The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  Information from the reporters' interview of Phoebe Short, and from Mrs. Short's testimony later at the coroner's inquest, revealed that on January 2, 1947, Mrs. Short received a letter from her daughter in which Elizabeth told her mother she "was living in San Diego, California, with a girlfriend, Vera French, and was working at the Naval Hospital." Mrs. Short said that her daughter "was kind of movie struck, and that everyone in Medford had told her how beautiful she was." Her daughter had left high school in her junior year.

  "Elizabeth had asthma," Mrs. Short told the reporters, "and every winter Betty would go south, to Florida, and work as a waitress, then she would return home in the summers." While she was living in Los Angeles, Elizabeth told her mother through letters, she had "worked in some films in Hollywood as an extra and had played in some minor roles." With the exception of Elizabeth's engagement to Matt Gordon, Phoebe Short was unaware of any serious relationships her daughter had had with men. "Major Gordon," Phoebe told police, "was engaged to my daughter, but he was killed flying home after the war."

  At the coroner's inquest, held in Los Angeles on January 22, 1947, seven days after the discovery of her daughter's body, Mrs. Short identified Elizabeth at the coroner's office and testified that she "was twenty-two years of age, a waitress by occupation, and to her knowledge had never been married." Mrs. Short had last seen Elizabeth when she left home in Medford, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1946, for California. She told the inquest that while her daughter was at home with her, she never spoke of having any enemies, and said she was in love with a man named Gordon Fielding. She added that her daughter always wrote her on a weekly basis while she lived away from home.

  Inez Keeling

  Mrs. Keeling met Elizabeth Short in Santa Barbara during the war when she was manager at the post exchange at the Camp Cooke Army base in Santa Barbara, where Elizabeth, then eighteen, was employed in early 1943. Mrs. Keeling said, "Elizabeth told me that she had come out to California because of her health. She told me that the doctors in the East were concerned she might contract tuberculosis if she remained in a colder climate, and that is why her parents allowed her to come to California alone. I was immediately won over by Elizabeth's charm and beauty. She was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen and one of the most shy." Mrs. Keeling told newspapers that Elizabeth "never visited with the men over the counter at work, and she didn't date the men. She was a model employee; she didn't smoke and only occasionally took a drink." Keeling last saw Elizabeth when she left the base early in 1943.

  Cleo Short

  The police discovered that Cleo Short, Elizabeth's fifty-three-year-old father, was living in Los Angeles, working as a refrigerator repairman. LAPD characterized him in its reports to the press as "uncooperative." Short explained that he wanted no contact with his daughter, who had traveled to California to live with him, and said he had paid for her bus fare back to her mother in Massachusetts. In 1930, according to Mrs. Short, Cleo had abandoned her and his five young daughters in Massachusetts, and simply "disappeared." Mrs. Short had raised the children on her own and had no desire to see or speak with Cleo at the time of the inquest.

  Both police investigators and reporters interviewed Cleo Short at his Los Angeles apartment at 1020 South Kingsley Drive, only three miles from the vacant lot where his daughter's body had been discovered. Short told them that he couldn't provide any current information about his daughter or her activities. "I last saw my daughter Elizabeth three years ago, in Vallejo, California. I gave her two hundred dollars and she came out from Massachusetts. She came to live with me in Vallejo, but she spent all her time running around when she was supposed to be keeping house for me, so I made her leave. I didn't want anything to do with her or any of the rest of the family then. I was through with all of them." Cleo made it clear to the police that since he had no information about his daughter, he wanted nothing to do with the investigation of her death.

  The interviews with Phoebe Short and her ex-husband, Cleo, revealed to police a mother who could not control her daughter's wanderlust, as innocent as that may have been, and a father who had abandoned his family and had no desire to be further involved with it. The interviews also revealed that Elizabeth was probably looking for a father figure, someone in authority, probably someone in uniform, who would stabilize her life. She thought she had found it in Matt Gordon, but his death had dashed her hopes and set her on a path to find a replacement. Whether she still lived in the fantasy of her engagement to Major Gordon during her stays in Hollywood and San Diego or was simply in denial about her own reality, she would drift from relationship to relationship until she met her killer.

