Tag Archives: Elizabeth Short

The Red Lipstick Murder

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Murder victims lose their identities. They are a toe tag in the morgue; they are a file number for police. Sometimes it is easy to forget that they were much more than a newspaper headline.

Born in a small New Mexico town in 1902, Jeanne Axford came of age during the Roaring ‘20s. Perfect timing for the free-spirited girl. She married at 17 to David Wrather and they had a son, David, Jr.

Jeanne Axford (L) with her cousin Clara (Photo: Ancestry)

In 1922, after training in New Mexico, Jeanne worked as a nurse in Amarillo, Texas. Marriage didn’t suit her. She and David divorced in 1924; she won custody of their son.

In 1925, Jeanne married again. That marriage, too, failed. Rumor has it Jeanne acted in films, but I couldn’t find her listed in the Internet Movie Database, even under an alias, so she may have had uncredited roles.

Regardless of whether she appeared in movies, Jeanne had an interesting Hollywood connection. She worked as a private nurse for Marion Benda Wilson, Rudolph Valentino’s last date, and maybe his last love. Known as the “Woman in Black” for many years, Marion put flowers on Valentino’s grave.

Marion Benda Wilson aka The Lady in Black
Marion Benda Wilson aka the Woman in Black

Sometime between 1925 and 1931, Jeanne learned to fly and earned the moniker, “Flying Nurse.” She worked for a large oil company in South America, flying from one oil field to another, caring for workers. She became a member of the Women’s Air Reserve, and the 99 Club, an organization of women aviators.

Either an optimist, or a glutton for punishment, Jeanne married for a third time in Dallas, Texas on October 8, 1931, two days after her 29th birthday, to Curtis Bower. It took the couple five weeks to realize their mistake. Dissolving her marriage earned Jeanne another nickname, “air-mail divorcee.” The divorce papers, prepared by her attorney, Allan Lund, went via air to Juarez, Mexico for filing. A law firm in Mexico provided for a final decree by proxy. Neither Jeanne nor Curtis needed to appear in court.

On July 5, 1932, Jeanne’s mother, Oma Randolph, went to police to file a missing person report. Jeanne left home the morning of June 27 to drive to the Mexican border, where she planned to board a private plane for Mexico City.

The Flying Nurse

The week following the missing person report, Jeanne cabled her mother from Mexico City. “I can’t understand the worry I have caused in the United States by flying to Mexico. I am flying back for the Olympics. I assure everyone that I am okeh.”

Jeanne kept a low profile for the next several years. She married in 1944 for the fourth and final time to a former Marine, Frank French.

It isn’t clear when Jeanne started her slide into alcoholism, but by the mid-1940s, she fought demons she could not control.

Alcohol fueled a life of risky behavior and made Jeanne easy prey for a monster.

On February 10, 1947, less than a month after housewife Betty Bersinger found Elizabeth Short’s bisected body in a Leimert Park vacant lot, Hugh C. Shelby, a bulldozer operator, found the brutally beaten, nude body of a woman in a field near the Santa Monica Airport. The Herald put out an extra edition with the headline: “Werewolf Strikes Again! Kills L.A. Woman, Writes B.D. on Body.”

Within a couple of hours, police identified the victim as forty-five-year-old Jeanne French.

Detectives at the scene of Jeanne’s murder

Jeanne suffered blows to her head, administered by a metal blunt instrument—a socket wrench. As bad as they were, the blows to her head were not fatal. Jeanne died from hemorrhage and shock due to fractured ribs and multiple injuries caused by her killer stomping on her. Her chest bore heel prints. It took a long time for Jeanne to die. The coroner said that she bled to death.

Mercifully, Jeanne was unconscious after the first blows to her head so she never saw her killer take the deep red lipstick from her purse, and she didn’t feel the pressure of his improvised pen as he wrote on her torso: “Fuck You, B.D.” and “Tex.” Police looked for a connection between Jeanne’s murder and Elizabeth Short’s death; but they found nothing.

Jeanne was last seen seated at the first stool nearest entering the Pan American Bar on West Washington Place. The bartender told police Jeanne sat next to a smallish man with a dark complexion sat on the stool next to her. The bartender assumed they were a couple because he saw them leave together at closing time.

On the night before she died, Jeanne visited Frank at his apartment and they’d quarreled. Frank said Jeanne, who was drunk, started the fight, then hit him with her purse and left.

Jeanne’s twenty-five-year-old son, David, came in for questioning. As he left the police station, he saw his step-father for the first time since he’d learned of his mother’s death. David confronted Frank and said: “Well, I’ve told them the truth. If you’re guilty, there’s a God in heaven who will take care of you.” Frank didn’t hesitate. He looked at David and said: “I swear to God; I didn’t kill her.”

