"The Black Dahlia: Hollywood's Grim Obsession"

Step into the shadowy corners of 1940s Hollywood with Bree, Heather, and Mike as they unravel the harrowing life and tragic death of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia. From her dreams of stardom to her grisly demise, this episode delves into the sinister underbelly of Tinseltown—a world where glamour veils exploitation, and fame often comes with a deadly price.

Discover the haunting parallels between Elizabeth’s rise and fall and the noir film that inspired her infamous nickname. As the hosts uncover the chilling details of her murder and the societal forces that sought to exploit her even in death, they ask: What does the Black Dahlia’s story reveal about Hollywood’s dark history?

Join us for a compelling episode filled with heartbreak, scandal, and the enduring mystery of a case that continues to fascinate and horrify decades later. Subscribe now—don’t miss the shocking conclusion next week!

Transcript

Black Dahlia 1 (00:00)
The case of Black Dahlia is one that's been adapted into films and books more times than we can count. The brutal slaying of the aspiring actress was like none other that America had ever seen before, cut in half and laid out on the side of the world like some bizarre carnival getup. The once enchanting, vivacious, and beautiful Elizabeth Short became the nation's next obsession.

For four years the raven haired beauty had wanted only to be famous. Instead of living a life in front of the cameras and lights, she found the infamy she so craved in death. Marilyn Monroe was the embodiment of glitch and glamour, but the black Dahlia was the personification of the dark, twisted underbelly of Hollywood. Monroe was the lie we want to believe, but the Dahlia was the truth we don't want to hear.

Here is the short but fascinating life and death of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia, and the many frightening and disturbing men that robbed her of the opportunity of becoming the Silver Screen's next leading lady. From My Partners in Crime and I'm, hello everybody, I'm Bree. I'm Heather.

And I'm Mike. This week, Bree took the reins and I've got to say, girl, you didn't disappoint. There are a few cases out there as brutal and mysterious as the Black Dahlia.

It's as much a part of Hollywood history as Charlie Chaplin or The Wizard of Oz. In a way, it's the first true horror story ever made there, only it played out in real life. The 2006 movie, you know, the one with Josh Hartnett? Hartnett's like the poster boy for the late 90s heartthrobs. That takes me back.

Well, that's the one that made me look into it first. And I've got to tell you, they really captured the era the parties with the showgirls and the general feel of LA and the hunger that was driving everyone down to an art. It's a fantastic film. I can't wait for this one. I think I'm the only one here who doesn't know that much about this case. Just that she was an aspiring actress who got killed in It's Unsolved.

I'm looking forward to finding out why this was such a big deal. You gonna take it away, Bree? Enlighten me.

And action. The case takes place in late 40s, just two years after the second world war ended. The world was still feeling the after effects of the most brutal war in human history,

But to understand the murder, we need to understand the era And for that, we need to go back a little more. The first cinema opened in 1905. 20 years later, the Hollywood sign was erected and with it came the infamous Casting Couch era A time when young Hollywood helpfuls flocked to Los Angeles to audition for roles.

The young, naive, desperate, and sometimes unwilling women were subjected to… let's just say compromising and degrading positions with promises of making it big.

This is an important part of this Hollywood mystery that can't be left out and in many ways is still a horrendous reality in the industry today.

Women were objectified and used in ways that today would give you a lifetime behind bars now. But back then, this open secret wasn't nearly as policed as it is now. The punishments were virtually non-existent and women and children were most often the victims.

Child stars were worked for inhumane hours, kept awake by diets of amphetamines, cigarettes, and barbiturates to keep them skinny, as Judy Garland discovered first hand. Their millions were squandered by their parents, and they had so little freedom that it was nothing short of slave labor splashed over the driving screen.

The term casting couch came from young girls and women who, when they were sat down on the audition couch, would be assaulted or coaxed into performing sexual acts with directors and other big actors.

They would then be filmed and blackmailed to further control and use them. Most of these women never got the roles they were promised, and they left Tinseltown, used, addicted, and completely destroyed. These crimes weren't committed by some backstreet modeling agency, these practices ran rapid in the industry. Praying on the young who were desperate to get their lives out of poverty, broken homes,

and all the horrors that continued to rage years after the war was over. Most young people in the 40s had grown up in the heart of the Depression era. Can you blame them for wanting to get out of those dire living conditions, especially with the Second World War looming over them? But instead of lights and magic, they were met with STDs, backdoor abortions, and drug use.

