Infamous America - HOLLYWOOD MURDER Ep. 3 | Black Dahlia, Part 1

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

On January 15, 1947, a dead body is discovered in a vacant lot on the edge of downtown Los Angeles, California. A young woman was brutally murdered and police identify her as Elizabeth Short. Investigators and newspaper reporters race to uncover the details of her life story. The press have a gory and sensational story on their hands. The police have a dark and twisted mystery to solve. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Hit “JOIN” on the Infamous America YouTube homepage.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4V_wVD7N1gEB045t7-V0w/featured For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. To purchase an ad on this show please reach out: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Warning. This episode contains scenes of graphic violence that may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. In the 25 years between William Desmond Taylor's murder in 1922 and the case of the Black Dahlia in 1947, Hollywood changed dramatically. Silent films were a relic of the past, and the movie business had become a full-blown industry. Hollywood had firmly established itself as the world's epicenter of glitz and glamour. The biggest movies opened with star-studded premieres on Hollywood Boulevard or Sunset Boulevard, two streets that were becoming as famous as the movies and the stars. What hadn't changed was the steady stream of hopefuls who came to town with dreams

of being the next Carrie Grant or Clark Gable, Catherine Hepburn or Olivia DeHavland, Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Stewart, or Lana Turner. After all, if a 16-year-old high school student named Judy could be discovered simply by walking into a cafe and then become a movie star overnight and change her name to Lana, it could happen to anyone, couldn't it? Unfortunately, the cold, hard truth for these star-struck hopefuls was that making it big in Hollywood was a lot harder than they had imagined. For most, their dreams of stardom gradually receded as they embraced. the reality that it wasn't going to happen, and they found new dreams to pursue. But for a tragic

few, their dreams became nightmares. That was the case with a beautiful young girl from New England who had jet black hair and piercing green eyes. She went to Hollywood hoping she might catch a lucky break like Lana Turner had in 1937. Lots of people told her she had the looks for it, so why not give it a try? And why not dream for the full package? While she was chasing a career as a movie star, maybe she would meet Mr. Wright along the way, and they would have the happily ever after ending she had seen in the movies. Sadly, for the young woman with the black hair and the green eyes, a monster lurked in Hollywood that was worse than anything conjured up by the film industry

for the golden era of horror movies starring Boris Karloff or Bella Legosi. The vicious murder of Elizabeth Short, and the long and complex criminal case that followed, became known by a simple two-word shorthand, Black Dahlia. It was a sensation beyond anything created in the town where she wanted to be a star. In some newspapers, it received more coverage than the attack on Pearl Harbor. And after hundreds of suspects, millions of work hours,

and years of investigation, the murder of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia, remains legally unsolved. But many believe the case is closed, An intriguing suspect emerged from the pile, and there's a lot of compelling information about that suspect that is impossible to ignore. But is it the truth? Let's find out.

From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling two murder mystery stories from the Golden Era of Hollywood, the case of director William Desmond Taylor, and the notorious Black Dahlia case. This is episode three, the Black Dahlia, part one of four. The Body Even in Southern California,

which is famous for its year-round sunshine, winters can be cold. On January 15th, 1947, in a quiet Los Angeles neighborhood, a cold morning turned chilling. It was a Wednesday, around 10 a.m., when a young housewife named Betty Bersinger was out for a morning walk

with her three-year-old daughter, Anne, who was being pushed along in a stroller. They cruised down the sidewalk, in their L.Mert Park neighborhood near downtown L.A., taking the same route they often did. Because the neighborhood was still being developed as part of the post-war housing boom, they were just about as many vacant lots as there were new homes. That morning, Betty and Ann were on their way to a local shoe repair shop to pick up a pair of Mr. Bursinger's shoes.

