Black Dahlia Identified

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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.

Beth Short 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 8th. 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.

Black Dahlia: Corpse in the Weeds

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Mrs. Betty Bersinger and her three-year-old daughter Anne walked south down Norton Avenue in Leimert Park, a still-growing Los Angeles suburb. They’d left their home at 3705 S. Norton to take a pair of shoes to be repaired.

Betty Bersinger

Like much of postwar L.A., Norton was only half-formed. Wartime shortages had stalled housing construction, and the neighborhood was still catching up. It was January 15, 1947, around 10:30 a.m., when Betty and Anne approached a large vacant lot in the 3900 block of Norton. Something pale caught Betty’s eye in the weeds—about fifty feet from a fire hydrant and just a foot from the sidewalk.

It looked like a discarded mannequin. Or a woman, lying very still.

As they drew closer, Betty realized it was neither mannequin nor drunk. It was a woman—nude, pale, and cut in half.

She grabbed Anne and ran to the nearest home to call police.

Over the years, several reporters have elbowed their way into the legend, each claiming to be the first at the scene. One of the loudest was Will Fowler.

Fowler said he and photographer Felix Paegel of the Examiner were near Crenshaw Boulevard when a call came crackling over the shortwave. The report was bizarre: a naked woman, possibly drunk, sprawled in a vacant lot one block east of Crenshaw between 39th and Coliseum.

 “A naked drunk dame passed out in a vacant lot. Right here in the neighborhood too. Let’s see what it’s all about.”

Paegel drove as Fowler watched for the woman. “There she is. It’s a body all right…” Fowler got out of the car and approached the body as Paegel pulled his Speed Graphic from the trunk. Fowler called out, “Jesus, Felix, this woman’s cut in half!”

That was Fowler’s version, and he stuck to it. He even claimed to have closed the dead girl’s eyes.

But was any of it true?

Other accounts suggest a reporter from the Los Angeles Times was the first on the scene.

Another contender? In her autobiography, Newspaperwoman, Herald reporter Agness ‘Aggie’ Underwood, claimed to be the first.

After nearly eight decades does it matter? All those who saw the murdered girl that day saw the same horrifying sight. It left an indelible impression.

Aggie Underwood on Norton, January 15, 1947.

 Aggie observed:

“It [the body] had been cut in half through the abdomen, under the ribs. The two sections were ten or twelve inches apart. The arms, bent at right angles at the elbows, were raised above the shoulders.

The legs were spread apart. There were bruises and cuts on the forehead and the face, which had been beaten severely. The hair was blood-matted. Front teeth were missing. Both cheeks were slashed from the corners of the lips almost to the ears. The liver hung out of the torso, and the entire lower section of the body had been hacked, gouged, and unprintably desecrated. It showed sadism at its most frenzied.”

The coroner recorded the victim as Jane Doe #1 for 1947.

Two seasoned LAPD detectives, Harry Hansen and Finis Brown, took charge of the investigation. During the first twenty-four hours, officers pulled in over 150 men for questioning. The city’s most brutal murder had just begun its long descent into legend.

The most promising of the early suspects was twenty-three-year-old transient, Cecil French. He was busted for molesting women at a downtown bus depot.

Police were alarmed when they discovered French had pulled the back seat out of his car. Had he concealed a body there? Police Chemist Ray Pinker found no blood or any other physical evidence of a bloody murder in French’s car. Investigators dropped from him the list of hot suspects.

In her initial coverage for the Herald, Underwood referred to the case as the “Werewolf” slaying because of the savagery of the mutilations inflicted on the unknown woman. The werewolf tag would identify the case until a better one came along—the Black Dahlia.

NEXT TIME: Jane Doe #1 gets a name—and a past.

REFERENCES:

Fowler, Will (1991). Reporters: Memoirs of a Young Newspaperman.

Gilmore, John (2001). Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder.

Harnisch, Larry. A Slaying Cloaked in Mystery and Myths. Los Angeles Times. January 6, 1997.

Underwood, Agness (1949). Newspaperwoman.

Wagner, Rob Leicester (2000). The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles Newspapers, 1920-1962.

The Hillside Strangler: MGM+ Docuseries

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I was interviewed over the summer for this four-part docuseries. The Hillside Strangler case was one of the worst in Los Angeles’ history.

One of the killers, Angelo Buono, died in prison in 2002. His cousin, and accomplice, Kenneth Bianchi, remains in prison. May he rot.

The most important names to remember are those of their victims:

Yolanda Washington
Judity Miller
Lissa Kastin
Delores Cepeda and Sonja Johnson
Kristina Weckler
Evelyn Jame King
Lauren Wagner
Kimberly Martin
Cindy Hudspeth

Here is the trailer.

Black Dahlia: The Missing Week–January 9-January 15, 1947

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After hours of small talk in the Biltmore Hotel lobby, Robert “Red” Manley finally left Beth Short. He had been out of touch with his wife, Harriet, for a few days. It was time to go home.

Biltmore Hotel at 5th and Olive

She told him she’d be fine. Her sister was coming. A lie—one of many she’d told Red since December. At 6 p.m. on January 9, 1947, Beth left the Biltmore lobby, navigated her way through guests and luggage to Olive Street. She turned right. She turned right. Whatever money she had, none of it was going to public transit. Otherwise, she would have turned left and gone to the nearby Subway Terminal Building.

Darkness had settled. Streetlights spilled pale circles across the pavement. Streetcars clanged. Buses sighed. Snatches of conversation carried further in the chill winter air. For the first block, she walked against pedestrian traffic.

