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Katy Charlwood
Hello delicious friends, and welcome to who did what Now? The history podcast. That is not your history class. With me, your host, Katy Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books. Now, as a millennial, I'd say that I've lived through, you know, a good amount of major historical events, some might say an abundance of major historical events. And frankly, we can just be chill for a while. Maybe. Like I'm just saying that it would be great if we could just not have to live through yet another major historical event. Unless that major historical event was a great time of peace and kindness and consideration and love for our fellow man, women, etc. Right? That would be great. That would be great to have. I would like to not have to worry about my kids growing up in a world that is on fire, both literally and metaphorically. So a lot has happened, she says, gesturing vaguely at the world. A lot of terrible things. And as a historian and sociologist, I'll be honest with you, I'm. I'm I'm worried. I'm. I'm worried. And because of everything that's going on, I very nearly didn't almost make this episode. Like, my original plan was always to end, you know, my 1940s crime series with the Black Dahlia. Like, it's such a. A famous, slash, infamous case. You know, it has been mythologized over the years. It's like almost fictionalized. I mean, it has been fictionalized in across the board, really. And within that, you know, Elizabeth Short, the victim, is a footnote in her own story. And I hate it. I hate it so much. This happens all the time when it comes to. To Crame, especially when women are the victims. And it's this historically, you know, and they're just an addition. They're like morsels in the meal. Like a bit to nibble on as you're going through. And I find that really offensive. And I'm sorry I've been losing my voice for a little bit, but I. Sorry I've been losing my voice a little bit. But this is part one. I did a vote on my Instagram about whether to do this as one, like, just really long episode and everybody voted. All the people who voted. It was like 70, 30, almost with two parts. So I'm gonna do two parts and I'm gonna try and cover as much in depth information as possible. And okay, I live for drama, but I live for, like, sneaky drama, snidey drama, like heists and, you know, sassy remarks and all that jazz. Right. What I don't like is the dramatization and the grotesquery and. Gratuitous. Nope, the gratuitousness. Gratuitousness. No, gratuitous. It's just gratuitous. That's. That. That's great. I'm really good at the words, guys, but I will provide details. I will provide accurate information when it comes to the autopsy and things. I will be as clinical as possible to provide as much accurate information without being fucking salacious about it. Also, I will probably swear at parts of this due to undiluted rage. So if you're not okay with, you know, the discussion of murder and also autopsies and things like that, you might want to exit stage left. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, katie, you are four minutes in. Quit your jibble jabber and fact me and fact you. I will. But first we've got to get our source on Hard Boiled Hollywood Crime and Punishment in Post War Los Angeles by John Lewis. The Black Dahlia Los Angeles Most Famous Unsolved Murder by Jim Bartlett the True Story of the Black Dahlia by John Gilmour Cold Cases Famous Unsolved Mysteries, Crimes and Disappearances in America by Helena Katz Black Dahlia Avenger A Genius for Murder by Steve Hodel Sisters in Death the Black Dahlia the Prairie Heiress and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer by Janice Knowlton and Michael Newton FBI Archives Black Dahlia e short on the FBI vault. There are also many, many, many just newspaper articles. We've got the Los Angeles Times, the examiner, the Herald, we've got United Press, the Times and the Daily News, right? It's just, it's just everywhere. There's, there's a reason I have subscription to newspapers.com. are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then let's begin. It was a Friday morning, January 15, 1947, and Mrs. Bertie Berzinger, she'd left her home at 3705 South Norton street with her three year old daughter Anne. On their way to a cobbler to get a pair of shoes repaired, they walked south down Norton Avenue in Leamort Park. It was around 10:30am that they were nearing a vacant lot in the 3, 800 block of Norton. It was here that Mrs. Berzinger spotted something pale in the tall grass ahead. At first she thought it was a mannequin. Spoiler alert, it was not a mannequin. As they got closer, she realized that laying just a foot away from the sidewalk was a female body mutilated and cut in half. She rushes with her daughter to the nearest house so that she could call the police. And like if you look at the crime scene photographs, right, you can see there's a good distance. Like it's an empty space, like there's a good distance before you see houses in the distance. So like she gets there cuz like that's not the thing one sees on the regular. And we will discuss this more later on. But there are basically two versions as to what happens next. One is that she's like super calm and collected and she's just trying to explain that, you know, there's a mannequin or a naked woman just like out in the grass, you know, go deal with it. The other is, is that she is absolutely terrified because she's just come across a bisected corpse. And because she's just all like freaking out, she ends up just trying to explain it but not doing a very good job of it. And so there's like this communication issue with The University Division of the lapd. So the communication officer, like, they end up calling a patrol car to the scene. Like a possible 390 at 39th and Norton Avenue. When officers Frank Perkins and William Fitzgerald arrive on the scene, it's clear this is not a 390 code for a stuporous drunk. Oh, and Betty, her name and phone number were not taken by the dispatch officer like, either. So they know that somebody made the call. They know a woman made the call. They don't know who this woman is. So these two officers, they arrive, they're not homicide detectives. They're just a patrol car that was told to go get a drunk person that was just all over the place. Right? And so reporters and journalists, they're like listening to the police radio as well. Yeah. So they hear, you know, stripper is drunk, possible naked lady. They're like, okay, this is weird, let's get in on this. Because if nothing else, you know, it's January, slow news day, off they go. So they radio the boys, the two cops, they radio for backup, right? Because they're just like, hey, this is, this is clearly a bisected corpse. So it wouldn't be long before investigators and the press would be swarming all over the scene because, yeah, you've got these journalists listening in for, like, interesting calls over the police radio. And, and so when they could, they would try to be first on the scene so that they could get the story to the press. They wanted to, like, get the scoop. And it wasn't surprising to see like, journalists at crime scenes. Like so much so that, like, when you look at these sort of old timey crimes, there are so many more