Infamous America - HOLLYWOOD MURDER Ep. 5 | Black Dahlia, Part 3

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Investigators struggle to find clues which will lead them to the killer. Suspects are interviewed and cleared. And then, the presumed Black Dahlia killer contacts a Los Angeles newspaper and provides chilling information about the crime and the victim, Elizabeth Short. But the investigation stalls until the police become aware of a new suspect, Dr. George Hodel, who seems to fit all the criteria of the killer. 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

A killer was on the loose. He was terrorizing a major city. A young woman had been found dead, with graphic mutilations and injuries that seemed to require surgical precision, or at least more knowledge of human anatomy than most people had. The public was both horrified and fascinated. The police were baffled as they tried to understand why the young woman was targeted

and why she had experienced such an extreme level of violence. They thought they'd caught the killer, but the prime suspect turned out to be innocent. The press was running wild with the story. It was one of the most sensational stories in history. Days passed as investigators worked overtime. They needed a break in the case. They needed insight into the killer that they couldn't get from the victim or the crime scene. And soon they had it, at least to some extent.

It was a communication from the killer. A letter was sent. to a well-known news agency. It provided some insight, but not enough. Mostly, it was a taunting, laughing missive. It began, Dear boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won't fix me just yet. It went on to discuss the victim, and the fun the killer was having, and how much he loved his work. It referenced the victim's blood, some of which had been kept by the killer. He planned to use it to write the letter that was now in the hands of the news agency, but it had become too thick over time, and he'd been forced to use red ink instead. The letter

ended with, My knife's so nice and sharp. I want to get to work right away if I get the chance. Good luck. There was a postscript at the bottom. The very last sentence was, P.S. They say I'm a doctor now. Ha, ha. The letter became famous. It's referred to as the Dear Boss letter. But it's not famous because of its salutation at the beginning or its many spelling and punctuation errors or the details about the murder.

It's famous because of its signature. The letter was signed, yours truly, Jack the Ripper. The letter arrived at the Central News Agency in London on September 27, 1888. It referenced one of the murders that are known as the canonical five, the five murders that seemed to be closely connected in the work of a single killer. And it was the first time the world saw the words Jack the Ripper. It has always been assumed that the letter was written by the most infamous unidentified killer of all time.

Later in the Whitechapel murder spree, Jack sent a care package and another letter to a man who led a volunteer group that was trying to catch him. The package contained part of a human kidney. The letter had the words from hell written in the upper right-hand corner as if that was the current location of the author. Jack the Ripper was suspected of being a doctor. He enjoyed taunting the police through the press, and he was never caught. 59 years later, an eerily similar situation played out in Los Angeles, California. A young woman was brutally murdered, almost.

certainly by a man, and one who had medical training. And as the press and the police were about to learn, he wanted to talk. The Los Angeles Examiner Newspaper was about to receive a care package and a letter from the killer. 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 5, The Black Dahlia Part 3 of 4. Letter to the Editor. When residents of Los Angeles picked up the evening editions of their newspaper of choice on January 15, 1947, they were in for a horrible stomach churning shock. The gory murder of an unidentified female was the top story. It took two days for the police to identify the victim through her fingerprints. She was 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, and like many women in Hollywood, she dreamed of being a movie star. But sometime between the night of January 9th and the morning of January 15th, she had been abducted, tortured, and murdered. Her body had been cut in half and drained of its blood. It had been positioned

next to the sidewalk of a vacant lot outside downtown, where it was sure to be found. For the first two days after the discovery, the talk of the town was mostly about the heinous nature of the crime. But then the police learned her name, and the press learned it shortly thereafter. They both hurried to learn her backstory and reconstruct the last few days of her life. The police learned she had moved to L.A. sometime in the summer of 1946. She had lived in residential hotels, a boarding house and an apartment in Long Beach with a pilot who was finishing his service after World War II. Elizabeth and the pilot, Joseph Fickling, had dated briefly in Miami before they unexpectedly found each other again in Los Angeles. There was nothing romantic between them now,

and Joseph allowed Betty, as he called her, to crash in his apartment because she had nowhere else to stay. At the end of the summer, he had to give up the apartment when he was discharged, and they went there separate ways. Later in the year, she drifted down to San Diego and ended up staying with a family who took her in, because again, she had nowhere else to stay. After a month with the family, Joseph Fickling generously wired her some money, and she called a friend to drive her back to L.A. That friend was Robert Manley. The details of Elizabeth and Robert's relationship are murky at best, but he drove her back to L.A. on January 9, 1947. He waited with her at the Swanky Biltmore Hotel downtown

while she played out the lie that her sister Virginia was on her way down from San Francisco. Eventually, Robert had to go home to his wife and child. And later that night, between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., a bellman at the hotel was the last person to see Elizabeth alive. She walked out of the back entrance and into the night and disappeared until her body was discovered by Mrs. Betty Bursinger five days later.

