January 7, 1947
Robert Manley wires Elizabeth at the French residence in San Diego and tells her he has plans to come down the following day and wants to see her.
January 7, 1947, 11:30 p.m.
That same night, Dorothy French's neighbor sees a car drive up outside of Dorothy's residence just before midnight. The neighbor sees three individuals, two men and a woman, get out of the car and go to the front door, where they knock, then wait for a few minutes. Elizabeth secretly watches them but does not answer the door, and the three hurriedly return to their car and leave. I submit that these two men are George Hodel and Fred Sexton, who somehow have found out where Elizabeth is staying.
January 8, 1947, 5:30 p.m.
Robert Manley arrives at the French residence to see Elizabeth, who asks for a ride with him back to Los Angeles. He tells her he has business to take care of first but that he will take her with him and they can return to Los Angeles the following day. Manley gets a motel room in San Diego for the night, and, for the first time, as he tells the police after they pick him up for questioning after Elizabeth's murder, he notices deep scratches on her arms. Elizabeth informs him they are from 'a jealous dark-haired, Italian man from San Diego.' These visible marks and scratches on Elizabeth's arms are completely consistent with the story of her attack that she told the taxi-stand manager ten days earlier. Elizabeth places a phone call from a cafe at Pacific Highway and Balboa Drive just outside San Diego to a man in Los Angeles. Red Manley, standing nearby, overhears parts of the conversation, enough of it at least to inform police later on that she called a man in Los Angeles and 'made arrangements to meet him somewhere in the downtown area, the following evening, January 9.' LAPD and DA investigators will later successfully trace the phone records and verify that the person she called was the 'wealthy Hollywood man,' whose identity has been established as Dr. George Hodel.
January9-11, 1947
Over the course of these two days, friends and acquaintances see and speak with Elizabeth in the downtown and Hollywood areas.
Also, between these dates, George Hodel accosts and assaults seventeen-year-old Armand Robles while the young man is approaching a footpad in the downtown area. George will later send the young man's photos to the press, identifying Robles as 'the werewolf killer.'
January 12, 1947
George and Elizabeth go to the downtown hotel at 300 East Washington Boulevard, where the hotel owners, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, see the couple during check-in and, after the murder, make positive identifications of both from photographs.
January 14, 1947, in the afternoon
A sobbing and fearful Elizabeth runs up to Officer McBride in a downtown bus depot. McBride escorts her back to a Main Street bar to obtain her purse and later sees her exit with two men and a woman. I believe these three are the same trio that came searching for Elizabeth at the Frenches' residence a week earlier, that is, George Hodel, Fred Sexton, and the same unidentified woman.
January 14, 1947, 3:00-4:00 P.M.
From the downtown bar, George Hodel takes Elizabeth Short to the Franklin House. He gags her mouth, binds her hands and feet with rope, and then begins a prolonged and systematic process in which Elizabeth is beaten and subjected to ritualistic and sadistic torture, is sexually assaulted and then slain.
January 14-15, 1947
George Hodel removes Elizabeth's body from the Franklin House, drives due south on Normandie Avenue and parks his car at the isolated vacant lot at 39th and Norton. Father removes both sections of the body, and carefully poses his 'masterpiece.' On his drive home he stops halfway and places her purse and shoes on top of a trashcan on Crenshaw Boulevard.
January 15, 1947
Tying up loose ends, possibly to pay for the hotel room, and still using the identity of 'Mr. Barnes,' George Hodel returns to the hotel at 300 East Washington Boulevard, where he tells Mr. Johnson he 'expects his wife to join him.' When Johnson jokingly replies, 'You were gone a few days; I thought you might be dead,' George becomes agitated, visibly nervous, and immediately leaves.
January 15, 1947, late evening
George Hodel enters an unidentified Hollywood bar, where he asks the bartender whether 'Sherryl' is working that night. After being told it is her night off, he leaves.
January 16, 1947, late evening
George Hodel returns to the same bar the next night and meets Sherryl Maylond, the ex-roommate of Elizabeth Short's at the Chancellor Hotel, room 501. Identifying himself as 'Clement,' George Hodel informs Sherryl he wants to talk to her 'about Betty Short.' But Sherryl refuses to talk to him and he leaves the bar.
January 21, 25, and 26, 1947
George Hodel enters the Hub Bar and Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, where on three separate nights he identifies himself to women and the bartender as 'George, an FBI agent working on the Black Dahlia investigation.' On the final day he approaches an attractive waitress named Dorothy Perfect, whom he propositions by promising her, 'I can fix you up with your own apartment on the Sunset Strip.' He also informs the waitress, 'I can tell you who killed Elizabeth Short.' Dorothy Perfect, believing the man is under the influence of narcotics, calls the sheriff's department, while George Hodel flees into the night, never to return.
In the days and weeks that follow the discovery of Elizabeth Short's body, George phones city editor James Richardson, promising to mail him a few of her personal belongings, which he does. Then, as the Black Dahlia Avenger, he sends a dozen taunting mailings to the press and detectives, makes and then withdraws his promise to surrender, and continues his ongoing cat-and-mouse game with the police department.
In rapid succession during the months following the Dahlia killing, George and Fred kidnap, rape, and murder lone women off the streets of Los Angeles, most of whom they savagely beat and strangle. More kidnappings and murders follow in 1948 and 1949. Even after Father's arrest for incest on October 6, 1949, he and Sexton commit