like, photographs because they were physically developed that give you so much perspective of the crime scene. But yeah, they, some of the reporters, because like, they'd called homicide and so some of these reporters, right, got there before the homicide detectives did. Now, Aggie Underwood claims to have been the first reporter on the scene. Meanwhile, reporter Will Fowler and photographer Felix Pragel say that they were the first to arrive between officers, detectives, journalists, photographers, and just, you know, nosy people. The crime scene was very much contaminated. They actually had at one point to make a human chain just like around the perimeter just to stop more people from like, trampling all over the crime scene. Like, they had to make a human wall because too many people were getting on top of the active crime scene. Investigators weren't exactly new to a body dump. It's Los Angeles. It was a growing city, and vacant lots were a fairly standard Option. However, typically, the body would be hidden. Like, it wouldn't be out in the open. There would be an attempt to disguise and cover up, you know, and this was different. This body had been posed, elbows bent, legs spread, a shocking sight designed to send a message. Detective P.W. freestone told reporters that this was the most brutal example of a sex crime that he had ever seen. And this was no spring check. You know, this fella was long in the tooth. The victim had been cleanly cut in half, drained of blood. There were cuts all over her body. Her face had been beaten, and she had been cut from ear to ear. Her lower half had been, for a lack of a better term, mutilated. Initially because of her. Her height and, you know, her petite frame. Investigators initially thought that she might be a teenager around 15, 16. And so at the scene, the Los Angeles county coroner, Frederick Newbar, recorded the bisected victim as Jane Doe number one. So this was the first unidentified female corpse that they had discovered in 1947. So that would be. Well, I mean, it's the 15th of January. They're halfway through the month. You know, Dr. Newber would perform an autopsy the following day. But the victim's fingerprints were taken at the crime scene. News about the murder spread like wildfire, and soon calls flooded into the LAPD Central Station. You know, fearing that this Jane Doe was there, missing friend or family member, reporters had put together a description, and there was a sketch taken at the scene as well. And like, the one thing that always sticks in my head was one of. One of the reporters described this again, bisected woman as having, and I quote, trim legs. And this was when they thought she was a teenager. Like, this teenager has trim legs. Sorry, this teenage murder victim has trim legs. I feel like inappropriate language even for the 1940s. So the cops thought they had a lead when women's clothing had been discovered stashed behind a used car lot on West Adams Boulevard. Because, like Jane Doe, she had been found in the nip completely naked. And this car lot was only three and a half miles from the crime scene. But their hopes were quickly dashed when they searched this, like, bundle and they found a dry cleaning tag with women's info on it, right? A woman who informed them that her laundry had been stolen from her car a few days earlier. This case had happened in the morning, and then later in the afternoon, they thought, wow, we've got this clue. And it turned out to just be a dead end that afternoon. Aggie Underwood story, front page story, I might add. And The Herald Express newspaper hit the stands. So there used to be like a morning edition of the newspaper and an afternoon edition of the newspaper. So like, you would get news twice a day. Now, like newspapers were printing. It was. It was the main source of information and not only because you got like, the story, but you also got pictures. So the newspapers were big business and they were huge for this time period. And so there it is in black and white. Nude girl found slain near LA Coliseum. And so began the public's obsession with one of LA's oldest unsolved murders. Jane Doe's fingerprints had been taken earlier at the crime scene. And so they were compared with prints on file at the sheriff's department and of course, the lapd, but nada. No matches were found. The next step, of course, was the FBI. So their plan was to send the prints by airmail to Washington D.C. but the best laid plans of mice and men. Because a snowstorm had shut down everything east of St. Louis, aircraft had been grounded and it would take days for snow to clear and for it to be safe for any air traffic to resume. So detectives Harry Hanson and Finis Brown were offered a solution when they stopped by the Los Angeles Examiner's office because they'd gone to pick up a copy of the newspaper sketch of Jane Doe Number one. Sidebar. The examiner was owned by none other than William Randolph Hearst, who also owned the Herald, that Aggie Underwood was writing for along with like 26 other papers across the US he was a newspaper magnet. Newspaper was big business also. What? Somebody controlling the news narrative. What? What a silly thing to bring up for no reason. So anyway, the assisting managing editor, Waldo Willard, offered the LAP detectives the use of their sound photo, an early fax, email or fax machine. It had never been used to send fingerprints, but they didn't really see any reason why it wouldn't work. So Captain Jack Donahue agreed to a deal. In exchange for sending the victim's fingerprints, the examiner would receive exclusives in the case. Note, it wasn't uncommon for the press and the police to work together, like, especially back then now, you know, police hold information back. More like they don't give out as many details of the crime, you know, until after. But yeah, back then, less so. So Woolard called the Washington Bureau, Hearst Newspapers. He relayed the information to Ray Richards, the director of the D.C. office. I'm sorry, but so many of these names have alliteration. I'm just. I'm just saying that they sound like they've been written by Stanley Ray Richards then contacted the FBI and arranged for the Bureau to receive the fingerprints in the morning. So, like it took them a couple of goes for a clear image of the prints to be transmitted. But they made it to the examiner's office before dawn in Washington dc. So when the prints got to dc, it took less than an hour for the FBI to find a match in their database of over 100 million fingerprint records. In fact, they found two. The first was from an application for a job as a clerk at the Camp Cook Army PX near Lompoc in January 1943. I had to look up what PX was because I didn't recognise it. Because PX to me, because I'm used to reading medical records was would mean patient, like PX is patient. But PX is post exchange, which is, it comes from like the frontier times and there would be like a military post. It was just. It all comes from that. We'll go into that more another time. The second set of fingerprints was when the victim was arrested for underage drinking on the 23rd of September 1940. So they're both from the same year. So because they had this, because she was arrested, they had a print of a mugshot and most importantly, a name. Elizabeth Short. But who was Elizabeth Short?
