The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  With a sense of what my father's background was, his predilections, the violence-driven sexual deviancy that colored his relationships with just about everybody, and the group of friends with whom he shared an artistic fascination with sadistic sexual perversions, some of the aspects of the Black Dahlia murder come into clearer focus. However — and this to my mind is crucial — no sexual offender who inflicts the levels of violence inflicted on Elizabeth Short can be a one-time killer. These killers are serial offenders, who, as Dr. Joel Norris has said in Serial Killers: A Growing Menace, engage in "episodic violence," reenacting the same kind of psychodrama from crime to crime. They taunt police to prolong their sexual thrill after each murder, and not only troll for victims, but live within their victim pool as predators lying in wait for their next opportunity.

  Accordingly, if my father fits any part of this psychological profile, there should be ample evidence of a series of crimes he committed, probably upon the same type of victims and probably within a circumscribed geographical area and timeframe. In other words, thirty years before Ted Bundy, the Hillside Stranglers, the Son of Sam, and even the Green River Killer, my father, most likely some of the time with Fred Sexton, was a long-term, serial sexual killer of defenseless women in the areas of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and downtown Los Angeles.

  Amazingly, these serial murders not only remain unsolved today, but the LAPD does not even acknowledge the possibility that the killings were connected or related to each other. As the evidence will soon reveal, however, the relationships among the killings are so strong they cry out for resolution even within their dust-covered LAPD murder books shelved into cold storage a half century ago.

  * "The actual protocol (coroner's formal report) to my knowledge has never been published, therefore I am unable to confirm the validity of some of the findings alleged in the "hand copied" versions. However, most of what is here reported is consistent with photographs that were released in the 1980s showing trauma to the body.

  * The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings, Grove Press, 1967, p. 610.

  18

  Elizabeth Short's "Missing Week"

  IN THE OFFICIAL STATEMENTS the police released to the public regarding the activities of Elizabeth Short in the period leading up to her death, detectives said the last time any witness saw her was the night of January 9, 1947, when she left the Biltmore Hotel through the Olive Street entrance. The Dahlia's "missing week," originally established and promoted by detectives Finis Brown and Harry Hansen, has become legendary, and remains with today's LAPD as unquestioned fact. As we will see, this was crucial to the 1947 cover-up.

  My own investigation and research reveal quite a different story. In reviewing the newspaper accounts of the day to see what other witnesses turned up to give statements to the police, I discovered a number who positively identified Elizabeth Short during the LAPD's "missing week." My review of what those witnesses told police shows that Elizabeth Short spent a very active week in Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley, and downtown between January 9 and January 14 and was seen not only by strangers who later identified her, but by numerous acquaintances and a policewoman to whom she complained that she was in fear for her life. In truth, LAPD knew there never was a "missing week."

  Iris Menuay, an acquaintance of Elizabeth Short at the Chancellor Hotel at 1842 North Cherokee Avenue, Hollywood, was one of the first people to run into Elizabeth after the victim got back to L.A. on January 9. Menuay reported to the police that she had seen Elizabeth Short sitting in the lobby of the Chancellor Hotel on January 9 or 10, at approximately 8:30 p.m. At that time, Menuay told police, she observed Elizabeth "embracing a man dressed like a gas station attendant." It was unclear whether Menuay actually meant that Elizabeth was embracing a gas station attendant or just somebody in a uniform she couldn't otherwise identify.

  The next person to recognize Elizabeth was bartender Buddy La Gore at the Four Star Grill, at 6818 Hollywood Boulevard, where she was one of the semi-regulars. He told the police and press that she had come to the bar on January 10, 1947, during the late-evening hours in the company of two other women. Elizabeth Short didn't drink hard liquor, La Gore explained. Though in the past she had spent long hours at his bar, "It was her custom to order soft drinks." "She always dressed immaculately," he told the cops, "and her clothing, makeup, and hair were perfect."

  On the evening of January 10, however, La Gore noticed, her appearance and demeanor were drastically different. "When she came in on January 10, she looked like she had slept in her clothes for days," he told police. "Her black sheer dress was stained, soiled, and otherwise crumpled." La Gore said he was surprised at the difference. "I'd seen her many times before and always she wore the best nylons, but this time she had no stockings on."