It was, in a lot of ways, worse than it is today.

This was long before movies were even in color and film was still somewhat of an exclusive thing. And if women weren't subjected to physical exploitation, then the press targeted famous women in much the same manner. They questioned their fidelity, painted starlets as harlots and drunks, while they praised the movie Starmen for the same behavior. Reporters back then were merciless, willing to do anything

make up any story to sell paper.

This is the time that Elizabeth Short left home to seek out her fortune on the big screen.

The kind of dark world a pretty small town girl had learned to navigate, where sensationalism meets exploitation, all covered by unregulated, ruthless reporters. We won't be starting the story with the discovery of her body like most people do. The problem with a case so brutal, so sensational, is that it makes us forget that she was once a human. A hopeful girl who loved, laughed, and lived just like us.

Instead, her death and the moniker of the Black Dahlia has replaced her name. Let's not forget Elizabeth Short and get caught up in the sensationalism that replaced the real truth that this was a tragedy, not just a grisly, salacious story to sell a paper in a movie.

Elizabeth was the third of five daughters born to Cleo Alvin Short and his wife Phoebe Mae Sawyer. Cleo was briefly enlisted in the Navy and when he returned he started his own business that built miniature golf courses.

In those first few years, the family did well enough to afford a house in the suburbs. With Phoebe giving birth almost every two years,

First was Virginia, then Dorothea. Elizabeth came right in the middle and after her were Elnorah and Muriel.

In 1929, when Elizabeth was 5 and her mother had just had her youngest sister, Muriel, the family was plunged into unimaginably hard times. Cleo had invested heavily into the stock market, and with the huge stock market crash of 29, they lost everything. Phoebe took up a job as a receptionist to help keep the family afloat, but less than a year later, Cleo disappeared.

They found his car abandoned on the Charlestown Bridge and concluded that he had ended his own life.

But in reality, Cleo had bounced down, hoping that everyone would assume he was dead, and he left his wife and five daughters to fend for themselves. Phoebe sold the house, moved her girls into a small apartment, and managed to raise her daughters with an enormous amount of love and stability.

She encouraged them to try their hand at everything and even championed Elizabeth's dream of becoming an actress. Elizabeth was just known as Bette by her family and friends. She was vivacious, cheeky, charming, and absolutely gorgeous. She looked like a raven-haired version of Marilyn Monroe. No one doubted that if anyone could make it in Hollywood, it would be their Bette.

In 1942, Cleo sent Phoebe a letter admitting that he was live and requesting that the family move all the way to Vallejo, California to be with him. Phoebe wrote back telling him to go kick rocks. Good girl. Yep, she had no interest in uprooting her and her kids' lives for man who they mourned for nearly 12 years.

Despite her anger, Phoebe did not discourage her kids from not knowing their father. Four of the girls showed no interest in having anything to do with a man they barely remembered, except Elizabeth. She dropped out of high school and went to move in with her father. bet. I'm guessing she went not because she wanted to reconnect. She went to be in Cali, right? That's exactly what she wanted.

Elizabeth was 18, incredibly beautiful, and she had a shot to get to know her father in the only place that could get her in front of camera. Cleo was still heavily involved with his old Navy buddies and almost as soon as she got there, Elizabeth had a lot more admirers than she could keep track of.

She worked in the mailroom on the naval base and superiors regularly had to chase guys away from the office building where she worked. The naval recruits were smitten and Elizabeth had plenty of fun leading them on. They gave her the title of Camp Cutie and declared her the picture's next leading lady. It was all in good fun though and Elizabeth only briefly dated one officer in the two months that she worked in the mailroom.

Unfortunately, he was the jealous kind, so she dumped him, quit her job and waitressed instead. It gave her more freedom to schedule auditions between shifts.

Except for sleeping at her father's place, she was living on her own terms. This drove Cleo insane.

He wanted Elizabeth to cook clean and be the submissive wife that she'd one day become to the cadets that were so interested in courting her. Elizabeth would have none of this and the two had explosive fights about it.

Elizabeth was arrested in September of 48 for underage drinking and sent back to her mother's house.

Even though we have the mugshot of her arrest, the officers never actually filed any official charges against her. According to reports, even the arresting officers were very taken aback with this stunning young charmer. They let her off with a warning and made her promise to go back home to her mother like a good girl.

