Cold Case Files - You Might Also Like: History's Greatest Mysteries - The Black Dahlia

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

It’s one of the most infamous crimes in American history: the gruesome murder of a young beauty, unsolved for decades. There’s a long line of suspects, each more mysterious than the next. Can the questions surrounding one of history’s most notorious unsolved cases finally be answered?Thank you to our experts who contributed to this episode: Cheryl Dorsey, Dr. Robert Schug, Glynn Martin, James Queally, Rachell Howzell Hall, Forrest Burgess, Miles Corwin, and Yvette Gentile.If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow History’s Greatest Mysteries to never miss an episode!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

And now a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind. Today, a mysterious and gruesome crime that's haunted the public for decades. The tragic story of Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, is a murder mystery that just doesn't go away. The victim is a young beauty. And like Jack the Ripper or the Zodiac Killer, her murderer has never been caught or even identified. The police are definitely working on. the idea that this is a personal vendettit. How many bad men does it take to kill one 22-year-old?

A young wannabe starlit in Hollywood contrasted with this very horrible death. Now we explore the top theories surrounding one of history's most notorious unsolved crimes. You've got this very violent, very vicious killer out there, and nobody knows when he's gonna strike again. Back then, when you had power, you had money, you had prestige, you could get away with murder.

Who killed the infamous Black Dahlia and why? Welcome to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast brought to you by Rewind Studios. Each episode, we take a deep dive into some of the greatest unanswered questions from history, backed by some of the foremost experts on the subject. Today, the murder of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia. For over seven decades, the Los Angeles Police Department has kept the Black Dahlia murder case open. Each new detective assigned to this legendary cold case must first review the evidence.

Los Angeles, California, January 15th, 1947. It's an uncharacteristically cool morning in Le Mert Park. There's a local resident who's walking in the early morning hours about 10 o'clock with a toddler, and she sees something that looks like a mannequin in an open field. Mannequin that appears to be broken in half. She thinks it's a prank. She calls the police. The police come, and it ends up being anything but a mannequin.

What they're really looking at is the bisected corpse of a young woman, naked, scrubbed, cleaned, and drained of all her blood. This was a very brutal murder. The body had been severed at the waist, and it had likewise been mutilated. One of her breasts has been removed. There is an incision or a gash above her. her genitals resembling a hysterectomy scar. The body was left in a position that is both shocking

and sexual at the same time. This tattoo had been cut away from her thigh. It was a tattoo of a rose and inserted somewhere else that I'm not sure if you want me describing on camera. There were signs of torture, there was signs she had been beaten, and maybe most importantly, there was no blood at the scene of this homicide. Her face was severely beaten.

Her mouth has been slashed from ear to ear in a grisly smile. The police initially believed that she had been killed sometime between 10 to 12 hours before her body was most likely dumped at that location. The medical examiner upon autopsy determined that the individual died from a concussion, hemorrhaging, and trauma to the body. Mercifully, she was already dead when the killer carved up the rest of her. The way the body has been cut in half is very specific. The body has been cut between the second and third lumbar vertebrae. It's called a hemicorporectomy.

This is the exact point where you would cut someone without having to go through bone. Investigators believe the killer has to be someone with medical training or at least expertise in anatomy. There were people at the LAPD interview that were doctors. They actually investigated 300 medical students at USC

to find out if one of them had done it. The very next day, officers run the victim's prints and within a few hours they have a name. She is 22-year-old Elizabeth Short from the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts. Her fingerprints were on file with police and FBI databases because she had applied for a job at a California military camp in 1943. And she had also been arrested for underage drinking in Santa Barbara County. The prior arrest for underage drinking in Santa Barbara does become relevant here because the arresting officer knew that she had a rose tattoo on her left leg. And that was in the report.

