Episode 647: A Deeper Dive into the Murder of Elizabeth Short (Part 1)

Hey weirdos, it's Ash. Before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about the spooky perks of Wondery Plus.
It's like having a skeleton key that unlocks ad-free listening and early access to new episodes. So don't wait, try Wondery Plus today.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
Let Audible expand your life by listening.

Explore over 1 million audiobooks and exclusive Audible. Network Podcast.
finance, investing, and more. Maybe you want to kick a bad habit or start a good one.
Speaking

of, I'm actually listening to The Secret on Audible. I love that title so much.
And 10 out of 10 recommend. The soundscaping is pristine.
Get advice and insight from leading professionals and experts on health, relationship, career, finance, investing, and more. There's so much opportunity to learn and more to imagine when you listen.
Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash morbid. Hey, weirdos, it's Elena.
And Ash. And if you can't get enough of the macabre mysteries, creepy chronicles, and true crime stories that we talk about here, you should check out Crime Junkie.
Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and her best friend Britt. Whether they're covering a case from the headlines, investigating a cold case with original reporting,

or deep diving into a twisty, twisty unsolved mystery,

Crime Junkie covers it all.

I love their saying, be weird, be rude, stay alive.

New episodes are out every Monday.

Listen to Crime Junkie now wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.

I'm Ash.

And this is Morbid. Rawr! Rawr! I just felt a little unhinged.
I mean, what else is new? I was gonna say, wow, weird. I just got Subway.
She did. It was a break from the norm.
I haven't had Subway in like 10 years at least. I know.
I haven't had Subway in a long time. Yeah, like possibly 15 years.
It wasn't even a choice. It just happened.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just really wanted a tuna fish sandwich real bad. Yeah, and it's real tuna apparently.
It is. Well, Elena tried to tell me that it wasn't she was like you know it's not real tuna and i was like oh my god and then i googled it and it turns out there was a lawsuit back in the day yeah people was trying to say it's not real tuna and it is yeah i became the internet for a second i was like let me just spout something that's complete bullshit with nothing to back it up she She said that she was just testing me to do my own research.
I was like I wanted you to check. So yeah I did my own research and it turns out survey says real tuna.
It was good. It slapped.
I'm glad it slapped for you. That was my lunch.
I like that for you. Thanks.
I had some cottage cheese with garlic and some sun-dried tomato and basil wheat thins. You have to say wheat thins.
Wheat thins. It was delicious.
That wasn't like my lunch. That was just a snack.
Like a pre-lunch. Yeah, pre-lunch appetizer.
We have an exciting thing happening today that we can't tell you yet. I know, and my tummy's all jumbly for it.
So she didn't eat lunch. I said, are you going to eat something, bitch? And she said, I can't.
I'm too excited. But excited but don't worry you will find out what this thing is and you will find out fairly soon actually yeah so yeah hang tight there's a couple exciting i know we're being those annoying people who are like we know something and you can't but you will sometimes it's fun i promise you oh i thought you were gonna continue that sentence i thought you were like i promise you no i just meant like i promise you you'll find like period yeah you're funny period period uh so we're going to be covering a case today that you might be like wait a second did i see this before you did you did uh but i want to cover it better we've grown um we covered it a long long long long time ago it's's no longer on there.
This is one of the first ones. Yeah, this is one of the first ones.
So, you know, it's a case that deserves another look and a deeper dive. A Dave touch.
A little Dave touch to it. So we decided to revisit it.
And it's also, it happened in January, which we didn't even mean to do. i don't even know if i knew that we're fresh out of january right now check it um we are going to be covering the black dahlia murder the murder of elizabeth short so this case has so many layers to it this is going to be a two-parter uh it must be it has to be it must it must be um i'm getting into my transatlantic

accent because we're going to hollywood baby hollywood hollywood we're going to hollywood and we're not in real life um i'm staying firmly planted over here uh but yeah this is a crazy case. It is the first case I can truly remember becoming unhinged obsessed with.
I remember that. It was this and like Jack the Ripper that I really just could not stop.
This one in particular, because I remember seeing, I believe it was one of those like E! True Hollywood stories or one of those like mysteries and scandals with A.J. Benza.
They used to do the countdowns. Yeah, exactly.
And I remember it was one of those like e true hollywood stories or one of those like mysteries and scandals with aj benza they used to do the countdowns yeah exactly and i remember it was one of those um i loved those i loved aj benza i don't know what he's up to now if he if he's good or bad right now i'm i'm not up on it and i bet he's fine i hope i'm gonna google it really because like i have fond memories of that show and him uh what's what if i just googled what's aj benza doing what's aj benza up to um his real name's alfred that's crazy good for him good for alfred he's just like doing poker okay so is he just a poker podcast is he kind of just like quietly existing podcast yeah it's good good for him. Sounds like he's chilling.
Okay. Oh, bitch, he plays for...
He plays? No, he plays harmonica. Wow, look at him.
That's what he's doing. All right, he's like blues traveler.
Is this the AJ Benza? Am I correct? What if this is just like a random vibe? I feel like that's AJ Benza. Yeah, I think so.
He has that vibe. AJ Benza, what are you doing? What are you up to? I just, when I mentioned him, I was like, you know, you always got to be careful to be like, oh, fuck.
These days. Because you don't want the only thing for anyone to hear out of this is A.J.
Benzo. He's a bad guy.
And you're right. It was mysteries and scandals.
Mysteries and scandals. I remember it was like, he was the host.
And I remember him standing on a very rain sodden sidewalk. Yes.
It was dark. There was lots of fog around him at all times.
And he would walk out and start telling you the story. And I can't.
Oh my God. Right? Bro, I can.
Can't you see it? No, not only can I see that, I can see the point of view, like watching the TV from your bed. Oh my God That's what in the purple walls.
Yeah. Oh my God.
See, it has a special place in my heart. Core memories.
Core memories. And I remember seeing the Black Dahlia case and I remember them showing some version.
I don't know if my mind is like twisting. No, it's not because I remember it too.
Some version, maybe it was a sketch or something of her autopsy photo. Yeah, no, I remember that.
Because I remember seeing the Glasgow smile. I remember seeing that vividly.
And I remember that being the point when I said, what? Like I was like, what, somebody did that to someone else? I feel like they show not like obviously like an overhead shot, but they show part of the crime scene. The, it's like from the classic photo where you can, it looks, you know, the crime scene looks like there is a mannequin laying in the grass.
And of course, we're going to get into the specifics of this because it was not a bloody crime scene. She was drained of blood.
In part two, we will get into all the theories. We're going to talk about who we think did it.
We're going to talk about, you know, a lot of the people that they were going after for suspects. So don't worry, we'll get more into that.
And I think in part two, too, we'll kind of go through even more of some of the nuances of this stuff. But right now, we're going to tell you about Elizabeth Short.
I'm going to tell you about the crime scene. I'm going to tell you about how she was found.
And we'll get a little bit into some of the suspects. All right.
Let's do it. So strap in.
AJ Benza, I hope you're listening. Oh, my God.
Hi, AJ. Oh, my God.
Hi, AJ. I don't think he has a poker podcast, by the way.
I said that wrong. It's a poker show.
Oh, okay. Good for him, man.
Yeah, just before anybody corrects me. Yeah, you don't want to get it.
I read wrong, okay? Yeah. I'm wrong.
It was live reading. Yeah.'s a you know we're live googling right now we're taking us back to a cool and very overcast day january 15th 1947 all right this is when betty bersinger and her three-year-old daughter ann left the house for a nice little morning walk just a stroll yeah just a stroll um they so the leimert park area of los angeles which is just five miles south of hollywood was a very newly developed and planned community and there were still a lot of vacant lots in it um they were along norton avenue and people would use these vacant lots a lot of the time because people are always going to people oh yeah to dump garbage other stuff you know like be be the dumb part of people yeah uh so when betty caught sight of a pale white thing in the tall grass in the empty lot she thought oh someone left a broken taylor's mannequin yeah in the lot rather than just getting rid of it properly you know it was just one of those things that she's she kind of walked by and was like, like, can people stop peopling? Yeah, she was like, oh my God, put your trash in the garbage.
Exactly. But then Betty got closer to the object, which was just a few inches from the edge of the sidewalk.
If you have ever seen the crime scene photos or anything like that, or been to that area, you know that she was right up out in the open. To think that she was with her three-year-old daughter.
Yeah. Worst nightmare.
Worst nightmare. Worst shakes me to my core.
Yeah. And, I mean, Elizabeth's body was right on the grass next to the sidewalk.
I mean, all of it was intentional. And she immediately realized she was not looking at a mannequin at all, but a horrifically mutilated

