(dramatic music)
- Tonight, a mysterious and gruesome crime
that’s haunted the public for decades.
- The tragic story of Elizabeth Short,
known as the Black Dahlia, is a murder mystery
that just doesn’t go away.
- The victim is a young beauty,
and like Jack the Ripper or the Zodiac Killer,
her murderer has never been caught or even identified.
- The police are definitely working off the idea
that this is a personal vendetta.
- How many bad men does it take to kill one 22-year-old?
- A young wannabe starlet in Hollywood contrasted
with this very horrible death.
- Now we explore the top theories
surrounding one of history’s most notorious unsolved crimes.
- You’ve got this very violent,
very vicious killer out there and nobody knows
when he’s gonna strike again.
- Back then, when you had power, you had money,
you had prestige, you could get away with murder.
- Who killed the infamous Black Dahlia and why?
(dramatic music)
For over seven decades,
the Los Angeles Police Department has kept
the Black Dahlia murder case open.
Each new detective assigned to this legendary cold case
must first review the evidence.
Los Angeles, California, January 15, 1947.
It’s an uncharacteristically cool morning
in Leimert Park.
- There’s a local resident who’s walking
in the early morning hours about 10:00 with a toddler,
and she sees something that looks like a mannequin
in an open field.
- Mannequin that appears to be broken in half.
She thinks it’s a prank.
She calls the police.
Police come and it ends up being anything but a mannequin.
- [Laurence] What they’re really looking at
is the bisected corpse of a young woman,
naked, scrubbed, cleaned, and drained of all her blood.
- This was a very brutal murder.
The body’d been severed at the waist
and had likewise been mutilated.
- One of her breasts has been removed.
There is an incision or a gash above her genitals
resembling a hysterectomy scar.
The body was left in a position
that is both shocking and sexual at the same time.
- This tattoo had been cut away from her thigh,
a tattoo of a rose, and inserted somewhere else
that I’m not sure if you want me describing on camera.
There were signs of torture.
There were signs she had been beaten
and maybe most importantly,
there was no blood at the scene of this homicide.
- [Laurence] Her face was severely beaten.
Her mouth has been slashed from ear to ear
in a grisly smile.
- The police initially believe that she had been killed
sometime between 10 to 12 hours before her body
was most likely dumped at that location.
- The medical examiner, upon autopsy,
determined that the individual died from a concussion,
hemorrhaging, and trauma to the body.
- [Laurence] Mercifully, she was already dead
when the killer carved up the rest of her.
- The way the body has been cut in half is very specific.
The body has been cut
between the second and third lumbar vertebrae.
It’s called a hemicorporectomy.
- This is the exact point where you would cut someone
without having to go through bone.
- [Laurence] Investigators believe the killer
has to be someone with medical training
or at least expertise in anatomy.
- There were people that the LAPD interviewed
that were doctors.
They actually investigated 300 medical students at USC
to find out if one of them had done it.
- The very next day, officers run the victim’s prints,
and within a few hours, they have a name.
- [Laurence] She is 22-year-old Elizabeth Short
from the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts.
- Her fingerprints were on file
with police and FBI databases ’cause she had applied
for a job at a California military camp in 1943.
And she had also been arrested for underage drinking
in Santa Barbara County.
The prior arrest for underage drinking in Santa Barbara
does become relevant here because
the arresting officer knew
that she had a rose tattoo on her left leg,
and that was in the report.
- [Laurence] Investigators begin looking into
Elizabeth Short’s background for more clues.
She was raised by a single mother
in a middle-class family.
- At a very early age,
her father faked his suicide and left the family.
- She was a young woman who left her home
to come find fame and fortune, maybe, in Los Angeles.
- A beautiful young woman cut down in the prime
of her life by this, you know, shadowy creature.
It’s kind of the archetype of the kinda crime
that captures the American public’s attention.
- [Laurence] Police and reporters try to get a lead
on Beth’s life, but the more they dig in,
the more of a mystery she becomes.
- She’s a high school dropout
and she’s kinda bouncing around from friend to friend,
you know, what the youngsters call couch surfing now.
So she was really trying to figure out what it is
that she wants to do with herself.
When she came to LA, Beth describes herself
as an aspiring actress.
However, there’s no evidence that she ever auditioned
for any roles.
- [Laurence] It’s in Long Beach, California in mid-1946
that Short picks up the nickname that will stick with her
after her death.
