Enchephalomalacia is a structural lesion in the brainsoftening of brain tissue, the psychiatrist wrote to Harnisch. In addition, one of the Los Angeles homicides Hodel attributes to his father was extensively investigated by the Unit, Lambkin says; the case was solved, the killer was identified, and he was not George Hodel. Tamars mother, however, testified that a psychiatrist had told her that her daughter was addicted to telling fantastic stories. ", Knowlton also made claims prefiguring those of Black Dahlia Files author Donald Wolfe. 146 W 11th St, Los Angeles, CA 90015 The Herald Examiner building, which is undergoing a renovation. It was so refreshing to find someone who was sticking to the facts and the original documents, she says. Harnisch now had a connection between a witness to Virginia Shorts wedding and the crime scene. Short was face up, her gray-blue eyes were open, and she had been posed with elbows bent at right angles, her hands over her head, and her legs were spread with her knees straight. Hes a journalist, he lets the facts guide him, and he doesnt have any agenda other than the truth., Anne Redding, chair of the Justice Studies Department at Santa Barbara City College, has researched the homicide for more than thirty years and uses it as a centerpiece in her Study of Murder class. The Murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia; Los Angeles' Most Famous Unsolved Killing Research into the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, on Jan. 15, 1947, on South Norton Avenue, in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department's most famous open case. I found out that a woman in the drugstore is the one who named her. Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley was a Los Angeles surgeon who lived in a house one block south of the vacant lot in which Elizabeth Short's body was found, until he left his wife in October 1946. Keller believed Mark Hansen was the killer and said Hansen was Swedish and had spent some time at Sweden's Medical Surgical School (Hansen was actually born in Denmark) which would explain the precise dissection of Short's body. New England has the Boston Strangler. [36] The reason why he was a suspect is unclear, especially since Siegel was more concerned with the Flamingo Hotel and Casino at the time and he was known to be a "lady's man" not a "lady's killer." At the time of the murder, Bayley's estranged wife still lived in the home. He appeared on numerous network crime shows, CNNs Anderson Cooper interviewed him, and he soon eclipsed Harnisch as the go-to guy on the Dahlia murder. About 60 people confessed to the murder, mostly men but including a few women. Testimony during the trial revealed that she had previously accused her father of killing Short. Dumais was cleared of any involvement in the crime, although he continued to claim he killed Short each time he was arrested for various offenses, well into the 1950s. Its just about watertight in most ways., LAPD Detective Brian Carr, who was in charge of the Dahlia case at the time, was more equivocal at the dinner, but still found all the coincidences relating to Bayley and the murder intriguing. Examiner reporters beat police to the locations where Short had stowed all of her belongings shortly before she was killed. [22] Steve Hodel maintains a website wherein he continues to update the case with additional discovered information.[23]. A hefty man with a white mustache and goatee who is wearing a Panama hat, Hodel reflects on the painful period after the release of his book when his integrity was questioned. At the time, Harnisch, says, the surgeon was suffering from a severe form of dementia. She said that she was with Doctor Hodel sometime prior to the murder and that she knew nothing about his being associated with the victim. He also spends the evening wandering around the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, where Short was last seen, paying homage to her and ruminating about the case. Id rather research than eat. The drive for violence and sexuality can come up and get worse and worse. During this time his marriage dissolved, he moved to a small apartment, and he faced the depressing reality of spending holidays away from his wife and son. During the Depression, her father, who built miniature golf courses, suffered a financial setback and abandoned the family when Short was six. His daughter was a friend of Short's sister Virginia, and had been the matron of honor at her wedding. An interview with Bayleys former secretary was of particular interest. I opened a dusty old box, and it was like exhuming a body, Lopez wrote. After fingering his father for the two murders, Hodel later claimed he was one of the Twentieth Centurys most prolific serial killers. I havent seen anyone come close to what hes done. When Harnisch began researching his book, he had no interest in attempting to solve the murder. The question of why this case has fascinated so many for so long has intrigued Larry Harnisch and sent him on such an intensive and serpentine journey of research, interviews, and archival study that some consider him Los Angeles most knowledgeable Black Dahlia authority. John Jigsaw John St. John was assigned