When Dorothy French brought Elizabeth Short home in early December, she never expected her to stake a claim to the family’s sofa. Dorothy had simply meant to offer a safer alternative to a seat in the Aztec all-night movie theater—a place to rest for a night or two. No more than that.
But Betty stayed.
She took advantage of the Frenches’ hospitality. They were too kind to put her out, but the tension in the home was growing. Betty (she used Beth and Betty interchangeably) must have felt it.
Elizabeth Short
There’s no record of how they spent Christmas. It would have been the perfect time for Betty to leave San Diego, return to Hollywood—where she had connections, where people at least knew her. But she remained, a guest among strangers. The question is why.
Was she waiting for money? A ride? A man?
Some accounts reduce her stay in San Diego to cliché: drifting, partying, mysterious. It was none of those things. It was stasis. A kind of limbo.
She spent her days writing letters—many of which she never mailed.
One of the most poignant was addressed to Gordon Fickling, dated December 13. She had lived with Fickling—a Navy lieutenant and flier—months earlier in Long Beach. Gordon Fickling.
She wrote:
“I do hope you find a nice girl to kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve. It would have been wonderful if we belonged to each other now. I’ll never regret coming west to see you. You didn’t take me in your arms and keep me there. However, it was nice as long as it lasted.”
The unsent letter offers a glimpse into her state of mind. It is wistful—a quiet longing for something stable. A safe harbor. And the realization that safety, when it appears at all, is always temporary.
The Frenches’ home had become a kind of refuge. Temporary, but real.
Then, something strange happened.
Red Manley
On January 7, two men and a girl came to the door. They knocked, waited a few minutes, and then ran to a car parked outside.
Betty peeked through the window but refused to answer. She was visibly terrified. When Dorothy asked her about it, Betty was evasive—so much so that Dorothy eventually gave up trying to get answers.
Shortly after, Betty wired Red and asked him to come get her. She was ready to leave San Diego.
He responded the next day:
“Wait and I’ll be down for you.”
NEXT TIME: Elizabeth Short’s life is measured in days.
Archival Note: Little contemporaneous documentation exists regarding Elizabeth Short’s daily life during her stay with the French family in Pacific Beach. Beyond later statements attributed to Dorothy French, and the surviving unsent correspondence, no police reports, diaries, or third-party accounts place Short at any specific location in San Diego between December 8, 1946, and her departure in early January 1947.
Elizabeth Short stepped off the bus in San Diego in early December 1946—alone, broke, and fading into the shadows of the chilly evening.
She walked a few blocks to the Aztec, a 24-hour movie theater. The price of a ticket gave her a quiet and warm place to rest. She dozed off, only to be awakened by the cashier, a woman about her age, Dorothy French.
Elvera & Dorothy French
Dorothy could tell the woman, who introduced herself as Betty Short, was at loose ends. She felt sorry for her, and she knew that a woman sleeping alone in the theater was easy prey. Dorothy invited Betty to come with her to Pacific Beach, where she lived with her mother, Elvera, and her teenage brother, Cory. Betty was welcome to spend the night and get a fresh start the next day.
Nearly two weeks had passed since her arrival on December 8. As the days crawled toward Christmas, the Frenches began to regret their kindness. Like many post-war families, they struggled to make ends meet. Betty hadn’t contributed a cent to the household, and the family was tired of tip-toeing around the sofa as she slept.
She showed no interest in finding a job and spent much of her time writing letters. She had one visitor, a man she introduced only as Red. She told the Frenches he was an airline employee in San Diego who lived in Huntington Park, but stayed at a nearby motel.
The sofa in the Frenches’ modest home was a far cry from the glamorous Hollywood backdrop Betty spoke of, but it provided a measure of stability. According to Elvera, Betty was polite but withdrawn. She offered few details about her past and rarely ventured out during the day. She claimed to have worked at a naval hospital but made no effort to find another job. Over time, Elvera grew uneasy. She had a “premonition” that something was wrong. She described Betty’s presence as moody and unsettled.
She was more shadow than guest.