- Elizabeth Short liked hanging out at this diner,
and the customers there had actually named her Black Dahlia
because she dyed her hair black.
She liked wearing black clothing.
And a movie called "The Blue Dahlia" had just come out.
And so they named her the Black Dahlia.
- A month before Beth’s murder,
she told friends that she was going to the Bay Area
to visit her sister.
But in reality, she went to San Diego.
- And there, she sleeps in a movie theater.
One of the women working at the movie theater
lets Elizabeth Short live with her and her family
for about a month.
But eventually, they tire of her,
and that’s when she, you know, starts up with Red Manley.
- [Laurence] On the evening of January 9,
six days before her dead body will be found in Leimert Park,
Beth is given a ride back to Los Angeles
by a traveling salesman named Red Manley.
- He said she was very fidgety,
she couldn’t sit still.
She just seemed very uncomfortable.
Red Manley tells police that he dropped Beth off
at the Biltmore Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles,
and then he heads home.
Officers checked out his alibi and everything rang true.
And so the last time that Beth was seen by anyone
was about 10:00 p.m. at the Biltmore.
Doorman said he walked her out and that was the last time
anyone had seen her.
- [Laurence] Six days later, she’ll be dead.
And the biggest manhunt in LA history kicks off.
- One of the first witnesses that investigators talked to
was her on-again, off-again friend,
sometime housemate, roommate, Ann Toth.
Toth is the one that points investigators
in the direction of their first real suspect, Mark Hansen.
- Mark Hansen was the operator of the Florentine Gardens
on Hollywood Boulevard.
It was a very popular dance club.
- He’s this Danish millionaire.
He has lots of very powerful friends.
He’s very influential,
and he lives in this house on Carlos Avenue.
- This was kind of a haven for dancers at his club,
for people who would just come to the city
and wanted to be actresses,
just people chasing the dream of Hollywood.
- [Laurence] Ann Toth is one of the women who lives
in the Carlos Avenue home.
She tells police that Beth lived there too,
off and on between May and November of 1946.
- One of the reasons that Toth directed officers
to Mark in the first place is because she knew
that he was completed obsessed and infatuated with Beth.
- He would forbid her to bring other men to the house,
which sounds like, you know, the jealous boyfriend type.
- Hansen was described as fixated on Elizabeth Short.
He had this unrequited sexual interest in her.
So she’s trying to find a way to, you know,
kind of shoo him off sexually without infuriating him,
so she comes up with this fiction that she’s a virgin.
- The fact that Beth rebuffed Mark Hansen with stories
of, "I’m a virgin," probably only fueled his desire
to want her all the more.
- [Laurence] The stormy relationship doesn’t end there.
- To avoid any conflict with Mark,
it’s rumored that she was having her gentlemen friends
drop her off about a block away from his house.
Now, this just infuriates him,
so Mark doesn’t speak to Beth now for several days.
- [Laurence] Things allegedly come to a head
in early November 1946.
- Ann Toth had told the police that the final straw
in this relationship between Mark Hansen and Elizabeth Short
is that Hansen had told Elizabeth that it was only her,
it was all about her, he was obsessed with
or fixated on her.
And then he brings another woman home,
and she sees this and suddenly is now aggravated.
And there is some kind of,
I don’t know if they come to blows
or it’s just a verbal argument,
but something happens between them
and that is kind of where things completely fall apart
between Hansen and Short.
The morning after this explosion,
Hansen does evict her from the property
where she’s been staying.
- [Laurence] But Ann tells police it isn’t the end
of Mark and Beth’s tumultuous relationship.
- The night before the murder,
Ann said that Elizabeth had called
and that Mr. Hansen had been acting nervous and restless.
She also said that Elizabeth was going to come over,
but she didn’t show up.
- So the last night that anybody sees Elizabeth Short,
she does make a phone call to Mark Hansen.
And he tells her, "Everything’s fine.
You still have a place to stay."
- But according to Mark, Beth never came back.
- [Laurence] Police question
the well connected nightclub owner,
but he downplays his relationship with Elizabeth.
- He says he was never interested in Beth,
he never tried to have sex with her.
He found Beth to be fair looking, average.
- Hansen does himself no favors with the police.
He tells easily disprovable lies.
He says he didn’t speak to her after he evicted her.
