The Black Dahlia Murder: What Happened to Elizabeth Short?

**Discussion begins at 6:30**

Today we’re discussing one of the most infamous unsolved murders in American history.  In 1947, a young mother and her child out for a walk, stumbled upon the mutilated body of a young female.  She was quickly identified as 22 year old Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia by regulars at a drug store she frequented - a reference to her dark hair and clothing and the Noir film the Blue Dahlia. The brutality of the crime, as well as the frenzied media coverage has led to a persistent fascination eve now, nearly 80 years later.  We’ll talk about Elizabeth’s life leading up to that January morning, the discovery that shocked the city, the chaotic LAPD investigation that followed, and some of the most well-known theories.  Brace yourself, there is some breaking news on this case pointing to one of the original suspects!  So join us as we dive down the rabbit hole, and discuss the mysterious case of the murder of Elizabeth Short.   

*Note: Graphic discussion of autopsy occurs at 26:30 -  30:00*

Transcript

Welcome back.
Welcome back to another 3Scheme Queens.
Welcome back to the catamarack.
Kait, what's been going on? Oh, I see Kait's rocking her Clemson sweatshirt over here.
Yeah, go tiger.
I did just see on Reddit a story of a missing Clemson kid that we may have to cover at some point. It's from before you were there. Oh, wow, I'm glad my parents ever saw that.
That would have been horrified. I, you said, what's going on?
And I'm taking down my Christmas tree today.
I let it stay up a little longer than norm, but I was just enjoying it. It's just so pretty and twinkly. I came home from New Year's Day and I was like, I'm claustrophobic, everything has to come down.
I haven't been home in two weeks, so my apartment is still Christmas.
She's just bopping house to house to dog sit for people.
But that's also not surprising. Colleen, I feel like you don't take down Christmas until Valentine's Day.
I'm very excited for Valentine's Day.
What did she do last year? She just threw a blanket over the tree, right?
I forgot about that. I could not process putting away my decor, so I just covered it with a blanket.
It's like a metaphor of how she deals with things in real life. My mom gave me, there's a neighborhood rat who's outside. We live in the DC area.
For now.
Rats are a problem, but it keeps groping me up, heaps popping up on my security camera.
So my mom brought me some big rat traps. I said, what am I going to do when you catch something? I'm not trying to get rid of that.
She said, you're just going to call Colleen.
Yeah, and I will. I'll just throw it in a trash bag.
Colleen is not afraid of gross things. As a profession, she's in one of the grossest professions, I would say.
I don't even think it's that gross.
It's disgusting. Yeah. And I have to tell people all the time, like we meet non-medical people.
It's a whole process explaining what I do.
To be clear, medical providers have a high tolerance for gross things, but it takes the special 1% of us to be able to deal with what she deals with.
There's only 20 or 30 in the DC area.
Gross.
But no, we're not going to put the rat traps out anyway, because I have other wildlife out there, and I don't want the fox to get stuck.
The fox is really cute. No, the prex is really cute.
We're going to table that, but I just want you to know that Carrie said Colleen will take care of it for you. I personally think you should just name the rat. If you name it, then it just becomes a part of the wildlife outside.
The other night, it was 11 o'clock, and I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot to take the trash out. I was like, well, I'm not doing it now, because if I go out to the trash bin at 11 PM, I could encounter this rat and I don't want to deal with it.
Last week, I opened the trash can and the rat was scurrying in there. Oh my gosh, did you scream and run away? I did scream.
I screamed and ran back inside. Again, I think I'm a pretty tough person. You are, as evidenced by my Instagram stories today.
The one person of this whole group that would outlive a-
Out of pure spite.
Well, actually, I think it would go Megan, Colleen, and I would be the one to die first. But you would also be like, I have no interest in spite.
I'm the one that's going to get severely injured by mistake, but then still survive.
So is it time for our drink check?
Drink check. I'm ready at the-
I have some good news for you all.
This is a good one.
We got a winner today.
Yeah, this is a really good one. I've already finished.
Colleen has finished before we even started.
It was so yummy. Wow.
That's surprising. Speaking of Carrie, we have a listener request. Carrie wanted to hear about the Black Dahlia.
So that's what we're covering today. But our drink is the Black Dahlia. The Black Dahlia.
I would call it a drink for a bee.
Like a bitch?
No, like a buzz bee.
Yeah. Oh, a bee. That drink for a bee.
I'm like, wait, what?
Okay. It was blackberries, but I learned from our Slaughter Children episode when we had that strawberry. Remember, it was so seedy.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
That was too much.
So this is black, like pureed blackberries, and I strained it. And then some lime.
Oh, yes.
You strained it.
So that's the key right there. Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
Actually, it's so good.
Some fresh squeezed lime juice, a little bit of triple sec, a little bit of vodka. And I froze the glasses and I froze some blackberries. So you would have, you know, blackberry ice cubes.
And then we rimmed it with some honey and sugar. And it was supposed to have poppy seeds, I think, for, you know, black dahlia. But Colleen told me she doesn't like when poppy seeds get stuck in her teeth.
So.
Yeah. Cheers. It's so yummy.
It's very cutesy. Like, it has a real, well, the cup you put it in is also a vibe. But it kind of tastes like a...
Like a Cozmo.
Yes.
I would say it's very citrusy like a Cozmo, but it also gives off like blackberry lemonade. Like a, it's a yummy.
So guys, we got a winner here and that almost never happens. That never happened.
No.
No. Over here, my drink tech, we're distance recording today. So they got the fun drink and I got a Diet Coke.
Diet Coke.
Classic. Just the classic, you know?
Well, Colleen and I are going to see the housemaid after this and I said, maybe I'm just going to buy a Diet Coke there out of the fountain. And she said, ooh, I don't think the fountains are very good. So I got a smuggle in my can.
Oh, are they the multi ones?
Yeah. They're not good ones at all. Yeah.
Got to be careful with multis.
Yeah.
All right.
You guys ready to get into this?
Heck yeah. I, based on the name, thought we were talking about a pirate. You've never heard of The Black Dahlia?
No, not at all.
I was surprised, actually, by how little I thought it was. I mean, there's a lot out there on The Black Dahlia, but I thought there'd be a whole lot more.
I also had a hard time finding a documentary or a podcast about this topic that didn't annoy me. So, a little less information out there than I thought. But we're gonna talk about what I learned.
Okay.
Okay, I'm excited.
Okay, can't wait. So today we're discussing one of the most infamous unsolved mysteries in American history. In 1947, a young mother and her child were walking through their neighborhood and stumbled upon the mutilated body of a young female.
She was quickly identified as 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, nicknamed The Black Dahlia by regulars at a drugstore she frequented due to her dark hair and clothing, and the Blue Dahlia film that was out at the time. It was like a noir film.
The brutality of the crime as well as the frenzied media coverage has led to a persistent fascination even now. Nearly 80 years later.
