The Black Dahlia: Hollywood's Grim Obsession Part 2

Uncover the chilling twists of one of Hollywood’s darkest mysteries in part two of this gripping series. Bree, Heather, and Mike dive deeper into the tangled web of suspects, corruption, and scandal surrounding the gruesome 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, known to the world as the Black Dahlia.

From the sinister George Hodel and his harrowing ties to Hollywood's elite to Leslie Dillon’s shadowy connections to the mob, the hosts explore theories, evidence, and the haunting question: Who really killed the Black Dahlia? Was it a deranged medical genius, a jealous criminal associate, or something even darker?

Join us as we navigate the shocking truths, horrifying possibilities, and unresolved threads that make this case as infamous as it is heartbreaking. Subscribe now for part two of this thought-provoking journey into the underbelly of Tinseltown’s golden age.

Transcript

The Black Dahlia 2 (00:00)
Hi everybody, the partners in crime are back with the strange life and brutal death of Elizabeth Short, a 22 year old aspiring actress who was found bisected, skinned, mutilated and displayed on the side of the road for everyone to see. But despite what the press tried to portray, this Hollywood hopeful was not the vixen that ate men for breakfast like they made her seem.

Regardless of what really was the truth, they named her the Black Dahlia, and that name stuck for nearly a century now.

The Black Dahlia is the personification of the reality of show business and how it consumes and discards young women after bleeding them dry. With her death, Elizabeth achieved what she'd been dreaming of all her life, fame. But there's so much more to this case than just infamy. The Black Dahlia exposed the truth, the darkness, and the reality of what awaits those who go to LA to seek fame and fortune.

Elizabeth lived the Hollywood dream. She died for it. And then she became the embodiment of the true horrors that crawl out from under the red carpet when the lights go out and the paparazzi leave. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Bree. I'm Mike. And I'm Heather. So what do you have for us today, Bree? Do we need to summarize part one real quick before we go into the suspects? I can sum it all up for you. The press.

We're scumbags.

That's not a bad assessment. The reporters really sank their teeth into this one. But to make a short story long, Elizabeth Short was known to be drop dead gorgeous.

She walked, talked, and dressed like the film noir style of the movies that ruled the day. She was the picture of class and dark beauty that drew every eye when she walked into a room. Sadly, the past four years between LA and Miami hadn't given her even one role or advertisement.

But it sure brought her many interested suitors. She dated dozens of men who paid for her clothes, her apartments, and everything in between. But Elizabeth's habit of stringing them along was a dangerous game that inspired the resentment and jealousy of some powerful and dangerous men.

Because that's the thing about LA. The lines between celebrity, politics, mob bosses, and the criminal underground is a murky one. Then Elizabeth went missing for a week, but before anyone noticed that she was gone, her corpse showed up on the sidewalk, cut in half, skinned, and with a joker smile cut into her cheeks. And if you can believe it, the autopsy results were even worse than the macabre discovery. This was newspaper gold.

Those scumbag reporters Mike mentioned blew this up to the country.

The gruesome death of the hauntingly beautiful Black Dahlia was front page news and it inspired all of the movies and books that the living Elizabeth so desperately wished to star in herself. Please do yourself a favor and go listen to part one. I know we always say this, but you really want to get the whole picture before diving into part two.

There are more details and side roads in this case than can possibly be covered in a single video.

Let's jump right in from where we last left off.

Over the years, there have been more than 700 people working on this case. Its changed hands and files have gone missing, but luckily the absolute media frenzy that gripped the nation has left us with lot of details that we can stitch together today.

It was no secret, even back then, that the police were very concerned about this murder.

An act this violent and one so expertly precise was alarming. I can give them this at least. The cops might have been corrupt in lot of ways, but unlike the press, most of them never forgot that Elizabeth was a victim. And that meant that there was a perpetrator out there who could possibly do this again.

The violence and surgical precision had all the ingredients for a guy who'd done this before and definitely someone who'd be able to do it again.

They started their interrogation by rounding up every man that Elizabeth dated in the two months preceding her death. There are lot of names and sketchy characters that bought her dinner. So we'll be focusing on the ones that the police at least thought deserved a second look. In all fairness, I went through the names and I agree that they look into the right people.

The first person they brought in was the last man to see Elizabeth alive, the married businessman everyone called Red.

Robert Manley sat down for two polygraph tests and his alibi for the whole week that she was missing, checked out.

His wife and multiple friends confirmed that they were playing cards until the wee hours of the morning together the night that Elizabeth was left on the side of the road. Just by the witness accounts alone, Manley couldn't have been the one to kill her. He was very cooperative with the police throughout the investigation and openly admitted that he and Elizabeth shared a room the night before he dropped her off at the Biltmore.

He denied sleeping with her, saying that they had enjoyed each other's company, but she would never let him get under her skirt.

He even identified the shoe and the handbag that was found in the trash as belonging to Elizabeth.

He and the doorman confirmed that she was wearing it on the night he dropped her off and he'd even paid for Elizabeth to have that shoe repaired in the few days that they spent together.

Despite his forthcoming cooperation and the airtight alibi, he actually was a good suspect in other ways. Manley served in the military years before he met Elizabeth, but he had been discharged for being mentally unfit. In later years, had to be institutionalized for a mental breakdown and it's reported that he suffered from hallucinations.

schizophrenia or some degree of PTSD. And back in those days, being mentally ill was enough to get most people to believe that you were guilty of something.