Investigators begin looking into Elizabeth Short's background for more clues. She was raised by a single mother in a middle-class family. At a very early age, her father faked his suicide and left the family. She was a young woman who left her home to come find fame and fortune, maybe, in Los Angeles. A beautiful young woman cut down in the problem for life by this shadowy creature. It's kind of the architect. or the kind of crime that captures the American public's attention. Police and reporters try to get a lead on Beth's life,

but the more they dig in, the more of a mystery she becomes. She's a high school dropout, and she's kind of bouncing around from friend to friend, you know, what the youngsters call, couch surfing now. So she was really trying to figure out what it is that she wants to do with herself. When she came to L.A., Beth describes herself as an aspiring actress. However, there's no evidence that she ever auditioned for any role. It's in Long Beach, California, in mid-1946, that Short picks up the nickname that will stick with her after her death.

Elizabeth Short, like hanging out at this diner, and the customers there had actually named her Black Dahlia because she dyed her hair black. She liked wearing black clothing, and a movie called The Blue Dahlia had just come out. And so they named her the Black Dahlia. A month before Beth's murder, she told friends that she was going to the Bay Area to visit her sister. But in reality, she went to San Diego. And there she sleeps in a movie theater. One of the women working at the movie theater lets Elizabeth Short live with her and her family for about a month. But eventually, they tire of her.

And that's when she starts up with Red Manly. On the evening of January 9th, six days before her dead body will be found in Lamert Park, Beth is given a ride back to Los Angeles by a traveling salesman named Red Manly. He said she was very fidgety, she couldn't sit still, she just seemed very uncomfortable. Red Manley tells police that he dropped Beth off at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, and then he heads home. Officers checked out his alibi and everything rang true. And so the last time that Beth was seen by anyone was about 10 p.m. at the Biltmore.

Doorman said he walked her out, and that was the last time anyone had seen her. Six days later, she'll be dead, and the biggest manhunt in L.A. history kicks off. One of the first witnesses that investigators talked to was her on-again, off-again friends sometime, housemate, roommate, and Tooth. Tooth is the one that points investigators in the direction

of their first real suspect, Mark Hanson. which brings us to theory number one. She was killed by a jealous nightclub owner. Mark Hansen was the operator of the Florentine Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard. It was a very popular dance club. He's this Danish millionaire. He has lots of very powerful friends. He's very influential.

And he lives in this house on Carlos Avenue. This was kind of a haven for dancers at his club, for people who just come to the city and want it to be actresses, just people chasing the dream of Hollywood. Anne Tooth is one of the women who lives in the Carlos Avenue home. She tells police that Beth lived there too, off and on between May and November of 1946. One of the reasons that Tohth directed officers to Mark in the first place

is because she knew that he was completely obsessed and infatuated with Beth. He would forbid her to bring other men to the house, which sounds like, you know, the jealous boyfriend type. Hansen was described as fixated in Elizabeth Short. He had this unrequited sexual interest in her. So she's trying to find a way to, you know, kind of shoe him off sexually without infuriating him. So she comes up with this fiction that she's a virgin.

The fact that Beth rebuffed Mark Hansen with stories of, I'm a virgin, probably only fueled his desire to want her all the more. The stormy relationship doesn't end there. To avoid any conflict with Mark, It's rumored that she was having her gentleman friends drop her off about a block away from his house now. This just inferiorates him, so Mark doesn't speak to Beth now for several days. Things allegedly come to a head in early November, 1946.

Antoth had told the police that the final straw in this relationship between Mark Hansen and Elizabeth Short is that Hansen had told Elizabeth that it was only her, it was all about her he was obsessed with or fixated on her. And then he brings another woman home, and she sees this. and suddenly is now aggravated. And there is some kind of, I don't know if they come to blows or it's just a verbal argument, but something happens between them. And that is kind of where things completely fall apart

between Hansen and Short. The morning after this explosion, Hansen does evict her from the property where she's been staying. But Anne tells police it isn't the end of Mark and Beth's tumultuous relationship. The night before the murder, Anne said that Elizabeth had called and that Mr. Hansen had been acting nervous and restless. She also said that Elizabeth was going to come over, but she didn't show up.

