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

by Piu Eatwell

  Not surprisingly, the grand jury was not impressed with the “alibi” evidence for Leslie Dillon that was turned up by Frank Jemison in San Francisco. Of course, the jurors had no idea that Thad Brown had already sent an officer in secret to interview Leslie Dillon personally, and that Dillon had been unable to establish his alibi. The jurors therefore pressed on with their investigation. They called up the police officers involved in the case to give an account of what had happened.

  By the time the first police officers were called to give evidence in December, the 1949 grand jury was virtually at the end of its term of office. Harry Lawson and his co-jurors had already heard detailed evidence about the cop tie-up with the prostitution racket through the liaison between Brenda Allen and her boyfriend on the LAPD Vice Squad, Elmer Jackson. After the grand jury’s indictments in that affair, Chief Clemence Horrall and his assistant, Joe Reed, had resigned that summer, and the LAPD had itself collapsed and been put into receivership in the hands of Worton, the Marine general. So Harry Lawson and his colleagues could have had no illusions about what they were about to hear when the police officers who were to testify on the Dahlia case took the stand in room 548 of the Hall of Justice.

  Members of the Gangster Squad were first on the stand. They recounted the story of the strange cross-state odyssey with Leslie Dillon and Dr. De River, stopping off at seedy motels on the route from Vegas to Los Angeles. Tough and wiry Willie Burns had, in General Worton’s reshuffle, been demoted to a lieutenant police officer on day watch at the Venice Division. He told the jury about his bugging of the motel rooms with the help of Francis Kearney. The recordings of the interviews with Dillon were of poor quality, and it was difficult to make out the words. But Burns did recall that Dillon spoke in a “very soft, well-modulated voice.”§ JJ O’Mara, the Irishman with the killer blue stare, had—unlike many of his Gangster Squad colleagues—escaped demotion. He had been transferred from the now-disbanded squad to the new internal espionage department that Chief Worton had created to replace it, the Intelligence Division. JJ recalled Dillon’s bizarre behavior when they visited the body dump site at Norton and Thirty-ninth. It was O’Mara’s opinion that Dillon was thoroughly familiar with the area of Leimert Park.

  The Gangster Squad went on to relate their investigations at the A1 Trailer Park in Long Beach. Loren Waggoner—now transferred to the University Division—testified how both Jiggs Moore, the manager of the A1 Trailer Park, and the old man who lived there, Mr. Carriere, were adamant that Elizabeth Short had stayed at the trailer park with Leslie Dillon late in 1949. James Ahern, who like Willie Burns had been demoted and was now a patrol sergeant in the Newton Division, confirmed Waggoner’s account. He testified that there had been a possible confusion of Elizabeth Short with a dark-haired, much older woman called Mrs. Ashford, who had lived at the park with her husband at the same time as Leslie Dillon. Jiggs Moore, however, had refused to accept that he was wrong in his identification, and, after being shown a photograph of Elizabeth Short, had steadfastly maintained that she was the girl who was at the park with Dillon.¶

  The Gangster Squad officers also revealed to the grand jury that they had interviewed Mark Hansen in February at his office next to the Florentine Gardens. “Hansen recalled a tall man coming to visit Elizabeth Short six or seven times,” said Waggoner. “He identified a picture of Leslie Dillon, from about 25 photos, as the person who had come to visit her.” Hansen had said to Waggoner and Ahern, “This is the fellow here. . . . I remember the side view of his face, and that’s the way his hair was combed.” Ahern had said to Hansen, did he realize that by making a positive identification, he could be sending the man to prison for life? Hansen said he had better not be positive, then, without seeing the man in person. When Waggoner handed the report to Finis Brown, Willie Burns, and Dr. De River, the doctor in particular had seemed to be very pleased. Finis Brown had no special reaction at the time. However, Waggoner testified, “I believe that Mr. Brown found Mark Hansen, and it later turned up, they said that identification was just a big wild story, there was nothing to it.”

