numbers.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. It's all about the numbers game. He's got a guy, he's gonna do.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well. They invent the numbers.

[Ed Larson]

It's the lottery.

[Marcus Parks]

There's too many names.

[Ed Larson]

I know, but Bugsy Siegel's fascinating because this is the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You just like him because he invented Vegas.

[Marcus Parks]

Dude.

[Ed Larson]

These are our real forefathers, you know what I mean?

[Marcus Parks]

Like out west. Yeah. Well, Los Angeles was one of America's newest cities, and a lot of mafioci Came to California to escape either the law or previous associations with crime families, mainly on the east coast. Now the other big crime cities, New York and Chicago, thought of the LA mob as a bunch of country bumpkins. And that's if they thought of them at all.

[Ed Larson]

And you're not wrong, that is a day. Basically. A lot of these guys came out to L. A really because they couldn't hack it in New York and Chicago.

[Marcus Parks]

Or because they'd gotten into trouble or they, you know, some. A lot of them came out because they were too hot headed.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they had done so, like they'd beaten the out of the wrong guy. And it's like, okay, you got to go to California now.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And it's an open territory.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. And then you come out here too. It's like. And they were also. They would also send people out. They'd be like, all right. Oh, you know, like old Sloppy Fred.

[Marcus Parks]

No, Mickey Cohen. Mickey Cohen was the guy they sent. I was like, okay, yeah, now you got to deal with Mickey Cohen. Like. And that then he ended up becoming one of the biggest gangsters in the city's history.

[Ed Larson]

And that shows that anything's possible in this town.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. But what Los Angeles had that no one else did was Hollywood, with all the new opportunities that the movie business brought. See, the motion picture industry was essentially contained within a 20 square mile grid with supply chains that could be manipulated and squeezed at any point. And its workforce was almost fully controlled by unions.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

At one point, gangster Bugsy Siegel had complete control of the screen extras union of all things.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I think screen extras union is a really good way to hire people very quickly. And then you get people that are in dire straits under your control.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also it's a good way to go. Make sure people are on set, taking a look at the director and having informants getting back to you and what's going on on set.

[Ed Larson]

And it's also a good way to get hot new desperate ladies.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Also you think about this. Cause when you said it's actually served.

[Ed Larson]

A lot of great.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It really is a very good Hollywood. New York had Broadway. And that's why LA and New York are better than Chicago. Because Chicago just got the cubs.

[Ed Larson]

It just got cubs and heart disease.

[Marcus Parks]

You also out here had a lot of rich and famous people with, shall we say, predilections.

[Ed Larson]

And we talked about predilections.

[Marcus Parks]

Uh huh. And those predilections could be exploited and used for extortion. Should a movie star or producer or director need some help getting rid Of a dirty little secret.

[Ed Larson]

And movie stars and directors haven't changed all that much New.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And I've had them all over the world.

[Marcus Parks]

And when it comes to dirty little secrets, Elizabeth Short may have gotten herself involved with a shady publicity phobic Hollywood businessman Heavily involved with both organized crime and the lapd. A man named Mark Hansen. And she just may have gotten killed as a result.

[Ed Larson]

The man from Batavia.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hanson's great grandfather.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, wow. I love those little girls. God damn. I just want to break off a piece of some of them. Handsome women.

[Marcus Parks]

Everyone was always talking about the Olsen twins when we were growing up. I was thinking about the Hansen sisters.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, you tell me, friend.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, if you'll remember, when the LAPD received the package from the man who had claimed to have murdered Elizabeth Short, Included with that package was an address book with the name Mark Hansen printed on the front.

[Ed Larson]

I believe whoever sent the package is the only person who knows who killed a Elizabeth Short.

[Marcus Parks]

Hansen claimed that he barely knew Elizabeth and that she'd stolen this book from him to use herself.

[Ed Larson]

She just always tried. She was jealous of my context, and.

[Marcus Parks]

That was the extent of their relationship. It is, however, almost positive that Elizabeth Short and Mark Hansen were involved in an affair shortly before the Black Dahlia murder.

[Ed Larson]

Or did he want to be in an affair with Elizabeth Short?

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, When I say affair, I use that term loosely. Like there was definitely some sort of relationship between the two of them. Although it's very murky as to what that relationship really was.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I'm sure it was completely innocent.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Mark Hanson, his story is quite interesting.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Mark Hanson was involved in motion pictures, but his business was on the distribution side. He owned movie theaters, and he'd gotten his start in Minneapolis, where he opened a chain of theaters that were successful enough to necessitate a move to Hollywood. Once in Los Angeles, Hansen opened a nightclub called the Florentine Gardens, where you could find an aging Errol Flynn or a young Marilyn Monroe hanging out if you went on the right night. But the big secret at Florentine Gardens was that it was also a mob casino. And a big part of the reason why Hansen and his mob associates were able to operate Florentine Gardens so successfully was because they worked hand in hand with the lapd.

[Ed Larson]

Mark Hansen, his whole storyline is that he was. He was an immigrant.

[Marcus Parks]

He was a Danish.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he came in, he. He was desperate to get in the movies. The way he got in the movies was by distribution, which happens a lot. He got in. And what he found, according to people who knew Merkans and he was a family man. He had wife and kids. And when he started, he. He considered himself a very honest businessman. Like he was trying to set up a way for him in lapd, in l. In la, that that would be successful for forever. And what then happened is that he ran into what happens to anybody that tried to run into any one of these businesses in Los Angeles at the time. You had to speak with various Mafia members that would also be members of the police office force and all this kind of stuff. And it just seems kind of perfunctory in the. Seem to be a part of business. A lot of people, Mark the Florentine Gardens gambling like group as to actually be kind of small and kind of low level. And it was considered just to be sort of like casual in terms of what they were doing there. He was really trying to get into show business. That's what he wanted. Well, and. Well, and make money in show business. And then what happened is that he got addicted to ladies.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep. And there was also actual mobsters involved.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, very much.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy the Little Giant Utley was his mob contact.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But Little Giant.

[Marcus Parks]

But remember, you know, these guys, like, no matter how, like there are these huge syndicates that are operating out of Los Angeles that involve Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen, but then are also these small ones that work directly with the police because Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel hated the cops. They hated anyone who worked. Yeah, yeah, they were New York guys. But these guys, guys like Mark Hansen and the mob associates he had, they worked directly with the police. Because if you'll remember, I mentioned earlier that one of the homicide detectives in charge of the Black Dahlia murder, Finis Brown, was a bagman for an organized crime with. The organized crime figure Finis Brown worked for was Mark Hanson. And one has to ask how much of a coincidence it is that while Finnis Brown was investigating Elizabeth Short's murder, a package should arrive from the killer that has an address book with his boss's name on it and the investigation stalls soon after.

[Ed Larson]

I think that's quite possible.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But also why would he be incriminating himself?

[Henry Zabrowski]

He wasn't incriminating by receiving the package that he's eliminating himself as a suspect.

[Ed Larson]

But it's Mark Hansen.

[Marcus Parks]

Mark Hansen didn't send the package.

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

Mark Hansen had no idea that the package is being sent. All this was happening outside of Mark Hanson's purview. And that's the problem here. Now, as far as how Mark Hanson came to be involved with Elizabeth Short, we really are looking at a very Laura Palmer esque plot straight out of David Lynch's creative universe.

[Ed Larson]

Just go and turn on some Count Basie. Go get some. I love this. The new song. The song I like was near you. This is like. It's a very kind of like what we talked about, how every song from the 1940s in the right context is truly frightening because it's just. I was just looking at. With these. And just like us looking at pictures of Elizabeth Short over and over again. Just remember that. It's all like, I want to sing like. But it's like filled with serial rapists.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And all the songs are about trains.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

See, in the 1940s, Mark Hansen had a sort of casting couch situation going on in which he would recruit young girls for his nightclubs. And these girls were found and recruited by a man named Nils Thor Granlund.

[Ed Larson]

And they called him Granny for short.

[Marcus Parks]

In ntg, Nils Thor had actually pioneered the New York City nightclub scene of the 1920s.

[Ed Larson]

Heard about the Charleston. I invented the Louisville.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So his name is Thor and they called him Granny.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, his last name. Granlund was his last name.

[Ed Larson]

Cause his last name's Granlund. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, he was the one who kind of pioneered the concept of the girl in the G string wearing high heels. And he. Thank you.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, seriously. Can we hold a moment of silence and say, thank you, Granny?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, he was a very particular flavor. A piece of shit. He would travel to rodeo shows across the country where he would find jail bait that he could lure to LA for Mark Hanson. But from the girls that worked for him, Mark Hanson would choose a sort of harem for his own home, which was located just behind the Florentine Gardens Club. Not all the girls who stayed at his home, however, worked for Mark Hanson. According to well placed sources, one of the girls that came in and out of Hansen's home who fit that bill, that didn't work for him was Elizabeth Short.