- According to Ann, Mark Hansen told her
Beth could come and stay there
if she needed a place to stay.
But when questioned by investigators,
Mark Hansen said he turned Beth away
and never saw her again.
- [Laurence] On January 21,
six days after Beth Short’s body is discovered,
an envelope containing the contents of her purse arrives
at the "Los Angeles Herald Examiner."
- Among the materials submitted
were Elizabeth Short’s Social Security card,
an address book that bore the name of Mark Hansen
on its cover.
At first blush, it looks like somebody’s trying
to set this guy up.
Because you just don’t send incriminating materials
to the police.
If you wanna do that, you might as well go
to the front desk and turn yourself in.
- It’s quite believable and reasonable
to suspect Mark Hansen as the perpetrator of this crime
because we know that he was obsessed with Elizabeth.
- [Laurence] But Mark Hansen has an alibi
and witnesses to back him up.
- He said that when the murder occurred,
he was at a movie theater opening in Long Beach.
And he also had a business associate testify
that he was at his home in Redondo Beach until 3:00 a.m.
This would not give him enough time
to kill Elizabeth and then dispose of the body
in the way it had been and be able to get away.
- [Laurence] Hansen’s alibi
knocks him down the suspect list.
Police never search his properties or vehicles
for blood or evidence,
and the case moves on.
- You’ve got this very violent,
very vicious killer out there and nobody knows who he is.
Nobody knows when he’s gonna strike again.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] It’s January of 1947
and Los Angeles is in the grips of a tabloid frenzy.
Everyone wants to know who killed the Black Dahlia.
- Media were all over this case.
At that time, there were four major dailies
in the city of Los Angeles competing.
This is the ’40s, so you’re pre-internet,
you’re pre-Twitter, but you are also at a time
when the papers are putting out two editions each day.
They’re putting out mornings and evenings,
trying to just edge each other out
and get, you know, at least one exclusive per day,
twice per day.
- This story had everything that you would relate
to a film noir.
You’ve got the seedy underbelly of Hollywood.
You’ve got the gruesomeness of the killing,
and then the great unknown is who did it.
- [Laurence] The Black Dahlia case
even becomes headline news around the country.
- Everyone was watching.
Everyone was reading papers.
This was a hot story.
And the cops were pressured to find out who done it.
- You had, at one point, 150 suspects
that investigators were looking at, wanting to talk to,
had talked to.
You had people who were calling in with tips.
And you even had people who were confessing.
- There were certain things that would only be known
to the killer.
One of the details that police kept from the media
was the fact that Elizabeth Short had a tattoo on her leg.
It was a rose.
Having information that others don’t have
is one way of helping eliminate folks
from like being a potential suspect.
- So, after the initial excitement of this young woman
found in a field and the several editions a day
of newspaper and all this coverage,
a month passes and the cops are still at a loss
of who killed Elizabeth Short.
- [Laurence] As their investigation continues,
the LA Police make a connection to similar grisly murders
that occurred a decade earlier
and over 2,000 miles away.
- [Speaker] Cleveland, iron and steel center
of the Middle West.
- The nature and manner of death of Elizabeth Short
tends to lend itself to a belief that
there might be other murders that are related to this.
A dismemberment murder,
a brutal, probably sexual murder of a woman.
- Cleveland, Ohio investigators are beginning to wonder
if the Black Dahlia killer is someone they’ve hunted before.
(dramatic music)
- Investigators in Cleveland are looking
at all that’s happening around this young woman found
in a field, and they are wondering,
"Is their killer the same as our killer?"
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- About a decade before in 1930,
Cleveland also had a killer who seemed
to delight in killing folks and dissecting the bodies.
- [Laurence] It all starts in September of 1934,
when a beachcomber on the shores of Lake Erie
makes a gruesome discovery.
- They discover a female who’s headless
with her legs amputated at the knees,
partially covered in sand.
- This body was essentially a torso with the upper legs
still intact, but the rest of the body was missing.
Investigators eventually find her legs but not the head,
and this woman becomes known as the Lady of the Lake.
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- [Laurence] Exactly one year later,
two teenagers discover the decapitated corpse
of a white male in a vacant lot.
- The body was found decapitated with his genitals removed.
While searching the crime scene,
police find the body of another man,
40 years old, who had also been decapitated and castrated.
- [Laurence] Every few months,
more butchered bodies turn up.