Dorothy said, “Betty seemed constantly in fear of something. Whenever someone came to the door, she would act frightened.”
Despite the undercurrent of discomfort, the family allowed her to stay through the holidays.
NEXT TIME: Elizabeth Short leaves San Diego.
Archival Note: Details of Elizabeth Short’s (Black Dahlia) stay with the French family in Pacific Beach are based primarily on contemporaneous police interviews and subsequent press reports. Key accounts include statements attributed to Dorothy and Elvera French following Short’s disappearance and murder.
For more than forty years, Agness “Aggie” Underwood covered the crimes that terrified—and fascinated—Los Angeles. Murderers, mobsters, and corrupt officials all crossed her path. But the moment that set her career in motion wasn’t a gunshot or a headline. It was a pair of silk stockings she couldn’t afford.
In 1926, money was tight. Aggie and her husband, Harry, had a daughter, Evelyn, and a son, George. Her younger sister Leona lived with them and helped with expenses. Still, Aggie wore Leona’s hand-me-down silk stockings. One day, she asked Harry for money to buy a new pair. He said no. Aggie told him that if he wouldn’t give her money for stockings, she’d earn it herself.
She was bluffing. She hadn’t worked outside the home since 1920.
Harry, Aggie, Evelyn, George
The next day, out of nowhere, her best friend Evelyn offered her a temporary switchboard job at the Daily Record. Aggie grabbed it. The stockings would be hers.
She described her first impression of the newsroom:
“I looked out on a weird wonderland… Shirt-sleeved men attacked beaten-up typewriters, which snarled and balked. Sheets of paper snowed on a central point called the city desk, whatever that meant. Men gyrated through the crazy quilt of splintered desks and tables. It was a jumble.”
The job was supposed to be temporary. But Gertrude Price, the women’s editor (writing as Cynthia Grey), saw something in Aggie and became her mentor. Aggie helped with the annual Cynthia Grey Christmas baskets, and Gertrude encouraged her to learn the business.
Christmas baskets
Aggie loved the chaos of the newsroom, and she loved being close to a breaking story. In December 1927, the city was horrified by the murder of twelve-year-old Marian Parker by William Edward Hickman, who called himself “The Fox.”
When news of Hickman’s capture in Oregon broke, Aggie couldn’t contain herself:
“As the bulletins pumped in and the city-side worked furiously at localizing, I couldn’t keep myself in my niche. I committed the unpardonable sin of looking over shoulders of reporters as they wrote. I got underfoot. In what I thought was exasperation, Rod Brink, the city editor, said: ‘All right, if you’re so interested, take this dictation.’
I typed the dictation—part of the main running story.
I was sunk.
I wanted to be a reporter.”
William Edward Hickman [Photo courtesy of LAPL]
She began writing human interest stories, covering fashion and women’s clubs. In May 1931, her first major break came when Charles H. Crawford (a.k.a. the Grey Fox) and reporter Herbert F. Spencer were shot and killed.
Crawford was a former saloon keeper turned vice king. Spencer had worked with a political crusading weekly, the Critic of Critics. They were both involved in the shadowy network known as “The Combination”—a marriage of City Hall and organized crime.
After the murders, David H. Clark, a former deputy DA and candidate for judge, surrendered. But no one had interviewed Clark’s parents. Aggie called every Clark in the phonebook until she found them in Highland Park.
She got the interview. The result: a front-page, above-the-fold story titled Mrs. Clark Says Son is Innocent. Her first double-column byline.
Later, she scored another exclusive with Spencer’s widow. Aggie admitted she was inexperienced—and that honesty earned her the story.
Clark was acquitted. But he drifted. In 1953, he killed a friend’s wife in a drunken fight and died in Chino prison in 1954.
Aggie had found her niche—finding the doors no one else knocked on.
In 1935, she joined the Evening Herald and Express, owned by William Randolph Hearst. She stayed with Hearst the rest of her career.
By 1936, Aggie had a reputation as a reporter who could crack a case. During the Samuel Whittaker case, she interviewed the grieving husband, a retired organist, after his wife Ethel was killed during an apparent hotel robbery.
