The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  When he learned that he would be returning to San Diego on business on January 8, 1947, he wired Elizabeth at the French residence and asked if he could see her again.

  Believing she worked at the Western Airlines office, Manley drove there at about 5:00 P.M. and waited for her to leave the building. Since she didn't really work there, she never appeared, so he drove over to the Frenches'. Elizabeth greeted him at the front door and asked, he later told police, if he could take her to make a telephone call. As they were driving to make the call, she changed her mind and asked him if he could drive her up to Los Angeles. He agreed, but not until the following day, because he had business to attend to in San Diego. They returned together to the French residence, where Elizabeth said her goodbyes to Vera and Dorothy, packed her suitcases, and left with Manley.

  Manley found a motel room, checked in, and the two of them went downtown for drinks and dancing. Elizabeth raised the possibility of taking a bus back to Los Angeles that night, but they decided instead "to get some hamburgers and return to the motel." She told him that "she was cold," and he lit a fire in the motel fireplace. She complained of "chills and not feeling well," and the two of them went to sleep without any attempt at lovemaking.

  The following morning Manley made his business calls, returned to the motel at 12:30, picked up Elizabeth, and drove her back to Los Angeles, stopping along the way at a restaurant for sandwiches, and again for gasoline in Redondo Beach. As they drove, Elizabeth asked if she could write to him. "Of course," he said, and gave her his address, which she noted in her address book. She told him she was "going to Los Angeles to meet her sister, Adrian West." Manley asked, "Where's the meeting, the Biltmore?" "Yes," she said, "the Biltmore."

  When they arrived in downtown Los Angeles, Elizabeth asked Manley to drive her first to the Greyhound bus depot, so she could check her luggage. Manley carried her bags inside, she checked them, and he drove her to the Biltmore just four blocks away. They both entered the lobby of the hotel and Elizabeth asked Manley to "check the front desk to see if her sister had checked in, while she went to the restroom." Manley did as she had bid, was told no Mrs. West had checked in, so he "asked a couple of women who were standing in the lobby if either one might be Mrs. West." They both said no. After waiting with her for a few more minutes, Manley left Elizabeth in the lobby of the Biltmore. It was the last time he saw her, he told the detectives.

  Red Manley swore he was telling the truth, repeating the same story over and over to his interrogators, who grilled him hard to try to find any weak spots. The more intense the questioning, the more firm Manley became, finally offering to take a lie detector test, even truth serum, to prove his innocence.

  When the police asked him if there was anything else he could remember from any of his conversations with Elizabeth, he said that on the evening of January 8 at the motel, he remembered seeing "bad scratches on both of Elizabeth's arms on the outside, above the elbows." He also reported that Elizabeth had told him that "she had a boyfriend who was intensely jealous," describing him as "an Italian, with dark hair, who lived in San Diego."

  He also recalled that "Elizabeth made a long distance telephone call to a man in Los Angeles on January 8 from a payphone in a cafe at Pacific Highway and Balboa Drive, just outside San Diego." Man-ley overhead just enough of the call to know that she was arranging to meet her caller — a man — in downtown Los Angeles the following evening, January 9. Manley did not hear her mention the man's name, but suspected it was actually this man, not her sister, whom Elizabeth was planning to meet. Finally, Manley said he learned of the murder and the discovery of her body from the newspapers during a business trip he made to San Francisco in mid-January.

  On January 25, 1947, detectives recontacted Manley and took him to the University Division station to see if he could identify a purse and high-heeled shoes possibly belonging to Elizabeth Short. He was shown a pile of some two dozen shoes and ten different purses, and positively identified both the shoes and purse as hers: she had been wearing the shoes and carrying the purse when he had left her in the lobby of the Biltmore. Asked by police how he could be sure about the shoes, since there were several similar pairs, Manley stated, "These shoes have double heel taps on them, and I remember that she asked me to take her to a San Diego shoe repair shop to have the extra taps put on her shoes." Manley also identified the "faint traces of perfume inside the purse as the same as the perfume she wore."

