Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Black Dahlia Murder Pt. 1

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

In 1940s Hollywood, a 22-year-old aspiring actress is found mutilated and drained of blood. Her body is posed, and her mouth has been carved into a permanent smile. The investigation takes police into the hidden sides of the city — illicit romances and gang-related crimes. But when another mutilated body is found weeks later, the hunt is on for a possible serial killer.  This is a crossover series with Unsolved Murders, looking at the murder of Elizabeth Short and other unsolved cases surrounding it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, listeners, it's Vanessa from serial killers, and I'm excited to bring you along as we dive into the story of one of true crime's most infamous mysteries. But this week, we're doing things a little differently because this story is anything but straightforward. So with that in mind, Carter from Unsolved Murders is going to join me on this journey back to Hollywood's Golden Age. Like Vanessa said, the case of the Black Dahlia is an enduring mystery that has fascinated true crime officinaut. for decades. But while most people know about the iconic murder at the center of the story, few people know about the other unsolved cases that surround it. This week, we're joining forces to explore these crimes, as well as the theory that they weren't a spate of disconnected tragedies. They were the work of a single serial killer.

Due to the graphic nature of this murder case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, mutilation, and sexual assault. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. On a chilly winter's morning in Los Angeles, H.C. Shelby was taking the scenic drive to his construction job. Yet another new housing project. Ever since the end of World War II, the building had been relentless. That was good news for Shelby, of course. He worked as a bulldozer operator, and with all the development he was never wanting for work. But sometimes it made him sad to see the city changing, so he liked taking back streets to get to work,

enjoying the quiet stretches of land where nothing had been built yet. That February day, as he gazed out of his window, something unusual caught his eye by the side of the road, inside a vacant lot overgrown with weeds, a flash of color against the concrete. Something about it bothered it. enough that he pulled over to the side of the road and got out. From where he stood, it looked like a pile of women's clothing had been left on the side of the road.

Classy stuff, too. He could see a fox fur cuff. But as he moved closer, an uneasy feeling took hold of him. Something about the shape of the pile didn't look right. It was too solid, too structured, too human. Suddenly, Shelby stopped in his tracks, a wave of nausea, rising. He saw a mop of dark, glossy hair, ghostly white skin. This was not a pile of clothes. It was a woman, to be more specific, the body of a woman, beneath a beautiful red dress and a fur-coffed coat. She was lying face up, but it was almost impossible to make out her features

beneath the bruising and swelling. Despite himself, Shelby moved closer. There was something written on the woman's torso in a vivid red hue that could only be lipstick. As he stared at the message, Shelby felt a chill spread up his spine. This whole scene felt horribly familiar, like something L.A. had seen before. Hi, I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is a special two-part series presented by serial killers and Unsolved Murders, both Spotify originals from Parcast. Today I'm joined by Carter Roy. Great to be here, Vanessa. You can find all episodes of serial killers, unsolved murders, and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free exclusively on Spotify. In this two-part episode, we'll be exploring one of the most notorious unsolved murders of the 20th century. Though it took place

more than 70 years ago, the Black Dahlia case continues to haunt true crime fans to this day. Today we'll discuss the mysterious life and untimely death of Elizabeth Short in the doomed police investigation that followed. Next time, we'll hone in on one particular suspect whose own son believes that he was Elizabeth's murderer and may have been a serial killer. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us.

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That's ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen.

Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Los Angeles isn't just the city of angels, it's also the city of stars. Every year, thousands of young hopefuls relocate. to Southern California from all across the globe, planning to defy the odds and find fame and fortune. For a lot of people, the gamble pays off, but for every Hollywood dream that comes true,

there are a hundred broken ones. Today's story is the most extreme example of that, because despite how it all ended, Elizabeth Short moved to L.A. to become a star. Instead, she lost her life in a monstrous way, And in a cruel twist of fate, she became one of the most famous women in the world after her death. On the morning of January 15, 1947, Betty Bursinger left her house in the Lamert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. She strolled down a quiet street, bathed in warm winter sun, pushing her three-year-old daughter in a stroller.