  Officer James Ahern confirmed Waggoner’s account that Mark Hansen had identified a photograph of Leslie Dillon, saying, “This looks like the fellow who came six or seven times to pick her up,” but he had said he would like to see Dillon in person to make a positive identification.# Asked who investigated Mark Hansen, Ahern stated that “at all points” it was Sergeant Brown.

  “Wasn’t Mark Hansen a friend of this sergeant?” a juryman asked Ahern.

  “Pardon?”

  “Wasn’t Mark Hansen a friend of this sergeant? Sergeant Brown?”

  “I wouldn’t know whether he was or not. I know that Brown interrogated him in the primary investigation; as to whether or not they were personal friends, I don’t know.”

  “In other words, you are more or less at liberty to question anyone, except to a certain point Mr. Hansen? Is he more or less Mr. Brown’s private witness?” wondered another juror.

  “Let me ask you this,” said Harry Lawson. “Was it significant to you that a man of Mark Hansen’s position and title by any chance would be down in a motel like that sometimes?”

  “Well—”

  “You ever draw any conclusions on that, or give it any thought?”

  “Yes, I gave it thought. If the girl was there, and Hansen was there—he was directly concerned with this murder.”

  “Did you form any opinion, sergeant, as to who might be a strong likely suspect? Do you care to express any opinion on it?”

  “In my opinion, until it is proven different, there are several people that are involved in the thing at the motel, and who withheld the evidence, which we had to drag out, who are suspects along with Hansen and Dillon.”

  “Hoffman?”

  “Yes, sir, and his wife, Mrs. Sartain.”

  James Ahern’s partner Archie Case confirmed that it was common knowledge among the Gangster Squad that Mark Hansen was friendly with Sergeant Finis Brown. Archie, like JJ O’Mara, had been transferred to the new Intelligence Division.

  “I want to ask you this question,” a juror asked Archie. “At any time in this investigation, did you ever hear it said, or was it talked among department members, that some certain police officer was on very friendly and cordial terms with Mark Hansen?”

  “Oh yes, I’ve heard that said.”

  “Who was that officer?”

  “Brown.”

  “Which Brown, please?”

  “Sergeant Finis Brown.”

  A new revelation from the Gangster Squad was that they had investigated Mark Hansen not only in relation to the Dahlia case, but in connection with a jewelry scam involving a man called Bill Miller. Willie Burns told the jury that Miller ran a jewelry store on Frank Street, out Santa Monica way. He recently went bust. Before his creditors could get to his valuable jewelry stock, it had mysteriously disappeared. The stock had been replaced with worthless, low-grade stones. At the same time, there was talk of the jewelry going to Mark Hansen, and a $15,000 transfer from Hansen to Miller.** The Gangster Squad strongly suspected that Mark Hansen, with his known connections to organized crime through his friend Jimmy Utley, was somehow mixed up in the jewelry scam. There were also possible links to the Dahlia case: one witness had said that, after the murder, Beth’s old housemate Ann Toth had called up Bill Miller and told him, “We had better get together.” The Moormans, too, had said that the man who stayed at the Aster Motel in January ’47—with whom they had dined, and whom they identified as Mark Hansen—had driven with them to an unidentified location downtown, from which he had collected “a large suitcase.”†† A search was made of Mark Hansen’s home, but the jewelry was never found. The Gangster Squad went to the LAPD chief to get Hansen’s bank account checked for a transfer to Bill Miller, but nothing came of it as far as Burns knew. If there was an investigation into Hansen’s bank account, he had never heard about it.

  The Gangster Squad officers went on to recount the
story of the blood-caked room at the Aster Motel. Waggoner told of how he and Officer Ward had painstakingly developed the confidence of the slippery old ex-con manager of the Aster, Henry Hoffman, leading to the explosive revelations by Hoffman that had been filed in Waggoner’s final confidential report, leaked to the Herald-Express. According to Ahern, the Gangster Squad had attempted to find out whether Leslie Dillon had stayed at the motel in January 1947. The motel records established that Dillon had definitely lived there for a few days from April 5, 1947, but two witnesses—Dillon’s real estate agent employer Tommy Harlow, and a woman who worked at his office, Mrs. Pearl McCromber—had stated he had come over on a bus from San Francisco in the early part of January. The question had been complicated by the fact that Mrs. Hoffman burned the motel’s registration cards for that month.