  When she met Arthur Curtis James in 1944, three years before her death, and agreed to model for him, she was already dancing very close to the edge.

  Arthur Curtis James Jr. (aka Charles Smith)

  Arthur James was a fifty-six-year-old artist and ex-convict, awaiting sentencing in a pending forgery charge, who first met Elizabeth in a Hollywood cocktail lounge in August 1944. "She showed an interest in my drawings," he told police, who interviewed him in 1947 after they discovered that James had known Elizabeth Short. James told police that he was in a bar drawing sketches and she was seated nearby. After she said she liked what James had sketched, he revealed to police, the two of them became friends. "She modeled for me, and I made several pictures of her," he explained. He corroborated his statements by giving police the names of the current owners of his artwork. "One, a large oil painting, I later turned over to a man named Frank Armand, who lived in Artesia." The second one he identified as "a sketch of Elizabeth, which I turned over to a Mrs. Hazel Milman, Star Route 1, Box 24, Rodeo Grounds, in the Santa Monica, Palisades district." James then told police that his contact with Elizabeth ended abruptly three months later in November 1944 after he was arrested in Tucson, Arizona, for violation of the Mann Act, while he was using the alias of Charles Smith. The press later established that the federal charges against him, involving the "transporting of girls across a state line for immoral purposes," did not involve and were totally unrelated to the Elizabeth Short homicide.

  As a result of those charges James was convicted and served two years in Leavenworth prison. After his release in 1946, he ran into Elizabeth in Hollywood that November, when he bought her several pieces of luggage. James quickly ran afoul of the law again, because the check he wrote for the luggage bounced and he was arrested. At the time of his interview with reporters in January 1947 he was awaiting sentencing on those charges.

  Mrs. Matt Gordon Sr.

  The press interviewed Mrs. Gordon, fiance Matt Gordon Jr.'s mother, over the phone at her home in Pueblo, Colorado, after a telegram she'd sent to Elizabeth was found in Elizabeth's luggage stored in the downtown Los Angeles bus depot. Mrs. Gordon denied rumors that Elizabeth and her son were ever actually married, but confirmed that her son had first met Elizabeth in Miami, Florida, in 1944, where he was stationed after his return from China. She also confirmed that the two did correspond after he left the United States for India, adding that she was proud that "my son had been awarded the Air Medal with fifteen oak clusters, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the silver and bronze stars."

  Upon being notified by the War Department that Matt had been killed in an airplane crash in India in August of 1945, Mrs. Gordon sent a telegram to Elizabeth: "Received word War Department Matt killed in crash. Our deepest sympathy is with you. Letter follows. Pray it isn't true. Love." In her telephone interview with reporters four days after Elizabeth's body was discovered, she said, "My heart goes out in sympathy to that girl and to her mother."

  Anne Toth

  Elizabeth Short's former roommate Anne Toth was a twenty-four-year-old film actress and extra who had had bit parts in several movies. She'd briefly shared lodging with Elizabeth at the private residence of Mark Hansen, part owner of the Florentine Gardens, a popular nightclub in Hollywood, which featured what newspapers called a "Girlie Revue." It was common practice for Han
sen to rent rooms at his Hollywood residence at 6024 Carlos Avenue, Toth said, to "girls trying to break into the business."

  Toth first met Elizabeth in July or August of 1946, when Elizabeth moved in. "She lived at the house for several months, then went away for about three weeks, then came back." Toth did not know where Elizabeth had gone during that three-week period, but indicated that "Elizabeth's girlfriend, Marjorie Graham, had left for

  Boston, but that Elizabeth said she hadn't gone with her and she would rather die than bear the cold of the East."

  "About three weeks before Christmas," Toth said to the press, "Elizabeth told me she was going to go to Berkeley, to visit her sister, but instead went to San Diego. I don't know why she went there." Toth received a telegram from Elizabeth during the Christmas holidays saying that she was low on funds. "She was asking me for twenty dollars," Toth said. "Three weeks later I got a second telegram saying she was coming back and a letter would follow." That was Elizabeth's last communication; Toth never received the promised letter.