About halfway down the block, Betty's eyes began to focus on something unusual, lying in the grass on the edge of one of the vacant lots. As they drew closer, Betty assumed the thing in the grass was a store mannequin that had been broken into pieces and carelessly thrown onto the ground. It was a strange sight, but she didn't think too much about it until she got a little closer. It looked like the ashen white mannequin had been thrown away with its black wig attached to its head. As Betty looked closer, she noticed it was covered in flies. She screamed so loudly that her daughter immediately became hysterical. The grotesque sight on the edge of the vacant lot was not a mannequin.

It was the naked body of a young woman, lying face up with her eyes still open. Her skull had been crushed. Her face was covered with cuts and bruises, and there were mutilations to other parts of her body. Her arms were bent at the elbows and posed above her head. Her outstretched legs were spread. wide apart. But the reason that Betty thought it was a mannequin that had been broken into pieces was because the body had been cut in half. The young woman's torso had been severed just below her rib cage. The lower half of her body had been pulled away and positioned at an angle about a foot

away from the upper half. And in addition to the damage to her face, there was the final, lasting detail that would baffle detectives, horrify newspaper readers, and fascinate true crime. enthusiasts. The killer had sliced the corners of the victim's mouth on each side, producing a gruesome wound across her face from ear to ear. It gave the young woman an obscene, elongated smile. Betty Bursinger turned the stroller around and ran back up the sidewalk. Her daughter, Anne, cried hysterically. In the moment, Betty couldn't know what Anne had seen or understood, but Betty hoped her daughter was reacting to her mother's terror and not the grisly spectacle near the sidewalk. Betty ran to the closest house and knocked on the door. There was no answer.

She ran to a house on the next block where, thankfully, a woman was home. Betty called the police. The LAPD dispatcher couldn't quite believe what he was hearing, but he sent officers to the location. A newspaper photographer who regularly listened to police dispatches on his own police radio, heard the call, and raced to the scene. He arrived before the police. But his only information had come from the sanitized, dispassionate radio call of the dispatcher. There was a dead body in a vacant lot on the 3,800 block of Norton Avenue. The reporter knew nothing about the condition of the body. After his initial shock, he went into work mode and began snapping photos. There were six daily newspapers in Los Angeles at the time,

and the appalling murder of the as-yet-unknown young woman became, not surprisingly, the headline story for their next editions. The reporter's photos were so gory and hard to look at, even in black and white, that the newspapers had to doctor the images before they printed them. They drew a blanket over the woman's midsection, leaving only her head, arms and feet exposed. The stories, as expected, set off a frenzy. There was a devil at work in the city of angels, and no one wanted to be his next victim. Before anyone could possibly anticipate future victims, or know if there were any previous victims, they needed to know the identity of the current victim. That was going to take some time, though for an era long before electronics and

digital technology, it didn't take as long as might be expected. The first two officers who arrived at the 3,800 block of Norton Avenue were uniformed patrolmen, and they were both rookies. They were understandably shaken by what they saw. One of them apparently had to step away to vomit. When they composed themselves, they placed a white sheet over the body. Next to arrive on the scene were two veteran LAPD homicide detectives. Like the two patrolmen and the reporter who was still snapping pictures, the detectives weren't warned about what they were about to see. As far as they knew, the scene was probably just another version of a scenario they'd seen dozens of times before. It was probably a shooting or a stabbing or a strangulation like the vast majority of the others.

When the detectives lifted the sheet, it was painfully obvious that this murder was, was something different. It was brutal. The violence was aggressive and remorseless. This was not a so-called crime of passion. It was not the result of a heated argument, maybe fueled by drugs or alcohol, that spiraled out of control and ended in murder. Here, there were signs of torture. The killer enjoyed inflicting pain and appeared to be sending some sort of message based on the trauma to and positioning of the body. Presumably, the detectives were just as shocked as the patrolman and the reporter, but they had to start analyzing the scene.

They noticed there was no blood anywhere around the body. Clearly, the young woman had been murdered somewhere else, and her body brought to the vacant lot. And not only that, but her body had been completely drained of blood. Next, along with the smell of a dead body, there was also a strong odor of gasoline. At the time it was puzzling, but it was later determined that the killer used the gas to try to destroy any trace of fingerprints. The body had been cut in half.

