← Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood
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- [00:10]
MeUndies Advertiser
Flowers die in three days. Matching underwear from Meundies. That's a gift that lasts. Meundies creates matching prints for couples and friends. Same adorable designs in different cuts for each of you. All made from their signature ultra modal fabric that feels impossibly soft. With 30 million pairs sold and 90,000 five star reviews, MeUndies matching prints are the perfect gift. Valentine's Day is February 14th, so don't wait. Get exclusive deals up to 50% off at Meundies.com acast code acast that's Meundies.com acast Code acast hey, it's Raj and Noah.
- [00:53]
Raj
And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [01:00]
Noah
Because we're still doing doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [01:02]
Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [01:11]
Noah
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [01:20]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:27]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [01:35]
Katy Charlwood
Love y'.
- [01:36]
Podcast Advertiser
All.
- [01:37]
Katy Charlwood
Influencer marketing isn't what it used to be. We're shifting from reach to resonance, from impressions to impact. It's no longer about how many people see your content. It's how deeply you connect with them. And nothing creates that connection quite like podcasts. Acasts podcast pulse 2025 report reveals how podcast creators are redefining influence through resonance, multiplatform fandoms and their ability to shape culture. So if you're a marketer who's tired of vanity metrics and looking for meaningful results, podcasts are where you need to be. Download the full research free at podcast pulse2025.com. Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to who did what Now, The History podcast. That's not your history class with me, your host, Katy Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books. So it has been a month. It has been a month. And that month has felt like an entire fucking Year, like, so much has happened in one month. And it is filling me with fear, God, dread, and undiluted rage. Now, I don't know how else to explain it, because as a historian and sociologist who is watching events unfold on this planet, I have to say, things are not looking good, okay? And to top it all off, I was already stressed, okay? I was already stressed, and then Catherine o' Hara died. Now, I cannot explain how much this woman means to me. And you can be like, oh, parasocial, blah, blah, blah. I don't give a fuck, okay? Because I love Catherine. Oh, o'. Hara. She was amazing and creative and funny. She was so funny. And I loved her in, like, Home Alone in Beetlejuice and Best in Show in Schitt's Creek. Got me through some tough damn times, let me tell you. So when I am not recording this, I am just gonna go and watch everything. Everything Catherine o' Hara has ever been in. I don't care if it's a bit part. I just need some joy right now. Anyway, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, katie, quit your jibber jabber and fact me. And I'd love to fact you, but all of her sources are actually in part one. So if you haven't listened to part one, you're gonna want to go do that. So let's get a bit more information on the timeline leading up to Elizabeth Short's death. So we have Elizabeth Shorts, life, really, in the last episode. And this episode is Elizabeth Short's death. I wasn't intentionally splitting them thusly, but the chips just fell where they may. And so, without further ado. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then let's begin. And yes, welcome to the second half of the Black Dahlia. Okay, that was not actually an intentional pun, but we're just gonna leave it in there because life, guys, life. If you haven't listened to part one, I'm gonna suggest that you get all caught up and then come back after. And I'm going to say it now, but the last episode was much gentler because I'm going to be discussing the crime scene, Elizabeth Short's injuries, and what information has been deduced about her torture and murder. Now, I say, what information has been deduced because of. Although I have. We have information, some limited information from the actual reports. We also have modern forensic and criminal analysis, but we do not have certain pieces of information. These have still been withheld from the public. Whether they have been lost forever or whether they're in somebody's trunk. Whoms to say, but that's where we are. As always, I will be as clinical as possible when describing the information regarding injuries sustained pre and postmortem. But if that is too much for you, I'm going to suggest that you exit stage left and we'll see you next time, okay? Same bat time, same bat channel. So on the morning of February 15th of January, 1947, Mrs. Bertie Berzinger was walking south down the west side of Norton Avenue with her three year old daughter Anne. And as she's walking, something pale catches her eye. It sort of through the tall grass on an empty lot in the 3, 800 block. Now, it wasn't just, you know, stuff was there? Like there was things kicking about, they were sort of rubbish or strewn like trash. There was trash all about for my American friends. So there was like rusted old bed frames and just litter and just stuff, you know, debris. And so it wasn't unusual for her to walk down this street and see things just in that general area. And vacant lots like this weren't unusual throughout the city either, because Los Angeles was a booming city and it had been growing, but the infrastructure was yet to catch up. Housing had been put on hold during the Second World War. And all over la there were residential areas with both homes and empty lots. In Norton alone, some houses were built like in Norton alone, some houses were built as early as 1942, while others weren't constructed until the mid-50s. In fact, on that vacant lot, the very one that was catching Mrs. Berzinger's eye, a home would not be built that until 1956. 3825 South Norton Avenue. Like now, I believe this to be that specific lot just with the information, you know, provided between the newspapers and the case notes themselves and from the coroner's inquest, like that seems to be the spot. Oh, and as far as I can see, it's currently priced at under a million dollars. Just there's just a fact for you. At first Mrs. Berzinger thought that someone had dumped a mannequin or a tailor's dummy. But as she grew closer and it came into view, it was very clear that this was not a mannequin. It is never ever a mannequin. It was in fact the body of a woman cut in half just feet off of the sidewalk. Feet as in inches and feet, not feet as in the bodily appendage. I feel the need to confirm that because it was clear that this was a corpse on the side of the street. The mother scoops up her daughter and bolted to the nearest home and use their telephone to call the police. She calls the university division at the lapd, and they send one squad car down. The two officers see quite squarely that this is a dead body inches from the sidewalk, and call it in. This is the most widely accepted timeline of events, but for the sake of a fully rounded understanding of the scene, we have to consider all the information. If you've seen the crime scene photographs, you'll see that the body is as inches from the sidewalk. Right? You can go look them up. And the thing is, there were so many reporters at the scene, so many photographers along with, like, the crime scene photographers. You have like, every angle. Like, you can see this from across the street. You can see it from the sidewalk. You can see it from the grass of the vacant lot. Like, you have probably one of the best documented crime scenes. I mean, it's tarnished completely because, you know, people are walking all over it. But anyway, so there was an interview with Betty Louise Berzinger at the ripe old age of 101. And in this interview, she claims that when she approached the vacant lot, she saw something pale in the long grass and weeds. And it was about 12ft from the sidewalk, not inches feet, that it was just, like, further in the garden or say garden in the sort of grassy lot. And she actually had to go into the grass. Like, she had to step off the sidewalk to look at it. Like, she was like, what is that? And took a few steps, and she saw the top half of a torso, but the back of it, not the front. And she still thought it was a mannequin and pushing a stroller, walked calmly to the nearest home and called the LAPD from there. And she did it to warn them as she was worried that it might scare the children. You know, because it's a street, you know, it's quite a busy residential area, and as a throughpass, it's quite busy. And so kids would cycle their bike and they'd go past, and, like, she would see this, and she was like, oh, I don't want to scare these kids. And that's about that. And she goes along with her day. And according to this version of events, the body was face down, half hidden by weeds, and was then moved closer to the sidewalk by the next people on the scene, Frank S. Perkins and William E. Fitzgerald. I also want to confirm that you'll see sometimes it, you know, put down as Wayne Fitzgerald. It's William. His name is William Fitzgerald. If you look at any of the LAPD Information. It's William. So on the one hand, this situation, if it's like this, this would explain a few things, like why the dispatcher thought, you know, to send one squad car, not homicide, to the 390. A stuporous drunk. Right? That's the code. Code 390 is the code for a stuporous drunk. Somebody who's all boozed up and they're just kind of Jack Sparrowing their way through the streets. Right. It would explain also why the body wasn't noticed nearly 11am on a busy Los Angeles street. Sun Opera at this time was about 6am People would have driven past, children cycled to school, etc. Etc. On the other hand, this was a discussion with a centennial woman. The human memory is unreliable. In fact, this is actually a fun fact. Or maybe not so fun. I don't know if this is fun for you. It was fun for me. We don't remember the memory. We remember the last time we remembered that memory. Like a photocopy of a photocopy. And eventually for most people, it gets fuzzy. You know, a drawing of a drawing is never quite the same. And, you know, it had been over 70 years. And there's always the possibility that this was a way of her dealing with it and being okay with it, that she never actually thought she saw a dead body. It was actually further away, it was hidden in the weeds. You know, that's a consideration, like making the memory more palatable over the years, you know. And if it is true, then what this does is it throws, you know, some of the criminology up in the air. Because a lot of what we base the criminology on is the very specific posing of Elizabeth Short's body. Now, I am both dubious and curious, but I do think perspective is necessary also. In addition, furthermore, we don't have tapes of the recordings, only the alleged transcript by a reality TV producer turned writer. Consider it. But Pinchas Salt, you know, Pinchas salt. So with this theory, the two officers who arrived on the scene would have moved the body from the depths of the vacant lot, moved it closer to the sidewalk, and then flipped it round the right way, thus posing the body in this position, which again, changes a lot of her criminology. Curious and dubious. Sorry, one more thing, actually, because he. I read. I read the damn book, right? He says in this interview, like, he's like, why didn't you tell people before? And she's like, nobody asked. And I'm like, I feel like they did. I feel like they would have If. If, you know, oh, you're the person who discovered the Black Dahlia, people would question. People would ask you, right? Whether or not you wanted to answer would be a different thing. But I