48: The Black Dahlia | Red Thread
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Hello, it's Red Thread Time. Today we're discussing a very important and monumental case in American true crime history. The Black Dahlia murders, fellas. Well, murder, really. It was one murder. Massive situation or case in the early 1940s. Have you guys done any videos on it, Isaiah? Yeah.

I have. I covered it back when I did the unsolved true crime iceberg. And I've also heard other YouTubers talk about it. So I'm pretty familiar with the case and how depressing it is. It's extremely depressing. So I guess that's a warning for anyone out there listening. This is going to get depressing. Sorry, Caleb. This is one of those episodes where you are going to break down into tears. Oh, yeah. Break down into tears. You mean laughter. Tears of laughter. Tears of laughter. It's okay, guys. These are tears of laughter. Someone got hurt.

Someone got hurt. It's tragic. It's so funny. Yeah. Where'd you put it on your iceberg, Isaiah?

It was one of the top layers, I remember, because the idea was as you went down the iceberg, it was more disturbing or more obscure cases. And the Black Dahlia is pretty famous. So it was like layer one or two, I think. Because it is one of the most famous unsolved murders. Yeah, it is. Up there with John Bonnet Ramsey and stuff like those...

I forget what the name of it was. The Delilah murders or something? The murders in Ohio of the two girls on the train tracks that actually got solved a few months ago. But that one was like a famous unsolved one forever. Do you think that this case, this unsolved case, the Black Dahlia murders will ever be solved?

No, if it is, it's going to be like a kid says like, oh, my dad said he did it or whatever. Or like a person who when they were a kid said their dad did it or something. And it'll be unverifiable. Yeah, it's a lot of the stuff is unverifiable. But that is actually one of the main theories of this case is some kid who's now an adult kid at the time.

has claimed that his father did it with some elements of proof. He did have some evidence, but it was still unverifiable evidence. We'll get into that later. So just a real quick mention before we actually dig deep into this document, which will be linked below. Official.men for merchandise. I'm wearing it right now, the red thread shirt.

available over there. But yeah, other than that, we'll just get going, hey? So on the winter morning of 15th of January 1947, Betty Bersinger was walking her three-year-old daughter along South Norton Avenue in the Leemart Park neighborhood of Los Angeles at around 10 a.m. As she passed a vacant lot, she saw something particularly strange, a mannequin laying alone positioned in an odd pose.

Spurred by her curiosity, Betty dared to take a closer look and as she got closer, her blood went cold. This wasn't a mannequin, it was the body of Elizabeth Short, now infamously known as "The Black Dahlia". What followed was one of the most infamous unsolved mysteries in American history, a murder that would go on to inspire countless books, films, theories and even a death metal band of its name. It's time to uncover and sift through the many threads of the case starting

with the victim herself. Who's the most respectful of us? Probably Isaiah. It's definitely Caleb. I think Caleb's definitely the most respectful of a young actress. I really appreciate this mantle of responsibility. I really love that. I can take it if you don't want to scare away new listeners that quick.

Yeah, let's let Isaiah. I think as a group, we've decided that Isaiah would be the best to intro us into this horrible, horrible situation. I know it's a joke. You don't actually find violence that funny or anything like that. It's

It's a joke, but don't you agree that Isaiah is probably the most respectful out of all three of us? In my mind, Isaiah is always wearing a suit and tie and he's incredibly respectful. Helping the needy. Yeah, he's like, yeah, exactly. He's helping the needy and he's there when you need him. Literally. That's it.

That's very convenient of you to gas me up right before I save you from reading this intro. See, that's how Cardi is. That's how needlessly selfless he is. Gas me up more like just being honest, my friend. Just for that, I shouldn't make you read it, but I'm not going to. Because a new reader coming or a new listener coming to this does not need introduced to you laughing hysterically about Elizabeth Short. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that would be very bad. That would be very bad. And I don't, yeah, it is a joke too. I don't, it's just because it's uncomfortable is why I don't think it's funny.

Caleb laughs in awkward situations, so if something bad happens, he starts laughing. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Which is very off-putting if you don't know him. It's so weird. Completely blind in this laughter at Elizabeth Short's murder. I can see how that would be like, what the fuck? What have I stepped into? Remember how funny I thought it was when Mudahar almost died in that car crash? Yeah.

That's what I was thinking. No one knows about that yet. I know, that's secret. That's secret. It's secret, but there was an event that happened with all of us where Muda was...

injured we'll say in a vehicle and everyone's freaking out and kate you can't i don't see caleb but i hear him getting closer to the car going uh-huh i'm laughing i turn around he's like whoa whoa muda whoa and also making sure checking his pupils making sure he was good yep i was i was getting he was he was he got the wind knocked out of him it looked like he was dying

but he got the wind knocked out of him. That was my official diagnosis. I feel like if I was in one of those situations and the guy who was like helping me out of the situation, like you were helping me out of the situation, if they were like laughing in my face as they were helping me out of that situation, it would honestly probably make me feel better. It would calm me down. It wasn't like, ha ha ha, you dumbass. It was like, all right, I'm trying to keep it light. Everybody's freaking out. Tom literally ran away and was like, somebody, we need to call 911.

call 911 an ambulance like a child turkey tom yeah trying to call the police and i was like bro this is not that big of a deal and the worst part was chris was there and all i remember is chris is like out my head and i didn't see her for the rest of the day so i thought she died yeah i still haven't seen her since what happened

She hit her head. There was like a bump in the car and she... Dude, even in my car, Brandon almost knocked himself out, but he's a fucking goober. So he didn't care. Anyways. Bump is a light term. I jumped a car with a bunch of people in it. And no one was buckled in. I just launched everyone through the car.

It was really awesome. So you were laughing because it was awkward and you didn't know who was actually hurt badly or something? I mean, I could see that Muda... The way that Muda was acting was as if he was dead. Like...

like dying he was it was as if he had something severely wrong with him um and i immediately came up and i tried to start like we have the footage i i feel like i handled it fairly well and keeping it light whereas everyone else was either hurt just you're trying to hush your buzz you were yeah dude i was like chill guys we're making youtube videos you know guys come on um it was it was cool it's not gonna like that

I'm excited to see the video when it comes out. Anyways, anyways, red thread. Red thread. Yeah, red thread. Yeah, yeah. So, Elizabeth Short, the victim, eventually identified as Elizabeth Short, hailed from Massachusetts. Born in Boston on the 29th of July, 1924, her parents, Cleo Alvin Short Jr. and Phoebe Mae Sawyer, had five daughters, Elizabeth being the middle child.

Her father built miniature golf courses around Massachusetts until the stock market crash in 1929, where he lost almost all of his savings. I'm laughing because in my head, I'm like, this is when Caleb would start laughing. Miniature golf courses. Yeah. The tables have turned. No, what made me laugh was that he lost all of his savings. That's the part I was like, Caleb would laugh at. That's a Caleb laugh point. That is pretty funny. Yeah.

Built miniature golf courses around Massachusetts until the stock market crashed in 1929, where he lost almost all of his savings and his business took a massive decline. Miniature golf courses were not in demand during the Great Depression. That's a funny line. Yeah, that's a good. Yeah, that's just that's just good fun.

Good old Christian fun. What a depressing time. No wonder it was the Great Depression. No one liked golf courses. All the broke golf course, like mini golf course owners just like crying on the... Yeah, dude. I think it's impossible to be unhappy at a miniature golf course. They're just too fun. That's how I feel about massage chairs. My wife would disagree. My wife got disagreed. One time she was like, she was having an awful day. She like felt sick. She was overstimulated. And my parents were like, let's go mini golfing in like downtown Gatlinburg. And she...

was like miserable and it was so funny because i was trying to be like no come on like caleb had a car wreck like no come on guys this is fun haha she was just staring at me overcome with the stress cleo decided to abandon his family

in 1930s as one would like that happened like 9 out of 10 times in the 30s and 40s I feel whenever something bad happened the guy just up and leaves

I forget whose joke it was originally, but back then, like, all you had to do to abandon your family was drive seven miles away. Yeah, they had no chance of finding you. Nowadays, you've got Facebook, you have, like, a trail. You can be in the same zip code and never see those people again. Yeah, just wear glasses. Like, it's kind of... Yeah, you can keep your job. We laugh at how, like...

believable it is the idea that superman could just put on glasses and be clark kent but that literally legitimately was a thing back in the 30s that's real you could disappear oh i'm sure and also like it's not like that many people were getting a like up close conversation with superman no they're like lois lane should have realized but other than that everyone else just sees a guy in the sky they're not immediately going to be like hey that guy's like the same height as that other guy like yeah yeah

In 1930, his car was found nearby on Charleston Bridge. Cleo was nowhere to be found and it was believed by investigators that he jumped off the bridge into the Charles River below and committed suicide. This caused a huge amount of stress for the family. Elizabeth and her sisters were still incredibly young and her mother entered the workplace as a bookkeeper to help support the now struggling family.

This time of their lives was incredibly tough. As well as financial strain, Elizabeth was plagued with sickness throughout her younger years. Suffering from bronchitis and constant asthma attacks, at 15 she had lung surgery performed on her due to her issues. Doctors recommended that the family move to a different, warmer climate as it would significantly improve Elizabeth's quality of life.