She staged a dramatic photo of Whittaker pointing his cane at the alleged killer, James Fagan Culver. But as she posed the shot, she noticed something odd: Whittaker winked at Culver.
Culver & Whittaker
Was it a tic? No. She waited. Nothing. She discreetly pulled Detective Thad Brown aside:
“Thad, ask that kid why Whittaker winked at him. Don’t let the kid wriggle out of it. Whittaker did wink at him. There’s no mistake about it.”
Brown humored her. Culver cracked. He confessed: Whittaker had staged the robbery, armed Culver with a .38, and planned to kill his wife himself. He did—then turned his gun on Culver. Culver escaped, wounded.
Whittaker was convicted and given life for his wife’s murder. On his way to San Quentin, he said:
“I hope God may strike me dead before I get to my cell if I am guilty of this horrible crime.”
He dropped dead of a heart attack.
Aggie on Norton, January 15, 1947.
In January 1947, Aggie began reporting on the body of an unknown woman found bisected in Leimert Park. She would become known as the Black Dahlia.
Many claim to have coined the name. Aggie said she got it from LAPD Lt. Ray Giese:
“This is something you might like, Agness. I’ve found out they called her the ‘Black Dahlia’ around that drugstore where she hung out down in Long Beach.”
Like it? She LOVED it.
The Jane Doe was soon identified as 22-year-old Elizabeth Short of Medford, MA. Aggie interviewed the first serious suspect, Robert “Red” Manley. Then she was pulled from the case.
She brought in her embroidery hoop while she cooled her heels in the office. Snickers followed. One reporter said:
“What do you think of that? Here’s the best reporter on the Herald, on the biggest day of one of the best stories in years—sitting in the office doing fancy work!”
She was reassigned, then yanked again. And then—she was promoted to city editor.
Dahlia conspiracy theorists say Aggie was close to solving the case. Some believe she was silenced. But promoting her to city editor—the boss of all the Dahlia reporters—was a strange way to shut her up.
Still… what if she was onto something?
When asked later if she knew who killed Elizabeth Short, she said yes—but never named him.
Mercy? Resignation? Maybe both.
Aggie understood something this city still struggles with: some crimes don’t end in arrests. They end in silence.
She covered L.A.’s most deranged crimes. As city editor, she won dozens of awards and the respect of her newsroom. On her 10th anniversary, her crew gave her a giant novelty baseball bat—like the one she kept on her desk to scare off pesky Hollywood types. It read:
“To Aggie, Keep Swinging.”
Aggie keeps swinging. Photo courtesy of LAPL.
Reporter Will Fowler said in his autobiography:
“The last thing I remember Aggie saying to her friends who came to celebrate at her retirement party was: ‘Please don’t forget me.’”
She had a bat on her desk and a city full of secrets.
The holidays aren’t joyful for everyone. Family gatherings, liquor, and year-long grudges can combust over anything—from the TV remote to the last slice of pie. Holiday homicides often boil down to too much booze and too much togetherness.
For the Thorpes, the trigger wasn’t a turkey leg or a slice of pie—it was the uninvited arrival of an ex-husband.
On Thanksgiving evening, November 27, 1952, Seal Beach officers rolled to 131 6th Street after a call from Frances Conant Thorpe. She told police that her ex-husband, Al McNutt, had stopped by to offer holiday greetings to her and her current husband of eight months, Herman. Frances and Herman had been drinking and arguing all day. McNutt’s appearance pushed things over the edge. A struggle followed, and Herman wound up dead.
Frances offered three incompatible versions of the shooting. First, she told Officer William Dowdy that Herman had committed suicide. Then, she told Deputy Coroner Walter Fox that she shot him twice during a scuffle. Finally, she told District Attorney Investigator M.D. Williams that Herman had tried to shoot her; she fell, hit her head on a case of root beer, blacked out for hours, and awoke to find him dead on the bedroom floor.
The facts shredded all three stories.
