In November 1939, police took into custody several performers and comics at the Follies Theater at 337 S. Main Street. Among them was Betty Rowland, the “Red-headed Ball of Fire” and charged them with exhibiting an indecent show. The defense spent a day in jury selection trying to assemble a “shock proof” panel who could withstand seeing the forty-four photos secretly shot by police photographer George T. George, and handle hearing the “hair curling” transcripts from the show read by undercover Policewoman Cheryl Goodwin. Would the jury of nine women and three men be up to the task?
The halls surrounding the courtroom became a popular hangout for citizens hoping to catch a rare glimpse of a burlesque queen in daylight. The ladies arrived demurely dressed, sans makeup, disappointing the gawkers.
The highlight of the trial came when Officer Jerry J. Uhlick, a husky 200-pounder, stood up at the request of the City Attorney and demonstrated the bumps and grinds he’d witnessed from his seat in the audience.
As the courtroom convulsed in laughter, Uhlick quipped, “Miss Jo Anne Dare performed the dance on the theater stage better than I can!” Although he admitted that he “took a fling at the stage in my younger days.” We assume the fling wasn’t as a dancer.
The defense showed photos of jitterbug dancers and said that moves every bit as suggestive as the bumps and grinds seen on the Follies stage were being performed by young people nightly all over town. They also showed photographs from popular movie magazines showing scantily clad movie stars.
FILM FUN MAGAZINE, 1937
Despite the vigorous defense, Judge Arthur S. Guerin convicted all the defendants. The judge ordered each of them to pay $250 fines as a condition of their two-year probation. During their probation period, they must not engage in immoral shows. The owner, Tom Dalton, paid $3,000.00 in fines.
Betty was a force to be reckoned with during the heyday of burlesque. She had a stage presence that belied her diminutive stature, and she was the highest paid dancer in her field.
Betty Rowland
Betty was only in her teens when she began dancing professionally at Minsky’s in New York. Burlesque houses thrived in NYC during the early 1930s, but by 1935 citizens’ groups were trying to close them, and Mayor LaGuardia had deemed burlesque a “corrupting moral influence”. The city’s licensing commission tried to pull Minsky’s license, but the State Court of Appeals refused to do so without a criminal conviction. In 1937, the mayor and the citizen’s groups finally got the break they’d been waiting for when they discovered a stripper at Minsky’s working without her G-string. That was enough for criminal charges to be filed, and they revoked Abe Minsky’s license. New licensing regulations would allow the burlesque houses to remain in business, if they didn’t employ strippers!
Burlesque gigs in New York dried up. In May 1938, Betty and her troupe opened in Los Angeles at the Follies Theater. It was supposed to be a limited engagement, but Los Angeles audiences loved Betty. She continued to perform at the Follies for most of her long and successful career.
I met Betty a few times several years ago. I found her soft-spoken, charming, and a natural storyteller with a wicked sense of humor. Betty graciously answered my many questions.
Here I am with the wonderful Betty Rowland
I asked her about the dispute over Barbara Stanwyck’s costume in the 1941 film, “BALL OF FIRE.” She chuckled and told me the dispute was a publicity ploy. Stanwyck’s costume is a knock-off of one of Betty’s.
Because I love vintage perfume and cosmetics, I asked her if she had a signature scent. She said she loved Coty’s L’Aimant. L’Aimant is the first fragrance from Francois Coty, launched in 1927. L’Aimant means magnet in French. The composition is elegant, sophisticated, and classic combination of flowers—perfect for her. I sent her a bottle in the hope it would evoke happy memories.
The slow slide to the end for the Follies began after the 1930s, as the theater fell into disrepair. By 1967, it was the last working burlesque house in Los Angeles. That same year Eleanor Chambers, assistant to Mayor Sam Yorty, failed in her bid to get the city’s Cultural Heritage Board to protect the theater and the Burbank Theater down the street at 548 (which was a combo film and live performance house in 1967). We give Eleanor high marks for creativity. She suggested to the board there were historic costumes from the Gilded Age stored inside the building–the building opened in 1904 as the Belasco.
Unfortunately, Eleanor’s best efforts failed. They bulldozed the Follies in 1974.
Joni Mitchell is right:
Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot!
Betty Jane Rowland passed away at 106-years-old on April 3, 2022.
Not everyone celebrates the 4th of July with fireworks and a BBQ.
On Friday, July 4, 1941, two men armed with a sawed-off shotgun entered the California Kitchen cafe at 410 Glendale Boulevard and held staff and patrons at gunpoint while they stole $67.50 from the register and $35 from their victims. As soon as they left, twenty-year-old Carson Citron, a talented cartoonist who sketched visitors to the 1939 New York World’s Fair, called for a pencil, grabbed a paper bag, and drew realistic likenesses of the robbers.
Jerry Towslee, manager of the Kitchen, and all the patrons, attested to the accuracy of Citron’s art work. The police immediately reproduced the sketches for circulation.
Over the next week, the Cartoon Bandits continued their spree of robberies, car thefts and kidnappings stretching from LA to Oakland and back to LA. They carjacked Paul Ashbrook and his date, Katherine Dietz, in Oakland. They drove the couple 80 miles east to Stockton, where they tied them up and left them in a cemetery. Ashbrook told police one of their captors said, “We’ve got to scram out of here now, but we’re going back and get that cartoonist!”