That lung surgery back then was like just cutting you open and slapping it a couple times. I probably got it out. This will get it working. That'll work. Getting surgery in the 1930s, that kind of level of invasive surgery kind of shows how serious the issues she had were where that was necessary because surgery back then was not as safe as it was now. And in the next room over, someone...

getting an ice pick shoved into their brain because this will make her be less mean to her husband. Why does she care so much about him cheating on her all the time? Maybe now she'll stop burning the casserole. Maybe now he won't have to beat her so much. Man, I love God in my country.

It wasn't really possible for the family to just up and leave, so for three years, Phoebe sent Elizabeth to family friends that lived in Miami to spend the winters. During this time, Elizabeth dropped out of high school and began working as a waitress to help support her family. In the midst of her struggles, Elizabeth began to dream of Hollywood and possibly one day becoming an actress. Not exactly a novel dream for a child to have in America during the golden age of Hollywood in the 30s and 40s. In 1942, a ghost came back from the dead.

Whoa.

Cleo had missed a pivotal moment of her childhood and was now asking for forgiveness. Man, this guy like he got the audacity to come back after 12 years and be like, hey, guys, that's bold. What did I say? What did I say? By the way, you can just park your car by a river and everyone who ever knew you is like that guy's dead. That's all it takes. Yeah. Please don't look for you. I wouldn't look for you back then.

Yeah, like, I mean, how are you going to look? Just start walking. Yeah, how? Put your hand over your eye? Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. A guy that wanted to disappear back then disappeared very easily. Like, there was no tracking that down, which is why I see what happens. You just abandon your family. Like, back when this used to be an honest country. An honest, free country back when we were great, Isaiah. Back when we were great. Back when we were great.

Back when a hoe was a hoe, cracks what you were cracking, you were cracking jokes. It's not like he had gone on to become a millionaire either. After he left his family, Cleo worked simple jobs and to our knowledge, never really recovered financially. Elizabeth decided to move to Vallejo in California to live with her father that year, perhaps to get closer to Hollywood and to also have a fresh start herself.

It wasn't a happy environment between father and daughter though, and they fought constantly. She ended up moving out of the house at the beginning of the following year. Moving out of her father's home, Elizabeth led quite a transient lifestyle.

She moved out to Lompoc, still in California, where she worked a retail job at the base exchange at Camp Cook, now called Vandenberg Space Force Base. Oh, that goes so hard. Vandenberg Space Force Base. I hate that, like, I know they haven't done that much cool stuff, but just like, I remember when Space Force got founded being like, wow.

That was before everything was like that too. Like now it's like, oh, Twitter's called X. And now everything's like, everything has to be like way too cool and try hard energy kind of stuff. Yeah. Everything's way too try hard. This was like, this was an, yeah. Yeah. When space force happened, it was like, wow, that's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. I, it was fun. And then everything got ruined.

During this time, she met a United States Army Force sergeant who was apparently quite abusive towards Elizabeth. Everything she had gone through throughout her childhood, her dad abandoning her, financial hardships, sickness, and now abusive partners had led her to spiraling. It wasn't a good life. During 1943, she broke away from the sergeant she was living with, moved to Santa Barbara where she tried to establish herself anew.

However, on the 22nd of September, Elizabeth was arrested at a local bar for underage drinking. Oh yeah, she's still under 21 at this point of time, yeah. Oh yeah, that's true. I didn't even think about that. The officers decided not to charge her, but they did send her all the way back to Massachusetts to be with her family. In a desperate ploy to start anew once more, she instead moved to Florida.

While in Florida, Elizabeth met the decorated Army Air Force officer, Major Matthew Michael Jordan Jr. Oh my. That's a cool name. Major Matthew Michael Gordon Jr. There we go. Yeah.

Matthew was training for World War II and was stationed overseas in India, but the two kept in frequent contact during his service. Wait, the way that's written, I thought it was Matthew Michael Gordon Jr. Matthew. Like it was one full name there because the junior had a full stop after it. No, the junior's a period. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, whoa, that's a cool name. Matthew Michael Gordon Jr. Matthew. His name would be Matthew Matthew for sure, which would not make sense. Matthew Matthew. It's crazy how much like abuse...

In general, it seems like women had to deal with in the early 20th century. Like, I mean, the 19th Amendment was in the 1920s, I believe, of the Constitution that even gave them the right to vote.

Like that's just, it's in that like all these, but it was right before, right after prohibition. Right. I believe so. Yeah. They're like right around the same time. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's wild how much, and you always hear it. Like I made the joke obviously about, uh,

you know, Isaiah, you said the burnt casserole thing and I made the beanie. Like that was like, it seemed to be the reality back then. That was legit. It would be like, no man's, they had this pompous characteristic about where it's like a man should always love and respect his wife because that's who God made for him. If you got a slapper around some, that's different. Like they had these weird like juxtapositions. They saw women obviously as objects. It was like a very

objectifying time for women. But again, abuse still exists in plenty of situations. Today, it's just more kind of under the surface, pervasive, kind of hidden. Whereas it was out in the open and accepted. Societally facilitated in the 20th century. Societally facilitated. Back in the 1900s.

It's pretty confronting to hear about all these stories and realize what women went through. Yeah. Yeah. But now they have nothing to complain about. Am I right? Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Get that out of here. Isaiah and I had to ruin it. Oh, yeah.

Hey, Uncle Sam, put your name at the top of his list. And the Statue of Liberty. Liberty started shaking a fist and the eagle will fly. There we go. We had to get that in. Sorry. All right. I feel better now. I can't let Jackson be like, we can't let him be like Ernest for two seconds. We have to step on it. I feel better now. I had such a strong urge to laugh for quite a while and now I'm just glad to get it out.

Elizabeth later told her friends and family that Matthew proposed to her in a letter after she had been, after he had been injured in a plane craft and she had happily accepted. There is however, no evidence of this letter or any proposal leading many to question if this was legitimate.

Matthew, well that's sad. Matthew himself died in another plane crash on August the 10th, 1945, the age of 26, just a few weeks before World War II ended, deeply affecting Elizabeth, who confided in friends the grief she felt.

Matthew, a flying ace, is remembered as a hero who served with honor, earning the Silver Star posthumously. So, a flying ace is someone who takes down five opponent aircraft, right? I think so. There's some level. It's three or five. It's like a kill streak from Halo. And the Red Baron is a pizza. Thank you. What's really funny, there was this one ace. He, if I recall right, was the only...

American to serve on both fronts of World War II. So he was like in Europe for a while. He fought the Italians and the Germans. And then if I remember right, his plane was down and he was taken prisoner. And then he was released by the Germans in some prisoner exchange or whatever. And there's some... It was something about...

By some rule, a soldier that was kept prisoner could not then go back to fight on the front lines against the enemy or something like that. I don't know what the technicality was, but the Pacific theater, but the Pacific's a whole nother animal, right? So he gets transferred over to the Pacific while in the Pacific.

There was one case where he was on a scouting mission and went ahead and saw that an island they thought was unoccupied and had an open landing strip had been captured by the Japanese. And one of...

I think it was a bomber or like a flying fortress or Catalina. Some plane with a bunch of like soldiers on it was about to land at that, uh, Island and their radios weren't working. So he wasn't able to signal to them that the Japanese control the Island. They're about to fly into a trap. So he gets behind that plane and shoots it down. He like targets the American planes, like engines on either side to make it crash. And,

And then when like they crashed, like, what are you doing? And he's like, you're about to fly into a trap. So everyone manages to get rescued. Uh, so he is the only American soldier to have a confirmed kill of an American plane. So much. So on the side of his plane, where it shows like all the different, uh,

countries he shot down. It shows Italy, Germany, Japan, and America. Poor guy. Just as a warning to anyone else who might fly around him. I'll shoot anything. If you're even in the sky, you're going down. Birds. Fucking Superman. He's got the flag of the birds when he's playing too, yeah. Whatever that is. Anyway, side tangent, but

A year later, Elizabeth moved once again to Los Angeles where she continued to try life for herself. The dream of Hollywood and the success it could bring was still in her mind and, while she was living in LA, she planned to make those dreams a reality. At first, she lived in boarding houses, renting out rooms in various parts of the city. Money was still tight and Elizabeth relied pretty heavily on friends for places to stay. It was an unstable life, something unfortunately common for her.

She had a brief relationship with Joseph Gordon Fickling, a lieutenant in the United States Air Force. At the time, he was stationed in L.A. working as part of the police force. Joseph was one of the last people that had heard from Elizabeth before her death as they continued to talk after they broke up. Well, she definitely had a type. She definitely enjoyed, you know,

armed forces men, military men. Heroes. I mean, that was like the majority of... Not heroes. They were mostly abusive, Caleb. Bad. Bad men. Yeah. Well, I mean, not the military as a whole. You heard it first. Jackson Clark says on the record, all American soldiers are abusive bad men. We'll put a boot in your ass. It's the American way. Just the one of the story.

Yeah, but no. Yeah, you should get checked over that. Everyone, his home address is 548 Australia Boulevard. 548 Australia Boulevard. They'll find him. How did he get so close? Just one giant road over here. Just take it out. All right. Elizabeth also met another man, Robert Red Manley, a 28-year-old salesman who was already married with a child of his own.