Upon closer examination of the bisection, it was apparent that the killer knew what he was doing. The act was completed with surgical precision. There was extensive mutilation of a sexual nature, though there was no identifiable pattern to the injuries. In addition to the lacerations and bruises all over her face and body, there were ligature marks around her neck, arms, and legs. She had been tied up for some period of time. And despite all the outward trauma, the coroner determined that it was likely a blow to the head that actually killed her. Once the injuries had been cataloged and the surrounding area had been surveyed for clues, the detectives had to turn their attention to identifying the victim.

Luckily for investigators, the gasoline fingerprint removal trick hadn't completely worked. The coroner was able to get latent fingerprints, at which point the LAPD enlisted the help of the FBI. The LAPD sent the prints to FBI headquarters in Washington by way of something called sound photo, which was essentially an early version of a fax machine. The whole process happened remarkably fast, and just two days after the discovery of the body, the investigators knew the name of the victim. She was Elizabeth Short. Investigators caught another lucky break with that one.

Her fingerprints were on file because she had briefly worked at a military base near Santa Barbara called Camp Cook. Today, it's Vandenberg Air Force Base. And that was where the mystery of Elizabeth Short really began. The police and the press were now in a race to reconstruct her background. The police needed to find her killer, and the press was eager to report one of the most sensational murder cases that anyone could remember. Elizabeth Short was born in Boston in 1924, and her family later moved to the affluent suburb of Medford after her father, Cleo, found success designing and building miniature golf courses.

But Cleo's success didn't last long. The short family enjoyed a few good years of living the good life, but life turned rough when the stock market crashed in 1929. Although miniature golf had become wildly popular before the crash, it quickly became a luxury that few could afford. Cleo went from rags to riches and back to rags. One day, he parked his car in the middle of Boston's Charlestown Bridge and vanished. The obvious assumption was that he jumped. off the bridge. His body was never recovered, so it was further assumed that the Charles River swept him out to sea. Suicide was not uncommon after the crash. So many people lost everything,

and they became overwhelmed. Elizabeth was the middle child of five daughters, and was just six years old at the time. She was devastated by the loss. Her mother, Phoebe, was now alone, with five daughters to raise and with no income other than sporadic work as a bookkeeper. The family moved from their big two-story house into a two-bedroom flat where they were barely able to make ends meet. Phoebe later recalled that Elizabeth, who went by Beth, went from being a happy, outgoing child, to being sad and withdrawn and prone to bouts of deep depression. But it wasn't only her emotional health that suffered. Elizabeth also had severe asthma and chronic bronchitis, which became worse as she grew older. The frigid New England winters didn't help. When she was 16, her health got so bad that her

mother sent her to Miami for the winter to live with family friends. Elizabeth's condition improved greatly, thanks to the Florida sunshine and the salty ocean air. She returned to Medford in the spring, a new girl. She stayed with her mother and sisters for the summer and through the fall, and then returned to Florida for the winter of 1941. Her family was pleased to see that Beth had finally come out of the depression that had been caused by the loss of her father 10 years earlier. By the time she turned 17, her bubbly, outgoing personality was back, and her family's situation had improved a little bit as well. Her mother, Phoebe, found work as a clerk at a Boston Bay Finally, there was a steady paycheck coming in. It wasn't much, and there were still six women

living in a two-bedroom apartment, but they managed. Phoebe's new job meant she could splurge on the weekends and take her daughters to the movies. It was then that Elizabeth fell in love with the movies and started to dream about one day going to Hollywood and becoming a movie star. Her sisters and friends encouraged her to give it a try. She had natural beauty and charm, why not give it a shot? He was now 18 and could go out into the world if she wanted to. But then, almost literally out of nowhere, Elizabeth and her family received the most unexpected shock they could have imagined. Phoebe sat her girls down and told them that their father, who had been gone for 12 years, was not actually dead. It turned out he had not committed

suicide as everyone assumed. He faked his death in the simplest way possible. He parked his car on the Charlestown Bridge, walked across the bridge to Boston, and disappeared. Then he traveled to California and started a new life. But Cleo Shorts' new life in California had not gone the way he had hoped. Cleo found a job at Mayor Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California, north of San Francisco. He was surviving, but just barely. After more than a decade essentially spent in hiding,