[Ed Larson]

So he was married, the parent. The wife left him because. So now he is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Why?

[Ed Larson]

I don't know. It seems that, like, we have a lot of friends that have run nightclubs, but it seems that when you run a nightclub. We do. I. I mean, back in the day, we've known people that have. I know people that have run. Yeah, yeah. And we. It does seem to hurt your relationships. Because what happened was, is that he fell in love again with the biz. Which is always like the worst thing for a business owner, especially in show business, where he became really into this idea of, oh, I Can control all of these young women. They have to. They're. They're being really nice to me and they're flirting with me because I have something to give them. And then what? He started renting his own apartment right behind the place. And his wife had left him. And then eventually, because they were there with him and when the family left, he's like, oh, I'll just bring the chicks in here.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

So they started hanging around. And now what we know because. What about. We know about Elizabeth Short. She pretended to want to be an actress.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

She did not actually.

[Marcus Parks]

She talked about.

[Ed Larson]

She talked about it, but she didn't actually want to be one. So Mark Hansen was sold originally on this idea that. Well, this. This is Beth. She's here. She wants to be a dancer. And Mark Hansen fell so butt deep in love with her.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep. Now, Elizabeth had been introduced to Mark Hansen's world through a friend named Marjorie Graham. Graham, A heavyset girl who was also from Massachusetts. Like Elizabeth, she had a weakness for the sauce and often found herself.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Sleeping.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And she often found herself in bad situations as a result. Oh, well, Elizabeth and Marjorie, terrible.

[Ed Larson]

You know, Olive Garden.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Elizabeth and Marjorie had been staying together at the Hawthorne Hotel in Los Angeles during the summer of 1946. This was shortly after Elizabeth's relationship with Major Matt Gordon had ended. Remember him? He was the guy that supposedly had died over India and that she had supposedly married him and she'd supposedly had a kid with him that had supposedly died and all that. No matter. Matter what happened. This is around the time that that whole thing ended. Yeah. And Elizabeth and Marjorie were running out of money. But they could, according to Marjorie, stay for free at the home of a club owner named Mark Hansen. Although it's unclear if Marjorie told Elizabeth what was expected of her if she did choose to stay at Hansen's home.

[Ed Larson]

Technically, Mark Hansen was doing the. More of the Romeo. What they call Romeo grift or Romeo con for pimps versus the. Versus coercive. Where they.

[Marcus Parks]

Come on, baby, do this for me.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, he. It's more like. Of all the girls which seemed to happen to Beth Short quite a bit is that he chose her specially like the other girls. He was just trying to.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But then.

[Marcus Parks]

And turn out.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. But when he met Elizabeth Short, he fell in love.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Like it was something else. Like he became obsessed with.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. But guys like that, it probably happens to him like once a month.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. But then they don't turn to the Black Dahlia, which is the, you know, always the kind issue with all of these stories in this episode.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but Mark, again, Mark Hansen didn't turn into the Black Dahlia. Now, while Mark Hansen did have sex with the young women stayed at his home, Elizabeth was said to be different from all the other girls. According to a friend of Elizabeth's who lived there, Mark tried having sex with Elizabeth on many occasions, but she was always able to get out of it, which only made him want her more.

[Ed Larson]

Because remember, there was also one of the theory, it's because Elizabeth Short said that her was destroyed.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that was disproven now.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, of course. Yes, but it was one of the weird lines that she gave. So one was that she was a virgin and the other one was just like my. My vagina doesn't work.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. Well, this yearning was only made stronger by the steady stream of dates Elizabeth would go on while staying at Mark's house. Now, Elizabeth was well aware of Hansen's jealousy, so she would always make sure her dates picked her up and dropped her off on a corner a block away. So Hansen would never see her within another man. But in early December 1946, about a month and a half before Elizabeth was found dead, Elizabeth and Mark Hanson had some sort of disagreement and he kicked her out of the house briefly. Elizabeth lived in an apartment where each room had eight young women crammed together in bunk beds costing just a dollar a night. But since Elizabeth didn't even have a dollar, she skipped out on paying the landlady and disappeared. A few days later she reappeared in the Aztec Theater in San Diego, where she was found by the aforement mentioned Dorothy French. Soon after you had the mysterious couple knocking on the French's door looking for Elizabeth. You had the ride back to LA with Red Manley, the disappearance that night, and her body being found six days later.

[Ed Larson]

So this is the final run. This is the. This is the story of Fire Walk With Me. Like literally. So she.

[Marcus Parks]

And right now we just have flashes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There are so many characters.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, well, it's because she really was.

[Henry Zabrowski]

She was hitting the town.

[Ed Larson]

She was homeless. She basically was homeless. And at this point what they truly say is like once the, the soldier storyline for her ended, she really was kind of left to the winds. So that's a part of what they say that she was probably doing when she was making all the phone calls in the hotel was that she was calling every old soldier that she had known from back in the day. Can you send me money? Can we do this? And she was really kind of speed running toward the End of her life. But it sounds like the. The conflict that got her kicked out of the house was also kind of indicative of why Beth Short was considered to be an intense. Sometimes people would say difficult person because she kind of wanted it both ways a little bit. So she wanted Mark Hansen to be in love with her. So she'd play that angle up for a while and then hold out, which is. Is her right. She's allowed to do it. Made Mark Hansen angry. Eventually he's like, all right, fuck it. He tried to move on. New girl comes in, new object of Mark Hanson's affections. She flips out, saying all of the stuff. Being like, she's going through my. My bags. She's trying to steal my stuff. And he's all like, why don't you just go? And then that's when she. That is like, apparently what. It started a bunch of drama because that's what happens when you put all of the showgirls that you're having sex with in one apartment.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And that's just like. I'm just gonna say this as a producer. Don't do that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, there's also. I mean, half of the houses that are like a million five in Hollywood right now would just hold actresses from. For producers.

[Ed Larson]

If you go up and down, I always think about on Rampart when you go up to, like, they used to have these furnished housing, and that's like, where all of this kind of happened. They used to have actors housing where they used to kind of put him, weirdly, like, in tenements where they were just all hanging out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They owned you. Yeah, I'm like a three or five picture deal. And you'd live there, and as soon as your deal was up or they fired you, you would lose your home and your clothes. Just very three amigos. It was real.

[Ed Larson]

But it's also kind of got, though, in a way, though, that contract system must have been kind of fun. Like. Like you hear like all those Ernest Borg 9 types because you show up, you have no idea what car, what part you're playing. You're like, I guess I'm a farmer today. And like, oh, I guess I'm a. I'm a. I'm a coal miner today. Like, that kind of stuff is funny. Then you're an alien. And then something else is kind of.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, it's like improv class.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, Mark Hansen was able to evade investigation for a long time after his former address book showed up at the Los Angeles examiner offices along with Elizabeth Short's other Belongings. But that was because he was in cahoots with one of the homicide detectives. Hansen, however, almost got a dose of street justice In July of 1949, a year and a half after Elizabeth's murder. That month, a dancer at his club named Lola Titus shot him in the back after an argument accusing him being, quote, a goddamn cop lover.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you're a damn cop lover. Lol. Lola Titus. You research into her at all, Bucks? A woman. She was a. She was his Rubenesque affair. Like, he was, like, super into this lady, and she was known for, like, she'd get naked at the drop of a hat, and she was like, she's a fun lady. Yeah, A lot of energy.

[Marcus Parks]

Hansen, however, survived the gunshot to the back. And when he arrived at the hospital, the first thing he said was Ky Brown.

[Ed Larson]

Kevin Brown.

[Marcus Parks]

He did not, however, mean Finis Brown. He wanted Finnis brother, Thaddeus Brown. The cops cop and Thaddeus Brown quickly rushed to Hansen's side, I suppose to make sure that Lola Titus got what was coming to her. No one really knows what went on between Thaddeus Brown and Mark Hansen during that conversation. All they know is he said, get me Brown, and Thaddeus Brown fucking jumped.

[Ed Larson]

Just understand that this is why this case is so difficult, because it's just. Everybody's a villain.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

No one's telling the truth. It is the. It's like dealing with the CIA. No one is. No. You don't know what anybody's actual story is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

So was Hansen dying and he just wanted to get Thaddeus some information?

[Ed Larson]

I don't know.

[Marcus Parks]

I think he want. I think what he wanted to do is bring Thaddeus and say, get the. Who did this to me? Get her. It was Lola Titus. Get her. Make sure she goes down.

[Ed Larson]

This really probably has nothing to do with the Black Dahlia directly. It's more just showing that Mark Hansen had definitely had a relationship. Relationship with the police. Which means that he was more than. More than probably an informant. Which would mean that if Finis Brown worked for Mark Hanson or was like a bag man for Mark Hanson, it's like he was then, conversely, working for a gangster that was also working for the police.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. You're making things purposefully confusing for people.