  In my review of these initial twenty-one witnesses originally interviewed by the press and police, I found that only a very few of them had played a public role in the investigation. Apparently the police had ignored most of the other witnesses, which obviously concerned me. Especially disconcerting were references to the Army, or Army Air Force, lieutenant from Texas named "George," who had been hospitalized in Los Angeles and whom she said she hoped to marry in November.

  The police had also seemed to have ignored the independent — and crucial — information provided by the taxi-stand owner, Glen Chanslor, about the incident the night of December 29, 1946: the vicious assault on her by a well-dressed man, the friend who had offered her a ride. Chanslor's statements were consistent in all respects with what Manley would later tell the police when he described the deep scratches he saw on her arms just eleven days later, which Elizabeth said had come from an earlier assault by her jealous boyfriend.

  Rather than providing answers, the information seemed to raise further questions. On the surface, it would appear that LAPD detectives had either dropped the ball or deliberately kept important witness information from the public. Why?

  Perhaps the answer to these and other troubling procedural questions, I told myself, could be found through a day-by-day reconstruction of the joint police and press investigations, beginning with the discovery of the body on January 15, 1947.

  12

  The LAPD and the Press: The Joint Investigation

  LOS ANGELES WAS USED TO BIZARRE CRIMES, and, although this crime went beyond brutality, into the world of pure evil, the LAPD command tried to take it as much in stride as possible. But even in 1947, Los Angeles, like New York, was a media capital, with a corps of crime reporters who knew well how the scent of blood sold extra editions of papers and could make a crime reporter's career. Therefore, even in the earliest hours of the investigation into the death of Elizabeth Short, as the sensational nature of the case began to overtake the gumshoe routine of LAPD Robbery-Homicide, the crime reporters themselves quickly got involved. Over the next few weeks it would be the reporters who were calling the shots as they tracked down leads, witnesses, and suspects for the police in exchange for exclusives. The police knew that once they arrested the "Black Dahlia Avenger," as he had called himself in a taunting note to investigators, their case would have to stand up to the scrutiny of a clever defense attorney. Thus they began to worry about disclosing too much sensitive information. Sloppy police work, either at the investigation or arrest stage, could result in an acquittal, no matter how compelling the evidence. The police brass had seen it before and did not want to walk around with mud on their faces as some clever defense attorney like Jerry Giesler took his client by the arm and walked him out of court a free man. This time it would have to be different, because this person was more than a killer: he was a "fiend," a "sex-crazed torture killer," as the papers were calling him.

  The LAPD needed to rely on the newspapers if they wanted to keep up with fast-moving crime reporters, but they also knew they had to keep some cards face down on the table.

  To see what aspects of the investigation actually made it into the light of day, it was necessary for me to document how the case actually unfolded, which witnesses were brought in, what they said. I needed to discover what was consistent and what was not.

  I have therefore laid out a chronology of the early months of the investigation, not only to see how the police proceeded in the Dahlia case during its first stages, but to establish a timeline enabling me to set the Dahlia murde
r in the context of the disconcertingly high number of other murders of lone women taking place in L.A. during the same period.

  Wednesday, January 15, 1947:

  LAPD's 1947 Investigation Begins

  The detectives who responded to the crime scene in Leimert Park, some five miles south of Hollywood, probably knew that the location where the body was found was a vacant lot that had been characterized by police as a "lovers' lane." They therefore knew that whoever had placed the body must have been familiar enough with the location to have felt secure that he, or they, would not be seen. Investigators were also quick to note that the victim's body had been deliberately and carefully placed just inches from the sidewalk, as if posed for maximum effect.

  While the surrounding grass near the body was dry, the grass under the two sections was wet, leading them to conclude that the body had been placed there after dark, once dew had formed on the ground.* Police canvassed the neighborhood for any potential witnesses. Within days, people started to come forward.