Herman’s autopsy revealed nothing consistent with suicide. The position of the weapon beneath his body and the trajectory of the fatal chest wound made self-infliction impossible. There was no gunshot residue on his hands and no powder burns on his skin. But there were traces of gunpowder on Frances’ bathrobe and on her left hand.
Investigator Williams noted that Frances’ attitude was evasive, and her stories “didn’t hold together.”
Dr. Raymond Brandt’s autopsy established Herman’s time of death as 1:30 p.m.—a full hour earlier than Frances claimed. Doctors dismissed her blackout story outright. One said it would be “medically impossible to be blacked out so long, even if she was intoxicated.”
The jury rejected her stories, too. After six hours and twenty-eight minutes of deliberation, they found Frances guilty of manslaughter. She was sentenced to up to ten years in prison.
Thanksgiving in Seal Beach didn’t end with dessert—it ended with a revolver, a bad lie, and a dead husband.
In the grip of an irresistible impulse, Delora saw a girl laid out like a doll, arms crossed, a green necktie cinched tight. The girl in the vision, six-year-old Donna Isbell, slept in the next room. Her eight-year-old brother Roy Jr., was asleep nearby. Their parents, Roy Sr., a petty officer at Los Alamitos Naval Station, and Garnett, who worked nights at Douglas Aircraft, weren’t home.
Unable to find a green necktie, Delora took one of Mr. Isbell’s black socks. That would have to do. She tore the sheet from Donna’s bed, stuffed a corner into the girl’s mouth, then wound the sock around her neck and pulled.
Donna didn’t cry out. She lifted her arms once, then went still.
Delora waited, then pulled again.
Roy, asleep just feet away, didn’t stir.
Delora obeyed the impulse that had tormented her for a long time. Maybe now it would end.
She sat on the living room sofa and lit a cigarette. The smoke steadied her for a moment, then the fear crept in—cold and absolute. She couldn’t explain what she had done—not even to herself.
She walked barefoot to the house next door and knocked. No answer. A few doors down, she found Dr. Sidney G. Willner. “Something’s wrong… at the house. Come with me,” she said. Then, almost to herself: “I must have done it. There was no one else there.”
They walked in silence. Dr. Willner wondered what she meant. Even if she had told him, nothing could have prepared him for what he found.
Dr. Willner called the Sheriff’s Department.
Deputies took Delora to the nearest substation for questioning. Because Delora was a teenage girl, the department brought in Detective Sergeant Lena Barner to assist Captain J.M. Burns with the questioning.
As investigators questioned the high school sophomore, they noticed her emotional distance. Sergeant Barner said when she asked Delora why she did it, “She just sat there and stared.”
The only times she showed emotion were when she saw Donna’s body at the scene and when Roy and Garnett Isbell entered the substation. Roy and Garnett were devastated.
Delora babysat Donna and Roy, Jr. several times before the murder, and she and the children got along well. The family had no reason to fear her.
As Donna’s parents tried to process their grief, Delora answered investigators’ questions.
She said quietly, “I often felt like strangling my brothers and sisters.”
She harbored violent impulses toward her siblings for a long time. Her feelings, coupled with her constant fights with her mother, were the reasons she was allowed to move from Colorado to Southern California two years earlier.
Women and girls rarely commit murder—especially in 1951. The story made headlines across the country. It was horrifying. And strange.
Was it a movie? A psychotic break? Something older and darker inside her? Could someone commit such a brutal act… and not be evil?
NEXT TIME: Wrapping up Delora’s story.
Photographs courtesy USC Digital Library. Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection
In Fort Lupton, Colorado, a fight with your mother could end in grounding. For Delora Campbell, it ended in something far darker. Life in post-war Fort Lupton revolved around church socials, 4-H clubs, and county fairs. Residents followed high school football with a passion, and the Fort Lupton Blue Devils were a source of pride. When the Blue Devils partied under the watchful eyes of adults, they danced to Patti Page’s soulful rendition of The Tennessee Waltz, or did a lively country swing to Hank Williams’ Lovesick Blues.