[Ed Larson]

It's the truth. This is what we're in the middle of. This is what I'm trying to explain.

[Marcus Parks]

But Mark Hanson's close relationship with the police wasn't the only reason why she shot him. Allegedly, Lola Titus and Elizabeth Short were friends, and Lola had accused Hansen of Being involved in Elizabeth Short's murder.

[Ed Larson]

I knew you were trying to cut me in half. I knew what you were trying to do. You drew that line about my belly button. And you said you were trying to make measurements for the new pool. And I know that that's not what was happening.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hocus pocus yourself.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, Mr. Magic man, you're not getting me. Here goes. Out. Oh, free lady I'm gonna be. I'm gonna go take my dancers out. I'm gonna put a banana up her pussy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

What did the guy say who killed Elizabeth Short? After he killed her?

[Marcus Parks]

What?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Abracadabra.

[Ed Larson]

Marcus liked it. I won't give it to you. I won't give it to you because it's mean. And again, the magician theory has that proven out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Did you think it was crocus pocus.

[Ed Larson]

Like that that I enjoyed? There we go.

[Marcus Parks]

Unfortunately, though, Lola was not the most stable witness. After she was arrested and taken to the hall of justice, the officer in charge of taking her to the courtroom opened the door to the room where she was being held to find her nude and spread eagled, lying on the floor.

[Ed Larson]

Want to check me for a gun, hey? Or do you want to go get some flowers and make me a boss?

[Marcus Parks]

The officer ordered her to get dressed, which she did.

[Ed Larson]

All right. How about just what way you want me to get dressed? Oh, one sock, one glove, the whole everything. Oh, you want me to cover my. Ah. Can you smell it?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Quite fragrant. It's quite fragrant.

[Ed Larson]

You're welcome.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I wasn't sure what it was, but once you said I knew exactly what it was.

[Ed Larson]

I also brought this pot. I also brought this pot of beef stroganoff from home.

[Marcus Parks]

But after her picture was taken by court photographer, she got nude again, remarking. My God, it's hot in here.

[Ed Larson]

I can't believe how hot in. Hey, I gotta show my butt to the air conditioner. Bring me to the ice machine. Hey, son.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Your new name is Air Conditioner.

[Marcus Parks]

But when it came time to finally make arguments, Lola's attorney said that according to Lola, Mark Hansen's game was to scoop up young girls and make a lot of promises about opening doors in Hollywood, if only they did a little something for him first.

[Ed Larson]

And that's fucking honestly, what a fucking lie. I have never heard a producer say no anything like that to anybody. I know. Like that's just like that's never.

[Marcus Parks]

That ploy has never been used in this city ever. I mean, who do they think we are here?

[Ed Larson]

I am so sick of my cherished Art for being slandered in this way. How dare you. Cuz I was never given the opportunity.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you were.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, actually, the one time I was. But it wasn't how I wanted it. It was never some big busty MILF saying, well, you know, these tits aren't gonna suck themselves. Should I say, oh, what, Mr. Babe Ruth? Like I'm auditioning for Babe Ruth. No. It was a man. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And you said no.

[Ed Larson]

Yep.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And look where you are now.

[Ed Larson]

I made the error of having taste and. And pride and I'll never do it again.

[Marcus Parks]

Lola Titus was one of those girls. And in her exact words, she said.

[Ed Larson]

Quote, I made up my mind that he was either going to love me, marry me or take care of me or I was going to kill him.

[Marcus Parks]

Not that statement. Amongst many others, Lola Titus was convicted of attempted murder and sent to the Patent State Hospital for the Insane.

[Ed Larson]

What do you mean? I just thought I had moxie. I thought I was going to go to the Southern California State Hospital for the big tenant.

[Marcus Parks]

No, she died there 10 years later at the age of 30.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, is that something happened? That's also. I feel like it's really weird.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I don't just shock their brains and give them crazy experimental drugs. No one had any checks and balances on these.

[Marcus Parks]

She was probably lobotomized.

[Ed Larson]

I would imagine they just put her away into it. It just really kind of. I thought it's interesting that she went to a state hospital instead of jail.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Specifically a state hospital where she could be shut the up and never listened to ever again.

[Ed Larson]

Because she's legally crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep. And with Lola put away, even considering her unstable nature, a possible window into Mark Hansen and Elizabeth Short's relationship was closed. Although Lola's perspective was far from the last fact vantage point. As we'll soon see now, there have been many people who have made connections between Elizabeth Short's death and organized crime. Chief among them, author Donald Wolf. In his theory, Elizabeth Short was a high end call girl who worked at a mob owned brothel and had become pregnant by the owner of the Los Angeles Times, a man who also happened to be from one of the most powerful families in Los Angeles. This, some people say, is why the Los Angeles Times had relatively scant coverage on the Black Dahlia murder and had begrudged, grudgingly covered it only after seeing how well the story was doing in the other city papers.

[Ed Larson]

This story feels too much like the perfect arc to me. This feels like it's too much of a. On a writerly version of what they wish kind of the way that they could explain it, it's a very pulp.

[Marcus Parks]

Fiction novel type way to just tie all the story up.

[Henry Zabrowski]

She was like, if I'm. If what I'm catching here is she was like the hottest chick in town and she was being sold to the most powerful men in town and she probably slept with a lot of the most most powerful men in town.

[Ed Larson]

See I actually a lot of people.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Could have been connected to her when she found out, when she turned up dead, everyone just like, let's sweep this under the rug. Whether it had something to do with it or not.

[Ed Larson]

I think that what you're saying is half right. I think that it's. The second half is right. I think that they would like to portray her as this interconnected high end call girl that was super sophisticated.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't think she was a call girl at all.

[Ed Larson]

No, I don't think so either. I think that she never did it for money. I think she was just surviving. And I think that she really, really just had a taste for dangerous people. And it got her quite a lot of trouble.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know, she could have been an escort, not a sex worker, but there's someone to be seen with.

[Ed Larson]

I think she just liked guys.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I think she just like. I think she was nice things. Yeah, she like guys and nice things.

[Ed Larson]

She like nice clothes, she wore her perfume, she. I think that it wasn't. She didn't have highfalutin ideas in that way. I think that she was literally just trying to survive.

[Marcus Parks]

I think it's how, you know, Jimmy Richardson put it, it lost like just not really know. She's in her early 20s, she doesn't know what the she wants. All she knows is that she doesn't want the life that has been laid out for her, you know, as society demanded it. She's trying to find something and she just keeps coming up with goose eggs every time. But as far as why Elizabeth was killed, it's theorized that she may have refused to get an abortion after being impregnated by such a high powered client. Which is why she was hiding out in San Diego and became disturbed anytime someone came looking for her.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And why she had her body hollowed out after she was killed.

[Marcus Parks]

According to the theory, she was finally captured when she returned to Los Angeles and was killed brutally and publicly so as to send a message to any other girls who may have been thinking of stepping out of line. But while this theory has the right idea, I think it comes to the wrong conclusions. I do believe that Elizabeth Short's death was directly related to organized crime. Yes, but I think it had a lot more to do with her associating with dangerous people than it did with her participating in risky activities, sex work in a mob owned brothel. I think that the organized crime figure responsible for Elizabeth Short's death was Mark Hansen. And he had a lot of help from the LAPD to make sure the Black Dahlia murder was never solved. But notice I said responsible for her death. I do not believe that Mark Hanson was the one who actually killed Elizabeth short.

[Ed Larson]

Thank you, Mr. Hansen's fake lawyer. Thank you for pointing this out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes, it's because his cut in hand.

[Marcus Parks]

Does this shaky, shaky, shaky, shaky shake.

[Ed Larson]

You know what I, I, and it's, I think what you're saying is the answer is in this situation. Yes, that's where the, where the answer is, is here. It's somewhere in this miasma of dudes that she met during her time around Mark Hansen. The Florentine Gardens and all of this stuff that is connected around it and I, that's, that's where I, I think that we're stumbling into is that these places are just where a lot of guys wants to talk about that, that are in the same room and they don't want people to know that they're all in the same room. And it's like she's just was a big old, like tying everybody together. She was the rug that tied the room together.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And I think that all of this happened within a span of months. Like I think Elizabeth Short's life fell apart very, very quickly. And I think she found herself involved in some really bad, very fast, like faster than she even knew what was happening.

[Henry Zabrowski]

She turned down Hansen probably.