But in reality, Manley probably had nothing to do with Elizabeth's death. Everything about her murder indicated that she had been held captive for a week during which she had been tortured.

The murder itself and the dissection and mutilation after the fact would have taken time to complete and quite frankly, Manley was surrounded by people who confirmed that he couldn't have been with Elizabeth when she died.

Besides, Manley wasn't called red for nothing. He had flame and red hair. The doorman would have definitely noticed such a distinguishing feature.

Strange fact about Manly, he died of an accidental fall many years later on the anniversary of Elizabeth's death, January 16th. It's not important to the case, but I just thought that that was a pretty creepy coincidence.

were involved in the investigation too, and they got the records of every medical student at the University of Southern California. Since everyone agreed that this was most likely someone with a medical background, but none of these names led them anywhere.

The more they learned about Elizabeth, the more complicated it became. In the two months preceding her death, she had been connected to, or had been on dates with no less than 80 men.

She'd see a guy for lunch, drop him like a hot potato, and skipped on to dinner with another guy, only to do the same with him. On a good day, Elizabeth saw or interacted with no less than four men.

It was a nightmare to track them all down, but the press were making it go much faster and they ended up being the ones to get identities and locations of most of the men in question. And they handed those names off to the police.

once they'd printed it themselves, I'm sure. Funny enough, they did the finding, investigating, and questioning, all the hard work. And after all that, they had an agreement with the police that they'd avoid naming anyone

until the cops gave them the all clear. It's a sticky slope, they were really effective at making things go faster, and they really did help a lot, but their moral compass had nothing to do with the equation, and that hurt more people than it helped at the end of the day.

A week after the discovery of the body on January 23rd, J.H. Richardson, the editor at The Examiner, got an anonymous phone call from a man who claimed to be the killer. Now, this was nothing new.

This case was all over the country and that always brings out a gazillion confessions from the mentally unstable and those that are desperate for some notoriety. The Black Dahlia case was bringing out more confessions and obsessed fans than any case the police had ever worked with before. There were thousands of calls and letters coming in in those first two weeks.

I completely forgot about that. It's always the same. All of these big cases have these crazy confessions and I can never understand why people do it. It just makes solving the case so much more complicated.

This guy was no phony though. He introduced himself as the Black Dahlia Avenger and he was terribly unhappy about how the papers were going about printing the case, but he congratulated them nonetheless on their booming sales and for getting the case so quickly.

He called Elizabeth Beth, a common nickname to shorten the name Elizabeth to a name that she was often called by acquaintances.

he was going to send the editor a package. The very next day, a box arrived with a note that was made from magazine cutouts. It read, here is Dahlia's belongings, letter to follow.

The box reeked of gasoline, just like Elizabeth's body had. So this guy had wiped everything in the box down with gas too. Inside the box was Elizabeth's birth certificate, her social security card, and the newspaper clipping she'd kept of her deceased fiance, Major Matt Gordon. Also in the box was an address book with the name Mark Hansen embossed on the front cover. The address book had

the names of 75 individuals, including Mark Hansen, the rich nightclub owner that got so annoyed with Elizabeth when she rebuffed his advances.

She had her suitcase on her and when she traveled, she always had these items, including her fiance's obituary. There's very little doubt that the caller was the killer. And before you place the address book down as evidence, remember she did hang out with him and it was a common practice at the time for businesses to emboss their owner or company name on stationery. Hanson probably had thousands of items with his name on it lying around and he was handing them out like mints.

The names inside were just numbers and addresses of dates she'd been on, and none of them saw Elizabeth ever again after just one or two dates. Almost all of them had alibis, or they weren't even in Los Angeles at the time. Another dead end. There were other letters sent and phone calls made to various newspapers, but none of them could be linked to the case as definitively as this one. One of the letters that looked

promising did have a fingerprint on it, but it didn't match anyone in the FBI database at the time or since then and The print didn't match any of the hundred and fifty suspects. They brought in over the years

Hanson was a good suspect for other reasons. He was one of the few persons of interest who was wealthy enough to have visited the Biltmore Hotel. Personally, I think the doorman would have noticed if the guy was older, but it was dark, so I'll oversee that detail. He liked to dress in suits, and the doorman did say the guy was wearing smart clothes. Police discovered that Elizabeth called him the day before she disappeared.

but his statements about what was discussed in the phone call are all over the place. He never kept his story straight. Now, Hansen had no history of violence necessarily, but he wasn't exactly a nice man either.

I think he was a jerk. Didn't he make a habit of trading sex for housing from women who were young enough to be his daughters? And he was connected to plenty of violent mob bosses, so I don't think he had a problem with roughing people up.

That's the thing about Hanson. If he did anything, he wouldn't have done it himself. There's no way a guy connected to the people he was would have been stupid enough to get his own hands dirty. And the woman who boarded in his apartments did say that he was getting very annoyed with Elizabeth. He wasn't used to women refusing him. She always called him up when she was down on her luck and needed a place to stay.

But despite always accommodating her, she never returned the favor. He was not a man who took to refusal well, and he definitely had a temper. But this brings us to a guy called Lesley Dillon. Police became aware of him when they were digging into Hanson. Dillon was a mortuary assistant and connected to the mob. He wasn't any big player, but he did a lot of dirty jobs for the mafia and for Hanson.

I'm just going to kind of throw this out there. You my thought is a mortuary assistant could have the skills the police were looking for, right? Well, hold on though, because we're about to go off on a tangent here for a second. Dillion was connected to a prostitution ring that Hanson ran. Think of Dillion as an errand boy for the criminal underworld. He roughed up women who weren't complacent, delivered packages, you know, that sort of thing.

