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- [00:00]
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- [00:51]
William J. Mann
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- [01:18]
Kevin Greenlee
I'm Kevin and we're going to talk today with the author of a book which takes a victim centric approach to the murder of Elizabeth Short, who's also known as the Black Dahlia.
- [01:29]
Anya Cain
Content Warning this episode contains discussion of murder, sexual abuse, rape and torture, some.
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Kevin Greenlee
Cases you hear about once and never forget. The murder of Elizabeth Short falls into that category for us.
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Anya Cain
Elizabeth, who became known as the Black Dahlia after she died, was found dead in a vacant lot in Los Angeles on the morning of January 15, 1947. Her body had been severed and so was in two pieces. Despite decades of theories and speculations, to this date, no one knows for sure who killed her or why.
- [02:08]
Kevin Greenlee
Now William J. Mann has written a new book on the case, Black Murder, Monsters and Madness in Mid Century Hollywood. His work busts many of the myths that have grown up around the case and puts the focus of the story squarely back on Elizabeth and her life.
- [02:28]
Anya Cain
William has written extensively about crime in Hollywood. His earlier work, Tinseltown focused on the murder of film Director William Desmond Taylor. He also wrote Bogey and Bacall, which focused on the relationship between the two stars, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
- [02:45]
Kevin Greenlee
Considering his pedigree, we were quite interested to hear what he had to say about the murder of Elizabeth Short.
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Anya Cain
My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.
- [02:54]
Anya Cain (co-host)
And I'm Kevin Greenlee.
- [02:56]
Kevin Greenlee
I'm an attorney.
- [02:57]
Anya Cain
And this is the Murder Sheet.
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Anya Cain (co-host)
We're a true crime podcast focused on.
- [03:01]
Kevin Greenlee
Original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases.
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Anya Cain
We're the Murder Sheet.
- [03:08]
Kevin Greenlee
And this is the Black the Life and Murder of Elizabeth Short.
- [03:23]
William J. Mann
It's.
- [03:52]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, sir?
- [03:54]
William J. Mann
I have been writing about Hollywood since the late 1990s. I've always been a lifelong film fan, especially with classic Hollywood. So I've written a number of histories of directors and actors. And then I stumbled upon a story back in 2012 or so of an unsolved murder in Hollywood and dove into that and wrote my book, Tinseltown Murder, Morphine and Madness at the dawn of Hollywood, about the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, and just really loved that process and realized that the genre of true crime was something that would allow me to expand my writing skills, but also my research skills to tell a bigger story than just one single person. And you're telling a story of a community in many ways. So that is what has brought me here to write about the Black Dahlia.
- [04:55]
Anya Cain (co-host)
The William Desmond Taylor case is really fascinating. Your book is a terrific look at it. I know we're here to talk about the Black Dahlia, but just in case some of the people in the audience aren't familiar with that case, which is again, the subject of your book, Tinseltown, can you just give a kind of a capsule overview of it?
- [05:15]
William J. Mann
Sure. In 1922, William Desmond Taylor, who was a very popular director, Hollywood, he was also the head of the Motion Picture Directors association, which meant he was the go to person for the press whenever they had a story about Hollywood. Taylor was the face to defend the industry against criticism, to explain why the industry was doing things. And he's found dead on the floor of his apartment with a bullet that went through his side and got lodged in his neck. And it becomes almost like a 1920s version of the game Clue. So we have all these suspects who may have done this, may have committed this crime, and yet they were never able to determine which, if any, of them was the culprit. So I've been. I was interested in telling this story not just about who may have killed William Desmond Taylor, though I try to get into that. But also what it meant for Hollywood and what it meant for the bigger picture of the American film industry. Because from there we see the creation of the Hollywood studio system with all of the structures that would come to define the industry for the next 50, 60 years.
- [06:32]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Yeah, that's one thing I really appreciate about your writing, is how you tell a story, but you use it to illustrate wider social things. And I've read a number of your books and have enjoyed them. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Bogey and Bacall.
- [06:50]
William J. Mann
Ah, yes.
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Anya Cain (co-host)
And I'm Anya, and I have an age gap in our relationship. So I'm curious, how did the age gap affect Bogart and Bacall?
- [07:00]
William J. Mann
Well, it was significant, absolutely. I think it was 20 some years. But I think in many ways what affected the relationship even more was the experience gap rather than the age gap. Bacall, when she went to Hollywood to make, to have and have not was literally had not done anything before. They said she was a model. She had done a few, you know, modeling, you know, shoots. In a while. She'd done some acting, you know, some local community acting, but she really had no professional resume. And here's Humphrey Bogart, the biggest star in Hollywood. I mean, this is right after Casablanca, and he's this enormous star with his enormous following. He's very popular within the industry. And here she is, this young woman from Brooklyn, and she's suddenly thrust into being Mrs. Humphrey Bog and expect to be his, you know, social hostess and all of that. I do think that the. The age gap was important in the sense that although Bogart was very much in love with her and, you know, romantically, sexually and all of that, he also had a paternal feeling for her as well. He had never had children. And here she was, this young woman who could have been his daughter. And I think when problems arose, you know, as. As Bacall discovers, you know, I've married this, you know, alcoholic who's got these really bad. I think seeing the disappointment on her face bothered him so much. He did not want to disillusion her because of that feeling. He was very protective of her and that helped change him towards the end. The end of his, you know, towards the end of his life. And certainly she, you know, she rose to the occasion. She became the Hollywood hostess she needed to be. She became an actress in her own right and a, you know, respected actor. And, you know, and when Bogey got sick, she was Right there to take care of him. So I think it certainly was part of the. Part of the relationship, but I think they were able to find ways to deal with it.
