Hey, weirdos. Elena here.
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Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid.
this is morbid and it's part two of a two -parter oh my god and it's kind of morbid in the morning it is that's why you might you might hear sleep in our voices i know honestly probably not i woke up with a fucking jolt this morning did you yeah i just well because i woke up oh yeah you were like Like, ah!
Yeah. I was late. What else is new?
But I made a good -ass coffee.
She did. She made a great -ass coffee.
I wasn't sure if it was good.
I thought my beans overextracted, but I don't know.
No, I think they extracted the correct amount.
I think they might have. And then we had, like, fun girl talk this morning.
We did. We lifted each other up.
We did. It was women supporting women in the office this morning.
We were like, you're a badass bitch. Yeah.
Tell yourself that every day.
Yeah. And you know what?
what you guys out there you're all badass bitches and you should tell yourselves that every day yeah don't compare yourself to anybody else no don't because you can do that until the end of time yeah and you'll always find someone that you're like well i didn't do this and that person did that yeah okay do you like you so are you proud of your accomplishments that's the thing that's the only thing that matters you like you you do and if you don't like you i'm sorry about that and you gotta get to a place where you do like you first before you can do anything else and this is not an ad no it's
really not it's just it's just it's just the vibes of 2025 especially with all the mayhem we gotta fill our rounding us with fucking elon musk deciding that he's an elected official like go fuck yourself yeah um so that with those vibes you have to get to a place where you like yourself it's not for any other reason if not for any other reason but because we gotta take care of that business.
Truly. But, yeah, so yeah, it's just important and I want everybody to feel that way.
I'm not really, I think we've, like, this is the year of, like, social media just kind of being crumbling.
Not the thing. Not the vibe.
You know what? I was listening.
I'm not gonna get, like, everything completely correct because my memory is just a vast land, but a vast land of nothing, but I was listening to Elisa Kelly's podcast. podcast podcast is so fucking good and she was talking about it was like at the beginning of 2025 i think it might have even been before 2025 2025 it was like here's what like how i think it's gonna go basically and it's i think like when from when social media started we've done like a full circle basically like a full rotation oh absolutely so it's almost being flipped on its head now yeah so there's going to be these like massive
shifts in social media which could be be them crumbling yeah which it does kind of feel like and i'm not mad about it like i like have been off of instagram for probably two three weeks now i am like my insides feel better yeah genuinely that's the thing like there was no there was no like inciting incident no that really did this like really like truly there was no inciting incident like there's always like there's always shitheads in the comments everywhere like in every comment and it wasn't even that it was honestly just like yeah for honestly mind -siting incident was like my account following
somebody that i didn't follow which i think we all know who that is yes that happened to mine don't support that orange man yeah i was like i'm not gonna stick around for this when like my account's being manipulated and like just see you know i follow like a lot of like uh news outlets and that kind of thing and i think it's good to have information for sure but i think there we are living in an age where there's too much fucking information there's too much misinformation yeah and if you have any kind of anxiety at all it will eat you alive it will and it's like and please know that yeah like
i know it's hard and it's a very hard line and we're not going to go too far into this don't worry we're going to get into that case but sometimes it feels good just like well you guys are like our broeys so we want to talk to you about it yeah it's important and we care about out your mental health we do you guys are a fucking rad ass community of awesome bitches and we want you to be okay so yes but it's a it's a it's a hard line to straddle to be informed but not be bombarded yes there's like yes that is a perfect way to say it fine line and it is i don't know if i have fully comprehended that line
yet it's hard it's very hard because of course you want to be informed but you don't want to be over informed to the point where you're you can't think of anything else or appreciate any kind of happiness in your own life well there's never been a day and age where you have a fucking thing in your hand 24 7 yeah that you can constantly be connected and constantly know what's going on like that is not how we're meant to live it is pretty fucked up when you think about it yeah and the the internet and like social media can be this beautiful place where amazing people can connect i know i do miss connecting
to you that's the thing like there's times where I'm like I'm like I love connecting to people but then it's like but then it's also in you know the human species is of is an onion of that that has some rotten layers to it and it's like and no matter what it's an evil onion with a lot of rotten layers but there's some great layers yeah some flavorful layers that will just make it'll make your soup delicious you know what it is there's shallots and there's onions exactly Exactly.
There you go. I prefer shallots.
I love a shallot. Yeah.
Jean shallot. Jean shallot.
I love shallots. I love a legume.
Oh, yeah. Speaking of that, let's take a quick little veer.
Are we? Nothing's better than fucking pearl couscous with shallots and veggie broth.
Yes. And some herbs on it.
I like the idea of that, but I want chicken broth.
The veggie broth gives it some kind of...
One thing about me.
Some kind of something.
I fucking hate veggie broth.
Really? When I tried my hand at vegetarianism, that's what it's called?
Vegetarianism? I went hard and fast with the veggie broth.
And I think now... You overdid it.
Yeah, it's not for me.
So I always do bone broth.
There you go. All right.
Well, there's our little tip.
Yeah. For a new you.
Yeah. Pearl couscous, though.
You know, Drew doesn't like the pearled couscous.
He likes the regular couscous.
I like both. I made the pearl couscous and he's like what's this one?
I'm like it's just a bigger version It's just pearls He's like I don't like it You're strange I love that man Well you know what We're all over the place We're everywhere And we have some really awesome things coming up That we can't talk to you about yet But bitches you're gonna know when they hit They're hitting soon I feel like after this case There's probably only like one or two episodes episodes before we can before it's like before it hits you in the face before it's gonna smack you in the face so don't worry it's yeah you're not gonna be waiting months for this no we wouldn't tease like
no and and we feel annoying but like we genuinely just can't but we're so fucking excited because two of these things are happening like pretty much in real time for us next week and then they'll be coming out to you in a like a couple weeks after 38 days later you know someday Someday we'll know.
You know how it goes.
But we know that, like, you know, we know that can be annoying to be like, something's happening.
But it's coming. And you're going to love it.
And my God, I'm so excited about it.
It's so exciting because also, like, it's such a variety with these two things.
It's such a variety.
It's going to fill your cup, like, it's going to overflow it.
In so many different ways.
Yeah. In different ways.
And the vibes are going to be fucking immaculate.
Chef's kiss. Fucking immaculate.
it. So just keep an eye out for that.
I promise you, you'll know.
It's going to literally punch you in the jaw when it happens.
So get ready. We'll say it in the intro too, like to, you know, whatever we end up talking about.
I mean, you're going to know.
You'll know. Just by the title.
Ick yuck, baby. Ick yuck.
All right. Well, we chatted.
So we chatted. This was a good chat, guys.
Remember the moral of the story?
Just like make sure you like yourself.
It's really hard. I get that.
Yeah. Took me a long time.
Oh, but I'm still working on it.
Took me past the age of 30 to really get to the place.
That's what everybody says.
It was really past 30 that I got to the place where I was like, no, bitch, I'm me and I like me and that's okay.
I'm nearing it and I hope you are too.
I hope you are too.
If you need help, we'll just keep telling you to do it.
Don't worry. Exactly.
Just think of me patting you on the back and being like, you're fucking great, bitch. Sometimes she genuinely actually does that to me.
It's great. It's great.
So I guess we have to keep talking about this horrific case, which is very fascinating and one that needs to be talked about because it is technically still unsolved uh we're talking about i know we're talking about the black dahlia case the murder of elizabeth short uh one thing i find interesting with this case uh is that the general consensus of the whole thing was like she was she was going out to hollywood to become a star and blah blah blah and that was her only like but in reality it's like yeah she was you know she wanted to be an actress all that good stuff but people make it seem like
she was that's it and that was all that was and blah blah it's like no she literally was just looking for a new start yeah like she was genuinely looking to just start a new and obviously she had dreams of like you know being an actress and all that and she was doing extra work and all that modeling yeah but i think like that emphasis gets put too much on that not enough on like she was really going through a lot of shit yeah and she really just was looking looking for a place where she felt like she belonged.