Today we'll discuss Elizabeth's life leading up to that January morning, the discovery that shocked the city, the chaotic LAPD investigation that followed, and discuss some of the most well-known theories about who may have been responsible.
So join us as we dive down the rabbit hole, including recent breaking news updates on this case. So I think one of the reasons it's like such a big case is because this was sort of one of the last big stories in LA before television took over.
What year was it again?
1947. So they had like four major papers in the area that were all competing for like the biggest scoop. And at the time, I guess newspaper was releasing like two, like a morning and evening edition.
And so it was just like constantly trying to fill that up. And so they really leaned into the story and that's sort of how it became as big as it is today. And then it really is a pretty brutal and horrific crime, we'll get into.
Oh god, I guess Colleen hasn't even heard about No. About The Black Dahlia. Kait, are you familiar at all?
You just have kind of heard of it or do you have thoughts?
Just kind of heard of it.
So we have no strong opinions.
Will this end on a cliffhanger?
What is a cliffhanger? It's a true, it's been 80 years and it's unsolved. But I have a suspect that I really like for this.
Okay. And there's also a new suspect that has sort of just come out in the last few weeks.
And this is all before DNA testing?
Well, the problem is, as with most of the stories also, that even if we could test DNA, everything went missing.
Oh my God.
Of course it was.
This is going to bother me. Yeah.
All right. So Elizabeth Short, she was born July 29th, 1924.
9:29
Elizabeth Shortʼs Background
She's raised in Boston, actually. Medford?
Oh, Medford, yeah.
Her father was a Virginian. He was a United States Navy serviceman, and her parents had five daughters. So Elizabeth was the middle of five.
In 1929, her dad lost all of his money in the stock market crash and was presumed dead after his car was found abandoned on the Charlestown Bridge. You know what? Yeah.
So now her mom has left the single mother of five daughters, and they didn't have a lot of money.
So her mom worked as a bookkeeper, and Elizabeth actually had asthma, she had frequent bronchitis, she'd had a lung surgery, and so her doctor at the time said, you really should probably have a more mild climate.
So she would go spend winters with family friends in Miami, and then kind of come back to Medford in the warm weather. She dropped out of high school to help work.
And then in 1942, her mom received a letter from her allegedly dead husband, who told her he was alive and well, and he was living in California.
Oh my God.
What? He just faked his own death for 13 years, then he's like, just kidding.
Did they ever find his body or something?
Well, they assumed he jumped into the...
Yeah, you're right. Okay, I'll give you that.
So that year, Elizabeth moved to Vallejo at the age of 18 to live with her dad. Most sources say, probably what you've heard, Kait, is like she was this aspiring actress and that's why she moved to LA.
But we really don't have any evidence that she ever worked as an actress or even ever auditioned for any parts. So don't know that that's really the case. But she moved to California and she wanted to get to know her dad, right?
Unfortunately, after a few months, they didn't get along very well. He kicks her out. So she moved out in early 1943.
And this is really a pattern. She gets kicked out of a lot of places. I think she was probably not a very good house guest is what I'm assessing.
Either that or maybe she was just a difficult, was she just like a difficult person too?
I mean, she grew up mostly without a dad, I guess.
I don't know. Well, and also imagine being like having all these like lung issues and then her mom being like, well, I guess you can't live with us.
Yeah. And then there's got to be some of her down. Like, we're pitted anger.
You know, when she's 18, she doesn't have a frontal, and really when she died, she's 22.
So her frontal lobe was never developed before she died. So she never even got to be like a real person. What a shame.
That's sad.
After she moved out of her dad's house, she kind of bounced around for a little bit.
She briefly worked at the Camp Cook Exchange, which is important to know because that's really how we were able to identify the body is because she had fingerprints on record from working on a military base.
She lived with a United States Air Force Sergeant who was abusive. He actually ended up getting court-martialed for domestic violence.
They were together.
He was abusive. He was court-martialed and she fled to Santa Barbara. Oh, wow.
While she was in Santa Barbara, she was arrested for underage drinking. The punishment was to send her back to her mom in Boston.
Oh, okay.
I thought you were going to say her punishment was to send her back to the abusive boyfriend and I was like, I think it's aggressive. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's also where we get this mug shot that is the famous image of hers.
So now we have fingerprints from this. Again, I'm getting ahead that fingerprints from this DNA, fingerprints from this government job, and a photo of her from this arrest.
So she goes back to Boston and then she's like, Peace out, I'm going to go back to Florida. She went down to Florida. There she met an Army Air Force officer.
And she alleges that she became engaged to him. They were writing, he was overseas. They were writing letters.
He proposed to her. And then he died as a result of injury sustained from a plane crash. And it's important to note, I mean, there's a lot of stories that, like she was known to sort of tell a lot of stories for sympathy.
And so, I mean, I think obviously she had a rough time. As you guys pointed out already, her childhood was kind of challenging, right?
But she would tell people like she was a war widow, or she had this baby who died, but there's no evidence she was ever pregnant. And so, it is hard to actually get the facts of her biography, because- Oh, she's like chronic like.
Yes, because I think she did tell a lot of tales. She has a lot, to me, she sounds like she has a lot of psych issues. I mean, just like bouncing back-
Oh, she's mentally ill.
Yeah, 100% mentally ill.
Well, and I think she also didn't get jumping ahead, but she was always sort of like sleeping on someone's couch, like having someone pay her way. And so I think she kind of relied on a lot of these stories to help survive, right?
Like to get support so she could live. So anyway, unclear if she was ever actually engaged to this man, but when she died, and we talk about the belongings she had with her, one of the things she did have was a copy of his obituary in her purse.
Oh, wow. In 1946, she moved back to California. She moved to LA initially to see a man who was stationed at the Naval Reserve Air Base in Long Beach.
How was she finding all these men?
There's a lot of military men, but I guess this was also the time.
This is the end of the war. She was renting a room in the home of a club owner, Mark Hanson, who we're going to talk about. This guy sounds like he was just a creep, and he took advantage of a lot of women who needed help.
He owned a nightclub where she waitress, and he invited her to move into his home. We're going to talk a lot more about him. But she moved into his boarding house with her friend in October for two weeks.
So I'm leading right up to this January, finding her body in January, what was happening.
So in October, she and her friend were living in Mark Hansen's boarding home, but they got kicked out because her friend was drinking all of Mark Hansen's booze, and Elizabeth and Mark are bickering about the men that Elizabeth was socializing with.
So he kicks them out. And this, again, as I said, is kind of a pattern. She gets kicked out a lot.
It's also really unclear what her relationship with Mark Hansen was because some places, some sources are like he was really in love with her and she wanted nothing to do with him.
And then some of the things are like she did like him, but they just were like constantly butting heads and they were both seeing other people. And then that led to a lot of fights. So I don't know, a lot of drama between these two.
But he kicks them out. And so she and her friend ended up moving in for two weeks with Bill Robinson and Marvin Margulies and she slept on their couch from October 23rd to November 13th. And then she went back to Mark Hansen's house.