body of a young woman who had been bisected at the waist. I think that's what initially

really drew me to this case, like made me just like morbidly fascinated and absolutely horrified

by this case was just the extent of the mutilation that was done to this woman. I could not conceive

of it. I still can't conceive of it.
It's brilliant. Even to this day, it stays as one of the most horrific cases of mutilation.
Oh, yeah. You can conjure.
Now, at the sight of this poor woman's absolutely mangled body, Betty immediately grabbed her daughter and ran for the nearest phone. And she called the university division of the LAPD and reported what she had seen.
Now, she was fully panicked, obviously, and absolutely horrified, going through complete shock. So she didn't like adequately describe what she found, like she wasn't able to convey it in a way that some, it would be a little understandable.
How would you? So the communications officer on the other end noted that it was a quote possible 390 which is a stuporous drunk down in the lot at 39th and Norton Avenue it's like dude why would she be that horrified if it was just a drunk person stumbling around that's the thing like I'm like I feel like you even if you note that as like I think this is what she said should be like, but she sounds really upset. So it could be.
Yeah, get there fast. There's other things going on here.
Now, whether because of confusion or poor communication, the officer also neglected to get the caller's name or phone number. So didn't know her name was Betty, didn't know how to contact her after that.
Oof. I don't really know why.
Maybe because they were thinking it was like a stuporous drunk situation maybe like first day on the job type vibes very first day on the job training and their their overseer was like in the bathroom a lot of this uh scene was manhandled in a very bad way which i think led to the reason why we don't have definitive things even today. That was the opposite of a bang-up job.
Yeah, not great at all. In fact, it was going to be a full 10 days before investigators were able to track Bursinger down through notices in the papers.
Like, they couldn't find her anywhere, so they could, they had no, all they had was that initial call, and then that was it. So they just came up upon it and were like, okay.
Jesus. Now, expecting to find someone sleeping off a night of drinking and a lot, the dispatcher sent a single patrol call to investigate the call.
And countless journalists and press photographers had heard the call go out over the police radios that they all kept in their cars. So they all kind of followed just to see if there was any story there.
Los Angeles Examiner reporter Will Fowler and his partner Felix Pagel were the first to arrive at the scene before the LAPD had arrived. Oh, shit.
So the journalists arrived before the police. And y'all know how that goes.
Yeah. That's never good.
They were shocked because Fowler said, there's something about a dead body you couldn't mistake. It's difficult to describe two parts of a body as being one.
However, both halves were facing upwards. Her arms were extended above her head.
Her translucent blue eyes were half opened. So I closed her eyelids.
Now that's really sweet. Don't touch a dead body.
Why the fuck did you touch a dead body yeah don't be the hero i'm sorry beautiful beautiful sentiment love that for you that you were trying to be respectful here's my thing to everybody don't fucking touch a dead body if you find it don't touch a dead body for a myriad of reasons don't get your fucking fingerprints on a dead body hello Hello? You don't disturb that. No.
Don't disturb the scene. You don't know anything about what's going on here.
You don't know if something was injected into her eyes. You don't know if something was put in.
Like, you don't know. Yeah.
So just. Sweet boy.
Don't touch. Sweet boy.
The sentiment. Love it.
He's an empath. Very respectful.
Very empathetic. I wanted to close her eyes.
Don't. Don't do that.
Yeah. Don't involve yourself.
Now, the patrol officers arrived a few moments later and quickly called the division to let them know, no, it was not a drunk sleeping off a night of drinking in a vacant lot, but a horribly mutilated dead woman. Thank you for fucking that up on the highest level you possibly could.
Well, that's the thing. I don't know how, like, I don't know the procedural for this, but I'm assuming you would probably send a different set of officers for those two things.
Yeah, I would think so. Like, you're not sending the homicide division to a sleeping drunk.
Yeah, exactly. Like, that's, like, it's, I'm, I'm just a little confused.
And again, I'm not, I've never been in this situation. how the person on the other end confused what she said so hard yeah and like you said with the amount of anxiety and panic in her voice i feel like you would question she's not going to be that upset about a drunk sleeping it's like i don't know i feel like there should have been a little maybe i don't know if she hung up quickly and maybe they couldn't get anything else i don't know but i'm like wow this really this game of telephone busted up right away yeah um the news of course brought more reporters and soon the the crime scene was absolutely overtaken by reporters photographers additional lapd chaos.
Just chaos. Of course.
And in order to keep as many people as they could out of the crime scene now, detectives told patrol officers and some of the reporters at this point, because they needed however many people they could, to make a human chain around the perimeter to keep people out. Dear God.
But by this point, the scene had been absolutely trampled by so many people coming and going and it would and honestly it remained open to the press long after investigators left as well so whatever evidence was maybe there totally tainted and again this is 1947 exactly so there's not a lot of evidence to begin with exactly most likely and it like after investigators left, that scene should have been cordoned off and somebody should have been stationed there.

