The Chilling Black Dahlia Murder Revisited

**"The Chilling Black Dahlia Murder Revisited"** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto YouTube on January 11, 2019. As a bonus episode, it was assigned to be the ninth episode of the fourth season of *BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime*, and the eighty-first episode overall. You can find it here.

## Description

Watch Ryan & Shane uncover more details of the Black Dahlia as they revisit that case. Be sure to watch the season premiere of 'I Am the Night,' premiering January 28 at 9/8c on TNT.

## Background

Around 10 AM on January 15, 1947, Betty Bersinger was taking her three year old daughter, Ann, on a morning errand to the shoe repair store, near what's now the Crenshaw neighborhood of Los Angeles. As they passed an empty lot on Norton Avenue, Bersinger recalls, "I glanced to my right, and saw this very dead, white body. My goodness, it was so white. It didn't look like anything more than perhaps an artificial model. It was so white and separated in the middle."

The body of 22 year old Elizabeth Short was lying face up and naked. Her body split in half at the waist. She was oddly posed, with her eyes open, hands above her head with elbows bent and legs out straight, and spread apart. She had been hit over the head and pieces of her flesh had been cut out. At the corners of her mouth, there were three inch long slits. As gory as the scene was, there was no blood. It appeared that the body had been drained and scrubbed before being placed where it was found. Betty Bersinger went to a nearby home and called the police to report the body. Bersinger then continued her errand.

After identifying the body by its fingerprints with help from the FBI, the LAPD began circulating a flier in the hopes of getting more information. It described Short as "five foot six inches, 118 pounds, black hair, green eyes, very attractive, bad lower teeth, fingernails chewed to quick". Eventually, more information about the woman began to emerge. Originally from Medford, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Short moved to Hollywood. Some say in the hopes of stardom. Like many actresses, she had worked as a waitress and a cashier and had dealt with periods of unemployment as she struggled to get minor acting roles.

It was common at the time for newspapers to bestow nicknames on murder cases. The papers called her, The Black Dahlia, due to reports that she often wore sleek black clothing and had striking dyed black hair. The autopsy on the body provided a chilling glimpse into Short's final moments. Officially, Short died of hemorrhage and shock. Marks on her legs, wrists, neck, and right thigh, suggested she had been bound and tortured. The slits at the corners of her mouth were made while she was still alive. She had also suffered a concussion from blows to her head. Reports say that cuts were clean, raising suspicions early on that someone with surgical skills may have been responsible.

The gory details and proximity to the glamour of Hollywood, caused Short's murder to become a huge story. Making page one headlines in Los Angeles for a full month. Feeding the sensation, was the apparent murderer themself. Nine days after her body was found, an envelope arrived at the offices of the Los Angeles examiner. It contains some of Short's belongings. Including her social security card, birth certificate, photos, and an address book that was missing a few pages. All of the items have been cleaned of fingerprints using gasoline and the envelope had been addressed using cutout letters taking from movie advertisements. All told, 13 letters were sent to the police and press, taunting them as the investigation unfolded. Many signed, Black Dahlia Avenger.

There were many suspects throughout the investigation. Its been estimated that hundreds were questioned and cleared. The police contacted about 75 men listed in the address book that was sent to the Los Angeles examiner. The majority of them said they'd met Short only briefly, going out on a dinner date or to the movies, but that things had ended before they went any further. During the case, the FBI investigated approximately 300 USC Medical School students, though, it seems nothing came of this. At one point, fingerprints were found on one of the Dahlia letters sent to the police. The FBI raced to match these prints with an identity, but the fingerprints were not in their files, so they were unable to find a match. Eventually, the case went cold.