They get into this fight over this other woman he's seen who's like at the house and he kicks her out again. So she moved into a sketchy apartment.
And then in December, she was calling Mark Hansen saying that she was going to go visit her sister for the holiday. And apparently or allegedly he told her that when she came back, she could stay with him.
And they have, again, a mutual friend who confirmed this, that like that was the plan she was going to go visit her sister, come back and stay with Mark.
There's also some sources that friends had claimed that Elizabeth was like, I'm really scared, but never explained why she was scared until maybe when she went to San Diego to allegedly see her sister who she wasn't visiting.
She was fleeing something, I don't know. So she went to San Diego and she was sleeping in a movie theater. Oh, God.
And one of the female employees told her she could come stay with her, her mother and her younger brother. And so she moved in with them for about a month. And again, just kind of couch surfing.
That's kind of what she does.
I did find multiple sources that said that there were two men and a woman who came and knocked on the door of the home that she was staying at and Elizabeth got panicked and was like, don't answer the door, I don't want to see them.
We don't know who these people are. This is all from like the nice woman who let her stay with them. Like that's the source for this.
Okay.
So then two days later, either she's kicked out of the home or she chooses to leave depending on again, the source, but she leaves and she ends up getting a ride back to LA with Red Manley.
He is the last known contact anyone had with her. Red Manley. Red Manley.
And she's lasting alive on January 9th, 1947. Just to preface this. Red was cleared.
He actually passed multiple polygraphs. But according to his story, his, this guy also sounds like a real dick. A lot of dicks in this story.
A lot of men take advantage of women, you know, as was the era.
Yeah.
His wife had just had a kid and she's like, we're going kind of through this rough transition period. And I kind of just wanted to know, like, could I be faithful to my wife?
What?
Yeah. This is his whole story to the police. So he's in LA.
He was in LA in business on December 15th. And he saw Elizabeth on a street corner and he pulled over. She got in his car and they start chatting.
And then he gave her a ride to the home where she was staying, again, the home of that that lady who was working at the movie theater. Red claims that they went out to a nightclub and danced and had a snack and then they kissed good night.
A snack? What's a snack?
I don't know. But I'm like, who goes for Kate? Kate goes for a snack.
I don't know.
Yeah. I love a snack.
I'm interested. I want to know what kind of snack they had. Of course you do.
What was the snack? I'm thinking more information, please.
Is she a low key hooker? Well, but the story is giving hooker.
I know. It kind of is giving hooker a little bit. There's a lot of allegations of that, but then there's also a lot of allegations that she was like a real tease.
Part of why all these men were always mad at her is because she never followed through. Yeah.
Okay. Okay.
So he takes her back home, they kiss good night, and then they don't see each other. Fast forward to January 7th, and he had actually sent her a wire to say, hey, I'm going to be in town if you want to hang.
That night, the two went out dancing, and then they drove to LA, but on their way back to LA, they stopped at a motel. What happened at this hotel?
He claims that Elizabeth told her, Elizabeth's like all over him, and then they get to the hotel, and Elizabeth's like, oops, I'm on my period, and nothing happened. I prefer.
All of the newspaper articles said something like, there was like a, what is it? It was like, it's something, it's some term, like erotically boring evening or something. Erotically boring.
It was like some, I'll probably find it later. It was like, termed very, very oddly. Anyway, and then they get in the car, he takes her to the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA, because she said she's gonna meet her sister who's visiting from Boston.
Okay.
So 6:30 p.m., he lets her out of the car.
He's the last one who spends any amount of time with her. And then witnesses did report seeing her use the lobby phone. So she hung out in the Biltmore Hotel lobby.
She's making a lot of, people say frantic phone calls. And then she left at 10 p.m. And there's some unreliable sightings afterwards.
But the last known reliable sighting was her leaving the Biltmore at 10 p.m. And then nothing for six days, right? Six days until we find her body.
So no one really knows what happened in the interim.
Red's wife, because I'm not going to talk anymore about him because he's been clear, he's not in my suspect list, but just so you know for closure, he obviously had to fess up to all of this when he's being questioned.
I think she supported him at first and then she ended up leaving him and then he ended up having so many mental breakdowns, allegedly as a result of all of this, that he ended up in an asylum and that's the end of the story.
So January 15th, 1947, a young woman had just purchased, how about this, how's this going to make you guys feel?
20:11
Body Discovery Details
She just purchased a home in this LA neighborhood for $11,000.
No, right.
Feels right. Yeah, had just moved there with her husband and young daughter. She had her three-year-old in a stroller and they were walking to pick up some shoes that were getting repaired for her husband.
And less than a foot off the sidewalk, she noted a pale body in two pieces, which she initially assumed was a mannequin.
Oh, my gosh.
The body was severed at the waist.
Oh, my God.
Without a drop of blood. Oh, what? And posed in such a way, again, that the witness thought it was a mannequin.
Unfortunately, news reporters beat police to the scene.
Oh, no.
Oh, no. But here is what law enforcement noted.
Before you continue, I'm thinking vampire.
I immediately thought vampire too. Although I don't, I don't, well, I don't really believe in vampires, but I read, you know. That's too bad that the site is already, like, trampled on by the press before the first police officer even arrives.
The medical examiners estimate the time of death was about 10 hours before the body was found.
Okay.
So likely late on the evening of January 14th.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to talk about the autopsy in a couple of minutes. It gets pretty graphic. So if you have a problem, fast forward.
But anyway, the body had been completely clean. There was really very little blood despite having so much damage, right? So makes you think probably killed elsewhere.
A professional.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know. We will talk about the injury. That is a thing, a professional.
But what kind of professional?
Murderer. Okay. A professional murderer.
I mean, like Dexter.
A lot of people think professional. Oh, like a butcher. Like a butcher.
I was thinking like a...
You know the butchers that like hang the...
Hang them and drain them? And drain them.
Butchers were a thing then.
Yeah. Yeah. Again, I'm going to talk more about the Emmy report that's pretty, I would say, probably the most horrific thing we've talked about on this podcast.
Even more than Jack the Ripper? Yeah.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
The most obvious and well-done injuries are that she had a Glasgow smile. Oh, so cut on both sides of her mouth to widen her mouth.
Oh, no.
She had been dissected with the two bodies positioned about a foot apart. This feels very Jack the Ripper. Her intestines were tucked up neatly below her buttocks, and the body was posed.
She was posed their arms up like at 90 degree angles, like she was making a snow angel, sort of frozen. There was a heel print, fire tracks, and a cement sack with watery blood found at the scene.
And she was the first murder of 1947, so she was coined Jane Doe 1.
Oh, man.
So again, the lack of blood at the scene despite these injuries had the police thinking she was killed elsewhere. Also, she had Levitity. Are you familiar with Levitity?
I don't think so.
No one here listened to Serial?
23:23
Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serial/id917918570
artwork representing URL
No.
I did listen to Serial, but that was the first podcast I ever listened to.
It was the first podcast most people listened to.
Yeah.