And that way they can go back to the scene if they need to.

If something comes up, you go, wait, let's get back to that scene and take a look again.

Yeah.

And they didn't do any of that.

So people were just trampling right through it right after they left.

It's like, guys, what were you thinking?

I don't get it at all. Who doesn't love the good things in life? Even though I enjoy a little luxury, it doesn't mean I can always afford it.
Until I discovered Quince. Quince is my go-to for luxury essentials at affordable prices.
Quince offers a range of high-quality items at prices within reach, like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50, washable silk tops and dresses, organic cotton sweaters. I love the organic fisherman crew neck sweater.
I have like three of those. And that's not it.
They also have 14-karat gold jewelry. Ooh la la.
By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes.
I love that. I have the 100% organic cotton fisherman crew sweater.
I love Quince sweaters and they last really long. These are quality made sweaters that are super duper comfy.
Give yourself the luxury you deserve with Quince. Go to quince.com slash morbid for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.
That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash morbid to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash morbid.
Nobody's Fool is the stunning and twisty new thriller from number one New York Times best-selling author Harlan Coben, creator of the hit Netflix dramas Fool Me Once and Missing You. A shocking discovery forces disgraced former detective Sammy Kearse to investigate an impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment for the past 22 years and challenges everything he thought he knew.
Nobody's Fool is available in bookstores now. It was common for murder victims to be dumped in various locations like the lot where Elizabeth Short was found, especially around Los Angeles.
It was just, you know, just the area. But from the moment investigators arrived at the scene, it was clear that this was not their run of the mill.
No. This was for sure.
There was a lot here. It was definitely not the killer trying to get rid of this body body quickly no that is for sure like this was not like i just have to remove myself from this situation shock they had arranged elizabeth short's body in a very particular way and had chosen a location where she would 100 be discovered very quickly like very This is, and the way she was arranged, like the two halves of her body were placed close to one another with about 12 inches between them.
And the upper half was placed somewhat asymmetrically from the lower half, like a little bit to the side. And her arms were raised above her head, and both of them were bent.
Okay. At an angle, very much so like you were posing for a photograph.
Right. That makes sense.
She was also completely nude. Mm-hmm.
But it was very much like she was posing, like you would lay on a bed to pose for a photograph. Yeah.
Like you would see in a magazine at the time. Right.
Like a time right a spicy magazine risque you know uh so it was very clear that they were trying to pose her in a way that it would shock and in a way that they they were definitely trying to send a message either about who they believed she was or about something else outside of something in their pathology exactly the level of violence that the victim had been subjected to, I mean, it exceeded what most veteran law enforcement officers and on the LAPD had ever seen or would ever see. Which is really saying something.
Yes. Detective P.W.
Freestone told reporters at the scene, this is the most brutal example of a sex crime I have ever seen. She had been cleanly, and when I say cleanly, I mean cleanly bisected at the waist, which is shockingly cleanly.
Absolutely insane. Yes.
Whoever had done this, it felt like they had access to the type of tools required to do that in a surgical setting.

Yeah.

This is like, this is kind of like when I go back to like Jack the Ripper. Don't worry, I'll talk about the DNA soon.
Thank you for tagging me and everything. But this is kind of what I say with Jack the Ripper that I don't think, like it's it's hard to understand how difficult it is to cut parts of the human body cleanly.
Yeah. If you haven't tried to cut human body parts cleanly.
Can confidently say I've never tried. Yeah.
So it's like if you have not been in a profession where you have done that. Yeah.
Or been around that. It's a little hard to wrap your brain around.
It is. Absolutely.
Especially if you've only seen it in like tv and all that kind of stuff in movies so like with jack the ripper i was always saying i do believe this person has medical knowledge because to be able to do that stuff in the dark or in the light it would take a somebody who knows where these organs are yeah and then to do it in the dark it's like muscle memory Just feels like you have to know precisely where these things are. It's kind of the same thing here.
This isn't somebody who just happened to figure out how to cleanly bisect a body. They knew how to do it.
And they knew how to do it because they know where things are because they are medically trained. That's how I believe this situation is going here.
I think you're right. And there's also other parts of it that lead to that too which we'll get to there was also and this is my next point here there was a lack of blood at the scene um and it indicated obviously that this mutilation had occurred elsewhere and that she was likely killed elsewhere but her body had also been completely drained of blood that is one of the factors about this case that always has stayed with me.
Yeah. Completely drained of blood.
And it's just like, why? That's the thing. And I think it was.
The why there could take you down so many different pathways. I think it very much to me is another point in the column of this was a surgeon yeah i just to me it feels like somebody experimenting with things that they had knowledge of obviously but experimenting to a degree in just doing the most yeah almost like showing off their skills because it's like you have to have knowledge of like vessels and you know, the vascular system to know how to properly drain a body of blood.

You also have to know how to do it, where to do it.

You have to have the space to do it.

And, you know, certain people that are suspects in this case have really big houses with basements.

Do you know off the top of your head how many liters of blood?