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Anya Cain
So. So I'm the recovering alcoholic in the. In the. That means I'm Humphrey Bogart.
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William J. Mann
Okay. Okay. There you go. There you go.
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Anya Cain
By Lauren Bagall.
- [09:08]
William J. Mann
Yeah, there you go.
- [09:09]
Kevin Greenlee
So you can be.
- [09:10]
William J. Mann
You can put together any way you want. Flip.
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Anya Cain (co-host)
It makes it bad. Right. One thing that occurs to me is when a lot of celebrities have images they want to try to protect, they don't want certain truths to come out. And certainly in true crime, there's a lot of secrets that people want to protect. You don't want to come out. What are the challenges to you as a writer when you come to research some of these things?
- [09:34]
William J. Mann
Well, as a. As a writer, as a journalist, I know that my story, my job. I'm sorry, my. My responsibility is to tell the truth and to make sure that the truth that I'm telling is as close to accurate as I can make it. You know, is. Is. Is. Is supported by the. The sources. And sometimes the truths that you find are difficult, embarrassing, something that the subject might not want to have been revealed. And so I always say that my job is not to sugarcoat the people I write about, but it is to tell their stories in context with their whole lives. So something they've done that maybe was not very favorable, they would not look back on favorably, put that in the context of their entire life, and sometimes it makes a little more sense, then. So, yeah, context and compassion. That's the other thing. I think, as writers, I think we. We need to write about our subjects with compassion. Even. Even the subjects who are pretty unlikable and, you know, maybe deserve some of the infamy that they have, but if still to tell their stories with context and compassion.
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Anya Cain
You know, one thing, as I'm sure you know, and as I'm sure most of our listeners can imagine, you know, in Hollywood, there's a big difference between the images and the myths and the stories. And sometimes the reality is that something. Is that dichotomy, something that can also be said about the Black Dahlia case?
- [10:58]
William J. Mann
Oh, absolutely. You know, the real woman at the heart of this, Elizabeth Short, was nothing like the image of the Black Dahlia that was created by the media and that still exists today. I mean, I was just looking at some of the films that have been made that have been slightly inspired by Elizabeth Short's murder. And there's a creature that exists in people's mind of what the Black Dahlia was. And it's a creature that, you know, bears nothing in common with Elizabeth Short. And in fact, the only thing they share is a name. And I should also point out here is that Elizabeth Short was never called the Black Dahlia in her life. When her friends heard about it, you know, they said what. Whoever called her that? No one ever called her that. What was going on here? So we're talking about, you know, an extreme case here of a public image that was nothing like the private image. And as you say, many of the figures that I've written about, Hollywood figures, the same thing. You know, Katharine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, their public images were very different from their private images. But in this case, while there might have been some connection, in Brando or Hepburn's case, there is literally no connection between the Black Dahlia and Elizabeth Short.
- [12:15]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Yeah, one thing that I was really impressed with with your book, one of the many things I was impressed with in the book was you really center Elizabeth Short in her story in a way that is unfortunately rare in this case. At one point in the book, you write, I'm quoting, Elizabeth Short's death was notorious. Her life was unremarkable. But her life is still more important than her death. So let's start there. Who was she, and what do we know about her life?
- [12:46]
William J. Mann
Elizabeth Short was the middle child of five daughters of Phoebe and Cleo Shore, born outside of Boston, Massachusetts. And of the five young women, she was always the one who had more difficulty in adapting to structures and to expectations. She was a daydreamer. She was not good in school. Her best grades were always in, like, courtesy and cooperation rather than, you know, any of the subjects. She was. She was always daydreaming about a world beyond her little town of Medford, Massachusetts, whereas her other sisters seemed to be more about, you know, we're going to get our degrees, we're going to graduate high school, and we're going to get married, and we're going to have babies. Elizabeth was just never in that direction. And when her health became difficult for her, she suffered from pleurisy and various forms of respiratory illnesses. She dropped out of school with her mother's permission in her sophomore year in high school and began spending winters with family friends in Florida. By doing that, I think it awakened a wanderlust in her. She wanted to see the world and she wanted to experience new places. She didn't have any, you know, big ambition. People say, oh, she wanted to be a movie star. She didn't want that. She just wanted the freedom to go out and explore and see things and allow her curiosity to take her places. And that's the young woman who shows up in Los Angeles in the fall of 1946. She's there to explore the world, to meet people, to see what she can see. See. And that's the, that's the young woman I wanted to capture and put at the forefront of the book.
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- [15:02]
Anya Cain
Absolutely. And, and you do a very, very good job in that. And we, we always appreciate that sort of victim centric narrative because you're so right. Her. Her life is more important than her death. She was a human being.
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William J. Mann
Right.
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Anya Cain
I was wondering, you know, speaking. I mean, it's kind of a character in, in this story in its own right. But, you know, post war Los Angeles, you know, we've just, you know, the United States has just won World War II. What, what's going on in LA at that point? Contextualize that setting for us.