- [23:18]
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- [24:02]
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- [24:39]
Katy Charlwood
Elizabeth Short was born on 29 July 1924 in Hyde Park, Boston, Massachusetts to Cleo Alvin Short Jr. A United States Navy sailor, and Phoebe May Sawyer, a housewife. Elizabeth was the third of five daughters to the couple. Her two older sisters were Virginia, May and Dorothea, and her younger sisters were Elnora and Muriel. You know what, we don't see the name Dorothea much anymore, or Muriel or Mariel for that matter. Elnora also. Let's bring Elnora back. Like, I love. I love old names. Let's bring old names back. Raised in Medford, Massachusetts, Elizabeth, who also went by Beth or Betty, had a pretty comfortable childhood, at least in her early years. When her father, Cleo left the Navy, he had a fairly successful business building miniature golf courses. Like, this wasn't a random thing. He wasn't just like, I really need to build a golf course. No, like, miniature golf was like this big craze in the 1920s and things were going, you know, well for him. That was until the 1929 stock market crash. When the markets fall and people are struggling to buy food, you know, they're not really interested in playing miniature golf. And so has business failed? The family were in financial trouble and one day he left the house and just didn't come back. It was in 1930, so a few months after the crash, and his car was found abandoned on the Charleston Bridge. And it was assumed that, you know, with everything that was going on and like many other businessmen at the time, but he had just ended his own life by jumping into the Charles River. And Phoebe, now considered a widow, had to support her family, all her daughters, by herself. So she gets a job as a bookkeeper, you know, just to keep their heads above water so that she can support her five children, who most, if not all of them are under the age of 10. And at the age of 6 years old, Beth Short's father had gone. He had disappeared from her life. And her life went from relative comfort to one pressed under financial stress. Like, she's lost a parent, her family are struggling through economic hardship, and on top of this, she's suffering from respiratory issues. She had bronchitis and Asthma and at 15, had to undergo lung surgery. After the surgery, doctors suggested that Beth would benefit from, you know, not being in a cold place during the winter months. So whenever you have respiratory issues, whether it's like bronchitis, asthma, copd, etc that, you know, the cold can trigger things like coughs and other breathing issues and it's not exactly, you know, optimum for you. So warmer climates, you know, in those colder months would be better for her, you know. Now, in order to reduce her respiratory problems, Phoebe May sent Beth to stay with family and friends. In Miami, Florida. Now? Now. Okay, I know I'm not super great at geography. However, like, I always thought Miami was like, you know, Florida wise was sort of humid. I thought Florida was like a humid state. Like, you have moisture in the air and like, moisture affects, like, respiratory issues too. So, like somewhere with a dry heat, I would assume would be more beneficial. So, like, it's kind of moist over there in Florida. And then on, like, the East Coast. Did I just go, like, never eat Shredded Wheat. Do you remember where the east coast was? Yeah, yeah, I did. Um, so California dry heat would be better for the lungs? No, I feel like that's a thing. Anywho, Beth would do this trip, spending time those, like, winter, those really cold Massachusetts winters. Like, she wouldn't. She wouldn't be dealing with that. She instead would be in Miami, Florida, where she would stay for the next three years. Beth would drop out of Medford High School during her sophomore year. Whether it was, you know, all of the travel disruption or maybe she just didn't enjoy school, maybe she didn't form friendships very well. Like, she was done. Whatever. For whatever reason, she was just not in it anymore. And so they're just kind of getting by. And then in 1942, Phoebe received a letter, one she was certainly not expecting to receive. It was from Cleo, her husband, who was not dead. No, he had not thrown himself off a bridge and into the Charles River 12 years earlier. No, he was not only alive and well, but he had a new life and a new family to boot. Turns out he just abandoned his car and took the midnight train going anywhere. And by anywhere, I mean Vallejo, California. So Cleo apologizes in this letter and he also asks Phoebe for forgiveness. And, yeah, Phoebe said, absolutely fucking not. Not a hope. Now, Beth, she was 18 at this point and she already had to go to warmer places in the winter anyway. And so she said, fuck this, we're a game of soldiers, and decided that she was going to go to California to stay with the father that she had not seen since she was 6 years old. Now, his abandonment of the family, like, it really affected her deeply. Like it was an issue for her, which of course it was because she was abandoned by her father at six. And on top of that as well, like, so 18 years old. Like, she's a teenager and she's just found out that her dad didn't die, which is like, she's already grieved for that. She's already dealt with that emotion and now she has to deal with the fact that he is not only alive, but for over a decade he chose to not communicate with the family, to not mention anything, to leave them to struggle alone. Now, like, so let me talk about daddy issues. And it's like, oh, a man abandoned his family and it's somehow the girl's fault. Like, get a fcking grip. Like, that is zero accountability. Like, you pass the buck every single time. As if, oh, we've created this problem, but we're gonna blame, you know, the people who have to deal with the problem. Like, that's, that's how we're playing this, motherfuckers, is it? Now, she had hoped for a relationship with her father, but he was not a shining example of a doting dad. Who knew instead of this budding father daughter relationship that she'd probably imagined up a thousand times in her head, instead of that, he was a mean drunk and he wanted her around to be a housekeeper, not to foster a relationship. So he got mad that she wouldn't stay in and keep house. Like, he got mad that she wanted to go out and do things. And, you know, instead of darning his socks, right, he was working at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in the San Francisco Bay. So like nowadays that's like a 40 minute commute. So I'm gonna assume it would be longer then. So he would be working. And he now, he allegedly had a new family. Like, he