I think that happens a lot with these kind of stories, like the kind of stories where like a young girl goes out to Hollywood and she wants to be an actress, but it's like that's never the only thing going on in somebody's life.
And in fact, usually when a young girl is escaping to California, to Hollywood, it's for a whole bunch of other reasons.
Yeah, there's a myriad of reasons that are coming with it.
And on top of it, she needed, that weather was her, her, that climate was her ideal climate.
Yeah, like health -wise.
Because of her lungs.
So it's like, there was many layers to this.
And I just think they don't get, it doesn't get talked about enough when it like gets brought up.
I agree. I see what you mean.
It just hits on like the, she wanted to be a star.
And it's like, yeah, she did.
It's like, that's an overarching theme.
She wanted to breathe too.
Like that was part of it.
She thought it was pretty sick to have full lung capacity.
It was pretty awesome.
So when we last talked about this case, we were talking about, you know, several of the suspects that seemed like good suspects and then would kind of fall apart at the seams. Robert Manley was like a really big suspect and he was the one, he was the red -haired man that was, you know, testing whether he loved his wife.
Yeah. That whole thing.
Yeah. Remember that guy?
He looked like a good suspect, but he was also very forthcoming with the information.
He never really, he never pushed away the investigators or tried to, His story stayed consistent Right He took a polygraph but fell asleep, you know You know, as one does You know, sleepy's gonna sleep I don't know But he was released from custody Okay Because we did also find out that two people who said they saw him with her And one said, like, literally Backed off Well, and they literally were like, yeah, like, she said her name Yeah, and then it ended up not being that at all Yeah, fake So at this point, they were looking only into her love life as a source of where this could be coming from,
this killer. And they were now realizing, you know what, the boyfriend angle might not be a good angle.
Not panning out. Maybe we got to start, like, widening our net here.
So with their best lead, the red -haired man, having turned out to be a dead end, investigators on one of the nation's now most closely watched news stories found themselves in a bad place, which is desperate.
That's not where we want to find our investigators on a case like this.
No. Because that's when things get messy.
Yeah. Yeah. So Detective Harry Hansen told reporters on January 23rd, we're right back where we started, which is also not a good place to be.
Nearly 200 officers fanned out across the city looking for new clues, many following up on a lot of false confessions that were happening as well.
That was like a wave. It's such a weird. Yeah.
thing? The amount of men that came forward to be like, me, I did it.
It's like... I feel like back then, too.
Yeah. I'm like, were you all just bored?
Like, what is going on here?
Yeah. What is the pathology there that makes somebody do that?
The pipeline from boredom to false confession.
Yeah. Like, what is that?
But they would be, you know, following up on these many false confessions, just, you know, wasting their time and resources.
But they had to. They don't know which one is false and which isn't.
Or they were conducting house -to -house searches in hopes of finding any new witnesses.
So they really were going hard. Meanwhile, the coroner's inquest confirmed the details of the murder, but offered really little else in a way of answers, especially when it came to the gap in time between her disappearance on January 9th and her murder.
That was the hard thing to pinpoint.
Investigators finally caught a lucky break on January 25th, when a postal clerk spotted a package addressed simply to to Los Angeles newspapers.
And he looked at it and he said, huh.
That's weird. That's weird. That's suspicious.
So he immediately turned it over to the police.
And inside, detectives found Elizabeth's birth certificate.
What? Her address book, a baggage check ticket, and other personal papers that belonged to her.
Yeah, of course. As well as a note from the sender.
and in the note was in letters cut from magazines and newspapers like the classic ransom note i hate that and the letter wrote here is dahlia's belongings letter to follow oh that's fucking haunting yeah like that and they were really her her things so this was absolutely from the killer yeah now during his interview with detectives robert manley claimed to have seen elizabeth's address book in her purse when he dropped her at the biltmore so So that was a big thing.
That's huge, yeah. Now we can at least follow that.
And he'd seen the baggage check ticket from the Greyhound station.
So given that, detectives concluded that the sender of the package must have seen Elizabeth after she left the Biltmore and could possibly be her killer.
One detective told reporters, we have so many leads we don't know which to choose first at this point.
Which is a good place to be.
But also a scary place to be.
It's a good place, but like a hairy place.
A hairy place, exactly.
Investigators theorized that the killer, sensing the case was going cold, had done this, sent the materials to the press to keep his, quote unquote, work on the front page.
Yeah. He saw that things were cooling off and they weren't getting anywhere, and he said, why don't I help you out?
Which is so scary. Yeah.
And very BTK. Very BTK.
Very BTK. He's like, what if I send you a floppy disk?
Exactly. And they're like, what's a floppy disk?
BTK before BTK. Yeah.
Like, this was, he probably looked at this and was like, there it is.
And I do wonder if he looked at this and said, well, he never got caught.
Yeah. But he didn't put into any kind of thought that, like, technology had grown.
That was a big part of it.
So while several detectives started running down the names in her address book, other officers started combing area dumps looking for Elizabeth's missing clothes and purse.
The day before the package was received, someone reported having seen a bag matching the description of her purse in a trash can on Crenshaw Boulevard, not far from a lot where the body was actually discovered on january 26th officers finally located the bag at the trash dump on east 26th street which is crazy i was gonna say um alongside one of the shoes elizabeth had been wearing on the night she disappeared oh wow both were positively identified by robert manley as belonging to elizabeth that when you genuinely think of like the work that had to have gone into that think of how bit like la is a pretty
big big place look at any dump yeah tell me how hard that would be to find one bag just piles and piles of random shit yeah like you that is that really is like that's detective detective work right there which all not as detective work i would not want to have to do that's definitely not it um the bag was later identified by the cafe owner on crenshaw boulevard who'd initially reported it to police okay so the cafe owner was like yeah that's the bag i saw now although there was still Still a possibility that the killer had followed Elizabeth to Los Angeles from San Diego, where she had been before.
Yep. The receipt of the package and the discovery of the purse strongly indicated that the killer was local.
Okay. Because he was sending it from a local place.
He's still around. Makes sense.
Seems like he's around.
Detective Harry Fremont said, I'm still convinced the killer is still in town, and I'm almost certain it is who has mailed us Elizabeth Short's belongings.
I agree. Which I think is pretty safe to say.
I'm like, yeah, I'd say so.
stuff. Having run down all the names in the address book now, investigators ruled out all the men in the book, which is wild.
Yeah. And began hoping the sender would follow another letter, just to kind of help them out at this point.
What he said was to follow.
I was gonna say the note did indicate that another one would come.
And at this point, they're like, we kind of need the other one to come.
Unfortunately, the news of the package prompted another flood of new anonymous anonymous correspondence, most of which were hoaxes.
Because, again, people are going to people.
Yeah. Rotten evil onions.
It's not great. One letter read, quote, a certain girl is going to get same as E .S.
Scott if she squeals on us.
Okay. Get it together, people.
Get a hobby. Get it to fucking gather.
Get a life. I mean, come on.
Another letter said, quote, E.