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William J. Mann
Yeah, the world was opening up after the war, 1946, 47, 48, with all sorts of possibilities. You know, this was a time of, you know, new technologies and planning for the future. You know, televisions coming out, highways are being built. And there's a, there's a feeling of, oh, we're moving into the future here. But at the same time, there's a lot of pushback because as the world is changing, some people don't like those changes. They don't like what they see around them. For women especially, you know, we have to remember that women stepped up and basically saved the nation by going and taking over the workforce during the war because all the men were overseas fighting. And then the war's over and the men come back home and the women, basically corporate America says to the women, thank you very much for your service. Now go back to the kitchen. And a lot of women were like, no, I don't really think that's what I want to do. And so these young women who were like Elizabeth Short, who were kind of following their own paths, many of them came to Hollywood because why not? That's where you go to make your dreams come true. So there's all of these young women coming into Hollywood, some who want to be actors, some who want to just have the freedom to do other sorts of work. It's just a place of possibility because it's always been the wild West. Hollywood and Los Angeles always been a place of possibilities. So that's what the going on in Los Angeles. There's this excitement about the future, but also this fear about the future and this, a growing paranoia that what's going on here? Why are all these women not married and having children? You know, what's going on with social society? Church attendance was plummeting. African Americans were moving out of their communities where they had been allowed to live and actually moving into other communities where previously had been prevented from living. And that, of course, pushes, gives a, a major pushback. So it's a time of both optimism and paranoia.
- [17:31]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Unfortunately, by the time Elizabeth Short arrives in Los Angeles, she doesn't have that long to live. What do we know about the final months of her life?
- [17:42]
William J. Mann
You know, I've often wondered, or I, I, I wondered as I was writing the book, why, when things got tough for Elizabeth in Los Angeles, that she didn't just go back home at, you know, at least for the time being, because home was a place of safety and comfort. She loved her mother. Her mother was very supportive. And originally I thought, well, maybe home was terrible, she couldn't go back to that. But it wasn't. Home was a place of safety. But I think by going back home, even when her time in Los Angeles was becoming more difficult, she was having a harder place to find to live, to sleep. She didn't have a job. She'd kind of run out of friends and boyfriend friends. And she was at her lowest ebb. I think Elizabeth thought, if I get back on that bus and go back to Medford, I'm stuck, and I'm just not ready to do that yet. I'm not ready to give up. So she stayed in Los Angeles. You know, she had few really good friends. She had one very good friend, Ann Toth. But other than that, she had a series of acquaintances that came and went from her life. And by, you know, after the first couple of months of that being kind of exciting and fun, by Thanksgiving, she was starting to realize her options were limited. And she was, you know, she was getting more anxious, but at the same time not so anxious that she was ready to turn tail and go back home.
- [19:10]
Anya Cain
So, going on to the murder, can you tell us about the discovery of her body and what shape that her body was in?
- [19:21]
William J. Mann
Yeah, the, the, you know, the first detectives who were called to the scene, they, the, the, the report was that there was somebody down, which meant. Probably meant that they were drunk and asleep in this vacant lot. And when they approached, the first thought in their mind was that this must be a mannequin because the, the body was so white, so, you know, unnaturally white, that they couldn't imagine this was actually human being. And as they approached, they realized there were actually two objects, not just one. So there were two objects so white, they were almost translucent. And that was because Elizabeth had been severed at the waist. Her blood had been drained. So there was virtually no blood at all at the scene because there was no blood left in her body. By the time the body was deposited there, she'd also been mutilated. There was a tattoo on her left thigh that had been actually sliced off. And then the killer or the person who did the bisection, they might not be the same person, then took the skin with the tattoo on it and inserted it into her anus. She also had a Glasgow smile carved into her face. The sides of her cheek were cut up towards her ears. So this was a corpse that did not even look remotely human when they, when it was found.
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Anya Cain
And in circumstances of finding it, approximately where did that occur in terms of, like, within Los Angeles?
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William J. Mann
Yeah, they found the body in, In a vacant lot. But the vacant lot was in the middle of a development that was being. New. Housing was being built for. A lot of housing after the war was being built for returning soldiers and, and, and young families were moving into the, into the area. So this was in the area of Limer park in Los Angeles. And so literally the one block that had not been developed was this was the choice for the killer to leave Elizabeth's body. So, yes, it's a vacant lot, but in no way was it out of the way. It wasn't hidden away in some isolated part of the city. It's right there in the middle of this development. Suburban young families with children. So it was left in that particular spot, clearly, because the killer wanted it to be found, it wanted it to be seen. He or she was making a statement with the display of the body. And indeed, it was first seen by a mother pushing her child in a stroller. And when she saw something that she couldn't really identify, she called the police. And had it been discovered a little later, children would have seen it on their way home from school. So the body was placed there very deliberately by the killer.
- [22:08]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Did the police do a good job of protecting the integrity of the crime scene?