  Betty Bersinger

  Housewife Betty Bersinger, a resident of the Leimert Park area, discovered the body of "Jane Doe Number 1" while walking along Norton Avenue with her three-year-old daughter, Anne. Mrs. Bersinger, who did not give her name when she called the police on the morning of January 15, finally contacted police on January 24 after learning through the press that they were trying to locate her and thought "she might be a suspect."

  Mrs. Bersinger said that when she saw the body she grabbed her daughter and ran to the nearest house, which she described as "being the second house on Norton Avenue from 39th Street, and that it belonged to a doctor." She phoned the police but "the police didn't ask me for my name and I was too upset myself to think of giving it to them. I do recall that the policeman asked me for the telephone number I was calling from, and I looked at the number on the dial and gave that to him."

  Embarrassed LAPD detectives later admitted to the press that the original officer receiving the call from Mrs. Bersinger not only neglected to take her name but lost the number she had given him. In an audit of their own records, the University Division station officers, ten days after the call-in, on January 25, located the ticket on Betty Bersinger's call, which documented that she had originally notified the police of her discovery of the victim's body at 10:54 a.m. on January 15, 1947.

  Robert Meyer

  Leimert Park resident Bob Meyer, interviewed on the morning of January 15 by both police and press, said that between 6:30 and 7:00 A.M. that morning he saw a "1936 or 1937 Ford, sedan, black in color" pull up to the curbside near where the body was found. The car was there for "an estimated four minutes, and then left the location." Mr. Meyer was unable to get a clear view of the driver because weeds were blocking his view.

  Sherryl Maylond

  Sherryl Maylond, one of the seven girls sharing room 501 with Elizabeth Short in Hollywood, also worked in Hollywood as "a bar girl" at an unidentified bar. She told the police and press that on Wednesday, January 15, 1947, a man, who gave his name as "Clement," came into the bar and asked the night bartender if he could "speak with Sherryl." The bartender told him it was Sherryl's night off, whereupon the man left. He returned the following evening, and again asked for Sherryl Maylond, who was working that night and agreed to talk to him. Clement, "a slight, dapper, olive-skinned man, with hair graying at the temples," told Sherryl he wanted to talk to her about Betty Short. Despite his repeated requests, she refused, until he finally left.

  Thursday, January 16, 1947

  Once the identity of the victim had been established, the investigation intensified. For a city with more than its share of bloody homicides, including the violent sexual murders of women, the characterization of the Elizabeth Short murder by LAPD as the city's "most brutal killing ever" made the local press corps even more frantic, desperate for every scrap of news, even if they had to create it themselves.

  Gradually, as the LAPD crime laboratory developed more information, the police, under increasing pressure to feed a crime-hungry public, released information that the victim "was killed elsewhere." She was murdered by a sadistic killer and then driven to the crime scene, where the suspect's vehicle "hurriedly stopped as evidenced by tire tracks in the gutter."

  The same day the police released information about the tire tracks, detectives brought in policewoman Myrl McBride to question her about the woman she had reported seeing near the downtown bus depot. Officer McBride positively identified the victim in the photograph as the same woman who had come to her "sobbing in terror" on January 14 and whom she later saw leaving a downtown bar in the company of two men and a woman. At that point, the police had, via a reliable witness, Officer McBride, a description of the three people who were with the victim only hours before she was murdered.

  The group of witnesses referred to in LAPD press releases as "five unidentified youths" told detectives that they had been with the victim at various Hollywood nightspots both in December 1946, and also a few months earlier, when she had told them about her plans "to marry George, an army pilot from Texas." Also on January 16, the police interviewed in Hollywood two of Elizabeth's former roommates, Anne Toth and Linda Rohr, as well as Inez Keeling, the former manager of the Camp Cooke PX.

