Ill never say Im a hundred percent sure. The Black Dahlia Murder Case Lecture 3April 26, 2022 Frank Wood. He wanted the cops to open them at the Examiner office. [18] See statement of Dorothy Hodel,[19] former wife). His final task is to chronicle the last few months of Shorts life, and Harnisch has gone to extraordinary length to track down biographical details. The deceased child's birthday was January 13; Short's body was discovered on January 15. I can still see him put his hand over the mouthpiece of the old-fashioned upright phone and say, Now, what do I tell her?, Richardson screwed up his one good eye and said, Now tell her. Harnisch figures she was just trying to get rid of him. Fickling and Short spent some time in a hotel in Hollywood, but the romance fizzled. As quoted in Newton, 2009, p. 46. After creating a roster of everyone named in the storiesdetectives, patrol officers, suspects, family members, witnesses, and reportershe created a list of people to interview. I havent seen anyone come close to what hes done. At the time of the murder, Bayley's estranged wife still lived in the home. [16] Popular accounts of the Black Dahlia case often portray Hansen as having connections to organized crime, but there is no evidence of this. One of the pilots at the reunion let me copy this and told me the story, Harnisch says. Harnisch created a timeline of when reporters, photographers, and detectives arrived by studying the shadows on the crime scene photographs. Also, Siegel was involved with Chicago Outfit starlet, and his on-off girlfriend Virginia Hill. According to the files, at the time of the murder O'Reilly was a good friend of Hansen and frequented Hansen's nightclub. Lindgren told Harnisch how scandalized the family was when her father left them for Partyka. After conducting some initial research at a local library, he realized that the fiftieth anniversary was coming up in January. 5121 Fountain [Franklin] Avenue, at the time of this murder had a clinic at East First Street near Alameda. After experimental film director Kenneth Angers book Hollywood Babylon II, was published in 1984, featuring lurid crime-scene photos that exposed the grotesque nature of the crime to a new generation of readers, it created wide-spread interest in the case. Some have suggested that the secret that Bayleys mistress was blackmailing him with was that he had performed abortions, then a crime. Writers have portrayed Short as a promiscuous loser sleeping her way across Hollywood. In 2003, Harnisch was sanguine about his book. The secret DA Hodel/Black Dahlia Files locked in a DA's vault for more than fifty years reveal that not only was Dr. George Hodel the named prime suspect, but a joint task-force consisting of 18 detectives from the LAPD and DA offices conducted a live stakeout of his Hollywood residence 24/7 for six weeks. Since beginning his investigation, Steve located and identified one of the photographic subjects as a former friend of George Hodel. Traced the address to a prominent surgeon named Dr. Walter Bayley In 1946 Dr. Bayley had started to exhibit signs of early onset Alzheimers, had abandoned and disinherited his family, and lived with a younger . It is theorized that Dr Bayley's degenerative brain disorder which symptoms include homicidal ideation/behaviour in even pacifists. This is where Jake Gittes in the movie Chinatown discovers that a civic kingmaker has been surreptitiously buying up San Fernando Valley scrubland for rock-bottom prices because he has insider knowledge that the land will soon be worth a fortune when an aqueduct brings water to the area, enabling the property to be developed. About the only thing Harnisch and Hodel agree on is the innocence of Leslie Dillon who author Piu Eatwell identifies as Shorts killer in her 2018 book, After all the attention Hodels book received and the defection of Ellroy, Harnischs best known advocate, he was extremely discouraged. Detectives were also inundated with dozens of false confessions during the first few months after the murder and they interviewed a steady stream of menand a few womenwho claimed to be the killer. This launched Hodels investigation. When a Dahlia enthusiast heard about Harnischs investigation, he sent him a box filled with photocopies of newspaper articles about the crime, a transcript of the inquest that contained most of the autopsy notes, a homemade documentary, a copy of Shorts grades from elementary school, and a dim photocopy of the marriage certificate of her oldest sister, Virginia Short. Although many believe that Walter Bayley is the killer, or Robert M. Manley, But the most well known and credible suspect for this case is George Hodel. Lopez studied the files and read Hodels book, but he remained unconvinced. [6] Wolfe's claim that Short was a prostitute is at odds with the Los Angeles County district attorney's files, which plainly state that she was not, as Wolfe asserts, pregnant.