arrested and detained at Juvenile Hall, where she was interviewed by LAPD Juvenile detectives.
Martin told the police that she knew Elizabeth 'only casually.' Martin said that Elizabeth's friend Marjorie Graham had come out from Massachusetts, and Elizabeth persuaded Graham to share a room with her and Martin at the Hawthorne Hotel. The three women lived together for a short time until, 'after a brief argument' with Martin, 'Short and Graham moved out of that room and took another room in the same hotel.' Martin told police that she 'learned of the murder on January 17, when a friend stopped me on the street in Hollywood and showed me my picture in the newspaper.'
Joseph Gordon Fielding
Pilot Joseph Gordon Fielding was an Army Air Force lieutenant, honorably discharged at the end of the war, who flew for a commercial airline in Charlotte, North Carolina. Because of letters LAPD detectives found in Elizabeth Short's luggage on January 17 between the two, they contacted Fickling in January 1947 and had detectives from the Charlotte Police Department interview him.
The letters reveal a long-distance romance, more in Elizabeth's mind than in Fickling's. According to their notes, he said he had first met Elizabeth in Southern California in 1944, before he had gone overseas, and while he had corresponded with her he 'denied ever being engaged or contemplating marriage to Elizabeth Short.'
In a letter found in Elizabeth's trunk, Fickling wrote to Elizabeth on April 24, 1946:
You say in your letter you want to be good friends, but from your wire you seem to want more than that. Are you really sure just what you want? Why not pause and consider just what your coming out here to me would amount to? In your letter you mentioned a ring from Matt. You gave no further explanation. I really don't understand. I wouldn't want to interfere.
In a second letter, also found in her trunk, Fickling wrote:
I get awfully lonesome sometimes and wonder if we really haven't been very childish and foolish about the whole affair. Have we?
He wrote that an engagement or marriage to her was out of the question:
My plans are very indefinite and uncertain. There's nothing for me in the army and there doesn't seem to be much outside. Don't think I think any less of you by acting this way, because it won't be true.
Fickling told the Charlotte detectives he had received a final letter from Elizabeth dated January 8, 1947, in which she told him not to write her anymore at her address in San Diego because her plan was to relocate to Chicago.
Five unidentified youths
Immediately after LAPD detectives identified their 'Jane Doe Number 1' as Elizabeth Short, they located three young men and two women who knew her and had been in Hollywood in December 1946. Detectives interviewed them but refused to divulge their names to the press. The interview notes and witness statements that would have been entered into the LAPD murder book case file have never been made public and may no longer exist. Similarly, the whereabouts of the investigators' summaries of their interviews are unknown. All that exists is a brief but very important collective statement, made by the five to the police and released to the newspapers the day after the discovery of Elizabeth Short's body. In that statement, published in the
Juanita Ringo
Juanita Ringo was the apartment manager at the Chancellor Hotel in Hollywood, at 1842 North Cherokee Avenue, where Elizabeth shared room number 501 with seven other girls, each of them paying a dollar a day for rent. In interviews with reporters following the identification of Elizabeth Short's body, Juanita Ringo stated, 'Elizabeth came to the apartment building on November 13, 1946,' adding, 'she wasn't sociable like the other girls who lived there with her. She was more the sophisticated type.'
On December 5, 1946, Mrs. Ringo said she attempted to collect the rent from Elizabeth, who told her she did not have the money. So, Ringo said, she 'held her luggage as collateral.' Elizabeth then asked one of her roommates to accompany her to a Crescent Drive apartment in Beverly Hills, where, she told them, 'A man would pay the rent.' Elizabeth went there, obtained the money that evening, paid her landlady the following day, and moved out. Mrs. Ringo told the papers, 'I felt sorry for her even when she got behind on the rent. She looked tired and worried.'
Linda Rohr
Twenty-two-year-old Linda Rohr, who worked in 'The Rouge Room' at Max Factor's in Hollywood, was one of Elizabeth's seven roommates at the Chancellor Apartments. During interviews three days after Elizabeth's body was discovered, she told the newspapers, 'Elizabeth was odd. She had pretty blue eyes, but sometimes I think she overdid it with makeup an inch thick. Elizabeth dyed her brown hair black, then red again.' Rohr said that Elizabeth dated men frequently. 'She went out almost every night and received numerous telephone calls at the apartment from different men.'
Specifically recalling December 6, 1946, the day Elizabeth moved out, Linda Rohr said, 'Elizabeth was very anxious the morning she left. She told me, 'I've got to hurry. He's waiting for me.' None of us ever found out who 'he' was.' It was Rohr's impression, she told reporters, that 'Elizabeth was going to leave and go visit her sister in Berkeley.'
Vera and Dorothy French
Elizabeth Short's last known address before she was driven back to Los Angeles on January 9, 1947, and into the arms of her killer, was in San Diego at the home of Elvera (Vera) French, whose daughter, Dorothy, had befriended Elizabeth after she met her at a local movie theater. When she learned that Elizabeth had no money or a place to stay, Dorothy invited her to stay temporarily with her and her mother, because she felt sorry for her. Reporters learned about Vera and Dorothy from the victim's mother, Phoebe Short, and quickly drove the three hours south from L.A. to interview them.
Vera French described Elizabeth as 'a shy and somewhat mysterious' person 'my daughter, Dorothy, brought home one night as a friendly act because she was down and out.' Elizabeth told the Frenches that she 'had been married to a major in the Army who had been killed in action,' adding that she had 'borne him a child, but the child had died.'
Elizabeth also mentioned to the Frenches 'her friendship with a Hollywood celebrity, who helped her out,' but never revealed a name. Mrs. French told reporters, and also later the LAPD, that during the month Elizabeth had
