Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 600: The Black Dahlia Murder Part I - The Girl from Hollywood

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

This week the boys celebrate 600 episodes with one of the most infamous unsolved murder cases in U.S. History... Hop on board cuz' we're heading to 1940's Hollywood for the story of The Black Dahlia Murder - beginning with the tragic tale of Elizabeth Short. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.

Do you want to listen to last podcast on the left without ads? Do you want extra content? Do you want to see what it's like behind the scenes? Patreon.com slash last podcast on the left. There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started.

What was that? That's when the cannibalism started All right, you guys ready Big deal today we can't ever you know, come on. We were the best podcast in the world and we can't get better fucking noisemakers We can make noises boys we can just make sick The goddamn poppers don't work either Scared after we got shooters running around. This is exactly what we need. Smells like gunpowder in this room.

Yes it does. Smells like my bathroom. Did you know I packed my ass full of gunpowder just to make my poo-poos more explosive? How revolutionary. Welcome to episode 600 of Last Podcast on the Left. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski I'm gonna I'm in my feelings today. I'm in my feelings Henry Zabrowski

So is that okay? Cuz this story is a story that we've obviously we've danced around over the years and it's come up back and forth But for number 600 the mystery begins but for number 600, the mystery begins. Ooh! God damn right, and we've got the tightly packed Ed Larson with us today. Man, there is no more room in my body. There is, the skin is tight.

The skin. And today, the story we're gonna be covering, the Black Dahlia murder, the most vicious crime to hit Los Angeles since the babes of Inglewood in 1937 or maybe since we made this city out of nothing Built it upon nightmares that you thought were dreams. You know, there was like full on like a weird Inquisition around here Let's fucking jump right into this shit, cause I cannot wait. I love this story so much, and it's gonna be a fucking journey, ladies and gentlemen.

This is a story that really, like, gets the hairs, which is a lot. Yeah, I'm standing on the back of my... It's the carpet of your back. Yes, it stands. I'm growing two times the size of I am normal. I'm turning into a calico cat. This story, I don't know what the hell it is about at this time, and I think it's because of all of the David Lynch I have consumed over all the years that since we have gotten to this point, Twin Peaks season 3,

this whole storyline, I did not realize is essentially Fire Walk with me. Yeah, yeah. This is an extraordinarily lynchian tale. And it's frightening. There's something very spooky about the mystery around Elizabeth Short. It reminds me a lot of the Elisa Lam story. It also reminds me of John Benet Ramsey. This is one of the most famous murders of all time, correct? An American. How come you haven't covered it yet? Well we're going to get into that in just a second.

So on January 15th, 1947, the viciously mutilated corpse of a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot in the LeMert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Within weeks, she would become known as the Black Dahlia and her murder would remain one of the most infamous unsolved cases in American history. That gum you like is coming back in style. Now this is a little out of character for us because we don't often cover unsolved cases but what if I told you that Elizabeth Short's murder was in fact all but solved and has been for almost 75 years now?

If you aren't ready you're probably like, no, I know the reason, I know exactly what it is and you don't know anything. That's probably what they would say. What if I told you that for very good reason, the most likely suspect was swept under the rug and has stayed there despite a mountain of evidence pointing towards his guilt. I would say like and subscribe please. Well over the course of this series, we're definitely going to be getting deep into the

who amongst the garden of who's. But who really isn't the big question here. I mean for some people it is, for me it is. That's the whole reason we're doing it. But also at the same time, you know, it's not, if it's already solved and it's not, this is in Marcus's, like, realm of understanding. It was her father.

The big question is why Elizabeth Short was murdered, and more importantly, how many people were involved before, during, and after? To try and answer that question, we're going to spend the next three episodes taking a tour through 1940s Los Angeles. Get out of here, messy! You're a sugar little man! The people, the papers, the movie industry, the mob, and of course, the biggest gang of

them all, the LAPD Oh, yes, the woman's made a comment about the Chicago gangsters versus the police were like in Chicago We pay off the cops and the gangsters do the job and Los Angeles the police are the gangsters Yeah, the Hat Squad We're also gonna cover a myriad of theories concerning who killed Elizabeth Short. All of them have a degree of plausibility, but in the end, there really is, in my own personal opinion, only one suspect worthy of serious consideration. That however, begs the question as to why this man's name isn't right up there with

some of the most famous murderers in history. Why his name hasn't become a byword for overkill. Because if you're not familiar with the Black Dahlia murder at all, it really is one of the absolute worst America has to offer. And that's saying something. We love killing people who come out west. Basically, you see, do you really want it? Do you really want to be in a Colgate commercial?

But to answer that question, it all has to do with the hypothesis I have. I think that people actually like the Black Dahlia murder better as a mystery that will remain unsolved for all eternity, although the reasons why people want it to remain mysterious differ from person to person. From one perspective, if the case remains unsolved, Elizabeth Short, with her almost movie star face and complicated erratic backstory, she becomes an almost romantic, even angelic figure, the beat generation's wandering sacrificial lamb laid out like an art installation in the middle of the city of dreams.

I will say in the last couple days that I've been spending very closely with Elizabeth Short, I would say I would have let her destroy my ever living life. She would have definitely been the exact type of woman I would have met in 1940s Los Angeles and said, oh, you want to go to San Diego? Let's go. Like it would have been very quick for me. She was like the first suicide girl. Yeah. Well, to the point suicide girl. She sent you.

Well, to the point of her beauty, the very name the press gave to the crime that killed her, the Black Dahlia Murder, makes it sound almost ethereal, like a song or a poem. But if you introduce a suspect into this story, the beauty fades along with the romance. It's no longer the Black Dahlia Murder. It's now the story of the Black Dahlia killer, which places Elizabeth Short's death firmly in the grubby world of true crime with no escape. Yeah, then she's just some murdered lady.

There is, however, an opposing perspective here that has nothing to do with romantic notions. Instead, the Black Dahlia murder, often considered one of the most gruesome crime scenes in history, can also be seen as a cautionary tale of a girl who, in the words of many people at the time, reaped what she sowed. And then they can keep cutting back to that cautionary tale anytime they like. Because that's what happens when you come to Los Angeles.

See Elizabeth Short, just 22 when she died, lived an unconventional life for 1947. She was a drifter of sorts from Massachusetts who just sort of ended up in and out of Southern California, a kid who didn't or couldn't buy into the conventions of post-World War II America. And this is gonna ask the audience the same question that Forrest Gump asks. Do you know what love is?

She reminds me of Jenny. Jenny. Now if you look upon it with from the with hindsight, Jenny's character is complicated. Nightmare. But at the same time, Jenny's most beautiful. She did give him something to do in the end of his life.

That's it. She provided tasks, which is the most important thing for a woman to do for a man. Well, as a consequence, Elizabeth Short became an example of what could happen if you stepped outside the boundaries that society had drawn for the average American woman in 1947. Put another way, people could make a stark comparison with no middle ground using Elizabeth Short's murder. You're either the girl that was found bisected in a vacant lot, or you're the happy housewife who lives in the home built on top of the crime scene.

Which I have visited, and they don't like visitors. They're really not super friendly about it. They don't want to talk to you about it because apparently they got nothing to do with the crime anymore. And they're really angry that you keep kind of bringing it up even though it's one of the most famous pieces of true crime on the face of the planet. You bought the ticket. Take the ride, man. See, they still are like, but this is my house that I purchased. It's my property and I'm all like Caster bro, I have different rules I'm just telling you what to expect

in reality though Elizabeth Short was neither of these extremes. As reporter Jimmy Richardson put it, Elizabeth Short wasn't bad, but she wasn't necessarily good either. She was just lost. A person trying to find a way out. A wanderer who bounced around the country in search of happiness and purpose. In other words, Elizabeth Short was as human as they come. And this also was at a time period where people believed that that search of happiness and purpose Made you an idler made you a useless member of society

Yeah, and that you're even though it's baked into the GD Constitution this idea of a pursuit of happiness and the idea that then yeah, sure you're legally and freedom allowed You're according to freedom you're allowed to do it But you should actually be pregnant right now Yeah, and so I think all of society when you look at somebody who goes with short I view her very very empathetically Because she just didn't necessarily want to be a mom and a housewife She wanted to go out and just do whatever the fuck and would do whatever were life was gonna take you and unfortunately It took her to a vacant lot

Yeah in Culver City or so we assume like that's the thing We actually don't know a lot about Elizabeth shorts actual motivations a lot about like what she really wanted out alive We're not really sure we can just piece together things from what people who knew her said She's 22 and when I was 22 22 I just my only goal was to stay alive. Yeah. But in this tale there is also a bevy of inhumanity. That savagery lies in the method of her murder and the likely motivations behind it. A story that's filled with a thousand questions about who did what when where and why?

So we're not allowed to play the sound cue anymore because it's fucking new they they are they've decided to make joy monetize But just now before we get into this episode I think it's really important for you to shut off all the lights in your home You got to put on that if you don't have the Lost Highway soundtrack, you go get that shit. Oh my god, it's so good. Yorando, Yorando, Yorando.

And this is the time to set way into, allow the mystery to take over. David Lynch, this story is central to David Lynch's entire artistic oeuvre. Oh no, this entire episode is scored by Angelo Badalamenti. Like, at certain points, just like in your mind, just think...

