Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder

by Piu Eatwell

  During the interview with Waggoner and Ward in the car, Hoffman also suddenly “remembered” the parcel of bloody clothing that his wife had described. It was later found in cabin 9, he said, where the girl had stayed. He had not told the cops about the black-haired girl before because he was afraid they would try to pin the murder on him. Hoffman looked at the picture of Elizabeth Short for a long time. Finally, he said, “Now that I recognize this picture, I believe that the Black Dahlia was killed at the Aster Motel.” Waggoner asked him why. “Because of the bloody clothing and the bloody sheets.”

  James Hurst was a suspicious old man who lived across from the motel on Flower Street. Like most of the people in the area, he did not like cops. But, for some reason, he took a liking to Archie Case. Mr. Hurst also recalled the black-haired girl staying at the motel. According to Officer Case, “Hurst said that this black-haired girl, who was living at the motel at the time that the girl was killed, came over and approached him as he was going into his house, and said she would like a quarter to go over to Long Beach.” Hurst told the girl he was a poor man. He didn’t generally give anybody anything. But this girl had a “desperate look on her face,” she looked “like she had been crying for about a week.” So Hurst said, “Why don’t you get it from your friends at the motel?” She said, “They won’t give me anything.” And so he gave the girl fifty cents. Hurst’s identification of the girl was “like most of the others—black-haired, and he thought she very closely resembled the pictures of Elizabeth Short that were shown.” Hurst told Archie he had seen the girl leave her cabin and go into the cabin where the Hoffmans stayed. He also recalled that around Sunday, January 12, he had seen a man who seemed to be ill somewhere around the cabins toward the center of the court,§§§§ and that someone had forced this man back into the cabin. He heard someone mention they should call a doctor. A short time afterward, a man arrived who seemed to be a doctor, but after talking to the others, he refused to enter the cabin. Later, the sick man left in a taxi. Hurst was shown a picture of Leslie Dillon. He thought Dillon looked like the man who had been sick.

  The cleaning maid, Lila Durant, also spoke of the black-haired girl. She told Ahern that Mrs. Hoffman had said to her, “You know what that black-haired so-and-so that lived back there in no. 10¶¶¶¶ had the nerve to do this afternoon?” Lila said, “No.” “She came up here and had the nerve to ask me for two bits to go to Long Beach.” Clora, however, subsequently denied that she had said any such thing to Lila. Mrs. Hoffman, in fact, never made a positive identification of Elizabeth Short from photographs as the black-haired girl who lived at the motel. The most she would say was, “It looks like her.” Clora’s brother Burt Moorman also told the police about the black-haired girl who stayed at the motel, although he was confused as to which room she had been in. He corroborated that she was in bed under just a sheet, and he also recalled seeing a man at the door of one of the cabins, who he believed could have been Leslie Dillon.

  The appearance and behavior of the black-haired girl at the Aster Motel corresponded with what the Gangster Squad knew of Elizabeth Short. Elizabeth, Archie Case noted, “had a habit of begging.” When Case was making inquiries about her at Long Beach, he was told that she would repeatedly beg people for a dime, a quarter, anything she could possibly get.#### And then there had been the original “sighting” by Officer Myrl McBride way back in ’47, the night before the discovery of Short’s body in the vacant lot, of a girl begging for help. The girl had exited a bar on Main Street with two men and a woman.***** Leslie Dillon was known to frequent the seedy dives of Main Street; Tommy Harlow had once seen him at the intersection of Fifth and Main with a girl for whom he was pimping. Could the girl that Officer McBride saw that night on Main have been Elizabeth, briefly escaped with the half dollar that Hurst had given her?††††† Had she somehow been persuaded to return to that motel, which on that night was to become her death chamber?‡‡‡‡‡ Everybody at the motel agreed that whoever the “black-haired girl” who stayed there in January ’47 had been, she disappeared without trace after the murder. And not one of the people at the motel could give the Gangster Squad officers any clue as to where she might be found.