claimed he had a new family. But clearly this family, he. He didn't care for them very much. I have a sneaking suspicion that basically, like, it was a shit show. And eventually his family just like left him and didn't want to deal with him anymore. And so he writes back to, you know, the family he abandoned 12 years earlier to go like, oh, I'm doing great. Love to reconnect with you. You know how like, sometimes an ex will message you at Christmas time like that? But yeah. So Cleo and Beth were arguing so much that Beth moved out a month later in January 1943. So like December 1942, right? She's there, she lasts a month. Like, they are fighting. They are just. It's intense. They're just not getting on with each other. And Cleo, he makes her leave. He said that he didn't want anything to do with her or the rest of the family again. So she goes and, you know, she's got like some education and she goes out and gets a job. She gets to Camp Cook and she gets a job there as a civilian clerk. So Camp Cook is now the Vandenberg Air Force Base. And so she's not there for very long. She's there and she gets voted Camp Cook, Camp Cutie. You know, I'm genuinely surprised that someone somewhere doesn't have like a bumper sticker that says like Camp cook, Camp Cutie 1943, like somewhere. But yeah, it's like when she applies for the job, that's when she gets, you know, the, the fingerprints taken for the first time. So as she's working there, like the first, well, she's pretty quiet, she's pretty shy and reserved. Like everyone thinks she's really refined and respectful. You know, she doesn't really, you know, make noise. Now after a few weeks she does start spending time with soldiers. So she goes out on dates and, you know, she's seen in their company. There's not a lot of information out with that, but that's basically, basically the story. So other women who are working there, they're not too keen with this teenage girl going on these dates with these like different Air Forcemen or whatever other type of army people are at the base, I guess. So after she leaves Camp Cook, which is like February, March, ish, you know, she does end up getting like other jobs. So she does like waitressing and stuff. And now for the second set of fingerprints. On 23rd September 1943, the then 19 year old Beth was arrested for underage drinking in Santa Barbara. She was in a restaurant called El Paso. Like she had gone out with some soldiers and they were at this restaurant and they were having drinks. And that's when like this officer is like, no, just no. And so the judge, they sentenced her to probation for violating juvenile court law, gave her a ticket to Medford, Massachusetts. And Beth agreed to go home to her mother, but instead didn't do that. She went to Miami. And it was in Miami that Beth met Major Matt Corden, a decorated fighter pilot, while he was on leave. Now there's a bit of inconsistency here when it comes to Matt. Some say that she met him the year before and then reunited in 44, while others suggest that they met in 44 for the first time. Like version one has them meet while he's on leave and then he's injured in 44, which is why he's on leave again. In version two is that they meet in 44 and initially smitten, like sparks are flying. And then Major Matthew Michael Gordon proposed to her after an injury from a plane crash. So Matt Gordon had trained with the American volunteer group, the Flying Tigers. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for participation in more than 50 combat missions and destroying two Japanese zero. Those are planes. He named his P40 the Nepes Nemesis. Which, which is weird because like as, as far as I know, like Nippon is like the traditional name for Japan. And so it's weirdly the alliteration like is it. I don't know if it's more or less respectful. Like I was trying to think of another word for like enemy that begins with J. My brain's not doing it. On 25 February 1944, he was injured in a plane crash while flying an LSB Sentinel reconnaissance plane. He was searching for a down pilot when he went down. He survived and returned to active duty. So according to Major Gordon's mother like she first heard about Beth in 1944 and that Matt and Beth's romance blossomed through letters. Like he's in Georgia at one point and so Beth short, she traveled to see him in Georgia like after the crash and it's like after, like he proposes afterwards but it's also via letter. So they wrote to each other a lot. And I mean a lot. Like it's, it's intense. Like at one point she writes him 27 letters in 11 days. Now it's easy to look back on that but that's like, you know, instant messages are not really a thing thing back then. I mean if you sent someone 27 messages in 11 days you wouldn't think that's weird. Like context of the. I mean I still think it's a lot cuz that's more than two per day. I mean what have you got to say that's new? I say that as if I don't spend quite a lot of time providing information on the Internet. So when Major Matthew Michael Gordon was stationed in India, he asked his mum if he thought that Beth loved him and she told him that he was old enough to make his own decisions and she trusted his judgment in picking a braid. So because he's away he's, you know, he's flying on the other side of the world. He asked his sister in law to correspond with Elizabeth and you know, she ends up telling him that she thinks that she's refined and educated, you know, she's a good girl. And on the 29th of July 1945 he wrote home and he told his mother that he would be back in September with his bride and that he intended to marry her in Medford, Massachusetts. On 10 August 1945, Major Matthew Michael Gordon was piloting a P51 Mustang near Kalikunda in West Bengal, India. His plane went down, and he died at 26 years old. Just weeks before Japan surrendered, Mrs. Gordon sent a telegram to Beth informing her of Matt's death. One of Matt's fellow officers sent an engagement ring to Beth, but the wedding ring was sent to his mother. Beth and the Gordons would correspond for a time, but the family cut ties when Beth contacted them, asking for money. Like, they thought this was uncouth, you know, that this was a very upsetting thing for her to do, for her to ask them for help. You know, the woman who was supposed to be marrying their son now a woman who was supposed to become part of their extended family. And they've just gone, oh, I'm sorry. You wanted something from us. Like, no. Beth had a photo of her and Matt from 1944. They were, like, sitting at a table. They're dressed up to the nines. He's in his uniform. She's. And a gorgeous guna. Like, they're arm in arm, and their eyes are full of joy and young love. Now, over the years, Beth