But in typical Elizabeth fashion, she rolled her eyes at the charges and skipped right back to Cali after only spending a few days at home catching up with her sisters. For the next year, she lived in an apartment right behind her favorite nightclub and was rarely without company, and her company was definitely eager to impress her with money, gifts, and clothes. She even dated a major for a while.

And for a moment it looked like Elizabeth would leave California behind to be with the dashing military man. Major Matt Gordon asked her to marry him right before he was deployed to fight the Japanese. Elizabeth stayed behind planning their wedding that was going to take place the moment he got back home.

But Gordon died in battle, leaving the 21-year-old beauty absolutely heartbroken. Elizabeth packed up Gordon's letters, pinned his military wings to her blouse, and left for Miami to take her mind off the devastating loss. Once there, she threw herself into men and fashion. If you saw Elizabeth on the street, she was dressed to the tee. Black pantsuits, gloves, and peep toe heels.

She was the embodiment of 40's sophistication. She walked and talked with class. There was no doubt that this was a woman who couldn't be bought with cheap tricks or in the corners of seedy boulders.

and the men she kept company reflected her taste. Lawyers and businessmen took her out on dates, but Elizabeth always had an eye for a man in uniform and the only men she ever seriously dated were in the military. One of these men was Joseph Gordon Fickling Fickling and Elizabeth dated on and off since she lived with her father in Vallejo.

He was incredibly frustrated with her flighty personality that bounced from one place to another, and that frustration was reflected in their letters to each other. But no matter how much he questioned their future together, or whether or not she took him seriously, he always added a few dollars to every letter he sent. And he wasn't wrong about Elizabeth being unpredictable. She moved around constantly, skipping to another neighborhood every few weeks.

when the landlord came knocking for rent.

And if there wasn't a man around to pay it for her, she'd have to find another place to live. For the next year, Elizabeth moved between Florida and California, still booking auditions and landing none.

One of the last places she lived was in a tiny two-bedroom apartment that she shared with seven other women on Hollywood Boulevard. man, eight people in one little apartment?

Yep, all of them were Hollywood hopefuls, working waitresses and dancing jobs. And they didn't have great things to say about Elizabeth. According to them, she was always late on rent. They rarely ever saw her and she never had a job either. Instead, she relied on admirers to fund her lifestyle. The men never stayed around for more than a few days. They'd pay for a few dinners, maybe a shopping trip, and then they'd be replaced.

doesn't sound like she had much of a fancy life anymore. mean, what happened? She was living it up the year before, wasn't she? It doesn't look like she was doing anything illegal or like she was into drugs or anything. Elizabeth just wanted to be on the big screen and she was having a hell of a lot of fun trying to do so. She was pretty enough that there was always someone to buy her dinner and on occasion pay for her rent.

She moved around a lot, and honestly, why would she bother holding down a job if she could get by without one?

Besides, Elizabeth liked to party, but she never really formed any serious friendships or relationships. She just wanted to do things on her own terms, I think, and if things ever got too tough, she could always go back home. It just sounds to me like she was young and living her best life before accepting that she had to grow up eventually.

In 1946, when Elizabeth was 22, the movie The Blue Dahlia was released. The main female role played by Doris Dowling was a cheating wife who'd accidentally killed her son in a car crash because she was driving drunk. She ends up getting murdered with the estranged husband as the main suspect. This film was a big hit and it's going to play a big part in this whole case later. The female lead was dead because of her floundering, drinking, and hanging out with the wrong crowd.

In other words, the Blue Dahlia had what was coming to her, so to say.

Remember this era of films called film noir was dark usually had some thriller or crime element to it and The style of makeup and clothes was what Elizabeth was emulating so expertly Tortured heroes lost love and tragedy all while looking like the very picture of class and elegance Predictably Elizabeth saw the film and loved it just like so many others across the world did

And she even had a lot in common with the female villain, just like Doris's role, Elizabeth liked to party. Even though she wasn't an alcoholic by any means, she was beautiful and even rubbed shoulders with gangsters. Well, sort of. Elizabeth kept company with a man named Mark Hansen. Hansen was a very successful businessman originally from Denmark. He was much older, somewhere in his 50s when they knew each other.

and his business ventures crossed paths with the Italian and Irish mobsters of the time.

Hanson owned a nightclub called the Astor Hotel and a couple of cinemas. The nightclub was a popular eating and partying establishment for mob bosses and celebrities,

But Hanson had a predatory streak in him. He liked to hire pretty young wannabe actresses to wait the tables. And knowing that they would be hard on cash, he'd offer to let them live at the apartments attached to the club. Well, in return for sexual favors.

