Less than a month after housewife Betty Bersinger discovered Elizabeth Short’s bisected body in a Leimert Park vacant lot, another horror surfaced. On this day, Hugh C. Shelby, a bulldozer operator, found the nude, brutally beaten body of a woman dumped in a field near the Santa Monica Airport.

The Herald rushed out an extra edition:

“WEREWOLF STRIKES AGAIN! KILLS L.A. WOMAN, WRITES B.D. ON BODY.”

Within hours, LAPD identified the victim as 45-year-old Jeanne French.

She had suffered blows to the head from a blunt instrument. But those weren’t the fatal wounds. Her killer stomped on her chest, crushing ribs and inflicting internal injuries that caused her to die slowly from hemorrhage and shock. Heel prints were left on her body.

Mercifully, investigators believed Jeanne was unconscious after the initial head trauma. She likely never saw her killer reach into her purse for her lipstick—never felt the pressure as he scrawled on her lifeless body in crude, angry letters:

“FUCK YOU, B.D.”
“TEX.”

Detectives immediately looked for links between Jeanne’s murder and Elizabeth Short’s. The initials. The mutilation. The proximity in time. But nothing solid connected them. Just another woman dead in the City of Angels.

The night before her death, Jeanne visited her estranged husband, Frank, at his apartment. They fought. Frank claimed she was drunk, struck him with her purse, then left. Jeanne’s 25-year-old son, David, was questioned. Upon leaving the station, he confronted Frank:

“I’ve told them the truth. If you’re guilty, there’s a God in heaven who will take care of you.”

Frank replied:
“I swear to God; I didn’t kill her.”

Police arrested him. But his alibi held—his landlady saw him at home during the time of the murder, and his shoe prints didn’t match those on Jeanne’s body. He was released.

Witnesses last saw Jeanne at the Pan American Bar on West Washington Place, sitting at the first stool by the door. The bartender noted she was with a small, dark-complexioned man. They left together at closing.

Her stripped-down 1929 Ford roadster was found parked at the Piccadilly Drive-In at Washington Place and Sepulveda. It had been there since at least 3:15 a.m. A night watchman saw a man leave it there. But Jeanne wasn’t found until hours later. Her time of death was estimated at 6 a.m.—what happened in those three missing hours remains unknown.

Police, ever industrious in the way that gets women nowhere, rounded up the usual suspects—“sex degenerates”—and checked Chinese restaurants after the autopsy revealed Jeanne had eaten Chinese food before she died. None of it led anywhere.

The case, dubbed the Red Lipstick Murder, went cold.

Three years later, amid public outrage and a grand jury probe into the mounting pile of unsolved women’s murders, the D.A. assigned two investigators—Frank Jemison and Walter Morgan—to reopen Jeanne’s case. They worked it for eight months. One painter who had done work for the Frenches and had dated Jeanne emerged as a promising suspect. He wore the same shoe size as the killer and had conveniently burned several pairs. But in the end, he too was cleared.

Like Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French faded into the backlog of cold cases.

Their names are part of a long list: Elizabeth Murray, Georgette Bauerdorf, Dorothy Montgomery, Laura Trelstad, Rosenda Mondragon, Lillian Dominguez, Gladys Kern, Louise Springer, Jean Spangler, Mimi Boomhower.

Some were murdered. Others vanished without a trace. They became headlines, case numbers, toe tags.

We remember them here—not as victims, but as women who once lived, with hopes and dreams they had every right to pursue.

Once Beth was identified, investigators raked through the ashes of her life, searching for clues to her killer.

Their search led them to Pacific Beach and the French family, where Beth had overstayed her welcome. It was from them that detectives first heard about a redhead who had dated her a few times.

They knew him only as Red—25 years old, 175 pounds, blue eyes, fair complexion. He drove a tan Studebaker coupe with a “Huntington Park” sticker on the rear window.

This was their first solid lead.

Police, and hordes of reporters, followed each tip they received. It was exhausting and fruitless.

On Sunday, January 19, 1947, Robert “Red” Manley, a salesman for a pipe clamp company, surrendered to police after returning from a sales trip to San Francisco. Until he returned to Los Angeles, he was unaware that police were looking for him.