So the last night that anybody sees Elizabeth Short, she does make a phone call to Mark Hansen, and he tells her everything's fine, you still have a place to stay. But according to Mark, Beth never came back. Police questioned the well-connected nightclub owner, but he downplays his relationship with Elizabeth. He says that he was never interested in Beth. He never tried to have sex with her. he found Beth to be fair-looking average. Hansen does himself no favors with the police.

He tells easily disprovable lies. He says he didn't speak to her after he evicted her. According to Ann, Mark Hansen told her, Beth could come and stay there if she needed a place to stay. But when questioned by investigators, Mark Hansen said, he turned Beth away and never saw her again. On January 21st, six days after Beth Short's body is discovered, An envelope containing the contents of her purse

arrives at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Among the materials submitted were Elizabeth Short's Social Security card, an address book that bore the name of Mark Hanson on its cover. At first blush, it looks like somebody's trying to set this guy up because you just don't send incriminating materials to the police. If you want to do that, you might as well go to the front desk and turn yourself in. Well, it's quite believable and reasonable to suspect Mark Hansen as the perpetrator of this crime because we know that he was obsessed with Elizabeth.

But Mark Hanson has an alibi and witnesses to back him up. He said that when the murder occurred, he was at a movie theater opening in Long Beach. And he also had a business associate testify that he was at his home in Redondo Beach until 3 a.m. This would not give him enough time to kill Elizabeth and then dispose of the body in the way it had been and be able to get away. Hansen's alibi knocks him down the suspect list. Police never search his properties or vehicles for blood or evidence, and the case moves on. You've got this very violent, very vicious killer out there,

and nobody knows who he is. Nobody knows when he's going to strike again. It's January of 1947, and Los Angeles is in the grips of a tabloid frenzy. Everyone wants to know who killed the Black Dahlia. Media were all over this case. At that time, there were four major dailies in the city of Los Angeles competing.

This is the 40s, so you're pre-internet, you're pre-Twitter, but you are also at a time when the papers are putting out two editions each day. They're putting out mornings and evenings, trying to just edge each other out and get, you know, at least one exclusive per day, twice per day. This story had everything that you would relate to a film noir. You've got the seedy underbelly of Hollywood,

you've got the gruesomeness of the killing, and then the, the great, great unknown is who did it. The Black Dahlia case even becomes headline news around the country. Everyone was watching. Everyone was reading papers. This was a hot story. And the cops were pressured to find out who done it.

You had at one point 150 suspects that investigators were looking at, wanting to talk to, had talked to. You had people who were calling in with tips. and you even had people who were confessing. There were certain things that would only be known to the killer. One of the details that police kept from the media was the fact that Elizabeth Short had a tattoo on her leg. It was a rose. Having information that others don't have

is one way of helping eliminate folks from being a potential suspect. So, after the initial excitement of this young woman found in the field and the several editions of days of newspaper and all this coverage, A month passes, and the cops are still at a loss of who killed Elizabeth Short. As their investigation continues, the L.A. police make a connection to similar grizzly murders that occurred a decade earlier and over 2,000 miles away.

Cleveland, iron and steel center of the Middle West. The nature and manner of death of Elizabeth Short tends to lend itself to a belief that there might be other murders that are related to this. a dismemberment murder and brutal, probably sexual murder of a woman. Cleveland, Ohio investigators are beginning to wonder if the Black Dahlia killer is someone they punched before. Investigators in Cleveland are looking at all that's happening around this young woman found in the field, and they are wondering, is their killer the same as our killer? Giving us theory number two, she was murdered by a Cleveland serial killer. About a decade before in 1930, Cleveland also had a killer who seemed to delight in killing folks and dissecting the bodies.

It all starts in September of 1934 when a beachcomer on the shores of Lake Erie makes a gruesome discovery. They discover a female who's headless, with her legs amputated at the knees, partially covered in sand. This body was essentially a torso with the upper legs still intact, but the rest of the body, was missing. When investigators eventually find her legs but not the head, and this woman becomes known as the Lady of the Lake. Exactly one year later, two teenagers discover the decapitated corpse of a white male in a vacant lot. The body was found decapitated with his genitals removed.