Short got it. carol marshall is next okay okay other notes in the letters suggested the killer was going to give themselves up one of them said quote dahlia killer cracking wants terms that was a postcard from pasadena fuck off all of them were just bullshit yeah just people with absolutely no fucking lives but among all of these there was one postcard written in plain block letters that caught investigators attention among all of them okay it said here it is unlike it said turning in wednesday january 29th 10 a .m had my fun at police black dahlia avenger unlike the other very obviously false
claims the postcard from the black dahlia avenger seemed as though it could have come from the killer because not only did it lack the grandiosity of the other ones the the silliness and ridiculousness of the other ones the investigators thought the phrase here it is was referencing the killer's earlier claim that a letter was going to follow the package which makes sense and the other ones didn't say that the other ones didn't because they didn't know that's what it said but this one says here it is and it was also just like had fun fucking with you bye but like bye it wasn't really saying like
this person's next or like I'm gonna turn myself in soon or yeah like something really stupid yeah You guys, I tried my mochi ice cream the other day, and I was lifted off of this planet into just another galaxy entirely.
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Hey there, my weird weirdos.
I want to take a minute to recommend another podcast called Who Took Misty Copsie?
In September of 1992, 14 -year -old Misty Copsie leaves the Washington Washington State Fair with her best friend and is never seen again.
Her body is never found.
At the time, Western Washington is home to prolific serial killers like the Green River Killer, which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to Misty.
Over the course of eight episodes, host and cold case investigator Sarah Kalin speaks with Misty's friends and family, looks at police records and different anonymous tips to try to figure out if Misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her.
No suspects are ruled out.
After 33 years, Sarah Kalin hopes to answer the question, who took Misty?
You guys are going to love this.
If you listen to Morbid, we know that you love a cold case, and we always tell you, a cold case is never cold.
So definitely give this a listen.
Definitely look into the case.
Listen to Who Took Misty Copsey wherever you get your podcasts.
podcasts just as the letter indicated on wednesday january 29th a man came forward to lapd and confessed that he had killed elizabeth short it was 33 year old daniel vorhees hilarious last name yes truly uh told detectives that he had met elizabeth short two weeks earlier in downtown Los Angeles and, quote, took her for a ride on a Wilshire Boulevard bus, and he stopped short of providing any other details about the murder itself.
Wait, so he just, he took her for a bus ride?
Is that what you told me?
Yeah, he said he took her for a ride on the bus.
Is that a thing people did?
Who knows? Imagine a man's asking you, I mean, like, do you want to go on a Peter Pan with me?
Do you want to go on a bus with me?
What do you think of Greyhound?
Yeah, I guess back then it was like, you want to take her out on the bus?
That's adorable in a way.
Yeah. Not in this scenario.
Not with Mr. Voorhees, but according to Mr. Voorhees, the two first met in 1941 and he'd taken her on several dates before they lost touch. But when asked for more details about that meeting, he again refused to say anything else.
But nevertheless, Voorhees insisted, quote, I'm sick.
I did kill Beth Short.
OK. And he was willing to sign any documents confessing to it.
So Daniel Voorhees was booked into the county jail that evening on, obviously, suspicion of murder.
uh there was going to be a polygraph exam planned for the following day because they wanted him to they wanted to wait to have him recover from his quote bewildered and befuddled state he was at the time of his arrest okay which tells you a little bit about what you need to know about like the state he's in and like his bewildered and befuddled i don't know about this i don't know if i want to believe a confession from somebody bewildered or befuddled exactly and while this This may have seemed at the time, it did seem at the time, a major break in the case.
There were several things about his confession that made detectives, unfortunately, a little skeptical.
They didn't want to be, but they were.
Yeah. In addition to his refusal to provide virtually any details about the murder or how he'd come to no short at all, investigators also described his story as, quote, generally incoherent.
Yeah. We're teetering off the edge here, folks.
And it was also full of contradictions.
Also, when they contacted police in Phoenix, LAPD detectives learned that Voorhees had a long record of petty offenses.
And at the time of his arrest, he was not really living anywhere and appeared very confused.
Apparently, he was from Phoenix.
That's sad. It sounds like he was very mentally ill.
It sounds like he was going through it.
Yeah. For sure. The next day, Voorhees changed his story, telling detectives he, quote, might have killed Short.
But he couldn't lead police to the scene of the murder.
Okay. Didn't know where that was.
Voorhees was held for a few more days while police looked further into his story, but eventually it became very clear that this was a completely bullshit false confession and he was let go.
Because this isn't the kind of thing, again, I think we touched on it in the first part, like somebody was like, you know, I forget what the, I think think it was a newspaper article said something and it was like the killer snapped and like they were in a crazy frame of mind it's like this isn't the kind of murder that you would just like snap and commit and be like oh i don't have any recollection of what happened it's like this was hours and hours hours long like she was tortured she was bisected she fought you off she was drained her of blood for hours right that takes a while right it's like
there's at some point you would have come to and remember had some recollection of part of it yeah you don't commit that like whatever that bisection thing was called and in a state of mind where you're not going to remember doing it.
Exactly, exactly. Now like their theory about a spurned lover, you know, an ex of some sort, detectives had expressed a great deal of confidence that the letters from the Black Dahlia Avenger would lead them to Elizabeth Short's killer.
But after Daniel Voorhees' confession turned out to be false and the communication with the Avenger stopped, stopped, they once again found themselves at a dead end.
After two weeks of intense investigation involving hundreds of LAPD officers, they had combed through all the leads and clues they had and they had yet to find the murder weapon.
They didn't find the crime scene, they didn't find a single suspect that was even remotely viable at this point.
The LA Times declared, quote, it appeared almost certain the elusive killer was a stranger to Miss Short.
And they wrote, them.
Among them was a woman in Long Beach who claimed to have heard, quote, unearthly screams coming from a, quote, long expensive car on the night Elizabeth disappeared.
Uh -huh. Did you call anyone when that was going on?
This informant told police she'd been waiting at a bus stop that evening when she saw a man, quote, holding a woman down in the rear seat of the car with a man and a woman on the front seat.
and she didn't call why are you waiting until now to say anything then there was a tip from elizabeth's friends where they were just trying to like think of anything they were trying to think anything that could help so they said she had recently quote plugged cavities in her teeth with wax from candies which sent investigators back to potential witnesses to ask whether they'd had seen anyone caring for their teeth in such a way wait what she would plug the cavities in her teeth with wax candies yeah and so they were saying like did you see her buying wax candies did you see anybody cause like
who knows did you see somebody like fiddling with their teeth like with you know sticking something in their teeth like on a bus anywhere they're literally trying anything literally anything cause these are like unique traits yeah you'd remember that that they're like okay Maybe I'd be able to go somewhere with that.
Yeah, like maybe that's something if somebody says like, oh, weird, I did see a girl sitting there like sticking something in her tooth on the bus or something like that.
That can at least help them figure something out.
Right. While most of the tips came from the Los Angeles area, they did receive calls and letters from other parts of the country too, which very unnecessarily taxed agency resources.
It just made it even worse.
In early February, for example, investigators received a call from officials at Fort Dix in New Jersey.
reporting that one of their soldiers, Joseph Dumays, had disclosed to army investigators that he'd been on a date with Elizabeth Short the night she disappeared.
Now, he's in New Jersey.
According to Dumays, he had gone on a date with Short on the evening of January 9th, but, quote, after the date, his mind went blank, and the next thing he remembered, he was in Pennsylvania Station, New York.
Across the country from where she was.