So Levitity is like you have this discoloration of your body where like the blood pools, right? Okay. So if you are laying on your back, your Levitity is going to be on your back, like posterior, right?
Like follows. Everything is fettled.
Right. Yeah.
The patient had Levitity, the victim had Levitity, but it was consistent with a prone position, but she was found supine. Oh my gosh.
So it makes you think that she would move. Yes.
She died. She was face down somewhere.
Yeah.
And then her body was moved and placed on the back. So Levitity didn't set up, didn't fit in, and rigor mortis had not set in. Well, could Levitity be a thing before rigor mortis?
Levitity precedes rigor mortis.
Okay. Interesting.
There was also dew under the body, but the grass around her was dry. So she was probably dumped in the early morning hours when there was a lot of dew. Now everything is dried and there's dew under her.
There were also some witnesses who reported seeing a 1936 Black Ford Sedan stop at the site where the body was later found, but one neighbor thought it was 4 a.m. and then another, I think the paper boy thought it was 6.30.
They had different times, but the same car they claimed to see. So people were like, did the guy keep coming back?
What was the story?
So again, we're like, we just have this poor young girl. We don't know who she is. This is horrific.
But I will say kudos to law enforcement because the police call the FBI. Okay. And it took the FBI less than an hour in the era pre-computer to figure out who this was.
Whoa.
They had over 100 million fingerprints in the system at the time, and they pretty much faxed these fingerprints, and they were able to match them to Elizabeth Short because of her previous arrest record and also because she was employed on the
military base. Honestly, that's why they were able to do it so fast. Because of her previous arrests.
Well, I think when she was arrested, one of the people who arrested her was like, she's got this rose tattoo on her leg, which was not common at the time for these women to have tattoos. Oh, okay.
So I think it's like probably someone was like, hey, wait, I know that. Yeah. I think it could be this person I arrested a few months ago, and that also helped.
This police bulletin goes out. It says wanted, information on Elizabeth Short between January 9th and 15th, 1947.
Quote, subject on whom information wanted last seen January 9th, 1947, when she got out of a car at Billmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
At that time, she was wearing black suit, no collar on coat, probably cardigan style, white fluffy blouse, black suede high-heeled shoes, nylon stockings, white gloves, full length, beige coat, carried black plastic handbag with two handles, 12 by 8
inches, which she had black address book. Subject readily makes friends with both sexes and frequented cocktail bars and night spots. On leaving car, she went into the lobby of Billmore and was last seen there.
So people are looking for, try to get more information. Sorry, looking for clues, right? All right, guys, I'm going to talk about the autopsy.
And please feel free to fast forward five minutes if, again, this is pretty horrific.
Yeah.
So Frederick Newbar performed the autopsy. And despite the fact that she was dissected, the cause of death was presumed to be blunt force trauma to the head and hemorrhagic shock from that Glasgow Spell.
She had a small subarachnoid hemorrhage, but they said probably lost a lot of blood. We all know faces bleed a lot, right, when she had this cut to her face.
Oh, my gosh.
She had ligature marks on her ankles, wrists and neck. She had superficial lacerations to her right forearm, left upper arm and lower left side of the chest. One of her nipples were removed prior to her death.
Oh, my God.
Her pubic hair was shaved and shoved in her rectum.
What?
Her privates were mutilated, again, prior to her death.
Oh, my God. She had a four and a half inch laceration between her umbilicus and her panus. Then she had, as I mentioned, she had this tattoo of a rose on her thigh that was removed and placed inside her.
Oh.
Yeah.
And then the Glasgow smile, it started three inches on the right side of her mouth, extended two and a half inches on the left side.
And so we think that's like this big smile, but the question is, was the purpose of cutting the mouth, not to make her smile, but to prevent her from being able to close her mouth?
Oh, my God.
There's a theory that he maybe forced her to ingest something, or was he trying to assault her without risking injury to himself? Because he sliced her the muscle so she couldn't close her mouth.
Regardless of the motivation, it was inflicted pre-mortem, okay? So we can only hope that she was unconscious for all this because this is horrendous. Horrific, yeah.
Her anus was dilated nearly two inches.
Oh, my God.
But there was no evidence of sperm, so may or may not have been assaulted. I'm just going to assume, yeah.
I mean, it sounds like she was assaulted, but not by a peony.
Yeah. Then the severing of her torso was the one thing that was, she was probably dead by the time that happened. That was post-mortem because there wasn't a lot of bruising.
But she was severed between L2 and L3, which is the only place you can cut where no bones have to be cut through.
Wow. Though somebody knew that.
That's the theory.
That's so sad.
The intestines were severed at the duodenum. She had food and alcohol in her stomach. And then kind of the last gross thing here, I'm going to move on, guys.
Okay. But guess what else was found in her duodenum?
Okay, hold on.
A gerbil. You're close.
An animal.
It was not an animal, but it's like equally disgusting.
A bottle. In her duodenum?
Fecal matter.
That wasn't hers?
Well, does fecal matter usually exist in your duodenum?
That's like right after your stomach.
Was it like a fecal transplant, too? The thought, the theory that some people prescribed to it. They made her eat poop.
He cut her mouth and forced her to eat feces. Oh, my God.
This is like the human centipede.
That's what I thought when I heard this. This is the human centipede.
Now, there are people online who were like, no, no, no, when she got transected, her own fecal matter backed up into the duodenum, but I'm like, like, I don't, I don't prescribe to that. If there's, there should not be stool in.
Yeah.
I think that in general, stool does not belong in your duodenum unless it was. No. That's the end of all the gross stuff, guys.
It's just, well.
God, that's horrible.
But that is, again, that is, I think that is worse. We talked about some really disgusting things during.
Awful.
It is, it's worse than Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper. On January 24th, 1947, a person claiming to be Short's killer called the editor of The Examiner and told him to expect some souvenirs of Beth Short in the mail.
Oh my God.
On January 24th, a USPS worker found a Manil envelope addressed to the Los Angeles Examiner and other LA papers.
There was a letter that had newspaper clipping letters, like stereotypical kind of like ransom letter, right? Right. And it spelled out, here is Dahlia's belongings letter to follow.
The envelope contained her social security card, her birth certificate, business cards, photographs, and an address book with Mark Hansen's name on the cover. Remember, Mark Hansen is the guy she was living with on and off? Yeah.
Yeah.
The contents were cleaned with gasoline, just like the body was.
So investigators believe that this was really from the killer. There were several partial fingerprints lifted from the envelope and sent to the FBI for testing. However, the prints were compromised in transit and thus could not be analyzed.
Jesus.
Oh, my God. I'm telling you what, there are sick people in this world. That is terrifying.
Yeah, this is gory.
Yeah. Also, it kind of sounds like this guy liked Jack the Ripper. This is like a little bit.
I remember Jack the Ripper was toying with police officers too. On January 25th, her purse and a shoe were found in a dumpster two miles from where the body was found on top of a garbage can.
