EPISODE 1: Jan 15th 1947
No housing on either side of Norton Ave. Note the tall grass and bric brac.
Welcome to the premiere podcast of the Black Dahlia and the Blue Dahlia, this is your host, Scott Tracy. The Black Dahlia is most famous unsolved murder in Los Angeles history. I will be telling the story as it was covered on a daily basis in Los Angeles newspapers. The Blue Dahlia is included in the title because that film noir movie is the basis of the name given to Elizabeth Short in the newspapers after her demise. Film Noir speaks to culture of the 1940’s. The Black Dahlia mystery has been an active topic. I find that fascinating. How does Jane Doe #1 of 1947 become dinner conversation in 2020? Why is the Black Dahlia the Patron Saint of Death for the City of Los Angeles? Before we begin, it is necessary to dispel 5 myths.
ONE Beth Short was a working actress
TWO Robert Manley was the last man to see her alive
THREE She was last seen at the Biltmore Hotel
FOUR the press invented the name The Black Dahlia.
FIVE Norton Ave is a lovers lane. Let’s chat about this myths in order.
Myth # One Elizabeth Short is not an actress. Elizabeth Short was a girl of 22, and as many young girls might she day dreamed about being a famous star one day. To be a successful actress, one trains, acting is a commitment, acting is a career. Beth would need a union card to be in the movies, even if she was just an extra. Beth has no union card. She needs an agent. Why would an agent take her on? Let me put this in numbers. Elizabeth Short lived in Hollywood for just over 100 days. That’s it. Beth checks into the Brevoort Hotel in Hollywood on Wednesday, August 20th, 1947 then stays in a variety of places the Hawthorne Hotel the Figueroa Hotel Mark Hanson’s house the Guardian Arms the Chancellor Apartments, and leaves for San Diego on Monday, December 9th, 1947. This mystery is not a Hollywood story. Early statements of Phoebe Short printed in the newspapers that create the opportunity for the press to craft desirable and relatable image for the public. QUOTE “Elizabeth always wanted to be an actress she was ambitious and beautiful and full of life but she had her moments of despondency. Sometimes she would be gay and carefree one moment and then in the depths of despair another. She was a good girl she wrote often at least once a week it was only 10 days ago when she wrote me from San Diego telling me she had a job in the Naval Hospital there I never dreamed she was having financial difficulties her letters were always so cheerful.“ This is not unique. Elizabeth will lie whenever it suits her. She is therefore an untrustworthy narrator. Beth never had a job in Los Angeles nor an acting career; her letters and conversations are filled with fibs and fantasies.
Myth # Two. Robert Manley was the last person to see Elizabeth Short alive. No. Her killer was the last to see her. “Red” Manley was the first significant suspect of the crime. Police quickly realize Manley is innocent. Robert Manley was not the last person to see Elizabeth Short he was the first person to be exonerated. Beth was seen multiple times over multiple days and nights between January 9th and 15th. Myth # Three. Elizabeth Short was last seen at the Biltmore. No. Beth was seen leaving. Robert Manley leaves for home at 6:30 driving north. Beth uses the pay phones in the lobby. She waits. She makes more phone calls. Beth is seen exiting the Biltmore after 10:00 p.m. and walking south. What has been created by the mystery of seven missing days reflects back to the Myth of the ferryman river Styx. Beth is in motion, alone after dark, her fate is sealed once leaving the safe haven of the Biltmore, her final fatal journey, ferried across the river to her black dahlia destination.
Myth # Four. The press invented the Black Dahlia name. Nope. She was named by regular customers at a drug store lunch counter in Long Beach who took notice of her black two-piece swim suit, there is no evidence these hanger-ons know Elizabeth as a friend.
Myth # Five Norton Ave was a lovers lane. I believed it in the beginning. Why not believe? Why make that up? The body dump site on Norton Avenue is a very loud event in a quiet neighborhood. Within this residential postcard of good neighborhood for young families to buy their first home, a body is discarded in the weeds, dumped on an incomplete street, a desolated area that is under the umbrella of a safe part of town on the westside. There is no evidence that Elizabeth Short has any physical or emotional relationship to the residential location in Leimert Park. In Beth’s time in Los Angeles, her life is miles away, centered in Long Beach, Hollywood and Downtown.