[Ed Larson]

Well, think about, you know, like they're, the way the city opens up to the, the right star. You know, Scarlett Johansson arrived, I think about it in that way where like they, these people, I mean most of them were industry plants. But when someone just shows up. Right. That's just a simply very beautiful, charismatic woman. Especially in these businesses. Things can go really far for you very quickly. And I think that's kind of, is what happened to her in a way too. I think because she was so hot and so desirable and too many men like that also just kind fired up everything around. Everywhere she'd go. It's like everywhere she went, she started a fire.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Hey everybody, Ed Larson here to give you some tips to get you through the end of the year. It's Christmas time and you know what that means. You're broke. You've spent all your money buying stuff that nobody wants because you feel an obligation. So you will have to tighten the belt. And you know who's going to be able to help you with that? That's Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users. All right, you know, you should get on board. They help you cancel things that you don't need anymore. That's right. Rocket Money helps you get out of all the subscriptions that you got tricked into keeping it make it so hard to cancel stuff. And Rocket makes it easy for you to come back at them and just say, you know what? Gone. Extra streaming service you forgot of. Gone. Newspaper from hometown. Gone. Fruit of the month club, gone. That's right, Rocket Money doesn't hold anyone.

[Marcus Parks]

Holy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com LPOTL today, that's RocketMoney.com LPOT LPOTL RocketMoney.com LPOTL this show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

[Ed Larson]

The best part, honestly about the holidays is that everyone that has to work goes away. And I don't have to hear about work. I don't have to hear about the trials and tribulations of the government. I just get to sit in the dark with my holiday liquid called scotch. My God, I love scotch. But more than anything else, I love therapy. Some people love getting therapy in the wintertime. I like getting therapy 24 7. And that's why I think, you know, for a lot of you, December would be a good time to try BetterHelp. Give therapy a shot. It's entirely online, but you can get in there anytime. See that therapist. Ping them, ping them, ping them, ping them, ping them, ping them. You're mean. But hey, you might want to find some comfort this December. And I think that you should find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com lastpod today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.com lastpod Everyone loves a good deal, right? Yep. So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for $15 a month with the purchase of a three month plan, we had to call them on it. I called my daughter lawyer and he was busy in the day. I actually had his assistant and turns out it really is that easy to get wireless for $15 a month. Yep. The longest part of the process is the time you spend on hold waiting to break up with your old provider. I say ghost em. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Ga Gu gu gu gu. All right. I love Mint Mobile. It's cheap. I love Ryan Reynolds. Handsome as a devil himself. These slings these phones faster than anybody I've ever seen sling a phone since Naomi Campbell threw her phone at her assistant. But I'll say these Mint Mobiles are just absolutely Dino might to steal another catchphrase, you're gonna love your Mint Mobile. Because I'll tell you what, we all hate Cinnamon Mobile. That's for certain. I'm keeping that one. We're keeping that one. To get this customer offer and your new 3 month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mint mobile.com lpotl that's mintmobile.com lpotl cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com lpotl 45 upfront payment required, equivalent to 15 per month. New customers on first 3 month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. C Mint Mobile for details.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, it's important to note that for almost two years there was very little to no movement on the Black Dahlia murder investigation. A lot of people have been questioned and a lot of theories have been put forth. And more clues had even been found. Elizabeth Short's purse and shoes, for example, have been found in a trash can outside of a cafe four miles from Leimert Park. But none of these clues had led anywhere meaningful because Finnis and Hansen had made sure, especially after Mark Hansen's name came into play, that the investigation had stalled.

[Henry Zabrowski]

See, now if they found the purse and stuff four miles away in a trash can outside of a diner, someone had to have been tipped off. Like, because that shit's just getting picked up and thrown in the dump. No one's searching every trash can within four months miles of her body.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it just happened. They just happened upon it.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, that's another just happened upon it story here.

[Marcus Parks]

Reporters later uncovered that Finis was in debt to Hansen for $5,000, 70 grand in today's money. And it's speculated that Mark Hansen used Finis Brown to shut down any lines of investigation that led towards him in exchange for forgiveness on his debt. Now that by itself is not not proof that he killed Elizabeth Short or that he was responsible for the death of Elizabeth Short. But a person was just about to be discovered that was going to lead towards Mark Hansen. The one man in the LAPD who just couldn't let it go. The man who tried to fight the tide of corruption and cover ups was the aforementioned Dr. Joseph Paul Deriver. Which I pronounced mispronounced in the last episode as derivative Deriver. Now, as we said last week, Deriver was in charge of screening all the confessing Sams who either arrived at the police station claiming they'd killed Elizabeth Short or were sending weird shit through the mail. After a year and a half of sifting through the muck, however, Deriver finally decided to get proactive.

[Ed Larson]

I got a copy of his out of print book, the Sexual Criminal. It is very. It's dated.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But it is very, very interesting.

[Marcus Parks]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Dr. Deriver is a hero. No, no. He behaved like monster much of the time.

[Ed Larson]

This next section of this whole story is so fascinating. I just find this all so fascinating. But the breakdown of Dr. Driver is. Because right now, this is the rise and fall of Dr. Driver.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. See, Deriver had a theory that the killer both craved attention and was most likely a true crime fan. So he planted an article about the Black Dahlia murder in True Detective magazine to try and lure the killer out from hiding.

[Ed Larson]

And he did have some approval, but very little approval for what he was doing. So Deriver was hired by the lapd. You know, he ran his. The sexual offenders unit.

[Marcus Parks]

He was, like, putting the registration.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he was putting this all together. And eventually they just kind of like, he was just kind of off road. And so eventually he was just like, I know exactly how it gets his criminal. And the first thing he did was like, we must beat him. We must encourage a tet. A tet. You know, that the black Dali avenger will have no. No way to not respond. If we tell everybody we think he's a dumb dumb, it's entrapment. Yep.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, the article described the Black Dalia killer as a sadomasochistic type with at least half a dozen victims already. A cunning, studious, scientific type who would be compelled to boast about the details of the crime. And sure enough, soon after the article was published, Deriver received a letter from Miami beach signed with the obviously fake name of. Of Jack Sand. Jack sand wrote that he'd read the article about the Black Dalia murder, and he believed that a friend of his was the killer. Intrigued, Deriver and the mysterious Jack sand began exchanging letters. And Jack eventually said that his friend was a guy named Jeff.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Jeff.

[Ed Larson]

Jeff.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Jeff.

[Ed Larson]

He killed the black gal. You have never met a man as sinister as Jeff. Jeff. The worst man I've ever met. My best friend, Jeff.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, allegedly, this guy said that he'd spent six weeks in San Francisco with Jeff just after the Black Dahlia murder. Jeff Jackson wrote, had bragged that he'd gone to the same bars as Elizabeth Short, but had fled Los Angeles before the cops could question.

[Ed Larson]

He went to the same hot dog stand she frequented. Mine. My friend Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

Jeff. Jeff also liked to draw.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, he did.

[Marcus Parks]

And in one language.

[Ed Larson]

Dogs, horses, airplanes, octopus, Anything you can draw. Jeff was addicted to it. Dangerously so.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, in one letter, Jack included a sketch that he claimed had been drawn by Jeff.

[Ed Larson]

As you can see here, these two rounds.

[Marcus Parks]

Lobes.

[Ed Larson]

Might just be a butt drawn by my best friend and enemy. Jeff.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, while the contents of the letters themselves were interesting, the sketch really was the sort of wow moment for Dr. Deriver.

[Ed Larson]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

It featured a fair amount of cross hatching that was very similar to some of the extensive mutilation inflicted on Elizabeth's Short's body, namely the crisscross lacerations that have been found on her pubic bone and right hip.

[Ed Larson]

Only a serial killer could shade in this way. I've never seen shading like this before. Truly nefarious. I must investigate.

[Marcus Parks]

Jack sand also wrote a letter that speculated on the motive behind the killing, saying that Elizabeth may have threatened exposure of something, an affair not considered proper, as he put it, with a horse.

[Ed Larson]

And with a fish, Many things can be made love to that are inappropriate, depending on where you're from.

[Marcus Parks]

Where are you from?

[Ed Larson]

Downtown.

[Marcus Parks]

Downtown where?

[Ed Larson]

Jeffon. You ever been to Jeffon? My best friend was from there. His name is Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

Jack sand also said that the killer may have experienced a new sensation by accident during the murder, thus leading to the Black Dahlia's complete annihilation. The letter also showed many of the same spelling, grammar and syntax peculiarities as the letter sent to Jimmy Richardson at the examiner. And Jack sand also referred to the victim as simply Elizabeth rather than Elizabeth Short or the Black Dahlia, inferring that this person may have known or felt like he had known Elizabeth Short intimately.

[Ed Larson]

And the beginning of this was just letters?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

So he opened this up and he started writing back and forth with Jack sand, and he's like. Literally is like. Yes, we ought to. We ought to put it. This is the answer I have been looking for.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I can hear him saying, the game is afoot. Over and over again, he had that perfect little must.

[Ed Larson]

He had that perfect mustache for it.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Now, when he was calling her Elizabeth, was she known as Elizabeth because you called her Beth earlier?