Police had victims of the bandits compare Citron’s sketches to mug shots and they identified the suspects as Edward Walker, a twenty-six-year-old robber paroled from Folsom Prison, and twenty-two-year-old Carl Westover, a San Quentin alum.
Early on the morning of July 10th, the gunmen abandoned a car in a lot at 450 S. Spring Street. They kept the lot attendant, Fred Hunt, at bay while they transferred a suitcase to another vehicle, which they drove off in.
For the next few hours, the bandit pair added new names to their roster of victims. Alvin Marshall lost $40 in a liquor store on Whittier. They took $8 from Ray Eckenroth at a gas station on W. Washington Blvd. Then they pulled into a gas station at 3251 Eagle Rock Blvd., bought gas and soft drinks, then pulled guns on the attendant, O. R. Bates and relieved him of $40. Evidently proud of their newfound fame, they boasted, “We’re the cartoon bandits. You can tell those—Los Angeles policemen we’re back in town and going to be plenty of grease in their hair.”
The bandits headed south.
Later in the day, as San Diego patrolmen Earl Myrick and Thomas Hays cruised in their radio car, they recognized a stolen sedan. They followed the car for four blocks, then drew up alongside it with their revolvers drawn. Westover had a.38 caliber revolver in the pocket of his pants. All the way from Los Angeles to San Diego, he held a sawed-off shotgun in his lap. He said, “But we decided to go to the Grant Hotel garage, so I broke the shotgun down and put it in a handbag in the back of the car.” Then he sneered, “If I could have got my gun, I’d have blown you cops all over the place.”
On July 11th, Detective Lieutenants Claude Thaxter and H. C. Henry drove down to San Diego to take the bandits into custody. Westover, the younger of the two and a former San Diego schoolboy, admitted to Municipal Judge Philip Smith how he and Walker robbed a liquor store.
The bandits also confessed they’d staked out Citron’s home and planned to beat but not shoot him, but there were police cars out front and they changed their minds. That is when they left for San Diego.
Westover claimed responsibility for a $3000 supermarket robbery, but it was quickly determined he was still in prison at the time of the crime. Called to the stand and asked about committing perjury, Westover mused, “Well, I committed so many stick-ups I can’t remember them all, and won’t be able to serve out all my time anyhow!”
In October, the Cartoon Bandits pleaded guilty to one count each of robbery in Judge A. A. Scott’s courtroom. Each of them received a sentence of five years to live in Folsom.
In 1957, Carl Westover, serving his life sentence as an honor worker in the San Quentin prison dairy, escaped. Oceanside policeman Ray Wilkerson captured him as he attempted to break into a car. Westover attacked Wilkerson with a screwdriver and ice pick, fracturing his skull, but two other officers arrived in time to subdue him. A career criminal, it appears Westover may have died in prison in 1998 at age 79.
As for Walker, he, like Westover, began his criminal career as a juvenile. The 1950 Federal Census shows him incarcerated in Folsom. I don’t know what happened to him after that. If anyone has information on Walker, please share.
Elizabeth Short aka The Black Dahlia [Photo courtesy LAPL]
In the days following the discovery of Elizabeth Short’s body, crumpled up confessions given by every sad drunk and deranged publicity seeker littered the local landscape. Most of the confessors were men. But even though none of the women who confessed were guilty, the cops thought maybe a woman had committed the murder. After all, L.A. has its share of female killers.
Louise Peete in court. [Photo: UCLA Digital Archive.]
The Herald ran side-by-side photos of three homicidal women arrested in L.A. Louise Peete (one of only four women ever executed by the State of California) was a serial killer. Police arrested her for murder in the 1920s. Found guilty, she served eighteen years in San Quentin. A few years after her release, she committed another murder for which she paid with her life.
Trunk containing remains of Winnie Ruth Judd’s victims.
Winnie Ruth Judd
Winnie Ruth Judd committed two murders in Arizona. Police arrested her in L.A. when a trunk containing the dismembered remains of Hedvig Samuelson and Anne Le Roi leaked bodily fluids in the baggage claim section of a local train station.
In 1922, Clara Phillips (aka “Tiger Girl”) murdered Alberta Meadows, the woman she suspected was a rival for her husband’s affections. She struck Meadows repeatedly with a hammer, and then, in a fit of adrenalin fueled rage, she rolled a 50 lb. boulder onto the torso of the corpse.
Clara Phillips
The possibility of a woman murdering Short wasn’t far-fetched. The Herald featured a series of columns written by psychologist Alice La Vere. La Vere previously profiled Short’s killer as a young man without a criminal record, but she was open to the killer being a woman. In fact, she abruptly shifted gears from identifying a young man as the slayer to enthusiastically embracing the notion of “… a sinister Lucrezia Borgia — a butcher woman whose crime dwarfs any in the modern crime annals.”
Body of Alberta Meadows — victim of Clara Phillips’ wrath. [Photo courtesy of UCLA]
La Vere was an expert for hire, and if the Herald editors had asked her to write a profile of the killer as a mutant Martian alien, she’d likely have done it. Still, she made a few insightful comments in her column. “Murderers leave behind them a trail of fingerprints, bits of skin and hair. The slayer of ‘The Black Dahlia’ left the most telltale clue of all–-the murder pattern of a degenerate, vicious feminine mind.”