The items had also been wiped clean with gasoline, destroying any fingerprints. A few days later, there was another letter. He was like, I'm going to turn myself in.
And then he never turned himself in. He wrote another letter and was like, haha, I changed my mind. Um, but that's kind of, that's, that's the story.
And then really not a lot of progress was made.
Oh my god.
So, let me tell you guys about the suspects.
32:02
Black Dahlia Suspects
It sounds like this person wanted to torture her, which makes me think it's somebody who knows her.
Okay. That's what I'm leaning towards. Or just a fricking freak.
Well, I think it feels to me like, we're gonna talk about a lot of suspects who, who most of them, this would be like a one-off if they did it.
And I feel like this feels like very aggressive for somebody who only killed once. This feels like someone who was escalating and escalating and escalating.
Yeah, like this is not their first.
But like, there was really no, I tried to find like similar, there's nothing that's even like similar to this out there. That is so crazy. So police contacted, I told you they had Elizabeth Short's address book.
They contacted 75 men from the address book. And they investigated approximately 300 medical students at USC, including a former boyfriend, because the med school was near the crime scene. Wait, I have a question.
You said that the bodies were like doused, her body was like doused with gasoline? Yeah, were there, like maybe this person, like what you said, like had escalated, but maybe he was burning the bodies afterwards?
And this is the first time he never did that? Good question.
You know what, that's a good thought. There's also some disagreement. I'm talking about the one podcast that I do recommend is Barry Bones, Paul Holes.
Love Paul Holes, Hot for Holes. Talked about this. Paul Holes is the man who solved the Golden State Killer, and he's worked on a lot of-
He literally-
Crowned it. Okay.
And he's like, I'm looking at the stuff. They're telling me that the purse belongings were covered in gasoline, but there's no smudging. So he was skeptical of this whole gasoline-
Oh, the story.
Like if that was-
But I also did specifically see that there was no evidence of burning on her because there were rumors that there were cigarette marks and stuff everywhere, so there was no evidence of burning.
But you're right, I didn't look into where other people burned. That's a good thought. I'm sure they might-
I mean, I'm not an investigator, and people do this stuff all the time, so I'm sure they looked into something like that, but just a thought. That's a good one.
Again, doctors seem like good suspects because whoever did this had to have knowledge of where to bisect the body. Also, during this time, three-quarters of people did not have cars because of World War II rationing.
But this body was, well, I'm thinking that too, the gas. I was thinking this body was definitely moved in a car. Was it like, hold there.
Oh, yeah, definitely not, yeah.
So I did some googling and you know who was allowed gas during the rationing?
Doctors.
Essential workers like doctors, mailmen, and farmers.
And then also traveling salesman, which is her boyfriend that I'm not going to talk about anymore. Red. So the big suspects that are often discussed.
The first one is Dr. George Hodel. He came to light because his son, Steve Hodel, was one of 12 children by five women born to Dr.
George Hodel. And Steve was a retired LAPD detective. And after his father's death, he discovered a photograph of a woman who he presumed to be Elizabeth Short.
So this led him down a rabbit hole of investigating if his father could have been involved in her murder.
Oh, my gosh.
Imagine being a child and thinking my dad could have been a murderer.
Yeah.
So clearly this man wasn't very nice. His son didn't really. His family.
Yeah. His sister had accused her father of incest.
Oh, oh.
And despite multiple witnesses testifying, he was acquitted of the charges. Well, on the stand, however, she accused him of being involved in the Elizabeth Short murder. So after his release, the police actually tapped his phones.
And he said kind of some weird things, like the famous quote is, suppose and I did kill the Black Dahlia, they couldn't prove it now, they can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead.
Whoa.
Hodel ended up fleeing to the Philippines.
Why would he talk about his, why would he say that about his?
Yeah, well, I read somewhere that actually they're acting like he's just like, this was all just like wiretapping, but I read somewhere that he knew he was tapped and he was just like messing with the police.
And so that's why he would say something like that. Hodel ended up fleeing to the Philippines because there was no extradition there. And he started a family, he lived there for like 40 years.
Eventually, he returned to San Francisco and then he passed away. Again, this guy is a very commonly discussed suspect, all because his son, Steve Hodel, made these accusations.
And at first, it sounds like people were like, huh, this is an interesting theory. But then he started accusing his dad of like everything.
So he accused his father of almost 50 murders in over 50 years, starting when he was a teenager, across multiple states and countries. He even accused him of being the zodiac killer. The daughter, he accused of incest.
So the thought is we have to emphasize to her, because she probably was abused at some point in her life because of this pattern of behavior that comes up. But she had a history of making false allegations.
Like her mom wouldn't let her be alone with her mom's husband because she didn't want there to be any accusations. She had accused like dozens of classmates.
So this is not the first person that she made accusations about, which again means probably something happened to her at that point. But did this happen? Yeah.
I don't know. Apparently, when she went to live with her dad, she told her brother before she left, like I'm going to make accusations against me. People are going to believe me.
What? Also, while George Hodel was a doctor, he was not a surgeon. He treated SEDs and performed abortions.
So probably didn't have the skill. If we are to believe that this is a surgeon, probably didn't have that kind of skill.
Doing that in that era, he probably had enemies.
Anyway, the Short family looked at that picture that started this whole thing, that Steve Hodel found this picture and was like, oh my gosh, it's The Black Dahlia. They said, that's not Elizabeth Short.
So all of this, everyone sort of thinks that Steve Hodel has written multiple books and he's just trying to profit off this storyline. And no one is, there's been no proof proof of George Hodel that he has one often talked about.
It is suspicious that he went to the Philippines. But maybe he was just like annoyed by elves, or maybe he was doing other bad things, you know? Not this bad thing, but other.
I mean, he sounds like he's probably doing other bad things.
Yeah. Or he had enemies.
Mark Hansen, so this is the guy whose house she was staying at, who again, I said, there's a lot of questions about the relationship. Everyone agrees he was into her questions, whether or not she was into him.
But he was a 55-year-old Danish immigrant who owned a number of theaters and liked to surround himself with aspiring actresses. He operated the Florentine Gardens nightclub, as well as two rooming homes.
And I told you Elizabeth lived with him for a period in October and again in November. Again, he was always unhappy with the men she was hanging out with, so she'd have men drop her off like blocks from home.
And they ended up having a fight and he evicted her in November. And then in early January, they were in contact. And according to her old roommate, their mutual friend, Toph, he had told her that she was welcome to come back when she got back from.
When he was questioned, he downplayed the whole relationship and denied having offered her a place to live.
So the theory, if you believe he did it, is that he was so enraged that she was with another man, you know, she was with Red that he killed her. But there's no evidence to support this theory.
The address book, people are like, why would he mail a book to the police that had his own name on it? Like, that feels more like a setup.
He actually had an alibi, he was at a theater opening, and then he was at his home, and he would have had no way to have done the murder and disposed of the body. They actually bugged his house and found nothing.
I think they told him they were bugging his house because they were investigating something else, and he agreed, so I guess he could have known what to say. But they didn't find anything.