feel like people would ask that question because we are nosy, okay? We're a nosy bunch, okay? That's what we're like. And I just. I just don't think it's right. I just feel like it's another little twist and a little push to try and sell books, but that's because I am a skeptic. And another thing, okay? A lot of the crime scene photos, they are taken very close to the victim in black and white cameras. So, like, it's not always going to be the best quality, obviously, degradation over time as well. So you've got these photos, and a lot of them are very, very close. Now, there are other photos of this scene that are further back. And, like, from the road, you might not necessarily see the body. You might see some things there, but it might not catch your eye. You know, I would notice more things as a passenger of a car than the drivers would a lot of the time because I noticed that a lot of drivers don't notice things on the side of the road because, you know, they're actually looking at it, you know, to drive. So it's just one of those things. I don't drive, so I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me. But you look at the road, right? You're not looking at the houses and the. You know, a place that's known to have trash at the. Trash at the side of the road. Like, that's not a thing. Is that a thing? I feel like that's not a thing. But if people are sort of minding their own business and they're going along the road, then I can understand them not seeing the body. But if someone's on the sidewalk, on that sidewalk, especially on the other side of the road, you wouldn't necessarily spot it, I don't believe. But on this side, that's when you'd come across it. And I feel like that's something to take into consideration in this area. So either way, with this phone call, like. Yeah, because the other version with the phone call is she sees the body, she goes up and she gets into the house, and she's sort of panicked and distressed. I covered this in the last week's episode, and she's sort of stressed and whatnot. And because of this, there's, you know, a miscommunication, and that's where the Squad car gets sent instead of homicide. But either way, Betty makes the call. And the communication officer sends a patrol car. Unit 34, Frank S. Perkins, number 4057, and William E. Fitzgerald, 3940, show up at the crime scene. Again, his name is William, not Wayne. Because I checked the LAPD officer's memorandum, okay? I looked it up. Fun fact. Also, did you know there are less archival files available on the FBI archives for the Black Dahlia than the Texarkana moonlight murders? So the Texarkana Moonlight Murders has 11, 18 sort of documents in the archive. The Black Dahlia has 204. Like much, much less. Now, I don't know if just less things were sent to the FBI or this is just. It's just. It's just interesting. And I know this because I read them. So Perkins and Fitzgerald, they arrive at 11:09. So Betty, timeline. Betty leaves her house at 10:30. It's about. Almost 11 by the time she sees the body, gets to the next house, makes the phone call 1109, right? They see it, and pretty sharpish, they request backup five minutes later. Now, I saw someone query, like, why did it take a whole five minutes to radio for backup? First of all, these are not homicide detectives, let alone seasoned ones, right? They're expecting to find a drunkard swanning about. Instead, it is a mutilated, bisected corpse of what looks like to be a teenage girl. That's gonna be hard on anybody. So they call it in and reporters are on the scene before homicide hour. Both Aggie Underwood and Will Fowler claim to be the first on the scene. Right? Will Fowler, actually, in his book, he says that he was, you know, the first one on the scene. And he tells his photographer, Pedro, he says, oh, no, no, the girl's cut in half. And so he ends up being, you know, showing some respect and closes her eyes. Now, I understand forensics are not where. Where you know, we are now, however, don't touch the corpse. I feel like don't touch the body is a very basic thing when that body is definitely of a dead person, okay? Especially one who appears to have been murdered. Now, the whole thing is like life saving techniques are always necessary. But again, mutilated, bisected corpse, okay? You're not saving anybody. And it's like, oh, I closed her eyes. You know how they close the eyes of a corpse, right? They put pins in there. That's how they do it, okay? And the thing is, like, to close a person's eyes, you they. You really should be doing it, like if it's close to death and you sort of gently close the eyes and you hold them there for a while, then they might, they might stay there. Most of the time they will open, like, at least a little bit, right? At least slightly. Most of the time they're gonna just like a little bit of a boing up. I feel like you're not. You're not closing those eyes, but also don't touch the fucking body. So back to the press contaminating the crime scene. See, press would show up to crime scenes all the time trying to get the scoop right. You can see the crime scene photos and again, it's really useful because we can see the layout, but also, no, because, again, crime scene contamination. And like in those crime scene photos, you can see all of the reporters that have shown up. So you basically just have this massive, massive, just group of just watchers at this point, just watching this situation. Now, again, people are nosy. So the coroner arrived and noted that the body was 54ft from the fire hydrant. So again, that's where it makes that 3825 house. That's why I think it's that location. The body was posed, the arms akimbo, bent at the elbow and raised above the shoulders. Kind of like a dancer's pose. Or if you lie back on a bed and you put your arms like above your head, sort of like kind of sexy. It actually lifts the bosom up if you put your hands above your head, which I think is why it's such a prominent, sort of schmuckshy, sultry pose. So she's posed in this very open, very submissive way. Her hair was matted with blood. The face was covered in bruises and lacerations. She had cuts from the corner of her mouth into her cheeks and nearly at her ears. So they say there are cuts from the corner of her mouth into her cheeks. Now, they actually refer to this at the time as they call it a Glasgow smile, Right, which is supposed to be a technique for splitting, splitting the. The mouth. Now, I would actually know that as a Chelsea grin. So the Chelsea grin is a very sharp, high grin and it can be done by. No, I'm not going to tell you how to do it, actually. I'm not going to tell you how to cut someone's mouth open. On top of this, her front teeth were missing. There were ligature marks on her wrists, ankles and neck. The liver was hanging out of the torso. The top half was more than 12 inches, like a foot apart from the Bottom half, but not directly. It was asymmetrical, so the bottom was a little to the right of the top. Like if you're facing the body so effectively. Her left side was further out. The lower half was mutilated. Cut to the pubic region. Lacerations on her thigh and her intestines had been tucked neatly under her buttocks. Rigor mortis had not set in. Lividity was observable on the top half of the body. For the sake of modesty, the victim was covered with a blanket, although I suspect that it was more to make the murder more printable. You can't exactly put a naked body on the front page of a 1940s newspaper. By covering her with a blanket, it made it more newspaper friendly. Aggie Underwood noted a male heel print bloody near the scene. Like they mention. They mentioned tire tracks too, but no one takes a photo of them. So like there's tire tracks near the scene and like a muddy heel print with blood in it. Like it's there. It's there. The evidence at the crime scene is minimal. There's. And there's something like very important missing blood. There are a few drops on the sidewalk, but if the murder occurred at the location, there would be blood all over. All over the crime scene. Because that's a bisected body. The body was drained of blood before being deposited at the crime scene. So that meant the murder must have happened elsewhere and then the body brought here. Like they do find as they're searching the area, a bag, an empty bag of Ajax brand cement with a few drops of blood on it. Detectives Harry Hansen and Finnis Brown, they get assigned to the case and like detectives, they actually end up making a human perimeter around the crime scene just because so many people are showing up and they need to protect it. So they're like, we need to actually block off this area. Like so human wall. Uniformed officers were sent out to canvas the area, searching for information and clues. Reporters got a sketch of the victim and chased their own leads about Jane Doe number one. While canvassing, several residents reported seeing a dark or black 1930s Ford sedan. So I think most of them say it was like a 36 or 37, that it was near the crime scene early in the morning between like 6:30 and 7:00am Everyone was also searching for the woman who called in, but. But it would take them 10 days to find Mrs. Betty Louise Ber. Like, okay, sidebar. One of the things they used to do in the old papers was recreate scenarios. So there are photos of her on the telephone. She's got her hair done, she's in a fur coat, right? And also, like, so she's holding the phone and also she's kind of hot. Like, I'm like looking at this woman going, wow, Betty Petty's got it going on. God, she's, she's gorgeous. Uh, listen, don't mind me. Just thirsting over centennial women here. So they would, like, post. You can see these photos. Like, they're great. They're like, they're my favorite type of, like, recreation photos. But everyone's like, super dolled up and, oh, it's fabulous. So back to the case. That evening, the victim's fingerprints were sent to the FBI via sound photo. Like, this was covered in our last episode. So if you want more details on that sound photo is basically an old type of fax mail. So fax machine, which is like an old timey scanner. And while that's going on, Los Angeles County Coroner Frederick Newbar performed the autopsy on the 16th of January, 1947. Frederick Newbar, the county coroner, noted that the victim was 5 foot 5 inches tall and weighed around 115 pounds, had brown hair dyed with henna, and her teeth were badly decayed, front teeth missing. So the victim had a description, a sketch. But thanks to the LA examiner, she also had a name. Elizabeth Short. Out of over 104 million files, Beth Short's prints are found twice. The first being her job application at Camp Cook, and the other for when she was arrested for underage drinking in 1943. So Elizabeth Short, who they initially thought was 15 or 16, was 22. The LAPD have a deal with the examiner thanks to the whole use of the sound photo machine situation. Basically, the LAPD kind of got extorted and the paper got first dibs on inflammation. So one of the reporters calls Beth Short's mum, Phoebe Short, and gets all this info from her, right? Because he rings her up and he tells her that Elizabeth has won a beauty contest. And like, once he's got this information, like one of the other reporters is like, what the actual fck are you doing? Like, you need to tell her. And after that he just basically goes, yeah, your daughter was murdered. Actually, like, he doesn't tell her. Like, he gets all this information and then he goes, oh, yeah, and she's dead, the prick. And it wasn't until later on either that this was confirmed by the lapd. So they told her first, okay. And so she ends up maintaining, like really good composure during this because this is shocking information. And then the lapd, they inform her, and the examiner just ends up offering to fly her out, like, to Los Angeles. And they do this, obviously, because they want to get to her first, but they make it seem like, oh, look, we're sorry. We're helping you. Prick.