He willingly submitted to a lie detector test, but the results were “confused.” Manley was so exhausted from the trip and the stress that it made it impossible to get a reliable reading. Captain Donohoe said, “We’ll try again later. He’s tired out now and so are we.”

Manley’s wife, Harriet, met him at the jail before he was booked. Heads together, they spoke quietly. He had a lot of explaining to do, and not just to the police.

Because of her police connections, Evening Herald & Express reporter, Agness Aggie Underwood, scored an exclusive interview with Manley.

Underwood was known to police as a reporter with the instincts of a veteran investigator. She had a reputation for “solving” cases. Police respected and trusted her.

When she entered the interview room, she intuitively knew how to begin. She said to him, “You look as though you’ve been on a drunk.” Manley replied, “This is worse than any drunk I’ve ever been on. I’ll never pick up another dame as long as I live.”

Good news for Harriet, but not enough to convince police. Underwood continued the interview. Manley told her about picking Beth up on the street in San Diego. And then he made the most surprising admission. He said, “I decided to pick her up and make a test for myself and see if I loved my wife or not.”

The test was simple. If he didn’t succumb to the charms of the dark-haired beauty, then his marriage was meant to be. It was a crackpot idea—one that suggests a man already searching for an exit.

At 25, his life was not what he had planned. He was a musician. He played in an Army band and stayed in the U.S. for the duration. He would rather have pursued music, but instead found himself a married salesman with a four-month-old child.

He told Underwood about their uneventful night at a Pacific Beach motel. He described their arrival in downtown Los Angeles on January 9^th. He said Beth asked him to take her to the Greyhound Bus Station so she could check her bags before meeting her sister.  

He asked where she was going to meet her, and without waiting for an answer, he said, “The Biltmore?” She said yes.

It was a lie. Her nearest sister, Virginia, lived with her husband hundreds of miles north in Oakland. It seems likely Beth was eager to rid herself of her traveling companion and hustle a place to spend the night.

Manley waited with her in the lobby of the Biltmore for a long time before he finally said he had to leave. Beth told him she had to wait. He told Underwood, “That is the last time I saw Betty Short. I’ll take the truth serum or anything they want to give me. And, I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles and tell my minister, too, that was the last time I ever saw Betty Short.”

“I did not kill her.”

The LAPD was frustrated in its attempt to send Jane Doe #1’s fingerprints to the FBI in D.C. A massive snowstorm had grounded aircraft, and it would take days for the affected areas to clear.

The Hearst-owned Examiner offered LAPD a workaround. The paper had a Soundphoto, an early facsimile (fax) machine. They had never used it to transmit fingerprints, but felt it could be done. They agreed to send the victim’s fingerprints to the FBI in exchange for exclusives in the case. Knowing the investigation could not formally begin without an identification, LAPD Captain Jack Donohoe agreed to the arrangement.

The FBI identified the prints as belonging to Elizabeth Short, a 22-year-old Massachusetts native. Santa Barbara police arrested her for underage drinking at a local restaurant in 1943 when she worked at the Camp Cooke PX. And there was a mugshot.

By January 17, the hauntingly beautiful mugshot was on the front page of newspapers across the country.

Her mother, Phoebe Short, and three of her sisters, who still lived in Massachusetts, arrived in Los Angeles to attend the inquest. Her sister Virginia, and Virginia’s husband, came from Oakland. It was a grim reunion.

Beth’s father, Cleo, refused to identify his daughter. He wanted nothing to do with her, the family, or the murder.

To spare Phoebe and Beth’s sisters, Virginia’s husband confirmed Beth’s identity at the morgue.

A murder victim, especially a beautiful young woman, dies twice. First at the hands of her killer. Next, in the newspapers.

The Daily News reported that homicide detectives were probing Beth’s “reckless career that ended under a sadist’s knife.” The judgement was unmistakable. Beth’s “reckless career” made her complicit. No one beat, slaughtered, and dumped nice girls like garbage.

Described as popular, Beth and her girlfriends were often seen in Hollywood night spots in the company of servicemen. It wasn’t an explicit condemnation of her lifestyle. It didn’t have to be.  

Round-ups of sex offenders and other shady characters police believed might be responsible for the murder yielded nothing of value. However, they got information that Beth was last seen with a handsome red-headed man. The man had picked her up at the French home in Pacific Beach on January 8^th. He had dated her a few times while she stayed there.. He answered to Bill or Red. No one knew anything more.