Like, obviously, I'm sure it varies, but like an adult body would have i'm fairly certain it's five like a little over five perhaps it's like somewhere around that okay um i lost like a ton of blood when i had my twins i had to get like two transfusions i think i lost like two liters of blood so that's that's the only reason it's stuck in my head how many to think To think of a body completely drained of blood, because I saw you obviously in the hospital after you had gotten the transfusion, so all your blood was back. But you looked, I remember, I will never forget pulling a nurse aside and being like, is she like going to make it? Like, is she okay? I was like gray.
So I can't, you were, no, you were literally gray. Like I've never understood what people meant when they say somebody's gray.
That you're like there was. Until that moment.
But to see somebody completely. Yeah.
Drained of blood, like. And to think about the procedure and the process of that.
Yeah, I can't go that far. Because normally to do that, it means, I apologize for getting graphic here, but it's really all I can do.
Normally to do that, you're going to hang the person upside down to allow all the blood to drain out just gravity. You're not just going to sit them in a bathtub or anything like that and let, you really need some gravity to help you out here.
Yeah. To drain somebody completely.
Usually it's like hanging them up up over something would you assume that that would have happened after she was bisected i would assume yes right because then i would yeah because that's the easiest way to do it because you've got two halves which is awful that are less blood in each to drain at once kind of thing you know what i mean like it's less and again we're getting graphic here but here you are you you clicked on this damn it it's less messy yeah it's just and it's less um less of a distance for the blood to travel to drain out of the body right because you're cutting it's all right there the travel in half essentially so this would have to be somebody who has the capability of doing all of that right which is not your average which is not just your guy on the street who was mad that she didn't date him you know what i mean like which is what they were really like yeah going with for a while like i don't think any of these fucking dickwads that were just like being assholes to her are really capable of all this and again this wasn't a day and age where you could just like extensively look something up like that online i mean obviously there were textbooks and that kind of thing but even then I would assume the resources on something like bisecting somebody and draining somebody of blood would be pretty limited. I think it's pretty safe to say that this person already had the knowledge because they had possibly gone to school to get this knowledge.
And possibly, maybe not the bisecting, but I don't know. You almost assume that this person has done something like this before for it to come out that cleanly yeah you do feel it you get the sense that this is not the first go even if maybe on some kind of cadaver in the learning process i don't know if that's how that works yeah i mean like this person and i mean if they're again where this is speculation obviously if this is a surgeon who did this, then it's like they've performed clean cuts on the human body.
Like obviously that kind of cut is like a very specific kind of cut. But who knows? It's like it's similar to other things.
So amputations can be similar. All right.
Side tangent aside. Yeah.
The victim had also been beaten about the face and head. There was a ton of lacerations, especially on her face and head.
And the thing that I think a lot of people really remember about this case, including myself, is that her killer had cut her mouth from ear to

ear creating a glasgow smile a permanent really ghoulish looking grin on her face essentially one of the most disturbing aspects of this it's a very very disturbing thing to look at uh it's it's horrifying it that That's why this is such a ghoulish crime scene because there's so much shock to this crime scene. One, she's nude.
Two, she's bisected. She's been posed with her body in the right place, you know what I mean, placements, but away from other to like showcase that she's two halves of a whole and even again like but like a little to the side with her arms up like she's posing for a photo and then to see how horrifically she was beaten and cut and all kinds of things but also she's got this ghoulish smile on her face, the permanent smile that has been chopped into her face.
It's beyond, it's really beyond anything you've ever seen. There was also a ton of superficial cuts and scrapes, other parts of her body.
And there also appeared to be ligature marks on her neck, wrists, and ankles.

Now, this is kind of important and kind of something that you can take in many different ways.

Obviously, it could mean that she was bound when she was alive and was being restrained,

which I fully believe can be the case and probably was the case.

But this could also be one of those things where you say,

okay, is that where she was hung upside down to be drained of blood? would leave ligature marks too that would leave ligature marks somewhere i mean her neck was also had like ligature marks as well which to me says it was part of like a torture restraining yeah uh but but it also can have to do with being hung upside down as that's the case if that's how it went yeah it's too if you think too hard about all these things all at once and you start thinking about what was happening during all this it can like fuck you up like it's just like thinking about what she went through yeah and you nobody knows how long she was going through this that's one of the things that i think about the most yeah that it had to have been like hours and hours and hours, if not days. Yeah, it's like it feels like it was at least hours and hours for sure.
So police ended up fanning out, started combing the lot for any evidence they could get, but there was really little to be found. What they did collect, some of it was like a paper cement bag with what they thought was small drops of diluted blood on it.
Investigators theorized that these cement bags were what were used to carry both sections of her body to this area. There was also tire tracks visible on the sidewalk and a slightly bloody heel print of a man's shoe this is good evidence yeah but according to former detective steve hodell which becomes a very important member of this case and we just talked about him in the rodney alcala we did um according to him quote these two important pieces of evidence were not secured or photographed by the on-scene detectives which Which, why? There's no scenario where that makes sense.
There are tire tracks and a shoe print. Why would you not photograph that? And they were not photographed or secured.
No. Like, bizarre.
Those are important pieces of evidence. Mm-hmm.
Those could be the most important. Yeah.
Like, you can genuinely narrow down a suspect with that shit you can tell what kind of tire that is what kind of car comes from you could tell what that shoe is what kind of shoe that is how many have been sold in there you can tell all that shit yeah lots but we're just eh like LAPD yeah come on what are you doing But other than that, there was really nothing else of note at the scene and no means of identifying this body. So she ended up being labeled at first Jane Doe number one and transported to the coroner's office.
The next morning, an autopsy was conducted by Dr. Frederick Newbar, who was the chief autopsy surgeon for the county of Los Angeles.
Newbar listed the cause of death as, quote, hemorrhage and shock from a concussion of the brain and lacerations of her face. My God.
They believed that that was all inflicted while she was conscious, which means that Glasgow smile was inflicted while she was conscious and alive. And those were deep cuts.
Think about like... Oh, it tore open her whole face.
When you're looking from the side, it's like her jaw has been removed almost. That's horrific.
And it's hemorrhage and shock from that, which is one of the most horrific things I can imagine. She died in shock from bleeding out.
From having her face ripped open. Yeah.
There was an additional incision from just below the navel to just above the pubic area. And several smaller cuts and small bruises all over the body that were likely defensive wounds.
So she was fighting back for part of this. I'm sure.

There was also evidence suggesting

that Elizabeth had been sexually assaulted,

but samples taken during the autopsy came back negative for the presence of sperm. Got it.
Newbar estimated the time of death to be somewhere within a 24-hour window before the body was discovered, but he couldn't be more precise than that because, I mean, this body's drained of blood and has been mutilated in a way I can't even fathom. um

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll

I'll discovered, but he couldn't be more precise than that because, I mean, this body's drained of blood and has been mutilated in a way I can't even fathom. Of particular note, though, at least from Newbar's perspective, was how precise the bisection was, like we were talking about.
In fact, it looked like it was actually what's called a hemocorporectomy, which is, at this time in the 40s, a relatively new surgical procedure that came into use after World War II. And it involved removing everything below the waist from a surviving person.
As far as Newbar could tell, the procedure had been done after death on this victim, who we now know is Elizabeth Short. and the precision with which it had been done really suggested that the killer, or at least the person who performed the bisection post-mortem, because it could be two different people, had some experience with medicine and surgery.
Newbar also noted that the body appeared to have been thoroughly washed before it had been left in the lot. Which, that's always so creepy to me.

It says surgeon to me.

Yeah.

Because everything is clean.

You have a clean field.

He's not going to go through all of that to drain blood and to bisect in such a clean way

and then leave it messy. Yeah.
It's just not something that I see happening. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.
Not available in all states. Hey, weirdos.
I'm Mike Corey. And like you, I'm drawn to true crime, creepy history,

and all things spooky.