- [31:46]
Podcast Advertiser
Flowers die in three days. Matching underwear from Meundies. That's a gift that lasts. Meundies creates matching prints for couples and friends. Same adorable designs and different cuts for each of you, all made from their signature ultramodal fabric that feels impossibly soft. With 30 million pairs sold and 90,000 five star reviews, MeUndies matching prints are the perfect gift. Valentine's Day is February 14th, so don't wait. Get exclusive deals up to 50% off at MeUndies.com acast code acast that's MeUndies.com acast Code acast hey, it's Raj and Noah.
- [32:21]
Raj
And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [32:29]
Noah
Still doing a lot of stuff wrong, but who isn't?
- [32:31]
Raj
That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [32:39]
Noah
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right so the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [32:48]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:55]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're gonna have full video episodes on YouTube, because as long as there things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [33:15]
Katy Charlwood
And now the autopsy. Something I want to make clear is we do not have a copy of the 1947 autopsy report. That information is not on file, at least not an accessible one anyway. The LAPD have never released the official autopsy on Elizabeth's short. All we have are snippets of information that we've received from, you know, the files that have actually been uploaded and discussions and interviews with people who had previously worked on the case. Like that is what we have. We do not have the original 1947 autopsy report. We do have the coroner's inquest and things like that too. But just to be clear, we don't have that information. So, yes, Frederick Neubar's autopsy on Elizabeth Short on 16 January 1947. Victim was 5 foot 5, approximately 115 pounds. Dark brown hair, coloured with henna. Light green eyes. So gray. Green often comes up when describing Elizabeth Short's eyes. You may see people say that they're blue. They weren't blue. They were sort of a very light green, almost a gray green. Kind of like mine, actually. Okay, that's. Yeah. Cuts went from the side of the mouth, not to the ears. Like people say they go like almost at the ears, they stop. Basically where the jawbones connect. Like this is visible from the autopsy photographs, especially the ones that are taken side on of Beth Short's head. Superficial lacerations on the face, also forehead and on the right side of the scalp. It is bruised. Front teeth are broken. Many other teeth in the mouth had cavities. Some were even black. Ligature marks were present on the neck, wrists and ankles. These were light ligature marks. She was not strung up by these, which I think is going to be relevant later. This was more of a bound down situation. There was a scar present, a three and a half inch scar on the right side of her back, presumably from lung surgery. Sidebar. Again, we know that she had lung surgery. We do not have documentation regarding what type. Now, I do believe, okay, that we can probably rule out pneumonectomy, the removal of a lung. As you know, both are listed in the autopsy. Thoracoplasty, which is the removal of ribs to collapse a lung because. Still got all the ribs. A lobectomy. Nope. Because neither of the lung lobes are missing. They're both accounted for. Most likely given her scar and you know, the pleural adhesions on her lungs, I'd say it's either probably like artificial pneumothorax, which is like a lung collapse therapy or sort of drainage. Lung drainage. So the right forearm had superficial incised laceration. So they're shallow and they're linear. And the left upper arm had similar cuts. So these are controlled cuts that showed no tearing, crushing or deep penetration. So it's not getting near the muscle. It is very much going through that sort of dermis and epidermis. Yeah. The right breast. So you see it more again on the crime scene and autopsy photos. Right. There's what I can only describe as an irregular laceration with superficial tissue loss. This means that the cut removed surface tissue, not just splitting the skin. However, it did not penetrate deeply into the chest cavity. One side of the cut is quite smooth and the other is fluted. Now, okay, I've seen similar when you're cutting skin from meat. So if you pull it quite taut and then cut one side. So when you're pulling it up, so one side's going to be a smooth cut and the other side is going to be more fluted or maybe even like puckering. You could even call it on the other side. So the right nipple is also missing. So it could be surmised, according to this evidence, that the nipple was pulled and then sliced off. Like there's actually quite a lot of breast tissue missing. So it seems like there was pulled and then cut. This injury was sustained close to death, so it was definitely pre mortem, but it was very close to death. There are superficial incised wounds to the skin and subcutaneous tissue of the thoracic wall. So the lower left chest, this was a deliberate placement and did not enter the rib cage or damage internal organs. It is very much on the outside. So when you see superficial, superficial cuts, it just means that it's on the top of the skin. It didn't go that deep. Okay. A large incised wound, a 4 and a half inch cut was from the navel. So the belly button running vertically down to the pubic region. This again was a deliberate controlled cut, like the breast laceration, arm lacerations and the chest wall cuts. These are precise, they're not exploratory. This is intentional mutilation. The killer had time and they had time, and these happened very close to her death. Lividity present on the upper part of the body and upper thigh suggested that the victim was placed face down for some time post mortem. So if the body was placed down for some time, this would lead credence to that initial sort of plot twice theory that we had earlier about Betty, that the body was upside down, but the body could have just been placed in certain ways for ease, especially if you're trying to do certain things. Body was bisected post mortem. This also resulted in the intestines being cut at the duodenum. The anal canal was dilated by 1 and 3 quarter inches. They tested for seminal fluid and sperm. However, no sperm was found in the Amos. This suggested foreign object penetration. Her pubic hair was shaved and found inside the anal canal. The victim had a rose tattoo on her leg. This had been carved off of her body and found within the vagina. The area where the pubic hair had been shaved was cut in a crisscross fashion, like cross hatching. When you're drawing, like when you're shading it kind of has that effect. Now I'm a pointillism gal. I, I've never been a cross hatch person when it came to art. I was always pointillism when I did my, when I, when I did my shading and art. Listen, listen, that or everything was painted blue underneath because blue makes shadows. Anyway. Toenails were painted pink and the body had been cleaned, possibly with gasoline. It cannot be confirmed, but there have been reports of faecal matter and grayish brown substance within Elizabeth Short's stomach. All organs are present and accounted for. The womb was small. Like, that's pretty standard. I mean, she's only 5 5. And if she had a small frame, like, like she's described as having a very neat frame. A very small person is going to have smaller organs. But yeah, so she had a small womb, body bisected at the waist, severed through vertebrae. There is no evidence. Okay, here we go. There is no evidence the pubic region was underdeveloped, nor were there cigarette burns on her body. The autopsy also confirmed that Elizabeth Short was not pregnant at the time of death, nor had she ever been pregnant. Cause of death was believed to be shock and hemorrhaging from the deep cuts on her face. Right. Something I always find interesting about this specifically is that there's no mention of those broken front teeth. Like, we know that the teeth are broken, but there's no mention of them like in the mouth or the throat. Like they're not, you know, stuck in the esophagus or the trachea or in the stomach contents. Like they're just gone. So the bisection of the body, which. Okay, first of all, it appears that the body was in a recumbent, like a semi recumbent position. So like almost kind of, kind of sitting, but kind of lying down, like if you're in a bath, you know, and that the body was cut this way, which honestly just makes a lot of sense because a trough, like an animal trough, like the big long one or like a bath would make a lot more sense because it would hold the blood, it would drain it like that. Just. It's just logical really, isn't it? Like it's control. So, and also the bisection of the body, the cutting in two, is often credited to be being by someone who has medical training. Now I think this theory exists because there was a popular procedure at the time called a hemicopectomy. Right. And this was the amputation of the body below the waist, transecting the lumbar spine. Right. While the person is still alive. And so there was a lot of things so you would be removing, like, intestines and genitals. And so there's a lot of work to do. And it was a very new and interesting procedure because they were doing it and people were living through it like they were surviving. And so when this is happening at the same time and this person is also found cut in half, well, I mean, correlation does not equal causation, but you can see where they made that leap. Right. And I think also as well is there's an assumption that if somebody's going to, you know, treat a body like it's meat, if someone's happy to just cut into it and treat a human like that, that there's a. An assumption that that's how they just perceive a body as a body, not as a human, like a human person body. That it's just something that needs to be done, a task as opposed to a person. So here's. Here's my tuppen's worth, right? You do not need medical training to use a sharp knife to cut through a corpse. Granted, a surgeon could do it, but so could any decent hunter, a butcher, a vet, even a farmer, a slaughterhouse worker or a cook. Right, right. Or throwing this out there, just someone who'd had practice. Right? Those serial killers who start off like hurting animals. Like, if you're