Police booked Frank for murder, then they cleared him. His landlady told police she could verify Frank was in his apartment at the time of the murder. His shoe prints failed to match those found at the scene of the crime.

Cops had few leads. They found French’s cut-down 1929 Ford roadster in the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant, The Piccadilly at Washington Place and Sepulveda Blvd. Witnesses said that the car was there at 3:15 on the morning of the murder, and a night watchman saw a man leave it there. The police never accounted for Jeanne’s whereabouts between 3:15 a.m. and the time of her death, which the coroner estimated to be around 6 a.m.

Police rousted scores of sex degenerates, but they eliminated each as a suspect. Officers also checked out local Chinese restaurants after the autopsy revealed that Jeanne ate a Chinese meal before her death.

Jeanne’s slaying became known as the “Red Lipstick Murder” case. Like the Black Dahlia case, it went cold.

Three years later, following a Grand Jury investigation into the many unsolved murders of women in L.A., the District Attorney assigned investigators from his office to look into the case.

Frank Jemison and Walter Morgan worked on Jeanne’s murder for eight months, but they never closed it. They came up with one hot suspect, a painter who worked for the French’s four months prior to the murder. He said he dated Jeanne several times. The cops discovered the painter burned several pairs of his shoes—he wore the same size as the ones that left marks on Jeanne’s body. He seemed a likely suspect until he didn’t. Police cleared him despite his odd behavior.

The 1940s’ high number of unsolved female homicides prompted a 1949 Grand Jury investigation into police inaction.

Like the murder of Elizabeth Short, there have been no leads in Jeanne French’s case in decades. Two more names added to the list of unsolved homicides of women during the 1940s.

The Black Dahlia–January 22, 1947

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On January 22, 1947, one week after Beth Short’s murder, the coroner held an inquest to determine the manner of her death.

It was an excruciating ordeal for her family. They called her mother, Phoebe, to the stand. Asked when she was first notified that her daughter died, she half rose from her chair and blurted; “She was murdered.” She regained her composure, sat down, and told the jury she last saw Beth in April 1946, in Massachusetts.

Beth wrote to Phoebe every week. She told her she was a waitress. She also said she worked as a film extra, and was going to San Diego to work in a veteran’s hospital. None of that was true.

Phoebe said she planned to bury Beth in Oakland, California. Beth’s sister Virginia lived there.

Robert “Red” Manley testified he knew Beth for about a month. He last saw her on January 9, 1947, when he drove her from San Diego to Los Angeles, and left her at the Biltmore Hotel.

Beth Short’s brother-in-law, Adrian West, and her sister, Virginia, sit
behind Robert “Red” Manley at the coroner’s inquest. [Photo courtesy LAPL]

Among the others to testify was Detective Jess W. Haskels. He told the nine-man jury that the “body was clean and appeared to be washed” when found on January 15. He described how the killer cut the body in half at the waist.

Dr. Frederick Newbarr, chief autopsy surgeon, stated that Beth’s murder occurred less than 24 hours before her discovery. He said his autopsy showed her death was due to hemorrhage, shock, concussion of the brain, and lacerations of the face.

Beth’s brother-in-law, Adrian West (married to her sister Virginia), expressed the family’s gratitude for everyone working on the case. Virginia, Phoebe, and Adrian planned to leave for Oakland by train on the 23rd to accompany Beth’s body north.

Adrian West, Phoebe Short, Virginia West [Photo courtesy LAPL]

After hearing all the testimony, the jury retired for 45 minutes before returning with the expected verdict: Homicide. Death by person or persons unknown.

Vying for headlines with the inquest was Lynn Martin—known around Hollywood as a 22-year-old model.

Lynn Martin [Photo courtesy LAPL]

Police searched for Lynn after finding out she roomed with Beth for a time in Hollywood. They found the frightened girl in a motel in the San Fernando Valley. At first, the detectives who questioned her believed her to be in her early 20s; but after spending hours with her, they saw her for the frightened teenager she was; only three days from her 16th birthday. They contacted juvenile officers to come for her.

Officer Helen Mellon with Lynn Martin [Photo courtesy LAPL]

She admitted her true name was Norma Lee Meyer, and her parents lived in Long Beach. Juvie officers said Lynn had a record dating back to when she was 11. She spent thirteen months in the El Retiro School for Girls.

El Retiro School for Girls {Photo courtesy LAPL]

Police hoped Lynn might help them with their investigation. They found her in a motel court in the San Fernando Valley. A cab driver, Ballard Smith, who knew Lynn, said he picked her up as a “fare” at Sunset Blvd. and Western Ave. on the afternoon of January 21st. He drove her to the Hollywood Post Office, and then to the Ventura Blvd motel.

Hollywood Post Office at Wilcox and Selma

As he drove Lynn to the motel, Ballard said he persuaded her to surrender to police. He learned from the newspapers that police sought her as a witness, not a suspect.