It's so... I don't know what it is. This time this story fucking creeped me out. But to help answer all of our questions, we used three sources. The Black Dahlia Files by Donald Wolf, Black Dahlia Red Rose by Pugh Marie Eatwell, and Black Dahlia Avenger colon, a genius for murder colon, the true story colon, part one by Steve Hodel. There's a lot of perspectives out there. I just also remember, oh, I want you also, we've watched the movies, I've went and watched whatever documentary footage I could find, and there is so much bullshit that has been

jammed into this story over the years. It is so hard to figure out what is real and what is not real. Because there was that big bombshell Apple podcast that came out a couple years ago that I believe that was called... Black Dahlia? Noi. No! that came out a couple of years ago that I believe that was called? Black Dahlia? No. No! Man, I watched the Brian DePalma movie to prep for this

and it has nothing to do with the story. Absolutely. It's another podcast called Root of Evil that tells the entire story from the perspective of the Hodel family, which is also, we don't know if that's real or not and that takes it entirely that side and say this is the only way that Guy could be the killer of the black Dahlia. We're gonna see this a lot. So

Be patient with us dear listener. Mm-hmm. We're going to get to your favorite theory at some point We're gonna talk about it and you just need to know that your favorite theory might not be the number one But we'll find out what we might not be that might not be the theory that we subscribe to, but you know what, that's okay. That's called opinion. So on the morning of January 15th, 1947, a woman named Betty Bersinger and her three-year-old child were walking through the half-finished neighborhood of LeMurk Park, a small neighborhood in Los Angeles that was still dotted with grassy vacant lots waiting for a home to be built on top.

But as Betty and her daughter stroll down the 3800 block of South Norton Avenue, she noticed broken glass on the sidewalk and a large black cloud of flies buzzing over what seemed to be two separate objects lying just off the foot path. Mommy I wanna go to the field! I wanna play with the flies! Mommy let me go to the field! I wanna meet the devil! Mommy! Mommy I heard flies announce the coming of the devil! I told ya! I told ya Scotty Jr! You can meet the devil when you commit suicide!

I'm gonna eat the flies! I told you we have flies at home. These are better! These are covered in blood! Oh no, we can't go over there. That's evident. Now when Betty got closer, she thought, perhaps unable to fully process the site before her, that someone had cut a mannequin in half and thrown it on the grass. She thought it was a mannequin because the objects were porcelain white. Her first concern, however, was this unsettling sight might frighten some of the kids playing

in the nearby park. I want to play with the dead woman's open wounds! No, Scotty Jr. I told you, we have dead woman wounds at home. I want the neck. So she decided to call the city to see if someone could come do something about this mess in the vacant lot. She knocked on the door of a nearby house, reported what she saw, and went about her

day, shopping at the mall while one of the most enduring mysteries in true crime history unfolded in that lonely vacant lot. Around 11.07 a.m., after a second bystander, who processed the crime scene a little more thoroughly called the police, saying something horrible was laying in a vacant lot in LeMert Park, the first policemen showed up on the scene. Their first reaction was to shout, holy hell, someone's cut this girl right in half.

I've been waiting to say that myself. You can right now. Practice, Eddie. Holy hell, someone cut this woman in half. No, teasing it, girl, a woman in half. No, he's a girl woman can vote Holy hell someone cut this girl in Half yeah, let me try. Let me try. Holy hell someone's cut this girl in half Let's happy. Yeah

Oh, I thought I was announcing is in the neighborhood Holy hell someone's cut this girl right and let me get my ruler. Exactly half. Well that exclamation drew dozens of people from cops to reporters to simple bystanders. All of whom got a good long look at the sort of gore that a lot of these men had hoped they'd left behind in Europe and the South Pacific just a few years prior. Now we'll get into more details as our story progresses. These men had hoped they'd left behind in Europe and the South Pacific just a few years prior. Now we'll get into more details as our story progresses, but what those people saw that morning is as follows.

A smorgasbord of such horror that it's hard to decide where to start, but for the sake of the story, let's start with the first thing the police noticed. The bisection of the body. The naked corpse belonging to a young white woman with reddish, light brown hair had been neatly cut in half about midway up her belly. What you'd call the true waist, just under her ribs. It was perfectly cut between the vertebrae as well. So it would not have scored any of the various organs that would have been there in the first place.

So it probably was done by somebody who's done it before you know I just found out about the true waist You know because I like wearing my pants below my belt my below my belly and stuff and they're like oh I think I have a 36, but they're like no no no no you're waiting That's not your way Guys this I am for waste yeah I was like, no, this is my waist. Like, that's not your waist. This is the thing. But no one tells fat guys this. I have four waists. I have my main, what I consider my youth waist, which is pinching my fat around where my belly button is

right in order for my pants to stay up because my belly is inherently soft, right? But then I have my top, top waist, which is right under my tits, which I will eventually get to, but I do, I should have, I should be killing some communists in a war somewhere first Then you have the under the belly waist which is the best one

That's only that when it's 70 then I get the suspenders over the waist through my shoulders And once the suspenders are involved fourth waist becomes the shoulders Where the pants do indeed lie because that's where the weight of the suspenders are involved, fourth waist becomes the shoulders. Whoa! Which is then where the pants do indeed lie because that's where the weight of the suspenders is. That's great. Yeah. Finally, this is how he keeps his pants up, people. It's a science.

It takes a village. A whole team. The torso had been laid out on the ground about a foot above the legs, but it had been deliberately placed to the left of the corpse's bottom half with a line above the legs, but it had been deliberately placed to the left of the corpse's bottom half, where the line on the outside of the right leg ran up to the line on the left side of her torso. In other words, the two sections were deliberately placed, crime scene as a work of art. The less artistically minded of eyewitnesses, however, described the placement as though

two hunks of human flesh had been laid down like two sides of beef. As for the victim's arms, they were extended, imposed above her head like a discarded marionette as one of the first reporters to write about the corpse put it, and her wrists, ankles, and neck were marked with deep rope burns. Her right breast was also missing, but just the right, as were many of her organs. The liver, however, was intact and hung slack from the bottom of the bisected torso. But perhaps most gruesome of all, her face had been beaten and mutilated, her lips and cheeks carved out to give her the appearance of a wide,

gaping grin. And I want to say thank you Marcus for sending me all the pictures because I was looking online. I couldn't find the proper uncensored pictures of the body because I want to look at it. I had them. I think it's important and I was really thankful because Marcus went to his books that he had them in and he took pictures of them and sent them to me and Then I got a really fun iPhone album picture Of my like literally where it's just like memories

Set to like show people got no reason Some random song short things Wow, that's Her pictures of her corpse, yeah, just come rolling through so thanks Apple I Appreciate you not sending me the pictures I'm actually getting it printed Put them in my pillowcase like I used to do in college. But what we're going to do is we're going to include them in our new advertising partner, Storyworth. Tell the story of all different types of your home and your family. And you can put any sorts of pictures from the morgue in there that you want.

You can add whatever you want to it. That's the point. I didn't realize your organs were missing. Some of them. Really? Did they ever find them? No. So they might have been sold. Maybe they weren't doing that all the way back then. the point. I didn't realize her organs were missing. Some of them really never find them. So they, they might've been sold. Maybe they weren't doing that. No, they weren't sold. No, no, they weren't. No, I'm just trying to make some money here. Her organs were gone and her bass drum couldn't be found either. No, it was immediately obvious. Yeah, yeah, be sad.

Yeah, man, be super sad about that one. Fucking put your, leave those hands on your face in shame for the rest of the fucking episode. Just be in my little corner. Now it was immediately obvious that this person had been killed elsewhere. Not just because of the time it would take to mutilate someone like this out in the open without someone seeing, but because there was very little blood on the grass. In fact, the body had been completely drained of blood, in addition to being washed or soaked

in water. The grass was still damp under the body, meaning someone had placed it between midnight and dawn, the dew was still there, and the deliberate posing meant that the killer had done all of this for maximum effect. This was not a crime of passion. This was deliberate. And if you look at the scene, I think that's why it's also important to have the full scope of the crime scene pictures is it really was on display like this was not hidden behind anything it

wasn't dumped on a lot like sometimes people like when they do these sorts of ornate when they do in an ornate crime scene like this it's normally where the crime happened look at BTK look at the the Boston Strangler wherever if whether or not it was Albert DeSalvo. It's normally there. This person brought it out and put it in an empty field. So it really looks like, unfortunately- I mean, but when you say empty field, I wanna make sure you know it's like two feet

from the sidewalk. Yes. Like there's a road, a sidewalk, and two feet off of that sidewalk is the body but it feels like a Theatrical piece like it legitimately feels like a horrible piece of art the way you see it walking down the way it comes Like there's a little lump of a slope of a hill and then she's laying right there So it's like it reminds me of the opening sequence of blue velvet now Near the body was a sack used for cement containing watery blood stains.

This was almost certainly the sack used to carry the body. It appeared, however, as if it had been carried by more than one person. Police also found a spot of watery blood on the nearby sidewalk, and a bloody footprint from a manned shoe was near the victim's head. These, however, were the only instances of blood at the scene. Now the only witnesses to any part of the body disposal were a neighbor and who else but the local paperboy. I've seen some horrible things. Extra, extra, read all about.

Oh God, never read a newspaper again. You don't want to know what happens at 4 a.m. in Los Angeles. Fuck Hell! Oh God! Never read a newspaper again! You don't want to know what happens at 4am in Los Angeles! I've seen so many horrible things! I saw my mom punch my dad! I saw my dad punch my grandma! I saw myself punch myself because hey, I'm annoying as fuck! But both the paperboy and the neighbor saw a 1936 or 1937 Black Ford sedan stop at the

side of the body. The neighbor said he saw it at 6.30am, but the paper boy said he saw it two hours earlier, at 4am, meaning whoever dropped the body may have returned after the initial dump for some reason. The only other hard clue at the scene, which turned out to be nothing at all, was a men's wrist watch found in the weeds near the body. It was considered to be a military-style watch, which, along with the victim's choice in men, would inform certain lines of investigation later on.

But within an hour, Jane Doe, number one, as she was still known at that time, was placed in an aluminum coffin and taken via hearse to the LA City morgue. Reportedly, when the coroner was told that the body had been cut in half, he requested that he be allowed to have lunch before he began the autopsy. See, in LA even the fucking morgue guys are hilarious. Everybody's funny. Maybe I should have a bit of lunch first. Yes! Tune in on Ryan, please.