## Theories

* **The first suspect is salesman and former Army musician, Robert "Red" Manley.** His relationship with Short began about a month before Short was murdered when Manley noticed her outside a bus station in San Diego and asked if she wanted a ride.
	+ According to Manley, at first Short would not speak to him but he was persistent and she eventually did get into his car. For the next month, Manley would take Short on dates when he was in town in San Diego. When the place where Short had been staying in San Diego suddenly fell through, Short contacted Manley and asked him to come pick her up. Manley said next they both stayed, platonically, in a hotel in Pacific Beach. After which, Manley drove them both to Los Angeles. There he says he brought Short to the Biltmore Hotel and left her there about 6:30 on the evening of January 9. As far as the investigation was ever able to ascertain, that is the last place Short was seen alive, six days before her body was discovered.
	+ When questioned by the police, Manley pleaded his innocence and willingly took two polygraph tests, both indicating that he was telling the truth. Years later, in 1954, doctors gave Manley sodium Pentothal. At one point, thought to be a truth drug, that would induce honesty and questioned him about the case. Again, it seemed Manley was innocent.
	+ Manley died on January 9, 1986, after an accidental fall in his apartment in Anaheim, California, 39 years to the day after he last saw Short alive at the Biltmore.
* **In 1997, for the 50th anniversary of the murder, the LA Times interviewed Ralph Asdel, the last living detective from the original investigation.** Asdel claimed that within weeks, he found the man he believed to be the murderer.
	+ Asdel had received a few tips and a description of a man witnesses noticed near the empty lot where Short was discovered. Other witnesses describe seeing a black car around dawn. Asdel found a man matching that description whose car, which had been recently repainted, also looked like the one described, because Asdel had no hard evidence and only a hunch to go on, he was unable to confront his suspect. But as of 1997, he believed that this mystery man was the Black Dahlia murderer.
* **The third and final suspect is well known to even those only casually familiar with the case. Dr. George Hodel.** Many who worked on the case over the years believe they interacted with the real killer at some point.
	+ Perhaps no one feels stronger than Steve Hodel. After retiring as an LAPD homicide detective, having worked on over 300 murder cases, Steve Hodel published his research, claiming the murderer was one George Hodel, the detective's own father.
	+ George Hodel was a wealthy doctor in Los Angeles, described as a well-connected, dashing man with a high IQ. George was in charge of a venereal disease clinic in LA, which supposedly gave him knowledge of the sexual lives of people ranging from local sex workers to the city's elite. While George wasn't a practicing surgeon, he was reported to have breezed through medical school, where he studied to be one.
	+ After George Hodel's death, his son Steve, found two photos of a woman who Steve believed to be Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. He began investigating, coming to believe that his father had a romantic relationship with Short and that they had been spotted together at a hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
	+ George Hodel would have had the medical training needed to produce the surgical mutilation performed on Short's body and that is only the beginning. Steve has suggested that George is also responsible for the murder of Jeanne French, which occurred a mere three weeks after Short's, on February, 10th. Like Short, French received blunt force trauma to the head and her body was also found oddly posed in a vacant lot early one morning. French's body bore the initials, BD. Possibly thought to stand for Black Dahlia, written in red lipstick.
	+ Notes allegedly sent by the killer after the murder match Hodel's handwriting, according to handwriting analysis performed by one forensic expert hired by Steve Hodel. That expert also believed that the BD initials written on Jeanne French's body matched George Hodel's handwriting.
	+ Evidence was found that Hodel had 50 pound sacks of concrete sent to his home for remodeling on January 9, 1947. the last day Short was seen alive and less than one week before her body was found. Hodel's son has claimed that there were similar bags found near Short's body that police speculated could of been used to carry Short's body from the car to the lot. What's more, George drove a black 1936 Packard that looked similar to the descriptions of the black car seen at dawn near the empty lot where Short's body was found. Steve's research pointed out similarities between how Short's body was found and work by George's reported friend, surrealist artist, Man Ray. The Dahlia's arms were posed above her head, not unlike Man Ray's photograph, possessed by MoMa, Minotaur. As for the slits on Dahlia's mouth, they could of been inspired by the artist's painting, Observatory Time, The Lovers. According to Steve, George idolized Man Ray and wanted to be an artist himself. Could the Black Dahlia have been George's sick attempt at art?