Both Hanson and the mob guys he ran around for had cops in their pockets. Dillion had an interest in the Black Dahlia case that was, let's say unhealthy. He wrote a letter to a doctor who wrote an article in a pulp magazine on the murder two years later in 49.

In the article, Dr. De River discussed the psychology behind the gruesome Black Dahlia murder, and he'd written it with the intention of luring out the killer.

De River was sure that a man capable of committing a crime of this extremity and complexity would be following every article and coverage of it. And sure enough, De River received a letter signed by Jack Sand. The return address led to Miami and police would trace it to Dillon. In the letter, Dillon claimed to know the man responsible and that more than one person was involved.

Dillion claimed that this man was ridiculed and bullied as a child and that he was quite unhinged. He also said that he'd helped track the man who committed the murder down. Something about the writing was different from the dozens of other confessions that DeRiver received after publishing the article. The two continued to exchange letters until Dillion agreed to meet with the doctor in Vegas.

De River was sure that Dillion himself was the man that he claimed to know that killed Elizabeth. When they met, two officers disguised as drivers stayed close to De River while the two conversed in the back of the car. Dillion looked like a damn grim reaper. Tall, skinny, pale. He was a disturbing man right off the bat. According to him, this other man was hired by Hanson to kill Elizabeth.

Hansen wasn't just annoyed with Elizabeth, he felt used and humiliated by her refusal to sleep with him. Yet she paraded many dates at his club and he felt like she was mocking him.

So, like all of his seedy business dealings, he got someone else to do the dirty work for him. The individual that Hanson hired was named Jeff Connors, and Dillion worked with him on errands for Hanson for two months before going to Vegas to hide out from the police, who wanted to question him in connection to mafia business.

But before he left LA, this mysterious Jeff Connors told him that he'd killed the Block Dahlia in a motel room. Ever since they started writing to one another, de River suspected that Jeff Connors was in fact Dillion himself. The doctor thought that Hanson's request was probably true, but he wasn't aware that Dillion was a psychopath who'd finally been given the means to exact his fantasies out on a real person.

And then Dillion said something that all but confirmed that he did it. He mentioned the tattoo on her thigh and her pubic hair had been stuffed inside the body. No one knew this, not even the family or the reporters.

and Dillion had a micropenis, so he probably had lot of pent-up sexual frustration, and that would give credence to his claims in the letters that the killer was mocked and ridiculed as a kid. Around the time of Elizabeth's death, a report came in from the Astor Motel. Not to be mistaken for the Astor Hotel.

The fancy hotel was nothing like this seedy joint that was named after it.

The place was a known exchange spot for mafia dealings and prostitutes. In cabin number three, staff had found one of their rooms in complete disarray. The walls were smeared with blood and feces. There was so much blood that it was possible that someone had died or been seriously injured there. So they filed a police report. Any guesses who was renting the room at the time? Without a doubt, my guess is Dillion

Lesley Dillon was the name on their books, and it perfectly coincided with Elizabeth's time of death. The couple who owned the place recognized Elizabeth's picture as one of their renters at the time, though she was in cabin number nine, and said that she stayed there on occasion, like many other girls her age pursuing a career in acting. They also pointed out Dillon's picture and said that he looked like the guy who rented cabin number three.

and that he had a slight accent that sounded like he could be German. The accent was consistent with Dillion, too. So, good. We've got our guy. And this case should be solved, right? Sort of. You know, I absolutely hate it when you say that. Can't you put it another way, like, what happened with words like, let's see or wait? Shh. It's my trademark phrase. Don't spoil it.

Besides, it drives you crazy. I'm keeping it. Just because I love you doesn't mean I always have to like you. You know that, right?

Ditto

Back to Dillion and the couple who owned the motel. They had more to say about the woman who could have been Elizabeth. The wife said that the woman looked out of sorts, like she might be on drugs. Neighbors complained that they heard crying from her cabin, and police suspected that she might have been held against her will. But everyone just assumed that she was under the influence of substances. Just as the wife was about to kick the girl out, she disappeared without paying her rent.

Inside cabin number nine, they found a bloody white blouse and some other clothes consistent with Elizabeth's preference for black clothing, all covered in blood. Another couple also staying at the motel identified Dillion and Elizabeth from their pictures, but the owners retracted their confession because they were afraid of Hanson and the mob. For some weird reason, that final interview was held with Mark Hanson in the room

and it's certain that the owners knew who he was. Like I said, the motel was a known place for mafia to conduct business. The couple never reported any wrongdoings by the mob, but they weren't involved either.

As long as the rooms were paid for and not left in disarray, they turned a blind eye. But the renting couple held firm on their statement.

out of town and didn't know Mark Hanson or any criminals, so they had no reason to be afraid like the owners were. In my opinion, this confirms Dillion was there, and maybe even Elizabeth. Hanson wanted to squash the whole affair.

Despite all of this, Dillion was released during the huge corruption scandal of the LAPD that was unearthed in 49. Dillion said that if they kept him and charged him with anything, he'd tell the world about the locations of dozens of bodies that the mob, Hanson, and scores of corrupt cops had killed.

He was suspiciously just magically granted freedom before any charges were officially filed. The department blew up and tons of mob guys, police officers, and even Hanson himself were tried for various crimes. But by the time the dust settled, Dillion had fled town and lived a low-key life until he died of natural causes. Police did go back to the motel and tested both rooms for blood.