Elizabeth worked at the club and definitely lived at the apartments on several occasions. And she accompanied Hanson as arm candy at events every now and then.

Interestingly enough, Marilyn Monroe worked at the Astor too, and she and Elizabeth were acquainted with one another.

But Hanson liked Elizabeth most of all. The other girls came and went, but he seemingly really wanted to go out of his way to court her. Like the Navy boys, Elizabeth strung him along, never really allowing him to get close to her.

He got very annoyed with her when she brought dates to the Aster on her nights off. The other girls who worked and lived at the club were a little resentful of Elizabeth. They were jealous that she was getting so much attention from Hanson and that she was much more popular with the guys than any of them. It sounds like Elizabeth had a lot of admirers who really weren't getting the candy that she dangled in front of them.

That's actually something that's going to come into question later. I can't give away too much just yet, but Elizabeth, with all of her suitors lining up around the block, never actually slept with any of them. Elizabeth was classy, and if you were going to carry yourself with grace, then you couldn't be some common desperate skank.

Later the media is going to paint this in a very different light, but let's just get the story straight now. Elizabeth might have looked like she had a lot of boyfriends, but she almost never went to their beds. That's a dangerous game to play though. All that teasing? Maybe one of those guys, you know, got fed up. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Back to the story of a struggling actress who's admired by military men and high rollers in Hollywood alike. But keep note of the names of the men she kept company with. So far Hanson and Fickling are the only two who can be described as Constance. But that still leaves dozens of men that we know nothing about. Why don't you take Elizabeth's last days,

1946 went by and Elizabeth still hadn't managed to land a role.

She ended up in San Diego for a while and she'd lost some of that spark that she was known for. Not landing any roles and always being short on cash was starting to catch up with her. In November of that year, Elizabeth met Robert Manley. He was known by others just as Red. Manley was handsome, successful, and married. But the two kept company despite his married status. And he made sure that Elizabeth could stay in a motel if she ever had trouble keeping a roof over her head.

For two months, the two hung out and Manley insisted that they were never intimate together. They definitely spent time inside the motel rooms alone though. Elizabeth, as we know now, wasn't easy to persuade into bed, but Manley also had a marriage and a reputation to keep intact.

So who knows what really happened between them. Just after the new year, Elizabeth had a burst of inspiration. Since she was constantly losing out on parts of thousands of other girls who were just as pretty as she was, then maybe she needed to land a few modeling gigs to give her portfolio a little oomph.

On the 8th of January, she wrote a letter to her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Fickling, telling him about her plans to move to Chicago, where the modeling agencies were situated.

Fickling was out of the military by now, working as a commercial pilot in North California somewhere. The day after she mailed the letter to Fickling, she asked Manley to drive her to Los Angeles, where she was planning on taking a bus to see her sisters for a few days before going to Chicago and try her hand at modeling.

The last time Manley saw Elizabeth was when he dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel with her suitcase in her hand, where she was planning to meet someone, but she never disclosed to him who it was. Now the Biltmore was no seedy motel. This place was iconic and like Hanson's club, it mixed Hollywood politicians and mob bosses together.

It's served the highest quality food and the most exclusive clientele. Presidents, Royal Dukes, and Princes. Charlie Chaplin, The Beatles, and mobsters like Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone.

You named a famous person and they were probably there at one point or another.

The staff were trained to lead famous people in and out through secret back doors and to stow those who had gotten too drunk to be seen in public in private rooms. A lot of rooms had hidden cabinets to hide booze during prohibition when the consumption and sale of alcohol was illegal.

If any establishment could keep a secret, it was the Biltmore. There's no way that Elizabeth could have ever afforded to stay there unless someone was paying for her to be there.

And most likely that person was famous and on the silver screen, a big political figure or a high profile criminal.

The doorman saw her waiting in the lobby with a suitcase next to her. The smartly clad young woman fit in so well with her surroundings that no one questioned why she was there at all.

Wearing a black sweater over a smart black dress with peep toe heels, she was the picture of perfection and old money. Two hours after arriving, at around 10pm, the doorman witnessed a dark man waving to Elizabeth through the window outside.

Elizabeth had apparently been waiting for this man because she got up from the couch and walked out to the door to meet him.

Together they walked south down Olive Street and disappeared into the night. The doorman would be the last person to see Elizabeth Short alive.

