The Cases That Haunt Us (40 page)

Police found luggage that Short had checked at the bus terminal. Inside were photos, clothing, and stacks of letters to and from men for whom she felt romantic attachment. The authorities were inundated with calls from people who had known her, but her own father refused to get involved, saying he had not seen her since 1943. Her mother—who first learned of her daughter’s death from a reporter who’d managed to track her down faster than the police—made the trip to Los Angeles to claim her body. Then, after the inquest, Beth was buried in Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery. Police had hoped strange people might attend the memorial service and give them some leads, but none showed.

Not long afterward, a package was sent to the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner.
An accompanying note created from newspaper letters stated, “Here is Dahlia’s Belongings” and “Letter to Follow.” Enclosed were Short’s social security card, birth certificate, a telegram, photographs with various servicemen, business cards, the newspaper clipping about Matt Gordon’s death, and claim checks for the suitcases left at the bus station. There was also an address book with several pages torn out. A note to police near the end of January indicated the killer was going to turn himself in, but then another note arrived saying he had changed his mind and that the killing had been justified.

On January 26, a purse and black suede shoes were found at a garbage dump on East Twenty-fifth Street. Manley identified them as Short’s. This suggested the killer was traveling north and may have been returning to the murder site. But nothing came of the discovery.

Some of the police and press theories about the Black Dahlia’s killer mirrored the Jack the Ripper speculation. One faction believed that this was a first killing for the offender and that the dismemberment indicated medical knowledge and training.

Others thought they were dealing with a serial offender. In this vein, one suggested suspect was the “Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run,” who had killed, mutilated, and dismembered a dozen people in Cleveland between 1935 and 1938. He was believed to be a woman-hating homosexual sadist. The killings there had stopped after three years with no solution.

LAPD
homicide captain John Donahoe and some of his detectives theorized from the viciousness of the injuries and that Short used to hang out with women that the killer was female, reminiscent of the “Jill the Ripper” theory. Short bore scratches on her arms said to be inflicted by a jealous woman friend.

Various suspects were investigated, picked up, and questioned, but none of them panned out. Others, both men and women, confessed to the crime; many, if not most, of them displayed psychiatric problems.

The press quickly seized on the image of the beautiful young starlet so tragically and viciously murdered, and their coverage captured the public imagination. Like many other high-profile cases before and after it, Short’s killing sparked several copycat sex crimes in the area. Three days after Short’s body was found, Mary Tate was savagely attacked and then strangled with a silk stocking. A month later, Jeanne French was found mutilated, with obscenities written on her corpse in lipstick. Another woman was mutilated, then throughout the summer three more suffered gruesome deaths through beating and/or strangulation. All bore some features that seemed to link them to Short’s death—killed in one place then transported to another, several were barflies, some bodies were nude—and detectives worked hard to figure out if there were any direct connections.

As they investigated Short’s death, police discovered a sharp contrast between the image and the reality. The Black Dahlia lived mostly at or below poverty level in California, essentially homeless. Police uncovered many rumors about Beth Short, one of the most prominent being that she had an underdeveloped vagina. There were stories that though she didn’t have vaginal sex with her boyfriends, she performed oral sex in exchange for whatever she needed—shoes, clothing, a room for the night. Who she really was and what she really did or did not do is largely lost in myth.

The Black Dahlia case haunted the public because of its aura of seedy glamour and the easy irony of how quickly the American dream can turn into the American nightmare, but what I see here is so much more pathetic than that. Elizabeth Short longed for something that always eluded her. She had two goals: to become a movie star and to marry a serviceman; fame and fortune on the one hand and domestic stability and normalcy on the other. At that time, the movie stars had the image of being at the top, but the reality was that the servicemen were the true heroes; they had just saved the world. Either of those lives could have made her happy, but because of her background and personality, she was able to achieve neither. Like Hollywood itself, the image was hollow. In her early twenties, her beauty was already fading and her teeth were rotting because she had no access to dental care. She was never a movie star, never even a starlet. She was just a poor, sad girl who wanted something for herself.