  But it was more than just her clothing, he said. "Her hair was straggly and some lipstick had been smeared hit-and-miss on her lips. The powder on her face was caked." He also described a dramatic change in her demeanor. "She was cowed instead of being gay and excited, the way I'd seen her before. Also, she was friendly and nice to me this time. The other times I saw her she acted like the 'grand lady' and was bossy." La Gore told the police that he'd seen the women who accompanied Elizabeth Short on January 10 on other occasions as well, but always with Elizabeth.

  That same day, Elizabeth was spotted by an unnamed witness whom Donahoe dubbed "John Doe Number 1." John Doe Number I told the detectives he'd seen Elizabeth Short, accompanied by two other women, drive up to the curb in a "a black coupe" along the 7200 block of Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip. The witness overheard them say they were "staying in a motel on Ventura Boulevard, and were on their way to the Flamingo Club on La Brea Avenue."

  He also provided the following description of the other two women: "One was 27 years old, 5'6", 125 pounds, with long black hair. The second one was a female who appeared to be in her 20s with light brown hair, combed up." During the police interview, the witness readily identified Elizabeth Short from her photographs.

  Mrs. Christenia Salisbury was another acquaintance who recognized Elizabeth when she was in Los Angeles during the week of January 9. Salisbury had known Elizabeth since 1945 when Elizabeth had waited tables in her Miami Beach restaurant, where the two women became friends. Salisbury, a Native American and vaudeville performer, had played several seasons with the Ziegfield Follies as a featured dancer named "Princess Whitewing." After she retired from show business, she bought the cafe in Miami Beach that she operated until just a few days before Christmas, 1946, when for health reasons she moved to Los Angeles in early January 1947.

  In the offices of the Los Angeles Examiner on January 28, 1947, Salisbury told reporters that on January 10, at around 10:00 p.m., she "ran into Elizabeth as she and two other women were coming out of the Tabu Club on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood." She described one of them as "a very tall blonde, 30 years of age, weighing about 160 pounds," and the other "about 27 years old, with very black hair, and very heavy makeup." Salisbury and Elizabeth began to talk while the other two women walked to a parked car. Salisbury was aware that the blonde was "very intoxicated, and got behind the driver's wheel."

  She and Elizabeth continued their conversation for ten minutes or so on the sidewalk while her two friends waited. Elizabeth "appeared happy and cheerful," Salisbury told reporters. She asked her for her phone number, to which Elizabeth replied, "I'm living with these two girls in a motel in San Fernando Valley. We don't have a telephone. Give me your phone and I'll call you." Salisbury gave Elizabeth her number, after which Elizabeth hurried to the car.

  Paul Simone was a painting contractor living in Hollywood who had been employed by and was working at the Chancellor Hotel on Saturday, January 11, 1947, the same hotel where Elizabeth Short had shared room 501 with seven women the previous December. While working at the building on January 11, he told police he heard "loud arguing" coming from the rear of the hotel. Checking to see what the commotion was, he saw Elizabeth Short and another woma
n involved in what he described as "a bitter argument." The second woman was "cursing loudly at Elizabeth," according to his statement, and Simone feared the two women were on the verge of physically fighting. The second woman saw Simone approach, looked at him, and yelled, "Oh, nuts to you!" then turned and walked out of the hotel. When she was gone, Elizabeth asked Simone, "Is there a rear exit to the hotel?" He said there wasn't and walked Elizabeth to the front door, where she got into a waiting taxi.

  I. A. Jorgenson was a Los Angeles cab driver who provided evidence to police of another sighting of Elizabeth Short, this time on the night of January 11, 1947. Jorgenson told the detectives his cab was parked outside of the Rosslyn Hotel, at 6th and Main Streets in downtown Los Angeles, when a man and a woman he positively identified as Elizabeth Short got in. The man told him to drive them to a motel in Hollywood. Police sources would not provide the press with the description of the man or the name of the motel, telling reporters "they would first conduct a follow-up and interview employees of the motel in Hollywood."