While searching the crime scene, police find the body of another man 40 years old who had also been decapitated and castrated. Every few months, more butchered bodies turn up. The Cleveland killer seems to target men and women who are down on their luck, folks who maybe a perpetrator might think they won't be missed, and were probably vulnerable in the moment. So we can already see specific parallels between the Cleveland Torsel Killer and the Black Dolly case. We see bodies that are turning up dismembered and disfigured in a way that involves a certain

amount of anatomical and or medical sense. skill and knowledge. Like the Black Dahlia's killer, who sent taunting letters to the newspaper, Cleveland's mad butcher seems to enjoy goading the authorities. A very significant parallel between the two cases is the fact that the killers communicated with police after the murders were done. In the case of the Cleveland torso killer, that killer was taunting the investigator who at that time was Elliot Ness.

Elliot Ness was the investigator who took down Al Capone in Chicago. The Cleveland torso killer is believed to be responsible for the murders of seven men and five women. In 1938, Cleveland's racked up about 12 bodies now as a result of this torso killer, and then it just stops. And so the question is, why? What happened? The belief was that Elliot Ness, during his investigation of the torso killer, had honed in on a guy who was only known as Dr. X. This person has received medical training. And Elliot Ness coaxes this person,

who he calls Dr. X, to talk with him. This Dr. X receives two polygraph tests and fails both. There was never enough evidence to charge him, but Elliot Ness manages to coax him into an insane asylum, and the torso murders stop. But some believe the suspect known as Dr. X wasn't actually the torso killer, and that the only reason the murder stopped

is because the real killer moved to a new hunting ground. Perhaps the killer actually left the area because a letter had been received by the police department. In this letter, he's kind of cheeky, and he says, you can relax now, I've left the area. I've gone to sunny California, and I'll be engaging in my surgical endeavors there. The suspect also says that he's buried his most recent victim in Los Angeles between Crenshaw and Western Avenue, which is really only about five miles from

Lamert Park. Did Cleveland's mad butcher set his sights on Elizabeth Short? The Cleveland torso killer and the killer of Elizabeth Short, Black Dahlia, had some type of anatomical training. They knew where to cut, where to avoid bone. There are also a number of differences between the two cases. We see with the Cleveland torso killings, there are decapitations. Elizabeth Short was not decapitated. The Cleveland torso killings, the bodies, weren't necessarily posed.

Also, the Cleveland torso killings involved men, which is a different victimology than the Elizabeth Short case. The Cleveland torso killers, mutilations, might have been more defensively motivated designed to keep him from being caught versus the Elizabeth Short case, which may have been more in the service

of sexual gratification. There was no hard proof that the killer of Elizabeth Short was the Cleveland torso killer. The M.O.s feel totally different to me. Most old unsolved murders slip into obscurity. Not so with the Black Dahlia. As the decades go by and the leads grow colder, the search for answers only seems to be heating up. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of the murder, the Los Angeles' Times hires renowned criminal profiler, John Douglas, to take his own look at the case.

Douglas believes that the killer of the black dahlia was a male, someone who's familiar with surgical equipment. He believes that the killer was motivated by personal stress, alcoholism, and romantic rejection. One of Douglas' biggest questions is why Lamert Park? The fact that the killer dumps the body in a residential area right in the middle of L.A., was notable to John Douglas. Because there's so many other places in Southern California to dump a body if you don't want to be found,

John Douglas feels that the perpetrator would have a connection to this neighborhood and to this spot. Well, who would possibly have a connection to this neighborhood that could have the means and the opportunity to commit this murder? Following up on that theory, an L.A. Times reporter finds a suspect that has flown under the radar for half a century. His name is Dr. Walter Bailey.