And as far as that address book, he said that it was a gift someone gave him and he put it in a drawer and he never used it. And it was like a blank book and Elizabeth took it. So people talk about him.
Again, he sounds, a lot of these guys all just sound skeezy, but no proof proof that they did it.
Yeah, it doesn't sound like she surrounded herself with good people, but.
But who are we to judge? That's not like a who are we to judge moment.
Live your life, Queen.
Um, so Leslie, Leslie Dillon was a former bellhop at an LA hotel, and he was also a allegedly a mortician's assistant.
Oh, God.
He became a suspect after an LAPD psychiatrist, Dr. Deriver, did an interview with the True Crime Magazine a few years after the murder and provided sort of a flattering description of the likely murder in hopes of luring him out.
So Leslie Dillon ended up writing to Dr. Deriver under the alias Jack Sand. He described himself as a 27-year-old aspiring author with an interest in sadistic and sexual crimes.
Oh, God.
Ring-a-ding-ding.
So Dr. Deriver actually lured him to a town just outside of Las Vegas by asking for his assistance in solving the case. And he takes him to this hotel room that he's tapped already.
Leslie Dillon claims that he had been reading about the crime and he'd spoken to a man in San Francisco named Jeff Connors who had met Elizabeth Short in a bar during the last week of her life.
Yeah, by the way, the real Jeff Connors was found in Alibi, so he had nothing to do with this. Pretty much Dr.
Deriver started accusing Leslie Dillon of having split personalities and saying that his theory was that this guy had tried to sleep with Elizabeth, but she made fun of his small dick, so he killed her.
The LAPD psychiatrist, with the help of the LAPD gangster squad, performed a citizen's arrest and held him for days and interrogated him. Oh my gosh, a citizen's arrest.
Somehow during this unlawful interrogation, they discovered that Leslie Dillon does in fact have a small penis. Leslie Dillon actually dropped a postcard out of a window asking for help, saying he was being held by Dr. Deriver against his will.
This is two decades before Miranda rights became a thing, so you could just grab someone and-
Oh my gosh.
He ended up suing the city for false imprisonment, and so that lawsuit prompted a grand jury investigation into Elizabeth Short murders. This is their version during this grand jury hearing.
The LAPD gangster squad says, they received a tip that Leslie Dillon had stayed in the Astrum Hotel in April of 1947.
The owners of the Astrum Hotel had claimed that on the morning that Elizabeth Short's body was found, they had discovered a room full of blood and feces.
Oh my God.
The owner was an ex-con, Henry Hoffman, and he said he cleaned the room himself and never reported it. So-
Why wouldn't you report it?
Because did it even happen? There is no real proof that Leslie Dillon was ever involved. Now the LAPD is under fire, and the chief of police is fired, and multiple officers are facing charges.
The gangster squad gets disbanded, and so people are like, were they trying to save some face here?
The reason this theory is even still talked about is because there was a book called The Black Dahlia Red Rose in 2017, and that author reported a second-hand account that said, the doctor, Dr.
DeRiver, told us that Leslie Dillon with his connection to the prostitution network was a pimp and errand boy for Mark Hanson, remember, the person whose house she stayed in. Hanson was getting tired of the short girl.
He was jealous of her many boyfriends, had enough of her pestering him for money. So one day, Hanson said words to the effect of, get rid of her.
Hanson, not knowing or caring that his functionary was a dangerous and murderous psychopath, was stunned when she turned up as she did, all cut up.
Dillon was simply a runner, a messenger, small time hood, but he knew where the bodies were buried and who at the LAPD was on the cuff for bedding, bookmaking, prostitution, etc. So he ended up clear because he had an alibi.
This guy was actually in San Francisco during the murder. Couldn't have done it. He wasn't a mortician's assistant.
He drove a hearse for three weeks. This is Leslie Dillon.
Okay.
So anyway, the thought is that Dr. Drover lost his mind. He tried to be a hero here.
He was wrong and now they're trying to come up with a story that could make this plausible.
Okay.
So they're like, well, we heard years ago that they found blood in that room, but no one called. We don't know that that was true because no one reported it. So we think they're just trying to save face.
So Dylan was actually alibi. He was in San Francisco. He never worked as a mortician's assistant, so we didn't have cutting experience.
He drove a Hurst for three weeks. There's no evidence that Dylan and Hanson and Short even knew each other. So I don't buy into that one.
There's a mob theory that Elizabeth Short got pregnant by mobster Bugsy Siegel, and he killed her because she refused an abortion.
There's also a theory that the LA Times publisher asked Bugsy to take care of her because he was the one who got her pregnant, like the LA Times publisher got her pregnant.
Oh, okay.
So it's all a conspiracy, but there is no proof that any of them knew Elizabeth Short. There is no proof that she wasn't pregnant when she was autopsied. I was about to say.
There's no proof she's ever been pregnant. So they think that this theory just came up from the time. There was a lot of organized crime and a lot of conspiracy corruption, and that's kind of where that theory came from.
So the torso killer was a Cleveland serial killer in the 1930s, who would murder people and dismember and disfigure them. And the torso killer used to communicate with the police, just like the mail that came from the Black Dahlia killer.
Okay.
Now, when we talk about this torso killer, investigators had a suspect in mind, a doctor who failed two polygraph tests, but they never had enough evidence to go to trial. So they ended up convincing them to just go to an asylum.
And so they send this guy to an asylum, and then all the deaths stop.
Oh.
So there have been 12 murders, and then nothing once this guy is committed. Oh. So they were like, we're pretty sure we got the right guy, even though we could never, you know, really nail him down.
But some people think that the murders stop because the killer had left the area. And the press did receive a letter from the alleged killer saying that he had moved to California and was continuing his work.
So people who prescribed this theory are like, the murders stop because we moved to California. Now it's been a decade and he's continuing his work. But his victim profile, the victim profile in Cleveland was very different.
They were men and women. They were decapitated. They weren't cut across the torso and they weren't posed like this one was.
So I don't really, I'm not buying into that one. I told you that that could be another serial killer, but I couldn't really find anything for the reasons I thought, right? Like this feels too heinous to be like a one-off crime.
But I couldn't find similar crimes. I didn't think about fire. That was a good thought, Kait.
But Paul Holes, he doesn't really believe any of these suspects either.
He thought it was sort of like sadomasochist BDSM type killing because she had these literature marks, which she thought were consistent with her being like kind of, you know, spread eagle and tied down. Yeah.
He believes in this whole fecal ingestion. And so he's like, I think this was just like a, yeah, sadomasochist BDSM. Like a real, real sick person to do this.
Okay, here's who I'm buying, guys. Here's my favorite theory.
Okay.
Walter Bailey, he was a surgeon at the University of Southern California. He had an office near the Biltmore Hotel, and he had a private practice specializing in hysterectomies and mastectomies. Oh.
Oh, God.
He could cut a nipple off.
