This is a story without an ending., Featured illustration by Eleonore Hamelin, courtesy The Delacorte Review. Some are from people whove done a ton of research and have a theory. Wolfe hypothesizes that Wilson was present at Short's murder and claims a connection between Wilson and gangster Bugsy Siegel through some small-time gangsters Wilson supposedly associated with. Further, the files indicate that O'Reilly's right pectoral had been surgically removed, which investigators found similar to the mutilation of Short's body. Best-selling author James Ellroy was eleveneight months after his mother was murderedwhen he received a copy of The Badge as a birthday present from his father. The cop/son is a little questionable, though. After tracking down and interviewing Betty Bersinger, the woman who found the body on Norton Avenue in South Los Angeles, Harnisch discovered that one of the first myths that had accreted around the Dahlia story did not match the reality. Harnisch attended a reunion of Gordons unit, the 2nd Air Commandos, in Florida and interviewed a number of his fellow pilots. The D.A. The two photos Hodel was convinced was Short, the photos that launched his investigation, were soon called into question. [34] Another suspect is referred to simply as "Queer Woman Surgeon" in the Los Angeles district attorney's files on the case. At the time, Harnisch, says, the surgeon was suffering from a severe form of dementia. Short was not killed by Walter Bayley. All the articles just say he was a cop. Hansen tells the jurors that he had worked cases where bodies were mutilated and bisected but the Short murder was different. Possibly as a taunt to the detectives, he included the phrase: HEAVEN IS HERE! Harnisch found the books for the 3900 block of South Norton Avenue and he worked his way through them until he reached the 1940s. In 2009,[30] Newton wrote that Janice Knowlton's relatives confirmed her father George was capable of violent abuse and further reported of his "boasts of [having committed] unprosecuted homicides". A photograph of the suspect in the nude with a nude identified colored model was secured from his personal effects. Dillon was a 27-year-old bellhop, aspiring writer, and former mortician's assistant who became a suspect when he began writing to Los Angeles Police Department psychiatrist Dr. J. Paul De River in October 1948. I sat there and listened to the poor, dear mother telling him about her school-day triumphs. So, the pathology lines up., The probate records revealed, Harnisch says, even more significant clues. Many Black Dahlia suspects, or persons of interest, have been proposed as the unidentified killer of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", who was murdered in 1947. It has also been surmised that if Siegel had any involvement with the Dahlia murder, he would have sent Mickey Cohen or one of his other henchmen. Nothing seemed significant, so he forgot about it. There were also many coincidences why people assume that he murdered The Black Dahlia because of how she died and the horrible things that the killer did to her. Webbs story is like a mini-morality tale: A little girl doesnt listen to her mommy and makes this horrible discovery. While other Los Angeles murder victims had been brutalized and their bodies mutilated, Harnisch acknowledges there was something sui generis about what the killer had done to Elizabeth Short. Rudolph Walthers, known to have been acquainted with victim and also with suspect Hodel, claimed he had not seen victim in the presence of Hodel and did not believe that the doctor had ever met the victim. He also met with a retired LAPD captain who gave him access to material that had belonged to the head of the Homicide Division at the time of Shorts murder, and obtained the recorded interviews of two Dahlia detectives, neither of which has ever been made public. Instead, he began blogging daily about Los Angeles history for the Times, freelancing occasional articles for the paper, and frequently challenging the accuracy of Hodel and other writers on his Black Dahlia blog. Then we realized what the hell we had. Its just about watertight in most ways., LAPD Detective Brian Carr, who was in charge of the Dahlia case at the time, was more equivocal at the dinner, but still found all the coincidences relating to Bayley and the murder intriguing. A Michigan death metal band is called The Black Dahlia Murder. As a result of wide-spread corruption in the LAPD, Hodel claimed, the murders were covered up and never solved. Fickling and Short spent some time in a hotel in Hollywood, but the romance fizzled. At the time of the murder, Bayley's estranged wife still lived in the home. But covering up a murder corruptiondefinitely not.. Former tenant of Elizabeth Short, Walter Bayley was questioned by police in relation to the slaying. Harnisch removes from his files a 1948 Examiner article on the dispute over Bayleys will and shows it to me. One of the first suspects was Walter Bayley. Eventually, he found the owner of the house on 3959 Norton Avenue, the woman on the deed who paid the property taxesRuth Bayley. OK, but so were a lot of people. During this time his marriage dissolved, he moved to a small apartment, and he faced the depressing reality of spending holidays away from his wife and son. Customers called her the Black Dahlia, a play on the 1946 movie The Blue Dahlia, and because of her swirling black hair and black clothing. The late Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist Jim Murray was a rewrite man for the Examiner at the time and sat next to Sutton. Killed her. Thats off the charts weird. Halfway up the block, the mother stopped in horror at something she saw in one of the lots. Harnisch has studied the case off and on for twenty-four years. People thought because Jack Webb was tied into the LAPD it was all true. Because of the complexity of the case, the original investigators treated every person who knew Elizabeth Short as a suspect who had to be eliminated. He doesnt bring in all this superfluous stuff to prove his case. No charges were ever brought against him. The book was made into a widely-panned Brian De Palma film. She was the matron of honor at the wedding of Elizabeth Shorts oldest sister in Inglewood. The clips revealed that Bayley had left his wife and family in 1946 because of his burgeoning relationship with a female physician he worked with, Alexandra Partyka. On March 5, 2004, Janice Knowlton died of an overdose of prescription drugs in what was deemed a suicide by the Orange County, California, coroner's office.