Although the relationship has been described as platonic, quote unquote, Red was known to give Elizabeth rides around town and they would spend time together at hotels. You know, like I do with all my female friends. It's platonic. Very platonic behavior. Yeah. Hey, do you want to platonically go on a date and get a hotel together? This last reported meeting was on the 8th of January, days before she was found dead.

This night together was later investigated, something we will explore shortly. Before the murder, Elizabeth had been earning a living working as a waitress, and she eventually rented a room right on Holly Boulevard. In her mind, she was manifesting the life she dreamed of, close to breaking through to something great. Fortunately, that would not be the case, as America would come to learn of her through a name entirely divorced from her own. What name was that, Caleb? The Black Dahlia.

America, broadly speaking, didn't know about Elizabeth Short for many years, but nearly every American alive at the time and the decades to follow certainly remember the nickname, the Black Dahlia. How did Elizabeth Short receive the infamous name?

It seems the most agreed upon theory starts with a movie. The 1946 release of The Blue Dahlia. It was released just a few months before her murder and the film was a noir thriller about a mysterious woman wearing dark clothes.

Elizabeth often wore dark attire, which may have been a component of the correlation, as well as her dark hair and pale skin. And there are stories about how locals would call her the Black Dahlia before her murder. But the most likely answer is the media wanted sensationalism. That makes sense, because it's a very sensational, just like, oh, the what? The Black Dahlia. Oh, fuck. I mean, it's literally based off like a spy thing, right? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, like a mystery film. It's supposed to sound sexy. Sexy, like eye-catching, obviously. It's a very successful name to use if the idea was to make it as sensational as possible. Especially considering why they gave her that name in the first place, but we'll get to that in a second.

Let's see. I don't know why, by the way. I don't know anything about this. So if I'm off the rails, just bring me back on, fellas. Don't worry. You'll laugh in a second. You'll laugh in a second. Don't worry. Thank you, Isaiah. You're too funny. Ah.

They would often give catchy and mysterious names to crime victims to sell papers, and what better name for an unidentified and mysterious victim than that of the hot new movie out on the silver screens? The extremely witty and very impressive headline writers would have spent all night changing blue to black, but that's why they're paid the big buku bucks. There you go. So brave.

You can continue on with the final moments, Caleb. Are you sure? Are you sure, Jackson? I'm sure. You're ready for the big leagues. You know what? You can take it all the way to the investigation, Caleb. Okay. Thank you, Isaiah and Jackson, my two very close friends. I'm incredibly grateful to be able to spend time with you. Oh, actually, no. I don't think you should take this discovery. On a monthly, on a weekly basis.

I'm excited. Okay, continue. According to some reports, in the weeks before her death, Elizabeth was seen frequenting Hollywood Boulevard most nights with different men and acquaintances. As we've established, Elizabeth first met Robert Redd Manley shortly before her death. They were both in San Diego at the time when Redd saw her standing alone on a corner when he decided to attempt to pick her up. Then that worked?

What? Apparently. It was the 40s. This was a different time. Jesus. Redbiz later asked if Elizabeth had told him how she got to San Diego, but he insisted that she had never said. They went out for dinner that night, and he claimed to investigators that Elizabeth was a mystery to him, that she lied about where she was working, among other things. Something he himself found out when he went to an airline office she claimed to have a job at, where it was then quickly revealed that no one had heard of her.

So according to Red, she was a bit of a fibber. Well, yeah. According to a lot of people, she was a fibber in the sense that she kind of conformed her stories to whatever she thought people expected or wanted from her. So she would just lie about her life and her occupation and stuff to impress people.

and try to get some level of support from them. So yeah, she would just kind of change her story to fit the scene and environment. People do that a lot now. I just can't imagine how easy that would have been in the early 1900s. How were you going to fact check anything back then? Yeah. I would have been the most oppressive person back then. Are you kidding me? Now, Red. This is a quote from Red. Does Red have a voice or should I not do a voice for Red?

I don't know. Go ahead, bud. I haven't heard him. You can do whatever you want. I asked her if she wanted a ride. She turned her head and wouldn't look at me. I talked some more. I told her who I were and what I did and so forth. Finally, she turned around and asked me if I didn't think it was wrong to ask a girl in the corner to get in my car. I said, yes, but I'd like to take you home. And she got in the car.

I feel like that was accidentally the perfect voice. That guy sounds like a bit of a ditz. That sounds like the bug man from Men in Black. Oh, wow. After staying in contact and casually chatting for a while, Elizabeth asked Red for a lift to LA on the 7th of January. On the way back, Elizabeth was apparently not very chatty and Red noted that she was in a more of a low mood.

On the way back, they stayed at the Tropico Motel in separate rooms, according to Red. The next day, Elizabeth was dropped off at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, and Elizabeth said she was planning on seeing her sister that afternoon, who was apparently visiting from Boston. This was, of course, a lie, because her sister, Virginia, lived in Berkeley, California at the time, and not Boston, and there is no evidence to suggest that she was visiting Los Angeles at the time.

Regardless, that was the last time Red saw her as he drove off and resumed his normal life. Elizabeth didn't live at the Biltmore Hotel. She instead lived at the Chancellor Apartments in Hollywood, a space she shared with seven other women. So it is assumed she was dropped at the Biltmore for a different reason, and Red is considered the last person to have definitively seen and interacted with Elizabeth while she was still alive. So she was living in like a hostel situation? Yeah, shared housing with a bunch of other women. Okay. Okay.

I know the script's kind of implying that maybe she got dropped off there to see another man maybe at the hotel. And that's where part of the

story of the uh killing i don't think the script is implying it necessarily i think that's just the natural implication uh well i was gonna say another alternative could be uh maybe she didn't want this guy to know where she lived or maybe she was ashamed of where she lived one drop that's kind of what i was thinking yeah basically yeah what we know about the lies are already yeah yeah you know all are plausible all are plausible yeah we have no way to know yeah yeah

But according to workers in the area, Elizabeth didn't just disappear off the earth. Staff at the Biltmore Hotel reportedly saw her in the lobby of the hotel after she was dropped off by Red. No one spoke or interacted with her, so we can't confirm if it was 100% Elizabeth, but if it was her, she was seen using the hotel's telephone, and later that day, Elizabeth was said to be at the Crown Grill Cocktail Lounge, located around 600 meters from the Biltmore Hotel.

these are the last uncorroborated reports of anyone seeing elizabeth before her untimely death and that's when we come to the discovery and i think i will take this one here so a warning here what happens to elizabeth was brutal and graphic but it's important to obviously go over because it's a central component of the story

It was the morning of the 15th of January 1947 and Betty Bersinger was out with her child for a relaxing walk when, as we know, she thought she spotted a mannequin in a vacant lot. It was on the west side of South Norton Avenue between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street in Leimert Park.

When Betty went to get a closer look, she discovered that it wasn't a mannequin, it was a body instead. Elizabeth's body, however, was severely mutilated. It was completely cut around the waist and she had been drained of blood. The lower half of her body was positioned separate from the top half,

Slashes had been made across her thighs and breasts, entire sections of flesh cut away from her body, and her torturer had carved a Glasgow smile into her face. This is where someone cuts from the corner of the mouth to the ear to create a smile on either side of the mouth.

Kind of like the Joker, right? Not to relate everything to fucking pop culture, but yeah, that's just the most obvious connection. Her intestines had been tucked under her buttocks and the killer had meticulously posed her body in a suggestive way. Her hands were placed above her head and her legs were spread. Her body had been scrubbed clean.

Medical examiners put Elizabeth's death at around 10 hours before she was discovered, meaning that she died either in the very late hours of the 14th of January or the very early hours of the 15th. It took them no time to identify the body because of her fingerprints. They were picked up twice in the system, once from her arrest and the other from when she had applied for a job at the Army Cook Camp over 10 years prior. It was lucky in a strange way as at the time the FBI had over 100 million fingerprints on file.

100 million fingerprints in the 40s and 30s? I thought that was like a later kind of thing. Fingerprints. That's a lot of fingerprints. Kind of like the Joker.

That almost sent me. It took everything to get it together when you said that. In the middle of this brutal description, you know, kind of like the Joker. Who else has a Glasgow smile? Insert pop culture reference. It's almost like he's still here with us. I can still hear his voice. Who's still here with us? I don't know who you're talking about. You should keep reading.

The particular way Elizabeth had been cut in half was with a technique called hemocorporectomy, described as a radical surgery that amputates everything below the waist. Is there any kind of, like, benefit to that ever? Like, why would you ever need to do that? Accidents.

Like if like people who are in intense like wrecks and something like that, like I saw a video of a guy the other day who had to have one because a forklift fell on him. So like his hips down were like flattened completely. So

So all that's destroyed. You have crushed muscle, bone. It's just bleeding toxins into your body. About to experience muscle death, about to experience all kinds of stuff. So the only way to save you is to cut all that off. I just can't believe, I can't imagine surviving that situation where a forklift crushes half of your body and you come out actually alive due to some surgery like this. It has to be immediate because otherwise you get crush syndrome fast and you're dead.