Lynn said she would call police as soon as she got to the motel. She explained she had not called them earlier because she was frightened, and didn’t want any notoriety.

As soon as she had checked in, managers of the motel recognized her and called police.

LAPD Captain Donohoe said they questioned Lynn about Edward P. (the Duke) Wellington because someone named him as one of her boyfriends. She admitted spending a few days in a motel with Wellington, and people saw her wearing a white-tipped silver fox fur wrap he allegedly bought her.

If Wellington bought Lynn a fur, he likely paid for it with a bad check. Police caught up with him in late January. Police cleared him of suspicion in Beth’s murder after proving he had never met her.

On February 3 1947, the Long Beach Independent featured an article about Lynn which, if true, may explain how, at 15, she was sleeping with a man in his 40s.

The paper interviewed Joe Kennick, head of the city’s juvenile bureau. He said Los Angeles police had arrested Lynn seven times. Even as she was being held by juvenile authorities, officials prepared to start court action against 10 male adults with whom she had been intimate.

Kennick said, “This poor, unfortunate girl is just another sad example of a child who never had a chance.” She bounced from relatives to foster homes, and she never got the care every child deserves.

On November 6, 1943, at only 12, police arrested her as wayward and for violation of the curfew ordinance.

The woman who was supposed to care for her forced her to sleep an unfinished garaged; no matter what the weather. One night when she got cold in the garage, she went to visit a 13-year-old friend. Lynn said she “wasn’t a nice girl—she gets herself picked up by sailors.”

The two girls went to the Pike, where drunken sailors picked them up. One sailor, about 20, seemed nicer than the others. Police arrested her when they found her with him under the pier.

It is not surprising that by age 15 she was living on her own in Hollywood—pretending to be a model in her 20s. She told police, “Hollywood is full of men around 40 that want to buy you drinks and a meal. They expect you to pay for the drinks and meals with yourself.”

Lynn’s story illuminates the post-war world, especially for young women. Beth was several years older than Lynn, but I doubt she was any more worldly.

I don’t know what happened to Lynn. Unlike Beth, she got a second chance. I hope she used it wisely.

Black Dahlia: January 15, 1947

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Bundled up against the chill of a cold wave that had held Los Angeles residents in its grip for several days, Mrs. Betty Bersinger and her three-year-old daughter Anne walked south on the west side of Norton in Leimert Park, a Los Angeles suburb. Midway down the block, Bersinger noticed something pale in the weeds about fifty feet north of a fire hydrant and about a foot in from the sidewalk.

Initially, Bersinger believed she was seeing a discarded mannequin or a passed-out nude woman.

Betty Bersinger recreates her phone call to police.

It took a moment before Bersinger realized she was in a waking nightmare. The bright white shape in the weeds was neither a mannequin nor a drunk.

Bersinger later recalled, “I was terribly shocked and scared to death. I grabbed Anne, and we walked as fast as we could to the first house that had a telephone.”

Over the years, several reporters have claimed to have been first on the scene of the murder. One person who made that claim was Will Fowler.

Fowler said he and photographer Felix Paegel of the Los Angeles Examiner approached Crenshaw Boulevard when they heard an intriguing call on their shortwave radio. It was a police call and Fowler couldn’t believe his ears. A naked woman, possibly drunk, was found in a vacant lot one block east of Crenshaw between 39th and Coliseum streets. Fowler turned to Pagel and said, “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 hopped out of the car and approached the woman as Paegel pulled his Speed Graphic from the trunk. Fowler called out, “Jesus, Felix, this woman’s cut in half!”

Will Fowler crouches down near the body of Jane Doe.

That was Fowler’s story, and he stuck to it through the decades. He said he closed the dead girl’s eyes. But was his story true?

There is information to suggest that a reporter from the Los Angeles Times was the first on the scene; and in her autobiography, Newspaperwoman, Aggie Underwood, said that she was the first.

Aggie on Norton, January 15, 1947.

After 78-years does it really matter? All those who saw the murdered girl that day saw the same horrifying scene, and it left an indelible impression. Aggie described what she 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 about 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.”

Air brushed newspaper photo of Jane Doe. 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 most promising of the early suspects was a twenty-three-year-old transient, Cecil French. He was busted for molesting women in a downtown bus depot.

Police were further 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. He was dropped from the list of hot suspects.

Ray Pinker, Police Chemist
c. 1935 Photo courtesy LAPL

In her initial coverage, Aggie referred to the case as the “Werewolf” slaying because of the savagery of the mutilations inflicted on the unknown woman. Aggie’s werewolf tag would identify the case until a much better one was discovered—the Black Dahlia.

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.

