The drastic personality shift at the end of Bayleys life wasnt anything I could have ever dreamed of happening, she told him. She wasnt. And Ill add one more element: noir. What keeps me going is that I promised myself I would clear up all the lies and myths and try to reclaim Elizabeth Short from the Dahlia freaks. When Bayley died in January 1948, his autopsy showed that he was suffering from a degenerative brain disease. The clips at the Times and phone book directories from the 1940s were no help in locating Lindgren. [4] Although critics of Harnisch's theory question whether Bayley's mental and physical condition at the time of the murder would have been consistent with the commission of this type of crime, the original investigators' theory that the body was cut in half because the killer wasn't strong enough to move it intact partially answers this objection. Bayley's daughter was a friend of Elizabeth Short's sister Virginia and brother . But it makes a neat package, doesnt it?, In the 2001 documentary James Ellroys Feast of Death, Harnisch presents his theory of the case during a dinner hosted by Ellroy, who has studied the murder for decades and has an encyclopedic knowledge of L.A. crime. He told Harnisch in an interview that he was still appalled and the incident was sharply etched in his memory., Wain called the mother and asked all these questions and took all these notes, Murray recalled. According to Pacios, witnesses she had interviewed state that Welles and the victim both frequented Brittingham's restaurant in Los Angeles during the same time period and waitresses believed Short was going out with someone at Columbia Pictures. Unlike other crimes, there is no statute of limitations on murder and a homicide investigation is never closed until it is solved. It may well be that, barring the dramatic appearance of a written confession, the Dahlia will remain the stuff of Angeleno myth.. He was 67 and had no record of crime or violence. They werent just chit-chatting. After all these years, I still get about one call a week, says LAPD Detective Mitzi Roberts, who has been in charge of the case for a decade. He wanted to interview Short and her husband in an attempt to determine the identity of Barbara Lindgren, but they were dead. His father, George Hodel Jr., was a dashing physician who hobnobbed with actors and artists, lived in a house designed by Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wrights son, in Hollywood, and operated a downtown venereal disease clinic. Harnisch spent three decades as a newspaper copy editor, ensuring stories contained no inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and were grammatically correct, and he brings this punctilious approach to his Dahlia research. . On January 24, 1947, a suspicious manila envelope addressed to "The Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers" was discovered. Hodel later acknowledged that that one of the pictures was of someone else, but still insists the second photo was Short. Harnish, solemn and staid, appears offended, and tells Fallon hes not interested and wouldnt allow a film to be made that treated Short like a piece of meat.. Former colleagues and relatives expressed to Harnisch how shocked they were at how Bayleys personality drastically changed toward the end of his life. With neither the energy nor motivation to finish his book, he put it aside. As City Editor Jimmy Richardson sat in a swivel chair beside him, Sutton called Shorts mother, Phoebe, and said that her daughter won a beauty contest in Southern California. Flipping through filesmuttering, Hansen, Hansen, where is Hansen?he locates a folder, fishes out testimony, and points to the relevant passage. Det. An intense man who chooses his words carefully, he wears wire-rimmed glasses, has neatly parted gray hair, and a high forehead that dissolves into furrows when discussing the many myths and mistakes promulgated by writers. Further, the files indicate that O'Reilly's right pectoral had been surgically removed, which investigators found similar to the mutilation of Short's body. Lane had lived in Los Angeles at the time of the murder and was employed by Columbia Studios, a favorite hangout of Short's, as a maintenance man. I happened to be working on the rewrite desk of the Daily News that morning and drew the story when our police beat phoned in the first bulletin, Smith wrote in a column years later. He read a story about the case in a True Detective-style magazine in which De River was quoted, and wrote to De River regarding his theories on the case. About a dozen patrol officers, sergeants, command officers, and detectives descended upon the scene, in addition to numerous reporters and photographers. He asked if her mother ever discussed the murder of Elizabeth Short and Lindgren said she had never mentioned it. Kay, who had worked with Hodel on some cases when he was a homicide detective, wrote, while emphasizing that he was not speaking for the D.As office, The most haunting murder mystery in Los Angeles County during the 20th, century has finally been solved in the 21st. Harnisch didnt know much, but he thought it was an interesting question. Again, this was before online searches were possible, so he had to scour voter registration records, Department of Motor Vehicles databases, telephone books, newspaper clips, and other sources. Harnisch theorizes that Bayleys