Even more interesting was La Vere’s exhortation to police to look for an older woman. She said, “Police investigators should look for a woman older than ‘The Black Dahlia.’ This woman who either inspired the crime or actually committed the ghastly, unspeakable outrage need not be a woman of great strength. Extreme emotion or high mental tension in men and women give great, superhuman strength.”
One thing I find interesting about La Vere’s profile of a female perpetrator is that she said the woman would be older than Short. In recent years, an older woman became an integral part of a theory about the murder.
It is a theory put forward by Larry Harnisch. Harnisch, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, wrote an article for the paper on the fiftieth anniversary of Short’s death. In the years since, he has done a lot more digging into the case and has unearthed an important connection between the body dump site near 39th and Norton, and two medical doctors. One doctor, Walter Alonzo Bayley, lived in a house just one block south of the place where Betty Bersinger found Elizabeth Short’s body. At the time of the murder, Bayley was estranged from his wife; however, she still occupied the home. Bayley left his wife for his mistress, Alexandra Partyka, also a medical doctor. Partyka emigrated to the U.S. and wasn’t licensed to practice medicine, but she assisted Bayley in his practice.
Following Bayley’s death in January 1948, Partyka and Dr. Bayley’s wife, Ruth, fought over control of his estate. Mrs. Bayley claimed Partyka was blackmailing the late doctor with secrets about his medical practice. Secrets damning enough to ruin him.
There is also a link between Bayley’s family and Short’s. In 1945, Dr. Bayley’s adopted daughter, Barbara Lindgren, was a witness to the marriage of Beth’s sister Virginia Short to Adrian West at a church in Inglewood, California, near Los Angeles.
Larry discussed Dr. Bayley in James Ellroy’s “Feast of Death”. [Note: Be forewarned that there are photos of Elizabeth Short in the morgue.]
A woman could have murdered Elizabeth Short. Could the woman be Alexandra Partyka? The chances are that we’ll never know–or at least not until Larry Harnisch finishes his book on the case.
Every high-profile murder case gets its share of false confessors. The police have no choice but to check them out, no matter how ludicrous the claim is. It is frustrating for investigators to travel down dead-ends, but they never know from where, or from whom, a break will come.
In late January 1947, two female confessors contacted LAPD detectives to confess their guilt. Minnie Sepulveda telephoned LAPD’s University Station from a bar. She said, “I just stabbed a girl. I killed Elizabeth Short.” They quickly dismissed her claim. Police also dismissed Emily Williams’ confession. Williams, a former WAC, suffered from an undescribed mental ailment.
False confessor, Minnie Sepulveda. [Photo courtesy of LAPL]
The confessions kept coming.
Thirty-three-year-old Daniel Voorhees of Phoenix, Arizona, telephoned the LAPD homicide squad room and told them he murdered Elizabeth Short. He said he would surrender to them at the corner of 4th and Hill downtown. At first, he refused to elaborate on his claim. Detective Lieutenant Charles King, with Dr. Paul De River, police psychiatrist, postponed a lie detector test until Voorhies recovered from his “bewildered and befuddled” state.
Daniel Voorhees. Photo courtesy LAPL.
Voorhees said he arrived in town on January 15 and checked into a hotel at 1012 E. Seventh Street at 10:45 a.m. He checked out the next day. He said he met Short on Hill Street “two weeks ago” (about the time of the murder) and took her for a ride on a Wilshire bus. He claimed he dated Short in 1941. Not only was she a 16-year-old schoolgirl in 1941, she didn’t arrive in Los Angeles until 1943. In his confession note, Voorhees misspelled his alleged victim’s last name. Police, who never actually believed his ramblings, released him.
Photo courtesy LAPL.
Marvin Hart, a thirty-five-year-old physical culture instructor, didn’t learn his lesson from the war-time mantra, “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” The drunk chatterbox told a taxicab driver, “Get me out of here; I have just killed a man.” The driver picked Hart up on Wilshire near the Los Angeles Country Club and drove him to a rooming house at 1842 N. Cherokee Street in Hollywood. The same building in which Short lived for a time. Rattled, the taxi driver went to the police and gave his statement.
Detectives brought Hart in for questioning. That he lived in the same building as Short and took her out a few times piqued their interest. They asked him to explain nis torn coat. “I had a fight with my girlfriend. We were at a party in West Los Angeles last night, and I guess I got pretty drunk.”
Marvin Hart. Photo courtesy LAPL.
Hart was a bone-headed blabbermouth, but he wasn’t a killer.
LAPD Vice Squad officers arrested Altadena resident Hugh Torbert Jr., on April 17, after trailing him and a female companion to a downtown hotel. While the officers waited for the perfect moment to break down the door and make a bust, they overheard Torbert tell the woman with him he knew Short, but didn’t want to get involved in the investigation.
Hugh Torbert. Photo courtesy LAPL.
Captain Jack Donohoe, head of LAPD’s homicide detail, checked into Torbert’s background. Torbert was in the Army and served at Camp Cooke, where Short worked at the Post Exchange. Tantalizing bits of information; leading to another blind alley.
One confessor made front page news. Joseph Dumais.
The February 8, 1947 edition of the Herald, announced that the army had the Black Dahlia’s killer in custody.
The Herald story began with a definitive statement. “Army Corporal Joseph Dumais, 29, of Fort Dix, N.J., is definitely the murderer of the Black Dahlia, army authorities at Fort Dix announced today.”