[Marcus Parks]

She was best to her friends.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, since Finnis Brown and Harry the Hat Hansen had all but given up on the case, the aforementioned Gangster Squad was tapped to pick up where they left off. Because not everyone at the LAPD nor everyone in the mayor's office was on the take. There were some people who wanted this thing solved.

[Ed Larson]

I do kind of believe it's kind of funny idea of being like Gangster Squad, and you go out there and solve this case. And they were like, yes, sir.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, sir.

[Ed Larson]

They're all just, like, trying to get in the elevator on the same. They all try to get in the same car. Who's driving? I don't know. Who's sitting in the G. I'm just hitting the. I want to be in the trunk. I'm riding on the top. I'm on the hood. I'm making siren.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Fire hydrant.

[Ed Larson]

I'm making the siren. We need to get organized. Gangster Squads on it.

[Marcus Parks]

So Deriver told the Gangster Squad all about this Jack Sands character in Miami beach, which prompted the squad to send one of their officers to Florida undercover to track Sands down, which they denied.

[Ed Larson]

They denied they ever sent a cop to go look at them. But, you know, it's all, who's saying what now?

[Marcus Parks]

Before long, they discovered that Jack Sands was a pseudonym for a career criminal named Leslie Dwayne Dillon, 27. At the time, Dylan was described as tall, lanky, and sloop shouldered, with a habit of dyeing his hair different colors. Originally from Oklahoma, Dylan had served less than a year in the Navy during World War II before he was dishonorably discharged for stealing watches.

[Ed Larson]

Remember that?

[Marcus Parks]

A few years later, Dylan was arrested for pimping in San Francisco. Then, after marrying and fathering a child, he became, much like Elizabeth Short, just another drifter in post World War II America.

[Ed Larson]

He was free.

[Marcus Parks]

Using the aliases of Jack Diamond, Jack Maxim, and Jack San, Dylan wandered between California, Florida and Oklahoma with his family in tow, working alternately as a bellhop, a rum runner, a bootlegger, a pimp, a professional gambler, a taxi driver, and for a short period of time, a dance instructor.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, take a look at my hips. A one, nine, a two, and a three and a four. And I'm just buying time to the end of class. I view him. No refunds. No refunds. I view him as the. He's Rob Schneider from Home Alone. Two, he's got the bellhop. We're gonna be discovering the bellhop mafia. There's a lot of these things flying around here. But, Lar, it is funny because they all, like, kind of talk about as soon as the word bellhop comes up and all of these, they're like, do you know he was a bellhop?

[Henry Zabrowski]

And you're like, who's got all the information?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

It's also the idea of that, like, are every bellhop just, like, somebody who's, like, stealing out of bags and, like, looking through people's purses?

[Marcus Parks]

I. Out of all the professions that he had, the one that he returned to again and again was bellhop.

[Ed Larson]

He just liked it.

[Marcus Parks]

And pimp.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Lots of cash.

[Ed Larson]

I tell you what I like. It's the little hat.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, bellhop and pimp. That goes hand in hand. You get. You're dropping off a guy, you say.

[Ed Larson]

Like, hey, looking for some fun tonight?

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And then you think the bellhop's getting.

[Marcus Parks]

The bellhop's the one who's telling you, like, hey, I got some girls. You looking for some fun tonight?

[Ed Larson]

He knows the pimp. I would never say the bellhop's the pimp.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, in this case, they're all it was.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Wow.

[Ed Larson]

And that's what's nice about a one stop shop.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The head bell hop.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Leslie Dillon.

[Ed Larson]

You want to fuck Greg? I need a home. I lost my home in the fire. I had to become a bell hop at 65.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Coming my ass so hard, my hat pops off.

[Ed Larson]

If you would please, please use me as. Use me as a toilet. Whatever you need. All right, I'll take your bags up. I'll suck your dick. I'll play with your balls. That was the difference about 1946 parties.

[Henry Zabrowski]

They played with balls.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

There's part of the turndown service.

[Ed Larson]

But think about that. I think that's why they were like. Because Mark Hansen got all into the world of, like, 1940 sex parties. And I really feel like the main difference is just, like, it's where they learned about sucking balls.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, concerning 1940 sex parties, there is a whole other line of investigation here involving the real Los Angeles sex parties. I think Mark Hansen was just taking fun. He was just taking a girl here and taking a girl there. There's a whole other line of questioning that involves a man named Hodel who was actually having horrific orgies at his house all the time. But George Hodel doesn't really fit into this world.

[Ed Larson]

Well, we're going to. We are. Do you Know this is a breakout of the story. We're going to come back to Leslie Dylan right now but just know that we are going to touch upon some of the other subjects. But George Hoardell was so fully covered in the Root of Evil podcast, it's kind of hard to shoe hoard him in here. But we will figure it out.

[Marcus Parks]

Now Leslie Dylan soon caught on that someone was following him. So he turned himself over to the FBI suspiciously telling the authorities that the cops were after him for quote some offense in Los Angeles.

[Ed Larson]

Also remember his voice. One of the big things too was that his voice sounded just like. That's why I'm doing the voice. Like that. He's the caller. Yeah, that's what they said. He sounded the smooth modulated tones that had called as the black Dolly Avenger that it turned talk to Jimmy Richardson.

[Marcus Parks]

But since the Gangster Squad operated totally in secret to protect themselves and to honestly take a on the Constitution whenever they wanted Dental dam written by Ben Franklin the FBI had no idea who Dylan was or what he was talking about so they told him to get lost. Now later one of the Gangster Squad members said that they would have been indicted many times over for the. They did back then.

[Ed Larson]

Simpler times.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Which meant that the guy who had traveled to Miami beach to investigate Leslie Dillon had no problem breaking into his house without a warrant to search for clues. Amongst violently torn clothes and piles of books, magazines and newspapers, the officers found numerous true crime articles cut out and saved stories about prison guards being killed in riots. Lot of stories about girls getting shot in the face. The officer.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, there was the one story he was obsessed with apparently that he collected all the articles on of a girl that had gotten her tooth shot out of her mouth from a beat BB gun.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah but he's just into the occult.

[Marcus Parks]

You know he's in a crime. He's not into the occult. He's in true crime.

[Henry Zabrowski]

True crime. He's in the true crime. But like you know back then there weren't like many books on it. There were wanted to read it again.

[Marcus Parks]

The magazines were everywhere.

[Ed Larson]

True crime was is like this is a joke like Drew grime has been a massive genre forever.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Back then there were so many detect like they called it detective magazines.

[Ed Larson]

And with the rise of the American gangster like the, the entire you like when we covered Bonnie and Clyde you find out that like you know it had made a whole whole like sex filled industry of true crime where people they were viewed as stars and people loved what like paying attention.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah yeah. They'd Read anything about these people. The officers also found a treasure trove of short stories that Dylan had written involving situations that usually ended with a woman being raped and murdered. Finally, though, the cop came across the copy of True Detective magazine that featured the article that Dr. Joseph Deriver had planted on a picture of a telegram Red Manley had sent to a local Elizabeth Short. Dylan had signed the page with the name Jack sand using a ballpoint pen, which appeared to be similar to the pen used to write the printed postcard in which the so called Black Dahlia Avenger had said he's going to turn himself in. Now, this may not seem like a big sticking point here, but in 1947, ballpoint pens were relatively new, rare and expensive that cost about $175 in today's money.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Whoa.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, none of this is of course, concrete creep proof of murder, but it was enough for the undercover officer to call his superiors in LA to say.

[Ed Larson]

Quote, this is the man.

[Marcus Parks]

And thus began the effort to lure Dylan back to California. Deriver contacted Dylan and asked him to meet.

[Ed Larson]

Which is also so stupid. This whole thing is like. Like this is the thing. It's like on one half it's like this tete a tet between investigator and criminal, and the other half, it amounts to one of the dumbest series of interactions I've ever seen between two humans.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's like everything the cops do is illeg except they try to get this guy legally back. Why don't just hit him over the head and fucking throw him in a train car?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's kind of what Driver said they did, but this is the other side of that story. The river contacted Dylan and asked him to meet so he could give him more information about this Jeff character.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, Jeff. I would love to talk about Jeff. Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

Jeff that had supposedly killed Elizabeth Short. But while Dylan had been all too ready to help before, he was reluctant to return to California.

[Ed Larson]

I get sunburned.

[Marcus Parks]

So Deriver and Dylan agreed to meet in Las Vegas.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Very different than California.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Where the Gangster squad planned to set up wiretaps to record everything Dylan said. When they got there, though, Dylan was too nervous to talk and suggested they go to Palm Springs instead. Much nicer it is. But during that drive, Dylan began to talk more about himself. He told the river and the Gangster Squad member driving them that one of his many jobs had been as a more trained assistant, where he learned the proper way to bleed a corpse.

