Black Dahlia suspects
Encyclopedia
Many suspects have been proposed as the unidentified killer of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the "Black Dahlia
," who was murdered in 1947. Many theories have been advanced, but none has been found to be completely persuasive by experts, and some are not taken seriously at all.
The murder investigation by the LAPD
was the largest since the murder of Marion Parker in 1927, and involved hundreds of officers borrowed from other law enforcement agencies
. Sensational and sometimes inaccurate press coverage, as well as the nature of the crime, focused intense public attention on the case. As the case continues to command public attention, many more people have been proposed as Short's killer, much like London's Jack the Ripper
murders.
About 60 people confessed to the murder, mostly men but including a few women. However, 25 people were considered to be viable suspects by the Los Angeles District Attorney.
showed that he was suffering from degenerative brain disease. After his death, Bayley's widow alleged that his mistress knew a "terrible secret" about Bayley and claimed this was the reason the mistress was the main beneficiary upon his death. Bayley was never a suspect in the case, but many medical doctors and others with medical training were. 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." 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 friends with Short's oldest sister.
When Larry Harnisch, a copy editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times
, began studying the case in 1996, he eventually concluded that Bayley could be Elizabeth Short's killer. Although critics of Harnisch's theory question whether Bayley's mental and physical condition at the time of the murder would have been consistent with the commission of this type of crime, the original investigators' theory that the body was cut in half because the killer wasn't strong enough to move it intact partially answers this objection. Harnisch theorizes that Bayley’s neurological
deterioration contributed to his alleged violence against Short. Some have suggested that the secret that Bayley’s mistress was blackmail
ing him with was that he had performed abortion
s, then a crime. However, there is no evidence that Bayley performed abortions or associated with anyone involved in performing abortions. Author James Ellroy
endorsed Harnisch's theory in the 2001
film James Ellroy's Feast of Death.
for the notorious Hollywood "madam" Brenda Allen
, which led to Short's murder at the hands of gangster Bugsy Siegel
. 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 is Wolfe's assertion that she was pregnant.
Dr. J. Paul De River in October 1948. Dillon was living in Florida
at the time of his correspondence with De River, but had formerly lived in Los Angeles. Dillon read a story about the case in a "true detective" magazine in which De River was quoted and wrote to De River regarding his thoughts on the case, mentioning another man named Jeff Connors as a possible suspect. Over the course of their correspondence, De River began to believe that Connors was a figment of Dillon's imagination and that Dillon had committed the murder himself. De River then lured Dillon to Los Angeles on the pretext that Dillon would assist him in solving the case. De River and several LAPD officers met Dillon as he made his way to Los Angeles and took him to a hotel room outside Los Angeles. There they questioned him about the murder for several days, refusing to let him leave, call a lawyer, or communicate with anyone else. Dillon was only discovered when a passerby found a postcard with a plea for help on it, which Dillon had thrown out the window of the hotel room, and contacted local police.
Once Dillon's situation came to light, police soon discovered that Jeff Connors was a real person who had lived in Los Angeles around the time of the murder and that Leslie Dillon could be conclusively placed in San Francisco at the time of the murder. Dillon filed a $100,000 claim against the city of Los Angeles. The scandal caused by the Dillon affair triggered a 1949 grand jury investigation of police handling of the Black Dahlia case and some other unsolved murders. In 2004, De River's daughter, Jacque Daniel, published a book called The Curse of the Black Dahlia, in which she expressed her belief that her father had been unfairly maligned for the Dillon affair.
, confessed to the murder a few weeks after it occurred. 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. Dumais was cleared of any involvement in the crime, although he continued to claim he killed Elizabeth Short each time he was arrested for various offenses, well into the 1950s.
Hansen died of natural causes in 1964. No charges were ever brought against him. He had no criminal record and no known history of violence. Popular accounts of the Black Dahlia case often portray Hansen as having connections to organized crime
, but there is no evidence of this.
of the charges in December 1949. The molestation case led the LAPD to include Hodel, a physician specializing in public health and sexually transmitted disease
s, among its many suspects in the Dahlia case. Authorities put Hodel under surveillance from February 18 to March 27, 1950, including the installation of two microphones in his home, monitored by over 18 detectives, to ascertain whether he could be implicated in the murder. In the surviving transcripts, Dr. Hodel is heard making highly incriminating statements.
In the final report to the grand jury dated February 20, 1951, Lt. Frank Jemison of the Los Angeles County
district attorney's office wrote:
The report, from which the above excerpt was taken, was submitted at the completion of the D.A.'s investigation of George Hodel and at least 21 other suspects.