Was that all he said about the guy? That he was dark? Like, his race? His clothes? What was he referring to? It was dark outside, and all that was recorded about his testimony is that the man was white, very well dressed, and his attire would have made him fit right in at the Belkmoor. But that's all we have on this mysterious figure.

It's odd that he didn't go in the Greeter. Why waiver out from the outside?

No idea, but it wasn't out of the ordinary enough for the doorman to make a point of noticing any more details about the interaction. The only reason he was able to identify Elizabeth was because she was so pretty and she caught his eye. Either way, that was the last time Elizabeth was seen or heard from ever again, and it had to be the day that she disappeared, because she wrote to Fickling the day before she went missing.

We know that because her letters were always dated, and that she didn't write to anyone after that, and remember she wrote to her mother, one of her boyfriends, and all four of her sisters, most of whom were not living at home anymore, so she was writing multiple letters a week. No one saw her until the 16th of January when her body was found, so whoever picked her up held her hostage from the 9th until the 16th for a whole week.

Finally, we get to the discovery of Elizabeth Short's body on January the 16th. On the morning, a young mother named Betty Bersinger

was walking with her three-year-old daughter down Leimert Park near 39th and Norton. Back then, it was a residential area for the lower to middle class, mostly made up of families. It was a quaint place that was low in crime and relatively quiet compared to the rest of Los Angeles.

The street that Betty was walking on had a single story house on the side and open grassy field on the other. When she came to the field, she saw what looked like a broken store mannequin lying a few inches from the sidewalk in the grass. It didn't take long for Betty to realize that this was no broken doll. It was a naked human body, song cleely in half at the waist.

was lying face up, hands stretched out over her head, and her lower half was only a foot away from the top half with its legs spread open.

almost like a puzzle piece that was just about to be put together before the builder abandoned the project.

so close that you can almost imagine her being a whole human being once, but far enough apart that she looked like a child's toy that had been yanked into by an angry toddler.

Not a speck of blood was around the body.

There was smell of gasoline in the air around her, and it was obvious that everything about this macabre display was meant to be found in the most dramatic way possible. The killer wanted to make a statement. Betty took one look at this terrible joker's smile that was carved into the victim's cheeks before she spun her daughter's stroller around and ran across the street to bang on the nearest neighbor's door to call the police.

When Detectives Finnis Brown and Harry Hansen arrived at the scene, it was crawling with reporters. They were snapping pictures, trampling their greedy little feet all over the crime scene, and there's a rumor that more than one of them poked the body to see if it was indeed a real corpse. Most of the pictures available on this case are from those reporters' cameras.

You know, they'd be jailed for a stunt like that today.

Reporters back then were like rabbit animals for a story. Newspapers were the number one selling form of media. Everybody, young and old, read the newspapers every day. The big papers made it their business to hound down famous people. Reporters got so desperate for a scoop that they were willing to break into celebrities' to get a picture of them.

Flocking like vultures over the corpse of such a brutally murdered victim was a far cry from the worst that these bastards had done.

And I'm checking my language here. The amount of profanities that I want to use for the deplorable behavior after Elizabeth was identified? Well, it makes it hard enough to look at this professionally. Just wait, you're going to be furious at them soon enough.

Before we get to an autopsy results, because that's the gruesome read, let me warn you, and the amount of the abuse that this poor girl went through is astronomical. Let's take a look at the scene, or at least what the police could make out of it after so much of it was disturbed. The lack of blood meant that she was killed somewhere else and dumped there.

But even if she had bled out elsewhere, it didn't account for the complete lack of pulling beneath her. Elizabeth's remains were completely drained of blood before it was transported. The organs that were spilling out of her torso were clean.

The smell of gasoline was coming off the remains. Apparently she had been drained and then washed down with gas to obscure any physical evidence. There was dew beneath the body and they concluded that she had been placed there after two in the morning.

There was a print on the ground next to the body of the back end of a shoe's heel, as well as tire tracks where a car had backed up onto the sidewalk.

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that the shoe print might not have been from the killer, but the who knows how many reporters that were on the scene.

Oddly enough, the cops do believe that it belonged to the killer, but there's no note on why they were so sure of that. One of the residents in the neighborhood reported seeing a man standing beside a parked sedan in the early hours of the morning when it was still dark out.

door was standing wide open on the passenger side. The neighbor was about to drive his car out that morning to dispose of some garden waste when he saw the guy and he drove over to find out what this man was doing there at that time of morning, but the guy, apparently startled by the approaching neighbor, hopped in his car and drove away.