If you particularly enjoyed Ash and Elena's coverage of the USS Indianapolis, where 900

sailors battled rough seas, sharks, dehydration, and madness in the open ocean, you need to check

out my podcast, Against the Odds. We dive deep into this survival story across four full episodes,

revealing details you haven't heard yet. Each week on Against the Odds, we put you in the shoes of real survivors, from the Thai cave rescue to Somali pirate hostages to the Donner Party.
These aren't just headlines. They're incredible stories of human endurance.
Follow Against the Odds on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to both Against the Odds and Morbid early and ad-free.
Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. This hemocorporectomy that he's talking about would be performed like it's like a radical surgery.
Like it is like last resort, like all you have left kind of thing. And what you have to do is you have to cut between two specific lumbar vertebrae that makes it so that you don't have to cut bone.
Okay. And they have to like reroute the spinal cord essentially.
And they have to reroute because you're removing the genitalia, you're removing any of, you know, the rectum, all that stuff. So you're going to have to reroute everything.
Many different things. Many different things for a living person.
Right. It's a very intense procedure, a very complicated procedure.
And again, this person cut in the same spot that you cut for this specific procedure so that they didn't have to cut through a bone. Which is strange.
And you, I'm telling you, you open up a body and you take a look at that spinal cord. It is not as simplistic as you think it's going to be to just chop through between a vertebrae you know what i mean so it's got to be someone who knows what they're doing and has seen this before they didn't just open her up for the first time and just figure it all out right it's just not something they they've opened people up before and they've seen what's going on yeah it's i i will die no doubt about it um knowing the cause and estimated time of death was pretty important, but for investigators, they really wanted to know who this victim was.
Like, they were like, this is the most important. During the autopsy, fingerprints were taken and passed along to the main offices of the FBI.
And in their coverage of the story the day after Short's body was discovered, the Los Angeles Examiner included a lengthy description of who the girl was. They were hoping someone would see this description of her, the physical description, and come forward.
Among other things, though, the examiner described her as between 15 and 16 years old. Nope.
With enameled pink toenails and a three and a half inch operational scar on the right side of her back. She was also described as quote rather well developed with small bones and trim legs.
Okay. I'm like you want to.
It's a weird way to describe any other descriptors in there. I'm like I don't know if I would be able to be like well my cousin does have trim legs.
It's a weird way to describe someone you think is 15 or 16 years old. Trim legs.
It's very 40s. Okay.
Very 40s. Truly.
Fortunately for investigators, once the identification division of the Washington, D.C. office of the FBI got the photos of her fingerprints, they found a match within an hour.
They identified Elizabeth Short from their card file of more than 104 million possible matches. Yeah.
Short's fingerprints were on file because she had filled out an application for a clerk position at Camp Cook in 1943. And there was a second set of her prints on file from that same year after she was arrested on charges of, quote, violating juvenile court laws.
So now this dead young woman that they thought was 15 or 16 years old, they found out was 22-year-old Elizabeth Short. 22.
22. That is so young.
Yeah. I don't think it's ever hit me how young she was.
For some reason, I always thought she was still a young person, obviously, but a little bit older. Yeah.
little bit older 22 yeah i think i'm also looking at it from a perspective of now being later in my 20s and now you're older than her so now it's like whoa you've barely yeah become an adult yet and she has lived yeah a lot yeah she had a tough life tough stuff going on yeah yeah she was struggling now elizabeth short was born july 29th 1924 in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston, kid. Hyde Park.
Hyde Park, you say. That's where the salon that I used to work at had its first ever location.
There you go. She's from our neck of the woods, kid.
She's a Boston gal. She was born to Cleo Alvin and Phoebe Short and raised in Medford.
Medford? Medford, I said. Wait, I'm going to Medford tonight.
Holy shit. Get out of here.
Medford. Medford is a working class suburb about 10 miles outside of the city.
It's true. It's true.
We can confirm. I was just going to say can confirm.
At the time of Elizabeth's birth, Cleo worked in construction, building miniature golf courses and, you know, other kind of attractions like that. I didn't know mini golf was a thing way back then.
Mini golf has been around since the dawn of time. We love to miniaturize things.
We do. We do.
And I respect that. I also respect that.
And when the stock market crashed in 1929, he became unfortunately unemployed and lost his savings. Oh, God.
It was really bad for a lot of people. A year later in 1930, Charlestown police found Alvin's car abandoned on a bridge and he was believed to have taken his own life by drowning in the Chiles River.
But a short time later, it was discovered that cleo had faked his own death and abandoned his family and moved to california hate that not great hate that not great that's fucking awful yeah that's real fucking awful i feel like i. Yeah.
There's so many parts of this case that you remember,

and then there's so many little details that you're like,

oh my God, do I even remember that?

And she was only, Elizabeth was only about six years old when this happened.

Only six, but old enough that you realize it.

Oh, that's terrible.

So this is a big traumatic event.

Fuck you, Cleo Alvin.

With Cleo gone, Phoebe Short became the sole provider for Elizabeth and her four sisters. So, and she was working as a bookkeeper.
With only one income, the family struggled, but did manage to survive the depression without like an insane amount of hardship, at least. Like she kept them afloat.
During her childhood, Elizabeth began experiencing chronic bronchitis and severe asthma, which ultimately required lung surgery at age 15. Oh, wow.
I don't know if you remember, there was a scar mentioned by Nubar in the autopsy that was from that surgery on her lungs. Got it.
Following her surgery, the doctor suggested Elizabeth would be better off in warmer, drier climates. So she began spending her winter breaks in Miami with family friends.
This was kind of like that TB thing, like the tuberculosis thing, where they thought, like, we just stick you out, you know, on a balcony and you'll get fresh air, like that kind of thing. It is better for your lungs.
After three years of wintering in Miami, Elizabeth dropped out of Medford High School during her sophomore year and moved to Miami Beach, and she quickly found work as a waitress. On her own for the first time, she struck up a relationship with Major Matt Gordon Jr., who was an Air Force pilot stationed at a nearby base.
A short time later, in January of 1943, Gordon was shipped overseas, and Elizabeth decided to relocate to California, where she wanted to live with her father in Vallejo. Oh, so they reconnected.
They reconnected. It was during this period that Elizabeth worked as a clerk at Camp Cook.
That's where the fingerprints came from. But her relationship with her father quickly became very strained.
And within a few weeks, she decided to move to Santa Barbara. Oh, wow.
Just weeks. Yeah.
Her father told a reporter after Elizabeth's death, I made her leave. I didn't want anything to do with her or any of the rest of the family again.
Huh. You're an asshole.
That's wild to say. That's just like you're a wild asshole.
That's wild to say ever. That's wild to say after your daughter's death.
And that's wild to say after your daughter's gruesome death.