- [22:13]
William J. Mann
They did, and that's a point I make pretty strongly in the book, because in the subsequent years, there's been so much myth and mistakes written about this case. And one of them was that the police mishandled the case right from the start and that the crime scene was compromised. And it's not true. The LAPD has not released by far the majority of the records from this case, but they did release the original reports that the police made, and they're very thorough. It's very clear that the only people who had access to the crime scene were the detectives themselves and then photographs taken by the press, which were then published, you know, in various newspapers and revealed that it's true. You see, the reporters are all held back behind the curb from where the. From where the body was. The only people surrounding the corpse are detectives. And in fact, the only ones who are close to the corpse are the chief detectives, the lead detectives, Harry Hansen and Finus Brown. And I think Captain Jack Donahue was there, as well as the police scientists. So no one was getting close to this body. And I think that that myth starts with a reporter by the name of Will Fowler, who wrote a really spurious memoir, I think, in the 1980s, called reporters, in which he. He describes himself as discovering the body before anybody else did. And then when the police got there, he's posing with the body and cracking jokes, and it's just nonsense that he's just making up. And people have believed that. That somehow the LAPD allowed this crime scene to be destroyed when that is not the case. The LAPD made some mistakes, but they were perfect at the discovery of the body.
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Anya Cain
You mentioned this kind of ridiculous reporter. And what were the relations between the media and the Angeles Police Department at this time period?
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William J. Mann
Yeah, it was way different than it is now. I mean, you picture these, you know, these press conferences that the police have after a crime, and they're very stoic and, you know, just keeping to the facts. And, you know, they sometimes don't take questions at all. And the reporters are all standing there shouting questions, not even really expecting them to be answered. But it's this. It's theater. Whereas in. In 1946, 1947, you know, the police and the press were In a symbiotic relationship, each was kind of depending on the other for advancement. So the police wanted the coverage and they wanted reporters to have access to their investigations because the reporters would write about them in the newspapers, which would keep the case alive and keep tips coming in, but also it could advance the reputations of the detectives that are doing this. They wanted the public affirmation for this. And the reporters, of course, wanted tips. And, you know, so they would continue to have access to crime stories and get, you know, get behind the scenes information. And also by getting this, they were keeping their publishers happy because they were selling newspapers. And, you know, today we forget just how important newspapers were. This was. This was the only means by which people got their news. And there was, I think there were five competitive daily news newspapers in Los Angeles at that time, all of them fiercely competitive, trying to bump each other down, trying to get the scoop, to out scoop somebody else. So it was this game. And from the moment that body was discovered in the vacant lot, the newspapers were all over it, and it was this, this free for all.
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Anya Cain (co-host)
And certainly that level of competition, it drove some members of the press to do some things that were like, borderline monstrous. Can you talk about how they dealt with Elizabeth Short's family?
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William J. Mann
Yeah, that was the moment, I think, when I was doing this research, when I realized what had happened, just to realize how dehumanizing this process was. Jimmy Richardson, who is the editor of the Los Angeles examiner, he would write about stories including the one I'm about to tell you with a certain amount of pride, look at how far I went to get this scoop. So he actually has one of his lackeys call Elizabeth Short's mother back in Medford, Massachusetts, after it's been termined, been determined that, you know, the identity of the victim was named Elizabeth Short. They find Elizabeth's mother before the police even do, and they call her and they want to make sure. They want to make sure this is the right person. So they, when they get Phoebe Short on the phone, they say, you know, we want to ask you some questions about your daughter. And she said, well, why are you calling? Why do you want to know? And he says, well, because she's won a beauty contest. And Phoebe Short, who is, you know, a very simple woman, hardworking, raised her kids all by herself because her husband abandoned her. You know, she's delighted, you know, she's delighted to hear that Betty, as she knew her, was making good. And so she starts describing her and they say, does she have a scar on her back, by any chance? Oh, yeah. She had an operation for pleurisy. And so they're like, you know, okay, we got it. It's the right girl. And then finally, finally Phoebe, who was, you know, she might be simple, but she was also very smart. She finally says, why are you asking me all these questions? And they said, well, Mrs. Shore, actually, your daughter's been murdered. And then they hang up the phone, they go, yeah, we got it. We've identified her. We've talked to the mother. Nobody else has talked to the mother. Run, you know, hit the presses, get going. And here's this poor woman in Massachusetts just devastated to learn that her daughter had been murdered. And the press did these kinds of things routinely at the time. And, you know, not all of the press. I mean, it's a period of time where some reporters are recognizing that, you know, we need to start changing our methods. But this. This was common. And Jimmy Richardson was so proud of that for the rest of his life.
- [28:13]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Yeah, it's really terrible. It's really appalling. You mentioned Finest Brown and Harry Hansen, who were the chief detectives on the case. Can you tell us about them and their investigation, who they looked at?
- [28:27]
William J. Mann
Yeah, so Finest Brown and Harry Hansen were the lead detectives. And Harry Hansen had more seniority, more experience. This was actually Finest Brown's first big murder investigation. And these were two guys who in some ways typified what would become the later image of the lapd. You know, just the facts, ma'. Am. You know, they were not the type who were out there carousing or slapping, you know, people on the back, saying, how you doing? I mean, it was very much we want the. We want the facts. And we, you know, very unemotional. And so they were going about their business. You know, they. This was a. This was a. The biggest case Harry had ever been on. The first case that Finus had been on. You know, they began doing what they. How they always investigate cases. But what happens is, is that the media is so intense around this that there's a new confessor every day. And, you know. You know, even with true crime stories, there's always these crazy confessors who come in and they started, you know, reporting themselves to. To the newspaper. The newspaper would find somebody who would say, oh, this person's confessing, or, you know, or here's. Here's the biggest suspect of the day. And Harry and Finance were then obliged to stop their investigation and go interview all these crazies, because otherwise it would look like the LAPD wasn't doing their job. So from the very start, both, both Hansen and Brown were frustrated with the amount of work they had. It was just them. It was only later that the chief allowed more detectives to help them. And the amount of material that was coming in and that continued to come in, some of it was completely crazy. There were going to be times where they missed something, and I don't fault them for that because, well, I suppose it was ultimately their responsibility to make sure that nothing slipped through the cracks. But. But you can understand how intense that was. And questions that were asked once would probably need to be gone back to later and asked again.