So Larry Harnish is a writer, and he presented this theory, and he has a lot of, he's kind of, again, there's a lot of crazy people out there, like Steve Hodel. I think you have a lot of opinions.
But Larry Harnish is, he seems really reasonable, and he does his research, and so, if anyone's looking for like a deep dive, I would look into him.
He discovered that Walter Bailey's daughter was the matron of honor at the marriage of Virginia Short, which was Elizabeth's sister to Adrian West.
And according to their son, the Bailey's and the Short's, well, West, the Short's Wests were all good friends.
And so Walter Bailey's theory is that when she was down and out in LA., she's in the Biltmore Hotel, she's looking for a place to stay, that she called Barbara Lindgren, who is Walter Bailey's daughter and the friend of her sister.
But Barbara had just moved to the Midwest. So then they either said, call my dad or his number was listed in the phone book. So maybe she called him up or she went to his office.
It was nearby. This is all just conjecture. We have no proof of this.
But he called Walter Bailey for help, and that's how they came into contact.
Now, all we have to support this theory is that Barbara Lindgren was listed as the witness on the marriage certificate, and the address she listed was that of her mother's house on Norton Avenue. Norton Avenue, that's where the body was dumped.
Oh my God.
So the body was dumped one block away from Walter Bailey's estranged wife.
Whoa.
So Walter Bailey's young son had been struck by a car, it was like years prior to all this. His young son had been struck by a car while riding his bicycle many years prior on January 13th. Elizabeth died sometime between January 9th and 15th.
So anniversary, right? Is he definitely super emotional? John Douglas, Mindhunter, we know John Douglas is.
Yes. He had created a profile of a suspect, and he said the suspect was likely desensitized to blood, but was comfortable with a knife and likely was a surgeon. He said, I believe he had a medical degree, but worked with his hands.
So surgeon, not like an STD doctor. He speculated the killer was probably angry at someone on Norton Avenue, and that's why he left the body there. So was this dump to target Walter Bailey's estranged wife.
Oh.
This is crazy.
Walter Bailey had encephalomalacia, which is like shrinkage of the brain.
So he's going crazy.
His encephalomalacia led to dementia and personality changes at the end of his life.
Oh, he was going crazy.
In the months prior to the murder, he was estranged from his wife and he was shacking up with this female surgeon and everyone was like, he was acting so weird.
Like he and this younger woman would just go out and get takeout and then go back to his office and eat dinner and just watch surgery videos all night while eating dinner.
Oh, so he knows how to clean a part of body. Oh, that's weird.
The VA did his autopsy, so they won't release it. So we actually don't know where his actual lesions were. But the behavior is consistent with frontotemporal lesions.
So if he has frontotemporal lesions in Malaysia, personality, and he died a year after Elizabeth, so is that why there weren't any other victims? Oh. Again, we have no proof proof.
This is all circumstantial, but it's like he's got ties to her. Geographically, it makes sense. It makes sense why they would come into contact with each other.
It makes sense why he dumped the body where he dumped it. Makes sense why there's not more victims, and makes sense why it was such a heinous cry because the man was going crazy.
And he was going crazy already, and now it's the anniversary of his son's death. And it was like they had this one son and they had two adopted daughters, but the son was their biologic son and the son died.
And it was like, that was the end of his world because... Oh my God. Anyway, so that's my favorite theory of the bunch.
That sounds very accurate, yeah?
Yeah. But did the police look into him?
No, this theory came about later. So I think kind of after... And the problem with all of these, I think honestly, I don't think this case is ever going to get solved because everyone is dead now.
We have no DNA, everyone is dead. So even if there was like a confession, are we ever to be able to prove it was real? Right.
Probably not.
Right.
Okay. And then that was where I was going to end my episode.
51:04
Zodiac Killer Update
And then there was breaking news.
Oh my god.
Oh my gosh.
I love breaking news.
December 23rd, there was breaking news.
2025.
2025. Two weeks ago. So there's a new theory that a different man, not one of these suspects I talked about, although I have touched on this person earlier in the episode, was both the Zodiac Killer and the Black Dahlia Murder.
So do you guys remember, I said that over 300 med students were interviewed, including an ex-boyfriend.
Yes.
So Elizabeth Short had dated this USC med student, and he was one of the initial suspects. So that student was Marvin Margulis, who I also told you, she lived with him for two weeks. So Marvin was born in Chicago in 1925 to immigrant parents.
According to his VA files, he had psychiatric issues in adolescence. He was afraid of the dark, he sleptwalk, he had nightmares. He was shy, introverted, and irritable for the psychiatrist.
He attended the University of Illinois as pre-med, but then he joined the Navy in March of 1943 at the age of 18, and he worked in the medical corps and spent 27 months overseas. It sounds like he was working mostly with the pharmacists here.
He wasn't necessarily doing surgery. His VA records talk about how he returned with mental health issues and aggressive tendencies.
He became resentful of the military, not just for his trauma, but for them denying his request to be part of the surgical unit. He ended up leaving with a 50 percent rating for mental disability.
In 1946, he enrolled in USC as a med student, and he had already completed his cadaver lab courses, so he did have experience dissecting.
After Elizabeth Short's murder, he dropped out of med school and went on to work in a number of different professions.
One of those occupations was an artist, and after his death, his sons found sketches of naked women in odd poses, including one labeled Elizabeth with the word Zodiac hidden in the ink.
Oh my God.
Now, I will say, I looked at this picture of this woman, Elizabeth. Yeah, it was like her face. It wasn't a big photo, but she had long straight hair.
It didn't look like Elizabeth Short to me. I would not have said this is Elizabeth Short, but regardless. He moved back to California.
We lived in California when he knew Elizabeth Short, moves away, comes back, and then the Zodiac killing started. Again, the reason this guy now is being talked about, because he was seen and sounds like maybe ruled out.
He was ruled out because he alibi'd it. They asked him where he was on a certain date and he had an alibi, but the date wasn't actually the right date, so he was cleared on poor information.
But now, and the Zodiac killing, we can't even get into the Zodiac. That's gonna be a whole other episode. This was already quite a deep dive.
But the reason now he's popular is because people who were investigating the Zodiac killings have now deemed him to be a suspect.
Is he still alive? He can't still be alive.
No. And his sons, unlike...
The other guys.
Steve. Yeah, other like, unlike Steve Hodel, his sons are like, I don't think he did this. So they're not trying to profit off of the story.
So you guys remember the deal with the Zodiac killer, though, was that he was interacting with the press, sort of like Black Dahlia's case, and he was sending these ciphers.
And so one of the ciphers, he said, like, my name, my true identity is hidden in the cipher.
What's a cipher?
Like a puzzle. But no one was ever able to solve it. So somebody, Alex Baber, founder of Cold Case Consultants of America, claims that he has solved the puzzle.
He said he used a combination of AI., traditional cryptography, and reference to US records to try to identify the Zodiac killer. And he says that the cipher says, my name is Marvin Merrill.