Dumais, a combat veteran, returned from leave wearing blood-stained trousers with his pockets crammed full of clippings about Short’s murder. According to the Herald, Dumais made a 50-page confession in which he claimed to have had a mental blackout after dating Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles five days before Betty Bersinger discovered the body.
Joseph Dumais. Photo courtesy LAPL.
The good-looking corporal seemed like the real deal. He told the cops, “When I get drunk, I get pretty rough with women.” Unfortunately, when police checked his story against known facts, the confession didn’t hold up. The Army sent Dumais to a psychiatrist.
Time passed, and the investigation faded from the headlines. So, too, did the steady stream of confessors.
On November 8, 1950, a thirty-five-year-old movie bit player and member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, Max Handler, became the twenty-fifth person to confess to murdering Elizabeth Short (one man confessed four times).
Handler phoned LAPD homicide and said he was “cracking up.” In his signed confession, he said, “I killed the Black Dahlia girl, for which I am sorry.” He said he didn’t recall committing the murder.
Max Handler with Det. Ed Barrett (in hat and glasses). Photo courtesy LAPL
Detectives revealed that a man resembling Handler and a young woman resembling Short were seen together in a Hollywood bar and at a motel on or about the date of her murder, January 15, 1947.
One clue gave detectives hope. In Short’s purse, found several days after her murder, was the business card of a local real estate company. The same company Handler worked for.
Police abandoned a lie detector test because Handler was so distraught, they knew they would never get an accurate reading.
After several days in police custody, Handler recanted his confession. He said the reason he confessed is he wanted police protection. From whom?
According to Handler, “A lot of little men with violins have been chasing me around. I wanted police protection. I knew they’d only laugh at me if I’d tell them about the men with the violins. So, I figured out another way to get the protection I needed.”
Detective Lieutenants Harry Hansen and Ed Barrett, referred Handler for a sanity test before the county Lunacy Commission.
The personal demons that caused Handler to confess to the Black Dahlia murder didn’t keep him from appearing in movies. He had an interesting career. He appeared in many B movies, but he also turned up in productions like The Asphalt Jungle, From Here to Eternity, and my favorite, Crime Wave. His last film credit, in 1960, is for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Handler died in 1993.
Even seventy-six years after the murder, people still phone LAPD about the case.
Elizabeth Short’s murder dominated the front pages of the Evening Herald & Express for days following the discovery of her body.
Even in a murder case as well-publicized as the Black Dahlia, the more time that elapses following the crime, the fewer clues there are on which to report. That the case was going cold didn’t dampen the Herald’s enthusiastic coverage. The paper sought psychiatrists, psychologists, and mystery writers who would attempt, each in his/her own way, to analyze the case and fill column space in the paper as they, and the cops, waited for a break. Decades before the founding of FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), shrinks and writers whose work appeared in the Herald engaged in speculative profiles of both the victim and her killer.
The Herald tapped Beverly Hills psychologist, Alice La Vere, to contribute her analysis of the victim and slayer. The paper introduced La Vere as “… one of the nation’s most noted consulting psychologists.” La Vere regularly spoke to various organizations about the problems of returning veterans. According to the newspaper, Miss La Vere would give readers, “an analysis of the motives which led to the torture murder of beautiful 22-year-old Elizabeth Short”. La Vere’s analysis is remarkably contemporary.
Here is an excerpt from her profile of Short’s personality:
“Some gnawing feeling of inadequacy was eating at the mind of this girl. She needed constant proof to herself that she was important to someone and demonstrates this need by the number of suitors and admirers with which she surrounded herself.”
La Vere described the killer.
“It is very likely that this is the first time this boy has committed any crime. It is also likely that he may be a maladjusted veteran. The lack of social responsibility experienced by soldiers, their conversational obsession with sex, their nerves keyed to battle pitch — these factors are crime-breeding.” She further stated: “Repression of the sex impulse accompanied by environmental maladjustment is the slayer’s probable background.”
How does La Vere’s profile of Elizabeth Short and her killer compare with the analysis of retired FBI profiler John Douglas? Douglas suggests Beth was “needy” and that her killer would have “spotted her a mile away.” He said that the killer “would have been a lust killer and loved hurting people.”
On the salient points, I’d say that La Vere and Douglas were of like minds regarding Elizabeth Short and her killer.
At the time of Elizabeth Short’s murder, mystery writer Craig Rice (pseudonym of Georgiana Ann Randolph Walker Craig) was one of the most popular crime writers in the country. In its January 28, 1946 issue, TIME magazine selected Rice for a cover feature on the mystery genre. Sadly, Rice is largely forgotten by all except the most avid mystery geeks (like me).
In late January 1947, the Herald invited Craig Rice to give her take on the Black Dahlia case. She summed it up this way:
“A black dahlia is what expert gardeners call ‘an impossibility’ of nature. Perhaps that is why lovely, tragic Elizabeth Short was tortured, murdered, and mutilated because such a crime could happen only in the half-world in which she lived. A world of—shadows.”
The police couldn’t catch a break. Not only couldn’t they locate the crime scene, false confessors, male and female, diverted critical resources and muddied the waters.
LAPD detectives Harry Hansen and Finis Brown headed the investigation into Elizabeth Short’s murder. The case was challenging from the moment they arrived on Norton Street. The lack of physical evidence at the body dump site posed a problem.