- [30:27]
Anya Cain
You touched upon on how the barbaric manner in which Elizabeth's mother was treated. How did her father, Cleo, react to the news of her murder?
- [30:39]
William J. Mann
Well, no one quite knew where her father was, and the mother said, the last I knew, he'd taken off. I don't know where he is. And as it turns out, the police get a tip that he's actually living in Los Angeles. And it turns out then when they go to try and talk to him, he's resistant, doesn't want to talk about it. He says, I want nothing to do with this. The family doesn't want anything to do with me, so I don't want anything to do with them. So he is very hostile, hostile witness. Which of course then lands him on the suspect list. Okay, you're living in Los Angeles. You have nothing good to say about your ex wife or your daughter. And you know what's going on here. And you know those times we were talking about that Elizabeth, you know, wasn't sure where she was going to spend the night. She really didn't call her father. You know, that's what the cops had to think about. You know, your father's living right here in town and you never called him. So he, Cleo, lands on the suspect list. He's a very unhappy guy. He's never cooperative in the investigation.
- [31:36]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Now, of course, even though this was a notorious murder, there's other people getting killed in Los Angeles at this time. Can you tell us about Mary Hodges Tate and maybe why you think her murder did not get the same level of attention as Elizabeth Short's?
- [31:53]
William J. Mann
Yeah. So it's the next day after Elizabeth's body is found and a woman by the name of Mary Hodges Tate is seen entering a hotel with a man. In the morning, she's found dead in the hotel room. The story barely makes any news. You know, it doesn't make any of the major newspapers. The only Newspapers that cover it even slightly are the African American newspapers because Mary Hodges Tate was black. You know, one of the things that Harry Hanson once said about why Elizabeth's short story became so notorious was because he said there were two reasons. One was the manner of her death. It was so grisly. This was something that. That you couldn't not pay attention to. But it was also because of the moniker that the press gave her, the Black Dahlia. So he said those two elements ensured that Elizabeth Short story was going to become famous, infamous. But in fact, I think there was another reason that Elizabeth Short's murder became widespread in coverage and Mary Tate's was not. And that's because she was white. She was a beautiful young white woman. And in fact, one of the reporters later on admits that, you know, he says if she had been black or Latina or Filipina, he said she would. This would not have made the news. I think about that, and I think. Well, I think if a woman of color had been murdered in such a way, I think it probably would have made the news, but we would not have seen the ongoing fascination with the case. And in fact, Mary Hodges Tate's, who I believe was the killer, was a white man who was arrested at one point and then let go. And I think it was simply because on very flimsy evidence, he was let go. And I think, you know, I think Los Angeles, the country, wasn't ready to prosecute a white man for the murder of a black woman. So, yeah, I tell Mary Hodges Tate's story alongside Elizabeth, just because I think we can't see Elizabeth's story outside of the context of the rest of the world.
- [33:56]
Anya Cain (co-host)
One thing that makes true crime interesting is that these cases involve a pretty interesting cast of characters. And one person you write about, I may be mispronouncing his name. Paul Deriver. Paul Deriver. Can you tell us about him?
- [34:14]
William J. Mann
Yeah. So J. Paul Deriver was the police psychiatrist for the lapd. And I use the word psychiatrist with quotation marks because he had no experience in psychiatry. When he sold himself into the position. He had been an eye, ears, nose and throat doctor. And suddenly he makes a comment about a murder case that the LAPD is investigating. And they say, hey, you seem to know a lot about this. So they put him on the payroll. He's the guy who comes around wearing his monocle, and, you know, he's smoking his pipe and he's making these big, big comments, you know, you know, trying to quoting Freud about things. And it drove some of the detectives nuts, because they said, you know, who's this guy? What is he saying? And. But then, you know, when. When there's a lull in. In the investigation trying to find Elizabeth Short's killer, Deriver actually puts an ad in a true. True mystery magazine, a true detective magazine. You know, kind of he says, I'm le. You know, I'm baiting the killer. And so he gets this letter from this guy who has no connection to the case whatsoever. And I go into. In the book. I'm not going to bore everybody with the details. He then spends the next year and a half trying to convince the LAPD and the district attorney's office that this guy is the killer. And in fact, he wasn't. And it becomes this huge sideshow and distraction. And in many ways, I think that's what pushed the investigation of Elizabeth Short's death firmly off the rails. Yeah.
- [35:47]
Anya Cain (co-host)
And I first became aware of this guy because at one point, he published a book which contained lots of gruesome crime scene pictures. What ultimately became of him?
- [35:59]
William J. Mann
Yeah, that book was his downfall because he though he made some money off it, but he used those photos without permission from the LAPD police files. He gets fired after he's arrested for prescribing drugs to his family and other people that really weren't for them, and he commits perjury, and it's just. It's bad. And he gets fired, and then he spends the rest of his life concocting conspiracy theories about everybody was against him and that only he knew who killed the Black Dahlia. And there are people still that a book came out not too long ago that basically just reiterated all of Deriver's ridiculous claims and said, oh, here's the real story. Story. He was a fantasist.