Now, Marvin Merrill is what Marvin Margulis changed his name to after Elizabeth Short was killed.
Oh, my God. I have full body chills.
So, Zodiac killed at least five people in California between 1968 and 1969. He was famous for corresponding with the press. That sounds familiar, right?
But the Zodiac killer shot people, which were mostly Leverlane couples. He killed couples, okay? And it was a different MO, I think, as far that he wasn't cutting them and bleeding them out and dissecting them.
He was kind of shooting them and running. Right.
And when they had interviewed all the med school professors at USC, when they were looking at all the med students, one of the medical school professors said, the surgical precision seen in Elizabeth Short looks like that of an experienced surgeon,
not a student. So they're like, this is not someone who's only had like a year of experience.
Not an amateur.
That's what he said back in the 40s. And now there was an officer who claimed to have seen Elizabeth Short on January 14th, because again, we have no good sightings between the 9th and the 15th when she's found, right?
But there was this officer, the story does come up, who claimed that she saw Elizabeth Short on January 14th, said that she found her sobbing and tear at a bus station, claiming that someone threatened to kill her.
And she claimed she was afraid of a discharged Marine who was insanely jealous. Who's that sound like? Sounds like this guy, right?
The officer escorted her to a bar to retrieve her purse, but the man was gone. And said she later saw Elizabeth Short exiting the bar with two men and a woman.
And I didn't lose the timeline because it's a version that Steve Hodel pushes and we don't really find him to be like a viable source. And so I kind of skipped over this when I read it.
I think they were like, Elizabeth Short is a dark haired woman and the police officer was like, oh yeah, maybe I saw her. But then when they actually showed this officer a photo, she was like, I don't know, that might not be her, I don't really know.
So it was such a weak story, I didn't share that in the timeline. But it's interesting that she was seen with a discharged Marine who was insanely jealous, right? That matches.
But then I guess the other question people are having, like a lot of Redditors are very skeptical because they're like, first of all, how do we know who actually cracked this code? AI just cracked this code.
Secondly, even if he did crack the code, just because someone wrote my name is Marvin Merrill, does that actually mean, like I could write, my name is Kate Miller? Yeah, anybody could write that, right?
That's true. Anyone could.
That doesn't mean I am Kate. That's just what I wrote in my puzzle. So this is sort of breaking news, has to be investigated.
Again, we don't really know the authenticity, the accuracy here, but it's an interesting story, and it would kind of tie up nicely these two unsolved cases, right?
Yeah.
That are probably never going to be solved, so.
Yeah.
That would be crazy if he did both, but also, why would he switch? Well, why would he go like MOs? Like, switch it up.
Yeah. I agree. That's the hardest part for me, is I'm like, how did you go from, it all sounds so good, but I'm like, this guy went from this gruesome hands-on murder to shooting people.
Yeah. Shooting men.
You get crazier and not crazier less.
Yeah. What did he do for 20 years? I guess he was traveling for 20 years.
Again, that's why I feel like whoever did it had to either have been killed or arrested or sent to an asylum. Right.
Something else.
Some reason that these murders didn't continue, although it feels like it was an escalation of something. I don't know. It's such a mystery.
I had no idea how atrocious it was.
That was so awful to hear.
I will say, just to end this on a positive note, that the Elizabeth Short murder is the reason that we now have a sex offender registry. Wow. Something good came of that.
Something positive came. I mean, some people claim that's not positive. I think that's a positive thing.
Why wouldn't it be a positive thing?
Well, some people think it like you can never, you're just labeled for life, right?
So you can't ever, but. And I mean, I think there is one thing to be like, you were 18 and slept with your 17-year-old girlfriend. It's very different from, but anyway.
So what do you guys think? Do you like any of those suspects? Do you think it's something else?
The last two.
Yeah, I think you were saving the best for last, the more due for last for sure.
Yeah, I'm still go with Bailey. I think it's early to tell about this Zodiac. I need to know more about who Alex Baber is.
I need to know more about how he solved this. Right.
I also don't know anything about the Zodiac killer.
No, I don't either. It'd have to be a separate episode. But it is.
Yeah, we'd have to do a whole separate episode about the Zodiac.
It's a lot.
Yeah. Then also, I had completely finished this episode research, and then it was like.
Just announced.
Update, and I was like, God, I got to squeeze this in. It's sad. I mean, the case is sad.
I think there have been, I mean, we haven't been particularly nice about her here. Remember, she was 18 to 22 when all of this is happening. She's still a baby.
Yeah. From a poor family, abandoned by her father, probably just trying to survive. I think there have been a lot of people out there theorizing that she was, like you guys said, a prostitute.
I don't think that's true. But I think it makes sense. I mean, it makes for a good tale, right?
To be like, this mom was walking her baby, and she stumbled across the body of this person who wasn't doing what she was supposed to be doing, right? She was just a troublemaker and got killed. I can see how the press took off with this story.
It sounds like she had borderline personality disorder, in my opinion.
BPD, that's my official diagnosis.
And it aligns with a lot of things she did, like lying, very promiscuous. But we don't know that she was promiscuous.
We just don't know.
No, apparently people are saying the bigger, that I think it's more likely that she was like leading men on to get meals and drinks and places to stay, and then wasn't like, you know, was a tease, if you will.
I think that is more likely than that she was sleeping around for money, you know?
Well, I mean, I never said she was sleeping around.
Well, you said promiscuous, and I, what is promiscuous?
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean that she was sleeping around. I didn't mean for money. I never said she was a prostitute.
Colleen said prostitute.
I'm saying, sounds like BPD.
Okay, BPD. Not that she deserved to die in the horrible way that she did.
Yeah, no.
I mean, no one deserves to die. Again, this is horrendous. This is probably the most gruesome murder I've ever heard of.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, again, I've read and watched a lot of true crime, and I'm like, this is hard for me.
This is gory. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Guys, just a reminder, don't forget to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages at 3SchemeQueens.
That's the number 3SchemeQueens, all one word. We're also on Reddit, same username.
If you want to check out our website, go to 3schemequeens.com and you can find links to our social media accounts, our Buzzsprout page, all of our episodes, additional content, and our contact page where you can engage with us and share any updates
on the topics that we have discussed. Let us know how we're doing and what you want to hear next. There are also opportunities to financially support us with links to buy us a cup of coffee and links to our merch store.
As always, if you choose not to financially support us, we appreciate the follows, the downloads, the listens, the likes. Kait, what should the people do?
Yeah, if you want to take out your phone right now and text it to three of your most weak stomached friends and say, never fast forward, I'm joking. Oh, my God.
That would be a cruel joke.
However, take it out, take your phone out, send this to three people who like a good mystery, like a good true crime story, maybe also has followed the Zodiac Killer or not, and wants to continue to tune in to our podcast, text it to three people,
then scroll on down, leave us a five-star review, leave us a comment, interact with us on our social media platform, share us with your friends and family, and yeah. All right. And we will see you next Tuesday.
We will see you next Tuesday.
Bye.