  “How did she happen to burn those cards?” Harry Lawson asked Ahern.

  “Well, she said she was in a small apartment with her two children. The cards were getting in the way. She just threw them in the fire and burned them.”

  “That is rather strange, isn’t it?”

  “I thought so, yes.”

  All the Gangster Squad officers confirmed that they had been making “remarkable progress” in the Dahlia investigation when they were suddenly and inexplicably ordered off the case in the summer. At this point, the files were turned over to Homicide. In Waggoner’s opinion, the transfer was baffling. “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.”‡‡ Garth Ward, Waggoner’s partner in the Aster Motel investigations with University Division, told the jury that he and Waggoner had asked to see the files on the case, but when the lieutenant at the University Division telephoned Homicide to ask for them, the request was denied. Garth himself had overheard the telephone conversation when the lieutenant asked for the file and was refused. He thought Thad Brown had been on the other end of the phone.

  Archie Case agreed that this was the only instance where a Homicide case had been transferred to the Gangster detail, and then back to Homicide. He had no explanation for why this had happened. But even before the transfer, according to Willie Burns, from the moment that Dillon was booked and released, Sergeant Brown had been assigned to “assist” in evaluating the reports made by Burns’s men. Finis Brown, Burns testified, read all the Gangster Squad reports on the case. Often he would go out and re-interview witnesses himself, if he thought the reports of Burns’s men “were not specific enough. . . . Brown would say maybe, ‘This is this fellow’s opinion. Will he testify to that?’ And the officer would say, ‘I’m not sure about that.’ So Brown would go out and see him and find out.”

  And somehow, when the witnesses were re-interviewed by Finis Brown, their stories would change. A picture that had seemed clear in the early Gangster Squad reports became, suddenly, confusing and riddled with contradictions.

  “Do you remember,” asked DA Arthur Veitch, when questioning Willie Burns, “Assistant Chief Reed ever talking to some officers and saying to them, ‘Have you any serious doubt or if you don’t believe this fellow Dillon is guilty, I wish you would come out and say so’? Do you recognize anything of that sort being said in front of Chief Reed, at a meeting you attended?”

  “I attended a couple of conferences on the things. I am not going to say whether it was or not. I don’t remember.” Burns hedged the question. But he confirmed that he still considered Leslie Dillon very much a live suspect in the case: “He certainly hasn’t been eliminated in my mind.” The main problem, in Burns’s view, was pinning Leslie Dillon down as to where he was at the time of the murder: “I sure would like to know what Dillon was doing between January 9 and 16. I have been unable to find him anywhere, either in San Francisco or here.”

  “He is a person whom it might transpire that evidence might tie him in definitely?”

  “That is right. That is my opinion.”

  Like Willie Burns, all the Gangster Squad officers were convinced there were strong circumstances linking Leslie Dillon and Mark Hansen to the murder, and that the events at the Aster Motel demanded further inquiry. They agreed that they had seen most of Dr. De River’s evidence in the case, and had confidence in him.

  “Did you form your own opinion as to possible suspects?” Harry Lawson asked Garth Ward.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind expressing them?”

  “I feel that, from my investigation, there must be something more than just coincidence in this Dillon and Hansen deal out on Flower. I am firmly convinced in my own mind there is something there, or I would say, a good probability.”

  “Sergeant O’Mara, with your knowledge of police investigation and so forth, at the time you were with Dr. De River, with this here Leslie Dillon, were you satisfied that he was a likely suspect in the Elizabeth Short case?”

  “I would say I was.”

  Archie Case was even more categorical in his support of Dr. De River and suspicions of Dillon and Hansen.

  “You are familiar, of course, with Dr. De River’s analysis of this case?” a juror asked Case.

  “Yes.”

  “What were your relations with Dr. De River? Were they friendly, co-operative?”

  “Yes, I valued Dr. De River’s part in this very much.”