Live from your grave. The photos of the Black Dahlia crime scene are pretty hard to find on the internet these days, but as Henry said, I have a book called Exquisite Corpse, Surrealism, and the Black Dahlia Murder that shows the whole thing in great detail and my God is it horrific. I feel like it used to be everywhere. Yeah, it's very actually I don't know how but it yeah kind of got scrubbed I think it's because of the true Graphic Ness of the pictures and it's hard because they just won't show up in the Google searches

But meanwhile like Jodi Arias's butthole is right there. That might be our fault though. I guess so, but maybe, but Jodi Arias's butthole, I guess because it's nice and it's different, right? I guess in that way it's different. I mean, there's no pictures of the dude's body, right? No, no, they censor those. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just a butthole.

Yeah. But nevertheless, in the next day's edition of the Los Angeles Examiner Herald, photos of the corpse were published on the front page before the victim was even identified. While they did edit the photos, cleaning up the blood, bruises, and knife cuts to the face, they did show a fair amount of mutilation, and even though someone airbrushed a blanket over the body, it was still a hell of a front page for 1947, but the news in Los Angeles in 1947 was one hell of a business. These stories are great. All these fucking old guys, like this is back when people like, I don't know, man, these made up rules, man.

I am some honestly surprised that they did that much to cover it up. It was very brutal back then. Yeah. You ever see there's an old, um, I think Sydney Lumen, who was the guy that did something like it hot? I think it was sitting, uh, Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder, Billy Wilder did a news reel about the Holocaust and I watched it and it's fucking brutal. Yeah. It's the worst footage I've ever seen of the Holocaust and it just Billy Wilder Billy Just and it just plays and it just played movie theaters as children are watching it It was just like oh my ever seen the photographs of Ouija. No Ouija's photographs That's what I was gonna bring up his father Ouija was a crime scene photographer in New York City and his

Pictures are fucking graphic. Extraordinarily graphic. And they were printed in the newspaper. Like, every day. You had the worst gore you could possibly fucking imagine just printed in the newspaper. And they had like weird... the tabloids were all like murder scenes too. Yeah. Well, I also think back in the day more people like... I think, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like from the 30s to like 20s to the 40s like more people on an everyday basis had to like kill one of their own pets yeah yeah we're like a little they were a little

harder edge during this time period a lot of more people have killed people in theater of war yeah between World War one and World War two yeah and so a lot more people have seen a lot more violence and was was a lot more normalized, I think, maybe. And then life was just harder. So we just were kind of coddled a little bit in this day and age where we don't necessarily have to go whack a bunch of kittens because they're fucking with the livestock

or stuff like you had to do. I didn't have to do it, my dad had to do it. But Prue from Great British Spake Off Breaking Show, they gave her shit because she had to drown a bunch of kittens and that's largely just because they do that in the UK for fun. You can't blame that, it's a society, it's a cancel culture, things change. There's almost something to live for these days. Almost.

See before the cops even showed up at the crime scene that day, two reporters and a photographer had arrived on the scene first. And this was a regular occurrence with crime scenes in Los Angeles. And one of those reporters was journalistic legend Agnes Aggy Underwood, who plays a big part in the story of the Black Dahlia. Yeah, sometimes I'm so competitive I be standing up. That's what I do.

I learn how to do it. I could pee out my belly button. Yeah, mostly man. But I'm woman enough to smack you in the mouth. She once smacked the editor of her paper in the face with a fish. Yeah, she's fun. Aggie Underwood is a fun lady. Yeah, she's the prototypical tough broad.

Born in San Francisco in 1902, but she'd spent her youth in the foster care system. A relative in Los Angeles finally took her in when she was a teenager, but only so Aggie could be exploited as a possible child movie star. Perfect! Yeah. Mine was my dream! No one wanted to exploit me! Now Aggie settled down for a bit as a housewife with her husband Harry, but decided one day

to get a job at the Los Angeles Record working the switchboard just so she could buy a pair of silk stockings after her husband said they couldn't afford them. You mean to tell me I can't buy a pair of stockings? How am I supposed to keep these tits up for the grocery store? I'm going out and getting a job! Before long, Aggie Underwood had worked her way from switchboard operator to reporter, and by January of 1947, Aggie Underwood was the best crime reporter on the Herald Express staff at the age of 44. She was short and sturdy, with a square jaw and a big grin, prompting her

editor to say, quote, she should have been a man. And in fact, Aggie did do her best to fit into the boys club. She refused to cover gossip or pop culture and dressed, quote, shabby and slapdash like her male co-workers, wearing no makeup and the lowest heels she could get away with. No shoes! I don't even wipe when I go to the bathroom. I want you to know I'm one of the guys. Just so you know, I'll fuck your wife. You don't think I'm a man?

Sit on this cigar! Yeah, come on. Yeah, nice. Now do a little dance for me. All right, now I got a cigar strapped to the front of me. Yeah, that's Cuba. All right, now I got a cigar strapped to the front of me. Underwood was actually quite proud of being a true crime reporter, later saying that she was no sissy in her reaction to blood and guts.

When a corpse was discovered, Aggie would usually be the first on the scene, pushing her way past beat cops trying to control their gag reflex so she could grab an ID off the body. Wrap it up boys, I X-nade my gag reflex in the elementary school. Eventually this moxie would land her in the city editor's chair, making her one of the first women in the US to have the job. During her 17 year reign, she kept sawed-off bat on her desk to swing at overzealous Hollywood press agents you know if you ever swung a sawed-off bat no oh my god it's the best if you cut the handle off a bat and you

just got the fat part of a bat that fucker swings my buddy my buddy's dad you know who taught us how to fight he always had one in his back seat of his car and I remember him showing us he was like whoa, man, you could really take someone out with this Guy who gave me a cue ball the day I got my car He's like keep it in your trunk in case someone ever tries to run from you Implies the running from the trunk In the cue ball is so you could throw it at their head. I luckily never had to use it. Today was a good day.

Well if Aggies newsroom was too quiet she'd walk out of her office with a starting pistol, fire it into the air and yell quote don't let this paper die on us today. But back when Aggie was the best crime reporter at the Herald Express, she was the paper's best bulldog when it came to getting the story and the black Dahlia would be the biggest story of her life and the biggest story her paper ever covered. And this is why we kind of like, I like that you chose this angle to begin the story with like kind of talking about

Where the story even came from because we're people telling the story and now we get to fuck it up Do you think that she wanted to solve it or is it just a gift that keeps on giving? No, he wasn't fucking she was going for it Aggie wanted the story no matter where the story led and then once the story was over It's time for the next fucking story another girl a good cut in half every other week as far as I'm concerned Fluorescent lighting is gonna ruin this business Now while Aggie Underwood and the rest of the reporters who'd been on the scene that morning tried to figure out what this story was all about, the body of Jane Doe,

number one, was lying on a slab in the L.A. City Morgue, about to be examined by the chief autopsy surgeon for Los Angeles County, Dr. Frederick Newbar. So I guess I'm not ordering dessert. I was going to. Oh, I had my salad earlier. Do you think before they cut her in hash is called Elizabeth tall? Oh, come on, everybody. Come on. Milton Burrell's my cousin.

Well, he was discovering even more disturbing details about the body. Although, again, we're not going gonna go into every single detail just yet So no fucking emails about how we didn't talk about a fucking dilated or anus was or whatever your favorite gruesome Tidbit might be it was super dilated Her anus is super dilated, but we're gonna get to it. Don't you worry you anus head she was in butt labor for some time It's horrible any bad things happen to her but bad things that dudes want to do. All right. Well, I take it back After determining the age 15 to 20 He thought he put the cause of death is most likely coming from one of the many blows to the head

She'd suffered they were hard enough to, but not hard enough to break the skull. Next the coroner moved on to the bisection. A very sharp long-bladed butcher's knife had been used to sever the body in half, cutting through the intestine, kidneys, and the soft disc between her vertebrae. Flesh had also been cut from her left thigh to remove a tattoo of a rose. The tattoo detail was held back from the press at the time, but the Herald Express did allude to the wound and their coverage by saying a piece of flesh had been gouged out of the leg.

This was most likely done after the victim was already dead. But when the coroner moved on to the face, he concluded that the victim had been given her satanic smile, as Aggie Underwood put it, while she was still alive. Then, as a final indignation, the killer had filled the victim's stomach with feces. that he didn't, this is disgusting. It's not that he quote unquote, he filled her stomach with feces but probably fed her this feces. Quite possibly. And they're also now kind of,

there's one kind of talk that might have been fertilizer. Yeah. Was her stomach cut open? No. Like the actual, so there was just poop in the stomach. Yeah. So it had to have been fed to her. Yeah.

Yeah. That's how that gets in mine. Yeah. Yeah. That's how that gets in mine. Yeah. Do that thing where you eat reverse poop. You eat like a cultured poop and it does something for your poop. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

No, I thought you're not talking to like logs. Oh no, I am talking logs. Yeah. No, I know, human shit. I'm talking about eating human shit. Full on. Uncut. Yeah, I just eat dog shit. That's different. That's

because he likes dogs. He's a dog person. I'm a people guy. I'm a people pleaser. No matter what, Ed, you're always going to be a simple man. I'm grossed out by human shit. Dog shit? I can care less. I flip. He'll say, oh, dog's mouth cleaner than yours, not what that dog's doing to me. Oh yeah. Now once it was all said and done, and again, more details later, the coroner concluded that whoever had mutilated this corpse had some knowledge in surgery because the body

was so cleanly bisected. This, however, ran contrary to how haphazard the facial mutilation had been, leading many to speculate for years on end that there had to be at least two people involved in this murder. Why were they haphazard and the other thing wasn't haphazard? It was just, she was tortured. But it was very, well that's the thing. What people didn't know for decades was that the coroner had ruled that the facial mutilation, an act of sadism, had been done before death, while

the bisection, a cold act of disposal and display, had taken place after. Definitely. You could see all of the stuff where the tattoo was cut off to help hide her identity. Well, actually, no, it wasn't. It was cut off and shoved inside her body. It was put inside of her, but I think it was the the added humiliation where it was put inside of her But I do believe it served a purpose of it being cut off to immediately hide an identifying identifying mark Now the mouth cuts were they like clean or no, no, they're like rag very she was probably alive

She was definitely a lot. Yeah when that was happening Well, the reason why people didn't know the fact about, you know, before and after was because the full autopsy report has never been made public. We only have excerpts and the LAPD's official line is that the full report on possibly the one of the most, I'd say top three most famous murders in Los Angeles history is forever lost. But there are some who say that the report was lost on purpose, because there may have been information contained therein that the LAPD didn't want the public to know. Release the report, Casco, and you got two weeks left to work!