The area was still under development, and there were a lot of vacant lots, many of them overgrown with weeds, ordinarily, Betty didn't give these empty spaces a second thought, but as she approached the corner of South Norton Avenue, she noticed something strange. There was an object lying on the ground up ahead just off the sidewalk. A mannequin, she thought, made of white plastic, the kind they use in department stores. But there were none of those anywhere nearby.

As she moved closer, she saw that the figure was split into two halves. An eerie feeling came over, Betty. She couldn't process what she was seeing, or rather she didn't want to process it, because this wasn't a mannequin. It was the body of a woman so pale she appeared ghost-like. The alabaster white of her skin looked even more dramatic in contrast to her jet black hair. The only flash of color came from the fresh wounds that extended from either side of her mouth, a grotesque mockery of a smile, and she'd been cut in two. Betty recoiled, instinctively stepping in front of her young daughter.

But the little girl was happily dozing way in her stroller, oblivious to the horrors just in front of her. Mind racing, Betty retreated back up the street and hurried to a neighbor's house. She knocked on the door and asked to use the phone. Trying to keep her voice steady, she called the police and told an officer. officer what she'd seen. Within minutes, the cops arrived at the scene, including two homicide detectives. After just a quick look at the body, they could see that this was no ordinary murder. The victim was bludgeoned and mutilated in a horrific way. There were several deep cuts all over

her body, and her intestines had been removed. But despite the shocking injuries, there was almost no blood to be seen. In fact, her body was... looked as if it had been drained, then scrubbed completely clean, and she'd been deliberately posed, her limbs contorted into an unnatural position. Vanessa's going to go over the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Carter. According to a 2004 paper on this subject, the act of leaving a victim's body in an artificially posed position is usually done with a very specific intent. And although it's an iconic trait of the most famous crimes, it's

actually quite unusual behavior for killers. Researchers noted that in a 20-year study of murders, only 0.3% of victims' bodies were posed. Sometimes a killer does this in order to satisfy some kind of fantasy need. In other words, they do it for a sick thrill. Occasionally, the though, a criminal will manipulate a body in order to send a particular message or to confuse and mislead law enforcement. However, if there was a message being sent here, it was obscured by the sheer horror of the scene. As a crowd of curious passers-by began to gather, detectives searched the lot for evidence.

All they could find was a tire track that might have been left by the killer's car, a bloody smear from what looked like a shoe and a bloodstead. bag. In other words, the killer had done a good job of covering their tracks. But one of the homicide detectives on the scene, Harry Hansen, had a hunch about this mysterious monster. This was not a sloppy, crazed act of brutality. He'd seen plenty of those before. It was violent, yes, but this victim had been mutilated with surgical precision. Looking at the body, Hansen felt sure that whoever had committed this murder had a medical background. During the autopsy the following day, Los Angeles County Coroner Frederick Nubar found evidence

that supported Hansen's theory. Newbar noted that the body had been cut in half using a technique called a hemicorporectomy, which was widely taught in medical schools during the 1930s. This procedure involves cutting the body just below the lumbar spine, and it's the only way a body can be severed in half without breaking any bones. Needless to say, it involves precision and training. That wasn't the only disturbing revelation from the autopsy. The victim's uterus was also surgically removed, and there was evidence that she'd been sexually assaulted and tortured. She'd ultimately died of a hemorrhage caused by repeated blows to her head and face.