trying to cut a body, like, you cut it at the smallest part, right? The easy part, which is the waist. The waist is the smallest part. You don't want to cut through the ribs because the ribs are bone, the hips are bone. So the easiest part is when you get to the spine. The reason you go through the vertebrae is because that's the bits that move, right. You don't want. You don't want to try and hack through the bone when you can go through the bit that's coming apart anyway, you know. So again, the manner in which the body is cut in half suggests that it was almost seated. Again, like that bathtub idea. The body was drained of blood and clean. Now, I don't know if this was like an intentional insanguination, like a deliberate, like, we need to drain the body of blood situation, or whether this was just a practical aspect, like you're gonna lose blood in. The body wasn't completely drained of blood. It wasn't completely insanguinated anyway. So a lot of blood loss is going to happen when you bisect a body. Like you cut a body in half. Like, blood's going to come out of both ends. You Know, but there's going to be, like, reservoirs of blood throughout the body. It's just going to kind of be around now. And that's where you get that sort of blood spatter, like, on the sidewalk and things like that. So, like, there's a theory as well that the Ajax, like, the bloody bag that the body was transported in, like, two cement bags, where is the other one? Did one blow away? Like, could it have nothing to do with the case whatsoever? Very possibly. So there is a ritual aspect to this because the body is cleaned now you're watching it for fingerprints because that's really all they had. I mean, they didn't have DNA testings, but they. They knew, like, oh, they could tell of, you know, what a blood type was, like, whether it was ab. Like, Elizabeth Short had AB blood blood type. But, you know, fingerprints is what they're looking out for, you know, and the question is, why cut out her tattoo? Is it removing an identifier, like, which, if that's your plan, you put it inside her. So is this a sort of humiliation ritual? So even in death, you know, and it's this sort of sexual sadism and this concept of shame, which is even the way the body is posed. It's posed, legs spread, arms akimbo. A very submissive and a very shameful position to put a woman in, especially in this society. And it's also, look at what I did. You know, there's that sort of side of it, too. The killer then took the time, both with the torture, the cleaning, the posing, and the body again, wasn't just dumped. Like, it wasn't a quick chuck it here. That is a deliberate posing that is trying to shock, that is trying to get attention. And this was a murder the likes of which had not been seen in Los Angeles. It was grem e.
- [49:48]
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- [50:29]
Raj
Hey, it's Raj and Noah and we're back with a new season of Am I doing it wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [50:38]
Noah
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [50:40]
Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics we we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [50:49]
Noah
We'll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [50:58]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [51:05]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're gonna have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're gonna be right here to help you do em better.
- [51:13]
Katy Charlwood
Love y Even for the streets of Sin City, Sergeant Finnis Brown and Detective Harry Hansen were assigned the case by Captain Jack Donahoe. But this investigation was bigger than this. It was huge. In fact it was massive. Right? There were over 750 investigators from the LAPD, 400 from the Sheriff's Department and 250 California State Patrol officers involved in this. Right. And this becomes one of the largest investigations undertaken by the lapd like especially in this era. And within hours of Elizabeth Short's discovery, police pecked up Cecil French at a downtown bus station. 23 year old Cecil was arrested on a morals charge, which is old timey speak for sexually assaulting a woman at the bus station. The LAPD had definitely deemed Elizabeth Short's murder as a sexual crime. And so this very suspicious to them. Number one, the second very suspicious thing about Cecil French was that the backseat of his car had been removed. And when police searched the vehicle they thought they saw blood splatter in the car. But police chemist Ray Pinker tested the vehicle and came out empty handed. And there was still the matter at this point of officially identifying Elizabeth Short. The Los Angeles examiner, yes, owned by the Hearst Newspaper Corps, paid to fly Phoebe, Beth's mother, to Los Angeles. They did this to keep themselves in the loop, to make sure they had the Scoop. And on the 18th of January 1947, Phoebe Short and Virginia west and Virginia's husband Adrian travelled to the city. Phoebe and Jenny didn't want to go into the morgue. They didn't want to go in and identify Elizabeth. They wanted to remember her as she was, not what had happened to her. But a formal identification had to be made. Adrian and Ginny had been married, but he didn't know Beth, so he couldn't do it. And so Phoebe and Virginia, they entered the morgue and they confirmed that this was their daughter and their sister. The examiner had also managed to. And I'm going to say it, manipulate Phoebe into providing letters written to her by her daughter. These were often filled with falsehoods. Now, these are usually used to portray Beth Short as a liar, but I think it's more nuanced than that. It's a girl writing to her mother and letting her know that things were going better than they were. And, like, I wouldn't consider it a lie, per se. It's just like the Tooth Fairy, a little bit of dusting, of optimism. She talked about meeting a pilot in Florida and that she was gonna marry him. She talked about getting a job here and working there. Like that she had been an extra on a film and that she had been and doing some waitressing and doing this and that, and. And she wrote to her mother fairly often. Now, there was a few weeks, and then two weeks before her death, Beth wrote to Phoebe that she got a job in a naval hospital in San Diego. It was around about this time that Beth had told many of her acquaintances that she was going to go to Berkeley. Now, Jenny and Adrian west, they lived in Berkeley, and so Phoebe stayed with them to plan Beth's funeral. And so eventually, they would travel together and they would bury Elizabeth Short. The examiner, with info of Beth's last known whereabouts, sent reporter Tommy Devlin to San Diego. He managed to find Elvira and Dorothy French, who Beth was staying with in San Diego. Dorothy shared that Beth had stayed with them from, like, the 8th or 9th of December, 1946, and then left on the 8th of January, 1947. So Dorothy, she actually worked in a movie theater. So she was there, and she noticed that people would buy late tickets to the theater and they would sleep there, like it was a very common thing. And when Elizabeth Short had arrived and she had her luggage and her hat box, like, she's like, okay, yeah, she's gonna do this. And so she's like, hey, don't sleep in the movie theater. Come and stay on my couch. So she was supposed to be there for a night. She stayed, like a month, and eventually they just had to ask her to leave. So she had said to Dorothy that Bob, a pilot, had gotten Beth a job as a stenographer for an air transport company. On 7 January, Short received a telegram saying that he was coming to see her the telegram was signed Red. So the examiner sends a reporter to Huntington park and read the telegram. Be there tomorrow afternoon. Late stop, would like to see you. Stop, Red, stop. Police find Robert Manley, who spent a night in a motel with Betty and who drove her from San Diego to la. Red Manly also happened to be married with a four month old baby boy. The police found him because he used his real name to sign into the motel. And the manager was wise enough also to take note of the car registration plate. So the number plate of the car also, it's like a cream coloured Studebaker. It's, you know, a description of Beth Short's luggage. Her two cases in a hat box were then sent to Examiner's editor Jim Richardson, who did pass that information on to the police. They searched bus depots and railway stations and police managed to find her luggage at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Los Angeles. It had been impounded basically for lack of payment. So. And Robert Manley, he confirmed that that was her luggage. So he was taken to Hollenbeck Station, where a witness claimed that he had seen Beth and Red at Union station on 14 January, the day before the body was found. So this is actually really important because the coroner says that Beth Short died around about 10 hours before she was discovered. So within 24 hours, definitely, but 10 hours is their sort of typical guess. Now, within that, if she had, you know, that's within 10 hours the body was cut and cleaned, transported and posed. So, yeah, 14th of January, this guy, I think it's William, his name is, and he's like, oh, I definitely saw him. And there was an argument between him and the Dahlia. Now, a woman would later come forward to state that it was her, not Beth, that had been seen that day chatting to another man with red hair. So Red was charged with the murder of Elizabeth Short. He was brought into station, he was questioned and he was cooperative with the police. He took a series of lie detector tests, which I know now we're like, you know, they're not a thing, it's not a real thing. It's just a stress indicator more than anything else. Like, it's not the kind of thing that's admissible in court. But Red, he's doing all these lie detector tests, he passes them all and like he's being questioned so much and he's staying up that he ends up like falling asleep during the lie detector tests. Like when they're doing it, he's just crashing, just crashing out, just out of it, because he's so tired. Right. Which of all the times to fall asleep hooked up to a lie detector, is an interesting one. Meanwhile, authorities are combing through Los Angeles searching for a torture dungeon or a murder room. Now, okay, I'm just saying, wouldn't the most logical place to