Dude, it's not even there, man. And every single time, if you read people say that they have a version of it, it's all hearsay, it's all fake. Secondhand. But it's, I do find it interesting. No, there's only, as far as we know, there are only four people in this world who ever read the full report. You know, the guy who wrote it, the head of homicide, the chief homicide detective at the time, and the two homicide detectives who were assigned to the Elizabeth Short case. I mean, it was back in the day when you just burned something and it's gone forever. Well, no, they kept records explicitly.

They just they specifically lost these ones. And it probably has to do with why we're planting a little seed here that the police might have had something to do with it. Blast for me. I know. I know. I'm the first one. I can't even believe I'm saying it. I pray for Brian Thompson's soul every day.

I pray he's saved. You know, I think you might have to be in our next Saint episode. Yeah, he really might have to. The public's hunger for information about this case was partially fueled by the fact that in 1947 there were five major newspapers in Los Angeles. And that's just major newspapers, that doesn't even count the small ones. This is in a city of almost two million, half the population of Los Angeles today, and every single one of these papers were competing with each other for the latest scoop concerning

the murder. Incredibly, the sheer number of reporters on the streets every day scouring the city for any bit of information about any given case, they actually outnumbered the investigative force of the LAPD, and some reporters were actually far better at homicide investigations than the cops were. Now you might say that's just because the reporters didn't have to follow the rules that the cops did, but let's just say that the LAPD wasn't too fond of rules in 1947 either. This was decades before the Miranda ruling. That, you know, Miranda rights, you had the right to rule, that was 1966.

Oh, I thought the whole Miranda ruling was that it was about being okay to be subpar on a sitcom. Whoa! Hmm. As the sex and the City roast, for no reason, of Miranda. I don't know if you know why. I don't know anything about the show. I just know that she's the weak one. She's the one nobody likes.

I think she's beautiful, but she's definitely the one no one wants to be Miranda. No. I know Peloton killed Mr. Big, bro. I do remember. I think that's a spoiler. Well because there were no Miranda rights, that meant that cops routinely held people for questioning without informing them of their rights for days on end. But because there were so many reporters, there was a constant trade-off of information between

the police and the press. but that came with the price. A reporter often had to weigh the cost of reporting a story that might make the LAPD look bad, because negative press for the LAPD could cut off the information spigot from the cops. And that spigot is what gives them the scoops that allows them to put their newspaper ahead of everybody else. They get not not only career wise but monetary attention and all of it in once. But if you have a big story about the LAPD being a bunch of bastards, that can sell a lot of newspapers as well. It can.

As long as you know you're paying off the cops, you can get any story you want. Well as long as then they all go to jail. They're still doing it. The dude fucking sold Kobe's pictures, you know? But such was their collaboration that some reporters were even given badges by the LA County Sheriff to gain restricted access to crime scenes. They could also use these badges to help themselves out when they ran afoul of the law. Like say if a rummy reporter had a few too many one night and got stopped on Sunset Boulevard, you just flash the badge and you're good to go.

Listen, I saw you drive on the median for four miles, but now that I see that you have a badge, you go right on ahead, officer. But not before you kiss me on the mouth. Do you have a license to fuck? The first reports from Aggie Underwood at the Herald Express described the killing as the act of a werewolf fiend. Those are the words she used. And for many days afterward, the Black Dahlia murder was referred to as a werewolf attack. I mean of all of the murders to call a werewolf attack. Yeah. I mean, not literally, of course. They weren't saying there was a werewolf loose in Los Angeles. But the mutilation certainly played

a number on the imaginations of the local Angelino. Seems more vampire to me because there was no blood. You know what? It could be sort of a vampire werewolf combination. Hanging out. They're hanging out. That's scandalous. Yeah, that's scandalous.

I don't know. Because, yeah, that's a Romeo and Juliet style. But the story also absolutely fascinated Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Examiner edition that featured the airbrushed photos of the crime scene with the headline, Fiend Tortures, Kills Girl. That sold more editions than the one announcing Pearl Harbor. But before long, police would identify the young woman found in the vacant lot from her fingerprints, which had been wired to the FBI using an early version of the fax machine called a sound photo.

That's where they yelled descriptions of a photo through a big bullhorn. She's cotton hat. Yeah, yeah. All right. Big bullhorn All right her righty next finger looks like a bunch of spiral Right finger looks like Spirals they're shitting your stomach Dookie Say it again. What was it? Shit! Shit! Doodoo!

Dookie! Within hours, the FBI linked the fingerprints to an arrest made on a girl who'd been busted for underage drinking four years earlier with a bunch of military officers at a restaurant in Santa Barbara. The LAPD was sent a mug shot

of a beautiful young girl with raven black hair, a stunner as the papers put it, who had originally hailed from the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Which is where Jingle Bells was written, was in Medford, Massachusetts. Now she was arrested, but not the men she was drinking with. They were of age. Yeah, they were of age.

But they were drinking with a minor. They might have also been arrested for, what do you call it, contributing to the delinquency. That's what the crime was. I don't even think that was a crime at the time. I think they were like, this minor made a decision that she shouldn't have made. To the clink with you. Well, her name was Elizabeth Short. And reporters began finding out details about Elizabeth Short little by little as they found their way out from the information they could glean from her arrest in

Santa Barbara. Back in 1943, she'd been working as a clerk at Camp Cook in Lompoc, California, and once won the base's Cutie of the Week contest. Just understand that back in the day I feel like World War two. We're in the middle of war. Yeah, we're in World War two here. Well war two I think that the idea of like winning cutie of the week like always leads to their death Kind of beauty queen something about saying now that's the cutest girl that's ever Some girl who's just used to being second best is now cutie of the week waiting for her Second best girl ends up. That's Hillary Clinton

She learns get better early. Well, Elizabeth Short's boss at Camp Cook said that she had a childlike charm and beauty, but she was shy. But as far as she'd known, Elizabeth never smoked and rarely drank. All she knew is that Elizabeth had disappeared in 1943 to parts unknown after a rumored sexual assault. Now, Elizabeth's father, Cleo Short, was also from Medford, Massachusetts, but lived just two miles from where Elizabeth's body was discovered in 1947. Reportedly, he reacted coldly to the news of his daughter's death and was mostly uncooperative.

Yeah, I moved here from Boston. I don't care where my daughter is. You want some alpestor? Yeah, I found this dude. It's this wonderful fling called alpestor. You ever had it? You ever had a taco? I don't care where my daughter is. You want some alpestor? Yeah, I found this dude. It's this wonderful fling called alpestor. You ever had it? You ever had a taco? Yeah, Cleo was a piece of shit.

He was a fucking awful man. Yeah, her father was a piece of shit. Well, he'd actually moved to Los Angeles on his own in 1945, but hadn't seen nor spoken to Elizabeth since she'd started working at Camp Cook four years prior to her death. He'd been an absent father in her childhood, and while they had tried to reconnect in California, he'd cut ties with her because he didn't approve of her lifestyle. Back in Boston, we'd call her a whore!

I ran away! Do not call me. Most cruelly though was what a reporter from the Los Angeles Examiner did to secure details about Elizabeth Short's life. See while the Herald Express had Aggie Underwood, the Examiner's City Editor was a man named Jimmy Richardson, a recovering alcoholic in his 50, who was said to be quote, the last of the terrible men. Yeah. I'll have a Coke. Also bring me 20 packs of cigarettes. Bring me the spider man. The

last of the terrible men, the last of the terrible men. There's been lots of terrible men. Really terrible. You ever see the picture of Jimmy Richardson? No. He's awesome. He looks just like, he reminds me of J. Jonah Jameson. It's very similar. Like he's got a big cigar, he's like chomping on a cigar and it's all just been like, that

girl looks green to me. Richardson was a newsman without fear. He once waged a one-man war against gangster Bugsy Siegel in the 30s. But Jimmy Richardson was also a man without conscience who would do anything to get a story. He had one of his crime reporters call up Phoebe Mae Short, Elizabeth's mother, and tell her that he was a reporter covering a beauty contest that her daughter had won and he just needed a little more background on the bathing beauty. So the mom didn't know that her daughter was dead? No idea. And got this phone call?

Got this phone call. Got this phone call from reporter like hi this is you know Jim Phelps from the Los Angeles Examiner. Guess what? Your daughter's won a beauty contest. It's a beauty contest. And I just need to know a couple of questions. Did your daughter have sex with a lot of sailors? After the reporter gobbled up details about Elizabeth Short happily relayed by her mother, he was ordered by Jimmy Richardson, listening on on another line to pull out the rug and tell Phoebe May that Actually her daughter had been murdered and left next to the sidewalk in a vacant lot comment Let's see what happens when we take the puppy away

Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, she's sad. I bet she's sad. Oh yeah, $20. I want that. I want that. Hold on a minute, get the quote. Oh, it's, ah, oh my God, my daughter, ah, I'm so sad, I'm so sad. How do I write crying down, Jimmy? Just write tear, tear, tear, blubber, blubber. Now what the Examiner reporters had learned was that Elizabeth was a free spirit of sorts, the third daughter of five born to a single mother. Elizabeth was also a high school dropout, dropped out her sophomore year.