But they found nothing.

Unfortunately, the owners did a good job of cleaning up after every customer left, and by then they'd cleaned the room between renters hundreds of times. There was nothing left to find if there ever was anything. De River always believed that he was the one who killed Elizabeth and that he'd sent her belongings to the paper back in the day because he wanted recognition for the murder.

He theorized that Dillion was one of the many, many dates that Elizabeth went on and that he took huge offense to her denying him anything more than a dinner. And when Hanson wanted her dead for the same reasons, he jumped at the chance to get his revenge on the woman who humiliated him as well. And it's certainly possible that Elizabeth and Dillion met just because they circled in the same crowds. Actually, it's almost certain that they did at least

across each other's paths on several occasions. So that's it. Case closed. Killer was never officially prosecuted, but we found him. Did I not say sort of? Can nothing be simple with you? Hey, don't kill the messenger. We've got another suspect to look at later, but I'm not done with Dillion just yet.

Most of the detectives on the case and even Dillion's ex-wife believed he was the killer. The only hiccup was that he didn't exactly have the qualifications to have done this level of dissection. But I mean, he worked at a mortuary. Of course he knew how. He only worked there for a few weeks, maybe a month or two. It's not like he was an expert or anything.

His ex-wife said he had studied in Switzerland in his younger years to become a doctor. Unfortunately, there are no records to confirm this, but Dillion was of Scandinavian descent, so it is very plausible.

Not that that means much. In the 20s and 30s, when he would have been there, they weren't exactly known for great record keeping. So there's no way to prove or disprove it. Also, Dillion was unusually intelligent for a guy who was just running errands for bigger fish. Every officer and De River commented that this was no idiot. He read the room like a salted detective would. He was well-spoken.

and they could totally believe he was smart enough to pursue a degree in medicine. But Mark Hanson, the hotel owner, apparently had more power in LA than they realized. Enough to keep Dillion out of jail and to disrupt an entire police department to keep his nose clean for another day. Now, onto the last suspect of note. If you thought that Dillion was our guy, wait until you hear this.

between Lesley Dillon and George Hodel. It's hard to say which one people think was most likely to have killed Elizabeth Short. To understand how Hodel even fits into this, you need to understand who he was and where he came from. wait a minute. I know we've covered a lot here, but that name's never come up before this, right? I mean, was he another one of Elizabeth's dates? Not quite.

But we need to go back to his childhood. Like mom said, it's complicated. Hodel was a prodigy. Seriously, this guy was supposed to have an IQ above 180.

He played piano so well that he was selling out concerts at the age of 9, and musical composers came from all over the world to see him. But Hodel had no interest in pursuing music. He graduated high school at 15 and studied at California Institute of Technology for a year.

but he got kicked out after he had an affair with the professor's wife and for impregnating another married woman whose husband worked at the university too.

At 16? Shoooo! He was a genius in the sheets, both the paper and Lenin-Kind.

Very funny. Hodel moved on to study medicine at another university and during that time he had a son with a long term girlfriend. They broke up and he got married and had a daughter, Tamar. Remember Tamar? She's going to come into the picture again soon. While he was studying medicine and burning through wives and affairs, he moonlighted as a reporter. Remember that the press and the cops were tight with each other.

Hidalgo was charming enough to convince police to take him along on patrols, giving him access to scoops before the perps even went to jail. His success as a journalist and as a previously successful pianist made him many friends both in the LAPD and in the entertainment industry. He was friends with directors, movie stars, and senators, and judges. He graduated and put his career as a

a crime reporter behind him to take on the position as the top STD specialist in the state. His high profile clientele sought him out to treat the crotch rot they picked up from their wild parties in a discreet fashion.

While still in his 30s, Hodel bought an ochi mansion where he entertained many celebrity guests with his own wild parties. His house had secret rooms and cabinets hidden all over the place to hide illegal substances.

At one point he shared the house with his ex-wife, his current wife, and his long-time mistress, all of whom had kids with Hodel. And he openly had even more women over, in full view of his kids. Hodel was brilliant, of that there is no doubt. But he also made sure that everyone in the vicinity knew it. He made no secret that he was the smartest man in the room.

Some say he commanded respect, but I say he was just a cocky self-centered bastard who used women like they were disposable. His own son stated that Hodel had a secret room in the house that the kids weren't allowed into. All he knew was that his father kept a disturbing amount of pornography in there. Because Hodel was very much a sex fiend, his wives just kept

quiet about his perversions and accepted that their lavish lifestyles was dependent on them keeping her opinions to themselves.

Some of his friends were deep into sadomasochism.

As in, they made their living off of showcasing women in bondage and other compromising positions. Man Ray, the photographer, and John Hudson, the film director, were big proponents of sexual surrealist art.

William Buehler the occultist, known for his misuse of his wives and mistresses in horrific ways, was also in the friend group.

There's more, that should give you an idea of the kind of crowd Hodel surrounded himself with, and that they were all obsessed with sex, violence, and viewed women's objects.

In 45, two years before Elizabeth's murder, Holdel's 27-year-old secretary, Ruth Spaulding died from an apparent drug overdose. Hodel was present when she took the drugs, and when she lost consciousness, he burned her clothes before driving her to the hospital himself. Spaulding was declared deceased upon arrival of an apparent suicide. Hodel packed up his things.

and went overseas to volunteer for the UN relief program for a few months before the secretary was even buried.