Today the disposable victim is a movie trop. In 1947, it was new news. That a tortured mutilated body of a young woman would be found in a quiet white suburban part of town is horrifying. No victim found in the skid row section of the Los Angeles would receive the same level of attention in the press. Every witness to the Norton Avenue location as reported in papers is going there to dump rubbish or lawn cuttings in the vacant lot. Did someone some time kiss someone else in a parked car on that darkly lit street? Maybe. Probably. Reporters are not interviewing local teenagers to find out where they neck. The press calls the Norton Ave dump site a lovers lane to enhance the melodrama of the shocking event and does so with all the integrity of a real estate agent. In a later podcast I will show examples of how the papers use the term “lovers lane” only when they write about a desolate location within a good neighborhood. The point is, is not necessary to label this vacant street a lover’s lane because it’s not news. Including it directs the narrative. Stories are crafted for maximize curb appeal often utilizing fiction tools. One needs to separate newsworthy facts from the newspaper stories. Let’s consider the power of this language; Who wants to be an actress? Photogenic girls. Who goes to a lovers lane? Passionate young sweethearts who seek privacy in the nooks and crannies of out of the way places. An attractive talented passionate young lover is murdered in cold blood, what a tragedy. The newspaper is assigning a fictional character arc to the victim. This is how these Black Dahlia myths are created. In contrast, let’s tell the a fact driven story. Elizabeth Short drops her luggage at the Greyhound bus station, Beth has lived in Los Angeles one month earlier, but now has no home to go to, no job to go to, no roommate to call. Beth isn’t meeting someone. Beth didn’t tell anyone she would be at the Biltmore Hotel. She not going to stay as she doesn’t have the money to pay for a room at the Biltmore. Beth makes calls from the hotel pay phones expecting to find a sympathetic ear, apparently to no avail. Is she friendless as well? It certainly must have felt so as she walks late at night alone to a bar at the edge of skid row. Sounds like I am describing the beginning of a film noir, a desperate beautiful girl; homeless, jobless, penniless, walks down these mean streets alone and vulnerable; in the morning her body is found dumped in an anonymous site, a victim of foul play. Elizabeth Short gets an actress & lover angle to her story because the body is placed on the westside. When a body is found in skid row the victim can never be innocent because it begs the question, what would a good girl be doing in the bad part of town after dark? Location. Location. Location. True for real estate, true for headlines and newspaper columns space. Consider who is buying the newspapers. Homeowners not the homeless. Smaller headline, fewer columns less interest if the Girl killed near skid row; not likely a page one story. Does the article appear on page 5? Page 18? I have been focusing my criticism on the newspapers and certainly they do embellish the stories they publish but in comparison to the common books about the Black Dahlia, the newspapers are a beacon of truth. The common agenda of the books on the true crime shelves is they are suspect driven to the point of often being a little more than a brief for the prosecution. These books weave the assumptions and conjecture with facts to enhance an inevitable conclusion that Jack Anderson Wilson did it or Bugsy Siegel or Leslie Dillon or George Knowlton or George Hodel or Orson Wells. To some degree, this is possible because; number one, Elizabeth Short is a cipher; there is a limit to what is knowable about her. And number two, so much of the testimony of those who know her is contradictory. A writer can select the facts that builds the case against the chosen suspect. These flawed books are the reason I begin this podcast at the intersection of lies and myth. Now that we have dispelled some misconceptions, we can being at the intersection of horror and mystery. Part of this mystery is the victim. Beth is a tabula rasa. The other side of that coin is that for you and I, dear listener, the Black Dahlia case is a Rorschach test for armchair detectives, the way you and I interpret the facts reveals something about ourselves. Let’s quote a man who never met Elizabeth Short but knew the Black Dahlia better than anyone, Detective Harry Hansen. He is interviewed in 1971 after he retired. QUOTE “She didn’t seem to have any goals or standards… she never had a job all the time she lived in Los Angeles. She had an obviously low IQ, lived hand to mouth, day