Cleo decided he wanted to come home. He wrote a letter to Phoebe, begged her forgiveness, and asked if he could come back to Boston and rejoin his family. Phoebe wasn't having it. She wrote back and made it clear that he was still dead as far as she was concerned. She wanted nothing to do with him. But Elizabeth was a little more forgiving. Her father was in California,

and Hollywood was in California, and a trip to the West Coast was too good to pay. pass up. Elizabeth and Cleo began writing letters to each other. When winter approached in 1942, Cleo sent her the money for a train ticket and invited her to come to California instead of returning to Miami. Against her mother's wishes, Elizabeth took him up on his offer. Vallejo was in Hollywood, but it was closer to it than Medford or Miami. Elizabeth arrived in Vallejo in December of 1942 with high hopes that were. quickly dashed. The years had not been kind to Cleo short. He was a shadow of the man she remembered,

and practically a stranger to her. Elizabeth became painfully aware that her father was now an alcoholic, and one who carried a lot of bitterness and rage. This was not what Elizabeth signed up for, and she knew her days in Vallejo were numbered. She stuck it out through the holidays, while she thought about her next move. Since it was the dead of winter in New England, it looked like Miami was her only option. Then in January of 1943, Cleo unexpectedly suggested they'd drive down the coast to see Los Angeles. That was too good to be true.

Elizabeth was finally going to see Hollywood. But Elizabeth's first trip to the movie capital was tainted by her father. The tension that had been growing between them finally exploded. Elizabeth was fed up with his drinking. Cleo was angry that she went out every night with servicemen, mostly Navy men, who were on shore leave from their tours in the Pacific. Southern California was flooded with young men who were heading to or from the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Elizabeth still wanted to be a movie star, but she also started to entertain the idea that she could meet a handsome young soldier and fall madly in love. They could start a life together and get married and buy a little house. So, she went to the popular bars and restaurants of the era. She was attractive and outgoing and enjoyed dancing and flirting. And that combination allowed newspaper reporters to label her a party girl after her death. They accused her of boozing it up at seedy establishments, and some went as far as to call her a prostitute. But none of those scandalous accusations were true.

Sure, she liked to go out and have fun, and sure, she was interested in finding the the right guy, but she rarely drank and didn't sleep around. She was no different than thousands of other girls in Los Angeles at the time. But she couldn't convince her father. His misplaced anger over his daughter's dating life and her late hours grew on him until he kicked Elizabeth out of the apartment they were staying in. Elizabeth Short was now a beautiful teenage girl in a city where she had no family, no friends, no place to stay, and very little money. The dream life she had hoped to find in California was now looking pretty dismal. But the situation brightened up a bit when she met an Air Force officer

who has only ever been referred to as Sergeant Chuck. He was on leave from Camp Cook near Santa Barbara. After hearing about her predicament, he offered to give Elizabeth a ride back to Camp Cook and told her she could probably find work on the base. Elizabeth took him up on his offer, and on the same day they arrived at the base, she landed a job as a clerk at one of the canteens.

Her fingerprints were taken as part of her job on a military base and filed away with thousands and thousands of others, likely never to be seen again. Betty, as she was called at the time, made a splash at Camp Cook. The Camp Cook newspaper featured an article that attributed the steady rise in business at the canteen to her looks and personality. A co-worker described her as having childlike charm and beauty and went on to say she was one of the loveliest girls I had ever seen.

