Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

victim only hours before she was murdered.

The group of witnesses referred to in LAPD press releases as 'five unidentified youths' told detectives that they had been with the victim at various Hollywood nightspots both in December 1946, and also a few months earlier, when she had told them about her plans 'to marry George, an army pilot from Texas.' Also on January 16, the police interviewed in Hollywood two of Elizabeth's former roommates, Anne Toth and Linda Rohr, as well as Inez Keeling, the former manager of the Camp Cooke PX.

Friday, January 17, 1947

The consulting psychiatrist for the Los Angeles Police Department at the time of the murder, Dr. Paul De River, said in the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express two days after the murder that whoever the suspect was, he 'hates womankind,' a 'sadistic fiend.' The killer was unlike a typical killer the LAPD might face because, said, Dr. De River, 'In his act, the murderer was manifesting a sadistic component of a sado-masochist complex. He evidently was following the law of analytic retaliation, 'What has been done to me, I will do to you.' These types of killers,' he continued, 'are usually highly perverted, and resort to various forms of perversion and means of torture to satisfy their lusts.'

The psychiatrist further noted, 'This type of suspect above all seeks the physical and moral pain and the disgraceful humiliation and maltreatment of his victims,' adding, 'These sadists have a superabundance of curiosity and are liable to spend much time with their victims after the spark of life has flickered and died.' Moreover, he said, 'The suspect may even be a studious type who delighted in feeling himself into the humiliation of his victim. He was the experimenter and analyst in the most brutal forms of torture.'

Saturday, January 18, 1947

By the weekend, the investigation had widened its circle of witnesses to include Dorothy and Elvera French in San Diego, California, whom reporters from the Examiner newspaper had been able to locate from the return address on a letter Elizabeth had sent to her mother in early January. The Frenches told reporters that Elizabeth had stored a trunk at the Railway Express station in Los Angeles. The reporters quickly located the trunk and Examiner city editor Richardson cut a deal with Captain Donahoe to reveal the location of Elizabeth's luggage in exchange for an Examiner exclusive on its contents. Captain Jack didn't like the condition that he had to open the trunk at the Examiner offices, but getting his hands on the trunk was more important than butting heads with a hungry city editor, so he reluctantly agreed.

The detectives and reporters who opened the trunk found many photographs of Elizabeth posed with a variety of men, most in uniform, from enlisted men to a three-star general. They also found love letters from Elizabeth to a Major Matt Gordon and a Lieutenant Joseph Fickling, along with telegrams sent to her by a number of people.

One of these telegrams — undated — was sent to 'Beth Short 220 21st Street, Miami Beach, Florida,' presumably from an unknown suitor in Washington, D.C., who gave no name and no return address. The telegram simply read:

Exhibit 15

A promise is a promise to a person of the world=Yours.

LAPD sent investigators to Miami Beach, but whatever they found was not released to the public. As curious as the telegram may seem today, it's obvious the sender knew that Elizabeth would know who it was from. The telegram was too familiar, too confident in tone, to have been a prank or a joke. This was a real message from someone in an ongoing relationship with Elizabeth, someone who felt he or she had been crossed because Elizabeth had gone back on her word. Given Elizabeth's oft-related fears about a jealous boyfriend, and Myrl McBride's report to her superiors of spotting Elizabeth in downtown L.A. too afraid to go back into a bar to retrieve her purse, there is no doubt Elizabeth was very afraid of someone not just during the second week in January but much earlier.

The police also interviewed Mrs. Matt Gordon Sr. by phone in Colorado about a separate telegram she had sent the victim notifying her of her son's death, which was also found in the victim's luggage while detectives in Charlotte, North Carolina, were interviewing Joseph Fickling. The Fickling interview was important because it revealed that Elizabeth, evidently believing she was about to escape from whoever was pursuing her, had written that since she 'would soon be leaving for Chicago, not to write her in California.'

That same Saturday also saw some crack investigative work by crime reporters from the Examiner, who interviewed the Frenches in San Diego about a man named Red Manley. They obtained a description of his car from Vera and Dorothy, searched the surrounding area, found the motel where Manley had signed for a room, got his license number from the registry, and called it in to city editor James Richardson. From the California DMV, Richardson got Man-ley's home address in the L.A. suburb of Huntington Park and sent reporters to stake out the location. When on January 18 Manley returned from a business trip to San Francisco, the reporters were there to greet him, along with the cops, who took him in for questioning. He was grilled at the station house for the next twelve hours without a lawyer and without being charged. He adamantly stuck to his guns that he knew nothing about the murder, and begged the detectives to administer a polygraph or shoot him up with sodium pen-tathol to satisfy themselves that he was telling the truth.

Sunday, January 19, 1947

Manley, still in police custody, took an initial polygraph, which according to LAPD was 'inconclusive.' He continued to deny any involvement with the murder, but the police remained unconvinced and had a second polygraph test administered by criminalist Ray Pinker, during which Manley fell asleep. He was awakened and pressured further, but eventually Pinker had to admit that Manley had passed the test, removing him, at least temporarily, as a suspect.

At the request of the police, Herald Express crime reporter Agness Underwood subsequently interviewed Manley at the police station to see if she could find out anything the police had overlooked. In the course of her interview she learned of a phone call Elizabeth had made to an unknown man from the San Diego restaurant where she and Manley had stopped. During this call Elizabeth had made arrangements to meet someone on the evening of January 9, in downtown Los Angeles.*

Monday, January 20, 1947

In what might have been the first real solid eyewitness lead, East Washington Boulevard Hotel owners and managers Mr. and Mrs. William Johnson told the police and reporters that Elizabeth Short and a man claiming to be her husband had registered for a room as 'Mr. and Mrs. Barnes' on Sunday, January 12, 1947, only two days before the murder. The Johnsons described what they termed the man's 'bizarre behavior,' particularly his nervousness and agitation after his return to the hotel on January 15. When 'Mr. Barnes' showed up in the hotel lobby on January 15, Mr. Johnson joked that because he and his wife had disappeared for three days, he thought the couple was 'dead,' at which Mr. Barnes, visibly shaken, turned and walked out of the hotel.