[7]. The mailings disturbed the recipient so much that she showed them to her sister in Los Angeles, who contacted the police. What keeps me going is that I promised myself I would clear up all the lies and myths and try to reclaim Elizabeth Short from the Dahlia freaks. The horrific homicide has sparked such enduring fascination that the crime has been transformed into kitsch. At the time of the murder, Bayley's estranged wife still lived in the home. Undersigned identified this model as Mattie Comfort, 3423 South Arlington, Republic 4953. She began following Harnischs blog about the case, which he launched after writing the anniversary story, and was immediately impressed. Welles was never a suspect in the investigation. He wanted to interview Short and her husband in an attempt to determine the identity of Barbara Lindgren, but they were dead. There is Black Dahlia lingerie, Black Dahlia perfume, Black Dahlia T-shirts, and a number of other schlocky items. She later wrote to him: Perhaps Matt was my man. So now they both have something in commondead sons. Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley was a Los Angeles surgeon who lived in a house one block south of the vacant lot in which Elizabeth Short's body was found, until he left his wife in October 1946. His father was devastated. When he asked her about Elizabeth Short, she became wary. His research, he believed, was redeemed. He doesnt bring in all this superfluous stuff to prove his case. Later, Hodel says, Ellroy pissed backwards, recanted his earlier endorsement, and told interviewers, maybe I was fooled. I interviewed Ellroy recently for another story I was writing, and we chatted amiably for about twenty minutes. He never imagined that he would unearth a murder scenario and a suspect who would intrigue LAPD detectives. After encountering these early erroneous accounts, he vowed that everything he wrote would be exact, backed by authenticated sources, and he ended up spending an inordinate amount of time, which stalled his own research and writing, challenging the accounts of other writers. . In 1999, she claimed in various public forums that Norman Chandler participated in a coverup of the murder. They threw hundreds of cops and investigators borrowed from other departments at this murder. Dr. Bayley lived a block from where the corpse was found. Some speculated that Dillon's ex-wife Georgie Stevenson was related to former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, who contacted the Oklahoma governor on Dillon's behalf, although none of these relations have been verified. He was 67 and had no record of crime or violence. My goodnessit was so white.. In five other books Hodel describes his investigation into these killings. Many conspiracy theories have been advanced, but none have been found to be completely persuasive by experts, and some are not taken seriously at all. She said that she was with Doctor Hodel sometime prior to the murder and that she knew nothing about his being associated with the victim. She told Harnisch that she was stunned that Bayley and Partikya used to pick up dinner to go, listen to classical music at their medical office, and eat dinner while watching surgery films. His evidence was simply not convincing, Lambkin says. Williams' father Richard F. Williams and his friend Con Keller were both members of LA's Gangster Squad investigating the case. Harnisch interviewed Fickling but is reluctant to share exactly what he said because so many people have plagiarized his blog and he wants to hold some things back for his book. They dated for about a week and then she joined him on a sales trip as he headed up to L.A. Yet another theory was that the murder may have been an attempt to frame Siegel by Jack Dragna, who wanted revenge for Siegel's attacks on Dragna's business interests since his arrival in the 1930s. He appeared on numerous network crime shows, CNNs Anderson Cooper interviewed him, and he soon eclipsed Harnisch as the go-to guy on the Dahlia murder. They werent. At the end of the conversation, she implored Harnisch in an anguished tone not to tell anyone how to find her. Then we realized what the hell we had. And he wasnt just a cop with the Long Beach P.D. . He was checking her out. Kay, however, later insisted that he did not agree with Hodels contention of a police cover-up. Nobody can tell this story straight. Harnisch scowls and grips his knees. Killed her. He rode toward her, to prevent her from wandering into a busy street, when he was hit by a truck. Douglas explained that the street where the body was dumped was a curious choice for the killer. Unlike the other pigeons she was trying to con, he would have actually asked how he died because he was a doctor. The envelope included a letter using cut-out words from newspaper clippings that said, "Here is Dahlia's belongings." The chunk of flesh that had been sliced from her thigh was later discovered to have been a rose tattoo. With neither the energy nor motivation to finish his book, he put it aside. Daily News reporter Jack Smith, later a revered Los Angeles Times columnist, wrote that the frenzied coverage was The Front Page come to life.. Wilson was never a suspect until Gilmore brought him to the attention of authorities. files. In addition to Short, Hodel claimed in the book that his father also killed Jeanne French a month later, which was called by the newspapers the Red Lipstick Murder because of the writing on the body. Only the Robbery-Homicide Division captain and Detective Mitzi Roberts, who is in charge of the case, have the keys to the storage room