by Steve Hodel
Hansen was one of the first people contacted by LAPD detectives after they opened the killer's package. In his formal statement, Hansen explained to the police and reporters that the address book had been stolen from his residence sometime during the period when Elizabeth had lived there in the summer of 1946. It was now clear it was she who had taken it.
Hansen said that he owned and lived at 6024 Carlos Avenue, in Hollywood, just behind his club. Hansen often rented out single rooms to girls, especially those who wanted to work for him or were trying to break into the business. He admitted having rented a room to Elizabeth for about a month during the summer of 1946 but, almost in the same sentence, adamantly denied ever being intimately involved with her or even ever having dated her. He added that he was aware that Elizabeth had dated many different men while she was living there, including "a language teacher I know, and many other persons, mostly hoodlums whom I wouldn't even let in my house."
Anne Toth, also present at his interview, took offense at his comment that Elizabeth had dated "hoodlums." "She was a nice girl," Toth said. "She was quiet, she didn't drink and she didn't smoke, and we ought to look on the good side of people."
Hansen identified the brown leather address book as his, saying it had been "sent to me from Denmark, my native country." He believed it had been taken from his desk; he hadn't known where it had gone until he had seen it pictured in the newspaper. As for the names in the book, "There were no entries in the book," Hansen said, "no names of any individuals when I last saw it."
He thought Elizabeth Short had stolen the address book, along with an item he described as a "memorandum and calendar book," which had also disappeared from his desk at roughly the same time that Short had moved out. In defining his relationship with the victim as simply that of landlord/tenant, he said that reports in the papers that he had dated Short were erroneous. Further, he claimed no knowledge of the crime either before or after the fact, telling reporters, "The last time I saw Elizabeth Short was last Christmas, three weeks before she was murdered."
Monday, January 27, 1947
In a second postcard mailed to the Examiner from downtown Los Angeles on January 26, the suspect wrote:
Exhibit 18
Here it is
Turning in Wed
Jan. 29 10 A.M.
Had my fun at police
Black Dahlia Avenger
In his public statement about the note, Captain Donahoe said he believed that the postcard was "legitimate" and might well be the "message to follow" that the killer had promised to send in his original pasted-up note. "The fact that the postcard was printed rather than lettered with words cut out of newspapers," Donahoe said, "also supports the theory that the killer intends to turn himself in to the police, and no longer needs to take pains to conceal his identity." By the killer's signature line, "Black Dahlia Avenger," he surmised, "he is indicating that he murdered Elizabeth Short for some avenged wrong, either real or imagined. So far we haven't seen any evidence of that, but we hope that the killer who is writing these notes keeps his promise to turn himself in on Wednesday." In a public message, Donahoe promised the killer, "If you want to surrender as indicated by the postcard now in our hands, I will meet you at any public location at any time or at the homicide detail office in the City Hall. Communicate immediately by telephoning MI 5211 extension 2521, or by mail."
That same day, police were reviewing a separate typed message they believed was written by a woman — because there were lipstick smudges on the paper — and mailed to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. In the letter the writer described in detail an incident involving Elizabeth Short that probably took place at a Hollywood nightclub a day or two prior to the murder. Captain Donahoe refused to release any details of the letter except to say, "it described an incident that might relate to the Elizabeth Short slaying. Detectives will also investigate a location described in the letter, and check out other details before its contents are made public." A handwritten notation on the outside of the envelope indicated, "Sorry, Greenwich Village, not Cotton Club."
Exhibit 19
Typed letter mailed to DA
The details of this letter were kept strictly confidential in a meeting between LAPD's Captain Jack Donahoe and then district attorney Simpson.
That same day, the police also released this public statement: "A complete roundup of the 75 names in the Mark Hansen address book was completed yesterday without adding anything to the sorry story that is already known."
Tuesday, January 28, 1947.
The analysis of the printed postcard in which the suspect had promised to turn himself in revealed that he had used a "new ballpoint pen" when he wrote the address of the L.A. Examiner. For the police, this was important, because ballpoint pens were a rarity in 1947. While they had been provided to officers in the military during the war, commercial distribution to the general public only began on Christmas 1945, and at a heady cost of $12.50 (approximately $125 today). They were used primarily by professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and business executives.