[Ed Larson]

You want to do it all the way, because if you leave some blood in it, get Stinky. The key is to make her entirely empty.

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's so crazy. Mum. Mum's the word from Florida to Vegas. But from Vegas to Palm Springs, it's an open book.

[Ed Larson]

I actually spent many years doing time tested trials to see how quickly it would take for me to saw a woman in half. Surgically, incredibly. That's fascinating.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Dylan also spoke in the same soft, modulated voice that had been used when the alleged Black Dahlia killer had called Jimmy Richardson at the Los Angeles examiner offices. Now, once they got to a lodge in Palm Springs, the gangster squad wired up a cabin and listened in as Dylan and Deriver talked about his mysterious friend Jeff, the one who had supposedly killed Elizabeth Short. Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Jeff is the worst bastard I've ever met. Do you mind running a bath for me, Dr. Deriver?

[Marcus Parks]

Absolutely.

[Ed Larson]

I would love to run the bubbliest bath you've ever had. Would you like me to first help you undress?

[Marcus Parks]

Dylan told them that the perpetrator's full name was Jeff Connors.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, Connors.

[Marcus Parks]

And soon after began to pontificate about Elizabeth Short's murder, starting with speculation on why her body had been been cut in half. Just sort of thinking out loud, Dylan.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. You're sitting in a hotel room together, hanging out, and just like moment of silence is like. Why do you think that Black Dahlia was cut in half?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Dylan said that the killer might have wanted to physically see how far his penis went into the body of a woman when it was inserted into her vagina. Fascinating cutting.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. Yes, me too.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

I swear. I wish I could know. I'm so curious.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right, so I'm gonna have sex with her. You peek in the town?

[Ed Larson]

Yes. It is called the Old Fashioned Prairie dog, where you see the little head of the dog peek its way out of the bush, which is the inside of a dead woman.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, cutting her in half, Dylan opined, would enable the murderer to stick his penis inside the severed bottom half of Elizabeth Short's body and see it poke out the other end.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yes, absolutely. Of course. Oh, wonderful.

[Marcus Parks]

More details you'd like to know.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, more and more, please. How pink it is.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh.

[Ed Larson]

Is your penis could poke her that long.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You know what's interesting is when you could do this. You could also shake her hand.

[Ed Larson]

Have you thought about a ruler, my friend, before we get too far? Because I do appreciate your curiosity, but you'll be even thought about maybe putting a banana for sizing reference. And that's how you would know how shallow or deep your penis can be.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Perhaps you want to try my ass.

[Ed Larson]

I'm only a doctor.

[Marcus Parks]

All I can do is tell you what I feel.

[Ed Larson]

Feeling some pressure. Oh, a bit of pressure.

[Henry Zabrowski]

There it is.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, as far as where the bisection took place, Dylan said she was probably cut in half in a bed, a bath, or on a floor. And the blood was probably drained by hanging the two halves in a shower. Jeff Connors, Dylan said, would have done all of this on the ground floor of a motel so he wouldn't have to lug the body down any stairs. As Deriver listened to Dylan, he began to get a hunch. So he asked Dylan to strip naked.

[Ed Larson]

Now listen, this might sound like a total non sequitur. We've been talking a period of time, but I'm just looking at you. I wonder, and I'm a doctor. Would you pretty please get naked for me? It's just us, It's Pop Springs. We've had a seven hour trip. You've taken a 19 hour two plane propel, two propeller plane flight to Las Vegas. We have now driven to Palm Springs for no reason. Can I see them dangles? Can I see you? Show me them nipples? I could say we got to get naked together. I'll do too.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, hesitatingly, Dylan did as he was asked. Or so Deriver says. I think it's more likely that a gangster squad member forced Dylan's pants down. Yes.

[Ed Larson]

See, there's some stories, but then there's the other idea of like, weirdly, which I do actually think is true of him going like, yeah, sure, like, he was like, we have to remember. So right now we're playing this. We are going to go through this whole.

[Marcus Parks]

Dylan's playing a game here.

[Ed Larson]

Dylan's a fucking weirdo.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Okay, so the idea of going into this weird lodge with this doctor man and then him just saying like, would you please remove your clothes? And then him just going like, yeah, right.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, he is a doctor.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, all right, why not?

[Marcus Parks]

But either way, Deriver's hunch was correct. He had suspected that Dylan had a micro penis. And sure enough, don't tell me why.

[Ed Larson]

I don't know how it was. I think it was his choice in music. On the way we were driving and.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure enough, when Dylan's dingle was exposed, Deriver, with disturbing accuracy, compared the size of Dylan's penis to one belonging to a boy of exactly eight years of age.

[Ed Larson]

I'm not a pedophile, but I have seen many boy corpses. Many, many, many, many boy corpses. And sometimes I do seek them out.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Penis was larger than a 7 year.

[Marcus Parks]

Old'S boy, than a 9.

[Ed Larson]

You know, I know that the differences are subtle, but present. Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap. That's how I tell. Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, little sugar packet. Flap back and forth, tiny penis. Key is, you know, how he's a doctor and this is a big. This is a lesson to all my people out there that want to interact with penises. Think about a micropenis, is that if it's slightly small, you know, whatever, a micro penis, you want to treat that thing with respect, because if you don't, the thing that's attached to that thing, it's gonna kill you.

[Marcus Parks]

The small penis, Deriver hypothesized was why there was a vertical cut in Elizabeth's pubic region just above her vagina.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The micro penis would not be long enough to reach the bisection. But if the killer did want to see how far his penis went in, he would have to mutilate the body further if his penis was pinned particularly small.

[Ed Larson]

For the next time you do this, what I recommend to you to use an orange.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, just guessing. Deriver thought that it was possible that Elizabeth Short may have mocked or threatened to expose Dylan's micropenis to his friends. And he had reacted in the most brutal way possible, which is why the.

[Ed Larson]

Only way I can reveal it is through the newspaper. See what happens then tell the whole world. Well, that's what he does then.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's why I think his pants were probably pulled down, because it didn't seem like Dylan was super pleased with his micro penis.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, it's weird, but I. But he's posturing. He is acting to the deriver that he is the person who killed Black Dahlia. He is playing.

[Marcus Parks]

He's saying, I'm. I didn't do it. Jeff did it.

[Ed Larson]

Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And so he's saying. But I think, weirdly, though, I think that we. Well, it depends on if you want to go with my theory or not. It depends. Because if in my theory, if he's innocent, if Leslie Dillon's innocent, this is your soul. Because he's a fucking freak elite fucking guy that you just, you know, that just happened to be just curious enough to be in a Palm Springs lodge with a criminologist that he just met over a letter, and he's just now here. I could see you. You just arrived here to be personally investigated as the Black Dahlia murder. I don't know if it's that far beyond the pale that you just show him your Micro penis and go. What do you think of that? What do you think of that, huh? Pretty small, huh?

[Henry Zabrowski]

It's very unforgiven.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Well, to bolster this theory, Deriver noticed that out of the many true crime articles Dylan kept at his home, many were stories in which the perpetrator had taken revenge on the victim for some slight meaning that the Black Dahlia Avenger moniker may have held some slightly element of truth. Additionally, Dylan knew far more about the exact details of the mutilation than what was made public. And here's. We're going to get into some of the really horrible.

[Ed Larson]

Well, this is also deciding whether or not they did have control questions. We don't know whether or not these control questions actually existed.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, Dylan knew that Elizabeth Short's pubic hair had been cut off and shoved in her rectum, while the skin on her left thigh, featuring her rose tattoo, had been carved out and shoved in her vagina. There was also the little matter of one of the final indignations bestowed upon Elizabeth's corpse. The carving of a single letter on her skin. The letter was D. And it was quite possible that the D was a sort of signature carved by who else but Leslie Dylan?

[Ed Larson]

No, not Jim. Unfortunately, that was supposed to be the smile.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, as we know from the last episode, some of the details had already been leaked to certain individuals connected to the lapd. So it's not impossible to think that Leslie Dylan could have heard about them from someone. It is, however, extremely unlikely.

[Ed Larson]

There's also one side of the story that says, according to Leslie Dylan. I never said that. And there's supposed to be a recording saying that he never said it. But then there's another thing saying. Oh, no, it just changed after the. He changed his. His. His answers after the fact.

[Marcus Parks]

Leslie Dylan changed many of his answers after the fact.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, after five days of conversation that only made Dylan look more guilty. Conversations where he said he liked girls with big mouths. You get it, you know?

[Ed Larson]

Jesus.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he was trying to get caught. Yeah, he also said that he also just reg. Just straight up said like, yeah, I drug and rape girls all the time.

[Ed Larson]

It's my thing. It's my hobby.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, he should have just killed him for fun.