A skillfully retouched photo of Elizabeth Short at the body dump site.
Police officers knocked on doors and interviewed hundreds of citizens to find the place where Beth was murdered, but they were unsuccessful.
The Herald-Express cruelly tricked Beth’s mother, Phoebe, into believing that her much loved daughter was a beauty contest winner, only to be told minutes later that she was a murder victim.
Phoebe Short at Beth’s inquest. Photo courtesy LAPL.
Murder victims lose their right to privacy; every secret revealed. To fill column space while reporters tracked multiple leads, the Herald looked to psychiatrists, Beth’s acquaintances, and even mystery writers, to speculate on the case, which they did with creative abandon.
The Herald sought the opinion of LAPD’s shrink. Dr. Paul De River. He wrote a series of articles for the paper in which he attempted to analyze the mind of the killer. De River wrote the killer was a sadist and suggested that: “during the killing episode, he had an opportunity to pump up effect two sources — from his own sense of power and in overcoming the resistance of another. He was the master, and the victim was the slave”.
Dr. J. Paul De River
In a chilling statement, De River hinted at necrophilia—he said: “It must also be remembered that sadists of this type have a super-abundance of curiosity and are liable to spend much time with their victims after the spark of life has flickered and died.”
Reporters interviewed people who had only a fleeting acquaintance with Beth. They weighed in on everything from her hopes and dreams to her love life. Beth was, by turns, described as “a man-crazy delinquent”, and a girl with “childlike charm and beauty”. Many people who claimed to be close to her said that she aspired to Hollywood stardom. The claim Beth longed to be a star is a myth, likely based on letters she wrote to her mother. Beth wanted to keep the truth of her life in Southern California from her mother; for instance accepting rides from strangers and moving constantly. No mother wants to hear that, so the Hollywood lie came easily. A believable fiction when you are young and pretty. The interviews yielded nothing of value in the hunt for the killer.
While working at Camp Cooke, Beth Short was voted “Camp Cutie.”
While the experts opined, Aggie canvassed Southern California for leads. She was twelve years into her career with the Herald-Express when the Black Dahlia case broke. In her 1949 autobiography, Newspaperwoman, she said she came across Elizabeth’s nickname when she checked in with Ray Giese, an LAPD homicide detective-lieutenant. According to Aggie, Giese said, “This is something you might like, Agness. I’ve found out they called her the ‘Black Dahlia’ around that drug store where she hung out down in Long Beach.” She immediately dropped the ‘Werewolf’ tag.
Aggie interviews a woman (unrelated to Dahlia case.)
A few days passed and police located the mystery man, Robert M. Manley, known by his nickname, Red. Early on the morning of January 20, 1947, Aggie interviewed the 25-year-old salesman. The first thing she said to him was, “You look as if you’ve been on a drunk.” Manley replied, “This is worse than any I’ve ever been on.”
Robert “Red” Manley busted in Eagle Rock. Note his wedding ring. I wonder if he wore it when he gave Beth a ride. Photo courtesy of LAPL.
Aggie told him he was in one hell of a spot and advised him to come clean. Harry S. Fremont, an LAPD homicide detective, looked over at Manley and said, “She’s right, I’ve known this lady for a long time, on lots of big cases, and I can tell you she won’t do you wrong.”
Manley told his story, and Aggie was smart enough not to interrupt him. Red said he picked Beth up on a San Diego street corner early in December. He confessed that the night he spent with Beth in a roadside motel was strictly platonic and concluded with, “I’ll never pick up another dame as long as I live.”
The story ran in the Herald with the headline: “Night In a Motel”, and Aggie got the byline. She was the only Los Angeles reporter to get a byline in the case.
Aggie’s Black Dahlia by-line
The morning following her interview with Red Manley, her editor yanked Aggie off of the case. She said, “… the city editor benched me and let me sit in the local room without a blessed thing to do.”
The no-assignment routine resumed the next day. Aggie said she sat for about three hours, then started on an embroidery project. Every person who saw Aggie with her embroidery hoop roared with laughter. She kept at it until quitting time.
Day three—Aggie prepared for more embroidery when the assistant city editor that told her that because of an overnight decision, she was to go back to LAPD homicide and continue working leads.
Aggie barely had time to pull out her notebook out of her handbag before management pulled her off the case again. This time, permanently. Aggie’s new assignment—city editor. Nobody was more shocked than Aggie. She deserved the promotion. With 20 years in the newspaper business, she possessed the necessary skill set to be an effective editor. She became one of the first women in the United States to hold a city editorship on a major metropolitan daily. She enjoyed running the editor’s desk, and did a phenomenal job, but she confessed she missed being in the field chasing a story.
One of the conspiracy theories that surrounds Beth’s murder involves Aggie. Some believe she got too close to a solution in the murder, and the killer(s) arranged to have her promoted out of the way. That means whoever murdered Beth had enough juice with the Herald to influence personnel decisions. I think that is nonsense. The paper’s owner, William Randolph Hearst, had no reason to tamper with Aggie’s successful coverage. Additionally, as city editor, Aggie handed out assignments and directed the activities of all the reporters in the newsroom. She knew everything they uncovered. The timing of Aggie’s promotion is a sidebar, not a conspiracy.
NEXT TIME: The Black Dahlia case goes cold — or does it?