the Dahlia file after Hansen retired and he kept control of the case until he pulled the pin in 1993. He raced through the two lines, pencil poised, and wrote in a single word. Smith later discovered that the editor, who had no idea what Short looked like, added beautiful to describe the victim. All the articles just say he was a cop. Everyone wants this to be a noir morality play, Harnisch says. Eventually, he found the owner of the house on 3959 Norton Avenue, the woman on the deed who paid the property taxesRuth Bayley. If he ever encountered anything significant, he believed that it would stand out like a beacon. Nothing related to Norton Avenue did stand out, however, but he was not discouraged. Knowlton's sister has since stated on Amazon.com's listing for Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer that after the publication of Knowlton's book, Tamar Hodel, daughter of George Hodel and sister of Steve Hodel, contacted Knowlton and the two women remained "email pals for several years. We follow Bersingers path, from her gray stucco house with a postage stamp front lawn, down the sidewalk to the lot where Short was found. Some are from people whove done a ton of research and have a theory. At the time, the street was undeveloped because the war had stopped construction, and Short was found on an empty lot, but now at the location there is a beige stucco house with Italian cypresses shading the lawn. I still dont have all the details Id like and Im still hoping to get more. He was checking her out. Los Angeles mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was allegedly a suspect in the murder investigation of Short. The picture, which is signed: To T.J. Love and luck always, Beth, reveals Shorts gracious nature. Then he had to determine who was still alive. And Ill add one more element: noir. What Harnisch does know is that after her fianc was killed, her life careened out of control, dissipating her ambition and her rectitude. Steve Cooley about the case, he said that Kay had presented Hodels theory in a closed-door presentation, but he wasnt close to being convinced. Still, he allowed Lopez to peruse the previously unreleased 1949 grand jury files, which chronicled an investigation headed up by D.A. The clips at the Times and phone book directories from the 1940s were no help in locating Lindgren. They werent just chit-chatting. Some writers contended the original detective team was inept. Harnish, solemn and staid, appears offended, and tells Fallon hes not interested and wouldnt allow a film to be made that treated Short like a piece of meat.. Grabbing her hand, she ran with her to the nearest neighbors house to call the police. Bersinger told Harnisch a different story. 1, spent 43 years as a homicide detective and investigated more than 1,000 murders and twelve serial killers. Harnisch argues that Short, destitute and alone on a cold January evening, sought refuges in his company. This is a story without an ending., Featured illustration by Eleonore Hamelin, courtesy The Delacorte Review. Kurtis also probes the theory that the killer was a surgeon named Walter Bayley. He rode toward her, to prevent her from wandering into a busy street, when he was hit by a truck. One of the first people to confess to the murder was a WAC sergeant stationed in San Diego. Harnisch points out that Short did not drink and the Gallery Bar didnt exist when she arrived at the hotel. She is found cut in half in a vacant lot. During the war, Short, who had asthma, moved to Florida to escape the harsh New England winters, and met a pilot, Major Matt Gordon Jr. When I asked him if he preferred Harnischs or Hodels suspect, he snapped, I wont talk about that anymore. He is grateful he began his research decades ago, long before the case generated renewed interest in the Twenty-First Century, because many of those he interviewed are now dead. In the final report to the grand jury, dated February 20, 1951, Lt. Frank Jemison of the Los Angeles County D.A. Black Dahlia Murder Suspect Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley was a Los Angeles surgeon who lived in a house one block south of the vacant lot in which Elizabeth Short's body was found, until he left his wife in October 1946. Our hearts and soul were wrapped up in himI have seen much of deathbut I never understood it before. A few years before his death, Bayley disinherited the two people living on 3959 South Norton Avethe daughter who Bayley might have blamed for his sons death and his estranged wife, who was supposed to supervise the girl. Youre going to get your ass caught. Douglas speculated that the killer wanted to shock and horrify the residents, sending the message that Short was a slut. He had almost completed his second draft, Ellroy was interested in writing the introduction and was going to set up him up with his agent. Also, Siegel was involved with Chicago Outfit starlet, and his on-off girlfriend Virginia Hill. In 2003, Steve Hodel published a book, Black Dahlia Avenger; A Genius for Murder, in which he claimed his father, who died in 1999, had murdered Short and was responsible for other unsolved killings over two decades. They dated for about a week and then she joined him on a