Wednesday, January 29, 1947
The newspapers and police received two additional notes, purportedly from the suspect, that were published on the front page of the dailies. Note #3 was again assembled out of pasted letters cut from newspapers, and said:
Exhibit 20
Dahlia's Killer Cracking,
Wants Terms
Note #4 was assembled the same way and promised:
Exhibit 21
To Los Angeles Herald Express
I will give up in
Dahlia killing if I get
10 years
Don't try to find me
The night edition of the Herald Express included a front-page photograph of the latter note, and in a front-page headline revealed:
'DAHLIA' KILLER NOTES WORK OF SAME MAN, TESTS SHOW
The LAPD crime lab analysis had quickly connected the envelopes and paper used and indicated that the same suspect who sent the original packet containing the victim's identification and address book also sent the subsequent offers to surrender in exchange for a ten-year sentence. Additional important evidence found on these notes by the crime lab were that several dark hairs had been imbedded in the Scotch tape used to paste on the words. Upon comparison, the hairs were found not to be those of the victim, but nonetheless became an important clue, to be matched to the hair of future suspects.
Publicly, LAPD detectives stated, "We are dealing with a homicidal maniac who craves attention for his crime and may come forward in a bold and spectacular manner for his curtain call after he has wrung out the last drop of drama from his deed."
Federal inspectors at the Terminal Annex Post Office in downtown Los Angeles received a fifth note on Wednesday that they characterized as a "semi-illiterate death threat," reported to have been "scribbled on glossy paper, torn from a note tablet." Though not reproduced in the newspaper, the message read:
A certain girl is going to get same as E.S. got if she squeals on us.
We're going to Mexico City — catch us if you can.
2K's
On the reverse of the mailed envelope someone, presumably the sender, wrote:
E. Short got it. Caral Marshall is next.
The Examiner engaged questioned-document expert Clark Sellers, considered by most to be one of the nation's leading forensic handwriting experts of the day, to review and analyze the handprinting on the postcards it had received from the purported suspect. Sellers had gained public notoriety as one of the chief forensic experts who testified for the prosecution in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping trial, in which he connected handwriting samples from the suspect, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, to the ransom note and helped the state win a conviction.
In his expert analysis, Sellers told the Examiner, "It was evident the writer took great pains to disguise his or her personality by printing instead of writing the message and by endeavoring to appear illiterate. But the style and formation of the prin
ted letters betrayed the writer as an educated person." The Examiner also revealed that Sellers had conducted "microscopic tests" on the Black Dahlia message and made "several important discoveries the nature of which is being withheld."
A second questioned-document expert, Henry Silver, was also contacted to analyze the original note the killer had sent with the victim's belongings, as well as some of the later postcards received by the press. Silver said:
The sender is an egomaniac and possibly a musician. The fluctuating base line of the writing reveals the writer to be affected by extreme fluctuations of mood, dropping to melancholy. The writer suffers from mental conflict growing out of resentment or hatred due to frustration of sex urge. Because the last letters of many words are larger, it reveals extreme frankness. The writer is telling the truth. Furthermore, he can't keep his secret and feeds his ego by telling. There is a fine sense of rhythm present, showing the penman to be either a musician or possibly a dancer. He is calculating and methodical.
Thursday, January 30, 1947
A day after he had promised to surrender, the killer sent a new pasted note addressed to Captain Donahoe that read:
Exhibit 22
Have changed my mind.
You would not give me a
square deal. Dahlia killing
was justified.
That same day, Daniel S. Voorhees, a thirty-three-year-old restaurant porter, called police to ask them to meet him at 4th and Hill Streets, downtown, where he confessed to killing Elizabeth Short. Voorhees was quickly eliminated when his handwriting was compared to that in the killer's note. Mentally and emotionally unstable, Voorhees was one of the first of a long list of what the police would term "confessing Sams," people seeking five minutes of "fame" by attempting to link themselves to the sensational murder.
Friday, January 31, 1947
The Herald Express published photographic copies of six additional messages, all purported to have been by the Dahlia killer. The first, in letters pasted from a newspaper, read:
Exhibit 23
'Go Slow'
Man Killer Says
Black Dahlia Case
The next read:
I have decided not to
surrender Too much
fun fooling police
Black Dahlia Avenger
Another note, also pasted together from cut-out newspaper type, was sent in. This contained a photograph of a young male with a stocking mask drawn in covering his face to conceal his identity. Pasted words glued to the note read:
Here is the photo of the werewolf killer's
I saw him kill her
a friend
The Herald Express also published photographic copies of three additional "crudely" hand-printed notes, each written and mailed to them on a separate postcard. The first two apparently referred to the surrender and confession of Daniel Voorhees:
Exhibits 26 & 27
26) The person sending those other notes ought to be arrested for
forgery. Ha Ha!
B.D.A.
27) If he confesses you won't need me
B.D.A.
The third read:
Exhibit 28
Ask news man at 5 + Hill for clue.
Why not let that nut go
I spoke to said man
B.D.A.
Exhibit 29
Armand Robles, age 17
Accompanying their article on page one, the Herald Express also ran a photograph of a young man with the following request addressed to its readers:
A "poison pen" is using a picture of this young person in the "Dahlia" case letters. If this person will call at the Evening Herald and Express office, a line may be obtained on the "poison pen" author of letters which send police on "wild goose" chases.