On January 15, 1947, Beth Short’s gruesome murder pushed everything else off the front pages. But during her missing week, January 9 to 15, other stories occupied the minds of Los Angeles residents, like the Flower of Temple Street.
Bitter rivals, nineteen-year-old Jenny Trejo and twenty-year-old Josephine Soto, met in the parking lot of the Carioca Café at Figueroa and Temple on the evening of January 9, 1947.
Carioca Cafe c. 1930s
Why the rivalry? The neighborhood was only big enough for one of the pretty young women to hold the title of the Flower of Temple Street, and it currently belonged to Jenny. She would fight to keep it. The animus between them was mostly about who was the prettiest, the best dressed, and the most desirable to the local men. Nobody could pinpoint when the feud began, but it went back several months, even before they came to Los Angeles from El Paso, Texas. Jenny with her husband and Josephina with her boyfriend, Porfirio Mendoza.
Josephine recently asked Porfirio for a knife for protection. She told him Jenny threatened to “get her.” When she accepted Jenny’s request to meet at the Café, Josephine brought the knife; just in case.
Jenny and Josephine exchanged words. Jenny produced a three-inch blade and stabbed Josephina three times in the chest and once in the neck. Josephina staggered 50 feet before she twisted grotesquely and slumped to the ground.
Friends of Jenny’s advised her to flee to Mexico. They told her, “When they get you, you’re going to be in for a long time.” With her husband in prison on a narcotics rap, Jenny had few resources to make it across the border. She first went with her friends to 14th and San Pedro, then by a streetcar to Sixth and Main, by another streetcar to Santa Monica, and then by bus to San Francisco.
Police couldn’t locate the fugitive. At the end of February, weary of hiding out, she went to a police station in San Francisco and surrendered. When questioned, she said, “I don’t know why I stabbed that girl. I just got mad all of a sudden. If I say I’d had a little wine, no one will believe me.”
Once back in Los Angeles, police booked Jenny into the Lincoln Heights jail. Her appearance in court drew a crowd. Not all of them supported her. One woman said, “I used to be a friend of hers, but no longer. I hope they hang her. She was just envious of Josephine because boys were attracted to her more than to Jenny.”
Lincoln Heights Jail
Biatrice and Ramona Flores, who both lived at 317 N. Figueroa Street, recalled what they witnessed on January 9th. “Jenny drove up in front of the Carioca Café with a boyfriend,” they said.
Biatrice and Ramona continued. “Suddenly Jenny asked Josephine, ‘Are you laughing at me?’” Then, according to Biatrice, the two women walked down into the street and behind a billboard into a parking lot. Biatrice said she and Ramona followed them. “I saw them fight—we ran to stop them—but Josephine was bleeding. I wrapped a coat around her neck because she had a hole in her neck. She just laid there, and that’s all.”
Later Jenny said to Dora Rose Fuentes, “I cannot get away with murder.”
The testimony of the witnesses was at odds with Jenny’s version of events in which Josephine wielded the knife and stabbed herself accidentally. Seriously? Three times in the chest, and once in the neck? Jenny’s version was fantasy.
Jenny opted to waive a jury trial and let Judge Walter S. Gates decide her fate. He found her guilty of manslaughter. While awaiting her sentence, Jenny divorced her husband, Salvador Trejo. She said Trejo beat her. The divorce would be the only good news she would receive for a while.
Judge Gates sentenced Jenny to one to ten years in Women’s Prison at Tehachapi.
No flower does well for that long without sunshine.
We won’t be on the bus as we were pre-pandemic. We will be stalking the mean streets of downtown Los Angeles (I’ll forego my vintage peep-toe pumps for something more suitable) to shine a light on unsolved mysteries, and heinous crimes.
One of the cases I’ll talk about is the 1943 murder of William Lederer, the owner of the Roseland Roof, a dime-a-dance hall on Spring Street. It is unhinged.
This post begins my annual coverage of the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.
Seventy-six years ago, on January 8, 1947, Robert ‘Red’ Manley drove to the home of Elvera and Dorothy French in Pacific Beach, in the San Diego area, to pick up a young woman he’d met a month earlier. Her name was Elizabeth Short.
Red was a twenty-five-year-old salesman and occasional saxophone player, with a wife, Harriette, and 4-month-old baby daughter at home. The couple married on November 28, 1945. They lived in a bungalow court in one of L.A.’s many suburbs.
Red enlisted in the Army on June 24, 1942. He was 20 years-old. In January 1945, He entered a hospital for treatment of a non-traumatic injury, and the Army discharged him in April of the same year for medical reasons—but not for any residual condition.
Maybe his injury made it difficult for him to adjust to marriage and parenthood. He said that he and Harriette had “some misunderstandings.” Restless and feeling unsure about his decision to marry, Red decided to “make a little test to see if I were still in love with my wife.” The woman Red used to test his love was twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Short.
Red traveled for his job and it was on a trip to San Diego that he met Elizabeth. She was standing on a street corner and appeared to need a ride. At first, she seemed reluctant to get into his car. But in an instant, she changed her mind and got in. She introduced herself as Beth Short, and they struck up a conversation. When Red returned to Los Angeles, the two corresponded.