But obviously he was at, I think, a warehouse. So it was immediately like, get it off, get him to a hospital. So that's why he lived. That's why people who are in rubble so much during explosions and stuff die. Because they'll have limbs get crushed and then all that flows into their system and they end up dying of internal sepsis. But yeah, that is a case where you'd have to perform a hemocorporectomy.

Yeah, super impressive that that's actually like a survivable thing now. Due to the little amount of bruising present, it was concluded that this most likely happened after her death. The cut was so clean that the FBI believed that it had been, that it had to have been done by someone with medical experience, framing the investigation already and limiting the suspect pool.

She did have some bruising present on her scalp, suggesting that she had suffered from various blows to the head. There was also physical evidence on her body, such as multiple abrasions around the anus that supported the theory that she had been sexually assaulted and raped, though the investigators didn't find any semen, and the absence of sperm and other definitive evidence ultimately make it inconclusive. Marks were found around her wrists, ankles, and neck, suggesting that she had been restrained for some time prior to her death.

The official cause of her death was blamed on hemorrhaging from the various lashes on her face and due to the nature of the murder, it wasn't long before the media took note. It's so grisly and gnarly reading those details. Like, when you hear the story of the Black Dahlia as portrayed by the media and stuff, um...

It doesn't really bring across that level of brutality most of the time. When I actually read through the injuries sustained by her, it was extremely fucking confronting and not something that I was aware of. Her being bisected, basically, cut in half. Crazy.

Yeah, whoever killed her absolutely brutalized her. Like, the level of damage to the body is... It's unspeakable. It's horrific. Do you believe there's some level of connection to the motive behind the level of brutality that they inflicted? Oh, sure, yeah. A lot of the times, like, I know, at least in the early times, like, there was...

an additional level of brutality enacted against like sex workers at the time by murderers and serial killers and I'm wondering if like that could be a connection I mean yeah it certainly could have been like you don't you don't kill someone and then cut them in half typically right that's an intense level of rage and hatred and whatnot so yeah that has to factor into motive somewhere I think

I can read the investigation if you'd like. Yep. So the area surrounding Elizabeth was swarmed with the media and other curious eyes. Elizabeth's mother, Phoebe, found out about her daughter's death from the Los Angeles examiner who contacted her under the pretense of a lie claiming that Elizabeth had won a beauty contest. Oh, fuck you. God damn. I hate journalists. This story doesn't get better either.

They used this masquerade to then ask personal questions to try and get the inside scoop on Elizabeth and her life. Even after the Los Angeles finally came clean to Phoebe, the deception didn't stop.

They offered to pay travel and accommodation fees for her to come to LA and help the investigation, but really they worked to keep her away from the police and other media to keep her all to themselves. As more stories began to get published around Elizabeth's murder, the media began labeling her as a quote "sexual deviant" and spreading rumors of her with multiple men before her death. The nickname Black Dahlia quickly began to spread across headlines, with the coiner of the term and headlines still ultimately being unknown.

regardless the nickname and details of the case quickly propelled the murder into the limelight and it wasn't long before everyone knew of it just the evil of like oh uh yeah your daughter won a beauty contest so what's her name where's she from all that okay actually she's dead goodbye like actually evil like i don't know how you can do that to another person oh it's just so underhanded it's monstrous yeah

A lot of people will use modern lens to be like, well, it was a different time in people. It's like at any time in history, lying to a mother about their dead daughter so that you could publicize it. But that was evil. That was evil in the Dark Ages. That was never an okay move. It's categorically evil. Yeah. Devoid of any kind of empathy. The first real lead came on the 21st of January, around a week after Elizabeth's body was found.

A phone call was picked up at James Richardson's office, an editor for the Los Angeles Examiner at the time. The person on the other end of the line congratulated James on the coverage of the case, and then said he would soon turn himself in, but not without a little chase first. They ended the call with a promise, quote, end quote.

Three days later, a package arrived. Inside were personal items of Elizabeth's, like her birth certificate, and there was also a message made from cut-out newspaper clippings. It read, The police soon found out there was no hope of wiping fingerprints from these items, as they had been wiped with gasoline.

They managed to get a partial fingerprint on the envelope, but it was damaged enough to never be successfully analyzed. Aware of the possibility of copycats or people trying to use the situation for attention, the police actually still believed that the letter had come from Elizabeth's killer as it had been meticulously cleaned just like her body had been.

Another letter arrived on the 26th of January, this time handwritten. It read, here it is, turning in Wednesday, January 29th, 10 a.m., had my fun at police, Black Dahlia Avenger. Yeah, so I think this is the first...

time the killer or someone the police believed to be the killer coined the term Black Dahlia Avenger. So even, I think the police did believe that this was the killer, these letters, due to obviously the inclusion of some personal belongings of Elizabeth Short. So yeah, the killer was obviously having a lot of fun with the idea that he was the Black Dahlia Avenger co-opping the name that they had given the murder.

Yeah, it's like, um, it seems to be legitimate, right? I mean, how else did they get a hold of it? Definitely the first letter at least because that included the personal belongings, but I think the police still believe that second letter to also be genuine. Yeah, it devolves from here. Yeah. But that wasn't it. Another letter arrived that same day around 1pm and, similar to the first, it was made up of cut-up newspaper clippings that read out a message.

There have been no other letters that are thought to have come from the killer, even though dozens of people have confessed throughout the decades.

there's an apparent suicide note found on the 14th of march though found in a shoe touched by a pile of men's clothes at venice beach it read quote to whom it may concern i have waited for the police to capture me for the black dahlia killing but have not too much of a coward to turn myself in so this is the best way out for me couldn't help myself for that or this sorry mary

Letter was found. The lifeguard, Captain John Dillon, was immediately notified on the beach. He went on to notify the local police station who took the belongings in. It was a coat, blue herringbone tweed trousers, brown and white shirt, socks, and moccasins size eight shoes. No further information came from this discovery. What do you think about that? Someone supposedly. I mean, like...

I don't know. Maybe there were so many people who like, yeah, would go on to confess for clout or whatever. And maybe someone who was about to take his life decided to for clout. Uh, maybe this was a prank that was set up because a bunch of people like we're pranking the police at this time. So someone just set up clothes and left the note in there. Or maybe legitimately the reason the original letter, um, said that I changed my mind. I don't want to do it. It's because he was a coward and he faced shame over that and decided to take his life. I think it's certainly a possibility.

a possibility. I haven't seen any evidence to kind of fly in the face of the idea that the Black Dahlia killer did just commit suicide afterwards. Because also, it seems really strange to me that this level of brutality was enacted in this murder and then it didn't continue. Like, this is all the makings of a serial killer that would, you know, continue to kill. And yet, we've never really...

come up with a connection to other murders uh beyond just the black dahlia murder which makes me think he could die shortly after or close to after the killings yeah i'm not sure uh while these letters were arriving the fbi continued to investigate the crime scene and body desperately attempting to locate any evidence they could find a black shoe and handbag caught their attention sitting on top of a rubbish bin around three meters from the crime scene

But these also had been wiped clean with gasoline and there was no further evidence on them. At the beginning of the investigation, there were over 750 investigators assigned to the investigation from different departments due to the nature of the murder and its infamy. They searched for evidence throughout the city, drains, buildings, and streets, etc., but ultimately there was nothing to be found. A reward was put up at the time for $10,000 for any evidence that led towards Elizabeth's killer.

This is over 130,000 adjusted for inflation today. This, predictably, led only to a bunch of false confessions with some even resulting in criminal charges for obstruction of justice. As always happens. As always.

Complicating the matters, all while the investigation was happening, a full media frenzy was running in tandem and the story was being spread nationwide. Many of the reports were not true and sensationalized stories on how Elizabeth died spread far and wide, causing incorrect information to disseminate. The police let those stories proceed, however, to hide her real cause of death from the public so that only they and the killer knew the truth.

They did this in order to easily weed out false confessions. Ah, okay. Interesting. I guess that's the strategy they employ often then. Because I always wonder why they don't correct the narrative employed by the media in a lot of different cases. And I guess retaining that information is useful in order to ascertain the validity of other claims that people make to them specifically if they have information that the public doesn't. In more recent cases like Ted Kaczynski, he had a code

that only the police knew. So anytime he would write a letter with the code attached, that's how they knew it was actually him. And then they didn't share the code. And they never shared the code until after the case was over, yeah. The codex. The Kaczynski codex. They would say that there was a code, and that's how they knew that it was him, but they never said what the code was. Right. Okay.

The police ultimately... Sorry. It was like a bunch of numbers. It was like 09357. It was like a number sequence if I remember right. The police ultimately determined that Elizabeth had probably been killed in a remote building in outer LA and then moved to the location where it was found to hide the crime scene. As told by lead investigator Captain Jack Donahue in an interview.

They began to search local medical centers like the University of Southern California Medical School as they were working on the thought that the killer had medical knowledge. They searched through students' records at the university but found no connections. In 1947, the murder of Elizabeth Short became a cold case. One lead investigator, Sergeant Finnis Brown, blamed the media and newspapers for compromising the case.