  "She was friendly with several men while she stayed at the house on Carlos Avenue with me," Toth said. "I remember three of the men. One was an Air Force officer from Texas, another a radio announcer named Maurice, and the third was a language teacher. He was about thirty-five years old, 5'-6", medium build, and he drove a black Ford or Chevrolet. I remember he had promised to set Betty up in an apartment in Beverly Hills if she left our place on Carlos." Toth added, "We used to think the world of that kid. She was always well behaved and sweet."

  "Sergeant John Doe" (unidentified U.S. Army man)

  Elizabeth Short's FBI file, obtained under a FOIA request, contains a memo dated March 27, 1947, of a lengthy interview by special agents of the FBI's Pittsburgh office with a soldier in the U.S. Army whose name, rank, and home base were blacked out, as were the names of other identified individuals. The interview, which provides important information about Elizabeth's background and movements, and insights into her overall character, describes a twenty-four-hour relationship between the soldier and Elizabeth in downtown Los Angeles on September 20-21, 1946.

  The interviewee told the FBI agents that after being granted special leave for four days in Los Angeles he went downtown to 6th Street and Olive, arriving at that corner at approximately 2:00 P.M. wearing his full Army uniform with campaign ribbons and shoulder patches identifying his "outfit." He told agents that two women approached him, one of whom he identified from photographs as Elizabeth Short.

  Noticing his shoulder patch, Elizabeth asked him whether he knew a certain soldier, whose name was stricken from the transcript. The interviewee replied that the two of them had served overseas together in the same outfit. Elizabeth told him that she and----had been "childhood sweethearts" in her hometown of Medford, Massachusetts. She added that she had heard he had reenlisted, but didn't know where he was stationed.

  The interviewee told the agents he'd asked Elizabeth for a date that night and she'd agreed, introducing herself as "Betty Short." She had also introduced her girlfriend, but the interviewee could not recall her name. The interviewee and the two women walked the short distance to the Figueroa Hotel, where Elizabeth was registered, and the three of them stayed in the hotel lobby and talked for a while until Elizabeth excused herself and went upstairs. According to their memo, the sergeant told the FBI agents, "He is positive that the name that Betty was registered under at the hotel was [blacked out]."

  The second woman remained in the lobby with the sergeant while Elizabeth was upstairs and informed him that she "had been married, was separated, then divorced," adding that she had been employed in Hollywood, though her employer's identity was stricken from the transcript. Elizabeth was currently unemployed, she said, and she had to loan her money from time to time. The sergeant then asked Elizabeth's friend if she knew where he could get a hotel room for the night. She told him she thought it would be extremely difficult but that "Elizabeth had twin beds in her room and might allow me to sleep there." The sergeant wanted her to "ask Betty if it would be agreeable with her if I stayed in her room." The girlfriend then left him in the lobby and went upstairs.

  Both women rejoined the FBI's unidentified witness in the lobby of the hotel a little later in the afternoon and walked a short distance from the hotel, then caught a bus to Hollywood. Sergeant John Doe was seated next to Elizabeth's girlfriend, and Elizabeth sat in a vacant seat next to a Marine, with whom she immediately struck up a conversation. Noting this, the sergeant told the FBI agents that Elizabeth was "the type of girl who was very friendly and would talk to anyone." During the bus ride to Hollywood, he said, Elizabeth's girlfriend said she had asked her about his staying in her room, and Elizabeth had agreed he could. When the bus stopped in Hollywood, Elizabeth's girlfriend said goodnight to Elizabeth and the soldier and went off on her own.

  Elizabeth and Sergeant Doe went to a live Tony Martin broadcast at the CBS radio studio and from there to Tom Breneman's restaurant at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. The interviewee told the FBI agents that when he and Elizabeth got there they saw a long line of people waiting for tables, but upon seeing Elizabeth the headwaiter immediately whisked the two of them inside and got them a table. The soldier could see, he told the FBI, that "Elizabeth was a regular customer, as all the waiters were on friendly terms with her and all recognized her."