Yeah, murder.

Murder, exactly.

What the fuck?

Can you imagine?

No.

I didn't want anything to do with my child again or any of the rest of my family. My other four daughters who are living on the other coast.

That's so fucked. You should have thought about that before you had a family.

That's like wild douche behavior.

Truly.

It was there in Santa Barbara that she was arrested for violating juvenile court laws when she was picked up for underage drinking at a santa barbara nightclub during her hearing the judge agreed to sentence to sentence her with probation provided that elizabeth accept a train ticket and return home to medford massachusetts and she agreed okay so she agreed to return to her mother in Massachusetts, but instead she chose to go to Florida. Once she was settled in Florida, she resumed her correspondence with Matt Gordon, the Air Force pilot.
And in 1945, Gordon supposedly proposed they marry when he returned home from active duty. And despite only having met him in person a few times, Elizabeth accepted.
It was nerve. Unfortunately, this enthusiasm was going to be short-lived because on August 10th, 1945, his plane was shot down and he was killed in the crash.
That's so sad. Which is like another traumatic event in her life.
Yeah, and she's 20. Yeah.
Now, following Gordon's death, Elizabeth found work as a waitress again, but within a few months, she decided she didn't want to stay in Florida, and she returned home to Medford, Massachusetts. There, she found work in a local movie theater, and once she was back home, she really didn't feel, like, settled or satisfied like she thought she was going to feel.
She thought she was going to feel some kind of comfort. She really didn she didn't love it here it's a hard time to to figure out what you're doing yeah early 20s i think and figure out where you want to be yeah and she was moving back when we were just heading into winter over here not the not the best time to move back here no um but yeah she wasn't feeling that great she and she knew she didn't feel really satisfied in Florida either.
She was like, so neither one of these are working for me. So on April 17th, 1946, she packed up her few belongings and returned to California.
This time she wanted to settle in Hollywood. By most accounts, it seemed like she struggled to find her footing in California for a while.
According to Steve Hodel, Elizabeth was known to have lived as a transient at various boarding houses with a variety of roommates. She stayed at a hotel in Long Beach for several weeks during the summer months and then returned to Hollywood.
There, once she got into Hollywood, she kind of bounced around a few times, staying at different places, and eventually she found an apartment where she lived with seven other young women, which, wow. I give you credit.
though. Ma lived with like, didn't she live with like four other girls when she was in Boston? Yeah.
Yeah. It's true.
I think that was just like the easiest way to make it happen. Yeah.
I mean, we lived with a bunch of our friends in Quincy, so I can't really. Yeah, it's kind of, I feel like that's like the time that you do it.
Yeah, we were living with a lot of people, so might as well. well.
Before you have kids before all that stuff. Now, during this time, Elizabeth was barely getting by on her wages from her job as a waitress at the Florentine Gardens nightclub.
In a few weeks before her death, she had actually struggled to afford rent. She was really like at her last few pennies.
So sad to think that like in her last day, she was struggling as much as she was. Yeah.
Her friend Anne Toss told detectives two or three weeks before Christmas she said she was going to Berkeley but instead of going to Berkeley she went to San Diego and she said just before Christmas day she sent me a wire saying she was low on funds and asking me to send her 20 bucks. She had been gone about three weeks when I received another wire saying she was coming back and stating that a letter would follow.
This is the last I heard of her. The letter never came.
Oh. Yeah.
Anne Toth may have never heard from her friend again, but Elizabeth did return to Los Angeles on January 9th. That evening, she was seen leaving the Olive Street entrance of the Biltmore Hotel.
And this would be the last time anyone but her killer would

see Elizabeth Short alive. Now, by 1947, people in Los Angeles had become pretty accustomed to seeing reports of violence in the press.
But the story of Elizabeth Short's murder was truly unlike anything anybody had ever seen. The news of the discovery hit the papers that very afternoon and set off a media frenzy.

And it's really due to what police historian Glyn Martin called, quote, the brutal, misogynistic and ritual nature that the murder contained. I mean, yeah.
Now, again, it's true. She hadn't just been murdered.
She'd been mangled.

She had been mutilated.

I mean, she had been posed.

She had been humiliated by being left naked and exposed like that um there was clear evidence of what a los angeles times reporter called quote an orgy of torture yeah that is honestly as as kind of like crass as that sounds it is exactly what it seems to have happened here yeah no but again probably But again, pretty grass. Probably a better way to say it.
Pretty grass. Adding to the sensationalism, the members of the press were quick to emphasize the sexual undertones of the crime, labeling the killer as, quote, a sex maniac and a sex fiend.
Which I guess you can somewhat understand because she was found. Why are you focusing on only that? Yeah, you shouldn't be focusing on only that, but I can understand why they were saying he, he might've been, you know, I can understand that they're saying there's a very big sexual aspect of this crime, a very sadistic sexual aspect of this crime.
But not hyper focusing on it. But like my friends, she was also drained of blood, bisected and given, um, a Glasgow smile.
Glasgow smile. Like, I don't think we should focus on one aspect of this.
Yeah, we should focus on all of it. But as was common at the time, journalists and law enforcement were kind of like intertwined in each other's work.
And the press would really play, just like the last couple of cases we've covered, play a big role in this case, particularly when it came to shaping how the public viewed the victim and viewing the potential killer. Once the victim was identified as Elizabeth Short, the story really picked up some more steam, thanks in part to the, you know, she was beautiful and she was very mysterious.
She was. So it kind of was it lent itself very well to the time and people wanting to start salacious rumors and like dig into people's pasts and yeah oh i think she was dating all these men apparently she had she dated a lot of guys yeah yes i mean you're in your early 20s and you're living in los Angeles.
Of course you're dating around. She's beautiful.
She's mysterious.

She's, you know, trying to find her footing there.

Why the fuck not?

Who cares?

The story quickly became what Martin called, quote, a sad cliche, the ultimate warning tale.

Elizabeth Short had come to Hollywood to become an actress.