The following day, seventeen-year-old Armand Robles and his mother, Florence Robles, contacted the newspaper and were interviewed by reporters for a story that ran the next day in which Armand explained that the photographs printed in the newspaper the previous days were of him and had been stolen about three weeks before by a strange assailant. He had been walking in the vicinity of the 4300 block of Eagle Street in Los Angeles on or about January 10, young Robles said, and "he was about to approach a footpad,"1 when he was "knocked down by a man, who then took his wallet." The photographs sent to the Examiner; which Robles had taken "about 3 months ago at a shooting gallery on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles," had been in the wallet. He described his assailant as, "well dressed, tall," and "driving a newer model car."
In a later mail, the Herald Express received a new pasted-up note, which read:
Exhibit 30
yes or no?
Saturday, February 1, 1947
In response to Armand Robles's going public with his information, another "poison pen" pasted-up note arrived at the Herald Express with a different photograph of Robles. This time the sender had hand-drawn an arrow pointing to Robles's picture, with the word "next" above his head. The pasted message itself read:
Exhibit 31
"that young! I'll do him like I did the
'Black Dahlia'
"Black Dahlia Avenger".
That same day, in a statement to the press about where the crime had occurred, Captain Donahoe speculated:
It appears impossible the Short girl was murdered in the city. We are forced to this conclusion by the failure of anyone to report a possible place where she was killed within the city limits. If she was slain in a house or a room or motel in the city it seems impossible that some trace has not been reported or found. This leads us to the conclusion that she was killed outside the city. The killer could not have emerged from the place in clothing worn when the murder was committed and the body drained of blood. He could have been too easily detected and stains would have attracted attention.
Donahoe also suggested, "The killer used a thick bristled brush of coconut fiber to scrub the body clean before he removed the body from the murder den."
The foregoing exhibits are photographs published in the various newspapers in 1947, and show the separate communications, pasted and handwritten notes, sent in by the Black Dahlia Avenger. Excluding the D.C. telegram and the typed letter to the district attorney's office, the suspect has, incredibly, within a two-week period posted a total of thirteen separate taunting notes to the press and police.*
Monday, February 3, 1947
With newspapers desperate for feature copy about the murder to attract readers, a number of editors asked some of the city's best-known mystery and scriptwriters for their take on the Black Dahlia. Ben Hecht, Craig Rice, David Goodis, Leslie Charteris, Steve Fisher, and others were asked to profile the character traits and personality of the killer for the public. Ben Hecht, whom we recall from his bizarre 1924 murder mystery Fantazius Mallare, which was reviewed and praised by the then young editor of Fantasia magazine, George Hodel, now some two decades later had become Hollywood's highest-paid screenwriter of mysteries. Hecht's brief but serious profile of the Dahlia killer was the most bizarre: "a dyke lesbian with a hyper-thyroid problem."
Novelist-turned-screenwriter Steve Fisher was very much on target in his character analysis for the Herald Express. Fisher — who wrote I Wake Up Screaming, Destination Tokyo, Song of the Thin Man, and Winter Kill for MGM and a screenplay based on Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake — not only evaluated the Dahlia case as it stood, but suggested what the fictional character Nick Charles would have done to force the suspect to turn himself in. Here are some extracts from his extensive "profile" that appeared in the Herald Express on February 3, 1947, under the headline "Noted Film Scenarist Predicts 'Dahlia' Killer Will Soon Be in Toils":
By following the case in the Evening Herald I think I know who the killer is, and think the police do also, and in a very short time will have his name. When the killer's name is published I think a lot of his friends will be very surprised and terrified. I think he is still in Los Angeles. When arrested his attorneys will plead insanity, but the kille
r will be his own worst enemy. He will not want people to think he is crazy. He is an egomaniac .. .
I believe that the killer believed that the Dahlia had wronged him, and because of his punctured ego, she had to be exposed. People had to know it. Vengeance had to complete itself. That is why he tortured her and chopped her up in ways so gruesome that many of the revolting details have not been revealed, even with all that has been printed about the Dahlia.
Fisher went on to conjecture that the killer wanted "recognition," and reveled in the publicity: It was his ego that impelled him to write to the police. (He was convinced the notes and cards sent to the authorities were authentic.) Presciently, Fisher also theorized that the killer must have been furious about all the "nuts" who kept confessing to his murder, but comforted by the thought that, one by one, the police dismissed them. But, added Fisher, if "a 'legitimate' suspect made a 'confession'... and the police announced the case solved," the real killer would be so frustrated and upset that he would "be driven at some point to come in and give the lie to the phony suspect's confession ... But, I believe the police right now have a definite 'line' on the real killer, and that kind of 'staging' won't be necessary. Look for a thriller finish to this case."