Although Betty was a civilian worker, she was entitled to housing on the base. Unfortunately, due to a housing shortage, Betty was told she needed to make her own living arrangements. Sergeant Chuck, who was clearly smitten with Betty, invited her to move in with him off base. She didn't have a lot of options, so she accepted his offer with the understanding that the relationship would remain platonic, and she would sleep on the couch. Sergeant Chuck agreed, but most likely believed he could change her mind. After he tried several times, and she denied him, he became violent and gave her a black eye. Betty filed a complaint with the military police, but rather than arrest Sergeant Chuck for assault, they shipped him overseas. Shortly after the incident, Betty lost her job, allegedly because of civilian cutbacks.

So, once again, Elizabeth Short was on her own in a strange place. She was unemployed and had very little money. Elizabeth rented a small cabin on a ranch in Santa Barbara County for a short time before moving to the city of Santa Barbara. She rented a room in an apartment. And one night, while she and her roommate were at a restaurant with a few other girls and a group of services, men, things got a bit rowdy. The police were called, and Elizabeth Short was arrested for underage drinking, despite having had nothing to drink. She was 19, which was above the legal age to drink in most states in the country, but not in California and a few others. In the 1940s, there was no

national law that regulated the legal age to drink alcohol. That wouldn't happen until 1984. Until then, each state determined the legal age on its own, and California was one of the first to place the minimum age at 21 when it passed its law in 1933. Betty was charged and her mugshot was taken. After her death, the press found the mugshot and published it in every newspaper in America. The picture and the small-time arrest cemented the press's ability to paint her as a juvenile delinquent. A female officer with the Santa Barbara Police Department took pity on Elizabeth.

In the officer's view, Betty was a good person. She was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time with the wrong crowd. Betty stayed with the officer while she awaited her court appearance. Her case was later dismissed, and she was allowed to go with a warning. But the mugshot, of course, stayed around for the press to find three years later. And with nowhere else to go, she tried to go. to make peace with her father back in Vallejo, but he refused to take her back in. Elizabeth had no choice but to go back to Medford, Massachusetts. The nice officer in Santa Barbara

assured her that the police were not going to send her file to Massachusetts, so there was no need for her to tell her mother about the unfortunate incident. The officer later recounted how grateful Elizabeth was for her help, and very apologetic for causing the officer any trouble. The officer gave her $10 for the trip to Boston. Back in Medford, Elizabeth was happy to see her mother and sisters again, and they were none the wiser regarding her arrest. But with another cold winter approaching, she went back to her previous migratory pattern

and returned to Florida for the winter of 1943. She found a job as a waitress, and she kept up the appearance of being happy, but she wasn't. She missed California, despite her string of bad experiences, and she still dreamed of becoming an actress. And she was still hoping Mr. Wright would come along too. She was only 20 years old, and she was already beginning to lose hope that she would ever find happiness. At about that time, she started dating a young lieutenant colonel named Joseph Fickling, a pilot who flew B-24 bombers. She thought he might be the one, but it wasn't meant to be.

They broke up just before Joseph was sent back to Europe. There was no animosity between them, and they remained close friends. And in a crazy twist of fate, Joseph Fickling would reenter Elizabeth's life in the final months before her murder. But shortly after Joseph was sent back to Europe, near the end of 1944, Elizabeth met the man who was the one. She was at a nightclub in Miami Beach on New Year's Eve, 1944, when she met a nightclub. Major Matt Gordon. He turned out to be the love of her life, and she turned out to be the love of his. They planned to get married, and if it had all worked out that way, the story of the Black Dahlia wouldn't exist. It never would have happened, at least not to Elizabeth short. But the story of

Matt and Elizabeth didn't have the happy ending of a Hollywood romantic comedy. Next time on Infamous America, it's the brief tale of Matt and Betty. Elizabeth returns, to Hollywood and her friends give her a nickname that's innocent at the time but takes on a darker meaning where the newspapers get a hold of it. And as detectives piece together her complicated life story, they start pursuing their first suspects. That's next week on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes.

Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched and written by Michael Byrne and myself. Original music by Rob Valier. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast.

Thanks for listening.