As Newbar examined the young woman, the authorities were still working frantically to identify her, as were the press. Thanks to the crime scene being so public, the grisly details of the case had already made headlines, and reporters were hungry for updates. A wider search had turned up a shoe and a purse thought to belong to the woman, but neither offered clues to her identity. With no modern forensic techniques available, identifying victims could be a slow, and laborious process in those days. So a journalist at the Los Angeles Examiner suggested a way to speed up the process. The newspaper had recently acquired a wire photo, which was essentially a 1940s version of a fax machine. They suggested that the LAPD used the machine to send images

of the victim's fingerprints to the FBI. The police agreed to give it a try, and by the evening of the 16th, the day after the body was found, the FBI came back with a name for their victim. She was 22-year-old Elizabeth Short. Four years earlier, Elizabeth had been arrested in Santa Barbara, California, for underage drinking. Her fingerprints were taken while she was in custody, which is how they ended up in the FBI database. That day, a reporter from the examiner contacted Elizabeth's mother, Phoebe, at her home in Boston. It's unclear how or why the press were permitted to contact her before the police,

but the timing of the call isn't the most upsetting part of this chapter. The details of this entire exchange are pretty horrifying. First, the reporter told Phoebe that Elizabeth had won a beauty contest in Los Angeles and explained that the newspaper wanted some information about her to include in its write-up. Phoebe was only too happy to tell the reporter all about her. daughter, who'd moved to Hollywood a few years earlier to pursue her acting dreams. After he'd gleaned as much information as he could, the reporter finally told Phoebe the horrific truth that her daughter had been brutally murdered.

This callous act was the first of many low points for the press, who seized on Elizabeth's story like vultures. The revelation that she was an aspiring starlet just made her killing all the more sensational, as did the details that emerged about her life in Los Angeles. One reporter discovered that staff and patrons at a drugstore that Elizabeth frequented had nicknamed her the Black Dahlia. The press ran with that nickname, a reference to the 1946 film noir starring Veronica Lake. Over the next few days, the examiner and other newspapers plastered the details of the Black Dahlia's life all over their front pages. They portrayed her as a kind of femme fatale, a mysterious, beautiful, adventurous who was last seen wearing a tight skirt

and a sheer blouse. Elizabeth was apparently irregular at many of the bars along Hollywood Boulevard and had been known to date various men. Reporters pointed to her underage drinking arrest as further evidence of her party girl ways, never mind that it had happened years. ago. One article noted that her lifestyle made her, quote, victim material. Another in the Los Angeles Times referred to her death as a, quote, sex fiend slaying. A police report went even further, noting that she was known as, quote, a teaser of men. There were even rumors that Elizabeth was a sex worker, which appears to be completely untrue, but even the idea of it was enough to change the way she was talked about and perceived.

Though sex workers are disproportionately vulnerable to violence, their murders are far more likely to go unsolved, in part because they're seen as less sympathetic victims. And though Elizabeth wasn't a sex worker, her supposed promiscuity was used against her. The way she was dismissed by the press is a microcosm of the way violence against sex workers is often diminished. There's a sinister implication behind this kind of slut shaming. Consciously or not, the press were suggesting that Elizabeth was to blame for her horrific fate, that if she'd made different choices, she would still be alive. Needless to say, that's not a great way to get a fair or accurate

picture of what happened here. So rather than passing judgment, we'll try to understand the choices that Elizabeth did make and trace the winding path that led to her life. abrupt end. Coming up, we'll explore the human being behind the Black Dahlia. What could be more shocking than uncovering the dark secrets behind history's biggest stories, realizing that everything you thought was true was a lie. Hi, it's Molly from the Parkhouse series Conspiracy theories. Each week, we take a closer look at the blurred line between fact and fiction, revealing that there may be more to the so-called truth than you think. The rise and fall of J. Edgar Hoover.

75 years of Roswell, the tragic death of Princess Diana. On conspiracy theories, we leave no stone unturned and no skeptic unheard. Some may be just outlandish claims. Others may make you rethink everything. Follow the Spotify Original from Parkast Conspiracy. theories. Listen free, only on Spotify. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigue, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity.

Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptitite and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

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Call 1-800-545-9-9 or visit setbound.lily.com. Now back to the story. A murder victim is, by definition, silenced. It's unfortunately easy and true crime stories for the victim to become an afterthought without a voice. You don't have a narrative, even when the story is seemingly all about you. This is especially true for someone like Elizabeth Short, who became a kind of cultural icon with a nickname to match. But if we want to understand her story, we need to get to know the person she was before she became the tragic symbol. Elizabeth was born in July of

24 in Boston, Massachusetts. The third of five daughters, she was surrounded by a loving family in her early years, but when she was five, things took a turn. In the fall of 1929, an unprecedented and stock market crash hit Wall Street, signaling the beginning of the Great Depression. Like many Americans, Elizabeth's father, Cleo, was left bankrupt. Unable to cope with the financial ruin, Cleo left the house one day, abandoned his car on a bridge, and disappeared. His family and friends assumed that he died by suicide. That left Elizabeth's mother, Phoebe, to raise five daughters on her own, so she found work as a bookkeeper to make ends meet.

On top of their emotional and financial hardships, the shorts also had medical worries. Elizabeth suffered from severe asthma and was hospitalized with bronchitis at least once. Because of her poor health, she was sent to live in Florida during the winters to avoid Massachusetts' brutal cold. Eventually, her respiratory problems became so severe

that she had to have lung surgery. It was a tough childhood, and Elizabeth took every chance she could to take her mind off her troubles. And for her, one of the very best escapes was into movies. For many people throughout the 1930s, cinema provided a much-needed reprieve from the brutal realities of the Great Depression. For Elizabeth, it provided a respite from her illness and a glimpse into what her future could be. By the time she was a teenager, Elizabeth had decided that she wanted to be an actress. There was just one problem. She'd have to get all the way across the country to make it happen.

She knew California was where movies were made, but she had no idea how to get there. And then when she was around 18, a miracle happened. Out of the blue, Elizabeth's mother heard from Cleo, the husband she'd long believe dead. He apologized for abandoning the family. family and revealed that he'd in fact started a new life in California. After more than a decade, Elizabeth had a father again, and whatever anger she might have felt towards him was eclipsed by her desire to be on the West Coast. She asked if she could come and live with him.

Cleo, surely eager to make things up to his daughter, agreed. Elizabeth packed up a few belongings and moved to Vallejo in the Bay Area of California. But the tentative father-daughter relationship soon deteriorated. Cleo was annoyed that Elizabeth spent all her time, quote, running around when she was supposed to be keeping house for me. The fact he was surprised by this might be an indication of how little he really knew about the daughter he'd abandoned. Elizabeth had no interest in being anybody's housewife, especially not her father's. And by January of 1943, Cleo asked her to leave.

Elizabeth's movements during this year are a little hard to keep track of, but we know that by the fall she was in Santa Barbara. That's where she was arrested at a bar and charged with underage drinking. The authorities sent her back to her family in Massachusetts, but she didn't stay put for long. By 1944, she'd moved to Miami Beach, Florida, where she'd spent so many winters as a child. We don't know much about Elizabeth's time in Florida, except that she worked part-time as a and found love. Around the beginning of 1945, she met an Air Force major named Matt Gordon Jr. Their romance was brief since Matthew was about to be deployed,

but the couple wrote to each other often after he left. In one of those letters, Matthew proposed to Elizabeth, and she immediately accepted. But before the couple could reunite, Matthew died in a plane crash shortly before the end of World War II. This was surely a devastating blow to Elizabeth who'd been imagining her future with Matthew. Now, 21 years old, she felt utterly alone in the world.

But she did still have her Hollywood dream. She'd barely had a chance to really make a go of it before she'd been sent back east. But after Matthew's death, she was determined to give herself a real chance. So in the spring of 1946, she headed back. back to the West Coast. It was at a drugstore lunch counter in Long Beach that Elizabeth first earned the nickname the Black Dahlia.