Hodel never volunteered for a single thing in his life before this. The LAPD did open an investigation into her death and they always suspected him of causing Spaulding's demise. They just didn't have enough to pin it on him. Shortly after his return to the United States, his 14-year-old daughter was found wandering the streets. Tamar was picked up by police who wanted to take her home but the teenager said that if she went back there...

Her father would abuse her, as he'd been doing for several years by that point. They probed the matter further and discovered that Tamar had been pimped out to high profile celebrities since she was 10 by her own father, Dr. George Hodel. Tamar's breaking point came when she got pregnant from this abuse and Hodel took her for a backdoor abortion. This case went to trial in the same year that Elizabeth was killed and it looked like an open and shut case.

There were three witnesses who testified that they saw first hand that the child was subjected to sexual abuse in the family mansion during the parties the total threw.

But Tamar's mother, her stepmother, and another woman living in the home, actress Lillian Hamilton, all testified that Tamar was a troubled child with serious psychological and behavioral problems. According to them, Tamar was a pathological liar and had never suffered any abuse to their knowledge. Despite the overwhelming evidence, witnesses, and Tamar's own testimony, Hodel was found not guilty.

The police always believed Tamar and they were sure that Hodel was guilty of committing these atrocities against his daughter and his secretary two years previously.

Who the hell was this guy? That's not even half of it. It was a nightmare trying to summarize his life. Really, Hodel's a piece of work, man. He was a very, very sick individual, and his life gives you pretty good idea on how depraved Hollywood was, and probably still is to this day. It's a rabbit hole all on its own, let me tell ya.

While the trial for abusing Tamar was going on, his name came up as one of Elizabeth's many boyfriends. Apparently the two of them, or at least a woman resembling Elizabeth, were witnesses attending parties together and having dinner on several occasions by dozens of people.

When the Black Dahlia detectives learned of this ongoing trial and that he was the main suspect in another murder, they were secretly, without the press even knowing, investigating him for Elizabeth's death. Actually, the Black Dahlia case opened up a whole can of worms.

There were a lot of women being killed in LA during the 40s, but we'll get to that a little later. Hodel had an affair with a pretty famous actress known as Lillian Hamilton. She was found around at his mansion a lot and their relationship was a little vague to be honest.

How she fits into all of this outside of testifying for him a few months before has never been answered.

But what we do know is why Hodel was getting nervous about the attention Lillian broke into his mansion and took Hodel's shotgun waiting for him to return home.

When he walked through the door, Lillian threatened to go public with the truth about how he abused his daughter, and she screamed that he killed the Black Dahlia.

If you recall, no one knew that the police suspected Hodel of the crime. Lillian's threat came out of nowhere.

This altercation ended with Hodel taking the gun out of the actress's hands, beating her, and forcing drugs into her mouth. When she was unconscious, he slashed her wrist and bandaged her up before driving her to the hospital.

When he got there, he told the emergency room doctors that she had arrived at his house high on drugs and attempted suicide. But Hodel managed to administer first aid when she passed out and brought her in for help.

Lillian Hamilton was placed in a psychiatric hold for a mental breakdown.

During her hospitalization, she held fast that Hodel was guilty of trafficking his own daughter as well as killing Elizabeth and that he had staged a whole altercation to make it look like she had a drug-fueled nervous breakdown.

But with a seemingly unstable witness like Lillian, police didn't have enough to make any big moves against Hodel, so they got permission from the Supreme Court to bug his house. Good! They could get him for a billion other things besides Elizabeth. Drugs, trafficking, all sorts of stuff.

The Black Dahlia 2 (34:36)
Meh. Hodel was aware that he was a suspect.

There were no more big parties and Hodel was careful to keep a low profile, but the recordings were telling nonetheless. Keep in mind this was 1949 technology so the devices weren't great.

A lot of what was said couldn't be made out at all.

But they could make out was disturbing to say the least. Most of the conversations were between Hodel and a man with a German accent.

Let me read some of them to you and you can make up your own mind about it. Quote number one,

This is the best payoff between law enforcement agencies. You don't have the right connection made.

followed by indistinct conversation before. I'd like to get a connection made in the DA's office, and any imperfections will be found.

They will have to be made perfect. Don't confess ever. Two and two is not four. We're just a couple of smart boys.

The next two recordings are of Hodel screaming at his secretary and having sex with an unknown woman who was not his wife or ex-wife. The third recording goes, supposing I did kill the black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead. The fourth recording is, realize there was nothing I could do. Put a pillow over her head and cover her with a blanket. Get a taxi.

expired at 1239. They thought there was something fishy. Anyways, now they may have figured it out. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary.

The fifth recording is of an unidentified woman crying, possibly while being assaulted, followed by the sounds of her calling for help and trying to give her location to the operator on the other line. Before the call is successfully placed, the woman is heard screaming several times. Then the device picks up the sound of digging

in the basement with Hodel and the German man's voice in the background.

the woman screams once more, followed by the sound of a metal pipe being struck, and there's silence.

Wow, that's a lot. How is this guy not in jail after all of this? It sounds like they killed a woman in this German guy. Was it Dillion?

The German man was nicknamed the Baron and they identified him as Ernst von Herringa an art dealer who was married to a socialite and a close friend of Hodel.

Like Lillian Hamilton, the Baron kind of drops off the radar and police never really looked any deeper into him. As for the recordings, they definitely had enough to reopen the secretary's death, but not for Elizabeth's murder, and that opened a whole lot of trouble for Hodel. Apparently, the secretary, Ruth Spaulding, was planning on taking some of Hodel's illegal activities to the authorities.