Friends from Medford later described Elizabeth as a fashionable girl who was destined for a more glamorous world than the Boston suburb could offer. In other words, she was the type of girl who moved to California. But they also described her as a bit manic-depressive. Using the parlance of the times, they said she'd be gay one minute and blue the next. That's what happened to my father the one time he was gay. Yeah, he immediately got blue. No, I just got to hear you say fucking funny guy.

Bunker cop life, right? It was wild. But it's interesting, I was reading, got into this deep research on Elizabeth Short. I find her interesting and they said there was something that she had, which is called the walk. That she would do this walk. That people said that she'd been doing since she was like 15 or whatever. And they said that it would get to the point where they would see cars get into accidents

as she walked down the street. They always kind of talked about her, about she was just kind of like, which we've said many times. She put the bass in the walk. She did, yeah. And she, there's something about this like, you were born in Texas, you needed to get out of Texas. Yeah, and everyone knew that I needed to get out of Texas yeah and everyone knew that I needed to get out of Texas like to the point where they were almost rude about oh yeah because one of my legs is shorter than the other

one Elizabeth short was just like naturally had this and the other words they always use for her to his natural vamp. Yeah. They say that there was something about her always that men just flipped out over. She was very good with guys. She like was like, I guess people talk about like that she would sort of like in the gone girl kind of way where like she was a guy's girl. Yeah. She would hang out with the guys and fucking like she was cool in that way. But she could kind of hang out with anybody. Yes. She was very, she was cool in that way but she could kind of hang out with anybody yes she was very she was just like that she just was a shapeshifter now Elizabeth certainly wasn't gonna stay in Medford but she also didn't have a good idea where else to go in her short 22 years

Elizabeth had lived in Miami Chicago Long Beach Los Angeles and a handful of other cities with her most recent address being in San Diego. And so, after discovering where she'd most recently lived, Richardson told his crime reporter to drop everything and head to San Diego to dig up whatever he could find. But with what little information the press already had, they were painting a very negative picture of Elizabeth Short. Nothing's changed. Hers was the fate of yet another pretty girl drawn to the promise of fame and fortune in Hollywood.

In essence, the press called her a morally bankrupt floozy who'd slept her way across Southern California. Endless reports about her supposed sexual escapades soaked the papers, and before long, the desecrated innocent became in the words of author Pugh Eatwell a temptress prowling the rain soaked streets of an urban film the war. Cool. Yeah. I like her then. Why is that bad? I think that's cool. It is. Super cool. Yeah. But I do yeah I get it the time because she would just she did have a lot of relationships and sure did

Kind of you guys well, that's the days and she had I mean we talked about you know, like modern You know modern people being born earlier like Elizabeth Shorts really no different from like your average woman in 2024 But if but for 1947 she was very unique. Like she was living an unconventional lifestyle that made people very uncomfortable. And she kind of had a little bit of a thing where she would like, she liked a soldier and she'd start talking to a soldier. Love military men. Love military guys. I think a lot of times, cause they were a little bit more, sometimes

they, I think military guys on one hand, they're monsters. And on the other hand, sometimes they're extra polite and extra nice. And I think military guys fell one hand they're monsters and the other hand sometimes they're extra polite extra nice And I think military guys fell for her very easily very often she would like get a meal out of them or a drink or something out of them and then they'd go to Sleep together and then she'd kind of say no I don't want to and that was a part of what of course at the time was like One of the even the worst sins and actually fucking is the oh you let us you led men on the tease The tease at the time was so much worse, which is why they keep pointing toward this idea

She must have done something to deserve this yeah, you're either a prude a tease or a slut And you're not going no matter what you're fucked on all three Yeah Now this change from virgin to whore spoke to a social anxiety that was bothering Southern California in particular at this point in American history. Inspired by portrayals of strong women in film, girls were moving to LA to live a life of freedom. They wanted to live like men.

They didn't want to resign themselves to the roles of domestic servants or mothers. This however wasn't just a 1947 issue. The influx of young women began in the early 20th century, and by 1920 there were more women in Los Angeles than in any other city in the country, and a lot of those women had dreams of being movie stars. Some reason though that those piles of women also seems to bring many legions of predators. Yes. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs made the moral panic even worse with his 1922 novel, The

Girl from Hollywood, which was about two young women who moved to Hollywood but soon fell into drug addiction, out of wedlock pregnancy, and death for one of them. Elizabeth Short was in short order painted as the real-life girl from Hollywood. Got addicted to drugs, got in a car crash, got pregnant, got un-pregnant, got re-pregnant, then got dead. And they would just believe they didn't even make their audition in Culver City. Now by some accounts Elizabeth Short was being referred to as the Black Dahlia as early

as January 17th, two days after her murder, but it actually took several weeks before that little detail came to define her entire existence. Jimmy Richardson, the last of the terrible men, if you'll remember, said that he invented the name. I invented the name! While Aggie Underwood claims that she invented the name. I discovered the Black Dahlia! But in reality invented the name.

But in reality, the name Black Dahlia had been given to Elizabeth while she was still alive. Elizabeth had jet black hair and liked to wear it high, and when she lived in Long Beach, she was known to frequent a drug store wearing a black two-piece lacy bathing suit. She naturally caught the attention of the local men who began calling her the Black Dahlia after appropriately a Raymond Chandler film The War that had been released the year before called The Blue Dahlia. She liked playing into it. Very much. She very much enjoyed attention for men. We'll get more detail about her some of her personal relationships but- And I'm

not judging on that or anything. No, not at all. No, but she... there was a little bit of a shtick to it, where, yes, she was a little gothy. There are some people that say that she was way more gothy than she was, and at the time, there was sort of a redo on what they call Victorian funeral fashion. There was kind of a, uh, in pop culture that was kind of coming back up, like, this,

in terms of, like, kind of dressing in this got that was kind of coming back up like this in terms of like kind of dressing this Gothi way is enough in a fashion statement, but she also would use like this Fabricated sob story quite a bit where she would tell stories of an old fiance that died We're gonna get into all these details and so partially it fit that character as well But part of the reason why the name caught on in Los Angeles was that there had actually been several local murders that had been labeled with a flower. Murders that had been covered by Aggie Underwood herself.

Which is probably the reason why she did probably cement the name. Yeah, she definitely. I think she almost certainly cemented the name. One of those was the White Carnation Murder. So named because a white carnation had been found on the top of the body of a dead waitress. Along with that, you had the Red Hibiscus Murder and the White Carnation Murder, so named because a white carnation had been found on the top of the body of a dead waitress. Along with that you had the Red Hibiscus Murder and the White Gardena Murder. Oh! But...

Put flowers on me. He gonna come put flowers on me. But all of those have faded into history because no name had the poetry of the Black Dahlia Murder. Fly from your grave. because no name had the poetry of the Black Dahlia murder. Fly from your grave. Now under Jimmy Richardson's direction as city editor, the Los Angeles Examiner was one of the first papers to put together a more 3D portrait of Elizabeth Short.

In San Diego, at her last known address, she'd stayed with two women named Elvira and Dorothy French. Elvira had found Elizabeth sleeping in the Aztec theater a little over a month before the murder and had invited her to stay at Her home out of pity why Elizabeth was sleeping in the Aztec seemingly hiding out. No one knows for sure That's one of those details we will get to also the Aztec theater is not looking very good recently It's in San Diego or here in Los Angeles? The one in Los Angeles. No, that's the Mayan.

Oh, no, there's also the Aztec, which is a big movie theater. Oh, really? I didn't know about it. Yeah, it's the one downtown. Yeah, it's looking real rough. Really just came to a halt here. I'll go masturbate there later. Yeah, good, thank you.

You're not going to be alone. Yeah, you will be. In memory of Fred Willard. Now, Elizabeth had told Elvira and Dorothy that she'd gone to LA to be an actress But was looking for work in San Diego in the meantime She also claimed that she was a recent widow her husband She said a one major Matt Gordon had just been killed flying over India And she further claimed that she'd given birth to his child, but the child had also died over India, and she further claimed that she'd given birth to his child, but the child had also died.

Now, it's hard to tell if any of this is actually true or just an exaggeration. Elizabeth Short was admittedly a bit of a fabulist. She told stories to either garner sympathy or make herself seem more interesting, because she was, after all, just a fucking kid in her early 20s. What'd you do on Tumblr? What did your life look at my 40 year olds who used to be 22 year olds? What are your fucking, what did that shit look like? I remember some of y'all back in the day. I remember some, some, some errands

nipples. Well, she probably didn't have a kid because it'd be some sort of record of it. Yeah, that she did. She did not have a kid. Well that's the thing, I mean Major Matt Gordon did exist. He did die over India in September of 1945. Elizabeth Short did receive a telegram from the Major's mother informing her of his death but the mother said that she sent telegrams to all of her son's friends as a courtesy and there's no evidence of a marriage between Matt Gordon and Elizabeth Short nor is there any record of her giving birth to a child. She, my call is she was a lot more attached to Matt Gordon than he was to her. The mother had, did not want her in her son's life, and I think that she roasted her by saying this after the fact, saying,

oh I sent notices to everybody, never wanted her to be in her son's life, and then I think her son was also like not necessarily her soulmate to him. Like he was not, she was not his soulmate but he was hers. Yeah she just happens to be the last person he was with before he went overseas. Yes. Quite possibly. Now these half-truths that Elizabeth told about herself make it a hell of a lot harder to figure out what was really happening in her life during this time period but she did tell Dorothy and Elvira that she had an inside track to Hollywood through some celebrity and was doing some work as a movie extra. That's also, we don't think, there's no record of her as a movie extra. There is some, like, very short piece of video footage that is thought to be her, but it's just her on the street.

