Tag Archives: Will Fowler

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 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.

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.