would refer to Major Gordon as her fiance, sometimes even her husband. Now I get why she would. Like, he died in August. They were supposed to be married in September. And she wrote letters about how. How she looked forward to marrying him and how she would, like, not date other people if she knew that he was gonna propose and this whole thing and he was gonna. And they were gonna be together. And, yeah, like, she had a paper clipping of his, you know, and the paper of his death, and she would show people this paper clipping of Matt and say that, you know, she was his fiance or whatever, but the paper printed the wrong name for the fiance, and so she'd scratched out the other name. And, like, this didn't exactly help her credibility. Like, people just assumed she was lying when, like. No. And the thing is, as well, if they had been intimate, if her and Matt had had sexual relations because they were engaged, because they were due to be married, like, that's more socially acceptable. And it protects her reputation, which was, like, a massive deal at the time. Like, there's such a huge value put on. On virginity, especially female virginity. And it has done for, like, centuries. But her whole life could be ruined. Like, that was the whole thing. Like, you could ruin someone. You could ruin a woman by accusing her of sex before marriage. So while she was in Miami and she was writing back and forth to Ma, you know, she was working as a waitress, and she was staying in the Elmar apartments, and so she's on Miami beach, that's where she's living. And then when she gets the news of his death, she is heartbroken, she is disheartened and she leaves her job and returns back to her mum in Medford, Massachusetts. And she's there for a while before returning back to Florida. And this time she's staying in the Colonial Inn in Jacksonville. But she wasn't working at this point. She just didn't quite have it in her. And she just seemed to like, stop for a while after her fiance's death. And so this was the address that Phoebe was sending checks to. And this is probably about the time that she's asking for money from the Gordons because she's not working. And, you know, now we can understand, we can understand that grief and that depression. But then, you know, because they weren't married, because she wasn't a widow, it wasn't really. She wasn't exactly afforded the same grace. So she's there for, you know, a little while and then she goes back to Medford for a few months before heading to Chicago in April. So she'd stayed at the Park Row Hotel and Blackstone, and it was in Chicago that she reunited with Joseph Gordon Fickling, an Army Air Force lieutenant that she had known in Florida. So there's a bit of, I'm going to say overlap. So when she was like living in Florida, you know, if someone wanted to take her out, like she would double date and she would go out with men, but she wouldn't do anything because she was just, you know, the girl liked a free meal and I can't fault her for that, cuz, you know, it's the 1940s and if you've grown up in any sort of food poverty, like, yeah, she's, she's getting her lunch and you know what, if the men wanted to buy her lunch just to enjoy her company, so be it. So, yeah, she reunites with him. And in July 1946, Fickling was relocated and stationed at the Naval Reserve Air Base in Long Beach, California. And Beth, she decided to follow him there. So, like, it's when she's in Long beach that she gets the nickname, allegedly gets the nickname the Black Dahlia because she would wear a flower in her hair just like the main character in the movie the Blue Dahlia, which had come out that year and it was like super popular. So it's easy to look back and see Beth short and go, you went across the country for a man and it's easy to Judge her on modern standards. When she was young and in that era, it was expected that a girl would get married and start a family. Like, it's what you did. Like, two of her sisters, at least they were. They were married at this point and started having kids. And so she wanted that, too. And her dreams had already been dashed once. And it's not just the relationship. People forget that. It's not just the ending of a relationship itself. It's heartbreak, sure, but there's a grief, a grief over the loss of not only the person, but the life you were expecting, the future you had planned. You know, everything you had built up in your head, you were going to. That you were leading to. All of that dreams and plans and everything, what you had pinned your hopes on had all come crashing down. And for Beth, this also included a security and comfort that she had been missing. In August, the couple would check into the Brevoort Apartments on Lexington Avenue as husband and wife. Like, they were not married, by the way, but it meant that they could, you know, share the same room, like, without judgment. When he returned to base, she moved to the Hawthorne Hotel on North Orange Avenue. When Fickling was relocated to Colorado, Beth decided that she didn't want to go there, and she chose not to follow. Now, initially, when the two had been writing to each other, like, she had told him that she had a ring and there was this other pilot, and he told her to really decide if he was what she wanted, you know, if. You know, if Fickling, if he was the man for her or whether she did love him or not. And it seems that she didn't. So when Beth is in Los Angeles, she is, you know, taking odd waitressing jobs here and there. Like, she's working a little, but not really enough to sustain herself. Now, you'll hear quite often that, you know, she'd gone to LA with aspirations of being an actress, but there was literally no record anywhere of her auditioning or, you know, waiting with extras or anything like that. There's nothing, you know, which, you know, if. If there was, we'd have something. I mean, this is, you know, 1940s Hollywood. We'd have information. I mean, if nothing else, you'd have, you know, film studios trying to, like, boost being, like, oh, we totally had her common audition this one time. But, like, she didn't take an acting class. She didn't. She didn't have any credits to her name. And no actor or actress, like, no extra even ever remembers her. Like, not one ever. Which there'd be one like. And somebody would be out there to sell their story to the papers. You know, they would for that, you know, glory of fame. Now if she did want to be an actress, if that was her plan, you know, it never materialized and that's a shame. But there is nothing to say she did. And you know, there's lots that draws people there. I think more. So it was all of the soldier stationed more than anything else because there's, you know, eligible bachelors and the warm weather that she needs for her lungs. So she's bouncing around hotels and boarding houses throughout LA and like it's often portrayed as weird, right? Or unusual. But post war Los Angeles had a housing crisis and those without a fixed address had a limited stay in a hotel. Now I've seen, I've seen different sort of stays listed. I've seen some as being five days, others being seven, sometimes a little more, you know, but there is a limit that you can stay in a hotel. And so there's a lot of human transit during this period. Like at one point she rents a room behind a nightclub in the Hollywood Boulevard. And so she stayed at the Sunset Motel, the Hawthorne, the Hotel Figaro, Guardian Arms, the Chancellor Apartments and possibly the Baltimore Hotel. Another place she stayed was Mark Hanson's home. Now Mark Hanson was a nightclub owner, a nightclub that was allegedly a mob front. And so his home is. Is interesting. Definitely interesting.