- The Cleveland killer seems to target men and women
who are down on their luck,
folks who maybe a perpetrator might think
they won’t be missed and were probably vulnerable
in the moment.
- So we can already see specific parallels
between the Cleveland Torso Killer
and the Black Dahlia case.
We see bodies that are turning up dismembered
and disfigured in a way that involves a certain amount
of anatomical and/or medical skill and knowledge.
- [Laurence] Like the Black Dahlia’s killer,
who sent taunting letters to the newspaper,
Cleveland’s mad butcher seems
to enjoy goading the authorities.
- A very significant parallel between the two cases
is the fact that the killers communicated with police
after the murders were done.
- In the case of the Cleveland Torso Killer,
that killer was taunting the investigator
who at that time was Eliot Ness.
Eliot Ness was the investigator
who took down Al Capone in Chicago.
- [Laurence] The Cleveland Torso Killer is believed
to be responsible for the murders of seven men
and five women.
- In 1938, Cleveland’s racked up about 12 bodies now
as a result of this Torso Killer,
and then it just stops.
And so the question is, why? What happened?
The belief was is that Eliot Ness,
during his investigation of the Torso Killer,
had honed in on a guy who was only known as Dr. X.
- This person has received medical training,
and Eliot Ness coaxes this person, who he calls Dr. X,
to talk with him.
This Dr. X receives two polygraph tests and fails both.
- There was never enough evidence to charge him,
but Eliot Ness manages to coax him into an insane asylum,
and the torso murders stop.
- [Laurence] But some believe the suspect known as Dr. X
wasn’t actually the Torso Killer
and that the only reason the murders stopped
is because the real killer moved
to a new hunting ground.
- Perhaps the killer actually left the area because
a letter had been received by the police department.
In this letter, he’s kind of cheeky,
and he says, "You can relax now. I’ve left the area.
I’ve gone to sunny California,
and I’ll be engaging in my surgical endeavors there."
The suspect also says that he’s buried
his most recent victim in Los Angeles
between Crenshaw and Western Avenue,
which is really only about five miles from Leimert Park.
- [Laurence] Did Cleveland’s mad butcher
set his sights on Elizabeth Short?
- The Cleveland Torso Killer
and the killer of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia,
had some type of anatomical training.
They knew where to cut, where to avoid bone.
- There are also a number of differences
between the two cases.
We see with the Cleveland torso killings,
there are decapitations.
Elizabeth Short was not decapitated.
The Cleveland Torso killings,
the bodies weren’t necessarily posed.
Also, the Cleveland Torso killings involved men,
which is different victimology
than the Elizabeth Short case.
The Cleveland Torso Killer’s mutilations
might have been more defensively motivated,
designed to keep him from being caught.
Versus the Elizabeth Short case,
which may have been more in the service
of sexual gratification.
- There was no hard proof that the killer
of Elizabeth Short was the Cleveland Torso Killer.
- The MOs feel totally different to me.
- [Laurence] Most old unsolved murders slip into obscurity.
Not so with the Black Dahlia.
As the decades go by and the leads grow colder,
the search for answers only seems to be heating up.
In 1997 on the 50th anniversary of the murder,
the "Los Angeles Times" hires renowned criminal profiler
John Douglas to take his own look at the case.
- Douglas believes that the killer of the Black Dahlia
was a male,
someone who’s familiar with surgical equipment.
He believes that the killer was motivated
by personal stress, alcoholism, and romantic rejection.
- [Laurence] One of Douglas’s biggest questions
is, why Leimert Park?
- The fact that the killer dumps the body
in a residential area right in the middle of LA
was notable to John Douglas.
Because there’s so many other places in Southern California
to dump a body if you don’t want it to be found.
John Douglas feels that the perpetrator
would have a connection to this neighborhood
and to this spot.
Well, who would possibly have a connection
to this neighborhood that could have the means
and the opportunity to commit this murder?
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] Following up on that theory,
an "LA Times" reporter finds a suspect
that has flown under the radar for half a century.
His name is Dr. Walter Bayley.
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- Walter Bayley is born in 1880, he’s a World War I veteran.
He is a surgeon
at the University of Southern California,
and maybe most importantly,
he has an office not far from the Biltmore,
you know, where Elizabeth Short was last seen.