In 2003 George Hodel's son, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, published a book claiming his father, who died in 1991, had in fact committed the Black Dahlia murder as well as a host of unsolved murders over the better part of two decades. Steve Hodel says he came up with the idea when he saw two pictures in his dead father's photo album that he claims resemble Short, although Short's family insists they are not of her and many other observers have failed to see the resemblance. Since beginning his investigation, Steve has located and identified one of the photographic subjects as a former friend of George Hodel. The other photograph remains unidentified. Steve Hodel claims he was unaware at the time that his father had been a suspect in the case, although his sister Tamar was friends with Janice Knowlton, author of her own book, Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer and case documents make it clear that Steve's parents and many of their associates knew the senior Hodel was a suspect. After reviewing the information presented in Steve Hodel's book, Head Deputy D.A. Stephen Kay (the prosecutor in the Manson Family case) proclaimed the case solved, but others have noted that Kay, who has since retired, formed this conclusion by treating Steve Hodel's many disputed assertions as established fact. Detective Brian Carr, the LAPD officer in charge of the Black Dahlia case at the time of Steve Hodel's briefing, said in a televised interview that he was baffled by Kay's response, adding that if he ever took a case as weak as Steve Hodel's to a prosecutor he would be "laughed out of the office." In a September 2006 television interview with Cold Case Files
host Bill Kurtis
, Carr added, "I don't have the time to either prove or disprove Hodel's investigation. I am too busy working on active cases." Steve Hodel has also claimed that George Hodel was responsible for the murder of Jeanne French. Her murder was dubbed, "The Lipstick Murder" because the letters "B.D." were written on her body with lipstick. French's murder occurred February 10, 1947, a few weeks after the murder of Elizabeth Short.
Author James Ellroy
endorsed Steve Hodel's theory in the foreword to the paperback version of Hodel's book. , however, Ellroy has since refused to discuss theories in the case and says he has no idea who the killer was and will never again talk about the Black Dahlia publicly.
Steve Hodel maintains a website where he continues to update the case with additional discovered information.
" that surfaced during therapy
. The Los Angeles Times
said in 1991:
Nevertheless, the Westminster Police Department took her claims seriously enough to dig up the grounds around her childhood home, looking for evidence. They found nothing to tie George Knowlton to the crime. In 1995, Janice Knowlton created a sub-genre as the first person to publish a book claiming that his or her own father committed the Black Dahlia murder. The book was written with veteran crime writer Michael Newton. In the book Knowlton, a former professional singer and owner of a public relations
company, alleged that her father had been having an affair with Elizabeth Short and that Short was staying in a makeshift bedroom in their garage, where she suffered a miscarriage
. Knowlton said she was later forced to accompany her father when he disposed of the body. Knowlton claimed that a former member of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department told her that her father was considered a suspect in the case by that agency, but this claim is unsupported by the public documents that have been released in the case. She claimed the same source told her that future LAPD chief and California
politician Ed Davis
and Los Angeles County District Attorney Buron Fitts were suspects in the murder as well. Janice Knowlton died of an overdose
of prescription drug
s in 2004, in what was deemed a suicide
by the Orange County, California
, coroner
's office.
In a side note to her accusations against her father, Janice Knowlton, who was a frequent contributor as to various online forums where the Black Dahlia case was discussed, posted an article to a Usenet
group in August 1998, in which she names Dr. George Hodel (see above) as a suspect in the case. Knowlton's sister has since stated on amazon.com
's web page for her sister's book, Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer, that after publication of Knowlton's book, Tamar Hodel, daughter of George Hodel and sister of Steve Hodel, contacted Knowlton and the two women remained "email pals for several years."
Knowlton also made claims prefiguring those of Black Dahlia Files author Donald Wolfe. In 1999, she claimed in various public forums that Norman Chandler participated in a cover-up of the murder. Knowlton claimed that on Halloween 1946 she was sold at the age of nine as a child prostitute to a Pasadena
Satanic
sex cult
. She frequently alleged that she was sold as a child prostitute to 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
. Knowlton became so abusive in her Usenet posts that Pacbell canceled her account in 1999.
tests and a sworn alibi, Manley was set free. He also identified Short's handbag purse and one of her shoes after they were discovered in a trashcan on January 25, 1947, several miles from the murder scene. Manley, who had been discharged from the army due to mental disability, subsequently suffered a series of nervous breakdown
s and claimed to be hearing voices
. As a result, he was committed to Patton State Hospital by his wife in 1954. He died on January 9, 1986.
had been surgically removed, which investigators found similar to the mutilation of Short’s body. The files indicate that O'Reilly had once been married to the daughter of an LAPD captain.
in a story appearing January 17, 1982. While Severed says that homicide Detective John St. John was about to "close in" on Wilson based on the material Gilmore provided, St. John told the Herald-Examiner in the same article that he was busy with other killings and would review Gilmore's claims when he got time. As reliable sources of information about the case, such as the FBI files and portions of the Los Angeles district attorney files, have become publicly available, statements about Short and the murder attributed to Wilson in Severed and supposedly tying him to the crime have not been borne out as accurate. Severed also claims Wilson was involved in the murder of Georgette Bauerdorf
. Severed, and many other sources based on Severed, erroneously claim that Short and Bauerdorf knew each other in Los Angeles, supposedly because they were both hostesses at the same nightclub. In reality, by the time Short arrived in Los Angeles in 1946, Bauerdorf had been dead for two years and the nightclub had been closed for a year. Wilson was never a suspect until Gilmore brought him to the attention of authorities.