and the cabinet, which is stuffed to the gills, she says. Walter was our only sonthe only child of our flesh and blood, Bayley said in a newspaper story. About 60 people confessed to the murder, mostly men but including a few women. But covering up a murder corruptiondefinitely not.. Harnisch theorizes that Bayley's neurological deterioration contributed to his alleged violence against Short. He was a vice cop. Text is available under the Creative . Shed been called a war widow. Its just about watertight in most ways., LAPD Detective Brian Carr, who was in charge of the Dahlia case at the time, was more equivocal at the dinner, but still found all the coincidences relating to Bayley and the murder intriguing. . The D.A. Hodels book contains numerous assertions about his father and the Dahlia case, some that are authenticated, some that are speculative; nonetheless, the book received widespread attention and immediately eclipsed Harnischs theory. I have a little pet theory of my own. The first was that Walter was 67 years old at the time of the murder (Wikipedia). Author James Ellroy endorsed Harnisch's theory in the 2001 film James Ellroy's Feast of Death. Walter Bayley (1529-1593), was an English physician. [5], In devising his theory, Harnisch consulted retired FBI profiler John E. Douglas, who advised that the very public location of the dump site was significant, since the killer had the ability to transport the body to a more remote site, where it may not have been discovered; the site was one block away from property owned by Bayley's estranged wife Ruth. If he ever encountered anything significant, he believed that it would stand out like a beacon. Nothing related to Norton Avenue did stand out, however, but he was not discouraged. 's files also indicate that Hansen had tried to seduce Short but was rebuffed. He attributes at least twenty-five murder to George Hodel, including the eight Northern California Zodiac killings, in addition to homicides in Chicago, Texas, the Philippines and a dozen in Southern California. The book was made into a widely-panned Brian De Palma film. Then another book, Black Dahlia Avenger, was released that blew everything out of the water, Harnisch says. During an interview Fowler quoted Napoleon: History is an agreed upon lie. Fitzgerald contended that when he arrived there were no reporters or photographers. In December 1946, she ended up in San Diego where she met the cashier at an all-night movie theater. [deleted] 8 yr. ago Thanks for the video link! Hodel believes his reputation was salvaged by a surprising revelation by a newspaper columnist and the support of Stephen Kay, an assistant Los Angeles County district attorney. Shortly before police arrived, Fowler, who wrote a memoir, Reporters, told Harnisch that he had closed Shorts eyes and later helped load the bottom half of Shorts body into the coroners vehicle. In the surviving transcripts of microphone recordings, Hodel was heard making highly incriminating statements. There were more than a half-dozen editions a day and editors prodded reporters for scoops so editions could be updated. Stephen Kay proclaimed the case solved, but others have noted that he had formed this conclusion by treating Steve's many disputed assertions as established fact. This was a component nobody had ever looked at. Dillon was a 27-year-old bellhop, aspiring writer, and former mortician's assistant who became a suspect when he began writing to Los Angeles Police Department psychiatrist Dr. J. Paul De River in October 1948. This was one of the last big stories in Los Angeles pre-television and the competition among the four papers drove the coverage. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Bayleys lesion and drastic personality change could be the result of, Frontotemporal dementia from a series of little strokes, Fallon says. A neighbor of the family, Bob Pacios, told Harnisch that Short was by far the prettiest of the five sisters.. [34] Another suspect is referred to simply as "Queer Woman Surgeon" in the Los Angeles district attorney's files on the case. Although this "breakthrough" was quickly dismissed by the original investigators, the Los Angeles press covered it enthusiastically until it was revealed that Dumais had been at Fort Dix at the time of the murder. The envelope included Shorts birth certificate, Social Security card, newspaper clippings, and a ten-year-old address book, which listed seventy-five men. In Los Angeles, the book was savaged. Unlike other crimes, there is no statute of limitations on murder and a homicide investigation is never closed until it is solved. Yes, there was some corruption in the department, but that was mostly in Vice. No charges were ever brought against him. His initial outline for the book was narrowly focused. Some researchers argue that the Sowden house is where Short was held and killed. Police put Hodel under surveillance from February 18 to March 27, 1950, to ascertain whether he could be implicated in the murder. Los Angeles iconic homicide is not known by the moniker of the perpetrator, but the victimThe Black Dahlia. I found out that a woman in the drugstore is the one who named her. Bayley had a degenerative brain disorder, which could have resulted in violent