When the police learned her identity and her story, they quickly tracked down Robert Manley. As the last person to have substantial contact with her, he was suspect number one. After intense interrogations, two polygraph tests, and a sodium pentothal injection, the police cleared him as a suspect.

But the police couldn't stop the press from writing about Robert's association with the murder victim and his possible involvement in the crime. The relentless media coverage caused multiple nervous breakdowns, and Robert eventually landed in a mental institution. In the media, the worst offender

was William Randolph Hearst. The rich and famous publisher was arguably the father of yellow journalism, the term that was given to the practice of publishing wild speculation, highly embellished stories, and sometimes outright lies. He owned the Los Angeles Examiner and the Los Angeles Herald Express, and roughly two dozen other big city newspapers across the country, and the examiner was about to take center stage

in the drama of the case that was already known as the Black Dahlia Murder. told his editors and reporters to flagrantly sensationalize the story. Part of that was to create the false narrative that Elizabeth Short was a young woman of ill-reput, as if that explained why she met such a grisly end. One article in the examiner described the black tailored suit that Short was last seen wearing as, a tight skirt worn with a sheer blouse. That was an exaggeration and a distortion of the truth. Another article described her as an adventurous who prowled Hollywood Boulevard.

Again, exaggeration and distortion. And the LA Examiner certainly wasn't the only guilty party. Two days after her body was discovered, a writer for the Los Angeles Times referred to the murder as a sex fiend slaying. The salacious articles achieved their goals. The newspapers sold tons of copies. Elizabeth's reputation was ruined as she was portrayed as something close to a prostitute. And then, the media coverage achieved an unexpected goal. About a week after Elizabeth's body was discovered,

James Richardson, the editor of the Los Angeles Examiner, received a call from a man who claimed to be the Black Dahlia Killer. The man wanted to congratulate Richardson on the paper's coverage of the case. The alleged killer said he intended to turn himself, in, but he wanted to give the police a little more time to try to find him, in a twisted game of cat and mouse. Both the LAPD and the press were getting countless false confessions, erroneous tips, crank calls, and letters from all kinds of disturbed people claiming to be the Black Dahlia killer. Richardson was pretty sure this was another one, and he told the caller he was skeptical.

To prove he was who he claimed to be, the caller told Richardson to be, the caller told Richardson to be, be on the lookout for a package in the mail, containing some, as he put it, souvenirs belonging to Beth Short. The fact that he referred to her as Beth suggested he knew his victim. Elizabeth's family usually called her Beth, and most of her friends usually called her Betty. But Beth is a common shorthand for Elizabeth. The killer could easily have called her Beth for his own amusement, so there was still reason to be skeptical.

But that skepticism was dispelled the very next day. A package arrived at the Los Angeles Examiner, as promised. When James Richardson opened it, he knew he had been talking to the Black Dahlia killer. The contents of the package were chilling. Inside was Elizabeth's birth certificate, her social security card, a couple personal photographs, and an address book with the name Mark Hansen embossed on it. Hansen was the shady owner of a boarding house behind the Florentine Gardens nightclub, which he also owned. Elizabeth had briefly stayed at the house, but Hansen had kicked her out when she wouldn't provide sexual favors.

There was also a letter in the package, written partially by hand, but also using pasted letters that were cut from newspapers and magazines. The gist of what the killer wrote was that he would turn himself in if he was promised, he would only serve 10 years for the crime. He gave a date, a time, and a location for his surrender. When the day arrived, the police waited at the location, but the killer never showed up. Few people were surprised. The killer followed up with another letter saying he decided against it

because he didn't believe he would receive fair treatment. That letter ended with a sickening postscript. The Black Dahlia murder was justified. On the same day the package arrived, an empty purse and a black suede high-heel shoe were discovered in a trash can not far from where Elizabeth's body was found. Police called Robert Manley in again, and he was able to identify both as belonging to Elizabeth. But when Manley was cleared as a suspect, Mark Hansen immediately rose to the top of the list. Hansen was brought in for questioning.