Office workers streamed out onto the sidewalk. Men with hats pulled low, coats buttoned tight, heading toward the Subway Terminal Building.

Subway terminal, Los Angeles

From 5th to 6th Streets, Beth encountered the usual post-war mix of bellmen, traveling salesmen, secretaries, and servicemen. The air smelled of diesel exhaust, coffee, diner food, damp concrete, and cigarette smoke.

Few women walked along. Those who did moved with purpose. Beth had a destination in mind. Hollywood would be the best place for her to find an acquaintance who could put her up for the night, or suggest a place where she could find a bunk bed for a dollar a night. If she didn’t have enough for more than a night or two, she could vanish down an exterior fire escape. She had done it before.

Continuing down Olive Street, between 6th and 7th, she would pass professional buildings, insurance offices, and small law firms. Several luncheon cafes offered sandwiches, pie, and weak coffee.

Foot traffic thinned out past 7th . The quiet edge of the street, with anonymous storefronts and upper-floor offices. Several bars dotted the street. None were rowdy. Just quiet places to grab an end-of-the-day cocktail.

Did Beth stop in at the Crown Grill at 8th and Olive? There have been no definitive sightings of her there on January 9th. She had lunched at the Grill with a friend and the friend’s married lover a few times.

Crown Grille at 8th & Olive

It isn’t unreasonable to assume she poked her head in, seeking a familiar face. One of the bartenders once drove Beth up to Mulholland, where they necked. Nothing more. If he had been behind the bar, she might have asked him for a dollar or two. Or a ride.

Beth didn’t walk eight miles to Hollywood. That much is certain.

AI generated image of woman walking on Olive Street.

Did her killer encounter her at the Crown Grill? Or did he stop and offer her a ride as she walked along Olive? Faced with a long cold walk, Beth would have accepted. She may have played it coy at first, just like she did with Red Manley when he approached her on a San Diego street corner.  But in the end, if a man in uniform, or in a topcoat and tie, offered a warm ride to Hollywood—she would have gone.  

That, I believe, is how the missing week began.

What followed, between January 9 and January 15, is the stuff of nightmares

NEXT TIME: After January 9, 1947, Elizabeth Short exists only in fragments. And fragments are where killers hide.

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Black Dahlia: Last Seen

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Two men and a woman came to the door of the French home on January 7, 1947. Elizabeth Short saw them, but didn’t open the door.

Their visit rattled her. Who were they? If she knew, she didn’t say. Instead, she contacted Robert “Red” Manley, the salesman she’d dated a couple of times, and asked him to come and get her.

Elizabeth Short

Red arrived at the French home at 7:30 p.m. He loaded Beth’s two suitcases in the car. Neighbors who saw them said they seemed in high spirits.

They headed north, hugging the coast, and checked into a motel a few hours later.

After an evening of dinner and dancing, they returned to the motel. Beth curled up in the chair. Red took the bed—alone.

The next morning, they left the motel and started north. What was said on that drive to Los Angeles? Red noticed some scratches on Beth’s arms and asked her about them. She spun a story about a jealous boyfriend. An Italian with a temper. He had scratched her. Maybe he never existed. Maybe she made the scratches herself. It wasn’t the last lie she told him that day.

Beth spent much of the drive in silence. She may have wondered what she would do once she hit L.A. She had calls to make. Maybe one of her Hollywood friends had a couch. But first—she needed to ditch Red.

Once they arrived in the city, Beth told Red that she needed to check her luggage at the bus depot. He took her there, but refused to leave her in that neighborhood on her own. She insisted she would be fine, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

Beth had a few minutes while she checked her bags to come up with a plan. When they returned to his car, she told him she needed to go to the Biltmore Hotel to wait for her sister. It was a lie. Her sister Virginia was in Oakland, hundreds of miles to the north.

Red drove her several blocks to the hotel. The main lobby was on Olive Street, directly opposite Pershing Square. She expected to be dropped off, but he wouldn’t leave her. He may have wanted to postpone seeing Harriet. He hadn’t spoken to her for days.  

They sat in the Biltmore’s grand lobby, surrounded by velvet chairs and marble silence. They made small talk. Nothing important. Nothing honest. Red finally said he had to go. She assured him she would be fine.

Biltmore Hotel

At 6:30 p.m. Beth watched him go. She waited a few moments, eyes on the clock. Then she rose and walked out. She turned right onto Olive Street.

Did she stop at the Crown Grill at Eighth and Olive? She’d been there before. Maybe she’d find a familiar face—or a place to sleep. Some of the Grill’s patrons thought they saw her that night. None were certain.

Sometime after 6:30 p.m. on January 9, 1947, Elizabeth Short met her killer.

NEXT TIME: The missing week.

NOTE: For a glimpse into Los Angeles as Beth Short would have seen it, here is some amazing B-roll from shot for a Rita Hayworth film, Down to Earth, via the Internet Archive.

Elizabeth Short: The French Connection–Conclusion

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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–The French Connection

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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.

The First With The Latest: Aggie Underwood, Crime Reporter — Aggie’s Birthday 2025

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Aggie interviews unknown woman.

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.

We couldn’t forget her if we tried.

NOTE: If you want to know more about Aggie’s crime reporting, get a copy of the my book, THE FIRST WITH THE LATEST!: AGGIE UNDERWOOD, THE LOS ANGELES HERALD, AND THE SORDID CRIMES OF A CITY.

Thanksgiving and a Revolver

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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.