behavior. Harnisch adds one more variable to his hypothesis. Tamars mother, however, testified that a psychiatrist had told her that her daughter was addicted to telling fantastic stories. After tracking down and interviewing Betty Bersinger, the woman who found the body on Norton Avenue in South Los Angeles, Harnisch discovered that one of the first myths that had accreted around the Dahlia story did not match the reality. An address book embossed with Hansen's name was among Short's belongings mailed to the Los Angeles Examiner after her murder by someone claiming to be the killer. They thought there was something fishy. The clips revealed that Bayley had left his wife and family in 1946 because of his burgeoning relationship with a female physician he worked with, Alexandra Partyka. At some point, he was approached by long retired LAT copy editor Larry Harnisch who pitched him his "No no. [27] She frequently alleged that she was sexually abused by a long list of dead movie stars and other notables, including Norman Chandler, Gene Autry (whose name she continually misspelled as Autrey), Arthur Freed, and Walt Disney. There are two things I refuse to discuss: Donald Trump and The Black Dahlia.. There were also many coincidences why people assume that he murdered The Black Dahlia because of how she died and the horrible things that the killer did to her. He could not and then tried to stagger off. All the articles just say he was a cop. Upon his death, his wife and girlfriend ended up in a legal battle over his belongings with his girlfriend claiming she knew a secret that would ruin him personally and professionally. Some are from people whove done a ton of research and have a theory. Trying to accurately chronicle the boyhood, career, war experiences, mental decline, flaws and foibles, and the marriage and eventual dissolution of the union of an unremarkable man born in 1880 seemed, at times, like a quixotic quest. Bayley was 67 years old at the time of the murder, had no known history of violence or criminal activity of any kind, and is not known to have met Short, even though his daughter was a friend of Short's oldest sister. And the parts fit better.. It turns out that T.J.s wife wouldnt write to him, so Charlie got Short to write him and send him the photo., After her body was found in the South Los Angeles lot, a savannah of-ankle high weeds and yard clippings, the afternoon, Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), a co-publication with The Delacorte Review, The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020: Fall Preview, Five Crime and Mystery Novels Featuring Deaf Characters, The Invention of the Polygraph, and Law Enforcement's Long Search for a 'Lie Detector', Graphic Content: Talking Comics, Crime, and Craft with Benjamin Percy, The Expatriates: Spy Fictions Hapless Unfortunates, The Many Levels of Mystery: Whodunnit? to Whydunnit? and Beyond, But Wheres Its Anus? On How We Imagine Alien Lifeforms, How Lower-Class Innovation, Like, Changes the Langwage, A Shed of Ones Own (in Upstate New York), Katy Simpson Smith on Writing a Southern Woman Louder Than Herself, Girls to the Front: A Reading List of Provocative Feminist History. The mannequins were used in the "house of mirrors" set for The Lady from Shanghai, a film Welles was making with his ex-wife Rita Hayworth around the time of the murder. In secret testimony, Detective Harry Hansen, one of the original investigators, told the 1949 Los Angeles County grand jury that in his opinion the killer was a "top medical man" and "a fine surgeon." I absolutely love research, he says. In the summer of 1996, he was conducting research for a detective novel he intended to write and was looking for a random, nasty old crime he could employ as a plot device. On January 15th, the date the body was discovered, he jammed a broomstick into the dirt on his front yard, spread out a large sheet of paper, and with a felt tip pen traced the progression of the shadowsa primitive sun dialand compared them to the shadows in the photos to garner a rough idea of who was at the scene and when. His daughter was a friend of Short's sister Virginia, and had been the matron of honor at her wedding. They might have said if youre ever down and out in L.A. and need help, call the Bayley family. Former tenant of Elizabeth Short, Walter Bayley was questioned by police in relation to the slaying. Walter Bailey may refer to: Walter Bailey (lawyer), state prosecutor in South Carolina; . [20], Author James Ellroy endorsed Steve Hodel's theory in 2004,[21] but has since refused to discuss the case publicly. His research takes us to a deceased surgeon named Walter Bayley. However, there is no evidence that either Bayley or his associates performed abortions. He was educated at Winchester School, and became a fellow of New College in 1550. She drifted around the country during the next year-and-a-half until her death, never held another job, and often stayed briefly with friends and acquaintances. Fowler claimed there were no officers to prevent reporters and photographers from tromping through the crime scene and interfering with the evidence. And the fact that Hodels father was named as a suspect and is mentioned in the D.A.s files, she says, is intriguing. When Dillon