- [36:43]
Anya Cain
I'm gonna say if he. If he lived later, if he was alive today, he would have an extremely successful YouTube channel.
- [36:51]
William J. Mann
Oh, exactly, exactly. He. Yeah, he was before. And before his time, because. Yeah, yeah, he. He's somebody who still has true believers.
- [36:59]
Anya Cain
Oh, yeah. The driver heads would be out in force.
- [37:02]
William J. Mann
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
- [37:04]
Anya Cain
So, you know, as the police and detectives are going through and piecing together, you know, who Elizabeth Short was and what was going on in her life when she was murdered, what were they able to find? And what have you been able to find about sort of the last week of her life leading up to what happened to her?
- [37:24]
William J. Mann
Yeah, it's that. That infamous lost week that people say because she was dropped off at the Biltmore Hotel on the. I think it's January 7th. She's not. Her body isn't found until the morning of the 15th. So it's a week's time in which detectives were never able to credibly source her movements. There would be a number of sightings between those two dates, most of which are easily discredited, a couple of which might be possible. But, you know, there's problems even with assessing those without access to the original police files. And that's part of the problem here is that there's still a tremendous amount of evidence locked up in a drawer at the lapd. So all we're going on in these cases is, are the district attorney's later summation and also newspaper reports. And the newspaper reports are always, you know, rewritten by copy men sexed up. You can't trust what the quotes are in these pieces. But there may have been a couple of people who saw her early on that week. There's no evidence to support that, but it's possible. But I think, think the one thing that we conclude is that Elizabeth was held against her will for much of that last week. And I say that because her best friend, her only friend in la, Anne Toth, was out of town. And so Elizabeth knew in the beginning of that week, I can't call Ann, but she knew she was going to be back on a certain day. And Ann said repeatedly she would have called me if she could have. So I believe that part of that lost week, Elizabeth was held. People say she was held prisoner. Maybe it wasn't as dramatic as that, but she was held against her will and was not allowed to communicate with other people.
- [39:14]
Anya Cain
Is it true that the killer contacted a reporter by phone?
- [39:19]
William J. Mann
Yeah. Well, that goes back to our friend Jimmy Richardson, who made the call to Phoebe, short of telling her daughter won a beauty contest. So that claim Richardson made not at the time, but five or six or maybe even seven years later in his memoir now, you know, it just doesn't make sense because, you know, had, you know, to believe that he only. He was only telling people then and had never told anyone before. You know, you're going through the district attorney's files, there would have been a mention in there.
- [39:52]
Kevin Greenlee
There.
- [39:53]
William J. Mann
There would have been a dimension that he had told people. So maybe he never told anyone. Well, why not? That doesn't make sense either, because he was a guy who was always after, you know, selling newspapers. If he had put that claim in one of his news, you know, the front page of one of his issues would have sold. Sold off the newsstands. So I tend to believe that never happened. You know, even his description in his memoir of it reads very much like a page at a really bad, cheapy B movie film noir and you know, with the killer kind of laughing, you know, sinister and all of that. So I don't believe it. I don't believe the killer contacted anyone.
- [40:31]
Anya Cain
Yeah, that doesn't make any sense on any level. Are the letters from the so called Black Dahlia Avenger, are those genuine communications from the killer in your mind?
- [40:41]
William J. Mann
I don't think so. And I base that on the original detectives didn't think so either. The only communication that they believe was authentic was the first one which contained Elizabeth Short's belongings. So that clearly either came from the killer or someone who somehow was aware of the crime. All of the others were pranks and there were so many of them, so many of them that, you know, I couldn't even chronicle all of them in the book. But if, you know, the newspapers were getting them, the LAPD was getting them them, the district attorney was getting them. The reason that Black Dahlia Avenger note has gotten so much attention is because there was this promise to turn himself in. And so the police set up a dragnet around the office to catch whoever was going to turn themselves in. And of course no one shows up and they get another that says change my mind. They were being played. And whoever sent that letter was laughing, probably watching, saying look at all the cops around. Nobody's to going, going to. And early on the cops and later on the district attorney ruled none of them were legitimate. So yes, I know that it's become kind of a franchise now, the Black Dolly Avenger. But you know, unfortunately that that letter was pretty much concluded to be a prank.
- [42:08]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Yeah, you, you mentioned in the book that it has become a franchise and I think think that's a reference. There's a particular former Los Angeles police detective who has written a series of books in which he alleges that his father, a doctor, was responsible not only for the Black Dahlia murder, but for virtually every other murderer on the west coast, seemingly. I know the answer to this question based on the reference in the book. But do you regard that guy as a serious suspect of this crime? Crime?