That's theory number three. The killer was a grieving surgeon. Walter Bailey is born in 1880. He is a World War I veteran. He is a surgeon at the University of Southern California. And maybe most importantly, he has an office not far from the Biltmore, where Elizabeth Short was last seen. Dr. Bailey had a young son who was riding his bicycle and was killed by a driver.

And it was a very traumatic incident in his life. It's been said that at this point, he sort of threw himself. into his career. He had a private practice where he specialized in mastectomies and hysterectomies. Given the injuries she suffered, given the specific areas of her body that were mutilated, there's a line of thinking that Bailey would have known exactly how to cut,

move, otherwise dismember those parts of a human being. Dr. Bailey and his wife lived in Lermert Park in a house just a block away from where Elizabeth Short will be found murdered. But in the months before the murder, Dr. Bailey's marriage and his life were coming apart. He becomes estranged from his wife about four months before Elizabeth Short is killed and kind of shacks up with this younger physician. He had a successful medical practice and then he sort of broke bad in a certain way.

His personality changed dramatically. He left his wife. He took up with this younger woman. He would have these bizarre kind of habits like watching surgery films at night while he ate dinner with this younger woman. And that sort of fit the profile of somebody who might commit this murder. One researcher investigating the Black Dahlia case found evidence of a connection between Dr. Bailey and Elizabeth Short. And he obtained Elizabeth Short's older sister's marriage certificate. And on the marriage certificate, one of the witnesses was Dr. Bailey's daughter.

And the address that Dr. Bailey's daughter listed was only one block from the crime scene, and that's where Walter Bailey's ex-wife lived. So there's now a connection between Elizabeth Short and Walter Bailey and the residence and the crime scene. Adding to the case against Dr. Bailey is his own medical condition. Dr. Bailey had a very specific brain condition,

known as encephalomyllusia. The neurobiologist said that this kind of dimensions could lead to a dramatic change of personality later in life. It could lead to a certain kind of violence and hypersexuality that might be consistent with somebody who would commit this kind of crime. Some theorists contend that Bailey, elderly and weakened by his disease, severed the body to make it easier to transport and purposely dumped it just a half a block from the house

in which his ex-wife still lived. If he's the suspect and he left this body within proximity to his wife, it would have been maybe to perhaps unsettle her and make her feel that, you know, this place that, you know, she calls home and feels safe is no longer safe based on the fact that a nude woman cut in half was found a block or two away. Dr. Bailey dies on January 4, 1948,

not even one year after the Black Dahlia murder, but his death doesn't stop speculation that he's the killer. Bailey wasn't a suspect at the time, but to a number of LAPD homicide detectives, of all the theories that had been going around for many, many decades, they felt his was the most plausible. There is this thought process that basically this man is going mad, not far from the Biltmore with the means,

mode and opportunity to commit a crime like this, and then Elizabeth short wanders into his path. Walter Bailey's death is critical here, because if this was to become a pattern of behavior, he didn't live long enough to find another victim. Walter Bailey isn't the only person who raises suspicions long after Elizabeth Short's murder. In 2006, Don Wolfe publishes a book in which he advances the theory, what if somebody with a hair-trigger temper, some infamous violent mobster killed Elizabeth Short?

And not only that he killed her, but he did it at the behest of a famous and powerful person. Leading to theory number four, she was murdered by Bugsy Siegel. Bugsy Siegel is infamous mafia figure, one of the people associated with the Foundation of Murder, Inc. in New York, which is not a reputation you develop unless you have heard people. Siegel moves to California in the mid-1930s to set up a West Coast criminal empire. Despite his track record as a merciless hitman, he soon finds himself hobnobbing with celebrities. One of the power players that Bugsy Siegel is known to associate with is Norman Chandler, who is at the time. the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Chandler is the civic leader in the second largest city in the U.S.

