two most important legends. But the facts are undeniable.
Violence was so prevalent on the streets of Los Angeles by 1949 that the public had finally had enough. Each day's headlines featured new stories of kidnapping, rape, and murders of women even in the city's upscale neighborhoods. No one was safe, and the community was outraged over the ineffectiveness of their police department. Worse, the department itself seemed to be no better than the gamblers, hoods, and thugs it was supposed to be getting off the streets.
First, there were the revelations of graft and corruption that came out of the Administrative Vice Division when Sergeant Stoker went public with the story of the Brenda Allen scandal. Hard on the heels of a public airing of LAPD's dirty laundry came the murder of Louise Springer, whose body was found strangled in her car near downtown. Then came what was to be known as 'the Battle of Sunset Boulevard,' when famed gangster Mickey Cohen and his entourage were gunned down on the streets of Hollywood. Then people began disappearing under mysterious circumstances, one after the other. First was Mimi Boomhower on August 18. Then on September 2 came the turn of Barney Weiner, a fifty-year-old newspaperman and district manager for the
By October, Los Angeles had jokingly become known as 'the Port of Missing Persons,' but it was no joke and its citizens were not laughing. Not only notorious hoods and gangsters went missing, but ordinary people as well. It was time the district attorney did what he was elected to do and put a stop to it.
In 1949, a grand jury was empaneled. Very quickly, it became proactive and, led by fiery jury foreman Harry Lawson, seemed determined to get some answers. Conducting its own investigations, and using its subpoena powers, it began with the Brenda Allen case and Stoker's charges of a systemic corruption within the LAPD, reaching all the way to the top.
After the Brenda Allen case and Charles Stoker, the next item on the grand jury's agenda was the Black Dahlia murder. Why hadn't the case been solved, and, if a fix had been put in, who was behind it?
Investigators from the district attorney's office, working through their own operatives, interviews with witnesses, and information developed by unnamed private investigators independent of the LAPD, provided dramatic new information to the grand jury.
The actual testimony itself, as with all grand juries, was secret and, because the case is still technically open, remains secret to this day. However, from articles printed in the dailies, it became clear that DA investigators believed that detectives within the LAPD assigned to the Gangster Squad had orchestrated the cover-up. DA investigators testified before the grand jury with respect to their own investigation and findings, which were the results of having assembled and organized all facts related to the Dahlia investigation during the thirty-four-month period since the murder. They suspected that the Gangster Squad detectives were protecting the identity of 'a wealthy Hollywood man' who was a prime suspect. The DA investigators gave the grand jury the name of the suspect and his address, saying they had found witnesses who would testify to having seen bloody clothing of the type and size worn by Elizabeth Short, as well as bloody bedsheets, inside the suspect's home.
While it did not release the name and address of the suspected murder residence to the public, an article in the
In secret testimony, DA investigator Lieutenant Frank Jemison identified this 'wealthy Hollywood man' as the same person whom Elizabeth Short had phoned from San Diego on January 8, 1947; the same man, who, four days later, on January 12, using the name 'Mr. Barnes,' checked into the East Washington Boulevard Hotel with Elizabeth Short as 'husband and wife.' Moreover, the DA investigators testified, the hotel owners had positively identified 'Barnes' from a photograph found in the victim's belongings, and the man, according to the testimony, was 'connected to a foreign government.'*
Because of this dramatic new testimony from the DA investigators, the grand jury subpoenaed LAPD detectives to testify how they had investigated the case and what they had found. The jury called seven members of the Gangster Squad, including the head of the unit, Lieutenant William Burns (could Bill Burns be Stoker's 'Bill Ball'?), and a Detective J.Jones ('Joe Small'?). The remaining Gangster Squad detectives called were Sergeants James Ahearne, John O'Mara, and Conwell Keller, and Officers Loren K. Waggoner, Archie Case, and Donald Ward.
Next, the grand jury subpoenaed Deputy Chief Thad Brown, as well as interim police chief William Worton, who had replaced former chief Clemence Horrall. Horrall, one recalls, had resigned shortly after his perjury indictment resulting from Charles Stoker's testimony in the Brenda Allen case. In June 1949, Mayor Bowron had appointed Worton, a retired Marine Corps general, as the LAPD's interim chief. Worton, restricted to one year of service, would remain only until the police commissioners made their final vote between the two top candidates, Brown and Parker.
The grand jury asked Chief Worton about the overall investigation of the Black Dahlia case and about the possibility that the wealthy Hollywood man was being protected by members of his department's Gangster Squad. A December 7 article published by the
It was the statement 'information presently available' that red-flagged the chief's statement for me. It meant that Worton had left himself a very convenient back door were the Dahlia case ever to blow up in his face.
After its two-month review of the Dahlia case, the grand jury, whose authority had expired on December 31, 1949, came out with a scathingly critical report of the Los Angeles Police Department and a demand for a complete reinvestigation of the Elizabeth Short murder, as well as of many other unsolved murders of female victims during the previous five-year period. On January 12, 1950, a front-page headline appeared in the
