Tag Archives: Biltmore Hotel

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.

The Black Dahlia–January 9, 1947

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About 12:20 p.m. on January 9, 1947, Elizabeth Short and Robert “Red” Manley left the motel where they had spent the night. Beth met Red, a traveling salesman, in San Diego. She decided to return to Los Angeles, and contacted him for a ride. .

He picked her up at the home of the French family where she had worn out her welcome. They offered her a place to stay for a few days. She lounged on their sofa for a month.

Robert “Red” Manley.

What did Beth and Red talk about during the couple of hours that it took them to drive back to Los Angeles from San Diego? Red noticed some scratches on her arms and asked her about them. She concocted a story about a jealous boyfriend—an Italian with black hair living in San Diego—who she alleged had scratched her. Beth probably made the scratches herself. Maybe insect bites? Beth lied to Red a few times more before their day together ended.

Harriet forgave Red

Following a platonic night in the motel room–Red passed his self-administered love test. Lucky Harriette. He still had a problem; he’d been out of touch with his wife for a couple of days. How would he explain his silence? Any guy capable of devising a ridiculous love test could come up with an excuse for being incommunicado for a couple of days.

In my mind’s eye, I see Beth and Red seated across from each other on the bench seat in his Studebaker, each lost in thought. Beth may have wondered what she’d do once she hit L.A. Maybe she’d go to friends in Hollywood. If she was lucky, someone would have an empty bed for her. Her immediate difficulty was Red. How would she get away from the well-meaning guy for whom she felt nothing?

Once they arrived in the city, Beth told Red that she needed to check her luggage at the bus depot. He took her there and Beth was ready to wave goodbye to him and be on her way–but he wouldn’t leave. He told her he couldn’t 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 make a plan to ditch her red-headed shadow. When they returned to his car, she told him she needed to go to the Biltmore Hotel to wait for her sister, Virginia. It was a lie. Virginia was in Oakland, hundreds of miles to the north.

Red drove her several blocks back to the Biltmore Hotel. The main lobby was on Olive Street, opposite Pershing Square. Beth thanked Red. He had been a gentleman. He’d paid to have taps put on the heels and toes of her pumps, and of course he’d paid for meals and the motel room. She thought he would drive off and leave her, but once again, he said that he didn’t feel comfortable putting her out of the car on her own.

Biltmore Hotel

He parked, and the two of them waited in the Biltmore’s lobby for a couple of hours. Finally, Red realized he couldn’t wait any longer. He said he had to go. She told him she would be fine, and that she expected her sister to arrive at any moment.

Red left her at 6:30 p.m. Beth watched him go–gave him a few minutes, and then she exited the hotel and turned south down Olive Street.

She may have been going to the Crown Grill at Eighth and Olive. She’d been there before and perhaps she hoped to bump into someone she knew; after all, she needed a place to stay.

This is a frame from B-roll of downtown Los Angeles. Do you see the crown? Doesn’t it look like a skull?

When asked if they’d seen Beth, most of the patrons were reluctant to talk to the police because the bar led a double life. By day, it catered to the lunch crowd. Dark enough to be cozy for cocktails for a man escorting a woman, not his wife. By night, the clientele changed to gay men. Because homosexuality was illegal, there were only a few places where men could meet.

No one could say for sure that Beth was in the bar on the 9th—and if she was there, no one saw her leave.

I find it sad that no one missed Beth. She had no family here, and no close friends. She was the perfect prey. With no any credible sightings of her, it is likely that Beth’s killer kept her captive from January 9th until the morning of January 15th, when he murdered her. What did he say to her? Did she plead for her life? It is terrifying to contemplate.

The Murder Complex, Part 4

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Thomas told anyone who asked him that the last time he saw Grace was on February 21, 1925. They had stopped at a roadhouse, the Plantation Grill, for drinks and dancing. National Prohibition may have been the law, but finding a cocktail was easy if you wanted one.

Entrance to speakeasy.