[Marcus Parks]

Then he was finally driven to San Francisco to track down. Down the mysterious Jeff Connors.

[Ed Larson]

Jeff could be behind any corner.

[Marcus Parks]

But after driving around San Francisco for a full week to no avail.

[Ed Larson]

No Jeff, nothing.

[Marcus Parks]

No Jeff. No Jeff nowhere. Visiting dozens of hotels and haunts where this Jeff Connors might have been.

[Ed Larson]

Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

Jeff.

[Ed Larson]

Where are You Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

No, not you. Not you.

[Ed Larson]

Not you. I'm Jeff. Let me see your license. Not with a G. Idiot.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Dylan was taken back to Los Angeles. There he began to realize he had basically been kidnapped by Dr. Deriver and the Gangster Squad.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

He had no way to free himself.

[Ed Larson]

Well, this is the thing. He freaked his way into the situation, and then he couldn't seem to figure out how to freak his way out. So he's now in there, and now they're like, you've told them a bunch of really cryptic shit that you are playing some psychological game, trying to insert yourself into. Either you are the Black Dahlia murderer, or you're trying to insert yourself into the story for some reason. But now. Now you're just like. You're just allowing them to just own you. And it's like all of a sudden, you realize he's like, oh, shit, this is starting to get more and more serious.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Okay, good. Thanks. Glad I gave you all this information. I'll see you later. Back to Miami. Why is this door locked?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So Dylan threw a postcard out of his hotel window in LA that said he was being to Jeff. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Dearest Jeff, please come to my rescue. He, like, plays like a conch shell, like.

[Marcus Parks]

The postcard said that he was being held in Room 219 by Dr. J. Paul Deriver in connection with the Black Dahlia murder, and he was requesting legal counsel, Interestingly, especially for a man of such little means as Leslie Dillon. The postcard was addressed to a high powered attorney, a man who had represented Errol Flynn on statutory rape charges, a man who had represented Robert Mitchum for marijuana possession, and. And most importantly, had represented mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen on a number of criminal charges. The incredible coincidence here, though, was that the person who found the postcard was none other than one of Aggie Underwood's reporters for the Herald Express.

[Ed Larson]

You can't write this in a movie. If you saw this in a movie, you'd be like, that's the corniest. That doesn't happen. But it literally happens.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. They called their contact at the Gangster Squad and asked them what was going on here with this Leslie Dillon guy that forced the LAPD to either arrest Leslie or set him free. And they chose arrest. Now, when Dylan was taken downtown and his belongings were searched for the first time, cops found that Dylan had packed a number of harrowing yet ridiculous items for his trip out west to speak with the police.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Can't wait for this one side of it.

[Ed Larson]

It's like He's a total, absolute madman. Murderer. And then there's the other side of it. Being like, this man is chaos itself.

[Henry Zabrowski]

This is a desk clamp.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. I brought my ping pong paddle. I brought my enema bags. I brought my chess set. I brought my dog's toothbrush. For the dog.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, along with 700 phenobarbital pills.

[Ed Larson]

I just like to be awake. I just like to. Like to enjoy myself.

[Marcus Parks]

Phenobarbital is a downer.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Tootsies on phenobarbital.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, nice.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's what you use to roofy women.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, really?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, I thought it was the roof of yourself.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Why Tootsie sleeps so much.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Pheno Barbatol is bad. If you're found with a lot of pheno barbital pills, it's bad person.

[Ed Larson]

Really? Yeah.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Blowing away right now.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

That's why they called me the nap Man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But they also could have epilepsy.

[Marcus Parks]

He does not have epilepsy.

[Henry Zabrowski]

All right, good to know.

[Marcus Parks]

Dylan had also brought seven razor blades and a dog leash with a massive leather strap that had appeared as if it had been thoroughly scrubbed and scraped.

[Ed Larson]

It's for the dog.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I mean, I'm going with a dog theory now.

[Marcus Parks]

The scrap also also showed signs of strain, as if a heavy weight had been suspended from it. If you'll remember, the way Elizabeth Short's arms have been placed made it look as if she'd been hung from something for a very long period of time.

[Henry Zabrowski]

And he also said that's the best way to drain the blood out of the body is hanging out in the shower.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, but also he could be using it. I heard one theory, but it kind of makes sense, is for autoerotic asphyxiation, he might have.

[Marcus Parks]

That's a possibility.

[Henry Zabrowski]

You can use a belt for lots of stuff.

[Ed Larson]

It's my choking belt.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

All right. This is just so I can relax.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, when it was announced that a suspect had been arrested in conjunction with the Black Dahlia murder, almost two years after it had occurred, the press started looking into Leslie Dillon, and they found that his aunt lived on Crenshaw Boulevard. This location was less than 4 miles from Le Merritt Park. Not super close, but not super far away. But it was only two blocks away from the cafe where Elizabeth Short's purse and shoes have been found in the trash can. At another one of Dylan's Los Angeles addresses, his landlady said that he'd driven a black Ford sedan when he'd lived there, which was the same type of car seen by eyewitnesses on the night that Elizabeth Short's body was dumped in the vacant lot. But when police began interrogating Leslie Dillon directly, he denied ever knowing or even meeting Elizabeth Short. But what the LAPD and the press did discover was that Leslie Dillon had been involved in organized crime when he lived in Los Angeles.

[Ed Larson]

Some of it was disorganized.

[Marcus Parks]

How so?

[Ed Larson]

Bad scheduling, poor catering.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I forgot my pants once.

[Ed Larson]

I didn't know. It's so hard. You're just rushing because of the deadline.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Dylan was decidedly small time. He worked as a pimp and a bootlegger. But the kicker was that he had done so in the same territory covered by associates of Elizabeth Short. Namely, he worked in the same territory as Mark Hanson, whose address book was still a big question mark for a lot of people when it came to the murder. Now, Dylan had been arrested but not charged, and time was running out before they had to let him go. Deriver was convinced that Dylan was the killer, but not just because of what Dylan had told him. See, Dylan was still saying that his friend Jeff Connors was the killer.

[Ed Larson]

Jeff did it.

[Marcus Parks]

And Jeff was the one who had told him all the mutilation details.

[Ed Larson]

He loves dealing details.

[Marcus Parks]

But at one of the hotels where Dylan had worked in San Francisco, Deriver had showed the manager a picture of Leslie Dillon. The manager said, sure, that guy worked here. I know him. But the manager did not call him Leslie Dillon. Rather, the manager identified the man in the picture as Jeff Connors.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Oh, my God.

[Ed Larson]

Jeff did do it. It's been me.

[Marcus Parks]

Obviously, Leslie was using Jeff as his alter ego.

[Ed Larson]

And this is where Deriver was, like, he got so hard. Yeah, he was just like, yes. Multiple personalities. Oh, well, the mystery increases. Oh, I just came in my wool. I cannot believe how good I am.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah, Leslie's just wanted a man's name.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, once Jeff. The most masculine of names.

[Marcus Parks]

But since there was no hard evidence linking Dylan to the murder just yet, and since there was little evidence linking him directly to Elizabeth Short, the LAPD was forced to let him go free. But concerning the lapd, there's so much evidence, and it's all just that he. It's all he said. And, like, they did take the strap, and they sent it off to the lab, and they're like, nothing here. It's been scrubbed clean. You know, like, it's all circumstantial. It's all just, like, weird shit.

[Ed Larson]

There are no pictures of Leslie Dylan with Elizabeth Short. There's no evidence. There's no physical evidence. That connects them to the scene of the crime. Driver destroyed all ways of making a legitimate investigation by doing this this way. It's is why, unfortunately, even though I love that he's a maverick and I love his style, and I like the fact that he decided to beg for forgiveness instead of ask for permission. That's my style. I enjoy that. But he legitimately up everything.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And so this guy, he also was. I'm gonna be fair and say Driver was also going like, are you sure you didn't kill the black dolly? Up like he was like pressuring this other psychopath that was like. While it was just deriver in the gangster squad, it kind of felt like maybe a game. And then they torture. Tortured him a bunch.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But concerning the lapd, there was a confluence of events around this time that left a bad taste in a lot of mouths. See, as it turned out, Jeff Connors did actually exist. He was found in the town of Gilroy at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. As it turned out, Jeff Connors was a 40 year old busboy, pulp fiction writer and failed actor turned cosmetic salesman.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I'm Jeff. Yeah, I'm a 40 year old busboy, pulp fiction writer and a failed actor turned cosmetic salesman. What's going on? You guys got a problem? What's big deal here? Was everybody so angry and he actually.

[Marcus Parks]

Was a friend of Leslie Dylan?

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah, I know Leslie. Yeah, yeah, he wishes it was me, but half the time because I'm awesome, but I'm Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

But he was questioned at length while Dylan walked free. The LAPD police chief had also made a total reversal on Dylan where he's just days prior to Dylan's release, it had been publicly said that they had incontrovertible evidence that Dylan was in LA at the time of the murder. The chief now said that Dylan had actually been in San Francisco at the time.