Wilson figures in Donald Wolfe's book The Mob, The Mogul, And The Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles. Wolfe hypothesizes that Wilson was present at Short's murder and claims a connection between Wilson and gangster Bugsy Siegel
through some small-time gangsters Wilson supposedly associated with. He was also part of the military.
sergeant stationed in San Diego. Authorities took the confession seriously enough to investigate and found it groundless. Another suspect is referred to simply as "Queer Woman Surgeon" in the Los Angeles district attorney's files on the case. Newspaper stories at the time implied that Short was a lesbian
or bisexual, but the district attorney files state bluntly that Short "had no use for queers."
was one of the many suspects in the murder, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's files and Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie written by Ed Cray and published in 2004 by W.W. Norton. According to Cray, Guthrie
drew police attention because of some sexually explicit letters and tabloid clippings he sent to a Northern California
woman with whom he was smitten. The mailings disturbed their recipient so much that she showed them to her sister in Los Angeles, who contacted the police. Guthrie was quickly cleared of involvement in the murder, but various authorities attempted to prosecute him, with minor success, on charges related to sending prohibited materials through the mail.
, suggested filmmaker Orson Welles
as a suspect. Pacios bases this theory on such factors as Welles's volatile temperament and his creation of mannequins three months before Short's death that supposedly featured lacerations similar to those inflicted on Short. 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. The scenes containing the set were deleted from the film by Harry Cohn
. In one of Short's last letters home, her older sister Virginia claimed she had written that a movie director was going to give her a screen test.
Pacios also cites Welles's familiarity with the site where the body was found and the magic act
he performed to entertain soldiers during World War II
. She believes that the bisection of the body was part of the killer's signature and an acting out of the perpetrator's obsession. Welles applied for his passport
on January 24, 1947, the same day the killer mailed a packet to Los Angeles newspapers. Welles left the country for an extended stay in Europe 10 months after the murder without completing the editing of Macbeth
, the film he was both directing and starring in. Despite persistent attempts by Republic Pictures
to get him to return to complete the film, he refused. According to Pacios, witnesses she had interviewed state that Welles and the victim both frequented Brittingham's restaurant in Los Angeles during the same time period and waitresses believed Short was going out with someone at Columbia Pictures
. Welles was never a suspect in the investigation. Pacios now maintains BlackDahlia.info, a website containing a great deal of information and official documents about the Black Dahlia case, but only a short section on Welles' supposed involvement.
Black Dahlia
"The Black Dahlia" was a nickname given to Elizabeth Short is an American woman and the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. She acquired the moniker posthumously by newspapers in the habit of nicknaming crimes they found particularly colorful...
," who was murdered in 1947. Many theories have been advanced, but none has been found to be completely persuasive by experts, and some are not taken seriously at all.
The murder investigation by the LAPD
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...
was the largest since the murder of Marion Parker in 1927, and involved hundreds of officers borrowed from other law enforcement agencies
Law enforcement agency
In North American English, a law enforcement agency is a government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.Outside North America, such organizations are called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police while others have other names In North American...
. Sensational and sometimes inaccurate press coverage, as well as the nature of the crime, focused intense public attention on the case. As the case continues to command public attention, many more people have been proposed as Short's killer, much like London's Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper
"Jack the Ripper" is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the...
murders.
Original suspects
Because of the complexity of the case, the original investigators treated every person who knew Elizabeth Short as a suspect who had to be eliminated. Hundreds of people were considered suspects and thousands were interviewed by police.About 60 people confessed to the murder, mostly men but including a few women. However, 25 people were considered to be viable suspects by the Los Angeles District Attorney.
The 25 District attorney suspects
- Carl Balsiger
- C. Welsh
- Sergeant “Chuck” (name unknown)
- John D. Wade
- Joe Scalis
- James Nimmo
- Maurice Clement
- A Chicago police officer
- Salvador Torres Vera
- Dr George Hodel
- Marvin Margolis
- Glenn Wolf
- Michael Anthony Otero
- George Bacos
- Francis Campbell
- "Queer Woman Surgeon"
- Dr. Adam Fairall
- Strip Club Owner
- Dr. Paul DeGaston
- Dr. A. E. Brix
- Dr. M. M. Schwartz
- Dr. Artnur McGinnis Faught
- Dr Patrick S. O’Reilly
- Mark Hansen
- Jacob Fisk
Current suspects
While some of the original 25 suspects were discounted, new ones have arisen. At present the following suspects are discussed by various authors and experts:Walter Bayley
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. At the time of the murder, Bayley's estranged wife still lived in the home. Bayley's daughter was a friend of Elizabeth Short's sister Virginia and brother-in-law Adrian and had been the matron of honor at their wedding. When Bayley died in January 1948, his autopsyAutopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
showed that he was suffering from degenerative brain disease. After his death, Bayley's widow alleged that his mistress knew a "terrible secret" about Bayley and claimed this was the reason the mistress was the main beneficiary upon his death. Bayley was never a suspect in the case, but many medical doctors and others with medical training were. In secret testimony, Detective Harry Hansen, one of the original investigators, told the 1949 Los Angeles County grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
that in his opinion, the killer was a "top medical man" and "a fine surgeon." 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 friends with Short's oldest sister.