  When Henry Hoffman finally opened up to Waggoner in the car in July 1949, he began to remember quite a bit about what had happened at the Aster Motel. Hoffman told the young policeman about a “fellow from Batavia”§§§§§ who had stayed at the motel for four or five days, about the same time the black-haired girl was there. Before he came, there had been a call notifying Hoffman of his arrival from the “Dutch Embassy or Danish consulate”—he could not recall which. The man from Batavia had a large amount of baggage with him. He arrived around Saturday, January 11, the day Hoffman was arrested for assaulting his wife, and stayed in cabin 8.¶¶¶¶¶ According to Hoffman, he was about forty-five or fifty years old. He had hair that was graying around the temples.##### He spoke with some sort of a foreign accent—Swedish or Norwegian, or something like that.***** He told Hoffman he was going to stay in Los Angeles for a few days, and then fly up to New York to buy road machinery. One day he asked Hoffman to take him to Earl Carroll’s nightclub in Hollywood†††††† to get tickets for the show. Hoffman drove him there and waited for well over an hour. Finally the man returned and paid Hoffman five dollars for waiting. Hoffman introduced the man to Tommy Harlow, and the pair discussed the real estate business.

  “I’m the main witness in this case, I hope those gangsters over in Hollywood don’t try and kill me,” Hoffman told Waggoner.

  Waggoner was surprised. “What do you mean making a statement like that?”

  “Well, this Mark Hansen, he’s the main suspect in this.”

  Waggoner had never mentioned the name “Mark Hansen” to Hoffman before. He asked Hoffman where he got it from.

  “Well, that fellow that was mixed up in that Black Dahlia killing. I just put two and two together, and figured it was him.”

  Later, Hoffman was shown a picture of Mark Hansen. He thought he could be the “man from Batavia,” but could not say for sure unless he saw Hansen in person. Hoffman told Waggoner that he was more than willing to cooperate in the case, if he was not accused of the murder. But if he was to get up and testify against Mark Hansen, he wanted the police to guarantee his protection.

  “Why?” asked Waggoner.

  “Because I’m afraid of Mark Hansen. Hansen is one of the gangsters of Hollywood, and if I get up and testify against him, he is liable to have me shot or something.”

  Burt and Betty-Jo Moorman also recalled the “man from Batavia” who stayed at the motel. Burt described the man as forty-five or fifty years old, with blue eyes, dark gray hair, and a large nose. He was five-foot-nine, weighed about 160 pounds, and was casually dressed in expensive clothes. The description fit Mark Hansen. Burt told the Gangster Squad that the man from Batavia had asked him and his wife to drive him to a downtown location,‡‡‡‡‡‡ where he collected a large suitcase. Afterward, the man invited them to his cabin for a drink, and they went out for dinner together at a Mexican restaurant on Slauson Avenue.

  On June 18, 1949, the Gangster Squad took Burt Moorman out to the Florentine Gardens. There, in the parking lot, he was able to observe Mark Hansen from a distance of twenty feet, for five minutes. Burt thought that Hansen looked like the man from Batavia, but wanted to corroborate with his wife first. On June 21, Betty-Jo was taken to observe Mark Hansen in a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, for about an hour. She thought he looked like the same man. Hansen, Betty-Jo said, had the same stooped shoulders and hesitant walk of the “man from Batavia.” Like the man from Batavia, he had “watery, glistening eyes.” He also “wolfed down” his food with his left hand, as the man from Batavia had done.

  Clora Hoffman also recalled the “man from Batavia.” He must have stayed at the motel at the time the bloody clothing was found, she said, because the Moormans were there at the same time, and they left on January 18. Clora Hoffman thought that p
hotographs of Mark Hansen looked like the “man from Batavia,” but like her ex-husband, she wanted to see Hansen in person to be sure. Waggoner told Clora that Mr. Hoffman now remembered the dark-haired girl who stayed in cabin 9, and had recognized the picture of Elizabeth Short. “It is about time,” Clora replied, “that he started to remember some of the things that happened at the motel.”