offered up intimate details about the crime, he was taken into custody by the undercover officers and transported to Los Angeles. Ten days after Shorts body was found, the killer mailed an envelope of Shorts belongings to the Examiner. The editor, however, asked, Do you want to do it? Harnisch, who had always wanted to be a writer, responded, Hell, yeah., At the Times morgue, he obtained all the clips on the case, photocopied them, and placed them in chronological order. When Larry Harnisch, a Los Angeles Times copy editor and writer, began studying the case in 1996, he eventually concluded that Bayley could be Short's killer. - Los Angeles' Most Gruesome Murder Ever Elizabeth ("The Black Dahlia") Short's Murder Still Unsolved. Harnisch found the books for the 3900 block of South Norton Avenue and he worked his way through them until he reached the 1940s. Theres a lot of conjecture, but by the end of the book its stated as fact. Dr Walter Bayley who knew Elizabeth's older sister, Virginia. According to Cray, Guthrie drew police attention because of some sexually explicit letters and tabloid clippings he sent to a Northern California woman who he was allegedly stalking. The clips at the Times and phone book directories from the 1940s were no help in locating Lindgren. The Murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia; Los Angeles' Most Famous Unsolved Killing Research into the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, on Jan. 15, 1947, on South Norton Avenue, in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department's most famous open case. Los Angeles Times reporter Larry Harnisch disputes this and says that Dillon did in fact receive a financial settlement from the City of Los Angeles. The lead detective on the case, Harry Hansen, told the Grand Jury that he believed that Shorts killer had surgical expertise. Reporters and detectives raced to track down the boyfriends identified in the letters. I shadowed him on his last day on the job when I was a reporter for the, Former colleagues and relatives expressed to Harnisch how shocked they were at how Bayleys personality drastically changed toward the end of his life. NY, Checkmark Books, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Black Dahlia Backlash: Family members take Hodels Avenger to task, "Smashwords I Killed The Black Dahlia (The Telephone) - A book by Anthony Johnson - page 38", "Heaven Is Here! Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley. Life. Walter Alonzo Bayley was a surgeon that lived close to Elizabeth Short. He had so much additional material that when the story ran, he decided to write a book. Bayley had an office a few blocks from the Biltmore Hotel, the last place where Short was seen alive. Hes a surgeon with mental problems who underwent a drastic personality shift. I am too busy working on active cases." He discovered that two years after the Short murder, George Hodel was tried for molesting his 14-year-old daughter, Tamar. . I decided Id report the story; Id go out and interview people., To know who to interview, he needed to conduct more research. This is one thing I have that nobody else has. I still dont have all the details Id like and Im still hoping to get more. Lindgren told Harnisch how scandalized the family was when her father left them for Partyka. He also said the coincidences piqued his interest. In his office, Harnisch points out a framed photo of Short, who was called Beth at the time, wearing a green beret, a matching top, and a string of pearls. Reporters are at the Detective Bureau and it is not possible for the investigators to have confidential telephone conversation or even read mail without having some news reporter looking it over to see if it relates to this one.. They couldn't prove it now. Jemison had compiled a list of 22 suspects, with Dr. George Hodel among them., Hodel was initially considered a suspect because Jemison compiled a list of all L.A. doctors who had been accused of sex crimes. The nickname alone, he says, was not enough. It was so refreshing to find someone who was sticking to the facts and the original documents, she says. He lives in a house befitting a man immersed in the past. Then another book. Fallon, who is familiar with the Elizabeth Short murder, agrees that the location of the lesion is the key. He described her as a pathological liar. The jury acquitted the doctor. The location of the lesion and the cause as well as when it occurred can have a significant impact on the behavioral manifestations caused as a consequence of the lesion. [32], According to Los Angeles district attorney files, Dr. Patrick O'Reilly was a medical doctor who knew Short through nightclub owner Mark Hansen. Some writers claimed she was lured to Hollywood from the East because she was an aspiring actress. He has interviewed more than one hundred-fifty people, ranging from the first officer on the scene, to family members of Short, to a former boyfriend, to detectives assigned to the investigation, to the woman who discovered the body. Keller believed Mark Hansen was the killer and said Hansen was Swedish and had spent some time at Sweden's Medical Surgical School (Hansen was actually born in Denmark) which would explain the precise dissection of Short's body.