The rumor is that Norman Chandler got Elizabeth Short pregnant, and that could not be. I don't know if either she refused an abortion or he never asked, but to cover up the affair and the baby, Chandler reaches out to Bugsy Siegel. And so Buxie Segal gets two of his henchmen to take care of the problem. And the problem is, of course, Elizabeth Short. But most investigators point to one flaw in this theory. Her autopsy report states that Beth wasn't pregnant. Elizabeth's autopsy did not show that she was pregnant,

that this detail would have been changed by a medical examiner, somebody that Siegel could reach, or somebody that Chandler could reach. There's other circumstantial evidence supporting the Black Dahlia murder as a mob hit. Norman Chandler had a condo right near the Biltmore Hotel. So maybe on January 9th, when Red Manley drops Elizabeth Short off at the Biltmore Hotel, maybe she's going to see Norman Chandler at his condo nearby. Maybe she was walking into a trap.

Siegel's movement around the time of the Black Dahlia killing raises even more questions. It's believed that Bugsy Siegel was in Los Angeles during the time that Elizabeth Short was killed. But on the day her body is found in Lamert Park, Bugsy Siegel leaves town and he goes to Palm Springs. Coming up, a Hollywood detective goes digging into his own past and thinks he's finally solved the Black Dahlia murder. The LAPD has kept its most famous cold case open since 1947, and the detective assigned to the Black Dahlia murder

must evaluate all the new leads and theories that continue to come in, like the one that comes from a former homicide detective, who believes he's tracked the elusive killer right to his own front door. Steve Hodel is a 24-year veteran of the LAPD, but he never investigated the Black Dahlia case himself until the death of his beloved father, Dr. George Hodel, in 1999. When his father passed away, you know, he started going through all of his father's things,

and he came across this little black book and saw a picture that looked like Elizabeth Short. During some family conversation with his older step-sister, as he's looking at these photos, the older sister tells Steve that at some point, their dad had been identified as a potential suspect in the Black Dahlia murder. Which is theory number five.

The killer was a notorious Hollywood doctor. In the very beginning, Steve Hoagher, Steve Hodel set out to prove that his father had no involvement in Elizabeth Short's murder. But over time, Steve Haudel's investigation would lead him to a horrifying conclusion and cast his father in a very different light. George Hodel was very wealthy, very charismatic. He was actually a genius, if you will. He's in college at Caltech when he's 16 and he falls in love with his professor.

He had an affair with. with one of his teachers and got her pregnant. And she didn't want anything to do with him because obviously she's a teacher and he's 16 years old. But it just kind of goes to show like that personality that he had, you know, because as he got older, you know, he married several times. He'll go on to have 11 children by five different women.

He grows up in the Los Angeles area and eventually becomes a medical doctor and even the head of the LA Department of Health. of where he treated STDs and performed abortions for the rich and famous and elite around the Los Angeles area. He had every political, every police in his pocket.

You could say he was taken care of. By the 1940s, Hodel is swinging amongst an elite L.A. crowd, including surrealist photographer Man Ray and movie director John Houston. Then in 1945, he's accused by his daughter, daughter Tamar of sexual abuse.

During the trial, Tamar accuses Hodel of murdering the Black Dahlia. Despite the fact that there are eyewitnesses to the incest events is acquitted, but Los Angeles police then monitor his home, planting microphones in the house to see if they can get evidence related to the Black Dolly murder. Investigators spend the next 40 days and nights monitoring and recording conversations inside the Hodel home. At some point, he is heard saying, well, even if I did do the Black Dahlia murder, they would never catch me.

The deeper Steve digs into the Black Dahlia evidence, the more convinced he becomes that his dad is the monster who tortured and mutilated Elizabeth Short. Witnesses at the time report seeing Elizabeth Short in the presence and company of Dr. Hodel and that she may have been a patient of his or perhaps even a dating partner. Another clue for Steve Hodel is the concrete bag found at the Black Dahlia crime scene. One of the other reasons that Steve thought maybe his dad had been involved is that this concrete bag that was found at the scene where Elizabeth Short's body had been dumped, Steve said he found a very similar concrete bag at his dad's home because there was some construction being done there. Steve Hodel found the receipts and he matched the receipts to the same. cement bags that were found at the crime scene.