When Larry Harnisch, a copy editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, began studying the case in 1996, he eventually concluded that Bayley could be Elizabeth Short's killer. Although critics of Harnisch's theory question whether Bayley's mental and physical condition at the time of the murder would have been consistent with the commission of this type of crime, the original investigators' theory that the body was cut in half because the killer wasn't strong enough to move it intact partially answers this objection. Harnisch theorizes that Bayley’s neurological
Neurology
Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...
deterioration contributed to his alleged violence against Short. Some have suggested that the secret that Bayley’s mistress was blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
ing him with was that he had performed abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
s, then a crime. However, there is no evidence that Bayley performed abortions or associated with anyone involved in performing abortions. Author James Ellroy
James Ellroy
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a so-called "telegraphic" prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black...
endorsed Harnisch's theory in the 2001
2001 in film
The year 2001 in film involved some significant events, including the first of the Harry Potter series and also the first of The Lord of the Rings trilogy...
film James Ellroy's Feast of Death.
Norman Chandler
Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, is accused of involvement in Elizabeth Short's murder, in Donald Wolfe's The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles. In a complicated scenario involving multiple perpetrators, Wolfe claims that Chandler impregnated Short while she was working as a call girlCall girl
A call girl or female escort is a sex worker who is not visible to the general public; nor does she usually work in an institution like a brothel, although she may be employed by an escort agency...
for the notorious Hollywood "madam" Brenda Allen
Brenda Allen
Brenda Allen was a madam based in Los Angeles, California whose arrest in 1948 triggered a scandal that led to the reform of the Los Angeles Police Department . Allen received police protection due to her relationship with Sergeant Elmer V...
, which led to Short's murder at the hands of gangster Bugsy Siegel
Bugsy Siegel
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American gangster who was involved with the Genovese crime family...
. 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 is Wolfe's assertion that she was pregnant.
Leslie Dillon
Leslie Dillon was a 27-year-old bellhop and aspiring writer who became a suspect in the case when he began writing to LAPD police psychiatristPsychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
Dr. J. Paul De River in October 1948. Dillon was living in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
at the time of his correspondence with De River, but had formerly lived in Los Angeles. Dillon read a story about the case in a "true detective" magazine in which De River was quoted and wrote to De River regarding his thoughts on the case, mentioning another man named Jeff Connors as a possible suspect. Over the course of their correspondence, De River began to believe that Connors was a figment of Dillon's imagination and that Dillon had committed the murder himself. De River then lured Dillon to Los Angeles on the pretext that Dillon would assist him in solving the case. De River and several LAPD officers met Dillon as he made his way to Los Angeles and took him to a hotel room outside Los Angeles. There they questioned him about the murder for several days, refusing to let him leave, call a lawyer, or communicate with anyone else. Dillon was only discovered when a passerby found a postcard with a plea for help on it, which Dillon had thrown out the window of the hotel room, and contacted local police.
Once Dillon's situation came to light, police soon discovered that Jeff Connors was a real person who had lived in Los Angeles around the time of the murder and that Leslie Dillon could be conclusively placed in San Francisco at the time of the murder. Dillon filed a $100,000 claim against the city of Los Angeles. The scandal caused by the Dillon affair triggered a 1949 grand jury investigation of police handling of the Black Dahlia case and some other unsolved murders. In 2004, De River's daughter, Jacque Daniel, published a book called The Curse of the Black Dahlia, in which she expressed her belief that her father had been unfairly maligned for the Dillon affair.
Joseph A. Dumais
Joseph Dumais, a 29-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Dix, New JerseyFort Dix, New Jersey
JB MDL Dix , better known as Fort Dix, is a United States Army base located approximately south-southeast of Trenton, New Jersey. Dix is under the jurisdiction of the United States Army Reserve Command...
, confessed to the murder a few weeks after it occurred. 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. Dumais was cleared of any involvement in the crime, although he continued to claim he killed Elizabeth Short each time he was arrested for various offenses, well into the 1950s.