- Dr. Bayley had a young son who was riding his bicycle
and was killed by a driver,
and it was a very traumatic incident in his life.
- It’s been said that at this point,
he sort of threw himself into his career.
- He had a private practice where he specialized
in mastectomies and hysterectomies.
- Given the injuries she suffered,
given the specific areas of her body that were mutilated,
there’s a line of thinking that Bayley would’ve known
exactly how to cut, move, otherwise dismember those parts
of a human being.
- [Laurence] Dr. Bayley and his wife lived in Leimert Park
in a house just a block away
from where Elizabeth Short will be found murdered.
But in the months before the murder,
Dr. Bayley’s marriage and his life were coming apart.
- He has become estranged from his wife
about four months before Elizabeth Short is killed,
and kind of shacks up with this younger physician.
- He had a successful medical practice,
and then he sort of broke bad in a certain way.
His personality changed dramatically.
He left his wife.
He took up with this younger woman.
He would have these bizarre kind of habits
like watching surgery films at night while he ate dinner
with this younger woman.
And that sorta fit the profile of somebody
who might commit this murder.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] One researcher investigating
the Black Dahlia case found evidence of a connection
between Dr. Bayley and Elizabeth Short.
- And he obtained Elizabeth Short’s
older sister’s marriage certificate.
And on the marriage certificate,
one of the witnesses was Dr. Bayley’s daughter.
And the address that Dr. Bayley’s daughter listed
was only one block from the crime scene.
And that’s where Walter Bayley’s ex-wife lived.
So there’s now a connection
between Elizabeth Short and Walter Bayley
and the residence and the crime scene.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] Adding to the case against Dr. Bayley
is his own medical condition.
- Dr. Bayley had a very specific brain condition
known as encephalomalacia.
- The neurobiologists said that this kind of dementia,
this could lead to a dramatic change of personality
later in life.
It could lead to a certain kind of violence
and hypersexuality that might be consistent
with somebody who would commit this kind of crime.
- [Laurence] Some theorists contend that Bayley,
elderly and weakened by his disease,
severed the body to make it easier to transport
and purposely dumped it just 1/2 a block
from the house in which his ex-wife still lived.
- If he’s the suspect and he left this body
within proximity to his wife,
it would have been maybe to perhaps unsettle her
and make her feel that, you know,
this place that, you know, she calls home and feels safe
is no longer safe based on the fact
that a nude woman cut in half was found
a block or two away.
- [Laurence] Dr. Bayley dies on January 4, 1948,
not even one year after the Black Dahlia murder.
But his death doesn’t stop speculation
that he’s the killer.
- Bayley wasn’t a suspect at the time,
but to a number of LAPD homicide detectives,
of all the theories that had been going around
for many, many decades,
they felt his was the most plausible.
- There is this thought process that basically this man
is going mad not far from the Biltmore
with the means, mode, and opportunity
to commit a crime like this,
and then Elizabeth short wanders into his path.
Walter Bayley’s death is critical here
because if this was to become a pattern of behavior,
he didn’t live long enough to find another victim.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] Walter Bayley isn’t the only person
who raises suspicions long after Elizabeth Short’s murder.
- In 2006, Don Wolfe publishes a book
in which he advances the theory,
what if somebody with a hair-trigger temper,
some infamous violent mobster killed Elizabeth Short?
And not only that he killed her,
but he did it at the behest of a famous and powerful person.
(dramatic music)
- Bugsy Siegel is infamous mafia figure,
one of the people associated with the foundation
of Murder, Inc. in New York,
which is not a reputation you develop
unless you have hurt people.
- [Laurence] Siegel moves to California in the mid-1930s
to set up a West Coast criminal empire.
Despite his track record as a merciless hitman,
he soon finds himself hobnobbing with celebrities.
- One of the power players that Bugsy Siegel
is known to associate with is Norman Chandler,
who is at the time the publisher of the "Los Angeles Times."
Chandler is the civic leader in the second largest city
in the U.S.
- The rumor is that Norman Chandler
got Elizabeth Short pregnant and that could not be.
- I don’t know if either she refused an abortion
or he never asked, but to cover up the affair and the baby,
Chandler reaches out to Bugsy Siegel.
- And so Bugsy Siegel gets two of his henchmen
to take care of the problem,
and the problem is, of course, Elizabeth Short.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] But most investigators point
to one flaw in this theory:
her autopsy report states that Beth wasn’t pregnant.