To detectives, he may have been the last person to see Beth alive.

They had Beth’s name, and they also had a nickname: “The Black Dahlia.” During the summer of 1946, a movie starring Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, and William Bendix, titled The Blue Dahlia, played around town. She got the nickname from acquaintances in Long Beach. She frequently wore black and sometimes tucked a large flower behind her ear.

Los Angeles has a history of murders named after flowers: Gardenia, Orchid, Red Rose. Now it added Black Dahlia to the deadly bouquet.

For background on Beth, detectives talked to former roommates and others who knew her and might be familiar with her habits.

Lynn Martin, 16 going on 30, and Marjorie Graham, 24, lived with Beth in Hollywood. They may have lived with her, but they knew little about her private life.

Tracking Beth’s movements in post-war Los Angeles presented a unique challenge. The war had ended almost 18 months earlier, but the housing shortage remained critical. If you didn’t have a fixed address, you could stay in a hotel for only 5 days. People were constantly on the move.

The population skewed young and transient. Veterans, mentally broken by their war experiences, drank in the same clubs as Beth and her friends.

The city was more dangerous than they knew. It could have been any of them who ended up dead in a vacant lot. But a monster chose Beth.

NEXT TIME: The red-haired man surrenders.

Welcome! The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat. Tonight’s feature is SUSPENSE (1946), starring Belita, Barry Sullivan, and Bonita Granville.

If you love ice skating, this is the noir for you! Belita participated in the 1936 Olympics. One thing I like about this film is the great views of the late, lamented Pan Pacific Auditorium–an Art Deco masterpiece.

Enjoy the movie.

TCM says:
After leaving New York under suspicious circumstances, Joe Morgan gets a job in Los Angeles with ice skating impresario Frank Leonard. Joe is attracted to beautiful Roberta Elva, the star of the show and Frank’s wife. Although Roberta does not encourage Joe’s interest, he pays close attention to her performance and suggests that she liven up the act by jumping through a hoop of knives. Frank is impressed enough with the idea to offer Joe a position as his assistant. When Frank travels to Chicago to buy another ice rink, he leaves Joe in charge of the business.

Welcome!  The lobby of the Deranged L.A. Crimes theater is open! Grab a bucket of popcorn, some Milk Duds and a Coke and find a seat.  Tonight’s feature is BLONDE FOR A DAY, and stars Hugh Beaumont and Kathryn Adams. Enjoy the movie!

IMDB says:

A newspaper reporter, Tim Rourke (Paul Bryar) keeps writing articles attacking the police department for its failure to solve a chain of murders, and this nearly leads to the reporter’s death. He calls in private-detective Michael Shayne (Hugh Beaumont), and Shayne turns up a blonde and a blackmailer.

https://youtu.be/5dMHRnZBT0Y

Chief County Investigator George Contreras supervised the disinterment of Grace’s decomposing body from her cement covered coffin in the cistern at her Beverly Glen cabin. News of the discovery spread, and soon morbid crowds paralyzed traffic in the Glen as they attempted to catch a glimpse of Thomas.

Dressed in a blue suit and appearing calm, Thomas, unaided, exited a car in front of the cabin. He was accompanied by Deputy D.A. Harold Davis and Investigator Charles Reimer.

“We want to talk this over a little,” Deputy District Attorney Davis told him. Since uncovering Grace’s body, the authorities had a lot of questions for Thomas. As soon as they arrived at the cabin, Thomas settled himself in a comfortable rocking chair, lit a cigar, and spoke.

He told the investigators, and the shorthand reporter talking notes, that his father was a chaplain at the Pennsylvania Penitentiary. Thomas also mentioned that he received his education at the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and at Washington and Jefferson University.

Thomas recalled meeting Grace and courting her, culminating in their Santa Barbara marriage. According to him, on the day of the marriage, Grace told him she was to be the “boss of the family.”

Investigators were skeptical of Thomas’ account. They believed he had been laying plans for his “perfect crime” since the first day of his marriage, and that he had always planned to kill Grace and gain control of Patrick and the Grogan fortune. They revealed that a part of his plan included Thomas choosing a woman for Patrick to marry, killing Patrick, and then marrying the boy’s widow.