He admitted to knowing Elizabeth, employing, her and being her landlord at one time. He told detectives the address book had belonged to him, but he never used it, so he gave it to Elizabeth. He also admitted that he had tried to seduce Elizabeth while she was his employee and tenant, but she had rejected him. Some contradicting statements Hansen made in two separate interviews had police thinking, maybe he was their man. But his alibi for the five days that Elizabeth was missing checked out, so he was clear. as well. The police were once again back to square one. Despite the frenzy and excitement of the killer's communications, there were no usable leads. The killer didn't leave his fingerprints on any of the

items that he sent to the press, and he obviously didn't turn himself in. He was unidentified and on the loose. In the weeks that followed, detectives widened their search as they became more desperate. At times they went pretty far afield. They interviewed Orson Wells, the world-famous actor, writer, and director behind the film Citizen Kane, which had been released six years earlier. He was a semi-regular at Florentine Gardens and had at some point been seen talking to Elizabeth. Infamous mobster Bugsy Siegel received the same treatment for the same reason, but they were both cleared pretty quickly. Police determined that not even Bugsy Siegel, who had killed plenty of people, would have committed such an unspeakable murder. And it wasn't just the vicious nature of the crime that led police away from gunmen like Bugsy.

Detectives continued to go back to the theory that the killer must have had a medical background of some kind. The LAPD again turned to the FBI for assistance. Federal investigators cast a large net, interviewing hundreds of medical. and dental students in the Los Angeles area, but they come up with no leads. Dead ends and phony confessions continued to bogged down the investigation, while the pressure to find the killer ramped up. The press had whipped the public into a frenzy, and the LAPD was receiving heat from both the mayor's office and the governor's office. They needed to get this psychopath off the streets before he struck again.

Over the next few months, and without any leads, the LAPD put together a list of somewhere between 50 and 75 potential suspects, who they had deemed compelling enough to investigate further. After they were able to rule out most of them, investigators were then left with a short list of suspects who they scrutinized very carefully. At the same time, detectives began looking at a string of unsolved murders of the other women in Los Angeles, both before and after the Black Dahlia murder. They needed to seriously consider the possibility that they were dealing with a serial killer, though they were 30 years away

from having that term in their lexicon. Just three weeks after the Black Dahlia murder, another woman had been brutally murdered and dumped in a vacant lot. Her name was Jean French, who was no relation to the French family Elizabeth had lived with in San Diego. Jean French's murder was also horrific. Police suspected she was knocked unconscious by her killer, possibly with a tire iron, then dragged into the lot where she was stomped to death. The coroner's report determined her cause of death

was a broken rib that had punctured her heart. Her naked body was found lying on its back and covered with her coat, and it turned out the coat probably wasn't meant to conceal the body. It was meant to conceal a taunting man. message, probably for the police. When police lifted the coat off of French's body, there was a message written on her torso in her own bright red lipstick. The part that is agreed upon is the simple statement, and please pardon the explicit language here.

The message began, fuck you. After that, it becomes messy. There seemed to be two initials printed on the woman's stomach. The coroner's report stated them as PD, which law enforcement interpreted as police department. The message was a direct insult to investigators. But based on grainy, black and white crime scene photos, it's possible to read the initials as B.D., as in Black Dahlia. The killer was taunting everyone, and had signed the message with the nickname of Elizabeth's case. That was the story the press ran with. But the coroner's report also stated that there was one final word fragment in the message, Tex, T-E-X.

So if the initials were PD, and the message was an insult directed at the police department, then Tex could be the signature. The killer could be calling himself Tex, similar to the way London's notorious killer had given himself the name Jack the Ripper. But Tex could also refer to the state of Texas. which would fit with Jean French's story. Gene French was born and raised in Texas. She had married a man in Texas,

but divorced him 20 years earlier. She was now on her fourth husband, and he was known to be abusive. So there were four immediate suspects on her list. And the police still had to consider the possibility that the two murders were connected. The press was already running with that idea, of course. And there were some major differences

between the crimes, but the connections still had to be investigated. Of the differences, there were these. Jean French lived on the west side of L.A., and her body was found on the west side. Elizabeth lived in Hollywood, and her body was found near downtown. That was a pretty small difference, but it was noted. Jean French was 44 years old and married. Elizabeth Short was 22 and single. Jean was essentially beaten to death.

in what looked like a fit of uncontrollable rage. Elizabeth was subjected to deliberate mutilations, both while she was alive and after she was dead, some of which seemed to require medical training. There were no such mutilations on Jean French's body. French was an alcoholic, and known for being pretty mean when she was drunk. According to the coroner's report,

her blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit to drive at the time she was killed. It opened the door to the possibility that she provoked someone while drunk, and that person had reacted with extreme violence, possibly while also drunk. Then there was the word text that was written on her body. That opened the door to all kinds of possibilities, most of which were hard to link to Elizabeth short. So it was tough to make a connection between the two crimes, but it was also tough to ignore a possible

connection. There had been a string of unsolved murders of women in L.A. in the 1940s, and French and short were the most recent on the list. And there were those in the LAPD and L.A. County Sheriff's Department who believed at least a couple of the murders were connected. The murders had been labeled by the press as the lone women murders. It didn't take long for newspapers to connect all of them to the Black Dahlia killer. Newspapers frequently referred to the unknown killer as a werewolf, but modern investigators have dismissed the murders as a pattern and the work of a single killer of the type that we would call today a serial killer.