Yeah. Totally. Fort Dix investigators analyzed the uniform Dumais had been wearing that night And found what turned out to be blood stains On one of the pockets of his pants Creepy Now, when they began digging into his background Investigators learned that the 29 -year -old soldier Had been married three times And on at least one occasion He had been examined by a psychiatrist Who recommended he be hospitalized For psychological reasons Also, while Dumais claimed to have been In Los Angeles the previous month there was no record of him having traveled to california recently yeah it was eventually
determined that he had nothing to do with elizabeth's murder and the blood stains in his pockets could have quote come from a bloody handkerchief okay but by then investigators had already wasted several days and precious man hours in this completely false bullshit lead which is really fucking annoying as the first week of february came to an end investigators had become so desperate for any new leads and eventually returned to what the press described as quite as quote twice cold clues so there was doubling back on things yeah while some members of the team went back to old suspects and witnesses
hoping to find anything that could point them in a new direction several other detectives started following anything that even resembled a lead no matter how insignificant like the cavity thing right this included a report from a young woman in culver city who told police she'd been waiting for a bus when a man in a 1940 1840 sedan approached her isabelle foster said quote the man asked me if i wanted a ride i refused he then took out a long butcher knife and ordered me into his car jesus she started to panic and started to cry and the man told her shut up or he would give me what he gave the black dahlia okay
which like here's the thing i don't think he's out here i could be wrong because he's a a fucking asshole who ever did this so it's like whatever.
It would be weird to me if he was just out on the street being like shut up or I'll do to you like I did the black Dahlia.
Like I don't think he's just gonna be like the black Dahlia.
Yeah. Like I don't think I'm gonna be out, like I don't think he's gonna be running around saying it to everybody out on the streets.
Maybe he's saying it to people in his life.
Yeah. For sure. I could see this guy being an idiot and who we think it might be.
I think he was talking about it with people in his life.
I don't think he's at a random bus stop trying to kidnap somebody and being like if you don't get in my car I'm gonna going to do the same thing i did to the black dahlia to you and it's also like if i do get in your car that's when you'll probably do it and it's like now this girl's gonna fight even more like you can yeah that doesn't make sense yeah reports like that of daniel vorhees joseph du maize isabel foster's report of this man with the butcher knife and all the others they didn't pan out and they were so common yeah they were just they kept coming in from the moment the body was discovered,
the front pages of every major newspaper in the LA area were dominated by the case of the Black Dahlia.
So it just kept on coming.
Such intense public interest drove equally intense press coverage and led to so many hoaxes, so many false confessions, tons of mistaken identities, complete lies, just people inserting themselves.
While these stories may have been, you know, great to read in the paper, very interesting, and they honestly made the case appear very complex and very fast paced and very like, you know, we're running down leads and we're doing this.
The truth was, this whole thing was indicative of just how little information detectives had to work with.
And it soon became apparent to the press and the readers of these papers that the case was growing cold.
Yeah. Because every time these things came out, it was like, no. And we don't have anything now.
By the end of February, investigators were We're literally grasping at straws at this point, looking for any detail or any clue that could just give a little spark to this case.
But they were coming up empty, which is crazy with how this woman – and it kills me because they had clues at the crime scene.
Yeah, that partial footprint and tire tracks.
Massive clues. So to be honest, they fucked themselves from the beginning.
It's real cool that they're running down leads now.
You fucked yourself over.
You had clues. Which I will never understand why they didn't photograph that, that footprint and the tire treads.
Yeah. Why would you not take photographs, take a mold of it, like do whatever you can.
Right. And to let that crime scene become so contaminated.
Contaminated and congested.
I just, yeah. Yeah.
I'm like, did they ever come out and say like, we didn't take the photograph because blah, blah, blah.
No. I think they just, it's the same thing as like, it got lost. And this is the, like, they just don't explain it.
Yeah. A few weeks later, investigators acknowledged that they had no leads and that this case was cold.
Now, the story of the Black Dahlia murder had dominated the papers for weeks with stories informed very heavily by people just theorizing and speculating and whatever bits of information the LAPD was willing to parcel out to the public.
The latter of these included information about certain arrests and potential suspects who were inevitably and very quickly ruled out.
But behind the scenes, there were other suspects whose names weren't immediately released to the press and who were considered way more seriously than the people they were releasing to the press.
Also, in the years since Elizabeth Short's death, a large number of authors and journalists, they've published books and articles naming many suspects, ranging from famous people like Orson Welles and Woody Guthrie and even notorious gangster Bugsy Siegel.
Damn. Like, lots of people have been fingered for this.
The suspect list contained more than 20 names, including many doctors and a few women.
Huh. Which I don't know if I, just the pathology of this one, I don't see it, but I could obviously be wrong.
Well, some of these theories have been very debunked over the years, like, very easily.
There remains a small list of names that many believe contains the killer's identity in there.
This girl, I believe it.
I definitely think so.
So, so this one is interesting.
So in John Gilmore's 1994 book, Severed, the true story of the Black Dahlia murder, the author strongly suspects Jack Anderson Wilson, a .k .a.
Arnold Smith, as the killer based largely on circumstantial evidence, which is evidence.
Yeah, no matter what.
No matter what. And that's really all we got at this point.
And he bases it on an interview he conducted with Wilson before his death.
In the interview, Wilson claimed to have been driven to kill by some supernatural force.
He told Gilmore he had to do that when the spirit overtook him.
Wilson went on to hint at his participation in the murder, saying, quote, you understand the trouble I could get into because of what he did.
If he could somehow make it seem like that he didn't do it, you know what I mean?
It's like we're talking about litigation and that sort of thing.
Everyone is entitled to go nuts.
What? Everyone is entitled to go nuts?
No. This is like that investigator being like, you know, she probably teased him and he went berserk.
And again. Babes, we're not entitled to that.
Like, I don't, it separates us from the animals.
You need to like, what are you talking about?
We're not entitled to do so.
We're not entitled to lose our minds and kill someone.
This isn't like the spirit overtook me and I became frenzied.
This is not that, this is not a frenzied murder.
That's the thing. This is not a disorganized, frenzied, passionate, a moment of crazy anger moment this is meticulous murder this is hours and hours and i think it was planned trolled torture and i think it was planned yes it's like she are we forgetting that the blood was drained from her body everyone that requires a lot and the bisection you're not bisection is so clean you're not going to convince me that somebody who was overtaken by a spirit it and like lost their mind was like no yeah I just figured out how to bisect her I just figured it out.
I'm I will not encourage you to look at the crime scene photos because I'll never encourage you to do that No. And these have been shared so many times that unfortunately they're everywhere.
If you're familiar with this case you've probably seen them.
If you are familiar with them I looked at them because we were going into this case it is a remarkably clean bisection.
Yeah This is not like I'm sorry to get graphic here but you're here it is not like a tearing through somebody no kind of thing like this is not a ragged cut it's a cut that is so fucking clean it's clinical is what it is right that is a clinical cut if i ever saw one i think somebody will never convince me that this person is not a doctor or a surgeon exactly it's the same thing as jack the ripper you're just not going to convince me i agree it's just the way it is for it and we will get into that don't worry yeah uh in the years since Since the publication of that book, Severed, The True Story
of the Black Dahlia Murder, Severed has come under a lot of scrutiny for a lot of inaccuracies, mistakes, you know, a lot of that stuff.
Among other things, the author Gilmore paid Wilson for the interview.
Okay. Which does happen.
For sure. But in these cases, that makes your eyebrow raise a little.
And the transcript indicates the conversation occurred over the course of many rounds of drinks.
Oh, well, that's...
Which can taint things.
Not great. It has also been pointed out that years after Severed was released, Gilmore had advanced to an entirely different theory about the killing.
So it kind of taints this original one because you're like, eh?
Right. In a 1982 interview with the Los Angeles Herald -Examiner, Gilmore described a suspect he refers to only as Mr. Jones.
According to Gilmore, Mr. Jones had confessed the murder to one of Gilmore's contacts.