Thomas saw a group of people enter the café and recognized a woman named Nina. He had known her for several years. He spent some time chatting with her. Thomas said that Grace became jealous, and they argued. Rather than make a public scene, they left the roadhouse and continued their argument in the car until they reached Western and Eighth Street, where they made up. Instead of calling it a night, they went to the Biltmore Hotel, for the orchestra and dancing.

When they arrived at the Biltmore, Grace excused herself to go to the ladies’ room. Thomas waited, but she never returned.

Thomas reported Grace missing, and he also hired a private investigator. He maintained Grace had left for Paris or New York to seek a divorce. According to Thomas, she carried with her $126,000 in Liberty bonds. Thomas said Grace would return when she was ready. Then he went on with his life as if nothing had happened.

Biltmore Hotel

A couple of days after Grace disappeared, Thomas asked Patrick to accompany him to the Beverly Glen cabin because he said he needed to pour a concrete floor in the cistern which he claimed was leaking. Patrick welcomed any activity that would distract him from worrying about his mother. He mixed and poured the cement while Thomas smoothed it out.

Over the next few weeks, Thomas arranged parties and other social events for Patrick to “keep his mind off things.” Among the guests at the soirees was Thomas’ attractive young office assistant, Dorothy Leopold.

When Grace’s father Frank first got word that she was missing, he felt in his gut that something horrible had happened to her. He wanted to force a confrontation with Thomas, so he filed a legal request to become Patrick’s guardian. If the guardianship request was intended to fluster Thomas, it failed. Thomas said that it was up to Patrick to choose a guardian.

Patrick didn’t want his grandfather to be his guardian, so he named an attorney he knew to take charge of his legal affairs until Grace returned. As a further slap in the face to his mother’s family, Patrick stated his preference was to live with his stepfather.

Weeks went by with no sign of Grace. Then Patrick began receiving letters from her with New York postmarks. In the letters, she said that her family was keeping her from Thomas and that they knew where she was. Patrick felt torn between two opposing forces, which left him in a state of inner turmoil. He loved his mother’s family, but Thomas was good to him. He had even bought him a new Chrysler.

By June, Grace’s family, joined by her friends from the Ebell Club and trust company officers from the bank, appealed to District Attorney Asa Keyes to launch a sweeping investigation.

Original Ebell Club located in Figueroa. By C.C. Pierce & Co.

On June 12th, an investigation into Grace’s mysterious disappearance, spearheaded by the D.A., kicked into high gear. Los Angeles Police Department officers interviewed residents of Beverly Glen. Among those interviewed were Donald Mead and Kenneth Selby. The boys related to police what they had witnessed that February night. If Thomas had been creeping around in the cabin in total darkness, people might have found it odd, but it didn’t make him guilty.

Adjacent to the Young cabin was a well which supplied water to several surrounding cabins. Using a gasoline pump, the residents drew the water and piped it to the surrounding cabins. Residents told police it had been an open well until February, when Dr. Young had sealed it with a concrete floor. They found it strange that the water, which had always been pure, emitted a foul stench after Dr. Young installed the concrete floor. One resident said, “The water never began to smell until a few months ago. No, we cannot use it, not even for shower baths or for dishwashing. It is slightly discolored and when drawn, a yellowish smelling sediment settles in it. We have no idea what caused this sudden change in the water.”

The number of questions surrounding the Beverly Glen cabin prompted the police to initiate a search. The cabin held several intriguing clues; a one-ounce bottle of Novocain secreted near the fireplace and bloodstains in a bedroom.

Prior to the search, Thomas made a cryptic statement: “I hold the key to this situation, and I have burned my bridges behind me.”

While many still had doubts about what had happened to Grace, District Attorney Asa Keyes was not among them: “I am as certain as I am sitting here that Mrs. Young is dead—that she has been murdered. By whom she was slain, we do not know. That we are trying to determine.”

Following their search of the cabin, authorities broke up the concrete in the cistern and made a gruesome discovery.

NEXT TIME: Grace is found.

Red Manley and the Black Dahlia

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In his 1991 autobiography, Reporters: Memoirs of a Young Newspaperman, Will Fowler recalled one of his colleagues, Baker Conrad, had noticed a telegram among Elizabeth Short’s belongings. The Examiner’s editor, Jim Richardson, dispatched Fowler to the address on the telegram, 8010 Mountain View Avenue in South Gate.