Elizabeth Short-Centenary

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ELIZABETH SHORT

Today, July 29, 2024, marks the centenary of Elizabeth Short’s birth. Born in Boston, Beth, as she often preferred to be called, was the middle child of Cleo and Phoebe Short. She had four sisters: Virginia, Dorothea, Elnora, and Muriel.

Cleo held various sales jobs over the years. The miniture golf craze of the 1920s captured his imagination. He opened a course, but in 1930, the business tanked. Rather than face the loss, and his responsibilities to his family, he positioned his car close to a bridge to create the appearance of suicide. A houseful of women has its comforts, but Cleo’s abandonment appears to have profoundly affected Beth.

Miniature golf was all the rage in the 1920s and 1930s.

A few years later, Cleo wrote to Phoebe and asked for forgiveness. She refused. At least Beth knew Cleo was alive. She hoped for a relationship. She found him in California. Rather than a loving father, he was a mean drunk, looking for a housekeeper, not a daughter. Their reunion failed.

Cleo Short

In 1943, she worked at Camp Cooke, now Vandenberg Air Force Base, where they voted her “Camp Cutie. On September 23, 1943, she got arrested for underage drinking at the El Paseo restaurant in Santa Barbara. The jail matron gave her money for a bus ticket back to Medford, Massachusetts.

Because of her asthma, Beth would regularly escape the harsh Massachusetts winters to work as a waitress in Florida.

Major Matt Gordon, a decorated fighter pilot, met Beth in Miami, Florida while on leave in 1944. He may have been on leave after sustaining injuries in a plane crash in February. A photo of them together shows him smiling, and Beth with stars in her eyes, and a proprietary hand on his arm. The handsome pilot was everything the twenty-year-old wanted.

Matt Gordon

Matt’s death in a plane crash near Kalaikunda in West Bengal, India, on August 10, 1945, was a cruel twist of fate. It happened just one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, and only weeks before the war ended. Matt’s loss devastated Beth.

After August 1945, she never worked again. She drifted from Medford, to Chicago, Florida, and to Los Angeles—chasing a ghost.

She lived in Long Beach, California, during the summer of 1946. While there, friends nicknamed her the Black Dahlia. By the end of the year, she was couch surfing at the home of Dorothy and Elvera French in San Diego. While in San Diego, she met a traveling salesman, Robert “Red” Manley, when he offered her a ride.

Beth and the married salesman, a fact he no doubt concealed from her, corresponded for a month or two before she asked him if he would drive her back to Los Angeles in early January 1947. He agreed.

Matt Gordon and Beth Short

Red picked her up at the French’s on January 8th. They drove up the coast and stayed the night in a motel before arriving in Los Angeles on January 9th. Beth checked her luggage at the bus depot. Red refused to leave her in such a sketchy neighborhood. He took her to the Biltmore Hotel, where she told him she was meeting her sister, Virginia. It was a lie. Virginia lived hundreds of miles north in Oakland.

Red stayed with her in the hotel lobby for a long time before he left. Beth, now on her own, left the hotel lobby, turned right on Olive, and vanished.

On the morning of January 15, a Leimert Park housewife, Betty Bersinger, discovered Beth’s body while out running errands. Where was Beth for those missing days? No one who knew her saw her during that time. The thought of her being held captive by her killer is horrifying.

Once police established her identity, reporters saw it as an opportunity to pry into every detail of Beth’s life. The dead lose their right to privacy. Speculation filled column after column in the newspapers. The prevailing attitude was that nice girls do not get murdered. Yet Beth had done nothing, good or bad, worthy of note. At 22-years-old, she never got the chance.

As time passed with no solution, the case grew cold. Other murders captured headlines. It was not until decades later, following a couple of books, and a mid-1970s made-for-TV movie, that Beth’s story became news again.

It is understandable that the case is known in Los Angeles, but what I find most interesting is that the 77-year-old Los Angeles murder mystery has drawn global interest. What is it about Beth’s murder that resonates with people even today?

It may be the supposed Hollywood connection.

Most contemporary articles erroneously describe Beth as an aspiring actress, or starlet. Such characterizations make her murder the ultimate Hollywood heartbreak story with a violent twist.

Still, two distinct narratives about Beth co-exist. One is the myth of the Black Dahlia, a fictional character based on Beth’s life.

The second story, and the one I believe is true, is that of a depressed, confused, and needy young woman seeking marriage and stability in the chaos and uncertainty of the post-war world.

Each of her sisters married and had children. By the time of Phoebe’s death in 1992, three daughters, thirteen grandchildren, twenty-one great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandson survived her. If Beth had lived, she would undoubtedly contributed heirs.

Beth’s funeral in Oakland, California

We have lost sight of the troubled young woman who came to California to connect with her father—not to break into the movies.

The tragedy of Beth’s life is not that she failed to achieve Hollywood stardom, she never sought it.