Studying the crime scene photos, Steve also believes he's established a motive. There's literally some of Man Ray's work that almost exactly resembles the way her body was laid out. And some believe that if this was George Hodel who perpetrated this murder, that he was trying to imitate or perhaps even supersede the work of Man Ray due to his close relationship and perhaps jealousy of Man Ray. In 1950, just when it seems the case against George Hodel is heating up, the doctor abruptly moves to the Philippines, which at the time has no extradition treaty with the U.S.

He goes there and he creates a whole new family. And he came back many years later, lived in San Francisco, and then he passed. Steve went on to write several books. and still believes to this day that his father actually killed Elizabeth Short. In 2017, the 70-year anniversary of Elizabeth Short's murder, a fresh look at the unredacted records breathes new life into an investigation that has never officially been closed. The fact of the matter is, LAPD still has a very talented detective assigned to this investigation

with the hopes that a solution still remains. Some believe that solution may involve a man who made headlines in the months after the murder. This is someone who investigators had looked at from the very start. It's the fall of 1948, and LAPD's chief police psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Paul Deriver, is still determined to find the Black Dahlia's killer. The LAPD years on from the murder starts to get a little desperate. They're trying to bait out the killer any way they can. So Dr. DeRiver is interviewed for a true...

crime magazine where he basically makes some flattering statements about who the Black Dahlia killer may be, talking about the intelligence of the individual who did this, and perhaps that person's need to brag or boast about it. Within days, the letter that Deriver's been waiting for arrives at police headquarters, giving us theory number six a sadistic drifter. A man named Jack Sands contacted Deriver saying that he had information about the Elizabeth Short Murder. And the main thing that is posited in this letter is that someone named Jeff Connors

has committed the homicide. Sands proposes that the murder Jeff Connors could have been Elizabeth Short's ex-lover, and perhaps she mocked him by insulting his manhood. Therefore, the murder would have been motivated by revenge. Jack Sance proposes this as the hypothetical motive of Jeff Connors. But Dr. Deriver says, oh no,

Sands himself is the guy. By now, police psychiatrist Dr. DeRiver is convinced he's writing to the actual killer and that Jack Sands is not his real name. So to track down this Jack Sands, the LAPD dispatches an officer to Florida to monitor his mailbox, and they soon discover that this Jack Sands is actually a man named Leslie Dillon. Dylan is a married man who bounced between residences and also between jobs. He'd once worked as a mortician's assistant, which intrigues police given the way that Elizabeth Short's body was cut up. Deriver has an undercover LAPD officer bring Dylan to a bugged hotel in Almonte, California,

so Deriver can talk to him about the murder. They spend three days in a hotel room that's bugged to have a conversation about the details of this killing. Dylan tells the police that he believes Connor had a motive to kill Elizabeth Short. Playing on a hunch, Dr. D'River asks Dylan to take off his clothes, and he's shocked. Dylan has the genitals of a child. This is important because it might have been the reason that Elizabeth Short may have been mocking him, and thus his reason for feeling humiliated and wanting to retaliate and kill her. Deriver is seeking to establish the credibility of Leslie Dillon, so he tests him.

He inquires about the damage to Elizabeth Short's body. One of the things that we know that police held back was the fact that the suspect had actually cut a portion of Elizabeth Short's leg, which contained a tattoo of a rose. When asked about the rose tattoo and its location on Elizabeth Short's body, without hesitation, Leslie Dillon states that it was removed from her left thigh and placed in her pelvis. This was something only the killer and the police knew, and he just answered the question affirmatively. After four days of questioning, Dr. Deriver is convinced he's finally solved the Black Dahlia murder. On January 10, 1949, Leslie Dillon is booked on suspicion of killing Elizabeth Short. Upon inspection of Leslie Dillon's suitcase, the investigators find 700 phenobarbital pills, along with 70 razor blades, and a dog leash. The dog leash itself had been damaged or worn, perhaps as if a baby, you know,

that had been bearing a significant weight, as in the weight of the body of Elizabeth Short. Strengthening the case against Dillon, it's discovered that a relative who gave him a place to stay at the time of the Dahlia murder lived just two blocks from where Beth's purse and shoes were dumped. They found her handback and her shoes just maybe two miles from where she was left.