  "John Doe Number 2," another secret witness police kept under wraps from reporters, was a gas station attendant working at the Beverly Hills Hotel who saw Elizabeth Short in the Beverly Hills area in the early-morning hours of January 11. The witness told detectives that around 2:30 a.m. he saw a vehicle, which he described as "a 1942 tan Chrysler coupe," stopped at the service station for gas. He positively identified Elizabeth Short from police photos as the same woman he saw in the backseat of the car. "She seemed very upset and frightened," he noted. He also saw a second woman in the car, whom he described only as "wearing dark clothing." He described the male driver as "about thirty years of age, six foot one, 190 pounds."

  As reported earlier in the LAPD investigative chronology chapter, Mr. and Mrs. William Johnson, owners and on-site managers of a hotel located at 300 East Washington Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, are the two most important witnesses police never brought forward to the public, because on January 12 they saw Elizabeth in the company of the man who most likely killed her. They saw this prime suspect again on January 15, after Elizabeth's body had been discovered. They told police that on Sunday, January 12, 1947, at approximately 10:00 a.m., they were working at their hotel when a man, whom they described as "25 to 35 years of age, medium complexion, medium height," came to the desk and "asked for a room."

  An hour later, a woman they positively identified as Elizabeth Short came to the hotel and joined the man who had booked the room. Mrs. Johnson provided the following description: "She had on beige or pink slacks, a full-length beige coat, white blouse and white bandanna over her head, and she was carrying a plastic purse with two handles."

  Mr. Johnson told police that "the man refused to sign the registration, when he checked in, and told me to put down Barnes and wife." The man told Mr. Johnson they had just moved out of Hollywood. The Johnsons watched the man and Elizabeth go to their room, and that was the last time either of them saw Elizabeth Short.

  LAPD detectives showed both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson photographs found in Elizabeth Short's luggage, and after viewing the many separate photographs the Johnsons positively identified the victim, Elizabeth Short, and her male companion who checked into the hotel with her as "Mr. Barnes." The police did not release the identity of "Mr. Barnes."

  C. G. Williams, a bartender at the Dugout Cafe at 634 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles, told police and reporters that when he was working at the bar on the afternoon of January 12, 1947, he saw a woman, whom he positively identified as Elizabeth Short, walk into the bar accompanied by "an attractive blonde." Elizabeth was a regular customer well-known to him. The bartender clearly remembered Elizabeth's visit that day, as "a fracas occurred," along with shouting, after two men tried to pick up the ladies and were rejected.

  Former jockey John Jiroudek had known Elizabeth Short when she worked at the Camp Cooke PX during the time he was a G.I. stationed there. He remembered her in particular, he told police, because he was there when she was chosen as the Camp Cooke "Cutie of the Week." He told detectives he saw her again in a brief encounter on January 13, 1947, when they crossed paths at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. She was a passenger in a 1937 Ford sedan. A blonde female was driving the car. He spoke briefly with Elizabeth at the intersection, and the two women drove off.

  As also referred to earlier in the LAPD investigative chronology, policewoman Myrl McBride, walking a beat in downtown Los Angeles, was probably one of the last people to have seen Elizabeth Short alive. She came forward to her bosses in the department after seeing photographs of the Jane Doe Number 1 who had just been identified from FBI records as Elizabeth Short. Myrl McBride positively identified her to superiors as the same woman who had come running up to her at the downtown bus depot, in fear for her life.

  McBride reported that on the afternoon of January 14, 1947, while she was on her beat at the bus depot in downtown Los Angeles, Elizabeth Short ran up to her "sobbing in terror" and told her, "Someone wants to kill me." Short said that she had come from a bar up the street and had just run into an ex-boyfriend. Officer McBride said that Short told her she "lives in terror" of a former serviceman whom she had just met in a bar up the street. McBride added, "She told me the suitor had threatened to kill her if he found her with another man."