Beth was looking for what most people her age wanted—marriage and a home. She pursued a romantic vision of a husband in uniform with shiny bright brass buttons, and a bungalow with a white picket fence.

Judging by an undated letter she received from Lieutenant Stephen Wolak, she did not hesitate to press a man for marriage. Wolak’s letter reads in part, “When you mention marriage in your letter, Beth, I get to wondering. Infatuation is sometimes mistaken for true love. I know whereof I speak, because my ardent love soon cools off.”

Wolak’s response to Beth’s letter is a frank assessment of their relationship—which, in his estimation, was not serious. You can gauge her desperation from his response.  

How many other men in uniform received letters from Beth suggesting marriage? 

A depressed and lonely young woman with daddy issues looking for love is not necessarily the stuff of bestselling books or blockbuster movies.

The pathos of Beth’s real life can make us uncomfortable, so we perpetuate the myth of the Black Dahlia. It is the epic tale of a beautiful young woman seeking stardom who meets a brutal end at the hands of a depraved killer that mesmerizes us.

I imagine in the years to come—no matter what may be revealed; we will continue to hold fast to the myth.

Black Dahlia: Another Confession and Another Murder

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The investigation into Beth Short’s murder grew colder every day. Police investigated all the crackpots who claimed responsibility for the heinous crime. They went through stacks of letters and postcards that named potential suspects and offered various theories about the culprit. They rousted local sex offenders and searched in vain for the crime scene. If only the killer would confess.

On February 8, 1947, Joseph Dumais, an Army Corporal, came forward and admitted he dated Beth Short. Not only had they dated, he was sure he had killed her. The Herald announced “Corporal Dumais Is Black Dahlia Killer.” The story began, “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 returned to Fort Dix wearing blood-stained trousers with his pockets crammed full of clippings about the murder. In a hand-written 50-page confession, he claimed he dated Beth five days before the discovery of her body—then he suffered a mental blackout.

Joseph Dumais

The good-looking corporal seemed like the real deal. Army Capt. William R. Florence, head of the Fort Dix Criminal Investigation Department, said, “I am definitely convinced that this man is the murderer.” In his zeal to be the one to solve the gruesome murder, Capt. Florence overlooked the superficial nature of Dumais’ answers to his questions. Dumais had only to read the news coverage of the case, and then unleash his imagination to be credible in the short run. When Florence asked, “Does it seem to you at this time that you committed this crime? Dumais answered yes. But as Dumais stated earlier, he blacked out and recalled nothing until he arrived at Penn Station.

Getting to the nitty-gritty details, the Capt. asked, “Do you know how her body was mutilated?” Dumais said he did, but did not wish to describe the injuries. Again, Capt. Florence asked Dumais if he could have committed the murder. Dumais replied, “Yes, it is possible because of my actions in the past.”

In his confession, Dumais told Army authorities he stabbed Beth in the back and around the mouth, then severed her body with a meat cleaver. He washed the body of blood and dumped it in a vacant lot in Leimert Park.

Dumais’s story was riddled with holes. He said he had a date with Beth in San Francisco on January 9 or 10, but could not explain how he got to Los Angeles and then back to Fort Dix. Further questions revealed Dumais to be a blackout drunk. He said he was “rough on the girls” when he had been drinking. Dumais’s credibility eroded with each new statement.

On February 10th, as Dumais’s story unraveled, Los Angeles awakened to the news of another brutal murder of a woman. The Herald put out an extra edition with the headline, “Werewolf Strikes Again! Kills L.A. Woman, Writes B.D. on Body”.

The victim of the “Werewolf Killer” was forty-five-year-old Jeanne French. Her nude body was discovered at 8 a.m. on February 10, 1947, near Grand View Avenue and Indianapolis Street in West L.A. Police were frustrated and overworked. The women of Los Angeles were terrified. What the hell was going on?

Detectives at the scene of Jeanne French’s murder.

NEXT TIME: The Lipstick Murder

Black Dahlia: January 26, 1947 to February 15, 1947

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Beth Short’s family buried her at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. The cemetery is located 375 miles north of the vacant lot in Leimert Park, where Betty Bersinger found her, and 3,000 miles away from Medford, Massachusetts, where her journey began.

Law enforcement worked around the clock to find the killer. On January 25th, as Beth’s family laid her to rest, a police search of a trash dump at 1819 East 25th Street in Vernon turned up one of her shoes and her handbag. Police carefully handled the items to preserve possible fingerprints. Because he saw her last, detectives called on Red Manley to identify the items.

