Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

newspapers' words, 'Dahlia-related.' Because of LAPD's dogged resistance, and in some instances outright refusal, to share information with neighboring law enforcement, nothing came of the connections that to me seem readily apparent.

During a grand jury investigation in 1949, later articles quoted several LAPD officers who testified that when they had attempted to pursue leads possibly connecting the Dahlia case to one in Long Beach, they were summarily removed from the active investigation and transferred to another division. Unless some commander ordered detectives to share information, the rule was, 'It's our case,' and little or no information was exchanged between agencies, nor was it even distributed to divisional detectives within the department. This LAPD exclusivity and informational lockdown was maintained for over five decades. As it relates to the Elizabeth Short investigation, nothing has changed from day one. That, I firmly believe, is why, despite what I consider some very compelling evidence, the killers of Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French, plus three additional women that I present below — Ora Murray, Georgette Bauerdorf, and Gladys Kern — and probably many more victims, were never caught. As we shall see, it was neither ignorance nor inefficiency that prevented these crimes from being solved, but rather a massive cover-up on the part of the LAPD.

Following are three investigative summaries on victims Ora Murray, Georgette Bauerdorf, and Gladys Kern, the first two crimes occurring before Black Dahlia, the last roughly a year after.

Ora Murray (July 27, 1943): The 'White Gardenia' Murder

Early on a Tuesday morning, July 27, 1943, the fifteen-year-old son of a golf course greenskeeper discovered the nude body of Ora Elizabeth Murray, age forty-two, lying on the ground near the parking lot of the Fox Hills golf course in West Los Angeles. The victim's dress had been wrapped around her body like a sarong, a white gardenia placed under her right shoulder. She had been severely beaten about her face and body. The wristwatch Ora Murray was wearing had been smashed and broken during the assault, probably as a result of her raising her arms to defend herself against the blows to her head as her assailant repeatedly struck her with a heavy blunt instrument. The destruction of her watch in all likelihood fixed the exact time of her murder, 1:50 a.m., consistent with an early-morning attack just six hours before the body was discovered. At the scene that morning, detectives picked up what was described by the newspapers as 'a torn credit card from an oil company, containing a serial number,' a potentially important piece of evidence that detectives said they would investigate.

The autopsy performed on the victim revealed that the cause of death was due to 'constriction of the larynx by strangulation' along with the contributory factors of 'concussion of the brain and subdural hemorrhage.' The body was found just outside the Los Angeles city limits, and therefore was in the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, whose homicide division handled the investigation.

Sheriff's detectives quickly discovered that the victim, who was married to an Army sergeant stationed in Mississippi, had only arrived in Los Angeles the previous Thursday. Mrs. Murray had been visiting her sister, Latona Leinann, and her husband, Oswald, who lived in L.A. and who, at the time Ora Murray's body was discovered, were in the process of filing a missing persons report with the sheriff.

Tracing Ora's movements the night before her murder provided homicide detectives with the following information from Latona:

On Monday night, July 26, 1943, Ora and her sister decided to go dancing at the Zenda Ballroom, at 7th and Figueroa Avenue, in downtown Los Angeles (one block from Father's medical office at 7th and Flower). At the Zenda, Ora and Latona met two men whom the latter described as 'Preston,' an Army sergeant, and a civilian, 'tall, thin, with black hair,' named 'Paul,' whom she characterized as 'very suave and a very good dancer.' Latona said that Paul was wearing 'a dark double-breasted suit and a dark fedora.' She also remembered, 'Paul told us that he lived in San Francisco and was just down visiting Los Angeles for a few days.'

The foursome danced for some time, then Paul offered to show the two women 'around Hollywood and go dancing at the Palladium.' At that point, Preston took off, leaving the two women with Paul.

Latona reluctantly agreed to go along with her sister and Paul, but only on condition that they drive to her house to pick up her husband. Paul agreed, and drove the women in what Latona told detectives was 'a flashy blue convertible coupe' to Latona's house. The Los Angeles Examiner quoted Latona as saying, 'We went home to get Oswald, but he was sleepy and wouldn't go and finally my sister told the man she would go with him anyway.' Latona said she saw her sister leave her residence with the handsome stranger and that was the last she saw of her until she identified the body for sheriff's detectives the following afternoon.

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department continued its search in an effort to identify Paul, whom they considered their prime suspect. By the following week they took a statement from a witness, thirty-one-year-old secretary Jeanette Walser, who said she had met someone who might be connected to the Murray murder investigation. The man called himself Grant Terry and told her he was a federal attorney from the East Coast. After what Jeanette Walser called a 'whirlwind ten-day courtship,' they became engaged and were to be married five days later. However, it turned out the man called 'Terry' was a con man who bilked Walser out of $700 cash and her diamond ring before he vanished.

The jilted witness told detectives that she had also loaned Grant Terry her blue convertible the day before the murder had occurred, and he had returned it to her the day following the murder. At that time, Terry had told his fiancee that 'he had to go to San Diego with a man named George [my emphasis] to try a case that had unexpectedly come up, but would return in two days.' Grant Terry never came back.

Jeanette Walser also provided detectives with a photograph of Grant Terry, which ran in the Los Angeles Examiner on August 5, 1943, alongside the front-page story Walser had told police.

Detectives showed Walser's photograph of 'Grant Terry' to Latona, as well as to several other unnamed women who saw 'Paul' with the victim the night of her murder. These witnesses, while not making a positive identification, said that the photograph strongly resembled 'Paul,' but that none of them could remember Paul's having glasses — in the Walser photograph he was wearing glasses.

The case was submitted to the district attorney's office. Based on the circumstances and tentative identifications, Deputy District Attorney Edwin Myers issued a felony fugitive warrant charging 'Grant Terry, age 34,' with the murder of Ora Elizabeth Murray.

In a related article in the Los Angeles Examiner three days later, headlined, 'U.S. Joins Hunt for Gardenia Slayer Suspect,' the newspaper reported that a U.S. federal warrant had also been issued by the FBI on August 7 charging separate felony counts and naming 'Grant Terry' as a fugitive. The felony warrant, based on the information provided by Jeanette Walser, charged Grant Terry with 'impersonating an attorney of the lands division of the War Department, in which false capacity he allegedly obtained $700 from Miss Jeanette J. Walser, 8019 South Figueroa Street.'

At a coroner's inquest on August 5, Ora Murray's sister provided a hesitant but tentative identification of the photograph of 'Grant Terry' provided by the witness Jeannette Walser, stating, 'It could very easily be Paul, but I can't say positively.' She told the inquest jurors that 'while the photograph strongly resembled 'Paul,' that at no time during the evening, either at the dance hall or while driving the convertible did he wear glasses, as seen in the photograph.'