  “Have you changed your attitude with regard to Dr. De River’s analysis of the case?”

  “No, I’ve got quite a lot of confidence in Dr. De River.”

  “You never changed your attitude with regard to De River’s solution of the case?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “You haven’t now?”

  “I haven’t now.”

  “Do you have any opinion as to who the possible suspect in this case might be, in your investigation?”

  “Yes sir, Dillon is a good suspect, and Mark Hansen.”

  Even the redheaded Iowan Con Keller, who had played a minor role in the investigation, said he believed all along—and still did—that Leslie Dillon was a “pretty good suspect.” He was also sure that Mark Hansen was “mixed into it somewhere.”§§

  At the end of their testimony, the grand jury congratulated the Gangster Squad, in particular Officer Ahern, on their frankness.

  “I’d like to compliment Officer Ahern,” said a juror.

  “He’s been cooperative and intelligent and helpful,” said another.

  “A fine witness,” said Harry Lawson.

  So ended the testimony before the grand jury of the members of the Gangster Squad. Every one confirmed his strong suspicions about Leslie Dillon and Mark Hansen. Every one stated that he believed they had been on the verge of a breakthrough in the case. Not one could account for why the case had been taken away from them and the investigation terminated.

  Another curious circumstance was that, as reported by Aggie’s Herald-Express newspaper, there were in fact seven officers who testified before the grand jury on December 1, 1949. Six were listed by name: Ahern, O’Mara, Keller, Waggoner, Case, and Ward. But there was also listed in Aggie’s report an unnamed “officer who went to Florida during one phase of the probe.” That officer must have been Officer Jones, who tailed Leslie Dillon in Miami. His testimony was never released.¶¶

  In their testimony before the grand jury, all the members of the Gangster Squad had voiced their personal confidence in Dr. De River’s “solution” of the case. And what was the doctor’s solution? Incredibly—or perhaps not incredibly—it is not recorded. Because Dr. De River’s grand jury testimony, given at Harry Lawson’s invitation in October, was the only evidence of a witness, in the entire proceedings, that was not transcribed.## His words were registered only in the heads of the jurors themselves, now dead and buried—although a remarkable oral record of the doctor’s “solution” was to surface, many years later.

  For now, however, the baton passed from the Gangster Squad to the Homicide Division. Harry Hansen and Finis Brown were about to take the st
and.

  Harry “the Hat” stepped into the witness box in his trademark pin-striped suit and loud tie. If he had knocked out the dent in the fedora he clutched in his hand, or given an extra spit and polish to his mellow brown oxfords, he wouldn’t have admitted to it. Harry’s long, lean, basset-hound face was as droopy-eyed and expressionless as usual. It was a face that would, in the ensuing years, become known in many American households as the LAPD spokesman for the Dahlia case. Harry “the Hat,” smooth and charming on the surface, was invariably wheeled out whenever a sound bite from the cops was required.

  Harry told the jury about his involvement in the early stages of the Dahlia investigation. He had been one of the first officers on the crime scene. He recalled the address book that had been mailed to the Examiner newspaper, and agreed that it was “safe to assume” that the package was from the killer. The police had tried to get fingerprints off the package, but there were “a lot of blurs and smudges.” Harry had interviewed Mark Hansen a few times in the early stages of the investigation. Every time, he had been accompanied by Sergeant Brown.

  The first Harry had heard of Leslie Dillon was when Captain Kearney, chief of Homicide, telephoned him in January and told him to hightail it to Highland Park Police Station, where a “hot new suspect” was being questioned. Dillon had been interrogated exhaustively at Highland Park, then questioned at the police academy by Deputy DA John Barnes. Harry had been present at some of the interviews, but not all. He was asked what he thought about Dillon as a suspect: “I actually felt in my own mind that the man had no connection with the murder.” Harry then went on to proffer his own, layman’s “little pet theory” about the case: “I think that a medical man committed the murder, a very fine surgeon. I base that conclusion on the way the body was bisected.” He was asked if the Homicide Division actually had any current suspects in the medical profession. “No, we have not.”