He thought that all of their false reporting, spreading of rumors, and fabrications deeply affected the case and made it impossible to determine what evidence could be trusted. To this day, the case of the Black Dahlia is still unsolved, but there were certainly suspects. As you can imagine, in a case of this magnitude, there are a lot of suspects, but there are two individuals that most people consider to be far more likely than others. Starting with Dr. George Hodel. Would either of you like to take it? Caleb, you love Dr. George Hodel.

Dr. George A he's a suspect he looks goofy as shit I'm just gonna say it this guy looks goofy as shit I don't know if I like him but we're gonna find out if I actually like him or not cause once again I don't know anything about this guy

Isaiah he does not have my mustache he has maybe your mustache oh well the beard's pretty much back in now so I don't know what you're talking about ah shit mine's blonde he looks smarmy he looks very smarmy in this picture that I'm looking at I get a crazy urge sometimes when people knock on my door to just like

I probably shouldn't say this online, but it's like this insane, intrusive thought where I just want to punch him in the head if they look a certain way. I just want to punch people in the head for some reason. It's not like I'm violent or anything, but this guy, if he knocked on my door and just showed up, I would be vibrating, trying not to just... You'd fight the urge. Yeah, not even fight him. Just punch him in his head. Literally, you walk by a doorway and you want to hit the doorway at the top.

Yeah. I do that, but with people's heads. All right. Well, that's a lot to dump all at once. And this guy's got that look. Interesting insight. This guy's going to get bombed. He makes women uncomfortable. Oh, yeah. George Hodel is one of the most famous suspects in the case of the Black Dahlia, and for good reason. In 2016, an article was published in The Guardian titled, I Know Who Killed the Black Dahlia, My Own Father. The article follows the story of Steve Hodel and how he came to believe that his father was the Black Dahlia murderer.

George was not a stranger to this case. Being one of the 25 men the police focused on and investigated, information that wasn't known until decades later, Steve came to the realization that his father may very well have been a murderer when he was looking through his estranged father's belongings after his death in 1999. George had been arrested in 1945 as he was performing illegal abortions at the time.

That's crazy. Then four years later, his daughter accused him of sexually abusing and getting her pregnant. That's crazy. That's insane. Oh, no. It's too evil. I can't read it. Does it get any worse? I can't read it.

Well, this case is about a murder. Oh my god. This is horrible, dude. This guy's a piece of shit and I talked about wanting to punch him in the face. Well, hey, that's good. That's a fair assessment. I'm glad. Maybe my instincts were right. Yeah, absolutely right. You do that a lot. You have a radar when it comes to people's faces. You're like, I don't like them. I don't like this guy. Most of them are just normal. I just feel bad. Not this guy, though. You have a lot of bad people showing up at your door, knocking on your door.

if you're feeling that way a lot. And they're all mailmen. When the case went to trial, George ended up being acquitted and Minnie saw his daughter's testimony as her... That's so fucked up. Minnie saw his daughter's testimony as her seeking attention. Is that a quote? Is that a real, actual... Yeah, that's like what people at the time believed. That's fucked up. That's crazy. That's just attention-seeking behavior. Dude, shut up.

Yeah, what kind of attention are you seeking when you claim your dad sexually assaulted you and got you pregnant? Yeah, seeking the type of attention that gets the police to investigate him as a fucking black Dahlia murderer, it seems like. See, again, this is also the same environment where it's like women get beaten for overcooking the roast. Yeah, that's way worse than the fucking overcooking the roast. This is like one of the most convolutedly evil things I've read.

There is a theory that George may have threatened her into silence as she recanted some of her story and didn't show up to the trial. When Elizabeth was murdered, the police followed up on any suspected sex criminals in the area and George came up on that list.

His medical knowledge also caused eyebrows to raise. Okay, yeah. Having graduated from the University of California with a medical degree in 1936, and after that, he opened a private medical practice in Los Angeles and also served as the head of Los Angeles County's Social Hygiene Bureau, which focused on public health issues, including STDs.

So that's interesting to me, that particular point, because that could speak to that motive, Isaiah, that I was talking about before, like the anti-sex worker stigma. So if this person, let's say George Hodel was the killer, if he believed that she was a sex worker, there may have been some level of additional hatred there because of what his opinions and stuff were of sexually transmitted diseases and things like that. There's some kind of connection there in my brain.

If there's like, I mean, with what he did to his daughter, you know, with him being on the radar already, I mean, what the fuck? Outside of just the Black Dahlia murder, if he did or did not do that, he clearly is not a good person. I'm glad he's dead. He's clearly not fit to exist among everyone else. Yeah, fuck that guy.

Um, let's see, where was I? The police even bugged his house during February to March in 1950. On these tapes, they even caught him saying some very suspicious things. Supposing I did kill the Black Dahlia, they couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead. He said that? Uh, yeah, allegedly. That's what it says in the transcripts of the recordings. And they didn't get him?

Apparently not. That wasn't good enough for some kind of further investigation. He said supposing. I mean, that's like saying allegedly, hypothetically, in Minecraft. Hypothetically. Yeah.

Yeah, he said in Minecraft afterwards. George's assistant, Ruth Spalding, had died years before her cause of death still unknown. And apparently in the articles reported that he also said to someone unknown, realized there was nothing I could do. Put a pillow over her head and cover her with the blanket. Get a taxi. Expired 1259. They thought there was something fishy. Anyways, now they may have figured it out. Killed her.

I think he's innocent. I mean, like, I don't understand what we're even talking about right now. This guy did this shit. Are we kidding? Keep in mind, these are the same reporters who lied to her mom to get a scoop about the dead body. So I don't exactly trust their publicist. I believe that these specific recordings were from police bugged testimony. Like, it was transcripts from the police department.

They bugged his house during February to March in 1950. And on the tapes, he was caught saying these particular things in the transcript, official police transcripts. You know what I've never said? Anything like that ever. It was all thought theory. It was hypothetical or something. That's what his defense would be. Hypothetically speaking, it's like OJ. He's like, if I did it, I may have gotten a taxi. She may have died at 1 a.m.

They may have figured out that I did it at this point. Maybe I killed it. Pulls his fake mustache off.

Back in his father's apartment, digging through item after item, Steve found a photo album, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. When he cracked it open, he found pictures of his family, something one would expect to find in such a folder, but right at the back were two pictures of an unknown woman. Steve believes the woman looks similar to Elizabeth Short. To date, the identity of the woman in the images remains unverified, even after experts and investigators have analyzed the photographs.

George had gone to medical school in the 1930s, a time when they were taught how to perform a hemocorporectomy. Whatever the fuck. That's just the one where they split you in half. Yeah. And then they can attach you back nowadays. Oh, I think that's a different one. I think that's from Futurama. I think that is from Futurama. Yeah.

Which was what had been inflicted upon Elizabeth. Steve also noticed that the handwriting in the letter sent to newspapers looked eerily similar to his father's. Is this supposed to be Elizabeth Short? That looks nothing like her at all. You don't think that looks like her? Well, the idea is that would hypothetically be her body maybe or something. I'd imagine like after he killed her. But like you still don't even think that's her? Like looks like her? No, I think the picture side by side it could be maybe.

To me, her eyebrows are just completely different than her nose. Man, I just don't know. I have such facial blindness, apparently. I just... To me, it looks alike. And hearing you say that it looks nothing alike, I believe you. Yeah.

People have... Thank you, Jackson. People have been talking about all the photos of the Luigi Mangione guy, the guy who shot the guy in healthcare. And they're like, every time a picture comes out, it looks like a different guy. I thought it looked like the exact same guy every single time. Every single photo looks like the exact same guy to me. I think they are. I think people are just being dramatic. Yeah. I think they're just trying to defend him in that way. No, that looks nothing like him. It couldn't be him. I think it's a joke online.

Investigating these possibilities led Steve to Los Angeles, where he spent his days documenting his father's criminal past. He even released another book called Black Dahlia Avenger, A Genius for Murder. Did he release a first book?

Yeah, the first book was just The Black Dahlia Avenger, I think. Oh, okay. I didn't know he released a book. I thought it was just a Guardian article or whatever we're talking about. No, no, no. He released an article first and then did more investigation and released a second one.

Hmm.

Okay, so this guy is just sort of getting a little carried away there. Yeah, getting carried away. Like, the evidence at the start is compelling. Like, this guy was in the air at the time. He was obviously trained in surgery and stuff. He was a medical expert in the field. And also, like, obviously, the fucking transcripts. He was known to the police. The police were investigating him. He had photos of someone that looked like Elizabeth Short.

And then But then the Steve Hodel The son has to like complicate it by Actually kind of seeming opportunistic Yeah JFK and those students at Kent State Just blaming Everything on the poor guy Well not poor guy Fuck this guy dude I'm getting fired up

There you go. That's the spirit. Where's the S-O-D-E-A killer? But what other evidence does Steve have? Well, there are photos that he found after his father passed away. His father's proximity to the location of the crime and how he was a medical worker with significant experience.