Okay. now in this version of events gilmore claims that mr jones picked short up at the biltmore and quote she and jones traveled from an apartment in hollywood to the roosevelt hotel where he picked up a key to the house at 33rd and trinity jones was angered by elizabeth short's behavior and her refusal to give in to his advances the two quarreled about a phone call she wanted to make and when she insisted on leaving the wooden house an incensed jones beat her raped her and then losing all control nope tortured her and ultimately killed her no in his frenzy to cut the body up for disposal purposes
nope that was not why she was cut no that was not for disposal purposes nope she was posed she was just posed if you are trying to dispose of a body you cut off the limbs you i know this sounds horrible no but if you're doing it for but disposal purposes you are putting it into bags so it isn't found or that it is found in several different places and you are not putting her next to a sidewalk where she is found posed and honestly if it was for if it was simply only 100 for disposal purposes this is awful but you would assume she would be in more pieces exactly she her limbs are in easier disposal
you leave limbs on if you're trying to dispose of a body easily and again this is a horrible discussion to have but it's just this doesn't make sense yeah like that you can't tell me this was for disposal purposes no and then this was for it was for shock she was posed like she was getting a photo taken right that's not what that was don't tell me that was disposal if it was she would be in bags yep she would not be laid out on the grass no like come on um so it says jones cut the body in half then panicked at the prospect of discovery and he wrapped each part of elizabeth short.
There was two. Two.
In curtains from the house, no, there was cement bags found, wrapped the entire bundle in an oil skin tablecloth and loaded the body in his car.
No. And at what point did he decide to drain her of all her blood?
Exactly. You didn't mention that.
Yeah. We're always skipping that one in these confessions.
Where'd you do that?
Where'd you do that?
How long did it take?
How'd you know how to do it?
Yeah. Like, come on.
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Gilmore claimed to have tracked Mr. Jones down in 1978 and found him living in Indianapolis.
the author went to see the man however and when he arrived he just decided not to talk to him okay gilmore said quote i just looked at him now i'm sorry i didn't talk to him about elizabeth short because i didn't know at the time that he had killed her i didn't have that part of the story i didn't know there was a situation between my contact and jones that there was always an antagonism what so it just gets a little messy this is pretty messy and it's a little weird So there's that.
I don't know about any of that.
Those were big suspects that people talked about for a little while.
But then in 1991, and this one's, there's a big issue with this one to me.
Okay. In 1991, another suspect was put forward when 54 -year -old Westminster resident Janice Knowlton went to the press claiming her father, George Knowlton, was Short's killer.
Okay. Janice had been undergoing psychiatric treatment at the time and claimed she had uncovered repressed memories of witnessing her father kill Elizabeth in their garage.
Now, that was in January 1947 that she claimed it happened.
She claimed that her father, who died in a car accident in 1962, had been dating Elizabeth in 1947 and that Short had been staying, quote, in a makeshift sleeping room in their garage where she had a miscarriage.
for me already i have like a ding ding ding where yeah his name would have been in her address book if she was dating him exactly yeah yeah precisely at least in my opinion there's that but then there's another big one that to me i was like nope now according to nolten she quote remembers the woman elizabeth short sitting in a chair under a bright light and her father hitting the woman in the face and head with a claw hammer now that's horrible and she did have lacerations and many wounds to her head but did she have like skull fractures she um i'm not sure if she had skull fractures but she had
a lot of lacerations to her face in her head like if you're beaten with a claw hammer a lot of times you have skull fractures here's the thing because janice said she witnessed this while hiding in the family's garage okay i think janice went through some horrible shit in her childhood very clearly and i feel for her absolutely because to be to be coming out with this kind of thing, a lot of stuff has happened.
And she was going through psychiatric treatment.
So she was obviously trying to work through some stuff.
So I'm not saying that I don't believe this because I don't, I think she's just straight up lying about anything.
I think she's gone through a lot.
And I think this is kind of a manifestation of some of that.
And I can't imagine what she did see with her own father.
When she probably did see this happen to somebody.
I just don't think that person was Elizabeth Short.
She said in the garage, she witnessed her father use a power saw to cut the body in half no no that cut is not a power saw cut a power saw would leave there would be some ragged unfortunately again i'm gonna get graphic there was gonna there's gonna be some ragged edges and some tearing yeah there's gonna be i mean she had there's there's full organs right at the edge of that cut that are fully fully intact right they are not touched they are not nicked they are not ragged they are not destroyed and mangled they are intact because again there was something very meticulous used to do this won't
think of a power saw it's going to be vibrating yeah it's going to an organ that slips very easily and exactly get mangled where she was found the top half of elizabeth short when she is found there is very clearly a large organ protruding from the top of her body right that would have been falling out of there.
And it would have been nicked and mangled and destroyed with a power saw.
A power saw was, I will die on the hill, a power saw was not used to cut her in half.
It just wasn't. It was a surgical situation.
Instrument, yeah. 100%.
So immediately when I heard a power saw in a garage, I said, absolutely not.
The following day, she says Janice said her father, quote, took the body to a utility room next to the pier and gutted and cleaned the victim's body.
But she wasn't gutted.
She was not gutted.
Maybe she meant the blood part.
Maybe that was her version of being gutted.
I'm saying it, but this one just doesn't fit for me.
It just doesn't. But I do feel for her.
I do. I feel for Janice a lot because obviously there's some stuff going on there and hopefully she was able to work through that.
dude yeah he sounds like he was awful um and the thing is in the mid to late 1980s there was repressed memories had like a moment like it was like that was the concept of that it gained a lot attraction and um like a lot of you know practitioners in mental health fields yeah were like very focused on it for a little while um i believe they exist for sure oh like absolutely absolutely i do believe too much was placed on them in the 1980s but actually there was a lot of that being the drivers of a lot of the satanic panic in the later 80s and early 90s i don't think it's something that you can rely
on too heavily because memories are already faulty yeah you can't hang your hat on and i'm not saying repressed memories don't exist i've literally absolutely like i've experienced repressed memory but again it can they can be wily and a lot of times with with repressed memories even in my own experience there's missing pieces still within those memories exactly it's not it's not always a full picture exactly and it uh and our brains are our brains are meant like they they by design fill in details exactly and like based on experiences based on what we're consuming based on so many different feelings
emotions how you feel that day what you ate what you did you know i mean like what you saw somebody else do what you read yeah yeah and And it's like, again, repressed memories, absolutely.
I believe they exist. I believe they can be very helpful.
I believe they can be very helpful moving through things and dealing with things.
That's the thing. But I think to hang your hat on a repressed memory is like hanging your hat on an eyewitness.
There's got to be more.
There's going to be some human error here.
Yeah. And there's going to be repressed memories can be like a mishmash of different memories that are all smushed into one.
Yep. So it's like you might be that might have happened to you.
She might have saw that.
But again, like you said, I don't think it was Elizabeth Short she saw.
I think she's seen Elizabeth Short.
Yep. She's seen the story.
And your brain can marry those two pieces of information.
I just, the details don't fit for me.
Yeah. But again, feel for Janice.
Big time. because holy shit to even think that about your own father this is some bad shit he's capable of a lot of shit nefarious shit yeah um it was around the mid -90s people did start to realize that like hanging your hat on repressed memories was not the best course of action and that like we said indeed they exist but they are fuzzy yeah um and a lot of people like you know when it was all like really heightened in like the late 80s early 90s when satanic panic was starting to like explode a lot of members of law enforcement took reports of repressed press memories very serious even if they
were out of this world strange and unrealistic they would take them as fact right it was almost like not great yeah it was only which is not it's just not fact there's it's in someone's mind you can't rely on that it's well and it's just as As much as circumstantial evidence is real, refreshed memories are real, but they are circumstantial evidence.
You've got to have them along with some really concrete shit.
Exactly. In this, however, with the LAPD trying to chase anything down, they even had a hard time believing this particular story.
Detective John St. John said, we have a lot of people offering up their fathers and various relatives as the Black Dahlia murder.
