31
Forgotten Victims, 1940s:
The Probables
I HAVE PREVIOUSLY PRESENTED A SERIES of seven killings and one Dahlia-related assault-robbery. Based on all the evidence from my investigations, it is my confident belief that George Hodel and Fred Sexton committed those crimes. Those eight victims are: Ora Murray, Georgette Bauerdorf, Armand Robles, Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French, Gladys Kern, Mimi Boomhower, and Jean Spangler.
The more I reviewed and researched the period 1943 to 1950, the more I became convinced that these two men were serial killers. I suspect history will ultimately prove them to have far outdone their counterparts of the late 1970s, Los Angeles's Hillside Stranglers Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who were charged with twelve murders of Los Angeles-area women. I am not alone in my suspicion; many of the crimes that follow were identified as 'suspect' by the press as possibly being 'Dahlia related.'
As we have seen, some law enforcement officers of other Southern California localities, including the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, the Long Beach police, and the San Diego police, also believed there might well be a connection between Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French, and their own unsolved murders. In the early months of the serial killings, even some 'renegade' LAPD detectives believed that the Dahlia and Red Lipstick murders, as well as that of a third victim, Evelyn Winters, were connected, and went so far as to release their ' 11 Points of Similarity' to the press, which printed the speculations in March 1947. The more I looked at the crimes and the patterns, the more I found.
As preface to this next grouping of murders I will provide some personal and professional observations as relates to serial killers. First the personal.
I have no desire to add to my father's and Fred Sexton's already horrendous body counts. Nor have I arbitrarily sought out unsolved L.A. murders to throw in 'just in case.'I'm an old-school homicide detective, trained by much older schoolers. As a rookie detective they told me, 'Kid, you're standing in the shoes of the victim. It's your case. If you don't find the killer it's likely nobody ever will. Go get 'em!' I am proud that I was indoctrinated and 'programmed' to believe that a detective's highest responsibility is to the victim and his family. That responsibility never stops. It remains as true fifty years after a killing as it did on the first day of the investigation. It is a sacred trust, handed down to the next generation of officers. They too stand in the shoes of the victims. Knowing this, even at the risk of overloading the reader with so many additional crimes, I believe it is my responsibility to make known what I see, what I believe, and what my professional instincts tell me is so.
From a professional standpoint, I would point out that there exist many misconceptions about serial killers and their M.O.s. Often these misconceptions come from in house, from experienced homicide detectives, who are simply wrong! Fixed attitudes, quick judgments, mixed with egos — a dangerous combination. Here are a few examples: 'Can't be the same killer, all his victims were white girls.' 'Nope, he only liked dark-haired girls in their twenties. 'Definitely not, he only used a white sash cord to strangle, not a stocking.' 'He stabbed them in the back, not the front.' 'He never struck on Saturdays.' ' That crime is too far away, our guy never went south of 5th Street.' Endless reasons for detectives to say, 'Not our guy.' However, as we have seen so dramatically in the previous cases, one should not disregard or eliminate a suspect
Here then, in this chapter and the next, are summaries of an additional nine murders and one attempted murder that I believe need to be examined by law enforcement as attributable to the same two men.
For various reasons, these ten are a rung or two down the evidentiary ladder from the victims cited earlier. Therefore, lacking additional information and documentation, I am classifying them as 'probables.'
These crimes span the years 1947 to 1959. The victims include: Evelyn Winters, Laura Trelstad, Rosenda Mondragon, Marian Newton, Viola Norton, Louise Springer, Geneva Ellroy, Bobbie Long, Helene Jerome, and a 'Jane Doe.'
With very few exceptions, these crimes followed similar patterns: abduction; savage, sadistic beatings; occasional mutilation and laceration of the victim's bodies; generally followed by ligature strangulation and dumping of the nude or partially clad bodies in public places, with no attempt at concealment. In many of the crimes, the suspect(s) ceremoniously wrapped or draped the victim's dress, coat, or cape over her body, and in at least one inserted a large tree branch inside the victim's vagina. I interpret all of these actions as a variation of posing, as Father and or Sexton had done in the White Gardenia, Dahlia, and Red Lipstick murders.
Evelyn Winters (March 12, 1947)
On the morning of March 12, 1947, just fifty-eight days after Elizabeth Short's murder, and thirty-two days after that of Mrs. Jeanne French, another woman's body was found in downtown Los Angeles.
She was quickly identified as Evelyn Winters. Her crime bore strong similarities to both the Jeanne French and Elizabeth Short killings.
Evelyn Winter's nude and severely bludgeoned body was found dumped on a vacant lot at 830 Ducommun Street, near some railroad tracks, just two miles from downtown Los Angeles. The victim's shoes and undergarments were found at Commercial and Center Streets, one block from where the body lay. The victim, who was forty-two, had been struck repeatedly with a club or pipe about the head and face.
Before he — or they — left the scene, the killer wrapped the victims dress around her neck. Police believed she had been slain elsewhere, then the body dragged from an automobile to the dirt lot. Footprints and tire tracks were visible nearby. The cause of death was due to 'blunt force trauma causing a concussion and hemorrhage to the brain.'
A check of the victim's background revealed that Evelyn's life had taken a downward spiral, most likely because of alcoholism. From 1929 to 1942 she had been a secretary at Paramount Studios. In 1932 she met and married the head of Paramount's legal department, attorney Sidney Justin. Divorced five years later, Evelyn married a soldier during the war, but they too were divorced within a few years.
The victim's arrest record in recent years showed that she had been booked by police for a number of alcohol- related offenses, all in downtown Los Angeles.