  During dinner Elizabeth talked more about her childhood sweetheart back in Medford, remarking that he "had been quite jealous when they were young, and had told me not to have any other boyfriends," which she found "quite amusing." The soldier mentioned to Elizabeth that he had known her friend only under combat conditions and "really did not know him very well."

  Throughout their dinner, the soldier noticed that many of the patrons kept eyeing Elizabeth, noticing how well dressed she was, and constantly making whispered comments, as if "they recognized her as an actress from RKO or some other film studio." The two of them finished dinner and left the restaurant in the early-morning hours of September 21, 1946.

  They caught a trolley back to downtown Los Angeles and got off about five blocks from the Figueroa. As they were walking, a black car drove up beside them. Inside, the soldier said, he could see five men, "all appearing dark complexioned, possibly all Mexicans." Three of these men jumped out of the car and yelled, "There she is!" The soldier said he turned to Elizabeth and suggested he "beat the men up." "No," Elizabeth told him, "it would be better to run" — which they did.

  As they reached the hotel, Elizabeth asked the soldier "to wait outside for about 20 minutes" while she went to her room first, because, she said, "the hotel has strict regulations." The soldier waited about half an hour, then went up and knocked on the door. "She opened it wearing a flimsy negligee." He made love to Elizabeth that night. In fact, he stated he "had relations with her numerous times during the night," adding that "at no time during the night was Elizabeth in a passionate mood."

  On the morning of September 21, Elizabeth's girlfriend returned to the hotel and the three of them agreed to double-date, the soldier promising to fix Elizabeth's girlfriend up with an Army buddy. They agreed to meet at the drugstore across the street from the Figueroa between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m., which they did. As they were leaving the drugstore, however, Elizabeth suggested that they play a little joke on-----: she and the soldier would write a postcard to---- saying they were "happily married and living in Hollywood." The soldier bought several postcards and stamps at the drugstore, wrote the messages, and addressed them to---- at his home address in Medford, Massachusetts.

  The foursome went to what the soldier described as a "nearby beer garden." Then the soldier and his Army buddy, whose name was stricken from the record, suggested to Elizabeth and her friend that they head back to the hotel. But Elizabeth and her girlfriend turned them down, saying they "had dates with other men later that night." Elizabeth said that her date that evening was "with a man with a car" who was taking her to some specific place that he could not recall. After th
e soldier realized he would not have another date with Elizabeth, he asked if he could correspond with her, and see her again. He gave her his address, which, he told the FBI, "was noted down by her girlfriend in a small notebook."

  After walking the girls back to the Figueroa, the two soldiers left them there at about 7:00 P.M. As Elizabeth started to enter the hotel the soldier noticed that she ran into someone she apparently knew and was having a heated argument with him: "a short, chunky, well-dressed man who appeared to be 40-45 years of age."

  Sergeant Doe told the FBI agents that he never saw, heard from, or corresponded with Elizabeth after that day, returning to the East Coast the following day, September 22. When four months later he read about her murder in the newspaper he immediately wrote the LAPD about his date with Elizabeth. He said he "was fearful that my name would be discovered in the victim's girlfriend's address book, and that was the reason I contacted LAPD as soon as I heard about her murder." He never heard back from the police. But since he wasn't in California from January 9 through 15, he could not have been a suspect.

  In closing the interview, the agents asked Sergeant Doe if he could recall any additional conversations he had had with Elizabeth during their thirty hours together. The soldier made these additional observations, which the agents included in their casefile memo:

  Elizabeth had told him "she was afraid to be alone on the streets of Los Angeles at night." In the hotel lobby, he said, "Elizabeth had shown me a newspaper that recounted the number of murders and rapes that had occurred in Los Angeles over a short period." Elizabeth also told him she was going out with a man "she did not like very much, but she did not want to hurt his feelings by stopping relations." The soldier could not recall this man's name.