It's not a movie. We don't really know, and we don't really know what's going on here. This is where it's like, this is where the mystery for me comes from. This is the unknowable person. This is the Laura Palmer of this story where you're watching this person who everybody got a different read on her. Everybody said that Elizabeth Short was extremely charismatic, fun to be around, like this party, but then also just got

really, really, really sad. And she'd get, she'd have this moody thing, and there was just something about her. I can see her. I don't know what it is, I can see her. And I get what she's doing. I don't know what it is. I can see her and I I Get what she's doing. She's a myth maker for herself Like if she had made it through all this she could have been an artist she could have been a many anything Yeah

But what's known for a fact is that on some nights a knock would come at the door of Elvira and Dorothy's home while Elizabeth was staying there She would refuse to answer and would become terribly frightened but would also refuse to say anything about who might be on the other side of that door. And those for you to remember this is up to a month before her death. To make things even more mysterious about a week before Elizabeth's body was found a man and a woman arrived at the house where Elizabeth was staying in a car driven by a second man.

Three people had shown up in San Diego looking for Elizabeth, but when they knocked on the door, Elizabeth got panicky and refused to answer again. Which reminds me when they call in Mel Holland Drive, when they call the guy with the big hat. Yeah, she saw some shit probably. Quite possibly. That's one of the big hat. She saw some shit probably. Quite possibly. That's one of the big theories. All Elvira and Dorothy knew was that Elizabeth suddenly wanted to leave San Diego as quickly as

possible after that encounter with those three people. And two days later, she left with a tall, red-haired, freckled man in his twenties named Red. I'm gonna fix everything. I'm creative on the name choices I give myself. You know a lot of people call me brown because of what I do now, but a lot of people call me red because I was me head. It's better because it used to just be man. Yeah, some guys call me guy and some people say please sir leave my child alone. Jimmy Richardson's crime reporter miles ahead of the police got a license plate number from Red's car from a nearby motel where Red and Elizabeth had stayed the night before she

returned to Los Angeles. The car belonged to a 25 year old pipe clamp salesman named Robert Manley known to his friends as red So Jimmy Richardson ordered his reporters to get an interview with red Manley the first prime suspect of the black Dahlia murder Poor poor red Manley. No his guys a fucking moron who signed up for the wrong, the exact wrong thing. It goes on to ruin his life. He had nothing to do with this whole fucking, and it's just... What do you do when you meet Elizabeth Short? Yeah.

Now Manley was in San Francisco on a work trip when Jimmy Richardson's reporter showed up at his home in Huntington Park. Unfortunately for Red, the person who was home that night was his wife, who was none too pleased to be questioned about the Black Dahlia murder. You see her? She was smokin'. His wife? His wife was beautiful. Like, I gotta kid, cause he's like, the reason why we're doing this stupid voice for him is cause he looks like Opie. Yeah, he's got the red hair and the freckles and the, yeah, he's an asshole.

Big choppin' ears, he looks like a moron. But she's she's just this like his wife is hot. That's red manly for you Yeah, well, I mean, it's I don't know maybe maybe it's tall He's got that fucking egg-shaped head that might mean you have a big long weird foreskin penis You know what's funny is that now that you say that and I think back to all the yeah Yeah, yeah, he's probably real Irish probably a boxer Well as soon as red returned from San Francisco he was ambushed and arrested by cops and reporters Immediately he said quote. I know why you're here But I didn't do it. Yep immediately first thing

He said now Manley wouldn't talk to the cops or the reporters who would help find him, but where Jimmy Richardson left off, Aggie Underwood stepped in. In the most 1940 speech you could imagine, she, according to her recollection, told him quote, Look fella, you're in one hell of a spot. You're in a jam and it's no secret. If you're innocent, as you say you are, you tell the whole story and if you're having anything to hide, people can't help knowing you're telling the truth. That way you'll get it over with all at once and it won't be kicking around to cause you more trouble. Yeah. Taking Aggie's advice, Manley told his story to her first, then repeated it over and over again to the police.

He said that he had met Elizabeth Short in San Diego the previous December just after he and his wife had a baby. According to Manley, his marriage was going through an adjustment period. Yeah, it's called his wife was healing from giving birth to your child. So he decided to test himself with a pretty young girl to quote, I just wanted to see if I could still love my wife. That is literally what he said. He said, I wanted to see if I still love my wife. But it turns out, yes, I do. I certainly do. Now he claimed that he never slept with Elizabeth short, but they did ride around dance and have dinner. They did kiss, but he said that when they did, she was quote kind of cold. I think it was

because she was cutting half at the time. Now Manley left Elizabeth in San Diego after their first fling, but returned the next month on January 8th when he offered to give her a ride back to LA at her request. That night though, before they left, they danced and had some drinks. And Manley said that Short was happy until they got to the motel room. You want to make it make it? You want to do it upside down? You want to do it in the booty hole? I've never done it before. I've heard people do it in France. He said that she became sullen and silent and when he tried making a move, she said that it was her time of the month. Oh, yeah, you got it. You got an appointment with your oboe fixer.

Well, luckily my name's Red Manley. Yeah, you know, anything I got appointment with your oboe fixer. Well, luckily my name's Red Manly It was my hair Extremely allergic to period blood And she refused to even discuss sex Manly said fair enough But the suspicious part of the story began the next day on their way back to Los Angeles Well, I have it your way, I'll go ahead and fuck myself. I was going to do anything. Maybe she was just mad because it didn't drive

the two hours to Los Angeles. That night. It stopped in the middle so he could blatantly try and fuck her. Well, it's because she was trying to, this is her, this is where the mysteries are, right? This is where all the big mysteries are. So she's hanging out with him. We don't really know why she's hanging out with him

Yeah, like why she found because she just went you Yes, but even before that like for that yeah, she was building him up as another I think that Elizabeth was in a lot of trouble and was looking for Potentially and I mean this in all generosity, for somebody else to maybe catch that trouble who was not her. Or to help her with her trouble and be ready to fucking take her to where she needs. I don't think Red Manly would have in any way whatsoever been able to like take the blame for whatever it was that she had. I mean two men show up to kill me, you protect me.

Ah, maybe. And maybe I get away. Like literally, I need cover. Maybe. But by the time they made their way to Laguna Beach at around 5pm, Elizabeth got anxious, staring intently at every car that passed, straining her neck to see who the passengers were while saying almost nothing. But when they finally got to Los Angeles proper at around 6.30pm, Elizabeth said that she needed to go to the Biltmore Hotel to meet her sister because she was planning on returning

home to Medford, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Shorts getting the fuck out of town. Or at least trying to. She says she's trying to. To him. Yes. And so, Manley dropped Elizabeth off at the Biltmore and the doorman later said that Elizabeth waited

in the lobby for three hours. Finally, she left alone at around 10 p.m. But she did make several calls. Yeah, and that was the last reported sighting of Elizabeth Short until her body was found in Limerick Park six days later. Well, official sighting. Official sighting. At least less credible.

Credible sighting. And she wasn't killed that night because her body would have been more decomposed, right? Oh yeah, and then there are quote unquote what they call the missing week as we'll get into. Now Manley's alibi checked out easily enough. He was playing cards with his wife and friends the night of the murder and his wife further said that it was absurd to think her husband would kill anyone because he fainted at the sight of blood. Honestly I get scared when I fart. I don't know what I'm supposed to do even thinking you massage your breasts until you make a child. You massage your breasts until you make a child. Well, as far as his sensational interview with Aggie Underwood went, Red Manly was quoted

as saying, I'll swear on a stack of Bibles and I'll tell my minister to that on January 9th. That was the last time I ever saw Betty short. I did not kill her, but brother, I'll never cheat on my wife again. And he didn't mostly because she divorced him. That's how you stop that. I say, you nip that in the butt. Get them involved in a fucking, one of the worst crime scenes being recorded history.

Yeah. About a year after the investigation, she divorced him and he never fully recovered from being the first suspect in the black Dahlia case suffered numerous nervous breakdowns as a result. Yeah. He was like in an insane asylum. He had to get, he had to be put away for a little while. Yeah. It ruined his life. It did.

But what was already pretty fragile as it was, didn't know I was hanging on by a thread. I was, what was strange about red Manley was what happened to Aggie Underwood just after her interview was published. Aggie, the best true crime reporter the Herald Examiner had, was pulled off the case without explanation. Well, in response to getting taken off, Aggie sat in her editor's office and did an embroidery for hours until she was put back on the story. You see what I'm making?

It's a set of balls. I'm running out of paint. It says home is where the nuts are. And she soon after uncovered an interesting link between Elizabeth Short and another murder that had occurred about two and a half years prior. On October 12th, 1944, a woman named Georgette Bowerdorf was found murdered in the bathtub of her West Hollywood apartment, raped, beaten, and asphyxiated. A military badge was stuffed in her mouth, which led the LA Sheriff's Department to believe she was killed by a military man. Yeah! Good job, Pelletine! The thing, though, is that...

Or is it somebody that wants you to think it's a military? Of course it is! Furthermore, Bowerdorf was a junior hostess at a club called the Hollywood Canteen, known to be frequented by men in the military, and who else should be working the same job at the same club at the same time as Bowerdorf but Elizabeth Short. Dude, just like all the girls in Twin Peaks worked at two Ajax. Yeah. Believing it to be too much of a coincidence, Aggie published an article linking the two

murders with the incredible headline, Werewolves Leave Trail of Women, Murder Victims in Los Angeles. Now, Georgette's diary had been confiscated by the LAPD after she'd been murdered, and it was discovered upon second look that there were quite a few entries about Elizabeth Short and the time the two girls had spent working at the Hollywood canteen. Laura Palmer's fucking diary. Of most interest was their relationship to a then well-known actor named Arthur Lake. Arthur Lake had played Dagwood in a series of 28 movies based on the comic strip Blondie between 1938 and 1950. Lake was known for playing light romantic roles, but was always a bit of a mama's boy.

Hardly a werewolf type. Yeah, he looks like a fucking Cholo if you see his face. He's got a goofy face He's got sort of a sad sack look and the fact that he looks he does sort of looks like Dagwood He looks exactly like Dagwood. Yeah Lake was also good friends with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst Patty Hearst grandfather. Welcome back to the show Connections so this is before Patty Hearst. This is all, it all runs together. 1947, yeah. Yeah.