In a nearby garbage can they found Elizabeth's shoes and purse.

The cops got the body away from the scene as fast as they could. The reporters that they had chased away were only a first of many that were coming in from all over the city. While they moved the body to the coroner's office, the detectives lifted the prints and enlarged it. That print was handed over to the reporters.

I need to know why the hell did those vultures get the prints?

Well, the police and the media actually had a very good relationship with each other back then. In the 40s, technology was limited and they still worked with fax machines. But the reporters had connections and a fire behind them that gave them an edge and a speed that police couldn't even begin to compete with. Reporters were glad to help because it gave them victims' names and arrest records right off the bat.

and they could run a story on murder before the police even named the cause of death, but at least the victim could be quickly identified, so it was an unpleasant but necessary trade-off. In less than an hour, those snoops identified Elizabeth from her job at the naval base when she was 18 and her underage drinking rest, even though the charge was never followed through with.

When they got a look at her picture and saw how beautiful the victim was, added to the particularly gruesome way that she was killed,

Well, that opened up the floodgates everyone wanted in on this story. Before we get to the terrible things they put the family through and the lies they printed, it's time to look at the autopsy reports. I hope no one's eating dinner. It's gonna get rough.

Starting with the outside of the body, Elizabeth had obviously been subjected to torture. There was bruising on the left side of her forehead, indicating that she'd been struck on the head in the days leading to her death, as well as minor cuts and bruises. That joker smile had been cut into her cheeks with a sharp object like a scalpel or a thin blade of some kind.

It stretched three inches on the right side from the corner of the mouth and into her cheek and two and a half inches on the other side. The henna used to dye her hair black was faded and her natural mousy brown hair was starting to come through again. She was definitely overdue for a touch up. Not something that the Immaculate Elizabeth would have allowed to ever happen in her life.

On the right arm, a patch of skin was removed, as well as a patch on her left breast, just under the armpit, and almost her entire right breast was skinned completely. The incisions that bisected her torso from the lower body were smooth and without hesitation. The organs inside were not damaged during the process, and the wound was incredibly clean. This looked like a professional job, something a surgeon, a

butcher or a taxidermist would do.

It was done almost to the letter like a technique called hemocorporectomy that was taught to medical students at the time, down to the disarticulation of the spinal cord and the transection of the pelvic contents and the reproductive organs. Okay, that sounds like a lot of medical jargon. Let me put it this way.

First, a cut was made vertically, right above the pubic bone to remove the reproductive organs.

right above the hip bones and the organs were moved aside without damaging them to get to the spinal cord.

The cord was severed with one clean motion and no hesitation marks. This was all done without nicking any of the internal organs. After all of this, the body was completely severed in two and the reproductive organs were placed back into their original position. This was a professional job. Yeah, I don't think that sounds like a butcher or a taxidermist to me. I mean, it seems like it would have had to have been somebody from the medical field.

We'll get to that when we cover the suspects. There's more to go over with the autopsy first. It gets more interesting when we get to what goes on inside the body. There's more?

Well, her vagina had been cut with a blade multiple times and there were ligature marks on her wrist, neck, and ankles. The marks indicated that she had been bound for some time, but they weren't her cause of death. Her anal canal was dilated, indicating rape, but the vaginal cavity inside and out was too mutilated to conclude whether or not she'd been violated there before death. There were no traces of semen inside or outside of the body.

and all of the wounds beside the blow to the head were done after she died. And the police were right about the lack of blood being unusual. The coroner concluded that she'd been mutilated shortly after death and that the corpse was allowed to drain almost completely before it was moved to the place where she was discovered. The dissection of the brain proved that Elizabeth died from hemorrhaging as a result to blows to the head.

But there was something odd about Elizabeth's reproductive organs that had nothing to do with her death or the days preceding it. Her uterus, ovaries, and even her vagina were undersized, indicating some congenital lack of development. The coroner made a note that she was definitely not having sex with anyone. The vaginal opening was just much too small to allow it.

So she really didn't have multiple partners like it seemed.