Aztec Theater, San Diego
Dorothy French met Beth on the night of December 9, 1946 at the all-night movie theater, the Aztec, on Fifth Avenue. Dorothy worked as a cashier at the ticket window and she noticed Beth seemed at loose ends. When her shift ended at 3 a.m., Dorothy offered to take Beth back to the Bayview Terrace Navy housing unit she shared with her mother and a younger brother. Beth was glad to abandon the theater seat for a comfortable sofa.
Dorothy French
Weeks passed, and Elvera and Dorothy grew tired of Beth’s couch surfing and contributing nothing to the household. She didn’t even pay for groceries. She received a money order for $100 from a former boyfriend, Gordon Fickling, yet she spent much of her time compulsively writing letters, many of which she never sent.
One of the unsent letters was to Gordon. In the letter dated December 13, 1946, Beth wrote:
“I do hope you find a nice girl to kiss at midnight on new years 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 French family had another complaint about their house guest—despite her claims, there was no evidence that Beth ever looked for work. Beth wrote to her mother, Phoebe, that she was working for the Red Cross, or in a VA Hospital, but it was just one of her many lies. Her letters home never revealed her transient lifestyle—nothing about couch surfing, borrowing money to eat, or accepting rides from strange men.
Robert “Red” Manley. Photo likely taken by Perry Fowler. Courtesy LAPL.
Beth could have found a job if she wanted one. She worked in a delicatessen in Florida as a teenager and at the post exchange (PX) at Camp Cooke (now Vandenberg Air Force Base). Red arranged with a friend of his to get her a job interview—but she didn’t follow-up.
When Red heard from his friend that Beth was a no-show for the job interview, he wrote to her to find out if she was okay. She said she was fine but didn’t like San Diego; she preferred Los Angeles and wanted to return there. Red said he’d help her out.
The drive from San Diego to Los Angeles was Red’s love test. If nothing happened, then he would know that he and Harriette would stay together. Kismet. But if he and Beth clicked, he’d have a decision to make.
Beth and Red weren’t on the road for long before they stopped at a roadside motel for the night. They went out for dinner and drinks before returning to their room to go to bed. Did Red have butterflies in his stomach? How did he want the love test to turn out?
Red must have realized the decision was Beth’s. They never shared more than a kiss. She spent the night in a chair and he took the bed.
The pair left the motel at about 12:20 p.m. on January 9, 1947, for Los Angeles.
According to Edith’s public defender, William Aggeler, a state of extreme melancholia brought about by physical ailments suffered since childhood, account for her accidental shooting of Linus Worden, causing his death.
Edith’s mother recounted for the seven men and five women on the jury a litany of illnesses and conditions afflicting her daughter. She testified that at seven months old, Edith had a serious case of pneumonia; she had an attack of spinal meningitis at three; at nine they found her unconscious in a rocking chair. She remained in bed for several weeks and was in such extreme pain she couldn’t bear to be touched without screaming in agony. When she finally got out of bed, she held her head in a twisted position. A lump developed on the right side of her neck and when she walked, she dragged her right leg and complained of constant head pain. At twelve, she suffered a spasm so severe that her hands couldn’t voluntarily unclench.
After her marriage, at seventeen, her husband found her one afternoon unconscious lying between the bed and the wall. In the ten years since then, she endured many similar attacks, even having one while in jail.
In November 1920, Edith’s mother noticed her daughter’s extreme moodiness. She testified the nervous condition manifested itself in Edith’s refusal to eat and her inability to continue to work in any capacity. In the fall of 1920, her mother found a revolver in Edith’s room and removed it. She gave the weapon to her husband.
As sad as Edith’s life was, she still shot and killed a man—and that is the story the prosecution would tell. Detective Kline testified to his conversation with Edith in the hospital. He asked her how she came to be shot. She answered, “It does not make any difference.” He informed her of Linus’ death, and she said, “I shot him, but I do not believe he is dead and will not believe it until my brother-in-law, Lee, tells me so.”
Edith insisted mutual despondency was the reason for the shooting. She claimed both she and Linus wanted to die. The mutual destruction motive flew in the face of Edith’s initial statement, “I couldn’t live without him, and I couldn’t get along with him.”
Edith’s mother testified for the defense; however, her father, Mr. Vosberg, was called as a prosecution witness. His duty to testify weighed heavily on him. He loved Edith. He recalled for the jury the events of the night of Linus’ death. He said he and Harvey Clarke, his son-in-law, relaxed inside the house while Linus and Edith sat outside in Linus’ car. When they hear four shots, both men sprang into action. They found Linus dying, and Edith seriously wounded.
A packed courtroom heard Edith testify on Monday, July 25. Physical suffering made her life wretched, and she tried several times to commit suicide. Two years after she married, she tried it again. “I had been reading spiritualist books.” [Note: spiritualism was enormously popular following WWI. So many people lost loved ones and desperately wanted to contact them in the afterlife.] Edith said she read The Gateway of Heaven. “It described the experiences of a woman on the other side. After reading it, I got a desire to go and see what was there.”
Seance c. 1920
The death of her husband exacerbated her depression. “I used to walk the palisades at Santa Monica and fight the inclination to go over. I did not think it was right at that time; I had a greater understanding then than later. I got the desire in August 1920 to take my life.”
A friend of hers from Santa Barbara shot himself in the head. She thought it would be “a good way to do it.” She bought a gun in early November.
Even jail didn’t stop Edith from attempting suicide. She got a hold of a pair of scissors and tried to do herself in.