sales trip as he headed up to L.A. Folk singer Woody Guthrie was one of the many suspects in the murder, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's files and Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie written by Ed Cray and published in 2004 by W.W. Norton. Now I find out he had some kind of secret and lived in constant fear of being exposed. His daughter was friends with Elizabeth Short's sister but it isn't certain that he ever met Elizabeth. Los Angeles Times reporter Larry Harnisch disputes this and says that Dillon did in fact receive a financial settlement from the City of Los Angeles. When asked about an element of the investigation, he is often reluctant to answer, and instead says, Let me check my files. He then lunges out of his chair, disappears into his office, roots through the photocopied newspapers clippings, inquest reports, and investigative files, and returns with a precise answer. He was one of the first serious suspects in the case and he was still a prime suspect as late as 1951. The clips at the, The marriage certificate indicated there was a link between the Short family and South Norton Avenue. Sitting at her kitchen table, he felt disoriented by the juxtaposition of this sweet elderly woman who proudly displayed drawings emblazoned with I LOVE GRANDMA on her refrigerator, recounting how she stumbled upon the mutilated body. The killer, Douglas surmised, had some connection to the neighborhood. The office in his small South Pasadena home is crammed with five metal file cabinets, twenty boxes of file folders, and four bookcases lined with hundreds of books, all focused on the Short homicide or Los Angeles history. Will Fowler, a reporter for the Examiner at the time, told Harnisch that he had been the first reporter at the scene and had arrived before the police. "We have a lot of people offering up their fathers and various relatives as the Black Dahlia killer," said St. John, better known as Jigsaw John. Bayley was an L.A. surgeon who lived just one block away from the location where police . Yet another theory was that the murder may have been an attempt to frame Siegel by Jack Dragna, who wanted revenge for Siegel's attacks on Dragna's business interests since his arrival in the 1930s. Mary Pacios who grew up near Short in Massachusetts and wrote Childhood Shadows, suggested that Orson Welles, who appeared to saw a woman in half during a magic trick, was the killer. , the date the body was discovered, he jammed a broomstick into the dirt on his front yard, spread out a large sheet of paper, and with a felt tip pen traced the progression of the shadowsa primitive sun dialand compared them to the shadows in the photos to garner a rough idea of who was at the scene and when. Walter also disinherited his wife, who had remained at the house on South Norton Avenue, and their other daughter, Beatrice. And the parts fit better.. Harnisch disagrees with the claim made by some writers that the detectives were inept, and the case was compromised by department corruption. In Los Angeles, the book was savaged. Welles applied for his passport on January 24, 1947, the same day the killer mailed a packet to Los Angeles newspapers. He wanted the cops to open them at the Examiner office. Her body was found in a weed-webbed lot in South Los Angeles, surgically severed in two, washed and scrubbed, posed, and completely drained of blood. He rode toward her, to prevent her from wandering into a busy street, when he was hit by a truck. No case has stumped investigators more than the killing of Elizabeth Short, aka "The Black Dahlia." On January 15, 1947, the 22-year-old, budding actress was brutally murdered in South Los Angeles. Customers called her the Black Dahlia, a play on the 1946 movie The Blue Dahlia, and because of her swirling black hair and black clothing. According to Knowlton, Short was a sex worker and a procurer of children for a child trafficking ring. Police soon discovered that Connors did indeed exist; his real name was Artie Lane. She wasnt. Because of the complexity of the case, the original investigators treated every person who knew Elizabeth Short as a suspect who had to be eliminated. I am too busy working on active cases." West was the ultimate boy scout, Harnisch says, a devout Presbyterian. At the time of the murder, Bayley's estranged wife still lived in the home. Bayley was never a suspect in the case, but many medical doctors and others with medical training were. In Los Angeles, there had been the White Orchid murder, the Red Hibiscus murder, the White Carnation murder, and the White Flame murder, but none remained the cynosure of attention. Severed and many other sources based on Severed erroneously claim that Short and Bauerdorf knew each other in Los Angeles, supposedly because they were both hostesses at the same nightclub. In a September 2006 television interview, Carr added, "I don't have the time to either prove or disprove Hodel's investigation. He didnt know her name and this was the pre-internet days, so he couldnt simply Google her. Still, Shorts mother refused to believe her daughter was dead. So now they both have something in commondead sons. 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