Today, experts would disagree with the conclusion that it would've been completely impossible for her to be intimate with someone. It probably would've come with challenges, but it could be done. She was anatomically intact, after all. Just not as developed as she should've been at 22. That was also probably the reason she was so petite. At 5'5", she weighed only 115 pounds.

further indicating that there could have been lack of complete physical development. But no, it's highly unlikely that she had any sexual partners during her hunt for stardom, no matter how many suitors she had. And, on an unrelated note, her teeth were in a deplorable state. She had many cavities that she'd stuffed with candle wax. It's not important to her death, it just means that she might not have had the best dental health, and no money to

pay to have it fixed either.

There were two other details that were never released to the public. First, Elizabeth had a rose tattoo on the inside of her left thigh. The place where the tattoo was was skinned and the patch was stuffed inside of her vaginal cavity. Her pubic hair was also cut off and those were inserted into her rectum.

Both of these details happened after death.

I don't think I feel so good after that. I mean, that is incredibly brutal.

I have no respect for medical examiners. I don't know how they do this every day. It was just… I can't put it into words how terrible it is to look at it.

Poor Elizabeth. I'm just thankful that the mutilations happened after death. But moving on, the police were sure that a car was pulled up to the sidewalk in the morning hours and that the killer took some time to stage the body. He wanted her to be found in the most embarrassing and compromising position possible.

unclothed and completely exposed to the world. They had two theories, and honestly, it's the only two theories that made any sense at all. First was that someone who Elizabeth knew, someone who wanted her and resented her.

He pursued her and she'd either rebuffed his advances or she'd cheated on him and this attack was the result of his anger and his attempt to humiliate her like she'd done to him. Or this was a complete stranger to Elizabeth, but one that planned out the attack in advance, possibly a serial killer who'd had some experience before.

They tracked down the car that the witness saw near the field, but they took the guy off the suspect list almost immediately. Not sure why, but it does seem like he was just a server at a nearby restaurant on his way to work.

One of the detectives on the case, a guy named Astell, remained sure that this guy was the killer. His name was never released and he was let go the same day that police found him. But Astell said that the guy had an era about him that gave him the creeps and he thought that they should never have let him go. But he's in the wind now and we can't look into it without more information.

According to the files anyway, he checked out.

And while they were tracking down all of the men associated with Elizabeth, because that's one hell of a job on its own, the press were going wild. An extraordinary beauty killed in such a hideous fashion was a story in its own right. But Elizabeth's incredibly varied love life made it all the more scandalous.

Less than two hours after her body was discovered, a reporter tracked down Phoebe, Elizabeth's mother. Phoebe had no idea that her daughter was dead. This piece of absolute garbage. First told Phoebe that Elizabeth had won a beauty contest and they wanted to do a piece on the pageant winner's life for the paper.

Why on earth would he take this angle of approach? Because Phoebe immediately told him everything there was to know about Elizabeth's early life. How she was always pretty and charming, how she wanted to be a star, and how despite her father's abandonment and dissatisfaction, that she wasn't going to be a good little housewife.

She still went ahead and chased her dreams anyway. Because her little bet was a firecracker

and no amount of poverty could have kept her down.

Phoebe was proud of her daughter and loved her dearly, and she told the reporter everything he was looking for willingly. When she was done, the reporter broke the news, and he didn't just tell her that her daughter was in fact dead, he told her that she'd been murdered, and then proceeded to go into detail about how she'd been cut in half, mutilated, and then displayed on the side of the world like some macabre statement piece.

I want the words to describe how sick this human being was, but there's just nothing that can put my feelings into words. That's just vile. Inhumane. What was there to gain from tearing a mother's world out from under her like that? A sensational story? That's what. Phoebe packed her bags and headed off to Los Angeles to bury her daughter.

The reporters followed her wherever she went.

They offered to pay for her flights and accommodations just so they could know where she was booked to stay. Every time she left her room, she'd be bombarded by questions. They followed her to the police station and waited for her at the coroner's office. When she got out visibly distraught and crying, they fell on her like rabid dogs.

It's like they sought out the times that she was most emotionally vulnerable. Phoebe and her daughters have said that the treatment they got from reporters was the most traumatizing of the whole experience and it haunted them all their lives. Police did at least track down Cleo short before the press did, but by that time he'd probably already seen the headlines.

One thing that the papers did at least was print her mugshot, and not the photos that they took at the scene. Given that Elizabeth was naked, that's probably why. I doubt any of the reporters gave a damn about the victim or the family and they'd have printed it happily if it weren't for the nudity. Cleo was less than helpful. When police got to his house, which was just three miles away from where his

Daughter body was.