[Ed Larson]

Is my buddy Leslie in trouble or something? Is something going on? Did he take like the wrong hors d'oeuvres or something from a restaurant? What's going on here? I'm Jeff. I'm just so. I wanted to be an actor, but now I'm a cosmetic salesman. So I don't really know what the.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Big deal woman in half did he did he.

[Marcus Parks]

He's always. He's been talking about that for years. I was hoping he didn't do it.

[Ed Larson]

I just thought it was kind of like a funny story or whatever. Mom. Jeff.

[Marcus Parks]

So the cops also stopped making the point that Dylan knew secret facts about the murder. The mutilation details. So the media was left once again with suspicions that something in the Black Dahlia case was being covered up by the cops. Dylan, however, began talking himself to the press, and he had a very different story to tell about the treatment he'd received at the hands of Dr. Joseph Paul Deriver and the LAPD. Much of which could be very well be true. Dylan claimed that Deriver lured him in with the promise of a job as a doctor secretary.

[Ed Larson]

That is true. True, though, he did. That was a part of the hook sure to get him to come to Vegas.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Was him being like, yes, of course. I'll hire the suspect for the Black Dahlia murder to be my receptionist.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No. Driver did all kinds of horrible, weird, illegal.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But then Dylan said the driver handcuffed him and kept him in custody for weeks. Dylan said he'd never claimed that his friend Jeff Connors was the murderer, nor that he'd ever even known who the killer actually was. But that also doesn't explain why the cops went and talked to Jeff Connors.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah. Especially if he's all the way in Gilroy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Dylan also said, and this part I believe, that the LAPD handcuffed him to a radiator with the heat turned all the way up during their interrogation. Driver, meanwhile, played good cop, saying that if Dylan confessed, they'd treat him well, like a sick boy instead of a common criminal.

[Ed Larson]

You want some ice cream? Didn't hide. You want a Popsicle?

[Henry Zabrowski]

Might be hard next to your heater.

[Ed Larson]

Listen, though, I'll get you a little bit of ice cream if you just admit to the murder. If you did the Black Dahlia murder. Okay. Want some dipping dots? You feeling okay there, buddy?

[Marcus Parks]

It was also uncovered that Dr. Deriver may or may not have been completely upfront about his background.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The Los Angeles Daily News discovered that Deriver's real name was Joseph Israel. So a city councilman called for a public hearing to investigate Deriver's credentials. Now, this is often pointed. Is something that discredits everything Deriver ever said or did, notwithstanding all the unconstitutional and legal shit that he did. But the hearing did not discuss the Black Dahlia case at all. And Deriver was allowed to keep his job at the end of the hearing. So that sucks.

[Ed Larson]

He's the one. They're like, you're bad at it, and you're a bad person, but I can't fire you.

[Henry Zabrowski]

God damn it. You're attractive.

[Ed Larson]

Thank you.

[Marcus Parks]

But even though the arrest of Leslie Dylan had been a fiasco that Resulted in a $100,000 false arrest lawSU that was later dropped. Some interesting information did come to light. As a result, through Leslie Dillon, the cops did find in question Jeff Connors. And while it was obvious that Leslie Dillon was using the name Jeff Connors as an alter ego, Connors was not a dead end. See, Connors himself was full of shit. He told police that he'd hung out with Elizabeth Short the night before she'd been murdered. Oh, yeah, he was kind of his. He was described.

[Henry Zabrowski]

He can't. They never tell the truth.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, man. What are you talking about?

[Marcus Parks]

Dude, you worked in the restaurant industry for a while. You know, busboy.

[Ed Larson]

No, no, no. You know, I've hung out with everybody. You know, Liz, she came over. We were hanging out. It was us, John Wayne. We were hanging out and we were just having a blast. We took the Hindenburg and took it to Lenny Dykstra's house, who's soon going to be a Mets player about 40 years from now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Can you cash a check for me?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Connors was known. He was a Walter Mitty type of character. You know, he would tell people that he'd acted in movies when he never did, and he was just known to make up stories himself. More interesting.

[Ed Larson]

And him and Leslie were very similar. They were like two buddies. Yeah, they're very similar in that way.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But Jeff Connors was like sort of the fun part of that.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Like.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, he was like. He was the fun guy that, you know, made up, like, fun stories. And Leslie Dylan was the guy, the very dark side of that, who says horrible things like, supposing you did cut a woman in half, that you could maybe stick your penis inside of her and see it stick out of the bottom.

[Ed Larson]

Is it bad to say that I feel like that these guys are my two wolves, like inside of me that I have a leg. Leslie Dillon and me and I have a Jeff Connors.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I really enjoy your lies.

[Ed Larson]

Your lies are fun. Your lies are gross.

[Marcus Parks]

But in checking out Connor's alibi, they came across his ex wife, who had some very interesting actual connections to the case. Jeff's ex wife knew nightclub owner Mark Hansen, and she had lived with Mark Hanson after her divorce from Jeff. Leslie Dillon had also showed up to Jeff's ex wife's house after he was arrested and set free, shouting through a closed door that she better not say shit to the police about anything she knew or else. So another connection between Leslie Dillon and Mark Hanson, however faint, was made. And the gangster squad was slowly connecting the dots. As far as what may have really happened to Elizabeth Short. The entire scenario, however, began to come into sharp focus when the gangster squad discovered reports of a motel room in Los Angeles that had been found covered in blood and feces just after Elizabeth Short's murder. And it's with that disgusting little room that we'll return next week for Black Dahlia Part three.

[Ed Larson]

Part three. We're gonna. I still wonder, can the killer of Elizabeth Short be both the same man that impetuously tortured her, beat her to death in disorganized fashion? Right. Ragged face cuts, all of the weird sexual play. All this, like, the kind of the marks of a disorganized killer. And can they also be the same person that will surgically put them in half, like, literally cut them in half and dispose of them? And I still don't know if it can be just one man.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, it seems hard.

[Ed Larson]

It does.

[Henry Zabrowski]

But you need helping hands. I just put together a bench, you know. Yeah, I need another piece, another pair of hands.

[Ed Larson]

I bleed when I put together an Ikea, like, chair, so. But there's. There's a lot left to cover here. Yeah, we got this. Like, this is right now.

[Henry Zabrowski]

To me, me, seems like it's clearly.

[Ed Larson]

Leslie, but there is. It's cloudy.

[Marcus Parks]

It's murky.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Well, there's three parts for a reason.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, it is very murky.

[Ed Larson]

And we're gonna come through some couple and got a couple other suspects under my belt that I want to talk about eventually, too, because there's a lot of guys out there because we didn't even get to the butchers.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

We haven't talked about the werewolf murders. We haven't talked about, like. It's kind of crazy, dude. It's getting. It just. This is one of those things that just keeps going.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. It's a massive story, and there are a million different theories.

[Henry Zabrowski]

I also feel like, you know, as someone who likes, like, older movies, I feel like there's, like, things taken from this story that's in, like, several different movies.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah, dude.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Just, like, little pieces here and there and stuff. It's very interesting.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, very much so. And also I really want to thank our team on this one, who's done a fantastic job. I want to thank Shaw. I want to thank Joel. I want to thank Carolina for her help and editing the script on these last couple episodes. It's really been, like, a bit. A nice team LPN effort. He here for the Black Dahlia series.

[Ed Larson]

And I'm loving this. I, you know, I love this story about this Dead Woman, patreon.com podcast on the left to watch a scream. We can flop around, go to Twitch tv, lpntv. Because we are. I guess it's already passed it. We did the LPN Funhouse last night.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And I'm upset with my choices. I don't even know what I'm doing yet. Because we're about to go into doing.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Because it's in the future, but it's in the past.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, indeed. And also, don't forget to go to last podcast on the left.com to check out where we're going to be playing a show near you. We're going to be coming to all kinds of fucking places this year. This coming year.

[Henry Zabrowski]

The show's hot right now, by the way. Guys, we just. That New York show was fucking nuts.

[Marcus Parks]

It was incredible. No, no, we're. We're rolling on. We're firing on all cylinders with this 1. Got Atlanta, Georgia on January 11, Dallas, Texas, February 22, Nashville, Tennessee, March 14, Detroit, Michigan April 18. Cannot wait to go to the record stores in Detroit and Toronto, Ontario on May 3rd. Also can't wait to check out the record stores there. Just fantastic record store towns, both of them.

[Ed Larson]

Can't wait to see all of you. And hail, sweet Satan, Hail.

[Henry Zabrowski]

Who was cool today? Count Basie.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's good.

[Narrator]

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[Marcus Parks]

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[Ed Larson]

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