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Katy Charlwood
Mark Hanson's bungalow was a block north of Hollywood Boulevard behind the Markhall Theatre at 6024 Carlos Avenue. It was a place to stay for gals who were down on their luck. These women were, quote, financially embarrassed to stay there. They were crammed into bunks and more often than not, approached by the landlord. One of the residents, an aspiring model actress, Anne Toth was never propositioned by Hanson because he was friends with her boyfriend. And Beth, he wasn't interested in. When he found out that she was a virgin, or at least he was informed that she was a virgin. And this is, you know, something that she shares with the other women that are staying there. Like, they're all crammed into these bunks. Like, there are a lot there. And Mark Hansen, he's staying in this. In this house, too, but also, like, he's married, but he's separated from his wife at this point. So Anne Toth, Ms. Anne, she becomes, you know, quite good friends with Beth more than anyone else, really, that she's been around. Like, she gets to know her. She's more understanding. Like, a lot of the times when Beth stayed in a hotel, for example, like. Like a lot of the other girls there that she would be sharing with because they'd be sharing rooms is like, they would be all struggling, and they would put in money when they did. And it was rare that Beth ever financially contributed. Now we don't have Beth's side of the story for this. We have just what these other ladies are saying now. They said that every now and again she'd managed to get a man to pay a bill for her. Like, they would cover her costs. So a lot of the time she would, like, struggle and get, you know, behind on payments. And then some guy would swoop in and pay stuff off for her. Like, different ones every now and again. And eventually people would just get, like, sick of her. And so Beth would just have to, you know, leave and go somewhere else. And she didn't really bond well with other women. But her and Anne, there seems to be, like, a genuine friendship there. And what's interesting is Anne believes 100% that Beth Short is a virgin, which is interesting because she's always portrayed as this sort of floozy, like. Like, she goes on all these dates with all of these, like, soldiers, sailors, butchers, beggars, candlestick makers, you know. And she's out every night with men, which is probably partly to be fed and partly because she's looking for a husband, because she's in her 20s, in the 40s, you know. And you've got Beth going out all this time and, you know, everyone's complaining and all these tales of her going out with all these dudes and. And then you have Beth here and no actual evidence that she had ever had sex. I mean, she may have done other stuff, but maybe she was in fact saving herself for marriage. Now, I'm not saying she did or she didn't, but there's this disdain for Beth when she was poor and hungry and spent time with men. Maybe companionship, maybe survival. It's 1946, right? You've survived a war and you want the life you were told your whole life that you should have. And again, she's also 22, her sisters are married. You know, everyone else seems to be having a life and she's in the sort of stasis. She's bouncing around from house to room to home to apartment to another room. And also, like, I think about her dating one last thing. You don't get to swipe right on every single gal that you see on a dating app and then complain that women are dating people in a roster. And like, this isn't a personal thing. Like, I don't, I don't date people who are dating other people. It's just not a thing I do. But I'm also not dating people. I'm not dating person. I'm aggressively single. But yeah, I couldn't date on a roster because I simply do not have the organizational skills. Also, I'm greedy and like to have one person all to myself. But if you have that mental capacity, that organizational skills that you can roster people and you are all happy and accepting of it, go live your best life. Okay? Another thing that's brought up by not just Anne, but by Mark as well is that Beth doesn't really have any vices. Like, she doesn't smoke and she doesn't drink and she would just kind of go to dinner with men, but she wouldn't be. She wouldn't be drinking. Like, she's very careful not to lose her inhibitions. You know, Beth would be kicked out of Mark Hanson's house twice. Once was because she had made a call to Texas, right? So she'd made this long distance call to Texas. Like, he finds out about it and she gets caught. And, you know, she can't afford to pay this like, long, long distance call. And so, like, that's like, strike one. And so he's already annoyed about this. And she is also having this, like, she has this big set to this other girl. Like a big fight happens. And so they both get kicked out. And, like. Like, he would kick people out of the house, like, all the time. So, like, if somebody was drinking, if they had a lot of. I think what he said was, like, they came in and they liked their liquor. Like, he would just not have them. He would kick him out. Now, I know he has a creepy landlord and he's propositioning his. His tenants, but I kind of appreciate the fact that he's not such a creepy landlord that he's, you know, trying on with drunk tenants. Like, I. I feel like that's like. You know how someone's just like, he's still shitty, but he's just not as shitty. You know, it's like bird pooh and elephant dung. It's like different levels. So, like, he actually gets questioned at one point about whether he would have, like, being interested in Elizabeth Short. And so he explains that, you know, I mean, she was always, like, neat and tidy