At first, Thomas said he could not recall how he had killed Grace. “I don’t know how I killed her,” he said. His pseudo loss of memory was, investigators felt, another calculated move by Thomas. They believed Thomas planned to feign insanity.

Davis wanted to know where Grace was killed. Was it in Thomas’ office or in his car? Or out on a lonely road, or at the cabin?

Prodded by Davis’ questions, Thomas said: “I don’t think we went to the office. How did I get her out of the office? How could I get her out of the office?”

Then he began an eerie mantra: “I don’t know how I killed her, I don’t know how I killed her, I don’t know how I killed her.”

“And you didn’t choke her to death?” Davis asked.

“I don’t think so,” he answered.

“And if you killed her when she was in the car, you didn’t kill her with gas, did you?”

“No sir,” Thomas replied.

“If you killed her with gas, you killed her at the office?”

“Possibly I did.”

“And if you killed her in the car, you choked her to death?”

“Yes.”

Thomas admitted to carrying a .38 caliber automatic pistol in the side pocket of his car on the night of the murder. The weapon was discovered by Investigator Reimer in Thomas’ dresser at the Kingsley Drive townhouse.

“Did you shoot her?” he was asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Was she shot?”

“What was the next thing you remember?”

“When she hit the bottom of the cistern, there,” he pointed toward the cistern. “I think I heard a thud.”

Grace in the morgue.

After hours of sparring with investigators and just as he was about to be taken from the cabin to the Strother & Dayton funeral parlor to view Grace’s remains, Thomas said: “I’m glad she is dead. I am glad she’s dead, because I am free.”

It was 3 a.m. when Deputy D.A. Davis and his associates arrived at the funeral home with Thomas.

Thomas walked right up to Grace’s ravaged body and said: “It doesn’t look like her.”

Then Thomas swayed on his feet and collapsed.

“It was a little bit of a hand.” He mumbled.

Thomas was taken to the front office, where he sat with a vacant stare for several minutes before recovering himself. He wanted to unburden himself.

Thomas said that on the night of the murder, he and Grace stopped at the Plantation Grill, where they argued, then they went to his office where they got a bottle of liquor and got “lit up.” While they were at the office, Thomas picked up a tube of Somnoform, a heavy anesthetic, and concealed it in his pocket.

Grace fell asleep in the car as Thomas drove out to the cabin. When they arrived, Thomas put a mask over her face, administering the Somnoform until she quit breathing.

After giving Grace the drug, Thomas told investigators: “I put cotton in her nose, and then I took that rubber bag off the Somnoform.”

They found the bag from the tube of Somnoform stuffed into Grace’s mouth, which was initially mistaken for a rubber glove. Thomas had used the cotton and the rubber bag to make sure that Grace “wouldn’t start breathing again.”

Before dumping Grace’s body into the cistern, Thomas stole $140 from her purse and relieved her of her jewelry. He gave his assistant, Dorothy Leopold, the diamond ring Grace had been wearing, as well as several items of expensive clothing.

Dorothy knew nothing about the murder and, in fact, she was staunch in her support of Thomas. She told reporters: “Of course, at first I did not believe that the doctor had killed Mrs. Young. But after talking with Mr. Harris (of the Nick Harris Detective Agency), I was satisfied he (Thomas Young) knew more about it than he had related. The fact that she had not communicated with Patrick was pointed out to me by Mr. Harris, and I told him I would do everything I could to find out for him and the officers.”

Police allowed Dorothy to speak with Thomas and she asked him if he knew where Grace was. “Why don’t you tell them?” she said. To which Thomas replied: “I can’t.”

The most revolting part of Thomas’ confession was the glee he took in having Patrick assist him in pouring cement on Grace’s grave. He thought it was a “good joke.”

Of course, the investigators wanted to know what had motivated Thomas to murder Grace. He said he’d killed her because after their fight she had slapped him and broken his glasses. It was enough to activate the murder complex.

“Someone was always imposing on me, beating me, verbally or physically. Yes, I was always the goat,” Thomas said.

NEXT TIME: Thomas Young’s fate.

This entry was posted in the 1920s and tagged Charles Patrick Grogan, Charles Reimer, George Contreras, Grace Hunt Grogan Young, Harold Davis, Nick Harris Detective Agency, Somnoform by Deranged. Bookmark the permalink.