Which is so sad. Which means there's a lot of shitty dads out there, which is like i mean get it together we've been new um he said the things that she meaning janice is saying are not consistent with the facts of the case and it's not uh regardless of whether you know detective saint john believed her janice remained convinced her father was involved she told a reporter he was a very sadistic man which again breaks my heart for her um she claimed that he didn't just kill elizabeth short either she also said she recalled two other murders committed by her father and she believes one of the victims
was mutilated and buried in the family's yard in Westminster.
Oh damn. So when she said this investigators in Los Angeles although they were suspicious of the claims members of the Westminster Police Department were like well we should fucking look into this so we didn't just let it go.
Westminster Lieutenant Larry Woessner said repressed memories like these do check out sometimes it's not unusual which is exactly how I feel it's like you can't ignore them them no you know you can't just hang your hat on them so in the summer of 1991 investigators in westminster received approval to excavate the empty lot where nolten's house once stood yeah just on the chance that janice's memories were accurate um he told a reporter the detective the lieutenant excuse me he said she seems to think that we may find a purse or some other belongings of elizabeth short a few days later when the site
was excavated technicians found quote a rusty knife animal bone fragments and costume jewelry which is weird but found no conclusive evidence of a murder that said was a little strange because they said the items did appear to be buried on purpose yeah um and they did find that unusual so they said we don't know how significant this is but it's definitely interesting why would anyone put such things that far underground right so it is strange and it sounds like her father was a sadistic fuck and maybe he did do some shit yeah they didn't find anything connected to elizabeth yeah now despite the strangeness
of the items found under the house there was nothing indicating a crime even had occurred just that it was weird so westminster police did decline to open an investigation because they were like yeah i don't we can't do that based on a rusty knife and costume jewelry it's like there's nothing here that says somebody was even hurt like it's just not uh nevertheless janice maintained her belief that her father had killed elizabeth and and actually went on some high -profile talk shows like Larry King Live, Sally Jesse Raphael, and promoted her story.
In 1995, she co -published a book with Michael Newton titled Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer.
Damn. Yeah. Even after her story and the popularity of her book had passed, Janice remained on that story and convinced that her father was responsible.
he a los angeles times reporter harry harnish said quote she'd leave long rambling voice messages on my answering machine at the times so it sounds like she really she was going through yeah some stuff yeah um she died unfortunately by an intentional drug overdose on march 5th 2004 oh man so i feel bad for janice that's that's a tough life because i don't judging by that story I don't believe that her father was the killer of Elizabeth Shore, but I feel her dad was a bad man.
And a sadistic man by her account.
Yeah. And that she went through a lot.
Clearly. I just feel bad.
Yeah. That's really sad.
I feel like that's like that's a lot.
And then to die by suicide.
It's like obviously she was… Psychologically going through a lot.
By a lot. Yeah. You know, and it's really sad.
again it's very unlikely that her father was elizabeth short's killer um but in 2003 another person stepped forward to offer up his father as a potential suspect in the case and this story is the one is the story in my opinion same um in his 2003 book black dahlia avenger a genius for murder former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel.
Who was a good motherfucking guy.
A good motherfucking guy.
Yeah. He you've heard his name.
We talked about it.
You've heard his name.
I think we've talked about him even before.
We've talked about him a few times.
He is known by his colleagues as a good cop.
Yeah. And a good guy.
Um he offers a very compelling case for who he believes is the the killer his father dr george hodell doctor dr george he was a surgeon right yep he sure was um he believes he killed elizabeth short and so do i at the time of elizabeth short's disappearance and murder dr hodell was a well -known and highly respected physician and the one -time head of the country's social hygiene bureau uh according to hodell quote he was a hard and cold individual with a huge ego whose demeanor bordered on tyrannical.
Wow. He said also he was an experienced physician.
He had the skills, tools, and the space necessary to commit this murder without detection.
Because that's the other thing.
You need the space for this murder.
That is something that, in my opinion, none of the other suspects have. They don't have the skills, they don't have the tools, and they do not have the space.
You need a lot of space, and it needs to be secret.
Hidden space. Hidden space.
She was alive. When her mouth was cut, she was alive.
There's going to be, as fucking macabre as that is, there's a lot of noise that was going to be happening here.
Absolutely. And he needed somewhere he could do this where no one was going to find him and no one was going to hear him.
And to me, because you might be thinking like, okay, well, that other guy had a garage.
That's one, not enough space.
Two, people are They're going to hear screaming.
They're going to hear those tools mixed with the screaming, if that's the way it happened.
It just doesn't make sense for me.
No, it doesn't make sense.
It really doesn't. He had George Hodel.
I want you to look it up, because I know you're all like immediately going to Google, because I also did this.
Oh, yeah. Get on it.
Look at his house at the time.
It's a huge house. Didn't he have like a huge basement?
Huge basement. Basement.
Huge basement. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Was there like tunnels and shit?
I think that was just like a, it was a labyrinthian kind of basement.
Like there was a lot of space, a lot of space, a lot of space away from the rest of the house.
A lot of offshoots.
There was a lot of people in that house that were willing to do a lot of fucked up shit to save their own shit, to make money, to save their reputations, to get people.
And a lot of times when it's wrapped up in money, the craziest, nastiest, out of this world shit happens.
He was also – he made sure to hire people in his house because he was very rich. He had a maid.
He had all kinds of – Yeah, he was a fucking surgeon.
He made sure those were people that he was also fucking, by the way.
Yeah. So you had shit on them.
So he made sure that everyone was on his side.
Like that's like he was – that none of them were going to talk and he had shit on all of them.
Yeah. So it's so – This guy relied on blackmail.
He relied on it and he was – there was so much dirty shit and we're going to get into it.
But I encourage you to read the book by Steve Hodel.
I know. He's convinced me.
It is captivating. It's a very captivating case.
It's one that has too many coincidences for me.
And for me, I'm not a big coincidence person when there's that many.
It's too on the nose.
Now, George Hodel Jr. was born and raised in Los Angeles in the first decade of the 20th century, which was a very big and exciting time for expansion for the city.
As a child, he was incredibly intelligent.
He consistently scored the highest on every test. He was very, very smart.
And ultimately, he graduated high school early and enrolled in the California Institute of Technology at 15 years old.
Wow. One result of his obvious intelligence was that George was treated very differently than his peers his whole life.
and given the impression that he was special and deserving of special treatment at a very young age.
You know, it can be great.
Yeah, but not great for the ego here.
Just one year into his education at Caltech, George was expelled.
Yikes. According to Steve Hodel, his expulsion was either for being kicked out for engaging in a sexual relationship with a faculty member's wife.
Meanwhile, he was 15, right?
Or for repeatedly gambling on campus, which was against the school's rules.
Maybe both. In the years that followed, George drifted from job to job, including working as a crime reporter with the Los Angeles Record during the Prohibition era, before finally enrolling in pre -med at Berkeley in 1929.
Which is insane. Insane.
From there, he went on to pursue a medical degree at the University of California, and he graduated with a medical degree in 1936.
He also went to school at the time where that specific bisection method was being taught.
Coincidence number one.
Yeah. Following his graduation, George worked his way up through the state health system, also making very high society friends along the way, friends with lots of Hollywood elites along the way.
I think we're learning now that that means something.
Connections. Yeah, I think we're learning that that has something.
thing uh it was through this social network that he met his first wife dorothy harvey who was the former wife of director john houston with whom hodell had one child a daughter named tamar hodell's marriage to dorothy harvey didn't last long but his relationship with his daughter tamar would prove pivotal yeah not only to his life but in steve's case against his father on october 1st 1949, Tamar disappeared from the couple's home on Franklin Street and was nowhere to be seen.
I believe at this point she was about 14 -ish.