Described in the Guardian article as a loose thread in the weather, tugging it... A loose thread in the weather. Interesting. Described in the Guardian article as a loose thread in the weather, tugging it gently to then a continuous unravel, Steve has connected his father to a multitude of murders across all of California. Steve's a genius. This guy's a genius. See? I mean, you can make anything fit if you try hard enough, I think. Like, you can make this guy the murderer to as many murders as you want. If you really want to put...

solved on the front of your book to sell more copies of it. Yeah. Yeah. It really does feel money orientated. Yeah. It feels very up. No. What are you talking about? Well, Isaiah, you know, I think it's, yeah, you know, the core is so compelling though, because George Hodel really does seem like the type or, yeah, it does fit for the black Dahlia murder, at least. Why it's so annoying. And you can't defend the dead, let alone your own father. Yeah.

Yeah. So the police have mostly ignored Steve and his theories around his dad saying, I don't have time to prove or disprove what Hodel says. I'm buried in other cases that do have evidence that are possibly solvable, which that's a fair mindset, in my opinion. Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, there's so many people that are like missing actively right now. So it makes sense.

I want justice for the Black Dahlia murder in knowing who killed her. But if the decision is between investigating a cold case from the 1940s where there's really no retribution to be found or current existing cases, obviously the choice is simple. Absolutely. And there's something to be said of the study of that. The fact that it was a cold case will help

the general process and like the way investigators and police work to prevent them from making the same mistakes that they did that I'm sure they know that they've made. I'm sure it's taught in criminal justice. I would bet everything. So, you know, it is bad, but I'm sure it has contributed to a lot of other cases being solved. Yeah.

learning process yeah george hodl eventually left america to live in china and the philippines for multiple decades before returning to san francisco and i wonder how many people he murdered in the philippines and china true maybe actually that's why the murders were the murder stopped and where it did maybe he just moved to a different country and murdered there instead yeah yeah there's some wild murderer stories from the 20th century from asia

I also think it's pretty sus whenever a single American man moves to the Philippines and stuff. So odd. And lives there. Yeah. Let me move somewhere where my money is worth a hundred times more and where nobody speaks my language. What do you want to be there? King? Is that what you want to do? Yeah. Seems like it. Yeah, it's kind of weird. Yeah, it's fucking bizarre. Um...

He returned to San Francisco in 1990 and died nine years later at the age of 91. You can celebrate. You can celebrate. Yes! Fuck that guy! That bitch! I think it was a painful death too if that makes you feel any better. Thank God. The bad thing is he lived to be really old. He lived to be 91. That's almost 20 years older than the average life expectancy. Which sucks. That's unfortunate. Kids die of cancer and this guy lived to be 91.

There's no justice. Conclusively determined. The specific cause of his death has not been disclosed and there is no additional evidence available about George Hodel to conclusively determine his connection. All right. So what do you guys think? Guilty or not guilty of the Black Dahlia murder? Obviously, he was guilty of other things, but the Black Dahlia murder. Yes or no? I feel like if I remember right, I did think this was the most likely guy, I think, out of everything I read. It's...

It's definitely split between this guy and the next guy. Like most people believe one or the other. And there's a lot of debate in the online true crime community. I think I thought it was this guy if I remember right. Murderer. The dude with the fucking... They bugged this motherfucker's house and he's talking about killing the Black Dahlia and his fucking... I mean, that is insane. That's crazy.

circumstantial evidence but evidence no less yes yeah inconclusive but damn do i want i feel like inclusive but pretty yeah uh inconclusive but not that many people talk about that to be honest so yeah um well to be fair we said it verbatim so if the police were bugging our houses at the moment they could cut that out and then tie it to you like it's possible yeah but i'm not a suspect for a murderer nor am i a sex pest

Yeah, hopefully. Isaiah, would you like to take Dr. Walter Bailey before you have to do it? This guy looks like Simo Haya.

I would normally, but I think I need to dip right now. Oh, you need to dip right now? I need to get going. But yes, before I go, I do think it was that other guy. Damn, it's unfortunate. I think it's the next guy, kind of. My gut feeling is this next guy, and I think you would be very interested by the evidence. Then I firmly think it was not this next guy then. If the Australian says it was him, then I would stand against that strongly. I think it's the third guy. See you, Isaiah.

See you. I'll see you tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. See you tomorrow. We'll have a sweet embrace tomorrow. See you, buddy. Drive safe. I can't wait. Don't tell the girls. Bye. Anyways, just you and I.

It's getting intimate now. Dr. Walter Bailey. I don't like actually, I don't like saying that during this. Fuck, that's so uncomfortable. Dr. Walter Bailey is another famous suspect in the case and that can be attributed to Larry Harnish, now retired copy editor who used to work for the Times. Over the years, Larry personally put a lot of research into the Black Dahlia case and it was in 1997, that's the year I was born, Caleb, just so you know. Youngster. Very special year. That

That Larry first- wait, aren't we the same age? I'm 96. Oh, 96. Yeah, I am a youngster. That Larry first suggested that this Dr. Walter Bailey could be the murderer. Larry came to this conclusion after interviewing an FBI profiler named John Douglas, who told him that the area Elizabeth was left in was a strange choice, and most likely the one who did it had a connection to the neighborhood itself.

Wow. David Lamkin believes it.

And if it's good enough for the Los Angeles Police Department Colgate Unit early 2000s David Lampkin, it's good enough for me. That's high praise. It is. So what is this theory and what are its merits? And more importantly, who is Dr. Walter Bailey? All right. Well, this picture of Dr. Walter Bailey immediately sends off the red flag. He looks like Seymour Hyatt. Do you know who that is? No. The white death from the winter war between Finland and Russia.

He looks like Simo Haya, but Simo Haya got shot in the head. Yeah, okay. It's probably not him. Unless... Oh, wow. It does look exactly like him, except Simo Haya. Whoa, he does... Like, if he's... What's up with Simo Haya's face? He got shot. He got shot in the noggin. So that's what that was? Yeah. Okay. So maybe this was pre-Simo Haya getting shot in the face. Maybe he was the Black Dahlia killer. No, Simo's a legend. He's a prolific sniper in World of Warcraft. Oh, he's actually a good dude? Yeah. A good dude?

Okay. Yeah, it depends on which side you're on, but yeah, I guess. Yeah, true. Yeah. Our heroes are someone else's enemies. Yeah, true. Yeah. All right. Dr. Walter Bailey, though. Walter was a doctor who lived in Los Angeles near the area that Elizabeth was murdered and found. An enthusiast who heard Larry was researching the area sent him a box of items like photocopies of newspaper articles about the Black Dahlia case.

Included in this was a marriage certificate of her older sister, Virginia Short, who we talked about briefly before. Yeah. Who lived kind of in the area. I think she lived in Berkeley, if I recall correctly, which I don't know California, but it's in the same kind of area. They had been married. Virginia Short had been married in Inglewood, and when he inspected closer, he saw that one of the witnesses to the ceremony lived in Norton Avenue, the witness named Barbara Lingreen.

So the importance there is like someone at the wedding of someone connected to the murder victim lived in that area, which I guess is a pretty big coincidence, right? Yeah.

He needed to find out who this was because the address on the marriage certificate, 3959 Norton Avenue, was only one block from where Elizabeth was found, and he considered this to be an unusual coincidence. He believed that the person who dumped Elizabeth Short's body in the area would have had to have been familiar with the area or otherwise had a reason to be there. And yeah, that is pretty compelling, honestly. Like...

Yeah. Which is kind of weird that the police wouldn't have latched onto that, maybe. Or maybe they did and they just, it went cold. They just forgot about it after a little while. Yeah, there were too many false alarms coming in from the press and stuff, probably. Got too hard.

So there was this connection that Larry had found between the crime scene and Elizabeth's sister's wedding guests, so the next step seemed logical. Unfortunately, by this time, Virginia and her husband had both passed, so he was unable to get any information from them, so he turned to the Los Angeles County Hall of Records. He looked through property deeds, and it was here that he found the name of the owner of 3959 Norton Avenue, a woman named Ruth Bailey. Ruth was Barbara, who's Barbara,

uh barbara is the witness she was the witness yeah she was the witness on the marriage certificate

- Okay.

And he did not live far from the Biltmore Hotel. His interest immediately peaked. So the witness's... The witness's mother...

Witness's mother's husband was a surgeon and they all lived in that same suburb, basically. And one block away from the murder location, well, the body's location, as well as him working next to the Biltmore Hotel. That is a pretty big coincidence, if it is a coincidence, right? I mean, that's a huge coincidence, yeah. And I mean, the part you're about to get to is even more interesting. That's wild.

He learned that Walter had left his family in 1946 as he had a growing relationship with a co-worker named Alexandra Patica, now deceased. Walter died in 1948 and Larry found that there was significant

drama involving his will where it was revealed that alexandra was allegedly intimidating walter into disinheriting his family and wife and if he ever went back to his family she would expose him about something big and that's the claim uh that the family makes that he she was holding on to some level of information the supposed information is not clear possibly professional or personal information i mean he is committing infidelity and stuff like that so there's

There's a bunch of things that it could be, but in the context of this case, potentially it could be the murder. When Larry spoke to odd colleagues and friends of Walter, they said he had experienced a dramatic shift in behavior before his death. And there was one thing that stuck out most regarding his former secretary.

And this is an interesting claim. Walter would meet Alexandra in the evenings where they would meet and have dinner, put on classical music and watch surgery videos together, fascinated by new surgeries and techniques. They would actually just sit there at like a fine dining table, listening to classical music, eating dinner while watching like just surgeries on the TV or whatever. How did they watch the videos? What was their...