- Elizabeth’s autopsy did not show that she was pregnant,
that this detail would’ve been changed
by a medical examiner, somebody that Siegel could reach,
or somebody that Chandler could reach.
- [Laurence] There is other circumstantial evidence
supporting the Black Dahlia murder as a mob hit.
- Norman Chandler had a condo right near the Biltmore Hotel.
So maybe, on January 9, when Red Manley drops
Elizabeth Short off at the Biltmore Hotel,
maybe she’s going to see Norman Chandler
at his condo nearby.
Maybe she was walking into a trap.
- [Laurence] Siegel’s movement around the time
of the Black Dahlia killing raises even more questions.
- It’s believed that Bugsy Siegel was in Los Angeles
during the time that Elizabeth Short was killed.
But on the day her body is found in Leimert Park,
Bugsy Siegel leaves town and he goes to Palm Springs.
- The LAPD has kept its most famous cold case open
since 1947, and the detective assigned
to the Black Dahlia murder must evaluate
all the new leads and theories that continue to come in,
like the one that comes from a former homicide detective
who believes he’s tracked the elusive killer
right to his own front door.
Steve Hodel is a 24-year veteran of the LAPD,
but he never investigated the Black Dahlia case himself
until the death of his beloved father,
Dr. George Hodel, in 1999.
- When his father passed away,
you know, he started going through
all of his father’s things and he came across
this little black book
and saw a picture that looked like Elizabeth Short.
- During some family conversation
with his older step-sister as he’s looking at these photos,
the older sister tells Steve that, at some point,
their dad had been identified as a potential suspect
in the Black Dahlia murder.
(dramatic music)
- In the very beginning,
Steve Hodel set out to prove that his father
had no involvement in Elizabeth Short’s murder.
- [Laurence] But over time,
Steve Hodel’s investigation would lead him
to a horrifying conclusion
and cast his father in a very different light.
- George Hodel was very wealthy, very charismatic.
- He was actually a genius, if you will.
He’s in college at Caltech when he was 16,
and he falls in love with his professor.
- He had an affair with one of his teachers
and got her pregnant,
and she didn’t want anything to do with him,
because obviously, you know, she’s a teacher
and he’s 16 years old.
But it just kinda goes to show like,
that personality that he had, you know,
because as he got older, you know,
he married several times.
- [Laurence] He’ll go on to have 11 children
by five different women.
- He grows up in the Los Angeles area
and eventually becomes a medical doctor
and even the head of the LA Department of Health,
where he treated STDs and performed abortions
for the rich and famous and elite
around the Los Angeles area.
- He had every political, every police in his pocket.
You could say he was taken care of.
- [Laurence] By the 1940s,
Hodel is swinging amongst an elite LA crowd,
including surrealist photographer Man Ray
and movie director John Huston.
Then in 1945, he’s accused by his daughter Tamar
of sexual abuse.
During the trial, Tamar accuses Hodel of murdering
the Black Dahlia.
- Despite the fact that there are eyewitnesses
to the incest events, he is acquitted,
but Los Angeles Police then monitor his home,
planting microphones in the house
to see if they can get evidence
related to the Black Dahlia murder.
- [Laurence] Investigators spend the next 40 days and nights
monitoring and recording conversations
inside the Hodel home.
- At some point, he is heard saying,
"Well, even if I did do the Black Dahlia murder,
they would never catch me."
- [Laurence] The deeper Steve digs
into the Black Dahlia evidence,
the more convinced he becomes that his dad
is the monster who tortured and mutilated Elizabeth Short.
- Witnesses at the time report seeing Elizabeth Short
in the presence and company of Dr. Hodel
and that she may have been a patient of his
or perhaps even a dating partner.
- [Laurence] Another clue for Steve Hodel
is the concrete bag found at the Black Dahlia crime scene.
- One of the other reasons that Steve thought
maybe his dad has been involved
is that this concrete bag that was found
at the scene where Elizabeth Short’s body had been dumped,
Steve said he found a very similar concrete bag
at his dad’s home because there was some construction
being done there.
- Steve Hodel found the receipts
and he matched the receipts to the cement bags
that were found at the crime scene.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] Studying the crime scene photos,
Steve also believes he’s established a motive.
- There’s literally some of Man Ray’s work
that almost exactly resembles the way her body was laid out.