hide blood as a place where there's loads of blood, like a slaughterhouse? Wouldn't like a slaughterhouse be the most reasonable place? A surgery, like an actual surgery, like those two places, places where you expect that to be. It just. I'm just saying, like a slaughterhouse is my bet because it's very easy to hide that there. But if the body was drained, which again, maybe more for like a practical side of things, because trying to move a whole body is difficult, especially depending on the type of car you have, because you have to be able to hide it and transport it. I'm just. I'm just floating ideas. So Red was officially the last person seen with Beth. And he had an alibi for the night of the 14th. Playing cards. On the 21st of January, six days after the body was discovered, the Examiner's editor got a phone call, allegedly saying, telling him to expect souvenirs. Three days later, a package addressed to the Los Angeles examiner and other Los Angeles papers is found. Basically, there's this mailroom clerk and she's looking at this stuff and she sees this and she's like, that's suspicious, right? It's a bit weird. And so this gets brought up. And inside was a series of documents and other items belonging to Elizabeth Short. It had Beth Short's birth certificate, photos of Beth with like various companions. So like different, like soldiers and airmen and things like that. Her Social Security card, a gold embossed address book with several pages torn out. And it had the initials MH on it. So it actually belonged to Mark Hansen. We discussed him in the previous episode. There were business cards, obituary clippings of Major Matt Gordon, and a note to the press with newspaper cuttings that read like, you know, that's sort of the serial killer writing. Of the cut out letters from the newspaper, it said, here is Dahlia's belongings. Letter to follow. So everything had been cleaned with gasoline, and there were partial fingerprints, but nothing really usable. I should note, actually, seeing as we're talking about Beth's possessions, that the contents of Beth Shorts, two cases and the hatbox have never been disclosed. Like, we don't know what possessions were in those two cases. And her hat box, we don't know what that evidence is. Two days later, another letter arrived and it read, here it is. Turning it n wid January 29, 10:00am had my fun at police. Black Dahlia avenger. So that one's in sort of scratchy handwriting. It's in capital letters. And so they go, they wait for him. He doesn't show. And then another newspaper cutout appears like another postcard, and it's have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing justified. Now, here's the thing. This case was huge. It was big News. And the LAPD had, I think, all in all, like, 192 suspects. Like, and that's in the initial investigation. But with all of this, notoriety leads to false leads, dead ends, and false confessions, right? So, my goodness, the same day as well that the examiner got this letter, a handbag and black suede shoe were spotted on top of this garbage can in this alley two miles from the murder scene, right? So, like, the guy who owns the restaurant, he's out back, and he sees it, and he calls it in because it's a weird thing. Like, this should not be there. So he calls it in. The police come. But when the police come, the garbage had been collected and it been taken to the dump. Okay? So they go there. The cops go there, and they start, like, looking through the trash, and they find it. They find this shoe, and they find the handbag, right? So it wasn't there before, it wasn't there earlier in the day, and then it just showed up. Okay, so red manly. He confirmed that these were her belongings. And he's even like, oh, this still smells like her perfume. Like, it hasn't been at a trash site. It's been at the dump. Okay, and you're telling me that it smells like her perfume anyway? Not get into it. I'm not gonna get into it. Okay, so her friends as well, people who knew her, they're like, that's not her bag. That's not her shoes. And this dude's like, definitely, yeah. Okay. Like, there's. There's actual photos of it, by the way. You can see the photos of him just, like, smoking a cigarette and holding the bag, which is just not how one collects evidence. The chain of evidence. If there was DNA on it, it's not there now. I mean, it's obviously contaminated by, like, the whole dump situation, but also. So back to Elizabeth Short. On the 25th of January, 1947, Elizabeth Short was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. Now, she was laid to rest, but what about her killer? But before we go into suspects properly, I want to talk about this whole letter writing scenario. Like, I am a suspicious person, especially when it comes to media. So as many of you know, my expertise is in sensationalism, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda and the late modern period. So a lot of what I do focuses on to the newspapers is quite a big part of that. So I feel like this might be taking a leaf out of, out of the Jack the Ripper scenario because it's not entirely dissimilar to the Dear Boss letter. So the Dear Boss scenario, where a reporter, like we, we've kind of all assessed now from the information that it was probably a reporter who wrote the Dear Boss letter. And so it was sent into the newspapers and the police and, you know, quote, effects would start showing up in people's livers and whatnot. But it was just a sort of tactic by the newspapers to just keep the story going and to sell more papers. And I feel like this, this initially could be something like that. That being said, there's always a possibility of people who try and insert themselves into investigations and they try and taunt and showboat. There's all these different options. But I. Again, dubious. Okay, dubious. So, suspects, first of all, Cecil French, he's out sexually assaulting women in bus stations and the back of his car is missing and he's like, oh, it's for actually collecting furniture. And what do you know, his alibi actually checks out. Then of course, we have Robert Manley, the last known person seen with Beth Short. What's interesting as well is he calls her Betty, right? He calls her Betty. And Elizabeth, she would have been called Betty when she was younger, but as she got older, preferred to be called Beth. So as she got older, she would change it. But for this man, he called her Betty, like, which is a little. I just thought it was interesting that she chose that name with him specifically. So he had an alibi for the agreed time of death and for the time that the body was left on South Norton Avenue. Like he has an alibi for both of those situations. Now, was he a shit person also? Yes. Everybody here is bad, by the way. So, like you've got, got Cecil there who's just again, Moral Crimes. And then you've got Robert Manley here who cheats on his, you know, wife of less than a year who has a four month old baby. And he's like, oh, it was just like a test to see if I loved my wife. And it's like, all right, red you. Even though he says he Says they kissed. Like. Like he kissed her. And she's, like, responding, quote, in the normal way, if a little cold, right? But they never have sex. And I'm inclined to believe that because of what her friends say. Like, or even people who don't like her. Like, there are girls who roomed with her, and they're like, oh, well, she used to lead men on a little bit, and she would try and, like, flirt and whatnot, but she never, never actually had sex with them. And it's like, okay, cool. And like, one of the theories, again, that you'll see floating about is that she didn't have sex because she had underdeveloped genitals. And, no, that's not the case. She had perfectly normal genitals. She just maybe didn't have sex. Maybe that just wasn't something she did. Or maybe floating the idea asexual, just putting it out there. Nobody ever considers that fact. Anyway. Anyway, maybe she just was not interested in sex. So here's the thing about the address book that was sent in. It had, I think, 95 names on it. And so detectives, they're just looking through all of these names. They're ticking them all off. They're trying to find them all because they think it's highly probable that these are connected to Elizabeth Short. So they're checking everybody out. Boyfriends, friends, acquaintances, just everybody who may have known her, everybody on this address book. Another suspect was Mark Hanson. He was a nightclub owner, and he sort of had sort of sneaky dealings. He had been separated from his wife at this point. He was Danish, I believe, and he rented basically cheap, cheap sort of beds in his house and this little bungalow he had. And he rented room out for girls who were down on their luck. And it was very, like, embarrassing to stay with him. And allegedly he would, you know, approach the women there and shag him effectively. Just abuse, really. It's just. I think it's rent. Abuse is the technical term. I feel like there is one. And so, like, we chat about him in the previous episode as well. So he allegedly didn't go near two women that had stayed there. So Anne Toth and Elizabeth Short. Now, Antoth, he was friends with her boyfriend, which is how she ended up rooming there. And Elizabeth Short, well. Well, Elizabeth Short, he had been informed, was a virgin. And he was like, I'm not doing that. Which I think is. I'm gonna kind of consider it. Like, I'm. I'm glad that you've chosen not to bother with her. So. So, like, one Thing I didn't like was girls who were drinking coming back to his bungalow. And he didn't like the kind of sorts quote, that Beth was hanging around with. So because she was always out on dates with men and he, he wasn't keen about all those men that she was hanging around with. And so there was this theory that it could have been jealousy or rejection, but there's like no evidence other than that, other than him being, you know, a creepy old landlord to anything that would link him to this crime. And also the circles that he was in, he could have very easily got rid of the 5 foot 5 women without a lot of hassle or fuss. Like he could have done it. But like this, this is something different. And then we have Dr. Walter Alonzo Bailey. So he was a surgeon in LA and his house, or he had lived in a house that was just one block south of the vacant lot where Beth Short's body was discovered. Now, I say he did live there