What do you mean? Like in the 1940s, I just don't understand how you would watch. My understanding is that it was just like broadcast television. I don't know if there's a surgery channel. I didn't think that there was like we're still in the 40s, right? Or am I completely wrong? Yeah, we are in the 40s. What the fuck? How did people watch movies back then? I thought that was just all broadcast television. I don't know how TV works, I guess, in the 40s.

Yeah, I don't know either, but the claim is that they watch surgery videos together. I'm assuming there would have to have been some way to watch educational surgery videos for training purposes. Like on their phones? Yeah, on their fucking Google Pixels. It just seems weird. You know, they set up, they have like a nice little dinner and they're playing a little Billy Joel. Fine Italian restaurant, Italian restaurant in the background. Obviously, that came out way later. But, and then they've got their little Super 8 film machine projecting surgery videos. That seems insane. Well, I guess...

they would have had projectors and stuff at uh universities to document things that's a good point yeah projectors with reels so maybe yeah maybe he did have access to something like that i was just you know purely ignorant i have no idea how television was or videos were watched i didn't even make that connection for some reason i thought they just had a blu-ray i don't know why i didn't connect in my brain like how how are they doing that

So this excerpt is from a 1948 Examiner article about the disputed will. Quote, Interesting.

I feel like, oh man, I don't know. Sure, in the context of everything we've learned, it sounds like that could have something to do with the murder, but also it legitimately could just be like she tells his work that he is an adulterer, basically, and tries to get him fired that way. Or fraternizing with other employees, basically. There are plenty of bad things he could have been exposed with, right? Outside of just the murder.

Maybe he was taking the surgery tapes home and that was illegal or something. Yeah, I'm looking to see just how this ties in better, more to murdering Elizabeth Short. I'm sort of like, I get the location so far and that's a bizarre circumstance. But so far this... Yeah, I mean...

Yeah, I just, I'm, I'm, I'm continue. I think it comes down to the location proximity. Like again, he was literally a block away from the murder location and places that Elizabeth frequented. He had considerable surgery experience. He had a fascination outside of work with surgery and stuff like an unnatural level of fascination. Like they would watch surgery videos together. Um,

He was obviously estranged from his family at the time, so he was going through an emotional upheaval period of his life. So there's that interesting element. But yeah, I would say the evidence, he's not caught on tape admitting to it like the other guy was. Literally, yeah. Yeah.

On Walter's death certificate, his cause of death was listed as encephalomyelasia. Sure. Encephalomyelasia. Something to do with the brain, clearly. Encephalomyelasia.

a brain condition that can be linked to behavioral differences and possibly violent behavior. After talking to professionals, it was brought up that Walter could have had frontotemporal dementia caused by strokes provoking his personality shifts. Unable to get the autopsy report of his death, Larry ultimately only had the death certificate to rely on. But if he had frontotemporal dementia, the, to quote,

the drive for violence and sexuality can come up and get worse and worse, but it wouldn't necessarily affect his sensory or motor skills, and he could still do surgeries. In other words, he could have had other behavioral changes that didn't impact his daily ability to do his job. He'd become a beast, but he would still be a functioning member of society.

Legitimate sicko mode activated in Brian. Larry also managed to eventually track down Barbara, who spoke to him about the situation. When her father left the family, it was a big scandal and she corroborated her father's change in behavior towards the end of his life. She explained that she had gone to Virginia Short's wedding, again, Virginia Short is the sister of Elizabeth Short, and served as the matron of honor because there really had been no one else and they were not close, according to her.

According to Larry, Barbara also came across as defensive herself and at the end of their conversation, she requested he not tell anyone how to find her. But to be fair, like I would probably ask that as well if like I was being, I would be defensive in like a murder case even if I knew I was not. It's also high profile as fuck. Like you don't want to be associated with that in any way. And you're talking about your dad and stuff, you know, very complicated situation.

Larry was quite suspicious of Barbara's defensiveness and her almost rehearsed answer when asked about Elizabeth. Larry ultimately ended up with the theory that Elizabeth, low on cash and needing a place to stay, might have reached out to the Bailey family to help and crossed paths with Walter. The FBI profiler John Douglas also theorized that whoever murdered Elizabeth wanted to intimidate the neighborhood and Walter did have the motive to do that because in 1920, his only son died while saving his sister from an oncoming truck

absolutely destroying Walter in the process. His son died on the 13th of January, the date lining up almost exactly to Elizabeth's murder. And I guess the implication there is like that date triggered him maybe. And along with the brain stuff and, you know, the surgery and stuff, he took out that kind of rage on Elizabeth.

He had the means to and the environment and his training lined up with the preciseness of her wounds having been a highly skilled army surgeon himself. His family home was near the crime scene, only 30 seconds away from where the body was dumped, and his office building was only six blocks away from the Biltmore Hotel,

And he was also going through a separation at the time. Over time, Larry became confident in his theory and began to write a book. But then another black Dahlia Avenger came out and stole the limelight. So the other book came out and he realized that if he released his, it would be overshadowed. They all release books. Everyone solving murders releases books. Why would you even be...

in the police and actually investigate shit when you can just speculate a hundred years later and just release the book and get rich. Just say you solved it. Yeah. I'm sure the police love these people. Larry also has critiqued the large sweeping conclusions that Steve from Black Dahlia Avenger, the author of that book, has drawn.

In particular, how George has committed dozens of murders, including being a Zodiac killer. That muddies the water for sure with the first one. It absolutely does. It destroys the credibility if you make claims like, well, yeah, he also killed, he was the Zodiac killer. He blew up the Challenger. He killed JFK and also then fellers at Kent State. 9-11, all of it. Yeah, exactly, dude.

Yeah. Yeah, it destroys the credibility, obviously. To Larry, it lacks foundational evidence and is not logical or fact-based, unlike his own theory about Dr. Walter A. Bailey. Well, this is all the evidence. I mean, how can you say that when there's actual testimony, though? Well, not testimony, but written records. Transcripts. Like, that's clearly evidence, even though he has destroyed his credibility in other ways. Yeah. That is compelling.

While this is all the evidence we have available to us, we still don't have anything concrete regarding motive, which is important. One interesting theory is that Elizabeth Short suffered from asthma and chronic tonsillitis as corroborated by her mother, which may have led her older sister, Virginia, to recommending Dr. Walter Bailey due to him being a family friend. Which, yeah, actually that is pretty compelling. Like, we already know she did have a life of those kind of lung-related illnesses. And she had surgery in the past.

And her sister, her older sister, Virginia, knows a surgeon in the area. The connection could have been made. Absolutely. But then I guess, why didn't the sister bring that up during the investigation?

I don't know. I'm bad at speculating with this kind of stuff. There's a lot of speculating to do, though, Caleb. In fact, that's all we have. I was just going to say, I think for my own sake, you should just start telling me who did it and just have a section for me at the end who you think did it. And I'll be like, that makes sense. You need to be straight up told who did it. Otherwise, there's no way. I'm infantile with my ability to speculate when it comes to cold case. But your creativity is so...

As the developer, one of the main developers of Black Pine, your creativity is unmatched. So what is it with speculation for you? Like, why can't you do it? I just feel like, I don't know. It's tough to think about people wanting to murder people. And like, I don't know what, what an intent, like your intent. For example, for the two people we've covered so far, we've got the two main people we've covered so far. We've got Walter and,

And the first guy, fucking Steve or George, George Hodel. Yeah. George, both doctors, right? Both doctors. George has a transcript of him talking about it, which is insane. And then the other guy, Steve, what's his name?

uh steve is the son dr walter a bailey is the second guy walter this other fucking guy walter who is in incredibly close proximity and in some way associated with yes with elizabeth short and also from a like he's he's gone insane as well like george to me he like sexually like the the whole sexual abuse of his own daughter and talking like

I don't know. Both of these people seem like fucking lunatic psychos. But both seem credible to be investigated further for sure. Yeah. Maybe they teamed up. Maybe it was like a team up killing. The Black Dahlia Avengers.

Yeah, Avengers. Oh, we haven't really connected it to the letters that were sent. I mean, fucking Steve Hodel suggested that the letters had similar handwriting to his father. So there is that, but I don't think... Seems like Steve will just say anything now. Yeah, exactly. Like, he's latched onto the theory, obviously, that his dad... Which is crazy that his dad is the killer. Like, he's so gung-ho about that. He loves the idea of that.

Daddy issues. Theories about what happened next vary. Some suggest her death was the result of a medical accident. So, sorry, we're still talking about Dr. Walter Bailey, you know, providing surgery to help her with her tonsillitis and stuff.

So theories about what happened next vary. Some suggest her death was the result of a medical accident while under surgery, while others propose it occurred during a violent outburst from Bailey. Several theories also suggest the complicity of Alexandra Patika, the affair partner. Yeah. And that's why she attempted to blackmail Walter afterwards. So yeah, I read a theory that the death was accidental, but then because of their surgery...

their fucked up fascination with surgery. They took advantage of the situation and kind of performed surgery on the cadaver, let's say, the corpse afterwards. Which...