- [42:41]
William J. Mann
I, I don't, I, I, I think George Hodell has nothing to do with the crime. There is no evidence that connects him in any way. Having said that, I, I think that Steve Hodel has done some interesting research and there's some of his side research has really shed some light on things, I think that's been helpful. Every book that's been written on the Dalia I have. I've read and have taken something away from, but I. There is no basis to say that George Hodel even knew Elizabeth Schwarzenegger. There's only a short, short window, about a month and a half in which they could have known each other. And that's part of October, and then November of 1946. Before that, Hodel was in China, and after that, Elizabeth went to San Diego. So if this intense relationship that Hodel describes his father as having with Elizabeth would have been condensed down to a little over a month, and that doesn't seem to be enough time for all of that to take place. And secondly, and more importantly, the investigators did a really good job of identifying the men with whom Elizabeth was seeing during that period of time in October and November. So they include everybody from, you know, Mark Hanson to Marvin Margolis to Steve Wolak to Maurice Clements, Michael Otero. And so it just seemed there was even room for George Hodel in there. And then finally, I talked with the family of Ann Toth, and they said. Said they. They told me that Ann met George Hodel at a later point. If she had thought he had anything to do with Elizabeth Short, she would have said something. And Anne knew all of those men that I just. That I just mentioned. She had access or heard them, got their phone calls, messages. She knew all of them. She never mentioned George Odell. There's just literally nothing that connects the two people.
- [44:32]
Anya Cain
What are some of the most persistent and prominent myths about this case?
- [44:36]
William J. Mann
Well, we mentioned one of them was that the police mishandled things. I don't believe the crime scene was mishandled. I don't think that the original investigation was flawed. I think they were overworked. But I also think the myths center around Elizabeth herself, that she was somehow a. She was an aspiring actress who would do anything to get a part, or she was consorting with gangsters, or that she was a sex worker, or that she, you know, slept with all these guys or that she was teasing all these guys. As we said earlier, that image of the Black Dahlia bears no resemblance to the real person. So I think that's, you know, the biggest myths are about. About her. And also I think the. There's. There's myths that she was, you know, she had made a stag film. None of these things were true. None of these things are true. And the myths. Myths tend to then build upon themselves. More stories are created and suppositions are Made. And it's just, you know, sorting through those myths was a big job because when I started, some of those myths were in my head, and I thought, oh, okay, maybe. Maybe this is true. And then as I dug through, I said, no, there's no truth to any of this.
- [45:46]
Anya Cain (co-host)
It's such a terrible case. Not only in the details of what Elizabeth Short suffered, but also in the fact all these people making false confessions and basically pranking the police. How did working on this case affect the detectives?
- [46:03]
William J. Mann
Yeah, they both lived with this for the rest of their lives. You know, I mentioned that they were. They were rather taciturn men. You know, they didn't show their emotions very much. And Harry Hansen's family told me that he was. He was not a warm father, grandfather. He was always kind and he was respectful, but he was. He was. He didn't give you hugs or anything. He didn't tell you how he was feeling. But even still, they saw how this weighed on him. And in 1975, the producer Douglas Kramer, made a television movie about the Black Dahlia case. Lucy Arnaz starred as Elizabeth Short. And Harry was asked to be the technical consultant, the advisor. And so he was on. He was there watching the film being made. He read the script. It's actually not a bad film, though. It takes a lot of liberties with the story, but it's not a bad film. People on the set told me that he was visibly shaken at times, reliving all of this. And after the film was made, he started getting the same kind of crazy confessions. In the mail. People said, oh, I saw the film and I killed her, or I know who killed her. And that just brought it all back up for him. I think he wanted very, very badly to have solved this case.
- [47:15]
Anya Cain
Why do you think this case has remained unsolved?
- [47:19]
William J. Mann
I think for a couple of reasons. I think because the amount of material became so overwhelming, and then there were too many cooks in the kitchen to kind of sort it all through. I think if Harry and Finus had gone back and interviewed some people they had interviewed in the beginning of the investigation, maybe they could have gotten farther. In my book, I put forward two scenarios of who and how this might have been done. And in one of those cases, it was a suspect who Harry and Finus had already interviewed. And if they had gone back and relooked at that, because at that point, when the district attorney steps in, Finus actually says, you know, this guy could be a pretty good suspect. So I think it was the amount of material. I think it was the distractions. And then I think it was the. Well, the distraction, certainly, that J. Paul Deriver put on the case and that it was then taken away from the LAPD and taken on by the DA Given back to the lapd. And those are the files we don't have. So I think it was. It was a combination of things, that there was too much distraction. There was the press. The press's involvement and their meddling really in the case really made it very difficult to find what was true and what was not. But then I also think it was something bigger than that. I think by the time the District Attorney's office had completed its own investigation, the case was returned to the lapd. The original detectives were getting older. And as they said, in a number of cases, solving an old case is not on the frontier list. There are other things to be done. And I think as time went on, Elizabeth Short slid into the back of the pile, and by that time, any new evidence that could be found was gone.
- [49:10]
Anya Cain
Do you think there's any possibility of it getting solved? I know that's almost a ludicrous question, and I don't want to get into the series that you posit in the book. I really want people to read this and sort of learn for themselves. I. I will say, though, like, do you think there's any possibility that there's. There's some kind of Hail Mary they can do?
- [49:27]
William J. Mann
Well, it all depends what exists in those LAPD police files. And people have said to me, why haven't they released them? And, you know, it's 80 years now. It's technically still an open case. So you don't release files if the case is still open. And I also think that the lapd, when they've kind of weighed in occasionally on this, There was a book by an author several years ago now who claimed that recovered memory, she remembered her father killing the Black Dahlia. And so the LAPD dug up her backyard, and of course, they found nothing. And I think they were a little embarrassed by that, and they decided not to keep talking about this case anymore. There's. There is still a nominal detective assigned to the case. She originally agreed to speak to me, and then I got a notice that she would not be able to do that. So I think the LAPD does not want to find themselves in an embarrassing situation again if they were to release those files. However, I think given everything that so many authors have done, not just myself, I think we can start to make some sense. You know, maybe the scenarios that I posted in My book will be shown to be wrong because the evidence might exist in those files that, that exonerates those two situations, but maybe not. Maybe there's something in there that now with all of this other information that has been done, maybe we can start connecting some dots. But we'll, we won't know until and if they ever release those files.