He was committing fraud by overprescribing his patients and booking them for unnecessary medical tests and procedures.

Hodel also had a lot of sensitive medical information on the politicians and celebrities that he was openly discussing with friends and acquaintances.

There was also a paper trail she had collected to prove that he was paying off police officers and judges. And finally, she had evidenced the performed illegal abortions for high profile clientele who wanted to keep their affairs hidden from the public.

It took authorities a year, but they finally had enough to get him for the murder of Ruth Spaulding and they threw Elizabeth Short's death into the charges too.

They didn't think that they could get him for Elizabeth's death based on the evidence, but with all the evidence from Spaulding's case, they might just be able to convince him to admit to the crime to get out of the death sentence. In 1950, a week or two before authorities were going to arrest him, Hodel got on a plane and flew to Hawaii for a year and worked as a prison doctor.

When police finally got the paperwork in order to arrest him there, in 1952, he flew to the Philippines, abandoning his wife, mistresses, and children completely.

There he started a new family and never left the country until 1990 as a decrepit old man near the end of his life. When authorities became aware that he was in a penthouse living in comfort, they again compiled all the files and reports and were ready to arrest him once again.

But that sick piece of work wasn't going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing him behind bars. He died of natural causes in his luxury apartment when, let's face it, he should have died like a dog in prison.

You realize that he spent 40 years in the Philippines going unchecked with a vast amount of wealth. I don't want to think about it, but he probably abused, maybe even killed more women over there. He had kids there too. And we know he probably would have abused the ones there just like he did to Tamar.

And how is this guy an even better suspect than Dillion?

What the hell was going on in LA in the 40s? That brings up another important point. Don't tell me. There are even more suspects. Not even LA can hold more killers and creeps than you've already mentioned.

Try me. L.A. had a couple serial killers when on ground between the 40s and 50s.

Hodel was a suspect for a lot of them. Seriously, there were many young women dying in the Tinsel Town, and they weren't all Hollywood wannabes. Hodel's own son, Steve Hodel, was too young to remember much of his father's crimes before he skipped town. But he later became a detective himself and he learned of the case and began to dig into it. He discovered that the LAPD had Hodel as a suspect for the Cleveland Torso murders that took place

10 years before Elizabeth's death. The lipstick murders were also on the list of possibilities that led to the death of three victims. One of the victims was a six-year-old girl who'd been so expertly dismembered that the coroner called it a masterful surgery, worthy of the operating room.

The guy who was arrested for the crime, William Heirens was a 17 year old mentally ill kid who couldn't have possibly performed this kind of dissection. I'm sorry, I've read his confession, I don't think he did it, and neither do a lot of other people. Detective Hodel Jr. connected the child victim to the Black Dahlia by her surname.

The girl's name was Susan Degnan and Elizabeth's body was displayed just one block away from Degnan Street. Hodel Jr. also found two old photos in an album that belonged to his father. The woman in the photos has dark hair and she's obviously posing for a professional picture.

But it's a stretch, the woman isn't completely facing the camera. Besides, the black hair, it's hard to tell. I personally don't think it looks like Elizabeth myself and neither does her family. But many disagree. Hodel Jr. thinks that Elizabeth, who was looking into doing modeling as a means to get into film, might've been hired by the German-speaking man that his father called the Baron.

The Baron and Hodel were both deep into the art scene and they both had massive collections of photos of women in bondage. Now, the pictures that Hodel Jr. found were not inappropriate, just headshots, but he thinks that she was hired to pose for pictures and that solidifies Dr. Hodel's connection to Elizabeth.

Hodel Jr. and a few others suspect Hodel of committing the Zodiac murders, the jigsaw killing, and the lone woman murders. The Zodiac case is flimsy at best and logistically, Hodel probably didn't do it. The Lone Woman Killings is another possible serial murderer. Nine women in Los Angeles were killed between 43 and 49. The blacked out is listed among the victims.

The actress Jean Spangler's disappearance is another odd one that Hodel's tied to. She vanished one night and her handbag was found a few days later with a note inside indicating that she was on her way to go and see a doctor. She's never been found and the case is still open. Spangler attended many parties, some of them at Hodel's mansion. Then there was the Manilla murders.

That sprang up in the Philippines after Hodel divorced his new wife.

He arrived in the country, married her, and had four kids. During this time, he opened offices in at least 20 Asian countries and he traveled extensively. After they divorced in 67, a series of dismembered bodies started showing up all over East Asia, where he traveled most. Manilla, the Philippines, and many other Asian countries called these the Chop Chop Murders

because a lot of the bodies were cut up with surgical precision and scattered over several miles. Some of them sowed signs of refrigeration before they were disposed of and they ranged in ages, body types, and backgrounds. It's a very widespread case and the victims number in the dozens. Most likely this is as a result of multiple killers, maybe a bit of human trafficking, and even some domestic disputes.

I doubt that Hodel is responsible for all of them, but if he is who we think he is, then he probably did commit at least a handful of them. One of these deaths is almost identical to the Black Dahlia case, though. Lucila Lalu was a 28-year-old business owner living in Manilla at the time that Hodel was.

She disappeared and a few weeks later she was found scattered around the city.

She was so expertly bisected that it could only have been done by medical professional. Her body parts were also placed in ways that made sure she was found in the most dramatic way possible.