But like so many young women before her, she'd only found disappointment, struggle, and ultimately death. Hollywood is fucking cursed, man.
It is. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr.
Bollin, the host of Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries.
And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened. And cases so baffling, they stumped even the best doctors.
So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show.
Listen to Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Now, within days of the discovery, the press began referring to Short as the Black Dahlia.
It was a reference to Elizabeth's, you know, she apparently loved the flower, the dahlia, and she wore one in her hair often. And she also wore a lot of black clothing and she had jet black hair.
Right. So it's a very good nickname for sure.
Yeah. Because it's mysterious.
It's got some... Sticks with you.
It's got like, for the press, it's a really smart one that they picked because it's like we said, mysterious. it's mysterious.
It sticks with you. For the press, it's a really smart one that they picked because it's, like we said, mysterious.
It's easy to remember. And it's got this sexy kind of undertone to it.
So they were really going with what they were trying to wrap up here. Going to sell papers.
Exactly. It's also possible, though, that they were influenced by the popular noir film The Blue Dahlia, which was released the previous year.
I'm sure it was like a mix of them. Regardless of where the name came from, it definitely added to the sensationalism and mysterious tone of the case.
And like we said, that's the reason why it's part of the reason why it has so much notoriety today. Is that when it's easy to remember the name of the case, the Black Dahlia murder, it's easy to reference, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
And again, like you said, it's going to sell more papers, which means it's going to sell more books, which means it's going to be something people want to talk about. Yeah.
It's just a catchy name. It really is.
So like the crime scene itself, the canvas of the neighborhood offered really few clues to guide the investigation. One local man, Bob Meyer, told detectives he'd seen a late 1930s model Ford sedan

stop in front of the lot around 6.30 a.m. that day.

And he said it lingered near the area where the body was found before driving away.

But he couldn't recall any of the other details.

That's weird.

To me, that seems like somebody who's dropping off a body.

Yep.

Fortunately for detectives, the identification of the victim offered several new leads, because now we could start connecting people to her. So they started with her mother, Phoebe, and they talked to her.
Oh, poor Phoebe. I know.
Investigators set out to learn everything they could about Elizabeth with Phoebe, in the hope that something in her background would help lead them to her killer. Phoebe actually learned of her daughter's death when she received a call from a Los Angeles examiner, which was soon confirmed by LAPD detectives.
That's awful. So she found out in an awful way.
According to Phoebe, Elizabeth traveled to San Diego a few weeks before her death and had found work with the Naval Hospital there. She said she left Hollywood because of the movie strike, which made it difficult to get work as an extra.
Phoebe didn't know why her daughter had returned to Los Angeles on the night of her disappearance, and she really couldn't offer any insight. Now, given the sexual undertones of the murder, the investigation definitely turned to Elizabeth's romantic life.
According to her mother, Phoebe, Elizabeth's only serious relationship was with Matt Gordon, the Air Force pilot who she planned to marry. Other than Matt Gordon, Phoebe Short knew really no other serious relationships that Elizabeth had been in before her death.
Her mother didn't know about serious relationships, but her friends and roommates definitely were like, she definitely had some relationships, but not she's dating around yeah um according to los angeles times article filed shortly after her death she was known among her friends as quote a girl with a different boyfriend every night good for her good for her uh several roommates and others who knew her claimed she had a fondness for sailors and often visited the nightclubs where sailors soldiers were known to visit that was so of the time i so of the time i just say i fucking love that oh yeah i think it's great the aesthetic of that time that's the thing the aesthetic the aesthetic but not not what the vibe of what was happening but like the aesthetic of the time is for sure it's like a movie yeah it really is um and uh her former roommate linda roar said she was always going out and she loved to prowl the boulevard. Let's go, girl.
Let's go, girls. In their interviews with those closest to her, investigators learned of several men they believe could have played a role in her death.
Of the men Short had dated, investigators were very interested in one boyfriend who Elizabeth had confessed to friends she was, quote, deadly afraid of. Oh.
According to Elizabeth's former co-worker, Cheryl Mayland, there was a, quote, tall, sinister, elderly man who approached her at a bar where she works a few weeks earlier and asked about Miss Short's whereabouts. And Maylong thought it was possible that he could have been responsible for her death.
Oh, wow. Other roommates told detectives about a radio announcer with a British accent named Maurice, whom they had heard Elizabeth talk about a few weeks before her death, but they didn't know anything else about him.
And I was like, some of these guys, you're like, wow, I feel bad for you. I know.
They're just like, that guy that she talked about? I just went on a date with her. Yeah, he's like, ugh.
There were other mostly unnamed men who came up early in the investigation, including a man in Beverly Hills who had offered to pay Elizabeth's rent.

And another in San Bernardino who asked her to move in with him.

But those tips really went nowhere.

They weren't involved.

They were just trying to get with her. So, yeah.

And then we have a lead detective on the case telling reporters, she probably went too far this time and just sent some guy into a blind berserk rage. That's nice.
And he called her a tease. Oh, of course.
Yeah, it's her fault. What was she wearing? To which I ask that man.
So how many women have you chopped in half because they supposedly teased you? Jesus Christ, sir. You fucking psychopath.
Truly. Like, who says that? What are men? What kind of blind? Not all of them, but what are some men? What kind of blind, berserk rage makes you do that? Drain the blood from someone and perform a highly complex surgical procedure? What a dumb thing to say.
Like, he probably went into a blind, berserk rage and then went to medical school real quick and learned how to do that like that's the dumbest shit i've ever heard someone say that's not a blind rage my friend that's a shameful statement tortured that's a shameful statement for so many layers one oh okay it's her fault she's a tease and two that's just dumb yeah that's just a dumb statement don't be silly like that don't be fucking dumb yeah okay don't don't be a dumb bitch where were you what was on the rewatch or no on scream scream yeah you're in a place a dumb bitch i am something like i'm being a dumb bitch it feels like 2025 is just bringing out the dumb bitches we We were so hopeful. We were.

But you know, it's okay.

It's still great.

Yeah.

In some ways.

In like one.

One way.

One way, sure.

Yeah, or another.

Yeah, one way or another.

But yeah, go listen to Scream if you want to.

Hey.

You know?

Anyway.

But yeah, that was a dumb bitch thing to say.