There's no evidence to support that and also remember the forensic evidence suggested that the body had been tied up like there were ligature marks around the wrist, neck and ankles and stuff like that which suggests that obviously it was not accidental and there were blows to the head so I don't subscribe to that theory Do you want to take other suspects to wrap this up?

So, dude, everyone around this person is like, there's so many suspects, uh,

Yeah, I wonder, I always wondered that, like, if I was murdered and it was a cult case, like, how many people connected to me would be investigated and they would find out, like, they had motive or means or something, like, they found out, like, I don't know, someone I met faked all their names and stuff and actually looked like a possibility of having murdered me, but it wasn't them. Like, how many, like, Elizabeth has, like, 20 people at least connected to her. Yeah. Yeah.

It's crazy. Yeah, there's a lot of... And a lot of it just seems... I don't know if it seems kind of more plausible now since so much time has gone on and maybe things... The way that things happen aren't always the way that things are documented and then reinterpreted and then sold and told and told. There are still...

People are still wrongly convicted now with DNA evidence. And like a lot of people in the 70s and 80s have now been exonerated because of DNA. Like there's so much, so many established theories or even... Yeah, but then on the other side of it, a guy can sit in his house while it's bugged, say that, yeah, I killed her. Yeah, you're right. I did not go to jail. Yeah, that's fucked. What? That's crazy.

Maybe there's something there. We won't arrest you unless we can prove it otherwise, beyond just you saying it in your house alone, unprompted. But then other people go to jail, obviously under false pretenses and stuff. I don't know. There's so much different cases where both of those things happen. It's crazy. There's also Leslie Dillon, who claimed he knew details about the murder and he himself actually described how the crime may have been committed.

He was an aspiring writer and said all of his theories were fictional, but some rang true, and the investigators were suspicious. He wrote too good. He wrote too good, damn it. He was too on the nose with his writing. Too good of fanfics. What pad? Yeah. He was getting crazy with it. That's why I recommend to all aspiring writers, just don't write fanfic about murders that are happening at the time. Yeah, that's stupid. Yeah, just don't. That's really fucking stupid. Choose something different.

It was questioned intensively, but nothing was ever proved that he was the killer. Another, George Nolten, whose daughter Janice accused him of killing Elizabeth in their garage. She even claims that she witnessed parts of the crime and saw the mutilated body. Her story was met with a lot of criticism, and of course, there is no evidence to prove what she has alleged, and official investigators have found no links between her father and the murder.

How confusing? Well, maybe. I just, yeah. It's what they said back then. People just said that shit about everything.

It's just yeah, it's this is what the investigators were dealing with though like so many different leads so many different things coming out of nowhere And they're like how do we how do we even investigate this this is crazy? It's such a possible task. It'd be fucked if it was her dad, and she's just like it's him It's him and they're like you're just throwing that for attention see

I mean, yeah, I agree. Sexism was obviously rampant back then and women were unfairly treated and told that they were just seeking attention for a lot of situations. But it's also possible that this woman just had severe mental illness and did do this as a way of acting out. Not necessarily for attention, but...

but just because she had a mental illness or something. There are a thousand potential reasons why someone would lie about something for sure. Well, yeah, I think attention is a very broad, you know, even if it's just for a reaction, that's still technically doing something for, you know, attention. If you just want, you know, if you just think in your mind, oh my God, it's so bad. The only way you can get that thought out of your brain is by saying that your dad murdered somebody he didn't

There's something wrong with you. Or maybe she truly believed that she witnessed it and it's not like an evil thing. Maybe in a moment of mental illness induced delusions, she thought she witnessed it. Who knows? And who could forget the gangster Benjamin Bugsy Siegel? He was a prominent figure in the 1940s who had ties to Hollywood and organized crime.

This one theory was only suggested because Bugsy was known as a violent offender in the city at the time and there was absolutely nothing to suggest that he was involved aside from that, but it didn't stop tabloids from speculating and running wild with the idea, insinuating that Elizabeth fell in with the wrong crowd while attempting to make it in Hollywood. And she was murdered by Bugsy Siegel. I'm imagining Bugsy woke up every morning during like the 40s to a new headline that he had murdered someone new.

That's really funny. That's hilarious. He's like the nicest guy ever, but like what kind of name is Bugsy? Come on. I don't know anything about him. Is he like a really famous? He has to be like a really famous mobster. Yeah, really famous murder. He may have been the guy who, I don't know. Was he murdered? He was the driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip.

I knew it was like a, he was very, he was a huge inspiration for like a lot of the... Nevermind, he probably did it. He probably did it. Siegel, Bugsy Siegel was one of the founders and leaders of Murder Inc. What do you mean? What do you mean? Murder Inc.? Murder Incorporated? Is that real? Yeah.

Murder Inc. was an organized crime group active from 1929 to 1941 that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate. Murder Incorporated. Yeah, he probably did it. This guy probably did it. Holy shit. That's a crazy name for a business. And he created the Las Vegas Strip.

What the fuck? How much of America was built from mobsters and stuff? A lot. Seems like. Yeah. Seems like the entire country was.

So many theories, so many investigators, and no answers still to this day. It's frustrating. All that was left was one life tragically cut short. While there is hope that one day the Black Dahlia case will find its conclusion in the form of providing some answers, it remains one of the most mysterious unsolved murders in American history. And as we've talked about, there are so many different possibilities of who murdered her.

Elizabeth Short, but at the end of the day, we just do not have a concrete answer. We've dug deep. There are a thousand different videos online covering this situation in

hyper-focused detail, but no one has the answers. We all- a lot of people subscribe to one or the other, generally, out of the two main suspects we talked about being the most likely, but it really can't be overstated that there was just no concrete evidence pointing one way or the other, so it's kind of like a crapshoot or a flip of the coin. But we do know Bugsley was obviously involved to some degree with the murder,

Until the day it is hopefully solved, Elizabeth's death remains a mystery that has embedded itself as part of Los Angeles' dark history, and that is a dark history indeed. A lot of dark history in Los Angeles, even to this day. Thank you for joining us for this episode. Caleb, do you have any last-minute thoughts or kind of, you know, theories or anything? I feel like it was the guy with the mustache. That's what I think. The first one? Yeah, George Hodel. Yeah, he seems like a piece of shit.

The transcripts are definitely the most compelling point of that entire situation. That is compelling, but again, on top of that, the sun kind of really, really destroyed his credibility in my eyes a lot of the time. Yeah, true. It's hard to know for sure. How much of his reporting and stuff has just muddied the water in general of what you can find? Yeah. What you can believe. Can we actually believe that those transcripts are...

honest when the son is that uncredible. I don't know if that's... Straight up hellbent. He's straight up hellbent on his dad being the murderer. Yeah, he wants his dad to be the murderer because it brings in the money. He has a financial incentive for his dad to be the murderer. Whereas for me, I think I subscribe to the Dr. Walter Bailey theory. I just think that

There's more means. There's more potential motive, more connection. And also, yeah, he also had some level of mental instability that may have made it more likely. My only thing is, again, and this was, I touched on this earlier in the episode, the fact that there was no murders after that

really makes, well, no murders that we know of anyway, after that, really make it a complicated situation for me because I feel like the brutality enacted upon Elizabeth Short speak to a level of familiarity with murdering. And I feel like they would have had to have kept killing or have killed previously. And in both of these situations, in the Dr. Walter Bailey case and the Dr. George Hodel case, there doesn't seem to be much room for that.

Yeah, it's a... What was done to her was such like a... Just an above, over-the-top, unnecessary... It's like a calling. You'd expect to see that. It'd be the calling card of that murderer to fucking just completely mutilate someone. That level of brutality. It's not like this was a...

crime of passion or a thing that happened in the moment this was clearly something that they wanted to enact upon someone else yeah and I just can't I don't believe that someone did that and then just spent the rest of their life not murdering

It's weird. It's very weird. So I guess another potential thing is like, it's another serial killer that we don't know about. Or we haven't connected it to another serial killer or something like that. It's just someone that's completely unknown. And I guess that's always the case with unsolved murders. Maybe it was the Zodiac Killer. I don't know. I have no clue. Who knows? All right, that's going to do it for this episode of Red Thread. Thank you very much, Caleb, for...

sticking with it, staying here. I appreciate you joining the second half of the episode. And thank you very much to all of you out there for listening. Big thank you. That's going to do it for Red Thread. Let us know down below what you would like to see next time. Oh, I should note, there's one more episode coming out this year, but then we're taking a little bit of a break between December 20th and January 20th, just over Christmas because I'll be in Japan and I won't be able to work while I'm over in Japan. So we'll be taking a break during that

of time, but there will be a few bonus episodes coming out in that period of time in that little gap, but they won't be frequent. I think there'll be two episodes coming out in that time, just that we've pre-recorded. So keep an eye out for those, but yeah, episodes will slow down for a little bit, but then they'll come back after January 20th on a regular schedule. So big thank you for you sticking around with us. Official.men. Again, if you want to go grab some red thread merchandise, it's

it's a really cool shirt design Caleb's on there as well as Mothman and Isaiah and myself uh we really appreciate it if you've grabbed a you know a shirt already really appreciate that so thank you very much means the world to us we'll see you next time bye guys see fellas and girl one girl