It's not totally clear why customers there named her after the film noir the Blue Dahlia, but it was probably a reference to Elizabeth's alluring appearance. She often wore black and was always impeccably put together. She already looked like a movie star. But the reality of her day-to-day life was far from glamorous, though she managed to support herself by waitressing, Elizabeth was often on the brink of homelessness. We know she had a series of precarious living situations, a room behind a nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard, and later a bunk bed in a unit with several other women. This kind of existence is pretty common

for Hollywood hopefuls, both then and now. The industry is inherently perilous, with minimal job security even when you do have work, and so signing a lease is often impractical. We have no way of knowing how much this instability affected Elizabeth. She may have seen it all as part of the plan. After all, if she'd wanted safety, she would have stayed with her family back east. In L.A., she might not have much security, but she had freedom. She was a social butterfly, a regular at cocktail bars and nightclubs, and was never short of romantic prospects. It's not clear how much she was pursuing her Hollywood dream at this point. There's no record of her ever booking any acting work, but she may have been going out on auditions. Either way,

though, Elizabeth seemed happy. She was only 22. Her life was just beginning, and yet it was about to come to a brutal end. The details of... of the last day of Elizabeth's life are famously sketchy, but we're going to do our best to piece together what likely happened. For reasons that aren't clear, she was in San Diego at the beginning of 1947, and at some point during that trip, she caught the eye of Robert Manley, a married salesman. Manley saw Elizabeth on a street corner and was infatuated. He asked her if she wanted a ride, and she agreed.

The details of their relationship. relationship are mysterious, but we know that on January 9th, Elizabeth and Manley traveled back to Los Angeles together. They checked Elizabeth's luggage at a Greyhound bus station, and then headed to the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown L.A. Elizabeth told her companion that she was due to meet her sister at the hotel, but some reports suggest that this was a ruse to try and get rid of Manley. Either way, Manley waited with Elizabeth in the lobby of the Biltmore for a little while before finally leaving her there. So by the early evening, she was alone in downtown Los Angeles. It's worth taking a moment here to explain what was

happening in this neighborhood at the time. In its heyday during the 1920s and 30s, downtown L.A. was the bustling hub of the city, boasting shopping, theaters, and a thriving financial district known as the Wall Street of the West. But by the time Elizabeth arrived in the city, the area was changing. The Depression had hit hard, and after World War II, a lot of people were choosing to settle further out in the suburbs, leaving urban areas less populated. But downtown L.A. wasn't an ideal place for a young woman to be alone after dark. All of which is helpful context for Elizabeth's final hours. Unfortunately, though, we don't have a lot of other information about her movements that night. The last known sighting of her was at the Biltmore.

around 6.30 p.m. wearing a black suit, white gloves, and black suede high heels. Where she went from there is a mystery. Almost a full week later, Betty Bursinger stumbled upon Elizabeth's body, seven miles away from the Biltmore. Despite how public the grizzly murder scene was, her killer had left behind almost no clues whatsoever, and that frustrating lack of answers would hang over the case for decades to come. Coming up, the police begin questioning suspects. Want to support your gut health? Take Activia's gut health challenge by enjoying two Activia yogurt today for two weeks

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After Elizabeth Short's body was found in January of 1947, she became a larger-than-life figure in the press. Reporters made her out to be a seductive party girl, a femme fatale who tempted fate and paid the price. Despite the misogyny of this narrative, all the attention around Elizabeth's case did put pressure on the LAPD to solve it. In the days after she was identified, the police interviewed dozens of people, her family, ex-lovers, and acquaintances across L.A. Robert Manley, the last known person to see Elizabeth alive, was an obvious suspect. The police tracked him down at a house