Mark Hansen
Mark Hansen was a Hollywood nightclub and theater owner who knew Short while she was in Los Angeles. Short lived in Hansen's home, as a paying boarder or as a guest (accounts vary), on several occasions between May 1946 and October 1946. Hansen's girlfriend Ann Toth shared a room with Short in this house, which was near Hansen's nightclub, the Florentine Gardens. Short called Hansen in Los Angeles from San Diego on January 8 or 9, making him one of the last people known to have spoken to her. Los Angeles district attorney files indicate that Hansen made contradictory statements to authorities about the nature of this conversation. An address book embossed with Hansen's name was among Short's belongings mailed to a newspaper after Short's murder by someone claiming to be her killer. The address book belonged to Hansen, but he had never used it. Short had been using it as her own. Los Angeles district attorney files indicate that Hansen had tried to seduce Short but she rebuffed him. Hansen was one of the first serious suspects in the case and he was still a prime suspect as late as the 1951 DA's investigation and grand jury inquest. Hansen was linked to three other suspects in the case, each of whom was a medical doctor: Dr. Patrick S. O’Reilly, Dr. M. M. Schwartz, and Dr. Arthur McGinnis Faught.Hansen died of natural causes in 1964. No charges were ever brought against him. He had no criminal record and no known history of violence. Popular accounts of the Black Dahlia case often portray Hansen as having connections to organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
, but there is no evidence of this.
George Hodel
Dr. George Hodel came under police scrutiny in October 1949, when his 14-year-old daughter, Tamar, accused him of molesting her. Three witnesses testified at his trial that they were present in the room and saw him having sex with Tamar. Another witness who had previously admitted that she had participated in sex acts with Tamar, recanted and refused to testify. Hodel was acquittedAcquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
of the charges in December 1949. The molestation case led the LAPD to include Hodel, a physician specializing in public health and sexually transmitted disease
Sexually transmitted disease
Sexually transmitted disease , also known as a sexually transmitted infection or venereal disease , is an illness that has a significant probability of transmission between humans by means of human sexual behavior, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex...
s, among its many suspects in the Dahlia case. Authorities put Hodel under surveillance from February 18 to March 27, 1950, including the installation of two microphones in his home, monitored by over 18 detectives, to ascertain whether he could be implicated in the murder. In the surviving transcripts, Dr. Hodel is heard making highly incriminating statements.
"Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They cant talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead...They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary..." - George Hodel. February 18, 1950Ruth Spaulding died from an overdose and Hodel was investigated by the LAPD in 1945 for her suspected murder. He was present when Spaulding died and had burnt some of her papers before police were called. The case was dropped through lack of evidence but documents were later found that indicated Spaulding may have been about to make public that Hodel was intentionally misdiagnosing patients and billing them for laboratory tests, medical treatment and prescriptions not needed. Hodel's son, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel believes Elizabeth Short may have been one of his father patients.
In the final report to the grand jury dated February 20, 1951, Lt. Frank Jemison of the Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County, California
Los Angeles County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 9,818,605, making it the most populous county in the United States. Los Angeles County alone is more populous than 42 individual U.S. states...
district attorney's office wrote:
Doctor George Hodel, M.D. 5121 Fountain [Franklin] Avenue, at the time of this murder had a clinic at East First Street near Alameda. Lillian DeNorak [Lenorak] who lived with this doctor said he spent some time around the Biltmore HotelBiltmore HotelBowman-Biltmore Hotels was a chain created by hotel magnate John McEntee Bowman.The name evokes the Vanderbilt family's Biltmore Estate, whose buildings and gardens within are privately owned historical landmarks and tourist attractions in Asheville, North Carolina, United States. The name has...
and identified the photo of victim Short as a photo of one of the doctor's girl friends. Tamar Hodel, fifteen year old daughter, stated that her mother, Dorothy Hodel, has told her that her father had been out all night on a party the night of the murder and said, "They’ll never be able to prove I did that murder." Two microphones were placed in this suspect's home (see the log and recordings made over approximately three weeks time which tend to prove his innocence. See statement of Dorothy Hodel, former wife). Informant Lillian DeNorak [Lenorak] has been committed to the State Mental Institution at Camarillo. Joe Barrett, a roomer at the Hodel residence cooperated as an informant. A photograph of the suspect in the nude with a nude identified colored model was secured from his personal effects. Undersigned identified this model as Mattie Comfort, 3423½ South Arlington, Republic 4953. 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. Rudolph Walthers, known to have been acquainted with victim and also with suspect Hodel, claimed he had not seen victim in the presence of Hodel and did not believe that the doctor had ever met the victim. The following acquaintances of Hodel were questioned and none were able to connect the suspect with murder: Fred Sexton, 1020 White Knoll Drive; Nita Moladero, 1617½ North Normandy [Normandie]; Ellen Taylor 5121 Fountain Avenue; Finlay Thomas, 616½ South Normandy [Normandie]; Mildred B. Colby, 4029 Vista Del Monte Street, Sherman Oaks, this witness was a girlfriend of Charles Smith, abortionist friend of Hodel, Turin Gilkey, 1025 North Wilcox; Irene Summerset, 1236¼ North Edgemont; Norman Beckett, 1025 North Wilcox; Ethel Kane, 1033 North Wilcox; Annette Chase, 1039 North Wilcox; Dorothy Royer, 1636 North Beverly Glenn. See supplemental reports, long sheets and hear recordings, all of which tend to eliminate this suspect.