And so, the manhunt continued. Those initial chaotic weeks turned into months, and months turned into years. Then, after three years of investigation, the LAPD and the district attorney's office believed they knew the identity of the Black Dahlia killer. At one point, police were poised to make an arrest, but it never happened. The police may have believed the case was solved, but it wasn't closed. There was one final, really strange chapter yet to be written. Former Assistant District Attorney Stephen Kay, who helped prompt. prosecute Charles Manson and his followers for the 1969 Tate La Bianca murders has gone on record saying,

if he had the same evidence today that law enforcement had in 1950, he would have indicted the prime suspect for Elizabeth Short's murder. That suspect was Dr. George Hodel. And the reason Stephen K. examined the potential evidence against Dr. Hodel was because Dr. Hodel's son, Steve, asked him to. Steve Hodel is a retired LAPD homicide detective who believes, without a doubt, that his father is the Black Dahlia killer. As it happened, the police had some pretty interesting circumstantial evidence against Dr. Hodel back in 1950, and Steve and his family were able to provide more details about other potential crimes, as well as Dr. Hodel's sordid lifestyle. George Hodel graduated from medical school at San Francisco State in 1936 and then moved to Los Angeles.

He started a private medical practice that flourished in the 1930s and 40s. His popularity in town grew quickly. He liked to drink. He dabbled in drugs. And he threw lavish A-list parties where both were celebrated. The parties became notorious for having, let's say, a free-spirited atmosphere. where anything was acceptable. In 1945, Hodel bought a home in Hollywood called the Sauden House, or the Soden House.

There doesn't seem to be a single person in the world who knows the correct pronunciation, but it's probably one of those. It's an amazing structure that was inspired by ancient Mayan temples. It was designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was the venue for Hodel's most decades. parties. And according to Steve Hodel, who grew up in the house, there was a secret room that only his father or those he invited were allowed in. If so, there's no record of what happened in there, but it's known by many in Hollywood as the murder house. And the suspicions of murder began that year,

or at least they were traced back to that year. In 1945, Dr. George Hodel's secretary, Ruth Spalding, died of a drug overdose. At some point in the early 1940s, Hodel became the director of Los Angeles County's Social Hygiene Bureau. That was a quaint way of referring to the agency that tracked sexually transmitted infections. Hodel also ran a private clinic in downtown L.A., where he treated those infections. He allegedly performed secret abortions at his clinic, which were illegal at the time. Some have speculated that while he was in this role, Hodel began to rack up favors with powerful people in Los Angeles. For local politicians, members of law enforcement, movie stars, or other prominent people who needed a doctor who could keep a secret, Hodel was the right man for the job.

Being the keeper of secrets also gave him leverage in case he ever found himself in his own difficult situation. and the first difficult situation might have been the one with Ruth Spalding. She was the secretary at Hodel's downtown clinic, which made her a keeper of secrets too. She knew all the information about the clients, and she also knew the internal secrets. Steve Hodel also believes he uncovered evidence that his father was routinely committing fraud, along with malpractice. Based on documents in his father's old medical files, it appears to be that. as though Dr. Hodel prescribed treatments even if patients didn't have an infection. He gave them placebos and then charged them high prices. Ruth would have known everything because she handled

all the test results and all the billing. In addition, Steve Hodel believes his father was having an affair with Ruth, one of many, and he wanted to end it. Ruth threatened to go to the police with the mountain of information she had against Dr. Hodel. And that was more than enough motive for Hodel to give her an overdose of antidepressants. At the time, in 1945, her death looked self-inflicted. But 40 years later, Hodel's daughter, Tamar, accused him of a truly hideous crime.

When her case went to trial, it put George Hodel in the spotlight. The police started working back through the disturbing details of his life. and they believed he was responsible for a multitude of crimes. The most prominent was the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, and the police would soon believe they had the evidence to prove it. Next time on Infamous America, the police zero in on George Hodel,

and they set up an operation to catch him. But then the case fizzles, and Hodel's son Steve takes up the investigation decades later. Steve reveals startling details of a similar murder that took place years later and thousands of miles away. And the only common link is George Hodel. That's next time on the season finale of 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 research

and written by Michael Byrne and myself. Original music by Rob Villeer. 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.