  McBride said she walked the victim back into the Main Street bar, where she recovered her purse. A short time later, McBride again observed the victim "reenter the bar, and then emerge with two men and a woman." At that time McBride had a brief second conversation with Elizabeth Short, who told her that she "was going to meet her parents at the bus station later in the evening."

  On January 16, the day the body was identified and photographs obtained, Officer McBride provided an unequivocal positive identification of Elizabeth Short as the same person who ran to her "in terror, fearful of being killed." A day or two following that positive identification, her statement was then "modified by detectives to being uncertain." My initial evaluation of McBride's statement from positive to uncertain was that LAPD detective-supervisors wanted the officer to, in police terminology, "CYA" (cover your ass). They couldn't allow the public to think that one of their own basically took no action and allowed the victim to walk into the hands of her killers just hours before she was murdered. Better to have her modify her statement and let the public think that maybe the woman McBride had contact with was not Elizabeth. (Sadly, this was not the case.) LAPD's need to minimize or reverse McBride's positive identification pointed to a much more sinister intent.

  From the various witnesses who saw Elizabeth Short between January 9 and January 14, 1947, it's clear there was no "missing week" in Elizabeth's life. That week was crisscrossed with sightings by both complete strangers and acquaintances, most of whom spoke unequivocally about Elizabeth's moods and movements in the days and hours before her murder, and all of whom saw her within a twelve-mile radius of downtown Los Angeles. These twelve witnesses, culled from reports of other sightings that are less than reliable, are sound.

  Officer McBride's sighting of Elizabeth just twenty hours before the discovery of her body, and a mere eight hours before Dr. Newbarr's forensic estimation of the time of her murder, must focus anyone's attention and suspicions on the three individuals in whose company she was seen. Who were these two men and the woman with Elizabeth? What were the descriptions of them provided by Officer McBride but not released to the public? Was one of these two men the person that Elizabeth told Officer McBride about in the bus depot, while "sobbing in terror"? Was he the same man whom Elizabeth just a short time earlier had fled from in the Main Street bar, the same "jealous suitor who had threatened to kill her"?

  There is one interesting aspect to Elizabeth Short's "missing week" that may not have been apparent to the LAPD at the time but is now. In the statement made by Linda Rohr, a roommate of Elizabeth's at the Chancellor Hotel in Hollywood, she said that she last saw Elizabeth on December 6, 1946, confirming landlady
Juanita Ringo's statements. Linda also said that when Elizabeth was packing to leave, she was very upset. She quoted Elizabeth as saying, "He's waiting for me," but added, "None of us ever found out who 'he' was."

  The next known sighting of Elizabeth was on December 12, when she met Dorothy French at the San Diego moviehouse and was offered a place to stay at her home. So from December 6 to December 12 there is indeed a missing week for Elizabeth, but it is before she goes to San Diego and not after she leaves the Biltmore.

  Since at the beginning of that week in early December we know Elizabeth was hurrying to meet her mysterious boyfriend, who that day was "waiting" for her, we can fairly assume she spent part if not all of the missing week with him. It was here that she disappeared off the radar screen. Who was this man? Where did they stay? What happened to her? Five days later Elizabeth resurfaced in San Diego, huddling for warmth in an all-night moviehouse, lonely, destitute, and afraid.

  19

  The Final Connections: Man Ray Thoughtprints

  THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF MY INVESTIGATION, the more I researched, the more I became aware of how important Man Ray was to George Hodel, who clearly considered him a kindred spirit. However, it was some time before I realized just how close and influential that relationship had been. Did that profound influence, I wondered, have anything to do with the Black Dahlia?

  It was the "Black Dahlia Avenger" who told police that he'd murdered Elizabeth Short and, through his notes, that his sadistic torture and murder was justified. Perhaps, like the "Ballad of Frankie and Johnny," in which Frankie kills her lover "cause he done her wrong," in his mind Elizabeth had wronged him. I suspect he and Elizabeth were lovers and were going to be married. I also believe Elizabeth had made a promise to him — "a promise is a promise to a person of the world," the anonymous 1945 telegram from Washington, D.C., had said — but Elizabeth broke that promise. In breaking her word she "done him wrong," and like Johnny she would pay for it with her life.