to day. They found out during the autopsy that her teeth were full of cavities. She had filled them up with candle wax. She was a man-crazy tramp, but she wasn’t a prostitute. There were all kinds of men in her life, but we were able to find three who’d had any sexual experience with her. She was a tease; She gave a bad time to quite a few guys. She just asked for trouble. There wasn’t much to like about her.” Did I mention Rorschach test just a minute ago. There is some of Hansen’s frustration coming thru as well as a ‘puritanical’ judgement of Beth’s character. However, Hansens’s negative comments made can be traced to the very real choices Elizabeth made that created a high risk environment for her to be a victim. Getting into cars with strangers, picking up men on the street, chatting up total strangers in bars, not having a regular job, making a few dollars by having nude photos taken of her. There is little doubt Hansen discovers other examples of behaviors or situations in the interviews with suspects and acquaintances. We do not have access to those files. There are other murders during this time period, as many as ten other women are murdered and their bodies dumped in Los Angeles streets in the age of Film Noir. These unsolved cases are referred to as Lone Woman Murders. Does this mean there was a serial killer in Los Angeles in 1947? Good question. One of the mysteries of this case is much of the evidence leads a person to conclude that Elizabeth Short is the victim of a serial killer yet there are no other truly similar cases. I come to the Black Dahlia mystery as if I were writing a book. I make the assumption, listener, that you have significant interest in the Black Dahlia and you have some familiarity with the topic, including the Lone Women murders. I have a Black Dahlia Blue Dahlia Webpage with maps and photos to help understand places and people, as well as a text of the podcast with footnotes. That concludes our prologue— Jan 15 1947. the discovery of the body. Leimert Park, a newer suburban area of southwestern Los Angeles, becomes transformed this morning when the police are called to Norton Avenue. The time is 11:07 a.m. In response to a phone call from an anxious civilian, the University Division of the Los Angeles Police Department dispatches two patrolmen, Frank Perkins and Wayne Fitzgerald to a vacant lot in a residential neighborhood: one block east of Crenshaw Boulevard, between Coliseum and 39th Street. Nothing could have prepared Perkins and Fitzgerald for what they would discover; the mutilated body of a young woman, washed of blood and bisected. The two halves placed a foot apart. Officer Fitzgerald later stated in an interview : “The first thing we thought was that it was a mannequin. That someone was playing a trick because there was no blood. Then we realized what the hell we had. We started calling all our supervisors, telling them this was something big.” LAPD detectives Harry Hansen and Finis Brown are assigned to the the case and they arrive at the now crowded dump site at 11:30. Los Angeles newspaper reporters listen to the police band in their car to stay on top of breaking stories. When the police dispatch broadcasts—“390W, 415, code 2” . Intoxicated female, indecent exposure. No siren. Residential neighborhood. That bodes well for every reporter listening on the police radio hoping for a big story. A substantial number reporters and photographers arrive at the Norton Avenue dump site before the lead detectives. What the reporters see: a young girl had been tortured antemortem and mutilated postmortem. The body lay in the grass inches from the sidewalk, on the vacant lot littered with weeds, trash and bric-brac. There are no homes in this block of the subdivision. Sidewalks and fire hydrants are in place. This is a street of undeveloped lots. One empty lot next to the other on both sides of the street. The display of the placed body invokes a quiet horror; unlike anything the most experienced reporters and police detectives have ever seen. The significant mutilations shock yet, are framed unusually by the lack of blood which softens the scene; inviting the eye to consider the victim to be an object, as if an alabaster statue fell from a pedestal and broke in half. People are queazy at the sight of blood. They faint. The primal reaction is caution. Blood means an emergency. Fight or flee? Consider then, this killer is not intimidated by the touch or smell or sight of blood. A comfort level with blood eliminates many suspects and is an indicator that narrows the field to someone in a certain trade, a butcher or a mortician, a hunter; due to the precision of the bisection, police assume they are seeking someone with the high level