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 9th. 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.”