I genuinely think Hodel killed Lucila. There's no physical evidence to suggest that they knew each other or tie him to the crime, but it's just too much of a coincidence and he was definitely in Manilla when she disappeared. Let's discuss the serial killings and Hodel's possible involvement in them before we move on to our own thoughts on Elizabeth's murder and who did it because

Hodel was a whole deep dive on its own.

What's there to say? Hodel's a serial killer. He's probably got something to do with at least some of the murders in LA.

I don't think so.

How can you say that after hearing what kind of guy he is? He was a monster. I'm not denying that he deserves to burn in hell or that he was a serial killer. I think he totally was, but not by nearly the amount of victims that we think. We can throw the Zodiac victims out of the possibility pool and two of the lipstick murders too. Where they happened in the victim profiles just don't fit.

I think Hodel would've killed anyone if they threatened his freedom, like his secretary, but I think he chose beautiful petite women, possibly children too, when he had the choice. He did not kill them at random, he abducted them. If Elizabeth, the actress, and the unidentified woman on the recordings are anything to go by anyway.

and they were connected to him, his parties, or the industry in some way. All of lone woman murders don't fit his ML. They were assaulted and murdered inside their homes after the killer broke in. One was randomly stabbed by a man walking past her.

Some of them attended military dances that were popular during that time and were attacked on their way home. Only one had any similarity in the condition of her remains to the Black Dahlia murder and that was the Joker smile that was carved into her cheeks with what looked like a pocket knife. This was no professional disfiguration, nor was it an unheard of disfigurement at the time.

The smile cut into the cheeks is a centuries old thing. I don't think Hodel committed those murders.

You said two of the lipstick murders? What about the third killing in that case? That was the child that was killed and dismembered. There might be a connection just because of how she was dissected. It was definitely done by someone who had experience with the scalpel, but again, it's a weak connection. Little Suzanne had nothing to do with anything in Hollywood, and she was abducted from her home. Not exactly Hodel's style.

can't see him driving to the other side of town to steal a child out of her bed unless he had someone else do it for him. Nah, I think he was the type to lure drug women rather than doing the manual labor himself. It just doesn't smell like his method of abduction.

So we're thinking that he killed Elizabeth, his secretary, possibly the missing actress Jean Spangler, and probably the unidentified woman that was heard on the police surveillance?

That's four at the very least in the United States.

I'm sure one of the many, many girls that were at these parties hoping to get into some directors good graces that went missing over the years probably fell prey to Hodel too. But four is the absolute minimum that we can tie him to here in America. And that's enough to classify him as a serial killer. What about the murders in Asia? There's hundreds of cases. No way he did all of them.

I agree that these are multiple events committed by multiple people and groups, but I highly doubt that a man with Hodel's compulsion could stop killing. I'm willing to put my money on the fact that he killed a few women there. He had money, he traveled a lot, and back then it was much easier to get away with murder.

There was a time that child predators moved and vacationed in East Asia just so they could indulge in their desires because of how easy it was to get away with it. Did his last wife there give any interviews or thoughts on the matter?

Nope, of all his family, the son who became a detective was the only one who really dug his teeth into it. And I personally think that he was willing to pin everything and anything on his father, no matter how flimsy it was. Not because he wanted to sell books for mon- Monotary. Monotary. Not because he wanted to sell books for monetary gain or anything, but-

because he despises the man and genuinely believes that he was a killer.

Unfortunately, he gets too eager about everything and his need to prove his father was a killer sometimes clouds his judgment. Tomorrow never retracted her claims of abuse and the other kids confirmed the secret room was full of pornography, the crazy parties, the drugs, and they also believe he killed Elizabeth. But what about Dillion? And the club owner Hanson? They can't be completely innocent in all of this. They were scumbags.

And all that stuff at the motel, the bloody clothes, the owners retracting their statements.

I think I see where Brees is going with this. Dillion and Hanson were scumbags, sure, and probably very dangerous and violent men. I think they did kill someone or several people, or they were involved in trafficking.

maybe an informant they were beating up, it could have been a million different things. Both of them were part of the same circle and that circle revolved around Hollywood, but it was also far removed from it.

It's a different kind of criminality that goes into the mafia. Celebrities indulge in the illegal booze, drugs, the women, and the other side of town supply them with all of it. Just because they sometimes cross paths doesn't mean that the two parts of the towns are necessarily on the same playing field.

and we need to discern which side of town Elizabeth was more connected with. Exactly.

I do think Dillion killed Elizabeth, but Hodel was a serial killer, just not Elizabeth's killer. Dillion and Hanson had a closer connection with Elizabeth they hung out together. Hanson had reason to resent her and want her dead, and Dillion was just a convenient pawn to do it for him.

Dillion had the skills from the mortuary and possibly from studying medicine in Europe and he was a lot crazier than Hanson thought he was.

He knew about the tattoo and the other mutilations that the press never found out about, and he was placed at the motel where the bloody clothes were found with a distressed woman that looked like Elizabeth by four separate witnesses.

that Hanson went to practically dismantle the police department shows that he wanted to hide a murder.

and that he was much more powerful than we thought. Damn it. When you put it like that, it does make complete sense, but so does Hodel.