In the 1950s, no matter where she lived, girls had to adhere to a strict code of behavior. Delora didn’t just test boundaries — she unsettled people. According to her parents, Clem and Francis, they sometimes feared she might harm her siblings. Their fear went beyond the usual sibling squabbles — it sounded like a warning.
Was the pressure to conform to community standards too much for Delora? Or maybe it was one fight too many with her mother, or another battle with her younger brother, Dickie. Maybe she feared she would act on an impulse to harm a family member. Whatever her reasons, at fourteen she ran away from home for the first time.
The court intervened, and a juvenile judge placed her on probation.
Delora’s behavior alarmed everyone — from her parents to school authorities and local pastors. Even her peers may have found her behavior unsettling. One of the biggest fears for a girl Delora’s age was getting a reputation. No worse fate could befall her.
In postwar America, the specter of juvenile delinquency haunted dinner tables from coast to coast. It wasn’t the commie down the street that frightened people; it was their own kid — sulking in the next room, listening to Hank Williams, and thinking dark thoughts.
Historically, when teenage boys acted out, their activities were met with a nod and a wink — the old “boys will be boys” trope. If they committed a serious crime, they might be labeled thugs or delinquents, and could end up in juvenile hall.
Girls faced a different kind of judgment. If they failed to measure up, they weren’t rebellious; they were hysterical, or morally compromised. Moral panic, a genuine fear in the 1950s, punished girls differently. Did Delora worry she might face serious punishment as had other girls who stepped outside expected norms? A girl who rebelled might not go to jail, but to a mental institution — until her hormones, doctors hoped, burned out the madness. Such a girl could count herself lucky if she was released without lasting damage from electroconvulsive therapy, heavy sedation, or ice baths. The belief that emotional instability was baked into the female brain dated back millennia. As one modern paper put it: “Hysteria is undoubtedly the first mental disorder attributable to women…”
Whatever was going on in Delora’s life, something caused her to run again. Was she concerned that she would harm herself or someone else? This time, she vanished for three weeks. Not knowing what else to do, her family sent her to live with her aunt and uncle in Long Beach, California. They may have wanted to spare her local infamy and give her a fresh start — or simply chose to quiet wagging small-town tongues.
The whispers in a small town can kill you.
On the surface, Delora appeared to thrive in her new environment. But was she genuinely happy, or just adapting to survive? On September 1, 1950, the Long Beach Press-Telegram listed her among a group of young people who attended a barbecue dinner where they played games and square danced.
Delora wrote home to tell her parents how much she enjoyed living in Long Beach and going to Woodrow Wilson High School. Francis was surprised — her daughter had never liked school in Fort Lupton.
Delora may have received an allowance, but sometimes when a girl needed extra cash, she took a job babysitting. For several weeks at the end of 1951, she babysat for six-year-old Donna Isbell and her eight-year-old brother, Roy.
On December 29, 1951, Delora walked a few blocks from her aunt and uncle’s home to the Isbell’s to sit with the kids. After the children went to bed, she stretched out on the sofa to watch television. The flickering light filled the room as she watched the 1947 film Repeat Performance.
The movie told the story of a Broadway actress who murders her husband on New Year’s Eve, 1946. As she’s leaving the crime scene, she wishes she could turn back the clock and do the year over — and suddenly finds herself transported to New Year’s Day, 1946.
Delora watched the film to its end, a little after 11 p.m. The house was still.; Donna and Roy were asleep. For a moment, Delora sat and reflected on the film she had watched.
Then the strangest thing happened. She had a vision in which she saw herself committing murder. The vision wasn’t terrifying — it was familiar. She had often felt like choking the life out of her siblings when she lived with her family in Fort Lupton, but she had resisted.
On this night, something inside her felt different—out of her control. She felt the tug of an irresistible impulse guide her as she calmly walked toward six-year-old Donna, sleeping snug in her bed. But first, she needed a necktie.
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, THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK (1928), starring Helene Costello, Wheeler Oakman, and Eugene Pallette.
This is the first feature film with all synchronous dialogue.