  By the summer of 1949, the Gangster Squad had made impressive headway at the Aster Motel. From an initial tip given by Leslie Dillon’s mother, they had managed to establish that a room in the motel—cabin 3—had been discovered splattered with blood and feces on the morning of January 15, 1947. That, at the time of the Dahlia’s murder, a dark-haired girl fitting her description had been staying there. That the girl appeared to have been trapped, possibly drugged some of the time, afraid, and desperate to escape. That she seemed to be incapacitated, lying naked on a bed. That she had been the subject of disputes between the owner of the hotel, Henry Hoffman, and his wife, who wanted her out of there. That a pile of bloody clothing fitting the description of the clothes last worn by Elizabeth Short had been found there on the morning after the murder. That the motel had an unusually large laundry bill during that week. And that a man corresponding to the description of Mark Hansen had stayed at the motel, posing as the “man from Batavia.” They had also found out that Leslie Dillon had definitely stayed at the motel in the spring of 1947, and apparently knew of it and used it as a place to crash in Los Angeles before then. Two witnesses—Henry Hoffman and Dillon’s former employer Tommy Harlow—categorically stated that Leslie Dillon was at the motel when the black-haired girl was there. Two further witnesses—Burt Moorman and Mr. Hurst—said a man corresponding to his description was seen at the time. If the police had drawn a plan of the occupancy of the motel cabins in the week of the Dahlia’s disappearance, as had been described to them by the witnesses, it would have looked something like this:

  Occupation of ASTER MOTEL, Flower Street, Los Angeles Circa. January 9–15, 1947

  And yet, despite the compelling evidence the officers of the Gangster Squad were uncovering, they never seemed to make headway with their investigation. The path was always blocked. On June 10, 1949, Officer Waggoner was told abruptly that he was to be transferred from the Gangster detail to the University Division. It was the day that he was due to take a statement from Henry Hoffman. Willie Burns told Waggoner that the statement was to be taken by Officer Ahern instead.

  “Don’t you want me to interview him?”

  “No, you come in and work nights.”

  “Don’t you want me to work this case anymore?”

  “No.”

  Waggoner was surprised. He could think of no good reason why he was being taken off the case. “I just couldn’t figure it out,” he later said. “The case could have been solved if we had been allowed to carry on our investigation. I was suddenly taken off the case and I never did learn the reason why.”

  For a few weeks, the young cop continued to work the Dahlia investigation from University, with his partner Garth Ward. It was during this time that he secured the crucial interview in the car with Henry Hoffman, in which the old man finally opened up. But the allocation of resources to the case at University was so poor that Waggoner and Ward both asked to be taken off it. The nocturnal lifestyles of the people at the Aster Motel meant that interviews had to be carried out mainly at night. And yet, somehow, no night patrol cars were ever available. Clearly, the young officers’ investigation was being blocked. Why or by whom, they did not know. And so, toward the end of July ’49, Officers Waggoner and Ward, at their own request, were transferred. The two officers submitted a final joint report to the officer in charge at University. Then, they moved on to other things. Once more, the Dahlia investigation stagnated.

  But then, in the summer of 1949, an extraordinary series of unforeseen events occurred. The LAPD became embroiled in the biggest corruption scandal of its history: a scandal that was to change the police department, and the course of the Dahlia case, forever.

  * An over: i.e., a contact.

  † It was generally accepted that Elizabeth Short was small-breasted. However, according to Ann Toth, like many other women of the time she wore “falsies” to augment her breast size, which would have given the appearance of larger breasts.

  ‡ This was the incident witnessed by Dr. De River and JJ O’Mara, described on pages 108–109.

  § Overlap with Beth’s stay at Long Beach: see page 43.

  ¶ Dillon was six feet tall with a slim build. His hair was naturally brown but he is known to have dyed it blond.