Cleo was passed out drunk and they had to sober him up before they could even talk to him. He hadn't seen Elizabeth in three years since she'd walked out and he had no interest in going over to the morgue to positively identify the body, nor did he want to see his ex-wife or any of his daughters during their time of need. Yeah, well, he didn't care enough to make sure that they had a roof over their heads when they were still in diapers. Why would he start caring now? I mean...

He's a he's as bad as the reporters. He told detectives that she was a disappointment for not taking care of him and for running around unchecked. Needless to say, he didn't even bother to show up for the funeral. That's just awful.

The media was adding more more details with every day's releases. They pounced on Elizabeth's many boyfriends, painting her as a wild girl who was willing to share anyone's bed for fame. It's not surprising that they went this route, given that she had many admirers. They interviewed the girls who'd shared apartments with her, and that didn't make her look too good either.

but it gave them an additional angle of tying Elizabeth to club owners and men in uniforms.

including the fact that she liked the movie The Blue Dahlia. She was named The Black Dahlia after that point. The actress in the movie was blonde, but Elizabeth in all her photos had dyed black hair. So you can see how they came up with that name,

And you can't deny the Black Dahlia has such a good ring to it that it's still the name that people associate with Hollywood's most sensational murder almost a century later. Unfortunately, the way they made her look like some hungry vixen that hunted men and discarded them after draining them dry didn't win Elizabeth any favors with the public.

She became the cautionary tale for parents to warn their daughters of what happened to bad girls who ran wild. For all the world was concerned, Elizabeth was as dangerous as she was beautiful, and her wild behavior had finally caught up to her. This is what happens to harlots and whores. People forgot that a girl had died, that she had been tortured and killed by a madman who could be coming

for their own daughters next. To the public, Elizabeth was the villain, not the psychotic killer on the loose of Los Angeles,

Just like the blue Dahlia. They went on to add details to her injuries that never happened, like that she was burned with cigarettes and that she'd been forced to eat feces before her death. All sorts of crazy stuff that were completely fabricated. But it kept the story hot. And America was eating it up, believing every word.

And when they found out that Elizabeth had some kind of irregular developmental issue with her reproductive organs, they did a complete 180 and speculated that she was a closeted lesbian who only superficially entertained men as a means to get a role. This led to reporters to investigate gay bars, but they came up with nothing. This is actually good thing. Why is that? What do gay bars have anything to do with it?

The gay scene in LA back then was as much an open secret as the wild celebrity parties were. It was a place rampant with drugs, sex work, and abuse.

If Elizabeth ever had anything to do with drugs or prostitution, then someone there would've known her, since the world of sex work and drugs were so intricately tied to that scene. But no one did. At least this puts a drug deal gone bad or drug debts that were unpaid off the table. The press were already painting Elizabeth as a wild woman and they'd suggested that she dabbled in high-end prostitution too.

And despite all their lies, the reporters were very good at digging up evidence, even if they were just in pursuit of a scandalous story.

And with paper sales nearly doubling during this case, they were going to go to any lengths they needed to add another salacious facet to this gruesome case. This was one angle they couldn't prove. Elizabeth was never a sex worker, that's for sure. While the press were having the time of their lives and poor Elizabeth was being replaced as a character of a woman with no morals.

The police were actually doing their job by rounding up Elizabeth's last known companions. I was wondering if they were doing anything.

I'm afraid the police finds we'll have to wait. We're running out of time here today. We'll have to pick this up again next week to see where the police will take this. Elizabeth's death is going to lead to the exposure of some very, very dangerous, powerful, and utterly evil people in LA. For now, we know that Elizabeth didn't have a billion boyfriends like the press made it look like she did.

Well, we know the Prez are a bunch of scavengers in this story anyways. didn't do drugs or hang around in the back streets,

But her transient lifestyle makes it hard to pinpoint who she was in contact with. And we know for certain that the condition of her remains is absolutely horrific. And definitely not the work of some jealous admirer who acted in a moment of madness. No, this was planned and executed with a disturbing amount of professionalism. This guy knew what he was doing. Hanson and the mob

are going to look like babies in comparison to what's really going on when the curtains drop and the lights go out. Tune in for the confusing and horrific conclusion of the Black Dahlia murder and be prepared to meet two more monsters that unfortunately are probably responsible for more deaths than the murder that shook Hollywood.

Thank you for joining me and my PICs. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and we will see you next time with more True Crime.