TCM says:
When bootleggers Jackson and Dickson, who have been hiding out in a small upstate New York town, learn that they finally can return to New York, they try to convince Eddie Morgan and his friend, a local barber named Gene, to come with them. With a promise from Jackson and Dickson that they will help the young men establish a barbershop in the city, Eddie asks his mother, who owns the town’s Morgan Hotel, to loan them $5,000 of her savings. Eddie and Gene set up the barbershop in New York but soon learn that it is merely a front for a speakeasy.
One thing I love about researching true crime is how a story can change direction. Just when I think I have someone figured out, they do something that seems out of character, and it wipes the smug expression off my face. That happened with Olney Le Blanc.
Olney’s courage impressed me when I discovered his story in newspaper coverage from 1935. He saved his three-year-old son, Bernard, from a man who killed the boy’s puppy and likely had something awful planned for the child.
Curious about where Olney’s life would take him, I continued to search. He appeared in minor news stories about his career as a dancer, and as a teacher. By 1940, he was the recreation leader at McKinley Home for Boys in Van Nuys; a job for which he was well-suited. He lived at the home without his wife or son. Because I could not find documentation, I believe they may have separated or divorced.
I expected Olney to continue his career as a dance teacher. Maybe I’d find he and Annette had divorced. The truth caught me off-guard.
Olney was a killer.
On August 29, 1942, a call summoned Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies to the Carmelitos housing project, where someone had stabbed a woman. They arrived at the Carmelitos Housing Project, at the residence of June Dyer, 22-year-old mother of three.
Mildred Davis, left, and Muriel Robbins, right, of the tenant selection staff of the County Housing Authority, look over the Carmelitos low-rent housing project, located in North Long Beach. The project was the first of its kind opened in Southern California. Photo dated: October 23, 1940, courtesy of LAPL.
Ten blocks away from the scene of the murder, police found a man unconscious in a car outside a school. Someone also stabbed him. One officer made a tourniquet from the leather thong of his nightstick and stopped blood spurting from a gashed arm. They identified him as Olney Le Blanc, and booked him into the police hospital ward on suspicion of murder.
In one of his pockets they found a letter, written by June.
Dear Donald: This is a written confession of an unforgivable error I made—not in the doing, but because I kept the truth from you. Dan is not your son. You know his father. Hold it not against Danny and love him as you always have if you can.
Donald, I have deceived you many times since the beginning, even telling you I loved you. I lied.
I could never find real happiness with a lie in my heart. Mr. Leblanc has been cheated of a glorified happiness because of me. I’m doing to try to make him happy, as I know he can make me happy and be as grand a father to the boys as anyone in the world. We will work together, something you and I could never get started.
Your wife, June
Why did Olney have June’s letter in his possession?
Working for hours, Sheriff’s deputies Ed Carroll, Emmett Love and H. K. MacVine pieced together the events leading up to the murder.
A witness, 16-year-old Walter Jensen, said he saw June standing beside a car outside of her home, talking to four friends. Another car drove up, its driver called to her, and she left to talk to him.
Walter said, “They seemed to be arguing. Then he grabbed her and threw her to the ground. Walter ran to June’s aid, but the man knocked him down. Her friends carried June into her house. Her husband, Don, arrived home in time to see June die.
The U.S. was at war, and hundreds of thousands of people moved to Los Angeles for war work at shipyards and factories. June, her husband Donald, and Olney worked at Vultee, a defense plant. June and Olney worked a swing shift, and they got to know each other. When she found out he was a woodworker, she asked if he would give her instruction. Olney agreed.
After her death, newspapers suggested June and Olney were having an affair, and called the case California’s first swing-shift murder. Staggered working hours sometimes made it difficult for spouses not to stray.
Donald took umbrage with newspapers that suggested June had broken her marriage vows. He said Olney became obsessed with June. In fact, six weeks before the murder, Olney kidnapped June, drove her to the Mojave Desert, stabbed her in the side and forced her to write a letter to Don, confessing infidelity.
Sheriff’s records proved the truth of Don’s statement. Deputies took Olney into custody and booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon following the kidnapping. June and Don refused to press charges.