in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of L.A. and quizzed him about his time with Elizabeth. Manley admitted that he'd been with her the night she disappeared, but insisted that he had nothing to do with her death. Unconvinced, detectives arrested him, but after he passed a polygraph test, they concluded that he was innocent. That was the first of many dead ends that the cops pursued. As their interviews continued, the mounting public interest in the case created a new, unusual problem. multiple people confessed to killing Elizabeth. Some reports say it was dozens, others more than 500. What's clear is that the Black Dahlia story had a grip on the city during this period,

driving some people to live in fear and others to try and insert themselves into the narrative. Of course, these confessions all turned out to be bogus, and each one wasted time and resources and drain morale. because while many of the false confessions were easy to dismiss, some had to be investigated on top of the genuine suspects the police were already dealing with. But finally, about a week after Elizabeth's body was discovered, a more compelling lead appeared. A man claiming to be Elizabeth's killer called the Los Angeles Examiner and complimented their coverage of the case.

The caller also said that he had Elizabeth's belongings, and offered to send them to the newspaper as proof. The editor who answered the phone didn't think much of it, just another crank, he figured. But the next day, a package arrived at the examiner offices. Inside were Elizabeth's things, her birth certificate, social security card, address book, and even personal photographs.

Clearly, this was no false confession. There was also a note written using cut-out letters from the pages of magazine, It was mostly nonsensical, but included the phrase, Heaven is here. Just like at the crime scene, the killer had taken care to cover his tracks. The envelope had been rubbed with gasoline to remove any trace of fingerprints. Nonetheless, the authorities hoped to find something they could use. Detectives poured over Elizabeth's address book and reportedly interviewed more than 70 people from its pages.

There's a common myth that these interviewees were all men whom she dated, but that's not true. However, the people mostly told a similar story. They met Elizabeth out in L.A., spent an evening with her, and then never saw her again. In many cases, they said nothing romantic had happened. By this stage, the search was beginning to feel hopeless. And almost exactly a month after Elizabeth's body was found, another brutal crime. sent shockwaves through the city. On February 10th, bulldozer operator H.C. Shelby was heading to work at a construction site on

the west side of L.A. As he drove past a desolate stretch of overgrown land, a flash of red caught Shelby's eye. Curious, he pulled over and went to take a closer look. At first, it looked like a pile of women's clothing, but as he got closer, he realized that there was a body underneath the dresses and coats, a nude woman with dark hair, her face covered in bruises and blood. Her killer had written a message in lipstick on her torso, and obscenity addressed to B.D. Given the media frenzy around Elizabeth Short's murder, most people assumed that B.D. stood for Black Dahlia, and though there was no way to know whether this was the same killer striking again, or if it was a copycat trying to make it look that way, either was a terrifying

prospect. By the time the victim was identified as 44-year-old Jean French, her brutal killing had already made front-page news, and was given the name, the lipstick murder. The brutality of the killing and the way in which the nude body had been left out in public would have echoed Elizabeth's murder even without the message to B.D. But with that added touch, the two crimes felt inextricably linked. It's likely that the cops thought so, too. But while the press ran with the narrative that there was a serial killer on the loose, the LAPD were reluctant to publicly link the murders.

Perhaps they wanted to avoid creating panic. Instead, they opened a new investigation into Jean's murder while continuing to work their way through suspects from Elizabeth's Rolodex. One man stood out, and his name wasn't just included in the pages of her address book. It was embossed in gold on its cover, Mark Hanson. Hanson was a wealthy and influential Hollywood nightclub owner with whom Elizabeth had been friendly. She'd even stayed at his house for a few nights. He also owned the nightclub, the Florentine Gardens, behind which she'd once rented a room.