  # Gordon Fickling, although tall at six-one-and-a-half, had very dark, wavy hair, and bore no physical resemblance to Leslie Dillon.

  ** The Aster Motel’s connections with organized crime in the 1940s and ’50s were underlined in 1954 when the gangster E. D. Spencer, on the run after a café shooting, was arrested there with his wife, Nan.

  †† Leslie Dillon, during interviews with Dr. De River in Banning the previous December, had stated that the murder had taken place in a motel. (See page 103.)

  ‡‡ Compare the parcel sent to the Los Angeles Examiner, containing the contents of Elizabeth Short’s purse. Did the killer originally also intend to send in the bloody clothing, later changing his mind?

  §§ This was likely one of Elizabeth’s many boyfriends, possibly Carl Balsiger, who had stayed with her in a motel shortly before she left Los Angeles for San Diego in December 1946. (See page 244.)

  ¶¶ The U.S. male pant size 32 corresponds to a slim/medium build.

  ## The Sears 1955 catalogue for the “Misses” range gives for size 14: thirty-five-and-a-half-inch bust, twenty-seven-inch waist, thirty-eight-inch hips. This would correspond roughly to a modern U.S. size 6 or UK size 10, that is, a medium build. While Elizabeth Short’s precise measurements are not known, the LAPD dead body report gave her as five-foot-three and weighing 118 pounds, putting her into the normal category for body mass index. Officer Ahern in his evidence recalled the clothes being discovered at the motel fitting the type and size of those worn by Elizabeth Short at her disappearance.

  *** The only documented case when the motel had an excessive bill for laundry was January 17, 1947. The items were identified as two blankets/bedspreads, and a rug. The pick-up date could have been January 13 or 15. However, no alternative explanation was given for an unusually large pick-up on January 13 (document entitled “Summary of Elizabeth [Beth] Short Murder Investigation,” DA grand jury documents).

  ††† Old 1936 two-door black sedan: compare the eyewitness reports of a 1936 or 1937 dark Ford sedan seen at the body dump site (page 47).

  ‡‡‡ The LAPD later attempted to discredit Tommy Harlow’s evidence by claiming that he had gotten his dates wrong, and that Leslie Dillon only started working for Harlow from March 1947. Dillon did, in fact, do some work for Harlow in March and April of that year. However, Harlow’s clear recollection was that Dillon had also worked for him earlier, when the motel was being built, and this could only have been in December/January. Mrs. Pearl McCromber’s account supported Harlow’s but her full statement has never been released.

  §§§ Unidentified Italian: compare Officer Jones’s report that Dillon hung out with an Italian taxi driver called Larry Fanucci in Florida (page 97).

  ¶¶¶ Hot jewelry: Dillon was in fact wanted by the Santa Monica police for robbing the safe of the Carmel Hotel, where he worked in March 1947. There were unsuccessful attempts to extradite him from Oklahoma in mid-1949 to stand trial for the robbery. The threat of prosecution for the robbery was one of the reasons Dillon eventually dropped his claim for false arrest against the city of Los Angeles.

  ### No official connection between the ownership of the Aster Motel and Mark Hansen has been proved. The original owner, on the face of the motel registration documents, was Clora Hoffman. Mark Hansen did tell district attorney investigators that he owned two “rooming houses” for girls. The addresses
of these were never publicly identified. (See page 56.)

  **** This means that Dillon must have stayed at the motel in late 1946/early 1947, not just in March/April 1947, because by then the motel was completed.

  †††† Elizabeth had hennaed her hair at the Frenches’ house but by the time of her death the dye was growing out, showing the original dark strands and giving the appearance of dark brown (page 11).

  ‡‡‡‡ The possibility that Elizabeth Short was held captive at the motel in a drugged condition was mooted, but not investigated. The contents of Short’s stomach were sent off for analysis for the presence of narcotics, but were somehow lost. No official analysis was ever produced.