[29]. Now every January 15thhe sends a check. She concocted numerous other sob stories to con men she had briefly met out of a few bucks. Fowler claimed there were no officers to prevent reporters and photographers from tromping through the crime scene and interfering with the evidence. When Bayley died in January 1948, his autopsy showed that he was suffering from a degenerative brain disease. Bayley had a degenerative brain disorder, which could have resulted in violent behavior. Dr. Walter Bayley considered the most likely suspect in Black. Then another book, Black Dahlia Avenger, was released that blew everything out of the water, Harnisch says. Harnisch doesnt have the smoking gun, but his theory definitely has to be included in the most likely theories.. Harnisch theorizes that Bayley's neurological deterioration contributed to his alleged violence against Short. The following acquaintances of Hodel were questioned and none were able to connect the suspect with murder: Fred Sexton, 1020 White Knoll Drive; Nita Moladero, 1617 North Normandy [Normandie]; Ellen Taylor 5121 Fountain Avenue; Finlay Thomas, 616 South Normandy [Normandie]; Mildred B. Colby, 4029 Vista Del Monte Street, Sherman Oaks, this witness was a girlfriend of Charles Smith, abortionist friend of Hodel, Turin Gilkey, 1025 North Wilcox; Irene Summerset, 1236 North Edgemont; Norman Beckett, 1025 North Wilcox; Ethel Kane, 1033 North Wilcox; Annette Chase, 1039 North Wilcox; Dorothy Royer, 1636 North Beverly Glenn. This interview and the Examiner article galvanized Harnisch. There was zero corruption in this unit. [11], In 2004, De River's daughter, Jacque Daniel, published a book called The Curse of the Black Dahlia, in which she expressed her belief that her father had been unfairly maligned for the Dillon affair.[12]. Intimidation by a young woman colleague caused Dr. Walter A. Bayley, physician, to disinherit his wife, the widow Mrs. Ruth A. Bayley, she claimed yesterday in a will contest suit, filed in Superior Court. Harnisch argues that Short, destitute and alone on a cold January evening, sought refuges in his company. and water and told me that he did not believe the person who committed the murder was a serial killer. It is the coldest of cold cases, a case so old the detective in charge of the investigation wasnt born at the time of the homicide. A story about Ruth Bayleys husband revealed something even more interesting to HarnischRuth had been married to Walter Bayley, a Los Angeles doctor, a surgeon with the skill to have performed the bisection of Short. Dumais, a 29-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, confessed to Short's murder a few weeks after it occurred. Fallon returns to the subject at hand and asks Harnisch if he has a copy of the autopsy notes or knows the section of the brain where the lesion was identified. When I asked him to explain, he hesitated and then refused. Everyone wants this to be a noir morality play, Harnisch says. He was checking her out. The Black Dahlia Was Here: A tour of L.A.'s most infamous unsolved murder October 17 . The editor wanted a noir stroll through the clips, but after perusing the articles, Harnisch realized that boilerplate anniversary stories had been written by reporters on previous anniversaries. One of the first people to confess to the murder was a WAC sergeant stationed in San Diego. After Black Dahlia Avenger was released, the book attracted so much attention, the LAPD brass allowed Hodel to present his theory to the Cold Case Unit. The editor, however, asked, Do you want to do it? Harnisch, who had always wanted to be a writer, responded, Hell, yeah., At the Times morgue, he obtained all the clips on the case, photocopied them, and placed them in chronological order. On January 15, 1947, the "Black Dahlia" was discovered murdered in Los Angeles. The drive for violence and sexuality can come up and get worse and worse. This is not a story where the victim got justice, the family got closure, and the killer was captured and punished, he says. If she met him on the pretext of getting help, she would have pulled the sob story about having a son who died. He never imagined that he would unearth a murder scenario and a suspect who would intrigue LAPD detectives. On October 26, 1946, the doctor left his wife for his mistress . Brian's Website The aspiring actress was just 22 years old and worked as a waitress in the City of Angels. He had almost completed his second draft, Ellroy was interested in writing the introduction and was going to set up him up with his agent. Multiply getting details like that with a thousand other details and youll see why its taking me so long to finish the book.. Walter Bayley. About a dozen patrol officers, sergeants, command officers, and detectives descended upon the scene, in addition to numerous reporters and photographers. Someone is going to look out a window and see you, Douglas told Harnisch. However, there is no evidence that Bayley performed abortions or associated with anyone involved in performing abortions. Hodel and Walter Bayley seem to be the best known suspects. [18] See statement of Dorothy Hodel,[19] former wife). In addition to Short, Hodel claimed in the book that his father also killed Jeanne French a month later, which was called by the newspapers the Red Lipstick Murder because of the writing on the body. Grabbing her hand, she ran with her to the nearest neighbors house to call the police. Bersinger told Harnisch a different story. Enchephalomalacia is a structural lesion in the brainsoftening of brain tissue, the psychiatrist wrote to Harnisch. The Murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia; Los Angeles' Most Famous Unsolved Killing", "Heaven Is Here! Detectives threw him in the drunk tank. They cherry pick information to confirm their view of who the killer was. Dillon had been taken into custody by detectives from the LAPDs Gangster Squad, claimed he was held against his will, and questioned for days by a police psychiatrist. Kurtis also probes the theory that the killer was a surgeon named Walter Bayley. Although this "breakthrough" was quickly dismissed by the original investigators, the Los Angeles press covered it enthusiastically until it was revealed that Dumais had been at Fort Dix at the time of the murder. 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