At the time of the kidnapping, Olney told officers, “I was so madly in love with her I didn’t know what I was doing.”
The letter found on Olney following his attempted suicide was the letter he had forced June to write.
Olney appeared for his preliminary hearing on September 15th. The judge remanded him to the County Jail without bail, pending trial, on a charge of murder.
As deputies led a shackled Olney from the courtroom, Don lunged at him, screaming, “I hope you die in a thousand hells—you didn’t have the guts to kill yourself, but you could kill June.” A bailiff shoved Don aside before he could get his hands on Olney.
In October, Olney entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The court appointed three alienists to examine Olney, and set trial for November 6 before Superior Judge Charles W. Fricke.
I’ve written about Fricke before. He was a no-nonsense jurist; some even called him a “hanging judge.” Olney was in for a rough ride.
In a surprise move, under an agreement with the D.A.’s office, Olney’s not guilty plea would stand. No witnesses would be called before Judge Fricke, who would use a transcript of the preliminary hearing and to have the court consider it as the evidence in determining Olney’s guilt or innocence, and the punishment if any.
On November 23rd, Judge Fricke found Olney guilty of first-degree murder, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Why did Olney’s life unravel? When I first found his story, it seemed he would lead a happy and productive life. How did he go from saving his son from a kidnapper to murdering June with a German sword?
While combing old newspapers in search of a tale for a Deranged L.A. Crimes post, I found the curious story of Olney Le Blanc.
On January 28, 1935, a picture of him with his son, Bernard, ran in the Los Angeles Times alongside a headline about a suspected kidnapping and arrest.
The day before the article appeared, 3-year-old Bernard Le Blanc was playing with his two-month-old puppy in his backyard. Moments later, a neighbor, John Corbett, saw Bernard walking down the alley hand in hand with a stranger who had a burlap sack thrown over his shoulder.
Alarmed, Corbett dashed over to Olney’s home and told him what he had witnessed. Olney, Corbett, and a group of neighbors rallied. They chased the man, and Olney caught him. A professional dancer, Olney was in prime physical condition and apprehended the stranger with ease. A fistfight broke out after the vendor resisted. The man was no match for a father in defense of his son. The neighbors held him for police. In the sack they found Bernard’s puppy, dead.
The stranger identified himself as 40-year-old Jack Light, a fruit vendor who lived at 401 1/2 North Main Street. He told police he was drinking before he saw Bernard and his puppy. Light insisted he only wanted to take Bernard to a local café for a bottle of milk, and to a store to buy food for the puppy. He claimed Bernard put the dog, still alive, in the burlap sack and denied kicking it to death. He said when Olney knocked him down, he must have fallen on the sack and crushed the dog’s head. Witnesses contradicted Light’s version.
Detectives Brown and Filkas arrested Light for attempted kidnapping.
In February, Jack Light, acting as his own attorney, took the stand on his own behalf. Charged with child stealing, he told Municipal Judge Morgan Gaibreth the same story he had told police. The judge set Light’s bail at $5000.
On March 20, 1935, Judge Fletcher Bowron found Light guilty of child stealing. Light requested probation. Judge Bowron sentenced him to ninety days in the County Jail, ten years’ probation, and fined him $25.
There is no way to know for sure what Light planned to do with Bernard. That he kicked the puppy to death leads me to believe he was going to harm Bernard, too. Olney’s swift action saved his son from an uncertain fate
Olney’s courage impressed me. I wanted to know if he did anything else worthy of newspaper coverage. I found a few stories about Olney and his dance career. He must have been talented to stay employed during the Depression.
By October 1936, Olney taught dance at the Torrance Recreation Department. The Get-Together Club was part of a WPA (Works Progress Administration) effort. He taught classes from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., each weekday.
Olney’s dance partner, Coral King, threw a birthday party for him in August 1939 at the Redwood Ranch, home of Lita Houghton in Van Nuys. The party was formal dress, with a live band. Among those in attendance was Coral’s dance class, the Friday Nighters.