of knife skills, likely medically trained. The lack of blood is confusing to the woman who phoned the police earlier, Mrs. John Bersinger who lived a block north of these empty lots was walking south with her three year old daughter to a shoe repair shop in the shopping center. Betty Bersinger did not see a dead woman. If she had she would have said so to the police. In a recent book on the murder, the author introduces Betty Bersinger and then writes about how many flies are circling above the body. The conversation about flies is one that the reporters write about later. Betty does NOT hover and count flies. She is concerned about her child and the other children in the neighborhood and decides to telephone the police because she is spooked, as if what she sees is a disturbing Halloween prank. Mrs. Bersinger remembers QUOTE “I happened to glance over to my side and I saw this strange sight. It looked like a mannequin that had been cut in half and was separated and was lying there and I didn’t glance at it too long, Because I had my little girl with me. As walked on further I thought Something didn’t seem right to me and I could see these kids with their bicycles and I thought maybe it will scare these kids as they ride to school and I better call somebody so they could have a look and see what it is. The thought of a dead person did not enter my mind. I thought is was a mannequin because it was so white”. END-QUOTE Betty briskly walks south and knocks on the first home she comes to. No answer. A second door. This time a housewife is at home. Betty uses the stranger’s phone. The police do not ask for Betty’s name. They ask for the phone number she is calling from, assuming she is calling from home. The University Division Officer writes the number down, then misplaces the slip of paper. The police have no way to question the first witness. The lack of blood at the crime scene is the first mystery, in that it has confused Betty Bersinger and disoriented the patrolmen. After all, why drain the body of all blood? Nor is it necessary to scrub the body before dumping it in a place where rubbish is discarded? This are two of several signature actions that are necessary for the killer but not for the killing. As we examine this fallen statue in the Museum of Cold Cases we have the advantage of time, and can bring the body of knowledge on the psychological make-up of killers to the investigation. In 1947 the level of damage to the victim would be cataloged by the police and reporters as a senseless evil, the unexplainable act of a violent madman. The reporters and policemen must have thought to themselves on that day, this is what is must have felt like to come upon a Jack the Ripper crime scene. The damage is dramatic but this is an articulation to the wounds that signifies a commitment of time not seen in the ripper alleyways. Jack the Ripper is a blitz attacker. He leaves to body where it falls. No sign of torture before death. Elizabeth Short suffered. Her body cut in half, after mouth is cleanly gashed on both sides, What do these actions mean? Today we see how this articulation is signature behavior that reveals character of the killer. The wide slicing of both sides of the mouth, for example, is the killer silencing a big mouth? Or is he opening a small mouth? Are the cuts related to her bondage? Is the slicing a thrust of sexual anger? Or is this a Joker smile? Wikipedia refers to this cut as a Glascow smile. It is not. A Joker smile is not a Glasgow smile in my opinion. . This is a common error that gets repeated on the internet as if it’s a key that unlocks the motive for the everything. Ah, there are trying to teach everyone a lesson. A Chelsea Grin or Glasgow smile is meant to be a gangland warning to not talk to the police. That quote “smile” is a cut of the skin that is sliced on a curve from the mouth up to the middle ear, following the natural curve of the jaw line. It’s meant to be a warning and a scar for life, not a cause of death. Two things. If it is a warning why do all the other things? Why kill her? Why carve the tattoo out of the leg? is that a warning also? I’ll teach you to have a tattoo! Of course it isn’t. The Glasgow smile is a myth. A marked victim who walks the streets instils fear on the living. The scar is a daily reminder of the power of the gang. There is no value to disfigure the dead. The dead victim inspires hate, not fear. The dead victim creates a desire for revenge not tribute. Elisabeth Short was sliced from the edge of mouth straight back to the bottom of the ear lobe as part of her torture. These two violent deep cuts happened while Beth was alive and are one causes of her death. The graphic autopsy photos are all the more unsettling once