and pretty. She was always clean and, you know, her clothes were always nice. However, she had terrible teeth. He said her teeth were black, and that was just not for him. So anyway, this time he kicks her at the house. She goes in, up staying somewhere else, and she comes back at one point with a suitcase and. And just saying to Mark, like. Like, can her suitcase day. She needs to hold her suitcase like, overnight. And he's like, yeah, the suitcase can stay. Like, she isn't staying. So he goes out, he comes back, Beth Short is still in his bungalow. And he's just like, absolutely not. And she's crying. She says she's scared. And he's just, no, I don't want you here. Get out. So she ends up staying that one night, like, just thanks to Anne Toth. And Anne, she actually finds her room at the Chancellor now when she's staying at the Chancellor, like, the Chancellor apartments. So she's like, sharing a room with girls again. So the girl she roomed with there would talk about how she would melt candle wax and put it on her teeth to basically cover up the black tips. And so, like, this was just a way of covering up, like, she'd really bad cavities. Her teeth were. Again, they were black. Like, we're past the point of Colgate here. And so she's there for a while. Things don't go great. And she leaves the Chancellor and she was dropped off at the bus station in Hollywood, and that was in late 1946. And she ends up traveling to San Diego where she's. She's in a movie theater. And so she ends up befriending Dorothy French, right? So she's there. Dorothy French is this cashier at the movie theater. And they. They get on and she tells her a story. And so. And Dorothy's like, okay, you know what? No, come with me tonight. You can crash on my couch. You'll be okay. You know, Good Samaritan type thing. And so she and her mother, Elvira and her brother Carrie. Now her dad was Mr. Fringe. He was out of the picture. He was kicked out the house for whatever reason. And Elvira, Dorothy and Carrie, they were all just living in there. So Elvira was working. She was a. She was a nurse. And Carrie, like, he was just a teenager. So they thought, like, she was just gonna be there and gone. It was gonna be like a one night situation. But she stayed for weeks, and she ended up staying for Christmas because it was not the most joyous Christmas because there's just this other person that you weren't expecting to still be there. Like, Elvira at one point said that having Beth in the house was like having a shadow, not a guest. Like, she didn't go out much. Like, she went out a little bit, but she would sleep most of the day. And so the family would just kind of tiptoe around the house because they didn't want to disturb her because, you know, they had manners for the person who was in their house, staying on their couch, eating their food. And so, like, when she wasn't sleeping, she was writing letters that she didn't send, or at least no one ever saw her post a letter. And then there's one night she's out and she's like, standing on a street corner, and she's approached by Red. Red is this man. And at first she didn't want to talk to the strange man in the street, which I feel is fairly reasonable. But he offered her a ride and they ended up having dinner and a few drinks. At the end of the evening, he kissed her. And, like, she kind of kissed back. Like, he said that she responded in the normal way, if a little cold. And like, maybe like, part of me thinks that she was just sober and there was this tipsy dude trying to, like, mack on her. Now on the 9th of December, like, she arrived on the 9th of December, and what was supposed to be a one night thing lasted a month, or at least like almost a month, basically. It gets to the point where they're like, they're just telling her that she needs to go. They're like, it's been swell having you here, but we feel like her Time has passed. And so basically around about the time they tell her that she has to leave, two men and a woman show up at the house looking for Beth. Like, who knew she was there? Like, two men and a blonde woman, they're looking for Beth and she's hiding. Like she would actually, like during the day if someone came to the door, like, she would be pretty scared. She would kind of hide away and not want to answer it. And so when this happens and someone's actually naming her, they're looking for her. Like, you know, it's weird, but they kind of brush them off and they're like, no, bye now. And Beth is just like sobbing and crying. Like she's talking about like how scared they are. Like this trio come, like. And after this she's just a wreck, you know. And again, how did they know she was there? Did she actually post a letter with it? Did it have a return address? Did she make a phone call from there and it was traced back? Like, what is it? Who are these people? So the next day she's like, okay, French family, thank you very much, but no, you're right, I do need to go. And so she calls Mark Hansen, of all people, right? And she calls and asks if she can stay because she's scared and she just needs to stay somewhere. And so he ends up telling her that, like, you know, she can stay, but only when Anne gets back from visiting family. So Beth then calls Rhett, he picks her up. And Red picks Beth up from the French residence on the 8th of January, 1947. He put her trunk and her hat box into his cream coloured Studebaker and the two. And later the two would check into a motel on the Pacific Coast Highway. Red would later claim that nothing happened between himself and Betty. You see, Robert Morris Manley, or Red to his friends, was married and had been for 14 months and had a four month old son. Whether Betty knew any of this information, whom's to say? Beth Short had called Red and asked him to drive her from San Diego to Los Angeles. When he picks her up, you know, she's like, I'm already packed. And so he tells her, like, oh, well, I've got stuff I need to do in San Diego. Like he's got business calls and whatnot. And so when he tells her that, she's like, great, take me to the bus station. Plot twist. He did not take her to the bus station. Instead they checked into that motel. They went for like a bit to eat. So they go there and they get freshened up and they check into the same room because he's like, well, it would have been suspicious if I showed up with a girl at a motel in. And we booked into separate rooms. Would it be suspicious? Or did you just not want to waste the money? Right. What were you hoping for here, Red? So, like, they go there, they go for a bite to eat, and then, like, they go to this, like, other hotel, and it's. Or, you know, like, the restaurant and bar of a hotel, and it's, quote, dead.