neurological deterioration contributed to his alleged violence against Short. Hansen was also linked to three other suspects, each of whom was a medical doctor: Dr. Patrick S. O'Reilly, Dr. M. M. Schwartz, and Dr. Arthur McGinnis Faught. Trying to accurately chronicle the boyhood, career, war experiences, mental decline, flaws and foibles, and the marriage and eventual dissolution of the union of an unremarkable man born in 1880 seemed, at times, like a quixotic quest. We follow Bersingers path, from her gray stucco house with a postage stamp front lawn, down the sidewalk to the lot where Short was found. Walter Bayley Bayley was an L.A. surgeon who lived just one block away from the location where police discovered Short's body. The story was such big news, the body was found down the street from her mothers house, and the family knew Shorts sister. The drive for violence and sexuality can come up and get worse and worse. According to the files, at the time of the murder O'Reilly was a good friend of Hansen and frequented Hansen's nightclub. I found out that a woman in the drugstore is the one who named her. Norton Avenue, she told him. century. If George Hodel were alive, Kay wrote, he would file two counts of murder against him for the Dahlia and the Red Lipstick murders. Dillon later filed a $100,000 claim against the City of Los Angeles, but dropped the lawsuit after it emerged he was wanted by Santa Monica police for robbery. They deserve to have somebody tell the story accurately. Walter Bayley [ edit] Bayley was a Los Angeles surgeon who lived one block south of the vacant lot in which Short's body was found, until he left his wife in October 1946. The mother didnt answer. Finally, the murder has been the most frustrating pursuit of all. I noticed that dark hair and this white, white form., I glanced to my right and saw this very dead, white body, she told Harnisch, her voice cracking. The story of the Black Dahlia made headlines for weeks. Walter Alonzo Bayley was a surgeon that lived close to Elizabeth Short. The first was that Walter was 67 years old at the time of the murder (Wikipedia). Two of the photos, he was convinced, were of Elizabeth Short. Then we realized what the hell we had. Hodel's son, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, believes Short may have been one of his father's patients. A self-published book by a former LAPD Vice detective wrote in 1950 that an abortion doctors office was located in a building on West 6th. Authorities took the confession seriously enough to investigate and found it groundless. London has Jack the Ripper. The real killer, he believed, only killed once. Bayley had a degenerative brain disorder, which could have resulted in violent behavior. Killed her. Id rather research than eat. He sticks to the facts. There was nothing then in the way of support groupsThe family has put so much time into trying to get away from ittrying to put it behind us.. Detectives in the LAPDs Cold Case Unit said the photos bore no resemblance to Short. I dont want other people following my trail. [14] Buz Williams, a retired detective with the Long Beach Police Department, wrote an article for the LBPD newsletter The Rap Sheet in 2000 on Elizabeth Short's murder. His evidence was simply not convincing, Lambkin says. The envelope included Shorts birth certificate, Social Security card, newspaper clippings, and a ten-year-old address book, which listed seventy-five men. Wilson was a lifelong petty criminal and alcoholic who was interviewed by author John Gilmore while Gilmore was researching his book Severed. Keller believed Mark Hansen was the killer and said Hansen was Swedish and had spent some time at Sweden's Medical Surgical School (Hansen was actually born in Denmark) which would explain the precise dissection of Short's body. Yet the loose chain of circumstance he assembles to prove his fathers guilt is less convincing still. As a result of wide-spread corruption in the LAPD, Hodel claimed, the murders were covered up and never solved. Walter was our only sonthe only child of our flesh and blood, Bayley said in a newspaper story. Author claims to have found 1947 murderer", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Black_Dahlia_suspects&oldid=1145097905, This page was last edited on 17 March 2023, at 07:28. He has interviewed more than one hundred-fifty people, ranging from the first officer on the scene, to family members of Short, to a former boyfriend, to detectives assigned to the investigation, to the woman who discovered the body. As quoted in Newton, 2009, p. 46. Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley was a Los Angeles surgeon who lived in a house one block south of the vacant lot in which Elizabeth Short's body was found, until he left his wife in October 1946. Bayley was chief of staff at Los Angeles County Hospital and an associate professor of surgery at USC Medical School, and doctors Harnisch interviewed who knew Bayley, as well as his secretary, insisted that it was highly unlikely that a surgeon with his professional standing would have performed abortions. He wanted to interview Short and her husband in an attempt to determine the identity of Barbara Lindgren, but they were dead. had bugged Hodels home and he was recorded saying, Supposin I did kill the Black Dahlia. Dillon was a 27-year-old bellhop, aspiring writer, and former mortician's assistant who became a