And some believe that,
if this was George Hodel who perpetrated this murder,
that he was trying to imitate or perhaps even supersede
the work of Man Ray due to his close relationship
and perhaps jealousy of Man Ray.
- [Laurence] In 1950, just when it seems the case
against George Hodel is heating up,
the doctor abruptly moves to the Philippines,
which at the time has no extradition treaty with the U.S.
- He goes there and he creates a whole new family.
And he came back many years later, lived in San Francisco,
and then he passed.
Steve went on to write several books
and still believes to this day that his father
actually killed Elizabeth Short.
- [Laurence] In 2017,
the 70-year anniversary of Elizabeth Short’s murder,
a fresh look at the unredacted records
breathes new life into an investigation
that has never officially been closed.
- The fact of the matter is,
LAPD still has a very talented detective assigned
to this investigation with the hopes
that a solution still remains.
- [Laurence] Some believe that solution
may involve a man who made headlines
in the months after the murder.
- This is someone who investigators had looked at
from the very start.
- [Laurence] It’s the fall of 1948,
and LAPD’s chief police psychiatrist,
Dr. Joseph Paul De River, is still determined
to find the Black Dahlia’s killer.
- The LAPD, years on from the murder,
starts to get a little desperate.
They’re trying to bait out the killer any way they can.
- So Dr. De River is interviewed for a true crime magazine
where he basically makes some flattering statements
about who the Black Dahlia killer may be,
talking about the intelligence of the individual
who did this and perhaps the person’s need
to brag or boast about it.
- [Laurence] Within days,
the letter that De River has been waiting for arrives
at police headquarters.
(dramatic music)
- A man named Jack Sands contacted De River saying
that he had information about the Elizabeth Short murder.
- And the main thing that is posited in this letter
is that someone named Jeff Connors
has committed the homicide.
- Sands proposes that the murderer, Jeff Connors,
could’ve been Elizabeth Short’s ex-lover
and perhaps she mocked him by insulting his manhood,
therefore, the murder would’ve been motivated by revenge.
Jack Sands proposes this as the hypothetical motive
of Jeff Connors, but Dr. De River says,
"Oh no, Sands himself is the guy."
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] By now, police psychiatrist Dr. De River
is convinced he’s writing to the actual killer
and that Jack Sands is not his real name.
- So to track down this Jack Sands,
the LAPD dispatches an officer to Florida
to monitor his mailbox.
And they soon discover that this Jack Sands
is actually a man named Leslie Dillon.
Dillon is a married man who bounced between residences
and also between jobs.
He’d once worked as a mortician’s assistant,
which intrigues police given the way
that Elizabeth Short’s body was cut up.
- [Laurence] De River has an undercover LAPD officer
bring Dillon to a bugged hotel in El Monte, California,
so De River can talk to him about the murder.
- They spend three days in a hotel room that’s bugged
to have a conversation about the details of this killing.
- Dillon tells the police that he believes Connor
had a motive to kill Elizabeth Short.
- Playing on a hunch, Dr. De River asks Dillon
to take off his clothes, and he’s shocked.
Dillon has the genitals of a child.
(dramatic music)
This is important because it might’ve been the reason
that Elizabeth Short may have been mocking him
and thus, his reason for feeling humiliated
and wanting to retaliate and kill her.
- De River is seeking to establish the credibility
of Leslie Dillon, so he tests him.
He inquires about the damage to Elizabeth Short’s body.
- One of the things that we know that police held back
was the fact that the suspect
had actually cut a portion of Elizabeth Short’s leg,
which contained a tattoo of a rose.
- When asked about the rose tattoo and its location
on Elizabeth Short’s body,
without hesitation, Leslie Dillon states
that it was removed from her left thigh
and placed in her pelvis.
- This was something only the killer and the police knew,
and he just answered the question affirmatively.
- [Laurence] After four days of questioning,
Dr. De River is convinced he’s finally solved
the Black Dahlia murder.
- They go back to Los Angeles,
and Dillon is ultimately arrested,
but just when it seems like the case is a lock,
LAPD makes a stunning announcement.
- [Laurence] On January 10, 1949,
Leslie Dillon is booked on suspicion
of killing Elizabeth Short.
- Upon inspection of Leslie’s Dillon’s suitcase,
investigators find 700 phenobarbital pills,
along with 70 razorblades, and a dog leash.