He was exactly the kind of personal Elizabeth was eager to meet when she arrived in L.A., an industry mover and shaker who employed aspiring actresses as dancers at his club and helped some of them break into the business. Some reports say that Hansen had a sexual fixation on Elizabeth, which was not reciprocated and that he saw her soon before she vanished. Hanson himself denied having any romantic interest in Elizabeth and claimed that he'd last seen her three weeks before her disappearance. It's not clear exactly what emerged during Hansen's interview, and officially he was cleared,

but he's a central figure in one prominent theory about Elizabeth's death. But before we get into this theory, we need to tell you about Leslie Dwayne Dillon. A hotel bellhop, Dylan was briefly the cop's primary suspect in the Black Dahlia case, and was even tailed by the LAPD's gangster squad. This new unit had been created just a year before Elizabeth's murder with a goal of keeping organized crime out of L.A. Though there was no evidence that Elizabeth's death was gang-related, Dylan was reportedly part of a gang,

so the squad stepped in to investigate him. Just like Hansen, Dylan was eventually cleared, but some cops could never shake the feeling that both men were involved with Elizabeth's death. In her 2017 book, Black Dahlia Red Rose, writer Pew Eatwell lays out this theory in detail. She suggests that Elizabeth had stumbled onto a hotel robbery scam that Dylan and Hansen were running. Per this theory, Elizabeth was involved with a man who was in a gang that Dylan also belonged to. Her beau told her about the robberies, and Hanson got wind of this.

To cover their tracks, he and Dylan kidnapped Elizabeth. and took her to the nearby Aster Motel. There, acting on Hanson's orders, Dylan murdered her. Eatwell also alleges that one of the lead investigators on the Black Dahlia case was a crooked cop with ties to Hanson, which explains how he escaped justice. In 1949, two years after Elizabeth's murder, Dylan wrote a letter to the LAPD's chief police psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Paul de River, using a pseudonym. In the letter, Dylan claimed that an acquaintance of his, Jeff Connors, had killed Elizabeth. He said the motive was to stop Elizabeth

from revealing, quote, an affair not considered proper by the average person. In itself, this could have been easily dismissed, but Dylan's letter included a disturbing amount of information about Elizabeth's murder, including details that had never been made public. It was concerning enough to the police that they held Dylan for a week, but ultimately released him. It's hard to draw any firm conclusions about this theory, since there are so many gaps in what we know about Dylan Hanson and their testimony. Years later, Dylan did name his daughter Elizabeth, which is either a chilling detail or an irrelevant coincidence, depending on your perspective. But there's one big factor that goes against Dylan, and for that matter, Jeff Connors.

Neither had a medical background. Remember that Elizabeth's body was cut in half with surgical precision, using a specific technique that was taught in medical schools during the 1930s. Her uterus had also been neatly removed. This is one of the very few solid pieces. pieces of information investigators were able to glean from the crime scene. So whatever else they knew, it was clear that whoever killed Elizabeth must have had some kind of medical training. Which brings us to another suspect, one who did have the skills necessary to carry out such a procedure,

a man who was one of 22 names on an early list of persons of interest. George Hodel was a suave sought-after physician. He catered to wealthy and influential clients across Los Angeles and lived in an opulent mansion that's now a historical landmark. If his own son is to be believed, he's also the man who killed Elizabeth Short, and she may not have been his only victim because there's fairly compelling evidence

that George Hodel wasn't just responsible for the most famous unsolved crime in Hollywood. Wood history, he was also a serial killer. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers and unsolved murders. We'll be back next time with episode two of the case of the Black Dahlia, where we'll delve into the twisted life of George Hodel and his involvement in a string of mysterious deaths around Los Angeles. You can find all episodes of serial killers, Unsolved Murders,

and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for four. free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Stay safe out there. Serial killers and Unsolved Murders are Spotify originals from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler. Sound designed by Michael Langsner, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro,

Nick Johnson, Trent Williamson, and Carly Madden. This special episode of serial killers and unsolved murders was written by Emma Dibdin, edited by Joel Callan, fact-checked by Catherine Barner, researched by Brian Petrus, and produced by Aaron Larson. This special episode of serial killers and Unsolved Murders stars Vanessa Richardson and Carter Roy. All. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.

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Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strike. again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hixed. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast

Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.