suspect when he began writing to Los Angeles Police Department psychiatrist Dr. J. Paul De River in October 1948. At the time of the murder, Bayley's estranged wife still lived in the home. The office in his small South Pasadena home is crammed with five metal file cabinets, twenty boxes of file folders, and four bookcases lined with hundreds of books, all focused on the Short homicide or Los Angeles history. However, Newton also admitted that Janice's allegations against her father were entirely circumstantial and lacked substantial corroboration. files. Hodel believes his reputation was salvaged by a surprising revelation by a newspaper columnist and the support of Stephen Kay, an assistant Los Angeles County district attorney. Hansen died of natural causes in 1964. While Fallon has an ebullient mien and manner, clearly enjoys discussing the bizarre nature of the case, and asks if Harnisch has explored his books movie potential. In addition, one of the Los Angeles homicides Hodel attributes to his father was extensively investigated by the Unit, Lambkin says; the case was solved, the killer was identified, and he was not George Hodel. 1, spent 43 years as a homicide detective and investigated more than 1,000 murders and twelve serial killers. A self-published book by a former LAPD Vice detective wrote in 1950 that an abortion doctors office was located in a building on West 6th Streetthe same building as Bayleys office. He also spends the evening wandering around the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, where Short was last seen, paying homage to her and ruminating about the case. Harnisch obtained Bayleys death certificate and one of the causes of death is listed as encephalomalacia. [18] See statement of Dorothy Hodel,[19] former wife). Hundreds of people were considered suspects and thousands were interviewed by police. Richardson informed Jack Donahoe, the head of LAPDs Homicide Squad about his finding and said he would tell him where the suitcases wereunder one condition. When asked why there is still an obsessive focus on the case among crime buffs, he says, Ill defer to the theory of the original detectives, who came up with three reasons. He had no criminal record and no known history of violence. In 2003, he was identified by Los Angeles Times reporter Larry Harnisch as a possible suspect in the infamous Black Dahlia case. Harnisch had a series of building blocks that led to a viable suspect; now he had to stitch them together and create a plausible scenario. After encountering these early erroneous accounts, he vowed that everything he wrote would be exact, backed by authenticated sources, and he ended up spending an inordinate amount of time, which stalled his own research and writing, challenging the accounts of other writers. Although this "breakthrough" was quickly dismissed by the original investigators, the Los Angeles press covered it enthusiastically until it was revealed that Dumais had been at Fort Dix at the time of the murder. In her 2000 book, Mary Pacios, a former neighbor of the Short family in Medford, Massachusetts, suggested filmmaker Orson Welles as a suspect. The D.A. He was a vice cop. His final task is to chronicle the last few months of Shorts life, and Harnisch has gone to extraordinary length to track down biographical details. Since beginning his investigation, Steve located and identified one of the photographic subjects as a former friend of George Hodel. They couldn't prove it now. Ill never say Im a hundred percent sure. This is where Jake Gittes in the movie Chinatown discovers that a civic kingmaker has been surreptitiously buying up San Fernando Valley scrubland for rock-bottom prices because he has insider knowledge that the land will soon be worth a fortune when an aqueduct brings water to the area, enabling the property to be developed. Walter also disinherited his wife, who had remained at the house on South Norton Avenue, and their other daughter, Beatrice. The Biltmore, with its Spanish and Italian Renaissance design, Moorish beamed ceilings, lavish frescoes and murals, was the citys most elegant hotel when Short wandered inside. When he studied the marriage certificate, he discovered the couple was married in Inglewood. He had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for "taking his secretary to a motel and sadistically beating her almost to death apparently for no other reason than to satisfy his sexual desires without intercourse," the files state. Reporters and detectives raced to track down the boyfriends identified in the letters. The envelope included a letter using cut-out words from newspaper clippings that said, "Here is Dahlia's belongings." They were unable to obtain fingerprints from the envelope because it had been brushed with gasoline. It didnt look quitelike anything more than perhaps an artificial model. Some of those elements, he said, have never been revealed by detectives in order to weed out the false confessors. Detective Frank Jemison. Short was not killed by Walter Bayley. [9][10] The publication of the Long Beach Police The Rap Sheet said that a former member of LA's Gangster Squad investigating the case believed that Leslie Dillon was the killer and when Dillon returned to his home state of Oklahoma was able to avoid extradition to California because Dillon's relative was the governor of Oklahoma. 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