There's no proof that Elizabeth knew Hodel at all. He had so many mistresses that the people who said that he'd seen her at parties could have mistaken any brunette for Elizabeth. And a guy with such a big sexual appetite like Hodel wouldn't have allowed Elizabeth to even think about stringing him on. He could have gotten a thousand other girls just as pretty and much more willing. I don't think he-

they saw Elizabeth with him. He'd have killed her the first time she told him no. And even though she was hanging around with some minor famous people, famous enough to be familiar with the Biltmore,

She'd never been invited to Big Name's house for Hodel's level of exclusive parties. Elizabeth was not Hollywood just yet. She was probably close enough to taste it though, but still on the outskirts along with Hanson and the mob. I mean, since we're on the subject of pinning it on Dillion, I have something to add. The gasoline.

How does the gasoline prove anything? Well, mean, if Hodel, who had access to a pharmacy's worth of chemicals, wanted to destroy evidence, then he could have used a dozen of other chemicals that were odorless or at least evaporated after a certain amount of time.

Gas is strong stuff and can probably do a great deal of damage, but it's not the best way to clean up a scene. Anyone with real medical background would have used something else. Gasoline stinks of the mob, pun intended.

have used gas. Hodel on the other hand, would have used something more inconspicuous. The shoe print would have been bigger if it was Dillion's shoe, but I don't think it matters.

That print was probably from one of the reporters destroying the scene. I agree with Bree Dillion is the better suspect. Even if Hodel was probably an even bigger and more dangerous monster.

I can't go to bed without knowing that Hodel did this. That man deserved to be stoned to death for what he did during his lifetime. It just had to be him. I mean, because you hate him, and rightfully so, Hodel was the devil. But there are more holes connecting him to Elizabeth than there are for Dillion. Outside of the shoe print, that was probably a reporter's shoe anyways. Everything comes back to Dillion.

Everything. There's still one open question. The man that waved Elizabeth out of the Biltmore window. We agree that it wasn't manly because the doorman would have noticed his red hair, even in the dark.

How would he have not noticed a guy like Dillion? He looked like a freaking Scythe Tall, hunched over. Give him a black cloak and he's the grim reaper for Pete's sake. Because Dillion didn't wave her out. Hanson did. Dillion said he was contracted by Hanson to kill her. So Hanson lures her out and hands her over to Dillion.

The doorman wouldn't have blinked an eye if he saw an older man pick up a younger woman. He probably saw it all the time at the Biltmore Hanson was pretty average looking and he was 50. It's not like he was ancient. I probably wouldn't have looked at him twice either. But there's one thing that aches me about Hodel still.

And that's the fact that all those recordings and surveillance pictures just poof, disappeared. Hold the press. All of it is gone? All we have are transcripts and not even all of it. We only have the files on the ones that they could definitively translate. Apparently the rest is so staticky and grainy that you can't make it out.

There used to be files where they guess what some of the unclear chatter was, but even that's all gone. Not even the files on the incest case against his daughter are complete. Also, you can't explain why they never went deeper into the Baron or Lillian Hamilton. There's nothing on them. This is highly suspicious.

There were people who were deeply involved in Hodel's life, especially the Baron, but we have no records of them being investigated, only the confirmation that they thought the actress was not crazy. And now the burning question is, Dad, is your conspiracy spidey senses strong enough to withstand the logic you're putting behind Dillion?

I wish you guys could see how wet his face is getting. This must be torture for you.

Wait, let me take a crack at it first since I'm the one who believes it's Hodel. One, Hodel fled to Asia where he definitely killed another woman in an exact same manner as Elizabeth. Probably more. The police were correct and in the recordings, what little we have of it, he mentions that he wants to set up a connection in the DA's office and he talks about payoffs in the police department.

proving that he was paying off the authorities. He did it. But the police were nervous that he was going to spill the beans on their own corruption, so they accidentally misplaced the recordings and gave him enough time to flee the country. Even though they had enough evidence to convict him of murder. Maybe he and Hanson knew each other. They're both powerful men in LA, and Hanson did kidnap Elizabeth and deliver her to hotel or something.

Now you're making up in there to just because you wanted to fit. There's no evidence that Hodel knew Dillion or Hanson. Damn it. It's got to be Hodel. But you bring up a good point. Hodel had people in law enforcement in his pocket allowing him to get out of the country and possibly destroying evidence to hide other crimes. I think Hodel was guilty of a lot more than just murder. He was definitely committing fraud.

serious abuse against women and his own children, or maybe other powerful people were in on these parties and illegalities.

There are lot of reasons that they might have been told to lose the evidence that had nothing to do with Elizabeth. All that proves is that Hodel was a criminal and someone inside the police department was helping him. He was a serial killer. They were right about that, but Dillion and Hanson killed Elizabeth.

How else could Dillion have been seen with her at the motel and have known about the details about her body that no one else did? Okay, I think we need to stop here or we'll be hashing this out for another few hours and it all leads to the same place. Dillion had the means and the motive, but it's Hodel's style and he's all but certainly a serial killer. The cops covered something up for Hodel, but it probably wasn't the black Dahlia you murdered.

I feel so frustrated. Usually when we walk away from a case, can sleep easy knowing that at least I believe one thing or another. But here, I'm just not sure. Even you got frazzled, Heather. I don't think I've ever heard you discard evidence to follow an emotional opinion. I know.

I know this isn't as black and white as the pictures in the 40s were. I hate this so much. I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep without this gnawing at me.

You know, no one really gives Dillion the time of day. Everyone focuses on Hodel so much because he's such an evil yet fascinating character that Dillion sort of just disappears into the background. No matter what you believe, I think Dillion and Hanson deserve a closer look. And I agree, that's a fact. So I guess that's where we leave everyone in the same boat we are. Frustrated, unsure, and absolutely

fascinated.

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