Robert Manley identifies Beth’s purse and shoe

Without hesitation, Red told them the handbag smelled of the perfume Beth wore when he drove her from San Diego to the Biltmore on January 9th. He recognized the shoe from a pile of shoes presented to him by police. Feeling the heel of each shoe, Red stopped at a black right pump. He held it up and said, “This is it! I’m sure of it.” The shoe was the only one with double taps—heel and toe. Red paid to have an additional pair of new taps put on the heels of Beth’s shoes when they left San Diego. Beth loved hearing the tap, tap, of her toe and heel hitting the pavement as she walked.

Detectives thought the shoe and purse might be the same as those reported by Robert Hyman. He said he saw them in a trash can in front of his café at 1136 Crenshaw Blvd, about two miles from 39th and Norton. Trash collectors took the can before police arrived; but they traced the load to the Vernon dump. Hyman could not identify the bag and shoe.

Meanwhile, LAPD Capt. Jack Donahoe ordered extra officers to sift through the contents of a cryptic envelope mailed to the Examiner. On January 22, James Richardson, the paper’s editor, received an anonymous call. The man told Richardson he had items belonging to Beth. He thought they would “spice up” the case. Two days later, the Examiner received a call from the post office regarding a peculiar package. Someone, likely the killer, soaked the package in gasoline and addressed it “To The Los Angeles Examiner and other newspapers.” The package contained personal documents, pictures, Beth’s birth certificate, and a 75-page address book in brown leather.

Publicity-seekers, and sad mental cases, contacted police. Police received many communications through the mail. The first, the gasoline-soaked package, was almost certainly authentic. The others included a letter intercepted in Pasadena. Enclosed in the improvised envelope, a note cut and pasted from newspaper headlines, read, “Dahlia killer cracking. Wants terms.” Another letter, not considered authentic, read, “We’re going to Mexico City—catch us if you can.”

One note had a message scrawled in ink. In bold, capital letters, it read, “Here it is. Turning in Wednesday, Jan. 29, 10 a.m. Had my fun at police.” The note was signed “Black Dahlia Avenger.” The Avenger was a no-show. He sent a follow-up note to the Los Angeles Times. The note read, “Have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing was justified.”

Daniel Vorhees, a transient in his thirties, surrendered to the police at Fourth and Hill Streets. He said he “couldn’t stand it anymore.” Detective Charles King and Dr. Paul De River, a police psychiatrist, agreed to wait until Voorhees recovered from his “bewildered and befuddled state” before giving him a lie detector test. Police cleared Voorhees.

By February 1st, police said they were giving up trying to contact Beth’s killer through letters and appeals. Sick pranksters sent anonymous notes, some from as far away as the Bronx, and signed them “Black Dahlia Avenger.” 

A local newspaper received half a dozen Black Dahlia messages in one mail delivery—one with postage due. An exhausting number of fortune tellers, spiritualists, mediums, and even clergymen wrote to police with their own solutions of the crime.

In the two weeks since the murder, hundreds of police door-knocked thousands of doors in a futile search for the crime scene. Several false confessors were detained and released.

The women of Los Angeles lived in fear.

NEXT TIME: A suspect and another murder.

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.

Aggie Underwood–Newspaperwoman

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On October 27, 1936, in a special edition celebrating the Herald’s twenty-fifth anniversary as an evening daily, city editor John B.T. Campbell wrote this about Aggie Underwood:

“Aggie Underwood should have been a man. A rip-snorting, go-gettum reporter who goes through fire lines trails killers . . . using anything from airplanes to mules to reach the spot that in newspapers is  . . . marked with an arrow or an X. What a gal! Usually followed by one or two photographers who . . . get lost when unable to keep up with this speedy lady. Favorite occupation is following a good murder. Favorite story, a good murder. Favorite photograph, a good murder. Favorite fate for all editors, good murder. Help!”

Today we may struggle with the “should have been a man” comment, but at that time it was high praise. Aggie was still new at the Herald, starting in January 1935. She undeniably made an impression on the newsroom. She recalled those early days as “happy-go-lucky.” The reporters worked hard and played just as hard; often going in a group to Chinatown for dinner, or gathering at a bar in Pico Gulch (about half a block from the office, on Pico between Figueroa and Georgia streets).

1931 photo shows the Goodyear blimp “Volunteer” soaring over the Evening Herald building to pick up a bundle of Twentieth Birthday editions for delivery to officials at city hall.

In her work, Aggie made it a point never to ask for special treatment because she was a woman. One night, she arrived at a brush fire in Malibu. A Sheriff’s deputy stopped her. “It makes no difference if you are a reporter. No woman can go in there.” She was considering her next move when she heard a man’s voice. He addressed the deputy, “It’s all right, lad. She’s been to a hell of a lot more of these things than you ever have. Go on through, Aggie.”

The voice belonged to Sheriff’s Department Inspector Norris G. Stensland, one of my favorite LA law enforcement officers.