- [72:18]
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Katy Charlwood
And so they end up getting some sandwiches, and they go back to the room. Like, he lights a fire in the room, and she's, like, covered in blankets and cold. And so she's like, I'm too cold. And so she's wrapped up in, like, everything, and he's sleeping in, like, a chair, and she's. Or at the very least, they're, like, in separate parts. Like, there's a distance between them. Now, if this is true, I like to think that she's just like, no, I'm not gonna do that. This is. I'll just say I'm cold and that I don't want to be, like, touched. So, like, they stay there for the evening. They go to sleep. And this is all according to Red. Like, we only have Red's version of events here. The next morning, he did his business calls and then went back to the motel and collected Beth around 12:20, after which they headed to Los Angeles. They stopped twice. The first time for lunch and the second to get gas at Laguna Beach. Like, as they're approaching la, Beth tells Red that her sister is meeting her at the Biltmore Hotel. But before they get there, she asked if he could take her to the Greyhound bus station so that she could check in her trunk and hat box. Which is weird, because if her sister was coming. If her sister was coming to visit, then why not leave the luggage with her? You know, why leave it at the bus station? Like, are they gonna be traveling together on the bus? Anyway, they get to the Biltmore around 5pm and Beth told Red that she needed to go up to her room, you know, to freshen up. And. Which is weird because you've already got a room at the Biltmore. Your luggage is somewhere else. Don't you need your luggage to get ready? Yeah. So she asks Red to, you know, to see if her sister's arrived while she goes and gets ready. And so he checks to see if, you know, Virginia west had checked into the hotel. The front desk had no reservation for a Mrs. Virginia West. So he thinks maybe she's going by a different name because, like, everyone calls her Ginny. Maybe she's using her maiden name, you know, maybe. And, like, Elizabeth had told her that Ginny was short and blonde. So this guy, he's in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, and he's going up to every short blonde he sees, and he's like, are you. Are you Virginia West? Are you Beth's sister or Betty's sister? He called her Betty. And none of them. None of them are there. And, like, when she comes back down from upstairs, when Beth comes down, like, it's after five, he tells her he has to go, right? He says to everyone, like, this is his. Like, officially. He says that this is the last time that he ever saw Betty Short. So the thing about her sister, about Virginia, is that Jenny, like, she confirmed that she was not coming. Like, she had never planned to come to la. She wasn't staying at the Biltmore. Like, none of that. So, like, was this an excuse to just kind of get rid of riot? Like, oh, I have to go and meet my sister, so I can't spend more time with you, you know? But, like, also made him look for her, which is also weird. Like, that's a weird thing to make him do. And. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, he is the last person, like, officially that was seen with Beth Short. Now Beth is seen, like, in the Biltmore lobby using the lobby telephones, like, a good number of times over the next few hours before she left the hotel. Around 10pm she walked out of the Biltmore Hotel in a black suit, no collar, a black pencil skirt, a white blouse with frills, nylon stockings, white gloves, and a long beige top coat. Clasping her black patent handbag, she stepped out in her black suede heels. And this is the last confirmed time anyone saw her alive. From January 9th to 15th, Elizabeth Short just vanished. It's the missing week she disappeared, only to show up bisected in a vacant lot on a dull Friday morning nearly a week later. And so ends part one of the Black Dahlia. Part two will be coming soon. If it's not tomorrow, it'll be the day after. It will be coming this week because I don't like to give too big a time frame when I do two parts because it feels crappy to me. And I'm the kind of person that always waits for both parts to be released before I listen to, like, a full story. Because I just. I don't like half a story. I like a full story. And with that, sorry, my voice is really going as well. So I'm gonna like get my throat coat tea out, which I'll be picking up more of next time I'm in the States. So with that recommendation time before I go anywhere else, for reading, I'm gonna recommend no Bed of Her Own by Val Lytton. For watching the Maltese Falcon. Are you sensing a theme? And for listening, I'm gonna suggest Fireside Mystery Theater. It's like audio dramas, kind of like pulp noir. It's very much a vibe. And so that is that. And I will see you for part two of the Black Dahlia case very soon. Adios. Au revoir and au vui de sehr, my friends. Bye bye.
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