The 1940 Federal Census shows Olney as the recreation leader at the McKinley Home for Boys at 13840 Riverside Drive in Van Nuys (now Sherman Oaks). He stated he was married, but his living alone at the home suggests a separation from his wife.
The McKinley Home (named after President McKinley), housed 150-250 boys. In the early 1960s, the home moved to San Dimas and still operates today. They leveled the Van Nuys location and built a mall in its place.
Other than a possible crack in his marriage, Olney appeared to be doing well.
Curious, I searched for further information.
I was unprepared for what I found.
NEXT TIME: Olney’s life takes a turn to the dark side.
Forty uniformed police officers began a house-to-house search around Norton Avenue, Coliseum Drive and 39th Street, where Elizabeth Short’s body was found. The killer left no evidence at the body dump site, so the police wanted to find the “torture chamber” where Beth was murdered and cut in half.
Detective Lieutenant P. P. Freestone said, “We hope to find someone who saw her during the blank period preceding her death, or who might have heard screams when she was being tortured. The police are in uniform so that housewives won’t refuse to answer their rings.”
The officers found many people willing to talk.
Paul Simone, a painting contractor, told officers he overheard a bitter quarrel between someone he thought was Beth and another woman. The women argued in apartment 501 at 1842 N. Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood, where Beth had lived with several roommates.
Simone said, “It was pretty hard language.” He said the last thing he heard was “Oh, nuts to you,” from the other woman. “Nuts to you” must have been harsh language for women in 1947.
The problem with Simone’s story is he claimed to have heard the altercation on January 11th. Later, they proved there were no credible sightings of Beth from January 9th until the 15th, when Betty Bersinger found her body.
In desperation, police rousted anyone who looked suspicious to them. They arrested one man, only to find out he was distraught because his dog was sick.
Police sought women, too. They launched a “woman hunt” for a pair of brunettes seen with Beth in Hollywood. Newspapers hinted the two women might be lesbians. They described the places the women visited as “Hollywood women’s hangouts.” Nothing came of the brunettes.
Minie Sepulveda, one of the women who falsely confessed to Beth’s murder. Photo courtesy LAPL.
Walter A. Johnson, of 3815 Welland Steen, told officers on Tuesday, January 14, he was burning trash across the street from the vacant lot where they found Beth’s body the next morning. He noticed a light tan or cream four-door sedan, possibly a 1935, and a man standing near it. The man’s behavior piqued Johnson’s curiosity. “He walked a little way up the street, then came back, crossed over and looked into my car, and finally got into his own and drove off.”
Johnson got in his car and followed the mystery man, but lost him.
Police asked why he had not come forward earlier. Johnson said he reported the incident, “but nothing came of it.”
Another witness surfaced. A cab driver, I. A. Jorgenson, told detectives he believed he picked Beth and a man friend at Sixth and Main Street on the night of January 11. He said he was “almost positive” the woman was Beth. Jorgenson said the couple hailed his cab, and they instructed him to take them to a Hollywood motel. The police withheld the motel’s name but told reporters they would question the employees.
None of the tips gleaned from the neighborhood sweep resulted in a solid lead. The police questioned hundreds of people, asking questions like the following:
“Do you know anybody in the neighborhood who is mentally unbalanced?”
“Anybody of whom you were suspicious after reading about the Elizabeth Short murder?”
“Do you know of any medical students?”
“Did you find any strange items in your yard or incinerator?”
Police chemist Ray Pinker worked long hours to bring a solution to the murder. He sought to establish Beth’s blood type after a gray, bloodstained blanket turned up late on January 22.
A bloodstained tarp, 3 by 6 feet, found near Indio, was also being examined in the lab.
Desperate to solve the case, the Los Angeles City Council offered a $10,000 (equivalent to $141,368.00 in current USD) reward; but the city attorney felt it to be inappropriate. City council member Ed Davenport, perhaps naively, said an informer “should be prepared to talk without being paid by the city. Maybe now he will come forward without waiting for any reward to be offered.”
If such an informer existed, he or she has never come forward.