Aggie worked well with law enforcement. She took the time to write to an officer’s superior to express how helpful he was. In this way, she built long-standing relationships based on mutual respect. Reporters like Aggie have a lot in common with detectives. Each knows the value of maintaining their composure and assessing a scene. Both cops and reporters know the value of developing informants.

One time, on a tip, Aggie arrived at the scene of a love-triangle murder. The cop at the door refused entry to Aggie, not because she was a reporter, but because she was a woman. “You can’t go in there, lady. It’s pretty bad in there. It’s no place for a woman. It’s a mess of blood all over.” Paul Dorsey, a Herald photographer who was with her, said to the officer, “Don’t worry about her. She can take it. Worry about me. Chances are that I can’t.”

In August 1935, Aggie got a tip that LAPD detectives planned to search the home of a woman accused of shooting and gravely wounding her husband at a dinner party days earlier. Aggie arrived before detectives Aldo Corsini and Thad Brown, who sought the pistol used by the woman. Aggie said the detectives were concerned about entering the home because of a huge gaunt German Shepherd. Nobody had fed or given water to the poor thing since the arrest of his mistress. The dog, frightened and stressed, barked from behind a window.

Victim of shooting interviewed by Aldo Corsini and Thad Brown. Photo courtesy UCLA digital collection.

Aggie had an epiphany. “Look, Thad, Corsini and I will go to the back door and make one hell of a noise and distract the dog. While we’re doing that, Thad, you go in through the window, right there beside the front door, then unlock the front door and rush out. I’ll go in then and tame your dog; I’m not afraid of him.”

Aggie heard dogs are aggressive when they are afraid of taller, bigger humans who seem threatening. She figured the best way to approach the frightened animal would be to get down to his level. Corsini wasn’t about to get on his knees to confront the dog, and neither was Brown, but Aggie refused to retreat. Facing the dog, Aggie talked to him in a soft voice, and cautiously moved her hand toward his head. She petted his head gently and said, “What’s the matter, fellow? You hungry and thirsty?” The big dog whimpered. Aggie stood up and went to the kitchen sink to fill his bowl with water. She set out some food for him, too. He became her shadow. He followed Aggie around the house while the detectives searched for the gun, which they found in a laundry bag. The woman later went to prison for attempted murder.

Thad Brown promoted to captain of homicide/chief of detectives. The rank and file would have made him chief of police if politics hadn’t put William Parker in the office instead. Aggie said for years Brown blushed when asked if he had tamed any wild dogs lately.

Aggie’s cordial relations with police provided her with exclusive stories. She rolled up to a house in Eagle Rock one afternoon after getting a report of a double mystery death. Several LAPD homicide detectives stood around outside, waiting for the living room to air out. Aggie said after ten days, the corpses were ripe. The couple died in the middle of a sex act on the living room couch. Detectives weren’t sure whether they had a murder-suicide or an accident. Aggie wanted to catch the Herald’s next deadline, so she made a deal with Captain H. H. Bert Wallis. They identified the dead man, but they still didn’t know the woman’s identity. No detective wanted to enter the house until the smell dissipated. Aggie said she would brave the stench and retrieve the woman’s handbag, which sat on a table visible from outside.

The woman was nude except for a slip rolled up to her chest. The man, in his union-suit, had fallen to the floor. His penis had burst, and Aggie had to step over him to reach the handbag. She tried to hold her breath, but the smell of decaying flesh was pervasive, clinging to her favorite brown wool dress. Aggie grabbed the purse and handed it to Wallis. In gratitude, he gave her a head start on the story. It turned out the man met the woman in a bar, brought her home, and they died of carbon monoxide poisoning because of a faulty heater.

Aggie loved the brown wool dress. She saw it in a shop window and bought it on lay-away. In a conversation with Aggie’s daughter, years later, I learned the fate of the dress. Mary Evelyn told me Aggie came home that night, peeled off the dress and burned it in the fireplace, saying, “I’ll never the smell of death out of it.”

Aggie at the Black Dahlia body dump, January 15, 1947.

During her career, Aggie reported on hundreds of crimes. The most infamous of them began on the morning of January 15, 1947.

Aggie claimed to be the first reporter at the body dump site on Norton near 39th in Leimert Park. She was likely one of the first. It scarcely matters now. The deceased was a young woman, naked and obscenely posed. Her head is north, her legs spread and point south. A couple of days later, they identified the woman as twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Short from Medford, Massachusetts. She became known as the Black Dahla.

Aggie interviewed the initial suspect in the grisly murder, Robert “Red” Manley. She sized him up and concluded he was not the killer. Despite an intense investigation, the case remains unsolved.

This post concludes my month-long tribute to Aggie, who inspired me to create this blog eleven years ago.

Aggie in her early days as city editor. Note the baseball bat on her desk. She said she kept the bat to deal with Hollywood press agents.