one realizes the depth of suffering this torturous slice would cause the victim. What ungodly screams must have been heard. These signatures have popular cultural references. The unique attacks on the body of Elizabeth Short, Batman’s Joker smile and a Vampire draining of the blood are common in the comic books and movies, not common is actual police reports, Cutting a woman in half is a magic trick that reaches further back in time, before the 1940 Batman issue, or the 1928 movie called the Man Who Laughs. A professional magicians cutting a woman in half on stage is a vaudeville trick going back to 1921. If we see a man in a top hat and tuxedo with a saw in a casino in Nevada, It’s showtime. As common as this may be in our imagination, but uncommon in reality; bisecting a murder victim is exceedingly rare. Indeed, beyond the difficulty of the task, there are few benefits to cut a body in half. Perhaps it is for this killer. Showtime. The victim is already dead. The goal of dismemberment is hiding the identity of the victim thru disbursal of the parts, as the The Butcher of Kingsbury Road accomplished by hiding parts of the victim in different locations. Bisecting a body has no comparative benefit; the face, the teeth, the fingerprints are intact and establish the identity of the victim. If Dr Watson were writing about the Black Dahlia story he would call it The Case of the Bisected Beauty. Cutting a body is half is a commitment of time; requiring skills with the right tools and uninterrupted space. As the reporters and police stood over this body it is clear this visual horror is far more than overkill. Washed the dead body, that is an uncommon signature, as well. Whose sins are being washed away? Is the body prepared for display in the manner of a mortician? This is the Sherlock moment of this podcast. The lack of blood is an under-appreciated clue on its own. Bisecting a body over a bathtub will result in a substantial loss of the blood down the drain, but this killer didn’t just rinse the body, he obsessively deep scrubbed the dead naked victim with a brush showing an uncommon behavior as he is dealing with an object. Not a person. Why scrub a body to throw it in the dirt on Norton Ave? And this leads us to our initial conclusion that this crime is about torture and display. Such a thought does not enter into the investigation in 1947. Police in this period assume the killer knows his victim, assess the damage to the body as a representation of the depth of anger that the killer has for the victim. Police are quick to arrest the husband in a rage killing. Today our understanding of the sexual aspect of this type of lust killing is about control, thru torture the killer codified and purposed his rage thru the slow suffering of a stranger as he watches. In a rage killing a husband or the jilted lover understands there is an enormous benefit to hide the body; until the police have a body, there is no crime. The rage killer can pretend the victim is still alive. Why display her dead body when there is such a risk. The public dump site makes it much more likely that Elizabeth Short was killed by someone she does not know. Staying with the topic of bisecting a body; FBI Mind-hunter John Douglas in his book, The Cases That Haunt Us suggests this was done to move Elizabeth’s body more easily. I am going to disagree with John Douglas this one time. Beth was 5’5” and 118 pounds. That not heavy. 117 pounds is the weight of fashion runway model. Douglas postulates our killer is weakened or injured so cutting her in half. John Douglas very aware that serial killers select smaller victims because they are easier to control. It doesn’t make sense to me that the killer of Beth Short is strong enough to overpower her but so weak that he has to cut her in half. It’s physical work to bisect a body. Estimated time is an hour and a half. And obviously it would be more than that if our killer was significantly injured. It is a mental task, as well, a significant commitment that required time allocated for the task of bisecting as well as preparing and cleaning up the torture site. the fact is bisecting is unnecessary to move the body. One could chop the body with an ax, not need one iota of medical level of skill to chop wood. Sloppy, messy and quick. It is noteworthy that each of these three signature behaviors; the severe slashing of both sides of the mouth, bisecting the body, scrubbing and washing; and each of these are not common signatures. In combination with the amount of time spent with the body before and after the murder, the signatures of the killer begs the question “Who would do this?”