After several hours of contacting friends and neighbors, George Hodel did contact the LAPD and reported her missing.
Two days later, she was found to be staying at a friend's house and she was taken into custody by the LAPD.
While she talked with a police officer, she explained that she'd run away because, quote, quote, my home life is too depressing because of all those sex parties at the Franklin House.
Now coming from someone so young, the statement was very shocking to the police officer.
More shocking, though, was Tamar's confession that not only had she seen the parties but also, quote, took part in them.
By the time the interview ended a few hours later, Tamar had implicated her father and three other adults in a conspiracy of abuse as well as confessing to having engaged in various sex acts with several of her male classmates at Hollywood High School.
So she was being abused on a galactic level.
Yep. That is the only way to describe that.
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Given the severity of these accusations and the notoriety of the men at the center of the scandal, the authorities moved very quickly and George Hodel was arrested a few days later and held on $5 ,000 bail.
Guys, get it together.
By the time he posted bail a few hours later, the story had reached the press and the once prestigious doctor was now being associated with sex parties and incest. Not great.
Right. In interviews with police and reporters, Tamar claimed that Dr. Hodel had been molesting her since she was 11 years old.
This is her father.
And that she had been encouraged to participate in sex acts with other adults at various house parties.
To which she obviously couldn't consent.
So what that means was she was raped.
That's what that means.
Yeah. That's the clearer way to say that.
Not that she was, you know, encouraged to participate.
She was raped. She was raped.
In early December 1949, George Hodel went on trial for the abuse of his daughter and the DA presented several witnesses who claimed to have been at the sex parties and verified what she alleged.
Even Hodel himself, and this should not be understated, because even Hodel himself stated in depositions that he had been, quote, delving into the mystery of love and the universe with his daughter.
her yeah no there's no mystery about fucking your own child and later he will claim like no i didn't do anything it's like nope you said it you said it because he also suggested that his memory of the events was quote unclear like a dream he's fucked he's just that guy in the the case should have been an easy prosecution for the da close and shut open and shut had it not been closed Close and shut.
Close and shut. Don't even open it.
Just shut it. Just shut it.
Yeah. Throw him behind bars.
But there was one statement made by Tamar during questioning from the defense that kind of made it, changed it a little.
Before ending his questioning, defense attorney Robert Neib asked one last question.
He said, Tamar, do you recall a conversation you had with a roommate at the Franklin house by the name of Joe Barrett?
And do you recall in that conversation making the following statement to him?
Quote, Quote, this house has secret passages.
My father is the murderer of the Black Dahlia.
My father is going to kill me and all the rest of the members of this household because he has a lust for blood.
He is insane. The courtroom was fucking stunned by this.
I would think. And Tamar tried to explain that she had no recollection of having said that.
I mean, of course. She's scared for her fucking life.
Yeah. Despite the strength of the case going into the trial, it soon became clear that the defense had intended to make her seem like a petty, vindictive daughter who was willing to lie in order to get revenge on her father, who she felt ignored her.
That's what they were trying to go with.
I think she wished that he ignored her.
Honestly, she'd be better off.
One defense witness after another took to the stand to call Tamar a liar, or worse, to recant their previous statements corroborating her initial accusations.
migrations so they had said she was a bully and then they would come back and be like just kidding real nice she's a child hodell later learned that several of those fucking witnesses had been offered large sums of money by his father to lie on the stand i think they call that hush money and i hope you are having the life you deserve or you're having the afterlife that you deserve to all those people i fully believe in karma at the end of the trial george hodell was was found innocent of the charges.
Money can get you out of anything.
He said he had been exploring the dream world, whatever the fuck it was, with his child.
Yeah. You're fucking gross, dude.
Several months later, George relocated to Hawaii, where he remarried and cut off communication with all of his children.
Wow. Nice. He's a piece of shit.
That's good. But they're better off without him.
Yeah. Steve Hodel hadn't given that statement about the Black Dahlia during the trial much thought, really, Until he was going through his father's belongings after he died in 1999.
I hope he died a horrible death.
I do, too. And he came across a small photo album that not only contained a photo of Steve's ex -wife taken before he'd ever met her, but also a photo of Elizabeth Short.
That is insane. Coincidence number two, everyone.
Yeah. Yeah. The photos caught Steve off guard, and he started going through his father's history more closely, hoping to find out why he had a photo of a notorious murder victim.
Mm -hmm. He also found other photos that he believes could be Elizabeth Sharp, but they have not been confirmed.
Okay. Over the course of several years, Steve Hodel combed through old police files and city archives.
Remember, he is an LAPD homicide detective.
He's a detective. And he talked to anyone who knew his father and could provide any insight into his history.
Through that process, he learned that his father's close relationships with many celebrities, including the artist Man Ray, who is a surrealist artist, would figure prominently in his theory.
According to Steve, in the mid -1940s, Dr. George Hodel had become known as a reliable and discreet provider of abortions, whose client list included Elizabeth Short.
Meaning he had even more blackmail on people.
Exactly. In his interviews, Steve claims to have spoken with at least eight people who, quote, asserted that they knew firsthand that Hodel had some kind of relationship with Short.
At least eight people have said that.
That's a lot of people.
Yeah. Based on, and that artist Man Ray, he does a painting, a couple of his paintings are very reminiscent of the crime scene.
Based on all the pieces he uncovered while writing his book, Steve Hodel concluded that that his father coaxed Elizabeth Short to a party at his house where she was subjected to sexual assault, torture, and eventually murdered.
He offers a large amount of circumstantial evidence to support this claim.
And again, like I said, circumstantial evidence is good evidence.
Including the fact that Short's body was found to be positioned in a way that, like I said, recalled two of Man Ray's more famous works of art.
which dr uh george hodell or yeah dr george hodell were was very interested in yeah now you can also he was like very into like surrealist dream shit clearly you can hear it when he says it was all a dream and i was exploring the dream of the universe and blah blah like he's very into that shit so that does figure prominently despite the circumstantial nature of the evidence steve wasn't alone in his suspicions either following hodell's acquittal for assaulting his daughter her, LAPD detectives started looking closer at him as a suspect in the Elizabeth Short case.
Oh, shit. So, during that time, they were like, whoa, whoa.
What about this guy?
Wait a second. The other officers outside of Steve Hodel.
This included Dr. Hodel being followed by investigators for several weeks and having his phones tapped for a period of time.
Which, when you hear about the phone tapping of it all, I'm like, how did you not continue going into this?
Like, how did you not even build more against him?
because i think people got passed off yeah during this period george hodel had been heard on more than one occasion to vaguely allude to his participation in elizabeth short's murder in one phone conversation on the first day of being tapped george tells a friend suppose and i did kill the black dahlia they can't prove it now because my secretary is dead coincidence who says that not me and ultimately the investigation into george hodell went nowhere and was ended when he moved to hawaii in 1950 but let me tell you a little more about that why that's insane yeah so on the very first day after he
said that supposing i killed the black dahlia they can't prove it now because my my secretary's dead and it's also like why do those two things correlate to each other exactly on that same those first few days he said that they also got the a statement of they got that statement they got him bragging about paying off law enforcement wow uh having officers demoted that's good who were peeking too quick and too much into his shit and he taught like anybody who was like looking further into his like the case against you know that his daughter had against him anybody who was on that that he was getting
demoted paying off people to get like to turn on the stand which they have proof of which is how he He was ultimately acquitted.
Yeah. And his physician friends were also part of all this, like, these conversations.