As we bid adieu to 2023, and prepare for new challenges in 2024, I thank you so much for your continued readership. This blog is one of my passions. I love relating true tales from L.A.’s past. Crime is banal, but the people who commit crime are endlessly fascinating. I’ve begun exploring stories for the upcoming year—there are some excellent ones. Within the next several days, I will begin my annual coverage of the Black Dahlia case, so stay tuned.

Happy New Year!

Black Dahlia–Conclusion

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NOTE: The Long Beach Independent-January 15, 1949. I believe the detectives in the photo are Harry Hansen and Finis Brown.

Two years passed with police no closer to a solution for Elizabeth Short’s murder. The 1949 Los Angeles Grand Jury intended to hold LAPD’s feet to the fire for failing to solve the Dahlia case and several other unsolved homicides and disappearances of women during the 1940s.

On September 6, 1949, the jury’s foreman, Harry Lawson, told reporters that the administrative committee scheduled a meeting for September 8.

Lawson said:

“There is every possibility that we will summon before the jury officers involved in the investigation of these murders. We find it odd that there are on the books of the Los Angeles Police Deportment many unsolved crimes of this type. Because of the nature of these murder and sex crimes, women and children are constantly placed in jeopardy and are not safe from attack. Something is radically wrong with the present system for apprehending the guilty. The alarming increase in the number of unsolved murders and other major crimes reflects ineffectiveness in law enforcement agencies and the courts, and that should not be tolerated.”

In his statement, Lawson places the blame for the unsolved homicides squarely on the shoulders of law enforcement and the courts. What Lawson failed to understand was that crime was changing. No longer could police assume a woman’s killer was her husband or boyfriend. Stranger homicides were nothing new, but neither were they common.

The population of post-war Los Angeles skewed young and, because of a variety of factors, like the acute housing shortage, they were transient. A potent and deadly mix of opportunity and a large victim pool made it easy for the criminally inclined to do their worst. Women had a false sense of security about men in uniform. Behavior considered risky by today’s standards was acceptable during the 1940s.

From the outbreak of the war, the government encouraged women to support men in uniform. Newspapers and women’s magazines devoted countless column inches to ways in which they could aid fighting men. Women formed “Add-A-Plate” clubs. The mission of the clubs was to invite a soldier home for a meal. Women also routinely picked up soldiers and sailors hitchhiking because it was their patriotic duty.

On April 2, 1943, the Pasadena Post wrote about a “ride waiting zone” which gave military men a place to stand and be visible to passing motorists who would then give them a ride. Most of the men were decent and law-abiding, but some returned home severely damaged by their war experiences. How many of those men were capable of murder?

Pfc. George Morrow, left, and Pvt. Dennis Ward could not wait until painters had completely finished the first service men’s waiting zone before they tried it out.

LAPD detectives spared nothing in their investigation of Short’s slaying. They took over 2700 reports. There were over 300 named suspects. They arrested fifty suspects who they subsequently cleared and released. Nineteen false confessors wasted law enforcement’s time and resources.

In 1949, the DA’s office issued a report on the investigation into Short’s murder. In part, the report stated:

“[she] knew at least fifty men at the time of her death and at least 25 men had been seen with her within the 60-day period preceding her death. She was not a prostitute. She has been confused with a Los Angeles prostitute by the same name… She was known as a teaser of men. She would ride with them, chisel a place to sleep, clothes or money, but she would then refuse to have sexual intercourse by telling them she was a virgin, or that she was engaged or married. There were three known men who had sexual intercourse with her and, according to them, she got no pleasure out of this act. According to the autopsy surgeon, her sex organs showed female trouble. She had disliked queer women very much, as well as prostitutes. She was never known to be a narcotic addict.”

Distracted by the continuing saga of local gangster Mickey Cohen, the jury turned their attention away from the carnage. In the end, they passed the baton to the 1950 grand jury–which also found itself sidetracked.

Mickey Cohen and his bullet proof car.

What happened to the women who disappeared? It is unlikely that we will ever know. It is also unlikely we will identify the killer(s). People will always speculate about the cases, and every few years a book about the Black Dahlia slaying will emerge claiming to have solved the decades long cold case. None of the books I’ve read so far is credible.

I do not accept theories which rely on elaborate conspiracies perpetrated by everyone, from a newspaper mogul to a local gangster to an allegedly evil genius doctor. My disbelief is based in part on the fact that most people are incapable of keeping a secret. Benjamin Franklin said, “Three (people) can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” Eventually, someone talks.

Elizabeth Short’s killer probably kept his depraved secret but, even if he didn’t, anyone who knew the truth is long dead.

NOTE: This concludes my series of Black Dahlia posts for now. I hope you will stay with me through 2023 as I unearth more of L.A.’s most deranged crimes.

Did a Woman Kill the Black Dahlia?

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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.