The report, from which the above excerpt was taken, was submitted at the completion of the D.A.'s investigation of George Hodel and at least 21 other suspects.
In 2003 George Hodel's son, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, published a book claiming his father, who died in 1991, had in fact committed the Black Dahlia murder as well as a host of unsolved murders over the better part of two decades. Steve Hodel says he came up with the idea when he saw two pictures in his dead father's photo album that he claims resemble Short, although Short's family insists they are not of her and many other observers have failed to see the resemblance. Since beginning his investigation, Steve has located and identified one of the photographic subjects as a former friend of George Hodel. The other photograph remains unidentified. Steve Hodel claims he was unaware at the time that his father had been a suspect in the case, although his sister Tamar was friends with Janice Knowlton, author of her own book, Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer and case documents make it clear that Steve's parents and many of their associates knew the senior Hodel was a suspect. After reviewing the information presented in Steve Hodel's book, Head Deputy D.A. Stephen Kay (the prosecutor in the Manson Family case) proclaimed the case solved, but others have noted that Kay, who has since retired, formed this conclusion by treating Steve Hodel's many disputed assertions as established fact. Detective Brian Carr, the LAPD officer in charge of the Black Dahlia case at the time of Steve Hodel's briefing, said in a televised interview that he was baffled by Kay's response, adding that if he ever took a case as weak as Steve Hodel's to a prosecutor he would be "laughed out of the office." In a September 2006 television interview with Cold Case Files
Cold Case Files
Cold Case Files is documentary television series on the cable channel A&E Network hosted by Bill Kurtis that documents the investigation of various long-unsolved murders through the use of modern forensic science , and criminal psychology, in addition to recent breakthroughs in the...
host Bill Kurtis
Bill Kurtis
Bill Kurtis is an American television journalist, producer, narrator, and news anchor. He is also the current host of A&E crime and news documentary shows, including Investigative Reports, American Justice, and Cold Case Files...
, Carr added, "I don't have the time to either prove or disprove Hodel's investigation. I am too busy working on active cases." Steve Hodel has also claimed that George Hodel was responsible for the murder of Jeanne French. Her murder was dubbed, "The Lipstick Murder" because the letters "B.D." were written on her body with lipstick. French's murder occurred February 10, 1947, a few weeks after the murder of Elizabeth Short.
Author James Ellroy
James Ellroy
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a so-called "telegraphic" prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black...
endorsed Steve Hodel's theory in the foreword to the paperback version of Hodel's book. , however, Ellroy has since refused to discuss theories in the case and says he has no idea who the killer was and will never again talk about the Black Dahlia publicly.
Steve Hodel maintains a website where he continues to update the case with additional discovered information.
George Knowlton
Little reliable information is available on George Knowlton, except that he lived in the Los Angeles area at the time of the Black Dahlia murder and died in an automobile accident in 1962. In the early 1990s, George Knowlton's daughter Janice began claiming that she had witnessed her father murdering Elizabeth Short, a claim she based largely on "recovered memoriesRecovered memory therapy
Recovered-memory therapy is a term coined by affiliates of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in the early 1990s, to refer what they described as a range of psychotherapy methods based on recalling memories of abuse that had previously been forgotten by the patient...
" that surfaced during therapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
. The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
said in 1991:
Los Angeles Police Detective John P. St. John, one of the investigators who had been assigned to the case, said he has talked to Knowlton and does not believe there is a connection between the Black Dahlia murder and her father. "We have a lot of people offering up their fathers and various relatives as the Black Dahlia killer," said St. John, better known as Jigsaw John. "The things that she is saying are not consistent with the facts of the case."
Nevertheless, the Westminster Police Department took her claims seriously enough to dig up the grounds around her childhood home, looking for evidence. They found nothing to tie George Knowlton to the crime. In 1995, Janice Knowlton created a sub-genre as the first person to publish a book claiming that his or her own father committed the Black Dahlia murder. The book was written with veteran crime writer Michael Newton. In the book Knowlton, a former professional singer and owner of a public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
company, alleged that her father had been having an affair with Elizabeth Short and that Short was staying in a makeshift bedroom in their garage, where she suffered a miscarriage
Miscarriage
Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving independently, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...
. Knowlton said she was later forced to accompany her father when he disposed of the body. Knowlton claimed that a former member of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department told her that her father was considered a suspect in the case by that agency, but this claim is unsupported by the public documents that have been released in the case. She claimed the same source told her that future LAPD chief and California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
politician Ed Davis
Edward M. Davis
Edward Michael Davis was the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from , and later a California State Senator from and an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1986...
and Los Angeles County District Attorney Buron Fitts were suspects in the murder as well. Janice Knowlton died of an overdose
Drug overdose
The term drug overdose describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced...
of prescription drug
Prescription drug
A prescription medication is a licensed medicine that is regulated by legislation to require a medical prescription before it can be obtained. The term is used to distinguish it from over-the-counter drugs which can be obtained without a prescription...
s in 2004, in what was deemed a suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by the Orange County, California
Orange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
, coroner
Coroner
A coroner is a government official who* Investigates human deaths* Determines cause of death* Issues death certificates* Maintains death records* Responds to deaths in mass disasters* Identifies unknown dead* Other functions depending on local laws...