Apparently, so there was a Lieutenant Jemisin who was working Hodel's case, and one of his physician friends that he talked to, this Lieutenant Jemisin, he was quoted in a report as saying to this lieutenant, someday I'm going to fix Tamar. I'm going to cut a chunk out of her calf of her leg and fry it and eat it in front of her eyes and then puke it up in front of her face um what those are his friends physician friends saying that about his daughter who he is accused and most definitely assaulted yeah oh just of note there is a large portion of flesh removed violently from elizabeth short's
thigh thigh by the way and her right breast was sawed off so hearing some of his friends say i would cut a piece of her calf out and fry it and eat it in front of her is pretty noteworthy when you look that there are pieces of elizabeth short's flesh that have been very obviously and very intentionally removed from her body in fatty parts of her body as well yeah her thigh and and one whole breast. Wow.
Like you're telling me that's coincidence?
We just happen to have a guy that's saying he's going to do that?
I think that's coincidence number four now.
Wow. Holy shit. Yeah.
In February, when they were tapping his phone, there was one day where they hear George Hodel speaking of his secretary, Ruth Spalding, who he was speaking of before.
My secretary's dead.
And he said she died.
She died under suspicious overdose in 1945.
45. And this time he's saying, quote, they thought there was something fishy.
Anyways, now they may have figured it out.
Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary.
So he literally just said it.
Killed her, maybe I did.
Like, what do you, you have it.
Of course I killed them.
You literally have it.
And if he had any, and apparently if he had any relationship with Elizabeth Short, that secretary would have known about it.
Of course she would have. Obviously.
She organized all the shit.
According to Steve Hodel, the LAPD at the time acknowledged that they suspected and investigated Hodel of intentionally overdosing his secretary with sexanol, which is a barbiturate and a sedative.
They said they looked into him.
They thought he did it.
They investigated it at the time.
There is a lot on these tapes, and I urge you to check them out because, holy shit, he was a shady dude.
And he was just, it's literally proven that he was paying law enforcement officers off.
He was talking about it.
And oftentimes he would talk in German to his friends saying these things.
Yeah. It's insane. The transcripts of these tapes are bonkers.
They're bananas. You almost wonder.
I don't know how we just fluffed it away and we're like, ah, I don't know.
Maybe he's a suspect.
What? You almost wonder if he did know that they had wiretapped him.
Oh, he absolutely did at one point.
And he was like fucking with them.
He absolutely did at one point.
It's insane. insane now in the early 2000s steve hodell presented all his materials to the los angeles district attorney they reviewed the material and ultimately decided not to pursue the case for why mistake mistake in my opinion you got big mistake fuck you guys i think it's such a big mistake they didn't like dude he's dead yeah the least you could do just look into it man look into it and see if it's done all the fucking leg work he might as well give it a shot when it's like like you're not getting any more money from this guy he's dead yeah fucking convict him yeah convict him he can't
hurt you anymore let's let's go and also the people that were at that time being paid off by him and all that shit that's the older lapd this is supposed to be a new crop of people that are supposed to be going through this prove that you're not those people and it's like look into it man there's enough here he absolutely in my opinion he is absolutely without Without a doubt, the killer.
Yes. If you look at the transcripts of these tapes, there's also a time where they caught a woman screaming on the tape.
And then they hear George Hodel talking to another person on the tape saying, leave no trace.
That's good. And a woman is screaming.
And they didn't go check that out.
And even Steve Hodel is like, I don't understand how nobody listening to those at the time, they were tapping him like live.
Why nobody made the five -minute trip from the department to go check on what was happening?
Because he was like, at the very least, there was felonious assault of a woman happening.
Clearly. And they didn't do anything.
So that, to me, tells me everything.
It's like, you didn't want to intervene on that?
What the fuck were you going to intervene on?
Nothing if it cost them money.
It's crazy. I very much encourage you to look into that whole part of it.
Because it's wild. Imagine coming to that realization and imagine what his fucking childhood was.
Exactly. Like, my God.
And it must be frustrating.
training but nobody's fucking listening to you yeah now since elizabeth short's body was found in that vacant lot in 1947 her murder has fascinated and i'm one of those people fascinated the public and generated no small amount of myths legends lore everything associated with it um by this point it's entirely likely what's known about the victim in the case is a lot of legend in fact like we've given you all the facts we can but a lot of things you'll hear we were talking about about how like, you know, she went to Hollywood to become a star.
Like that's, that was true.
It's a very small piece of it.
In a small, yeah. It's like she had a lot more that she wanted to accomplish out there, like getting her life together and like starting over, being healthy, being able to breathe, like meeting someone.
She had all kinds of aspirations.
So it's like a lot of this became, you know, and there's things you'll hear that you can easily debunk.
Yeah. On one hand, the notoriety of the case, you know, It's surprising because there was very little evidence that they had.
And it's not like Elizabeth Short was, like, a famous actress at the time.
She was, you know, a civilian walking around trying to get a job.
But when you look at how she was found, what she endured, and the mystery surrounding her, it's easier to understand why this has become such a fascination for everybody.
And the pool of suspects.
That pool of suspects.
And just, like, that crime scene, there's no way this wasn't going to fascinate people.
Going back to the Man Ray of it all, like, you guys got to look at some of those photos.
It's interesting, to say the least. To even just, like, don't look at the crime scene photos if you don't want to, but even just to hear them described, the way that her body was positioned off -center.
Yeah. Like, go look at Man Ray's art.
Yeah, just go look at it.
And this also is, like, the intersection between Hollywood and murder, which is something that always is gonna get everybody's attention it's just always it's a fascinating place it's a dark place it's a scary place it's a beautiful place it's a shimmery place you know it's like all it's layered it is so layered um since her death you know elizabeth short has become a symbol for anyone you know hoping to moralize in one direction or the other Because a lot is placed on, you know, how many boyfriends she had and what she was doing with her life.
It doesn't matter. Whatever the facts, it seems unlikely that anyone's going to be really satisfied with an ending to this case.
Because people have so many different thoughts and theories.
But I think people, I almost think it's like the Jack the Ripper case where you don't even know anymore if people want it solved.
That are not like part of the case.
You know what I mean?
That they just want to keep talking about it and keep theorizing.
A former LA Times reporter, Larry Harnish, who we mentioned earlier, said, people don't want the record set straight.
People want this grab bag of noir tropes.
Yeah. Which is not great.
Honestly, you said it perfectly.
It's a bunch of noir tropes.
A grab bag of noir tropes.
Yeah. And when you really look at the reality of the case, and this is just our opinion that I think Steve Hodel is on to something here.
Absolutely. absolutely.
I think he's a very interesting person to listen to.
And a trusted source.
A trusted source. You know, somebody who has a long history of not being a dickhead.
Yeah. That I can tell.
I think it's an interesting one.
And I think it can be solved.
I really do. I think it can.
And I think we just need to keep pushing for it.
You never know. Like we said, a cold case is never cold.
It's never cold. It's never cold.
It's just gets a little chilly and And we just got to give it a blanket.
So I think we can do it.
Steve, let's go. Steve's like, I've tried.
Steve's like, but I've done everything I can.
He's like, I literally went to everybody I could.
Steve, I don't know.
I want to help you.
Just got to re -approach when there's new people.
Exactly. We just got to reignite it, reinvigorate it.
Keep it in people's ears.
Keep talking about it.
Keep bringing new things forward. And eventually it's going to happen.
I know it. So that is the case of the Black Dahlia, the murder of Elizabeth Short.
It's a crazy one. It is.
And I'm glad we revisited it.
yes same i wanted to give it a little more you definitely give it space more and time and attention and yeah some more details different things yeah for sure very very interesting case i think we could probably revisit it again in even like five more years absolutely more and thanks to dave for doing such a good job with this one too cuz dave is one of the smartest people i know he is he's lovely you guys should all have a friend like dave you should so we hope that you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird i honey honey we don't gotta say it where they don't fill your own cup bring it
full circle let's talk Thank you.
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