- [50:55]
Anya Cain
You wrote that next to the tragedy of Elizabeth Short, that the saddest tragedy in this story is Red Manley. Can you tell us a little bit about him?
- [51:04]
William J. Mann
Yeah, my heart went out to, to Red Manly Robert Manley. He was just a good person. He was somebody who, when he was in the army, he kept talking about finding ways to have lasting world peace. I mean, he was somebody who, he didn't have an enemy, he didn't have anything to grind. And you know, he's married, he has a new baby child and he's in San Diego. He spots Elizabeth Short, offers her a ride. And as he says, I was tempted, I was tempted to cheat on my wife. And that one temptation sealed his fate. Because although he doesn't cheat on his wife with those little bit shorts, she didn't let him. He was willing. And then of course, he's dragged into the murder case and harassed by the police and cross examined and grilled under lights and then told he was gonna get the gas chamber. I mean, he was just, he was destroyed. He was already a sensitive young man, man who had had to actually have psychiatric help during, during his time in the military. And so he's, he's shattered by this. He's embarrassed what he did to his wife. He feels guilty, feels shame. And then two years later he's drawn back in. The cops want to talk to him again. And by the, by this point, he's, he, he has, he has a, a nervous breakdown and never really recovers. And I thought for that one moment, that one moment of temptation you had that to possibly cheat on your wife who was home with the baby and was, you know, completely consumed by the baby. That one moment changed his life. And I thought, you know, and because of the media attention that was put on him, and I just feel, I feel badly about it. He was, he was a good man. He didn't, didn't deserve that.
- [52:41]
Anya Cain
Yeah, it's really disproportional for one moment of, you know, a bad decision.
- [52:45]
William J. Mann
Exactly. Yeah.
- [52:47]
Anya Cain
What does this case say in your mind about mid century attitudes about sexual.
- [52:53]
William J. Mann
Oh, it says lots about that. I think, you know, this was a period of time not only were, was the role in place of women. Society changing, but it was a period of time where queer people were starting to first kind of demand a place in society, a place in the culture. The number of unwed births, unwed mothers was growing. Women were taking more control of their own sexuality. And you know, if this was, this was a time of so much social change and cultural change that the story of Elizabeth Short was always going to be seen in that light. So here she is, a young woman who goes to on her own. And not only does she go off on her own, she has relationships with men that may or may not have been sexual. She's, she's not settling down. She's allowing herself to be in situations that a good girl might not like hanging out at the Florentine Gardens and, and it, it be the, you know, mid century, we're in that, we're in that, that conflict zone as we talked earlier. So there's the people who are kind of excited about these new ways of life and these new opportunities and these new, new ways of seeing the world. And there's people who are definitely af. So Elizabeth, Elizabeth's story, not so much Elizabeth herself, but her story is caught in that, in that back and forth. So we're always going to see her story as this, at this particular moment, at a time when women were reaching out to be more, have more autonomy, more agency and people pushing back against them for that. And you know, it's really about the, it's a, it's the sexual revolution starting to happen and Elizabeth Short is a part of that.
- [54:48]
Anya Cain
And then what is next for you? Now that you've, you've done this book, do you have any other projects that you can hint at or let us know about?
- [54:55]
William J. Mann
Well, I, I don't actually have anything to hint at because I'm still trying to figure that out myself. My editor wants to know. I really love writing true crime. I, I, as I said, it really, it, you get to tell a big story about the world, about a community, about people, about, about motivations, about, about, and allows you to be analytical. It allows you to be empathic. I mean, it's just, there's so much more than just telling the one single story. So I'm kind of looking at that. I mean, what are the stories? I'm, I'm not so much interested in contemporary true crime because it's just become so different and so much more difficult to research. So I'm looking at some other previous stories, but there's also some, there's also some Hollywood stories. I still want to tell too, so we'll see. I'm still trying to figure that out.
- [55:40]
Anya Cain
Well, we're excited to see what you do next and we'd love to have you back on. If it's a crimey story or even there, we'd love that.
- [55:47]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Great.
- [55:48]
Anya Cain
Anything we didn't ask you about that you wanted to mention?
- [55:50]
William J. Mann
No. That was a great interview. It was really great to talk about all of this stuff, to really get the big picture of this story because there's so much to it.
- [55:57]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Thank you so much.
- [55:58]
Anya Cain
We really appreciate that. And thanks for coming on the show.
- [56:00]
William J. Mann
Absolutely. Thank you.
- [56:02]
Kevin Greenlee
We want to thank William for taking the time to speak with us today. His terrific book, Black Murder Monsters and Madness in Mid Century Hollywood is available wherever you buy books. We'll include some links in our show notes. Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com. if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [56:40]
Anya Cain
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.
- [57:04]
Kevin Greenlee
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the.
- [57:10]
Anya Cain (co-host)
Web@Kevintg.Com if you're looking to talk with.
- [57:15]
Anya Cain
Other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.