  Friday, January 17, 1947

  The consulting psychiatrist for the Los Angeles Police Department at the time of the murder, Dr. Paul De River, said in the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express two days after the murder that whoever the suspect was, he "hates womankind," a "sadistic fiend." The killer was unlike a typical killer the LAPD might face because, said, Dr. De River, "In his act, the murderer was manifesting a sadistic component of a sado-masochist complex. He evidently was following the law of analytic retaliation, 'What has been done to me, I will do to you.' These types of killers," he continued, "are usually highly perverted, and resort to various forms of perversion and means of torture to satisfy their lusts."

  The psychiatrist further noted, "This type of suspect above all seeks the physical and moral pain and the disgraceful humiliation and maltreatment of his victims," adding, "These sadists have a superabundance of curiosity and are liable to spend much time with their victims after the spark of life has flickered and died." Moreover, he said, "The suspect may even be a studious type who delighted in feeling himself into the humiliation of his victim. He was the experimenter and analyst in the most brutal forms of torture."

  Saturday, January 18, 1947

  By the weekend, the investigation had widened its circle of witnesses to include Dorothy and Elvera French in San Diego, California, whom reporters from the Examiner newspaper had been able to locate from the return address on a letter Elizabeth had sent to her mother in early January. The Frenches told reporters that Elizabeth had stored a trunk at the Railway Express station in Los Angeles. The reporters quickly located the trunk and Examiner city editor Richardson cut a deal with Captain Donahoe to reveal the location of Elizabeth's luggage in exchange for an Examiner exclusive on its contents. Captain Jack didn't like the condition that he had to open the trunk at the Examiner offices, but getting his hands on the trunk was more important than butting heads with a hungry city editor, so he reluctantly agreed.

  The detectives and reporters who opened the trunk found many photographs of Elizabeth posed with a variety of men, most in uniform, from enlisted men to a three-star general. They also found love letters from Elizabeth to a Major Matt Gordon and a Lieutenant Joseph Fickling, along with telegrams sent to her by a number of people.

  One of these telegrams — undated — was sent to "Beth Short 220 21st Street, Miami Beach, Florida," presumably from an unknown suitor in Washington, D.C., who gave no name and no return address. The telegram simply read:

  Exhibit 15

  A promise is a promise to a person of the world=Yours.

  LAPD sent investigators to Miami Beach, but whatever they found was not released to the public. As curious as the telegram may seem today, it's obvious the sender knew that Eliza
beth would know who it was from. The telegram was too familiar, too confident in tone, to have been a prank or a joke. This was a real message from someone in an ongoing relationship with Elizabeth, someone who felt he or she had been crossed because Elizabeth had gone back on her word. Given Elizabeth's oft-related fears about a jealous boyfriend, and Myrl McBride's report to her superiors of spotting Elizabeth in downtown L.A. too afraid to go back into a bar to retrieve her purse, there is no doubt Elizabeth was very afraid of someone not just during the second week in January but much earlier.

  The police also interviewed Mrs. Matt Gordon Sr. by phone in Colorado about a separate telegram she had sent the victim notifying her of her son's death, which was also found in the victim's luggage while detectives in Charlotte, North Carolina, were interviewing Joseph Fickling. The Fickling interview was important because it revealed that Elizabeth, evidently believing she was about to escape from whoever was pursuing her, had written that since she "would soon be leaving for Chicago, not to write her in California."

  That same Saturday also saw some crack investigative work by crime reporters from the Examiner, who interviewed the Frenches in San Diego about a man named Red Manley. They obtained a description of his car from Vera and Dorothy, searched the surrounding area, found the motel where Manley had signed for a room, got his license number from the registry, and called it in to city editor James Richardson. From the California DMV, Richardson got Man-ley's home address in the L.A. suburb of Huntington Park and sent reporters to stake out the location. When on January 18 Manley returned from a business trip to San Francisco, the reporters were there to greet him, along with the cops, who took him in for questioning. He was grilled at the station house for the next twelve hours without a lawyer and without being charged. He adamantly stuck to his guns that he knew nothing about the murder, and begged the detectives to administer a polygraph or shoot him up with sodium pen-tathol to satisfy themselves that he was telling the truth.