Chancellor Hotel on Saturday, January 11, 1947, the same hotel where Elizabeth Short had shared room 501 with seven women the previous December. While working at the building on January 11, he told police he heard 'loud arguing' coming from the rear of the hotel. Checking to see what the commotion was, he saw Elizabeth Short and another woman involved in what he described as 'a bitter argument.' The second woman was 'cursing loudly at Elizabeth,' according to his statement, and Simone feared the two women were on the verge of physically fighting. The second woman saw Simone approach, looked at him, and yelled, 'Oh, nuts to you!' then turned and walked out of the hotel. When she was gone, Elizabeth asked Simone, 'Is there a rear exit to the hotel?' He said there wasn't and walked Elizabeth to the front door, where she got into a waiting taxi.
I. A. Jorgenson was a Los Angeles cab driver who provided evidence to police of another sighting of Elizabeth Short, this time on the night of January 11, 1947. Jorgenson told the detectives his cab was parked outside of the Rosslyn Hotel, at 6th and Main Streets in downtown Los Angeles, when a man and a woman he positively identified as Elizabeth Short got in. The man told him to drive them to a motel in Hollywood. Police sources would not provide the press with the description of the man or the name of the motel, telling reporters 'they would first conduct a follow-up and interview employees of the motel in Hollywood.'
'John Doe Number 2,' another secret witness police kept under wraps from reporters, was a gas station attendant working at the Beverly Hills Hotel who saw Elizabeth Short in the Beverly Hills area in the early-morning hours of January 11. The witness told detectives that around 2:30 a.m. he saw a vehicle, which he described as 'a 1942 tan Chrysler coupe,' stopped at the service station for gas. He positively identified Elizabeth Short from police photos as the same woman he saw in the backseat of the car. 'She seemed very upset and frightened,' he noted. He also saw a second woman in the car, whom he described only as 'wearing dark clothing.' He described the male driver as 'about thirty years of age, six foot one, 190 pounds.'
As reported earlier in the LAPD investigative chronology chapter, Mr. and Mrs. William Johnson, owners and on-site managers of a hotel located at 300 East Washington Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, are the two most important witnesses police never brought forward to the public, because on January 12 they saw Elizabeth in the company of the man who most likely killed her. They saw this prime suspect again on January 15, after Elizabeth's body had been discovered. They told police that on Sunday, January 12, 1947, at approximately 10:00 a.m., they were working at their hotel when a man, whom they described as '25 to 35 years of age, medium complexion, medium height,' came to the desk and 'asked for a room.'
An hour later, a woman they positively identified as Elizabeth Short came to the hotel and joined the man who had booked the room. Mrs. Johnson provided the following description: 'She had on beige or pink slacks, a full- length beige coat, white blouse and white bandanna over her head, and she was carrying a plastic purse with two handles.'
Mr. Johnson told police that 'the man refused to sign the registration, when he checked in, and told me to put down Barnes and wife.' The man told Mr. Johnson they had just moved out of Hollywood. The Johnsons watched the man and Elizabeth go to their room, and that was the last time either of them saw Elizabeth Short.
LAPD detectives showed both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson photographs found in Elizabeth Short's luggage, and after viewing the many separate photographs the Johnsons positively identified the victim, Elizabeth Short, and her male companion who checked into the hotel with her as 'Mr. Barnes.' The police did not release the identity of 'Mr. Barnes.'
C. G. Williams, a bartender at the Dugout Cafe at 634 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles, told police and reporters that when he was working at the bar on the afternoon of January 12, 1947, he saw a woman, whom he positively identified as Elizabeth Short, walk into the bar accompanied by 'an attractive blonde.' Elizabeth was a regular customer well-known to him. The bartender clearly remembered Elizabeth's visit that day, as 'a fracas occurred,' along with shouting, after two men tried to pick up the ladies and were rejected.
Former jockey John Jiroudek had known Elizabeth Short when she worked at the Camp Cooke PX during the time he was a G.I. stationed there. He remembered her in particular, he told police, because he was there when she was chosen as the Camp Cooke 'Cutie of the Week.' He told detectives he saw her again in a brief encounter on January 13, 1947, when they crossed paths at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. She was a passenger in a 1937 Ford sedan. A blonde female was driving the car. He spoke briefly with Elizabeth at the intersection, and the two women drove off.
As also referred to earlier in the LAPD investigative chronology, policewoman Myrl McBride, walking a beat in downtown Los Angeles, was probably one of the last people to have seen Elizabeth Short alive. She came forward to her bosses in the department after seeing photographs of the Jane Doe Number 1 who had just been identified from FBI records as Elizabeth Short. Myrl McBride positively identified her to superiors as the same woman who had come running up to her at the downtown bus depot, in fear for her life.
McBride reported that on the afternoon of January 14, 1947, while she was on her beat at the bus depot in downtown Los Angeles, Elizabeth Short ran up to her 'sobbing in terror' and told her, 'Someone wants to kill me.' Short said that she had come from a bar up the street and had just run into an ex-boyfriend. Officer McBride said that Short told her she 'lives in terror' of a former serviceman whom she had just met in a bar up the street. McBride added, 'She told me the suitor had threatened to kill her if he found her with another man.'
McBride said she walked the victim back into the Main Street bar, where she recovered her purse. A short time later, McBride again observed the victim 'reenter the bar, and then emerge with two men and a woman.' At that time McBride had a brief second conversation with Elizabeth Short, who told her that she 'was going to meet her parents at the bus station later in the evening.'
On January 16, the day the body was identified and photographs obtained, Officer McBride provided an unequivocal positive identification of Elizabeth Short as the same person who ran to her 'in terror, fearful of being killed.' A day or two following that positive identification, her statement was then 'modified by detectives to being uncertain.' My initial evaluation of McBride's statement from positive to uncertain was that LAPD detective- supervisors wanted the officer to, in police terminology, 'CYA' (cover your ass). They couldn't allow the public to think that one of their own basically took no action and allowed the victim to walk into the hands of her killers just hours before she was murdered. Better to have her modify her statement and let the public think that maybe the woman McBride had contact with was not Elizabeth. (Sadly, this was not the case.) LAPD's need to minimize or reverse McBride's positive identification pointed to a much more sinister intent.
From the various witnesses who saw Elizabeth Short between January 9 and January 14, 1947, it's clear there was no 'missing week' in Elizabeth's life. That week was crisscrossed with sightings by both complete strangers and acquaintances, most of whom spoke unequivocally about Elizabeth's moods and movements in the days and hours before her murder, and all of whom saw her within a twelve-mile radius of downtown Los Angeles. These twelve witnesses, culled from reports of other sightings that are less than reliable, are sound.
Officer McBride's sighting of Elizabeth just twenty hours before the discovery of her body, and a mere eight hours before Dr. Newbarr's forensic estimation of the time of her murder, must focus anyone's attention and suspicions on the three individuals in whose company she was seen. Who were these two men and the woman with Elizabeth? What were the descriptions of them provided by Officer McBride but not released to the public? Was one of these two men the person that Elizabeth told Officer McBride about in the bus depot, while 'sobbing in terror'? Was he the same man whom Elizabeth just a short time earlier had fled from in the Main Street bar, the same 'jealous suitor who had threatened to kill her'?