	+ One of George's daughters, Tamar Hodel, recalled her father hosting huge parties at their Hollywood adjacent home with guests including Man Ray as well as movie stars. Tamar also claimed she had posed for nude photos for Man Ray when she was a child. After running away from home in 1949, Tamar reported her father to the police, telling them he had tried to teach her about oral sex at the age of 11, that he offered her to his friends for sex when she was 14 and that George himself had had sex with her.
	+ As a side note, at age 15, Tamar gave birth to a baby girl in San Francisco. That girl, Fauna Hodel, would be adopted by a family in Nevada and not know the story of her biological grandfather until much later when conducting research of her own.
	+ George Hodel was ultimately acquitted of incest charges after several other family members testified that Tamar was lying. There are those who have stated, however, that the family could of been motivated to do so because George was the breadwinner, supporting the family. In 1950, a few years after the Black Dahlia murder, George Hodel moved or perhaps fled to the Philippines. Perhaps not so coincidentally, a woman murdered in Manila in 1967, reportedly was also found bisected and posed in an empty lot, just like the Black Dahlia. Steve claims that at the time, George Hodel was living just a half mile away from the crime scene.
	+ In 2012, Steve Hodel visited his childhood home with a production crew, another former police officer, and a search dog that picked up the scent of human decomposition in multiple locations on the property, such as the alleyway in back of the house. According to Dr. Arpad Vass, a leading forensic anthropologist, who helped pioneer chemical analysis of human decomposition, this does not technically indicate that the remains are located where the search dog found the scents, cause the markers the dog detects can move, carried by water and other forces over the decades. However, Vass himself analyzed a soil sample taken from the alley behind the home and found that it was positive for human remains. Though, the sample indicated a death that occurred anywhere from 20 to 100 years ago.
	+ After hearing about the George Hodel theory, LA Times reporter, Steve Lopez, went to the Los Angeles DA and was given access to case files and grand jury documents. In the files, he found a photo of George Hodel, listing him among 21 other suspects. Lopez also found records indicating that the LAPD had snuck listening devices into Hodel's home undetected and listened to Hodel for 40 days in 1950, not long before he left for the Philippines. The recordings do not exist anymore but transcripts of the recordings were left in the DA's files. Lopez says one of the transcripts had recorded Hodel saying, "supposing I did kill the Black Dahlia? They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary because she's dead."
	+ Another transcript describes what may have been the sound of a woman being attacked in the house's basement. According to a CBS 48 hour special on the case, the investigation into Hodel's possible ties to Short was shut down abruptly in 1950 with one of the lead investigators stating that the recordings taken from Hodel's home eliminated him as a suspect. George's son claims his father via his connections and occupation, had knowledge about corruption in the LAPD and their ties to prostitution and abortion rings and that the police covered up Hodel's guilt to avoid their own dirty laundry being aired. Indeed, some officers in the LAPD were notoriously corrupt in the early 20th century and the transcripts from the bugs left in Hodel's house also reportedly quote George as saying, "this is the best payoff I've seen between law enforcement agencies. I'd like to get a connection made in the DA's office."
	+ Lending credibility to the corruption allegation, according to the 48 hours investigation, the LAPD admits that much of the physical evidence for the Black Dahlia case is not with the files. Its unclear where it is or why it would be missing.
	+ While there are some doubts as to whether the photographs found in George's photo album are actually of the Black Dahlia or if his handwriting does match the letters sent to the police and press, there's enough cause for suspicion without those leads to keep the lens focused on George Hodel. After reviewing the Hodel case, Stephan Kay, the then LA county head deputy DA who had prosecuted murder cases for over 35 years, stated he believed the case had been solved, speaking for himself, not the DA's office. "I would have no reservations about filing two counts of murder against Dr. George Hodel." George Hodel returned to the United States from the Philippines around 1990. He died in 1991 at the age of 91.