because he had lived there up until October 1946, when he'd left his wife. So three months before Elizabeth Short was discovered. Now, his wife still lived in the home. And just, I don't know if this is a crazy, random happenstance, but his wife, or someone who had the same name as his wife was listed as a witness to the wedding of Virginia Short and Adrian West. Now, like, some weird coincidences happen. I just thought that was really weird and interesting and wanted it to share with you. Now, the thing about Walter Bailey as well is that he was in the sort of early stages of a neurological disorder, which is why some people think that he's more likely to have been involved in this. Like, you know, the reason for all of his, like, change in behavior at the time. Now, at the time, like, Bailey was never ever a suspect. He only became one sort of in later years when sort of people went back and started digging. But at the time, he was never a suspect and he was 67 at the time of the murder. And yeah, I just don't think. I don't think he was going to be lugging around a dead body. Although it would make sense to, you know, to make it lighter by severing in half. But then we have Jack Wilson, also known as Arnold Smith. So he wasn't again, named at the time. This came out later in investigative journalism. And so he was alleged to have violent tendencies and possible links to Elizabeth Short. Now, again, it's one of those things where, like, he kind of knew her. He was around. Like, was he. Do we really have that. He's just one of the ones that I just don't really hold a lot of weight with. But I'm going to mention him anyway for you. Another suspect is William Aarons. So he was a convicted serial killer who was active in Chicago and it was like around about the same era and he was rumored to have confessed to other murders and he was like loosely linked otherwise by speculation. But like it's more like. It feels more like trolling than anything else. And there is no evidence to place him in LA at the time and investigators mainly have just sort of poo pooed it. It's been dismissed. Then there's this sort of. He's like a bellhop and he wants to be a writer, but he's also wants to be a mortician's assistant, which is a very specific goal to have. So he became a suspect in 1949. So it's like a little bit later. And the theory is like he ends up being involved in the murder because like he's asked to do that by Mark Hanson. Like it's a very sort of, it's a little we things, little link. But again it's just one of those ideas that didn't really pan out. It didn't really follow through. Then we have Carl Balziger. So he's, he's another military man, right? So he had been at Camp Cook around about the same time that Elizabeth Short had been like they had overlapped a little bit. Now he had actually seen her again like in Los Angeles sort of not long before she died, you know, and he'd actually given her like a ride to the bus station and she said she was going to the Bay Area, but then she'd gone to San Diego instead. Like she kept telling people that she was going to different places and then she would just go places. Now when Elizabeth Short was murdered and when her body was discovered, he was stationed at McCord Field in Washington and there are witnesses to say that he was there. So drive to the bus station, never sees her again. He is cleared. Another suspect I want to talk about is George Knowlton. Now we don't have that much information about him apart from the fact that George, he used to live in LA and he died in like 1962. I think it's 62. He was in a car accident, but his daughter Janice, in the early 1990s was doing this recovered memories therapy because she had hysterectomy. She was feeling depressed because like your hormones go crazy when you do things like that. Like Your body dysregulates. And so therapy is one of the things they do. And I don't like recovered memory therapy because I don't necessarily think that it makes sense. I think it's very leading and it's easier to invent a situation in someone's mind. That being said, somebody could remember something, but it's, it's. I've never seen a case, really. I don't recall seeing a case where it's actually been confirmed, but I need to double check. So, Janice. So she claims that as a child, that she saw her father murder Beth Short. So he. She saw, like, the actual face cutting in murder. And I have issues with this theory, apart from the fact that I think that she has been manipulated into believing this, first of all. Secondly, she basically says that, you know, her dad had been having an affair with Beth and that who had been staying in this sort of. Oh, goodness, like in their garage. Right, her garage. They were staying in there, and she ends up having a miscarriage. So she has a miscarriage and so he kills her. Yeah, that's basically the story. Cuts her in half in the sink and then makes the daughter help him dispose of the body. Right. And that's the theory. She also says that Elizabeth Short was working for a child trafficking ring, like, procuring children for it. But if that was the case, I don't think Elizabeth Short would have been as poor as she was. Like, when she comes back to LA, she has $1 to her name. And the reason she has that $1 is, is because Dorothy French gave it to her. Like, that's it. We have another surgeon for you, Dr. Patrick Shane O'Reilly. So he was an orthopedic surgeon in LA, and he was a suspect because apparently he had, like, he was friends with people who knew Beth Short. So he knew Mark Hansen and then like some other person. So partly he was, you know, He's a surgeon. One, he's an orthopedic surgeon. Two and three, he physically assaulted his secretary in 1939. Right. He also, this is a wild one, surgically removed part of his right breast, which was similar to, you know, obviously, the slicing of Elizabeth Short's breast. But, like, he was a suspect because he was also, like, a surgeon. And so this other stuff just kind of added to it. And what's funny about him is, like, he's not even called O'Reilly. Like, he lies about who he is, his name, his place of birth. Like, he becomes like a really great surgeon. Like, he saves lives. Right. But he had changed his identity. And he was discovered, I think, like, three years ago, he was discovered to have a long history of just, like, lying. So he would just tell. Just make stuff up and just say it to, like, newspapers and to the police and so on and so forth. Another interesting subject is Norman Chandler. That is right. The publisher of the Los Angeles Times. And that's from 1945 up until 1960. Like, there's this theory that he impregnated Elizabeth Short when she was working as a sex worker. Like, there's this whole theory. Many of the theories, they revolve around her being a sex worker and. Or pregnant. She was never pregnant. So anyway, so basically, she's supposed to be working for all these people, and then she's discovered, and then this leads to. To her being murdered. Effectively. It's. Yeah, it's again, more nonsense. Then we have Leslie Dillon. So basically, he had been writing letters that basically showed, or allegedly showed detailed knowledge of the crime and discussing sort of ideas about the killer's psychology. Now, he. He could have just been, again, really interested in the case because all of the information is out there. And so he gets the polygraph test, the lie detector. He passes. And he also had an alibi for, like, all of it. He was just like, I think the killer does this. And it's like, yeah, I feel like, dude might have just been a True Crime fan. He could have done it, but there wasn't enough evidence that linked him to, like, any of it, really. Okay, so. Okay, so I do have to talk about the. The celebrity suspects idea, because there's this whole idea that it has to be someone famous. Like, it's a big thing there. It's a weird obsession that happens all through True Crime. One of them is Bugsy Siegel, the mobster, right? So he's allegedly a suspect. Well, one. He's a criminal. So if they can pin anything on him, they're just like, yeah, that'll do. It's such a weird one to pin on him specifically because he wasn't known for being violent to women necessarily. And if he was involved in the murder, like, he wouldn't have been the one to do it himself. Like, you don't get to that level of notoriety and that level of hierarchy within the mob and not have, like, people to do your dirty work for you. And, like, it's very. I mean, I know the mob of the past is at least, like, they're not afraid to do a bit of showboating and to be like, ta, da, da. Don't Fuck with us. But that it does seem, and I'm gonna say it. Overkill. Overkill. Now another. Another one. I read a theory about Orson Wells, Orson Welles. I mean. I mean, the. The man who traveled to Spain to punch fascists in the face. Another suspect was Woody Guthrie, a folk singer. Right. Basically because of, like, the letters that were sent to the press. Some believe the handwriting matched. Like, that's. That was their connection. But, yeah, then we have some false confessions, like Daniel Voorhees. So Daniel Voorhees, he said that he had met Elizabeth short back in 1941. They'd gone on a couple dates and then just sort of disappeared into the ether. So he's asked for more details. He says nothing else, but he's like, I killed Elizabeth Short. And so he's taken in. He's charged, obviously. And they're like. They're kind of suspicious about him because they don't really think he's that, but they plan a polygraph test anyway, and basically, they're waiting to see if he will recover from his bewildered and befuddled state. Like, he's not quite with it. So his confession, it's. It's not really believed by detectives. They're really, really skeptical. And he's not giving any details about how he knows Elizabeth properly or, like, about the murder. And it's just kind of like he's kind of talking in circles. Like, he's full of contradictions and confusion, and it's very much all over the place. And he was, like, known to police. Like, not known known, but he had, like, a whole list of, you know, like, offenses here and there. So, yeah, they weren't. Weren't too in on that one because, like, yeah, he couldn't even lead the police to the scene of the murder. Like, he couldn't bring them to the crime scene, either of them. Another thing that happens is that they get tips from all over the country, right? So you've