- The dog leash itself had been damaged or worn,
perhaps as if it had been bearing a significant weight,
as in the weight of the body of Elizabeth Short.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] Strengthening the case against Dillon,
it’s discovered that a relative who gave him
a place to stay at the time of the Dahlia murder
lived just two blocks from where Beth’s purse
and shoes were dumped.
- They found her handbag and her shoes,
just maybe two miles from where she was left.
- [Laurence] Leslie Dillon has suggested
a man named Jeff Connors is the Black Dahlia murderer
and that he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area,
but the cops believe Jeff Connors
is merely Dillon’s alter ego.
- And as things turn out,
there is a real Jeff Connors and he really is
in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Interestingly enough, police learn
that Jeff Connors, in addition to knowing Leslie Dillon,
he also knows Mark Hansen,
one of our suspects from a previous theory,
as well as Elizabeth Short.
And that all of these paths might’ve crossed
at some time previously.
- [Laurence] Investigators suspect that those paths
might’ve crossed when a jealous
and spurned Mark Hansen may have enlisted their help
in killing Beth Short.
But when Jeff Connors’ ex-wife gives him an alibi
for the presumed time of the murder,
he’s allowed to walk free.
- Mark Hansen was very powerful,
and he had a lot of money and he had a lot of connections.
What if he used all of that to make this case disappear?
Leslie Dillon had plenty reason
to want to get rid of Elizabeth Short.
There’s a theory that she mocked his manhood
or lack thereof.
- Leslie Dillon may have the motivation
with humiliation and revenge.
Mark Hansen may have the means and the ability
to get Elizabeth Short to him
and also the means to get it all cleaned up afterwards.
- [Laurence] All these years later,
newly uncovered witness statements may finally explain
how that happened.
- In 2018, the son of one of the Florentine Garden showgirls
reaches out to investigators and says
that his mom, Nanette, had said to him
that she knew exactly who had killed the Black Dahlia.
Nanette also, according to her son,
said to him that she had seen someone who resembled
Elizabeth Short in Mark Hansen’s home
behind the Florentine Gardens,
known as the Carlos Avenue house.
- [Laurence] According to Nanette’s son,
she asked Hansen who the girl was,
and he said it was Elizabeth Short.
- So a week after the Black Dahlia murder,
when the story was all over the news,
Mark Hansen apparently called Nanette and said
she shouldn’t mention this to anyone
or her career would be over.
- [Laurence] But Beth was out
of Hansen’s Carlos Avenue house by the 10th,
so where did she go after that?
- According to unredacted
district attorney’s office documents,
Mark Hansen, Leslie Dillon, and Elizabeth Short
were all seen at the Aster Motel together.
- Theory has it that Leslie Dillon
and her old friend Mark Hansen kidnapped her
and tortured her in one of the rooms at the Aster Hotel.
Witnesses saw Mark Hansen leave room three
at the Aster Hotel in Los Angeles.
The hotel owner’s wife walked into room three
after everyone had left it,
and she found blood and gore everywhere.
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] These witness accounts, buried for decades,
point to the possibility
that the Aster Motel was where Elizabeth Short was tortured,
murdered, and mutilated.
However, by the time the LAPD examined the Aster Motel,
there is no evidence of a bloody murder.
And though the Aster Motel is ruled out as a crime scene,
the detectives assigned to investigate
are quickly removed.
- The two detectives who were working this case,
who were working the Aster Hotel scene,
are suddenly excused.
Why would they be kicked off this case?
Is it because of Mark Hansen’s pull?
- [Laurence] Is it possible
that multimillionaire Mark Hansen had the clout
to bury evidence and squelch an investigation
into his possible guilt?
It’s yet another unanswered question
in LA’s most compelling murder mystery.
- The Elizabeth Short mystery carries on to this day
because nobody’s been caught.
- Given the nature of the crime,
we want an answer.
We wanna know why. We wanna know who.
And until we do, I think there will always be an interest.
(dramatic music)
- The Black Dahlia murder has a long, unsavory suspect list,
but without solid evidence,
there’s still no way to rule anyone in or out.
The file remains open.
A detective is still on the case.
Maybe one day a newfound clue will finally lead
to the identity of Elizabeth Short’s killer
and justice at last for the Black Dahlia.
I’m Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History’s Greatest Mysteries."
(dramatic music)