's office.
In a side note to her accusations against her father, Janice Knowlton, who was a frequent contributor as to various online forums where the Black Dahlia case was discussed, posted an article to a Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
group in August 1998, in which she names Dr. George Hodel (see above) as a suspect in the case. Knowlton's sister has since stated on amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
's web page for her sister's book, Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer, that after publication of Knowlton's book, Tamar Hodel, daughter of George Hodel and sister of Steve Hodel, contacted Knowlton and the two women remained "email pals for several years."
Knowlton also made claims prefiguring those of Black Dahlia Files author Donald Wolfe. In 1999, she claimed in various public forums that Norman Chandler participated in a cover-up of the murder. Knowlton claimed that on Halloween 1946 she was sold at the age of nine as a child prostitute to a Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
Satanic
Satanism
Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
sex cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
. She frequently alleged that she was sold as a child prostitute to a long list of dead movie stars and other notables, including Norman Chandler
Norman Chandler
Norman Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1945 to 1960, and largely responsible for the success of the newspaper.-Education:...
, Gene Autry
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...
(whose name she continually misspelled as Autrey), Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed was born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a Jewish American lyricist and a Hollywood film producer.- Biography :Freed began his career as a song-plugger and pianist in Chicago...
, and Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
. Knowlton became so abusive in her Usenet posts that Pacbell canceled her account in 1999.
Robert M. "Red" Manley
The last person seen with Elizabeth Short before her disappearance, Manley was the LAPD's top suspect in the first few days after the killing. After two polygraphPolygraph
A polygraph measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions...
tests and a sworn alibi, Manley was set free. He also identified Short's handbag purse and one of her shoes after they were discovered in a trashcan on January 25, 1947, several miles from the murder scene. Manley, who had been discharged from the army due to mental disability, subsequently suffered a series of nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
s and claimed to be hearing voices
Auditory hallucination
An auditory hallucination, or paracusia, is a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds without auditory stimulus. A common form involves hearing one or more talking voices...
. As a result, he was committed to Patton State Hospital by his wife in 1954. He died on January 9, 1986.
Patrick S. O'Reilly
According to Los Angeles district attorney files, Dr. Patrick S. O’Reilly was a medical doctor who knew Short through nightclub owner Mark Hansen. According to the files, at the time of the murder O’Reilly was a good friend of Hansen and frequented Hansen's nightclub. Files also state that O'Reilly "attended sex parties at Malibu" with Hansen. O'Reilly had a history of sexually motivated violent crime. He had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for "taking his secretary to a motel and sadistically beating her almost to death apparently for no other reason than to satisfy his sexual desires without intercourse," the files state. Further, the files indicate that O'Reilly's right pectoralPectoralis major muscle
The pectoralis major is a thick, fan-shaped muscle, situated at the chest of the body. It makes up the bulk of the chest muscles in the male and lies under the breast in the female...
had been surgically removed, which investigators found similar to the mutilation of Short’s body. The files indicate that O'Reilly had once been married to the daughter of an LAPD captain.
Jack Anderson Wilson (a.k.a. Arnold Smith)
Wilson was a life-long petty criminal and alcoholic who was interviewed by author John Gilmore while Gilmore was researching his book Severed. After Wilson's death, Gilmore named Wilson as a suspect owing to his alleged acquaintance with Short. Prior to Wilson's death, however, Gilmore made an entirely different claim to the Los Angeles Herald-ExaminerLos Angeles Herald-Examiner
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner was a major Los Angeles daily newspaper, published Monday through Friday in the afternoon, and in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays. It was part of the Hearst syndicate. The afternoon Herald-Express and the morning Examiner, both of which had been publishing in...
in a story appearing January 17, 1982. While Severed says that homicide Detective John St. John was about to "close in" on Wilson based on the material Gilmore provided, St. John told the Herald-Examiner in the same article that he was busy with other killings and would review Gilmore's claims when he got time. As reliable sources of information about the case, such as the FBI files and portions of the Los Angeles district attorney files, have become publicly available, statements about Short and the murder attributed to Wilson in Severed and supposedly tying him to the crime have not been borne out as accurate. Severed also claims Wilson was involved in the murder of Georgette Bauerdorf
Georgette Bauerdorf
Georgette Elise Bauerdorf was a twenty-year-old oil heiress who was strangled in her home at the El Palacio Apartments on 8493 Fountain Avenue, West Hollywood, California. She was educated in a convent on Long Island, New York....