And it just so happened that Aggie Underwood's newspaper was one of the many newspapers that William Randolph Hearst owned. So with one quick phone call from Hearst, from Hearst mistress, any investigation into Arthur Lake, Georgette Bauerdorf and Elizabeth Short was quickly nipped in the bud. Although there are no serious theories that say that fucking Dagwood murdered the black Dahlia except look at I mean Actors especially back in the day some of these guys were there was some cryptic shit Yeah going on you've ever read Hollywood and Babylon or Hollywood Babylon to any of the Kenneth anger stuff, right?

Like I know a lot of it is completely exaggerated, but these guys did some fucked up shit. If you look at, you know, we talked about Errol Flynn, there was a lot of weird shit. Yeah. But just because Arthur Lake wasn't involved, that didn't mean there wasn't a connection between the murders of Georgette Bauerdorf and Elizabeth Short, even considering that Georgette's murder was nowhere near as violent or performative as Elizabeth's. Yeah, where does Elizabeth's murder come from? Is that really the first time somebody ever kills somebody?

Do they produce the Black Dahlia? I don't think so, but... It's just the way it was done. Yeah, I mean, you'd think it would be definitely a... you'd think it'd be a huge ramp up. But Aggie never got to find out anything about these connections. Because the moment she started looking into this link, she was taken off the story a second time. Except on this occasion, it was because she was promoted to city editor of the Herald Express.

And that's how you always get- if you have a problem, and you want to get rid of it, and you got a way to get to promote them out. That's the best way to do it because it shuts them the fuck up. I mean she was a deserving candidate. Oh yeah. But everyone thought it was strange that the only reporter making real progress at their paper on the biggest news story of the decade was reassigned twice without explanation. So this kind of points to mafia probably.

Don't know Eddie, don't know. But Aggie took the job and the story more or less went back to Jimmy Richardson. Now besides the black sedan that had been spotted at the murder scene in the wee hours before Elizabeth Short's body was found, there really weren't any concrete leads as to who was responsible for Elizabeth Short's murder.

But on January 23rd, the phone rang at the office of the Los Angeles Examiner, and it was Jimmy Richardson who answered On the other end of the phone was a man with a voice that has been described again and again as soft and sly He was asking for the city editor. Jimmy said, speaking. And so the soft voice replied, well, Mr. Richardson, I must congratulate you on what the examiner has done in the black Dahlia case. You seem to have run out of material.

Maybe I can be of assistance." And so after Jimmy very matter-of-factly said, we need it, the soft voice said, "'I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll send you some of the things she had with her when she, shall we say, disappeared.'" Immediately, Jimmy wrote the words, TRACE THIS CALL on a piece of paper and handed it to his assistant, who jiggled the receiver arm on Jimmy's telephone to get the attention of the switchboard girl. The soft voice went on to say that he had Elizabeth's address book, her birth certificate, and a few other items that she had in her handbag.

When Jimmy asked when they could expect these items, the soft voice said, Oh, within the next day or so. See how far you can get with them. And now I must say goodbye. You may be trying to trace this call. Flabbergasted Jimmy sat back in his chair, lit a cigarette, and said, I think I might have been talking to the killer of the Dahlia. And sure enough, two days later, a package arrived at the examiner's office postmarked January 24th, the day after Jimmy Richardson had gotten the call

Written on the front of the package and words clipped from newspapers and magazines was this here's the Dahlia's belongings Letter to follow and inside among other things was Elizabeth Shorts birth certificate Social Security card and a baggage claim check for two suitcases and a hat box at a local Greyhound station. But most important was a brown leather notebook filled with names and numbers, what appeared to be Elizabeth Short's address book. Strangely, the name Mark Hanson was printed on the front, and believe you me, we'll be getting into Mr. Hanson on the next episode. But even more strange was the fact that several pages had been cut out of the book, meaning

that it was possible that whoever sent it didn't want the reporters or the police to have certain bits of information. Like their name. Yes. Oh yeah. But less the police get too excited, the entire package of in soaked in gasoline, which meant that there were no usable fingerprints on anything that was inside or outside of the least get too excited, the entire package had been soaked in gasoline, which meant that there were no usable fingerprints on anything that was inside or outside of the envelope.

Four days later, though, the promised letter to follow arrived at the examiner. This time it was a handwritten message and very short it said quote here it is turning in Wednesday January 29th 10 a.m. had my phone at police black Dahlia Avenger. Now the cops waited January 29th like it was Christmas Day and they couldn't wait to find out what the fuck Black Dahlia Avenger meant. Oh, they're very excited. Yeah.

I would be if I was a police officer during this time period. Oh my God, I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They figured it was probably in reference to some sort of wrong that Elizabeth Short had committed, either real or imagined, that the person who had killed her had avenged something. But once January 29th came,

they thought that they were gonna find out for sure. But January 29th came and went. The next day, another postcard arrived at the examiner, this time returning to the cut-and-paste method. It said, quote, have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia Killing was justified. And that, Misev, the newspapers in Los Angeles and the offices of the LAPD were flooded with letters and postcards supposedly from this black Dahlia Avenger, making it impossible to tell what was real and what was a hoax. I wonder if the actual Jack the Ripper has any idea what he did. Yeah, what he started. Yeah.

Like the fact that this is all tied back and it's all been the same. They've been doing this shtick ever since because of him. This guy, the Zodiac, BTK. It's very interesting. I'll always like, it's fascinating. I like it when they yell at the police. LaFosse leads overwhelmed the investigation on both sides. And while there were four viable fingerprints taken from the second postcard, it was believed by the FBI that only the first package and the first postcard were from the actual killer, although they may also have

their reasons for holding that opinion. From there, though, the police had to contend with a mountain of what they called confessing sams. These were men and women who didn't do the crime, but wanted to take credit for the murder anyway. And that's important to remember throughout this whole series, is how people fucked up as it is. We've seen it with Jomad A. Ramsey.

We've seen it with like, people want to be attached to the story because it gives them some meaning. Like, they're, they're, they're, so we're going to see a lot of that. It was interesting, though, that at least one confessing Sam got attached to another brutal murder. Just a few weeks after Elizabeth Short was killed, another woman, a 45 year old pilot, army nurse and bit player named Jean French, was found beaten and stomped to death on the corner of Grandview in Indianapolis Avenue on her torso

Someone had written a message in lipstick fuck you BD presumably fuck you black Dahlia, which doesn't really make sense No, because it's like what are you mad about? No, let's see to be honest It sounds like it could be they said it could also be fuck you BP But it could you know, who knows it could be anything, but it was be either be The blind dancing boy that was a part of all of the biggest hits on the Los Angeles Broadway at the time with the whole thing was that people would lie to him where the stage was and everyone follow him around And see if he the tap dancing and he was the one who his favorite song all the world's a stage I just wish I could see it. I love that guy.

It could just be like fuck you big dick too. It could be anything at all. BD was not I don't think big dick energy was a thing at the time. Yeah also that also the crime the killing of Gene French also unsolved to this day. The cops believed at the time that Jean French had been murdered in a rage by the Black Dahlia killer because two days earlier the Herald Express had declared that a man named Joseph Dumé, who would spend years confessing and recanting about Black Dahlia, was the man who murdered her. The LAPD went back on the link

between French and short, but they still had to contend with over 500 confessing Sams, each of whom had to be thoroughly checked out just in case they were telling the truth. That's crazy. 500. 500. Such a ridiculous number. And they have to track each one down.

Because of them, the person probably got away. Oh yes, and almost you wonder if some of them were written by the people that were surrounding the investigation and all of that. No idea. Now some of these confessing Sams were led by the press and public opinion to create fantastical stories that were nowhere near the truth. See for a time it was speculated that Elizabeth Short was gay because she was sometimes known to be in the company of quote bossy blondes and women with Amazonian proportions.

Call me a lesbian. Yes. Well, she was seen by enduring her missing week. She was seen several times with the with a woman, a very Amazonian blonde woman, another small brown haired woman with a lot of makeup. Now the gay angle was of course salacious, but it also served to further smear Elizabeth Short. Because while male homosexuality in Hollywood in the 1940s was condemned, lesbianism was actually seen as the far greater sin and the bigger perversion. Because I think some guys in many ways like we're almost jealous of homosexuality beach because that's two dicks Yeah And two penises the most powerful things that could be in a room having sex with each other and that's like what's hard for people

Understand it's like I was like they have to wrap they have to kind of put that aside because it's like two penises That's awesome Man making decisions those are businessmen, policemen, officers. You know what I mean? Lesbians... There's a dick going into a hole. I can grasp that. And there's a dick on the other side of that hole that's his own dick. Also, it's just two less dudes trying to fuck my wife. Yes. Meanwhile, lesbians show they don't need dick. Yeah.

And that's not. It's powerful. Well, that's what they don't like about it Well, it was said that gay women dressed in men's clothing to trick innocent young girls into horrifying sadistic situations Just like the black dolly a murder and a reporter at the Examiner was Particularly sure that the murderer was a disgruntled lesbian. I think a lot of times they just make angry guitar music These were men trapped in women's bodies, they said. Neurotic, tragic, absurd and dangerous.

And it seemed like this story was actually going to play out when a woman named Christine Reynolds confessed to Elizabeth's murder. Reynolds said that she'd met Elizabeth at a gay bar called the Crown Jewel on January 9th, and it killed her soon after, using some of the worst details about the mutilation that had been held back from the public as proof. Namely, Christine had said that after the murder of Elizabeth Short, she had quote, cut some of her goddamn hair off and shoved it up her fucking pussy.