. No answer is forthcoming; as there are no witnesses; no clothing nearby, no identification, no shoes or purse. There is very little for the police to go on. Witnesses and confessions are the cornerstones of successful police investigations at this time. Detective Lieutenant Jesse Haskins described the condition of the body when he first arrived on the scene: “The body was lying face up and the severed part was jogged over about 10 inches, . .there was a tire track right up against the curbing and there was what appeared to be a possible bloody heel (print) in this tire mark; and on the curbing which is very low there was one spot of blood; and there was an empty paper cement sack lying in the driveway and it also had a spot of blood on it. . .It had been brought there from some other location. . .The body was clean and appeared to have been washed.” A man’s shoe print near the sidewalk. A drop of watery blood on a torn cement bag; How much of a clue is a cement bag? That question is The Black Dahlia Blue Dahlia quiz of the day and everyone listing to this podcast can play this quiz. If you are in your apartment or a hotel room listening, right now, raise your hand raise if you have an empty cement bag with you at this time. I don’t see any hands raised. A cement bag seems to indicate a man who owns a house or who is in the construction business. Killers and cement. Construction at the home. There are no prints on the bag. So if the killer left the bag, it is interesting that he did not see it as a clue. The killer could have just as easily picked it up and driven away. One supposes the killer wore gloves and wasn’t worried about prints on the bag. As for the mystery of the victim, no one matching the age and description of the girl has been reported missing. This is the first unknown murder victim of 1947 so the initial police reports are gathered in a file under Jane Doe #1.
ONE MORE THING before I go. As I mentioned the web page will have the text of the podcast with footnotes. I choose not to interrupt the flow of the podcast with sources. For example, I spoke about the effect of sight of blood has on many people. On the web there will be a footnote of source Psychology Today, Feb 13 2013 and more information. It was fascinating to learn that for 25% of the population the sight of blood causes dizziness or fainting. I have quoted an interview of Wayne Fitzgerald. I did not interview the policeman. I read about it in a Jan 6, 1997 Los Angeles Times article called “A Crime Steeped in Mystery, Myth” written by Larry Harnish a is very much respected fact checker on the Black Dahlia investigation; in contrast to the many Black Dahlia true crime book writers, So do take a look at my web page. I would enjoy hearing from you. I welcome your comments and emails. This concludes the first podcast of the Black Dahlia and the Blue Dahlia. The next episode will focus on the following day, January 16th 1947 telling the tale of one autopsy and two very different headlines. Until then…
* Leimert Park within a decade will open to integration and become a black neighborhood in early 60’s
** “Farewell, My Black Dahlia,” by Tod Faulkner, Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1971
*** Hansen is raised Mormon.
‡Los Angeles Times “A Crime Seeped in Mystery, Myth”. Larry Harnisch, Jan 6 1997
‡‡ Reporters argue over who arrived first, Fowler or Underwood? It has no bearing on the murder investigation.
‡‡‡Preliminary guesses suggested a teenager. The January 16 1947 edition of the Examiner lists Jane Doe #1’s age as 15 to 16 years old.
∞The photos of the washed mutilated body of Elizabeth Short are dramatic but tame in comparison to the bloody LA Ripper photos of Virginia Griffin and Lillian Johnson.
∞∞The reaction to the sight of blood is primal as well as medical. Run to or run away from blood. Fight or flight. “Why Do Some People Faint at the Sight of Blood? Psychology Today, Feb 13 2013. For 25% of the population the sight of blood causes dizziness or fainting. “Genetics of vasovagal syncope” Karl Martin Klein & Samuel F. Berkovic Autonomic Neuroscience Journal Sept 2014
∞∞∞When committed by a serial criminal the behavior is called a signature; indicative of a repeat offender and strongly suggests this is unproven conjecture: the Black Dahlia crime is the work of an organized serial killer;
§ Has our killer buried previous victims in cement graves?
§§LAPD does take the bags . Look at the crime scene photos and notice the cement bags appear in the early photos.
1946 Los Angeles Transit Map
A map of the time period makes clear how much Leimert Park is a suburb at the far edge of the city, unknown to most everyone who lives in Los Angeles or Santa Monica or Pasadena . Notice Crenshaw Blvd. is on city land, but west of Crenshaw is county land, patrolled by the Los Angles Sheriff.