Among the more promising leads, though, was a tip about another former boyfriend, Joseph Fickling, who she met in California in 1944. Like Matt Gordon, Fickling was a former Air Force pilot living in North Carolina.
And the two had been writing back and forth as recently as Elizabeth's time in San Diego. Oh, shit.
Very, very, like, recent to when she died. Yep.
Fickling told detectives, she told me not to write her anymore at San Diego and that she was in Chicago or just she was going to Chicago, excuse me. Oh.
In April 1947, Fickling started to suspect he was only one of Elizabeth's romantic interests. Well, listen.
And that her expression of love for him might have been disingenuous. He wrote in April to her, you say in your letter you want us to be good friends, but from your wire you seem you want more than that.
So she was just like playing the field apparently. She said, I don't know.
She said, I don't know. I'm like 20.
I don't know. I'm like 22 right now.
Now, based on the letters between them that investigators discovered among Elizabeth's belongings. Fickling's confusion and Elizabeth's ambivalence eventually led to the end of their relationship.
Yeah. He wrote in one letter, in your letter, you mentioned a ring from Matt.
You gave no further explanation. I really don't understand.
I wouldn't want to interfere. Okay.
Well, he seems respectful. He does.
Like, that's a pretty respectful thing to say. Like, hey, you just mentioned that another guy gave you an engagement ring.
So like, I don't want to interfere okay well he seems respectful he does like that's a pretty respectful thing to say like hey you just mentioned that another guy gave you an engagement ring so like i don't want to interfere in that i'm gonna i'm gonna bow out yeah the letters indicate that elizabeth had told fickling about her proposed marriage to matt gordon but failed to mention that gordon had died two years earlier okay that's that's an interesting play. It sounds like she didn't want a lot from this man romantically, and that was the best way to go about it, to let him down easy.
Yeah, it does kind of seem like that. You know? Yeah.
In an interview with Charlotte, North Carolina detectives, Fickling said he'd last heard from Elizabeth in a letter dated January 8, 1947, the night she left San Diego. Oh, wow.
And he hadn't heard from her since. And given that he was on the other side of the country when she was killed, he was quickly ruled out as a suspect.
But they just got like a little more insight into what was going on in her life, I guess. A few days into their investigation, detectives learned that when she returned from San Diego, Elizabeth had been traveling in the company of, quote, an unidentified red-haired man.
On January 20th, detectives picked up 25-year-old Robert Manley, a salesman the press described as, quote, slender, neatly dressed man with carrot-hued hair. Not carrot.
Not carrot-hued. Not carrot top over here.
And he was believed to have been with Elizabeth on the night she disappeared. Uh-oh.
Manly admitted to police that he had casually dated Elizabeth since first meeting a few weeks before Christmas, and that he had dropped her off at the Biltmore the night she disappeared. But he flatly denied having anything to do with her murder.
He told detectives, My wife and I had had some misunderstandings. I guess so.
I thought I'd make a little test to see if I were still in love with my wife and i had had some misunderstandings i guess so i thought i'd make a little test to see if i were still in love with my wife so he picked up elizabeth at a nightclub and they hit it off first of all babe that's not disrespectful to your wife yeah super disrespectful to elizabeth to be a part of a fucking test unknowingly and third of all fuck off yeah fuck you you know what your hair is carrot hued okay ginger all right okay no soul all right here's a job you have a soul whatever according to manly he picked elizabeth up at a pacific beach motel on january 8th and drove her back to los Angeles. But he had not connected Elizabeth with the stories in the papers, and thus, he did not come forward to the police.
I don't know about that, my friend. I don't know.
Sounds like you were doing another test to see if law enforcement would contact you. Well, investigators were also unconvinced by this.
Yeah. And they asked Manly to take a polygraph examination and he agreed okay but after the long drive from san diego and many hours of intense questioning by police he couldn't keep from falling asleep during the exam and it was postponed that's giving rude that's giving that's giving what that's giving sir how do you fall sleep under these circumstances adrenaline would be shooting me into the kuiper belt i mean who knows how long they were questioning damn but yeah if it wasn't for like at least 12 hours open your eyes well and the thing is here's the thing he was very forthcoming with information regardless of falling asleep during the polygraph he was very forthcoming when he was conscious when he was conscious he was forthcoming with information and he told police the last time he'd seen elizabeth he noticed several scratches on her upper arms huh and she attributed to them to an intensely jealous boyfriend and she described him as an italian with black hair who lived in san diego okay.
So we're like, who's that guy?

Yeah, who is him?

So although he appeared to be telling the truth, Manley's story was inconsistent with other statements gathered by police, particularly that of William Sullivan, a railway express clerk who claimed to have seen Elizabeth on January 14th.

According to Sullivan, quote, a woman resembling Short visited the office about noon on January 14th, accompanied by a red-haired man, and inquired about shipping a trunk and some suitcases to Ketchkin Hospital. When asked to whom the items were being shipped, the woman said to herself and gave the name Elizabeth Short.
Okay. The same couple was seen about an hour later by Jadel Gray, a waitress at a cafe in San Diego.
Gray described the man as, quote, very fair complexioned and said his hair was quite straight and he was slightly freckled. Okay.
Sounds like a ginger to me. Based on these witness identifications, Manley was beginning to look like a pretty strong suspect.
He sure was. But the following day, Sullivan admitted to detectives that he had been mistaken in his identification of Manley, and in fact did not believe it was the same person.
Sullivan changed his story when police told him that another young woman matching Short's description had come forward to say she had been at the express office with her red-haired boyfriend on January 14th. Oh, shit.
When he was shown a picture of the woman, he immediately recognized her as the person he'd seen that night. And remember, he said that she used her name.
Yeah. So he just lied.
Oh, what the hell? Like, what the fuck? And with Sullivan's identification now recanted, the mystery of the red-haired man proved to be a dead end, and Captain Jack Donahue ordered Robert Manley released from custody immediately. All right.
Now, only one week into the investigation, detectives who had been certain the key to finding Elizabeth's killer was in her love life had now begun to accept the boyfriend angle was probably a dead end. Yeah, it seems like it.
They were going to find him in there. And that is where we are where we are gonna end for part one you butthead because we have some real suspects coming in part two i know who they are and it's gonna get crazy the story just gets wilder as you go yeah this is a wild case yeah i i got a 99.9 opinion me Yeah.
So we will definitely talk about that in part two.

And yeah.

In the meantime,

we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird,

but not so weird that you lie to the police about your whereabouts or test

your fucking wife in any way.

Yeah.

Fuck that shit.

Don't test me.

And don't call the victim a tease.

Oh.

Oh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I the victim a tease. Oh, why I oughta.
Motherfucker. Why I oughta.
Thank you. I'm I'm I'm I'm If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
Are you captivated by the dark and mysterious world of true crime? Wondery Plus offers you the ultimate true crime experience with early access to new episodes, exclusive content, and a seamless ad-free listening journey. With Wondery Plus, you'll get access to hundreds of podcasts, including more than 50 true crime series like Dr.
Death, the shocking true story of a trusted surgeon who brought unimaginable pain and suffering to his patients. This was not an operation that was performed.
This was attempted murder. And there's Morbid, the hit podcast that's a lighthearted nightmare.
With Wondery Plus, you get access to exclusive bonus content, too, allowing you to dive deeper into the cases you love. Like in Suspect, where an ordinary Halloween party turned into a terrifying murder mystery that left its mark on the community.
This case is one of those roller coaster rides where it's like, no, he did it for sure. No, for sure he did it.
Each story is crafted to keep you enthralled, revealing the complexities and motivations behind every crime. Subscribe to Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today.
Unlock the door to a world of true crime like never before.

With Wondery Plus, the best true crime stories are always at your fingertips.