And the thing was, this did happen. The killer did cut off a piece of skin from Elizabeth Short's pubic area before forcing it into her vagina after her death. But when Christine Reynolds was further interrogated, it was found that she had a girlfriend who worked for the LAPD who had told her all the gory details about the mutilation that had been withheld from the public. Nevertheless, the lesbian angle continued to be pushed for years. Now, was she big? Would she be able to carry the body? You know, like that's, I mean, who

knows, but I mean, all of this, you know, came and went in the course and of course of a couple hours, you know, like she's, you know, she gets put in the box and starts confessing. And then they, and the, one of the big tricks that they used with these confessing Sams was the hair color because everyone sort of assumed that when Elizabeth short was killed, that she still had her like famous raven black hair, but no, she'd actually dyed it using henna really like pretty recently before. So her hair, when no she actually died it using henna Really like pretty recently before so her hair when she was killed was actually kind of a reddish light brown, okay? Yeah, so if they didn't know that detail then it was like okay You're definitely you definitely aren't the person who killed her what happens to you if you're confessing Sam. Do you go to jail?

No, they say get out of here. Yeah, they just get mad now. There are punishments for it Yeah, destruction of justice suction of drugs as you can but at the time they just be like get the fuck out of here I'm gonna beat him a little bit. I mean man. They beat fucking everybody They beat everybody they used to have I was talking about reading about the LAPD at the time was like they would talk and Investigate new ways to beat people without them believing physical marks. What were those things? Billy Jacks? Yeah, yeah, black jacks. Yeah, leather with a piece of lead in it.

And they also would use, what's this putz, rubber hoses. Oh, yeah. Because they didn't leave big marks. Oh, that's where that... Yep. I'll beat you with a rubber hose. Oh, okay. Well, now I know. Now, the man who was responsible for sifting through all the confessing Sam stories to

maybe find the real killer was also the only guy in Los Angeles who seemed to have a real hook on who the Black Dahlia killer might be. That man was Dr. Joseph Pohl DeRiver. DeRiver! He was a psychiatrist who worked for the Los Angeles Police Department. He's an interesting guy. He is interesting. And there, of course, some people say that he's completely discredited

because he made up his job. But it's the 1930s. Somebody's got to make up the job. We made up our job, and people sometimes call us as experts. That's hilarious. It's the same thing. I've had people ask me legit professors or police officers asked me questions about crime and it's like oh You fucking don't know you got bamboozled son. Yeah, I have to learn it from you. Yeah. Yeah, I made this up

I made up this job. This is a job we created now because of the public display of the body and the black Dahlia Avenger communications Deriver was convinced that the murderer would continue to interact with the public. So if someone wanted to talk, Deriver would listen. Because Deriver had already danced to this song once before. I love murder. Nah, it's my passion. Criminals are my passion.

Sex crimes my instrument. I love it every second of it and god damn it I can't get enough of it. Sex crimes, my instrument. Every second of it and god damn it, I can't get enough of it. I like to be up to my pierced eyebrows. And little girl jasmine. See, in 1937, he'd worked a case called the Babes of Inglewood. It's now lost time, but before the Black Dahlia,

it was the most disturbing set of homicides the city had yet seen. In this case, three little girls, ages seven, eight, and nine, were found raped and strangled to death in a gully in Baldwin Hills. Going just off the way the bodies were positioned, and the fact that their shoes had been removed and placed next to them, De River deduced that the killer was a sadistic pedophile in his 20s who was meticulous in his appearance He was religious and he was remorseful I'm standing right there! Ah! Ah! Ah!

Ah! Ah! I'm sorry! It's hardly a bigger story Yeah, it's a huge story, yeah And now, like, actually this, I found some information about it, but you know, there's no fucking Wikipedia page about the babes of Inglewood. Well, police soon found something very close to that. And a 32 year old crossing guard named Albert Dyer, who said he lured the girls to the park with a story about rabbits. He then separated raped and strangled them one by one before praying over each corpse.

The river's mostly accurate profile was among the first to ever lead to the capture of a killer in Los Angeles So Deriver became a sort of star expert thereafter He also established the LAPD sexual offense bureau which led to the California sexual offender registry That was created partly because of the black dolly a murder But like all of it because like there was a little bit of discrepancy I believe about Albert Dyer because they said that he might have been too simple to understand yeah and they said that because he was mentally handicapped and they started talking asking him a bunch of questions and he'd give them a bunch of opposite answers and they're not quite certain maybe in the end if he

was real and then the worst part about creating the California sexual offender register was that then being used as a massive tool for evil yes It was used to criminalize LGBT people like it was basically used as like a gay list, you know And that was used mostly during the sex crime panic of the 40s and 50s But the rivers actual target with this registry was sexual psychopaths like the man who had killed Elizabeth short The river believed that particularly nasty sex offenders should be castrated, tattooed on the forehead, and get their ears clipped to a sharp peak so children could easily identify.

What, they're gonna make them terrifying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like one of our researchers put it, it's like you wanted to turn them into actual goblins. I think there's a couple of them who was like, I'll do that anyway. Thank you. Oh, but for free? Oh, the government's paying for this? to actual goblins. I think there's a couple of them who are like, I'll do that anyway.

Thank you. For free? Oh, the government's paying for this? But even though some of his ideas were fucking insane, Deriver was the one who found the man who might be the key to the entire Elizabeth short mystery. See, as was demonstrated by Elizabeth's paranoid behavior in the time just before her disappearance, it just might be that she got herself mixed up with some unsavory characters during her time in Los Angeles.

These unsavory characters were the men who ran the city's underground, men who had the power to not only cover up one of the most famous murders in history, but to eventually derail an indictment that would have almost certainly resulted in a trial that could have introduced a lot of uncomfortable questions. And it's with these men, those questions, and the world where all this happened that we'll return to the Black Dahlia murder next week. Ooh! Call me.

Dial your number. Go ahead. I told you I was here. You invited me. It is not my custom to go where I am not wanted. I love Doss Highway, man. So now we realize we lost Highway. All of this shit fucking- I don't know why this stuff creeps me out.

Yeah, man. Because I think that as we get deeper into Elizabeth's short story, and you see more and more of, like, the reason why this really hits the David Lynch vibe more than anything, besides the fact that he told the story about how he got hit up by a police officer later on in life. And David Lynch got, he said, I got something to show you, something that you'd really want to see and David Lynch is all right, and then they got dinner at Musso and Frank's this is according to David Lynch and

He said they had dinner and they talked about stuff and he was like at the end the police officer looked David Lynch and said So you're into the black Dahlia case and David Lynch is like it's sort of the cornerstone of a lot of my work And he's like I want you to tell me what you think of this and reached into a case and he pulled out a picture of the body of Elizabeth short line in the grass and David Lynch said that he was in front of him He said he looked at he says he looked at it for 10 minutes had he never seen it before never seen it before was a new picture of the black Dahlia body. And then he took it away. And it wasn't until he was at home later on that night

that he said, what was the difference? What's wrong with that picture? And he was like, it was that night. The body was not found until the morning. Whoa. Until 11 AM. And it wasn't photographed until about 11 AM. Yeah, that is his.

So David Lynch has got this. So this whole thing is so fucking mysterious and we just started it. Yeah. So it seems to me like this person, whoever did it, probably killed a bunch of other people. Maybe. If they were very romantic about it and taking photos of their work and shit. Maybe. Or otherwise just be trying to get away with it.

I don't know. I don't know. Or it's just one of those where we don't know what patch of grass it was in. I love this, I fucking love this shit. Yeah, there's a lot, I mean there's a million theories about who may have done it, why, the motivations. For every argument you could make,

there are six arguments you can make against it. And that's what's awesome. Yeah, I mean I guarantee you there are people that just because I said the name Dr. Joseph DeRiver have discredited every single thing that I've said before or after. Yeah. Just because you even mentioned Joseph DeRiver because in their theory, in their world, they must remove Joseph DeRiver from the picture completely for their theory to be true. But that's why we're going to go through as many of the theories as we can.

Yeah, we're gonna go through a fair amount of them. Like next week, we're really gonna be getting into like some of the other theories, some of the really interesting things, some of the stuff that does have to do that relates to the art world, you know, some of the stuff that relates to the cops. And then on episode three,

we're really gonna get into the theory as to who personally I think is the best suspect and why We're gonna talk about some of those sweet men you mentioned earlier. Yes, those very sweet men And you can go to patreon.com Slash last podcast enough you can watch us yell about this You can also go and get our see us live on our stream 600 episodes of this shit Just yell about this you can also go and get our see us live on our stream 600 episodes of this shit Technically I do believe with all the numbers all together. It's probably like 645. I think it's actually more I think we're pretty getting pretty close to 650 at this point

We make the fuck the rules yeah, that's what it's like and that's the problem in the newspapers go rogue because then they make reality Which is what we just did by changing our numbers we can do whatever we Want and we go to last podcast and left comm go see us live. That's right. We got Atlanta coming up It's gonna be so much fun the coca-cola Roxy big-ass space so come and check us out there and after that we got What's after that we got Dallas in February? We got the Ryman auditorium in March, Detroit in April, right before 4 20. That's going to be a lot of fun. I don't want to get stuck in Michigan on 4 20 by the way.

And, um, we're going to bring our own stuff too. What's like the, what's the 4 20 version of devil's night? Everybody goes, smokes weed and watch great British Baking Show until they fall asleep, right? Of course, Toronto is also this next year. That's on May 3rd. Don't forget to buy your tickets to that. It's at the Elgin Theatre. Y'all. And so, Hail Satan, do your best to not be black dolly-ed this week. Try.

You know what I mean? Yeah, hell gain everyone. But also at the same time beef be free Yeah, don't let that make you afraid no be free like Elizabeth short But not just like her You know what the same result, but she was free and hell is a bit short. She seems like a really cool person She's got her she got her moments. Yeah, it does yeah, and I would have thrown it all away for you

Really would have got she would have fucking destroyed you exactly my exactly my type. I would have hired her to be a bartender at my restaurant. Yeah Goodbye bye