Edith described suffering debilitating symptoms every month. She lived on aspirin. Often, she shut herself away in her bedroom.
Was there a legitimate medical cause for Edith’s physical complaint and behavior? It is possible Edith suffered from Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). In the 1920s, the diagnosis didn’t exist. In fact, they didn’t add PMDD to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 2013, and it remains a controversial. Yet, the symptoms described by Edith fit the disorder. They also fit Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Her first suicide attempt at fourteen lends credibility to a hormonal imbalance, but that is speculation.
It isn’t surprising that Edith’s trial became a battle of expert witnesses. Alienists on both sides offered an opinion on Edith’s mental state. The question of her sanity loomed large.
Defense witness, Dr. Allen, believed Edith was insane at the time of the murder. In fact, he referred to her case as one of “psycopathic (sic) personality.” He said, “In considering her mental state, it is necessary to view it in the light of the history of her case. In this case, there is a very marked history of abnormality, or eroticism. I don’t think this woman was at any time mentally normal. Because of her physical condition, she was predestined to become mentally unbalanced in a crisis.”
Dr. Allen’s conclusion isn’t surprising given how often women were characterized as hysterical and insane.
The coincidentally named Dr. Wordens female pills for women. Advertising for the pills read: Thousands of women suffering from the nerve and health-racking ailments peculiar to their sex have been restored to full health and strength by this great remedy after they despaired of ever being well and strong again.
I’ll digress for a moment. Women’s menstrual cycle has a long history of being misunderstood. In fact, the word taboo comes from the Polynesian word tapua, which means both sacred and menstrual flow. Ladies, if we ever learn to harness it, menstruation is our super power. Why? Ancient Romans believed a woman’s monthly flow could turn new wine sour, wither crops, dry seeds in gardens, kill bees, rust iron and bronze. Dogs who taste the blood become mad—their bite poisonous. There is some good news. Hailstorms and whirlwinds are driven away if menstrual fluid is exposed to flashes of lightning.
Don your capes and prepare for battle. Now back to Edith.
Edith’s conflicting stories of the murder are troubling. At first, she said Linus wanted to die. During her trial, she said it was an accident. Before she and Linus went out for a drive on the fatal night, she slipped into a small room off the parlor. Linus noticed her come and go twice before he asked her about it. She said she would explain later. She didn’t tell him it was where she kept her revolver. He didn’t see her slip the gun into her coat pocket.
When they returned later and sat in Linus’ car, Edith said she kept thinking about taking out the gun and shooting herself. She communicated some of her unease to Linus. He said he would see her the next night. Making future plans doesn’t sound like a man ready to kill himself.
Edith continued her testimony, “All kinds of emotions went through me. I remember him turning away from me. He laughed and said: ‘You will be all right.’ I shook my head and felt the gun. The first thing I knew there was a flash. I saw his face in front of me. The report frightened me.”
Did Linus laughing at her trigger a rage?
The defense hoped the jury would believe Edith’s ill health made her mentally irresponsible for Linus’ death.
“Many people suffer from illness, including headaches, but it doesn’t justify taking a life,” argued the prosecution. The D.A. asked the jury not to be swayed by “technical insanity,” nor sympathy, but to administer the law as it is written.
It took the jury an hour and a quarter to acquit Edith.
The following day, shortly after 2 PM, police rearrested Edith at a downtown department store on an insanity warrant sworn to by Detective Sergeant Eddie King of the district attorney’s office. Accompanying him was future LAPD chief, Louis Oaks. [Oaks served from 1922 to 1923 until they showed the hard-drinking the door. It’s an interesting tale for another time.]
Was the D.A. a sore loser? Maybe. But he pointed out that the attacks of melancholia Edith suffered were a recurrent affliction, and a recognized form of insanity.
In early August, five physicians of the Lunacy Commission found Edith sane. While subject to depression, the doctors didn’t consider her a menace to society. However, they recommended six months of probation rather than confinement in an institution.
Judge Weyle said, “you have suffered enough.”
EPILOGUE
Following her acquittal, Edith resumed the use and spelling of her maiden name, Edythe Vosberg.
The 1930 census shows her living with her parents in a home at 858 N. Curson, in West Hollywood. She works as a stenographer in the motion picture industry. Her brother-in-law Harvey, and her brother Gayne (born Alfred D. Vosberg), worked as actors. Either of them may have helped her get the job. Her brother changed his name to Gayne Whitman after WWI to avoid the negative association with his German birth name. Gayne had a long career, from 1904-1957, he appeared in 213 films. On radio, he played the title role in Chandu the Magician and also worked as an announcer.
The 1933 city directory for Santa Monica, has Edythe working for the H.C. Henshey Company. Henshey’s was a major Santa Monica department store. Sadly, it went out of business years ago.
Henshey’s
Edythe’s mother passed away in 1939. By the 1940 census, 49-year-old Edythe is living at 2630 St. George Street with her father and her nephew, 22-year-old Harvey Clark. The house is off Franklin Avenue, near the Shakespeare Bridge in Los Feliz.
In 1950, 56-year-old Edythe works as a record keeper for the city police department. It doesn’t say which city, she appears to be living in North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley.
I don’t know what Edythe did from 1950 until her death in 1971. I know she never remarried, and never had any further run-ins with the law. She is buried at Forest Lawn in Glendale.