When Fowler arrived at the bungalow court, a strikingly beautiful young woman greeted him. Her name was Harriette Manley. Fowler let her believe he was a cop.

During their conversation, Harriette said her husband phoned her from San Francisco after he saw his name in the newspapers in connection with Elizabeth Short’s murder. Red reassured Harriette that he’d had nothing to do with the slaying. He said he “loved her more than any man ever loved his wife.” 

At 10:00 pm on January 19th, two LAPD sergeants, J.W. Wass and Sam Flowers, staked out the home of Red’s employer in Eagle Rock. When the suspect’s sedan pulled up, the officers approached him with their guns drawn. An Examiner photographer was there to capture the arrest.

Robert ‘Red’ Manley

The next day, Aggie Underwood interviewed him. Red needed no encouragement to unburden himself. He told her how he’d picked Beth Short up on a San Diego street corner. How they had spent an “erotically uneventful” night in a motel and how he eventually dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel on January 9th.

Red finished his tale with a heartfelt statement. “I’ll never pick up another dame as long as I live.”

Aggie believed Red and shared her gut feelings with the police. Red was forthcoming in his interview. Aggie knew he wasn’t a killer. Red was a frightened man with goofy ideas about love, marriage, and fidelity.

“I was only trying to test my love for my wife,” he said as he sought to explain his brief escapade with Beth Short.

Red said he first saw Beth standing on a street corner in San Diego while on a business trip ten days before Christmas. “She looked cute, so I thought, well, I’ll make a little test and see if I’m still in love with my wife, or whether I could ever fall for anyone else.”

According to Red, he and Harriette, married for just 14 months, were going through a “readjustment period.” He said they had a “few misunderstandings, but nothing important.”

He swore up and down that Beth was the only woman he picked up since his marriage. When he approached her that day, Beth was coy. “She turned to me and said, ‘Don’t you think it’s wrong to approach a girl this way?’” Wrong or not, she got into his car within a minute or two. Before he dropped her off in Pacific Beach, where she was couch-surfing at the home of Elvera and Dorothy French. they sat in his car and talked. He asked her if she would go out to dinner with him. “That would be nice,” she said.

Red drove back up the highway and rented a motel room. He picked Beth up that evening and they went to a nightclub and danced until midnight. Afterwards, they stopped at a drive-in for a snack. He said they talked for a few minutes in front of the French home. Red kissed her goodnight, but said she was a little cold.

He didn’t see her again until January 7, on his next trip to San Diego. He wired ahead to let her know he would be in town. They went nightclubbing again. Then they stayed together in a motel on their way back to Los Angeles.

Red’s story, and his demeanor, convinced Aggie he was not a killer, but that didn’t mean she let him off easy.

If there was one thing that Aggie detested, it was a sob sister. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a sob sister is a female journalist who writes overly sentimental copy. That sort of journalism was never Aggie’s thing. She said, “A sob sister could have wept with and over Manley, interpolating, editorial gushes to prove what a big bleeding-heart beat in her breast. To hell with that. I’d rather have a fistful—an armload—of good solid facts.”

Her armload of facts made Aggie’s interview with Red Manley riveting. In fact, her city editor, who normally cautioned her to keep her copy short, let the entire interview run without a ton of photos. He knew a great interview when he read one. Aggie was the only Los Angeles reporter to get a by-line in the Dahlia case.

Why, then, amid the covering of the murder, was Aggie yanked off the story? With no warning or explanation, Aggie found herself benched. The city editor let her cool her heels in the newsroom without a thing to do. 

Aggie spent a couple of miserable days at her desk, bored out of her mind. Then she got pissed-off enough to fight back. She didn’t get huffy or raise her voice. She brought in an embroidery project. In no time, the other newsroom denizens were snickering. One newswoman, Caroline Walker, 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!” 

The next day, they reassigned Aggie to the story—only to pull her off a second time. What the hell was going on?

NEXT TIME: The Black Dahlia case continues.