Beth Short was young and emotionally vulnerable and needy, with a highly dependent personality. Because of the lifestyle she led (I hesitate to say “chose,” but I suppose we have to acknowledge this), she was a high-risk victim. Like Tennessee Williams’s Blanche DuBois, she relied on the kindness of strangers. She could easily be targeted by anyone who wanted to dominate or hurt women. And her killer would be the type who’s always on the hunt. He could have spotted her a mile away.

The homicide falls under the heading of lust murder, as is clearly indicated by the torture to which the victim was subjected antemortem, but I would be hesitant to categorize this
UNSUB
as being in the same sort of crazed frenzy as we saw in Jack the Ripper’s mutilations. The combination of the sawing in half—as opposed to frantic disembowelment—and the washing of the body indicates to me someone who knows he’s got to get rid of his evidence. The washing is to eliminate forensic clues, and the severing of the body is for easier and less apparent transport. These are the actions of an organized offender, which combine with the more disorganized elements of the case for a mixed presentation.

Since the body was found in a vacant lot, we know it had to be physically carried at least some distance. We know people were in the area with some frequency before the body was found and that it was found shortly after it was dumped. From this we can conclude that the killer might have been seen by a witness, but did not arouse much suspicion. That speaks to the possibility that he carried the body in a bag, or even two bags. Transportation would have been a lot easier in two pieces.

Of course, if it could be shown forensically that the sawing of the body had taken place before death, I would have to reevaluate its meaning. I would still say that this was a lust murder, but then the offender becomes more of the disorganized type, more obviously mentally aberrational.

We can still conclude that the offender had an automobile because, frankly, there isn’t any other way of getting the body to the dump site, and this is not the kind of thing you’d risk borrowing a friend’s car for. Generally, the lust murderers we see don’t drive vehicles. More times than not, they’re disorganized types of personalities, often bordering on the psychotic. And in 1947, when fewer people had cars, it would be even more unusual for a disorganized personality to have one. This can tell us something about the killer. He’s functional; he’s not disorganized twentyfour hours a day. It may be that he’s a chronic alcoholic, for example, who is able to hide or handle his problem well enough that he can still hold down a job. He has to have money to maintain his vehicle, keep it gassed up, etc. He probably worked with his hands, possibly in a job involving blood, such as at a slaughterhouse. Or, he could be a seasoned hunter.

To do what he did to the victim, both antemortem and postmortem, he also had to have a house or apartment of his own. It could be small and run-down as long as it was someplace private, with access to running water, where he knew he would not be interrupted. So now we know the
UNSUB
can’t have been poor—at least, not compared to his victim. He had to have money for rent as well as car expenses. Even if he stole the car, he’d still need a private place to go.

The fact that the body was placed where people would quickly see it rather than where it would not be found for days or weeks tells us the killer wanted to shock and offend the community by what he’d done. And he communicated with the police, which was unusual for this type, again giving us a mixed presentation. This
UNSUB
wanted credibility, much like the Zodiac, although he was not nearly as organized, bright, nor detached.

In the Ripper examination we discussed general motives of the lust murderer. Here I would add that the sadistic elements, the degradation and humiliation inflicted upon this victim (forcing feces down her throat, for example), and the selection of the dump site for the body all indicate this killer’s need to make a statement with his crime. It’s not just this particular woman; his rage is directed at all women. And in selecting his dump site, he further shows his anger against humanity.

All of these points are important because as indicators of motive they tell us this was not the type of crime we’d expect a jealous boyfriend to commit in the heat of passion. Nor is it, to shoot down another theory suggested by some, the actions of a frustrated suitor who, in a drunken frenzy, went nuts when he learned that this girl was the ultimate tease—she didn’t even have the proper equipment to have sex with him. These scenarios—and/or one involving a female offender—do not match the particular motive of this
UNSUB
as evidenced by the crime.