got people confessing, like, for. He's here. And then you've got. You basically have this military personnel who phones the lapd like, it's officials at Fort Dix, right, in New Jersey. And basically, Joseph Dumay, he's one of their soldiers. He said that he had been on a date with Beth Short the night she disappeared. And, like, at this point, he's in New Jersey, so he's like, on January 9th, they'd gone on a date, and then his mind had gone blank. And the next thing he knows, he's in New York in Pennsylvania Station, just, like, across the country. So basically, these investigators at Fort Dix, they had gone through the uniform that he had been wearing at the time. And, like, one of the pockets on his trousers had blood stains on it. And so they just start digging, they start looking into him. Basically, he's 29 years old, he's been married three times. And he had previously been examined by a psychiatrist who, you know, recommended hospitalization. Hospitalization, like, for psychological reasons, effectively. Like, he says that he'd been in California, but other soldiers at the base were like, no, actually, he was here. Like, he was unsure. He was in this location. He wasn't there. And so it just seemed to be a thing of sort of like the. The Texarkana moonlight murders. It just seemed to be this false idea, this blank memory and filling in the blanks, combined with whatever psychological issues he had. And then, of course, we have the three main theories. The torture doctor theory, the unknown local killer theory, and the butcher or the medical or butcher skill theory. So Dr. George Hodel, who is this LA doctor, he specializes in venereal diseases. And so he's. He's known as being this. Well, he's not in LA. Well, one. Because he's a doctor who deals with STIs, right? So he is. People know him, okay? But he's respectable because he's a doctor. But he's also not respectable because his chosen field is sexually transmitted infections, venereal diseases, as they would sometimes be called or they would have been called back then. So there's also this, I mean, quite probable, quite probable theory that he was also a back alley abortionist because abortion was illegal back then. So this is all part of it. Now. There's a lot of. I'm gonna call it. I don't want to call it smoke and mirrors, but there's lots of confetti and trumpets, right? There's a lot of hoopla going around for the George Hodel theory. Now, I maintain that Dr. George Hodel was a pretty shitty person. He was a terrible person. He was a sexual sadist. He was an incestuous pedophile, but a murderer. Of Elizabeth Short, specifically. I. I don't subscribe to that particular. To that particular theory. So his daughter. His daughter basically reported the fact that she had been raped by her father. Other people had claimed that. They had claimed they had seen it. They were witnesses to the event. And it was all swept under the rug because she also claimed that her father had killed the Black Dahlia. Now, there are. There is, like, reasonable evidence. There is reasonable evidence to Say that he had, like, a sex dungeon in his weird little pyramid house and so on and so forth, and that he would be engaged in, like, BDSM and things like that, although he would be not the kind of dom you'd actually want to be leading. Leading the situation. Like, that's not. It's not a no. But there were, you know, there's photographs and things of that nature. And his son wrote a book. I mean, there's a. There's a podcast called Root of Evil. It's very good. It's very compelling. And his son, Steve o', Dell, he wrote a book, and he was an LAPD detective now. And he's like, my father did it. And one of the things that really threw me off of this was I was looking at the website specifically, and there were photos of the. The Dahlia, of Elizabeth Short, and of this other woman who had been photographed naked. Right? Which is like, whatever. The naked photographs, like, nudes are. Whatever. But I mean, if they're consensual nudes, they're fine. Okay. Like, that's fine. If they're non consensual nudes, that's Shetty. Okay, let's just lay that on the table. So there's this naked woman and Steve Odell. She's like, this is her. This is definitely like, look at this. Look at this. Look at this ear. It's definitely this woman. It's definitely Beth Short. Like, she's the woman from this photograph. And I'm like, I've seen enough photos of Beth Shore, both alive and deceased, right? Both alive and deceased that she is not the woman in this photograph. And out of all the photographs I'd seen from this collection, none of them are her. Like, she has a. Quite. Like, it's not her face. It's not the same shape. That is a different woman. I spent a lot of time looking at things, face shapes. You'd be surprised how often I look at face shapes. But it's so not the same woman. It's a lot of confirmation bias. And the circumstantial evidence all relies on confirmation bias. And that's where my issue is. And so that's the first part that kind of threw me off. The second one was Steve Odell has not only accused his father as being like, the Black Dahlia killer, but of being like several other serial killers, which, honestly is. Is. Pick one. Pick a lane. Because, like, all of this doesn't make sense. Now. There are reasons why he's, you know, he's seeing this. Like, he his dad is clearly just a terrible person at the best of times. But, you know, there's this whole thing, just because he has medical training, they assume that he would do it. There's this whole theory that he was performing an abortion, it was botched, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, he, he gets his house bugged, like in the, in the 1950s, right? In 1950, I think, actually his house is bugged and it's. The wires tapped and there's. There's a phone call and it's. Again, it's one of those pinch of salt thing because he's like, supposing I did kill her, right? Supposing I did kill the Black Dahlia. Police aren't gonna do anything now, are they? Were they gonna ask my secretary? She's dead. Like, as someone with pretty gallows humor, I can see someone being in his situation and doing that just because, A, you think it's funny or B, because you know you're being listened to. Like, those are kind of options there, you know, and it could be. And it's. It just sounds very sarcastic to me. Like, supposing I did. Supposing I did. Suppose you did. Suppose you didn't. Like, it's very. I found it a bit wishy washy, you know what I mean? I'm not fully sold on this concept, to be honest. I'm not fully sold on it. And I think because of all the horrible things he did, and because he was under scrutiny continuously, he leaves the country, like, very sharply. He's, like, being investigated by police and he just leaves. I think he was up to shit anyway. Bad stuff. He was doing bad stuff. And also, if you want to run your little BDSM dungeon, if you want to, you know, do all the things you want to do, you can't really do that if you're perpetually under police surveillance. And, you know, paranoia is also a thing. Like, the thing about Doctors is a lot of them, there's. There's a superiority complex there for a lot of people, and they don't like being challenged and losing control is like a whole thing. But all of the evidence, I mean, read the book, listen to, listen to the podcast. I mean, I could. I could literally, I could do an episode. I could do a full episode just on, On George Hodel, because. But also, I'm. I'm kind of. I'm kind of done talking about horrible men for a little while. I'd rather not, you know, for, For, For a spell. Now, again, there is no physical evidence that directly Links him to Elizabeth Short. And it just feels like. It feels like just you're so desperate for that to be the answer that you're just trying to load as much sort of opinion and bias towards it. You know, there's this. There's a theory in science, I can't remember the correct term. We used to call it the Swan theory. I don't remember the proper name. Right. And it's basically, if you want to prove something to. In order to remove bias, you have to try and do the opposite. So if you want to prove that there are no black swans, like that all swans are white, in order to do that, you have to go and search for the black swan, right? That is your goal. Your goal is to find the black Swan, right? And that is how you prove it. And so, like, I do that a lot with my research, which is why. Sidebar. Sometimes I will, you know, I'll, you know, read the information that allegedly contradicts, you know, what I'm trying to say. So I will try and look for the opposite evidence, which is always really handy whenever I have to talk about something specifically controversial, like whenever I discuss Mother Teresa, because I'll have her own letters in it. And I will have, you know, things that she wrote and I will have proper, like, Catholic, you know, opinions, like articles like, I'll have that in my sources. And I do that so that when someone turns around and goes, oh, your sources are lies. And I'm like, oh, is Mother Teresa's own letters a lie? Because I'm a bitch, so. And a petty one at that. So that's what I do there. So George Hodel, the George Hodel theory basically tortured her till she died, cut her in half, posed her. Then we have the unknown local killer theory. Basically, this means that Elizabeth Short was murdered by some dude who escaped identification. Like, again, it's post war la. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of people moving back and forth. And so he's there, he commits the murder. He gets to know Elizabeth Shore, maybe he offers her somewhere to stay, which is why she just kind of disappears, but he doesn't take her to go back and get her luggage. You have all of these false confessions, all of this that's just pouring in. It's easy if someone did do that, for it to slip between the cracks. And of course, we didn't have the same sort of DNA profiling. The forensic science just wasn't where it would need to be. And also, the body was washed with gasoline, which is like, that's something I actually don't know. Which I think would be interesting to find out is, like, how. How easy was it to have, like a high amount of gasoline around? Like, like, would it be normal for it to be stored somewhere? You know, especially in, like, 1940s LA, my brain just goes flammable. So the person would have known the area, like some kind of familiarity. But you could be anyone from like a traveling salesman to a local. Like, you've got options and you're there and you can leave. You know, maybe you were a surgeon in the army. Maybe you were, goodness, a hunter passing through. Like, I actually, I don't. There's a. You know, the reason I don't believe it's a hunter, actually, is because the. The body isn't drained correctly. Because if you wanted to drain a body of blood, like, for ease, the first thing you do is, like, string it up upside down and cut the throat. But the ligature marks on Elizabeth shorts, like wrists, ankles and neck, none of them are tight enough to do that. The pressure isn't there. Then, of course, we have the medical or butcher theory, effectively that the killer had anatomical training and or professional experience with chopping bodies. So body bisected cleanly. Now they say cleanly, right? Bodies are heavy. The heavier a thing is, the easier it is to cut. Right? You're not moving up and down a lot. It's not like you're trying to cut a grape when you can cut a potato, you know, it's bigger the mass. And if you've got a sharp enough knife, you can cut through anything. You know, if you're doing it with a sharp enough blade, it's not like you're, you know, I was gonna say axing and hatching. I was like, hatcheting, but, like, it's not like you're, you know, chopping it with an axe. If you're cutting through flesh, then that's a fairly easier option. You could have had a sword. Maybe you could have just had a sword collection. Now, you don't really need, again, medical training to be able to cut things cleanly. But if you're a butcher, you know, or if you're a surgeon, like, if you're used to dealing with, like a corpse, like, if you're a mortician and you're doing autopsies, like, that's also a very reasonable theory. Like, there are options. You're not limited to surgeon, which. I know, I know. I think, again, I think it's all because of that hemicopectomy like, that's what I think. I think it's all because of that. Finally, we have this serial killer theory. So the idea is that this is an escalation. Like, here's the thing. You don't start off with this level of murder, right? You don't start off that way. Like, you build up. Now, if she died because her mouth was cut open because of the hemorrhage there, that could have been an accident. That could have been something they weren't expecting. It was a step too far. But again, there's an escalation because of all the type of cuts and mutilation that was done, like, pre mortem, like when she was still alive. So this could have been an escalation. And there's an idea that this is like a serial killer who's all over California, and this is, like, ritualistic because the body is posed in a particular way. Now, I haven't seen any cases that are as similar, but, like, there's a theory that, you know, it's an escalation and they're working through, but I haven't seen anything like this. Now, I did hear a theory about the. Was it the Cleveland torso murders? But I would need to look into that more. I haven't. I don't actually know much about that case specifically, so I would need to delve into that. And this case was always going to be a tough one because there was just so much that went wrong. It was such a big case. You have this crime scene contamination. There are records which are either incomplete or lost. Like, again, there's so many things that we don't have. Information that was never put out there. You've got false confessions. You know, DNA is not preserved. Like, a bunch of stuff is missing. And the whole media circus that revolved around it, the sensationalism, it really just. It really just twisted the narrative about what happened. And a lot of people wanted to see Elizabeth Short as just salacious. Like, it's a very salacious crime. That's why a lot of the theories revolve around her being pregnant or. Or a sex worker. It's always this way to make her seem slightly more. I'm not going to say deserving of murder, but it's kind of that, you know, victim blaming. And we know so much about Elizabeth Short because we talk about not even her Sumo, but the Black Dahlia. And it's just the continuation of women, especially victims, of course, but women, especially victims of violent crimes, becoming footnotes in their own stories. Like, I discussed this when we were talking about the whole Jack the Ripper theory, and it's just. It just makes me angry. And I was actually thinking earlier, I was like, I know that I have to finish writing this damn book of mine. But I was like, oh, I had a plan for book number two, but now I new have a new plan for book number two, but I need to finish book number one first. Because I was like, wow, what if I talked about all of the myths revolving all around these old timey crimes? I was like, that's something I could do because that's in my wheelhouse. But that would be like a lot more in depth and a lot more work. And yeah, like, murders typically happen. They're usually caused by someone close to the victim. That's typically how it goes. Now this could be something else, but that is usually how it works. And that's why, obviously, they were going to this address book. That being said, if that address book was planted, then that, like, is another web. I just. The killer is taunting and then he's not. And then you've got so many false leads and so many copycats coming in that if they wanted to do anything else and mess with the press, it's just gone now. I heard as well, somebody. Somebody compared the zodiac to the black Dalia. And it's like, please stop. It's like, stop comparing everything to the Zodiac, okay? Cuz, like, the tanks are kind of moonlight martyrs were compared and this was compared. And it's like one. The timeline is quite. Quite a large time difference, first of all. And then the MOs are completely different. I. The MOs are completely different. Like, pay attention to this. Like, just look at the crime. Look at the crime committed. They're different crimes. It's just. It's just. Anyway. But yes, Beth Short, Betty. Elizabeth. You know, there's so many. So many tales, so many stories, so many myths about her, and she's become this sort of. Yeah, myth, really. Legend. An infamous legend. And even in death, she'll never get peace. You know, and one other thing that bothers me is people want a good answer. They want a juicy, meaty answer. That's what they want. They want something tantalizing and sensational and they'll take something sneaky or tricky or cruel and violent when it could be something so much more mundane. It's just some dude out there. Um, and I. I don't subscribe to that whole. It was definitely a woman who did it. Like, I mean, maybe may actually. Well, someone who had a car anyway. Someone who could afford a car in 1947. So someone who had one would assume the person would have to have a job, right, in order to get a car in 1947. Again, Ellie, pull. I need to look it up. But, yeah, we'll never know who did it. It's one of those stories that just kind of float into the ether. Now, one of the things actually, before I. Before we end is people always, like, ask you, like, oh, if you could go back in time, like, what crime would you. Like, you like to. You know, what would you like to know? But, like, what's really weird is the way they phrase it, right? They're like, oh, what crime would you like to go back in time and, like, solve? Right? What would you like to go back in time and get the answer to? And I'm like, one. If I'm going back in time. That is an interesting plot point, but, like, it's so weird. It's such a weird one. And a lot of people will say, I'd love to go back in time and find out what happened to the Black Dahlia. And I'm like, or you could just not go back in time and find out what happened to the Black Dahlia. If we're doing magical wishes, Like, I don't need to see that in real life, you know? Anyway. Elizabeth Short lived a life that was, at the time, unremarkable. She struggled for money. Her family were poor. Her sisters were married. She searched for love and didn't receive it. She flopped from A to B, just trying to survive a little dusting along the way. A life and death shrouded in myth and mystery and a case that will never have a satisfying conclusion because y' all just love the drama. Well, not y', all, if you're listening to me. Maybe you just dead want the evidence. But so ends our story on Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. If you liked my retelling of this really fucking horrible story, feel free to rate and review five stars. If you didn't like it, you can just keep your mouth shut. I don't need to hear it. And so, yeah, it's been a long one. This has. I mean, so follow me on the socials. You know where to go. And it's recommendation time for watching Schitt's Creek. Watch Schetz Creek. Just go watch it. It's amazing. It's fabulous. Ah, Katherine o' Hara for reading Rebel of the Regency by Anne Foster. Read it. Anne is amazing. She's from Vulgar History. She's fabulous. It's just she knows more about Caroline of Brunswick than I think any other person on the planet. It's just. It's amazing. I don't know if it's still on pre order or if you can just, like, buy it now, but go buy it. Go support her. She's an amazing historian and I love her so much. Okay, so listening is finally. You know what? Listen to some Kate Bush. Listen to some Kate Bush. That's. That's what I've got now. So with that, I shall bid you adieu. Adios. Au revoir. Au re vui des aimes, my friends. Bye bye.
- [112:58]
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- [113:32]
Katy Charlwood
Hey, it's Raj and Noah.
- [113:34]
Raj
And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
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Noah
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
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Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week, we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
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We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
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Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Noah
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
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Katy Charlwood
Love y'. All.
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Hey there.
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