. Severed, and many other sources based on Severed, erroneously claim that Short and Bauerdorf knew each other in Los Angeles, supposedly because they were both hostesses at the same nightclub. In reality, by the time Short arrived in Los Angeles in 1946, Bauerdorf had been dead for two years and the nightclub had been closed for a year. Wilson was never a suspect until Gilmore brought him to the attention of authorities.
Wilson figures in Donald Wolfe's book The Mob, The Mogul, And The Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles. Wolfe hypothesizes that Wilson was present at Short's murder and claims a connection between Wilson and gangster Bugsy Siegel
Bugsy Siegel
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was an American gangster who was involved with the Genovese crime family...
through some small-time gangsters Wilson supposedly associated with. He was also part of the military.
Female suspects
Although the vast majority of suspects in the case were male, authorities did not rule out the possibility of a female killer. One theory held that, because Short had checked her baggage, including her clothing and cosmetics, a week before she died, she must have been staying with another woman (who presumably would have loaned Short the essentials) during the intervening time. Another theory was that the assailant bisected Short's body because he or she was not strong enough to move it in one piece. One of the first people to confess to the murder was a WACWomen's Army Corps
The Women's Army Corps was the women's branch of the US Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on 15 May 1942 by Public Law 554, and converted to full status as the WAC in 1943...
sergeant stationed in San Diego. Authorities took the confession seriously enough to investigate and found it groundless. Another suspect is referred to simply as "Queer Woman Surgeon" in the Los Angeles district attorney's files on the case. Newspaper stories at the time implied that Short was a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
or bisexual, but the district attorney files state bluntly that Short "had no use for queers."
Woody Guthrie
The folk singerFolk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
was one of the many suspects in the murder, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's files and Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie written by Ed Cray and published in 2004 by W.W. Norton. According to Cray, Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
drew police attention because of some sexually explicit letters and tabloid clippings he sent to a Northern California
Northern California
Northern California is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The San Francisco Bay Area , and Sacramento as well as its metropolitan area are the main population centers...
woman with whom he was smitten. The mailings disturbed their recipient so much that she showed them to her sister in Los Angeles, who contacted the police. Guthrie was quickly cleared of involvement in the murder, but various authorities attempted to prosecute him, with minor success, on charges related to sending prohibited materials through the mail.
Orson Welles
In her 1999 book, Mary Pacios, a former neighbor of the Short family in Medford, MassachusettsMedford, Massachusetts
Medford is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States, on the Mystic River, five miles northwest of downtown Boston. In the 2010 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 56,173...
, suggested filmmaker Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
as a suspect. Pacios bases this theory on such factors as Welles's volatile temperament and his creation of mannequins three months before Short's death that supposedly featured lacerations similar to those inflicted on Short. The mannequins were used in the "house of mirrors
House of mirrors
A house of mirrors or hall of mirrors is a traditional attraction at funfairs and amusement parks. The basic concept behind a house of mirrors is to be a maze-like puzzle. In addition to the maze, participants are also given mirrors as obstacles, and glass panes to parts of the maze they cannot...
" set for The Lady From Shanghai
The Lady from Shanghai
The Lady from Shanghai is a 1947 film noir directed by Orson Welles and starring Welles, his estranged wife Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane. It is based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King.-Plot:...
, a film Welles was making with his ex-wife Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth was an American film actress and dancer who attained fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars...
around the time of the murder. The scenes containing the set were deleted from the film by Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn was the American president and production director of Columbia Pictures.-Career:Cohn was born to a working-class German-Jewish family in New York City. In later years, he appears to have disparaged his heritage...
. In one of Short's last letters home, her older sister Virginia claimed she had written that a movie director was going to give her a screen test.
Pacios also cites Welles's familiarity with the site where the body was found and the magic act
Magic (illusion)
Magic is a performing art that entertains audiences by staging tricks or creating illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats using natural means...
he performed to entertain soldiers during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. She believes that the bisection of the body was part of the killer's signature and an acting out of the perpetrator's obsession. Welles applied for his passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
on January 24, 1947, the same day the killer mailed a packet to Los Angeles newspapers. Welles left the country for an extended stay in Europe 10 months after the murder without completing the editing of Macbeth
Macbeth (1948 film)
Macbeth is a 1948 American film adaptation by Orson Welles of William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth.-Pre-production:In 1947, Orson Welles began promoting the notion of bringing a Shakespeare drama to the motion picture screen. He initially attempted to pique investors’ interest in an adaptation of...
, the film he was both directing and starring in. Despite persistent attempts by Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, operating from 1934 through 1959, and was best known for specializing in westerns, movie serials and B films emphasizing mystery and action....
to get him to return to complete the film, he refused. According to Pacios, witnesses she had interviewed state that Welles and the victim both frequented Brittingham's restaurant in Los Angeles during the same time period and waitresses believed Short was going out with someone at Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
. Welles was never a suspect in the investigation. Pacios now maintains BlackDahlia.info, a website containing a great deal of information and official documents about the Black Dahlia case, but only a short section on Welles' supposed involvement.