Leslie Dillon has suggested a man named Jeff Connors is the Black Dahlia Murders. and that he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, but the cops believe Jeff Connors is merely Dylan's alter ego. And his things turn out, there is real Jeff Connors, and he really is in the San Francisco Bay Area. Interestingly enough, police learn that Jeff Connors, in addition to knowing Leslie Dylan,

he also knows Mark Hansen, one of our suspects from a previous theory, as well as Elizabeth's short, and that all of these paths might have crossed at some time previously. sometime previously. Investigators suspect that those paths might have crossed when a jealous and spurned Mark Hansen may have enlisted their help in killing Beth Short. But when Jeff Conner's ex-wife gives him an alibi

for the presumed time of the murder, he's allowed to walk free. Mark Hansen was very powerful, and he had a lot of money, and he had a lot of connections. What if he used all of that to make this case disappear? Leslie Dillon had plenty reason to want to get rid of Elizabeth Short. There's a theory that she mocked his manhood or lack thereof. Leslie Dillon may have the motivation with humiliation and revenge.

Mark Hanson may have the means and the ability to get Elizabeth Short to him and also the means to get it all cleaned up afterwards. All these years later, newly uncovered witness statements may finally explain how that happened. In 2018, the son of one of the Florentine Garden showgirls reaches out to investigators and says that his mom, Nanette, had said to him that she knew exactly who had killed the Black Dahlia. Nanette also, according to her son, said to him that she had seen someone who resembled Elizabeth Short in Mark Hanson's home behind the Florentine Gardens, known as the Carlos Avenue House. According to Nanette's son, she asked Hansen who the girl was, and he said it was Elizabeth Short. So a week after the Black Dolly murder, when the story was all over the news, Mark Hansen apparently called Nanette and said, she shouldn't mention this to anyone or her career would be over.

But Beth was out of Hanson's Carlos Avenue house by the 10th. So where did she go after that? According to unredacted District Attorney's Office documents, Mark Hansen, Leslie Dillon and Elizabeth Short were all seen at the Astor Motel together. Theory has it that Leslie Dillon and her old friend Mark Hanson kidnapped her and tortured her in one of the rooms at the Astor Hotel. Witnesses saw Mark Hansen leave room three at the Astor Hotel in Los Angeles. The hotel owner's wife walked into room three after everyone had left it

and she found blood and gore everywhere. These witness accounts buried for decades point to the possibility that the Astor Motel was where Elizabeth Short was tortured, murdered, and mutilated. However, by the time the LAPD examined the Astor Motel, there is no evidence of a bloody murder. And though the Astor Motel is ruled out as a crime scene, the detectives assigned to investigate are quickly remembered.

moved. The two detectives who were working this case, who were working the Astor Hotel scene, are suddenly excused. Why would they be kicked off this case? Is it because of Mark Hanson's pool? Is it possible that multimillionaire Mark Hanson had the clout to bury evidence and squelch an investigation into his possible guilt? It's yet another unanswered question in LA's most compelling murder mystery. The Elizabeth Short Mystery carries on to this day because nobody's been caught. Given the nature of the crime, we want an answer. We want to know why.

We want to know who. And until we do, I think there will always be an interest. The Black Dahlia murder has a long, unsavory suspect list. But without solid evidence, there's still no way to rule anyone in or out. The file remains open. A detective is still on the case. Maybe one day a newfound clue will finally lead to the identity of Elizabeth Short's killer, and justice at last for the Black Dahlia.

Thanks so much for listening to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast brought to you by Rewind Studios. Join us next time for a deep dive into another mystery and all the theories behind it.