We would not see this level of degradation and mutilation from any of these other types. These are the actions of someone who fantasizes continually about hurting someone, who is on the hunt regularly for someone to dominate and to punish, and who knows just what he wants to do to that person once he gets her under his control.

While the washing and sawing appear to have been elements of modus operandi—performed to help him successfully commit and get away with the crime—the torture and carving of the smile into the victim’s face were signature elements—those emotionally necessary and satisfying to the offender.

Doing all this took some time. We’ve already discussed the disorganized elements of this UNSUB’s personality, yet he was able to fantasize, plan, and carry out this time-consuming, complicated crime. For this reason, we’d expect him to have some criminal history before his encounter with Beth Short. As we’ve shown repeatedly, you don’t jump into this kind of thing without some criminal evolution and development.

I would also have advised police to try to link any of the so-called copycat murders that happened afterward. Someone this advanced in his murderous fantasies would not have been satisfied with one. Unless he was stopped, he’d continue. I’d even go so far as to say that if we saw this case today in isolation, we’d still know immediately that we were dealing with a serial killer.

As reported by John Gilmore in his book
Severed
, some indicators linked the Black Dahlia murder to an unsolved case from the year before, that of Georgette Bauerdorf, an oil heiress and beautiful L.A. socialite whose father, back in New York, worked with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. After Short’s murder, Aggie Underwood, an aggressive crime reporter for Hearst’s
Herald-Express
, wanted
LAPD
to reinvestigate the Bauerdorf case. Bauerdorf, who had known Beth Short through one of her hangouts, had been strangled before she was dumped facedown in her bathtub, a piece of towel wedged in her throat. Sheriff ’s investigators were unable to locate a six-foot-four, dark-complected soldier with a limp who had dated Georgette. She had been frightened of him and had broken off their relationship. A man of similar description was witnessed near her murder scene. I’d say we have to seriously consider the possibility that Short’s killer also killed Georgette Bauerdorf. Both are lust murders, both involve bathtubs, and they were relatively close in time.

Gilmore has done extensive research into the Short case. In the early 1980s, he produced a tape recording of an interview he had done with a man named Arnold Smith. Smith was tall and thin, with a limp and a long rap sheet. He claimed to Gilmore that a character named Al Morrison killed Beth Short, and that Morrison had related the details to him. Gilmore went over his material with John St. John, the detective who had taken over the case in the 1960s. I actually met St. John once, when he had already achieved near legendary status. He held
LAPD
detective badge number one. He died in 1995 at age seventy-seven, having retired only two years previously.

According to Gilmore, St. John believed that Smith and Morrison were one and the same. At one point, Smith brought Gilmore a box of Short’s belongings, including a handkerchief and a photo of her with a blond woman, Smith, and another man he identified as Morrison.

Smith gave a detailed account of Short’s killer taking her to a Hollywood hotel, where it became evident that she hadn’t realized he was planning to share the room with her. She reportedly refused liquor and was uninterested in a relationship with Morrison. He took her to another house and assaulted her when she wanted to leave. According to Smith’s account to Gilmore, the killer threatened to rape Short, she screamed, and he hit her again and again until she stopped moving. Smith provided a full description of how the killer had tied her and stuffed her panties into her mouth before cutting, draining, and washing her body—including fairly convincing details such as how he laid boards across the bathtub to cut her in half and wrapped her in an oilskin tablecloth and shower curtain and carried her in the trunk of his car to the vacant lot where she was found.

According to Gilmore, Smith also made a veiled reference to “that other one” who had been found in “a bathtub”—possibly Bauerdorf. Smith had actually come to the attention of LA County Sheriff ’s detective Joel Lesnick in connection with that murder. Lesnick learned that Arnold Smith was one of many aliases for Jack Anderson Wilson, a tall, gaunt alcoholic with a bad leg and a history of robbery and sex offenses.