The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  That day the Express also ran a report about a forcible rape, including a photograph of the attractive victim, a Mrs. Sylvia Horan, who was described as "30 years old, honey-haired and shapely." At first glance, the crime appeared to be an unrelated and isolated sexual attack, though the paper noted that it had occurred "near the Dahlia murder spot." Sylvia Horan might have been an important living witness to detectives in the Black Dahlia investigation if law enforcement had linked the Horan crime to the Short case.

  Although the rape had occurred within the city limits, Mrs. Horan lived in the county and reported the crime to the sheriff after having been thrown out of the suspect's car in the sheriff's jurisdiction. She told deputies who took a "courtesy report" for LAPD that she was an ex-WAC and married, but that her husband was in New York on business. She had gone alone to downtown Los Angeles to see a show. Afterward she was standing on the corner of 7th Street and Broadway when a "suave stranger, driving a black coupe, drove up to her and offered to drive her home." "I accepted the ride," she said, "due to the late hour." The stranger, who identified himself only as "Bob," drove her to a lonely spot on Stocker Boulevard between Crenshaw and La Brea Avenues, only eight blocks from where the body of Elizabeth Short had been found, and forcibly raped her.

  Mrs. Horan reported, "He grabbed me in his arms ... we were parked in his car on a very dark street... I was paralyzed with fright... I had a vision of the Black Dahlia, her body cut in half. . . I was in a situation ... so I submitted to his advances. I knew we were near the place where the Black Dahlia's body had been found, and I was terrified. All I could think of was to escape and get home alive."

  Mrs. Horan told the deputies that after the attack the man drove her to the Inglewood area and "rudely pushed her from his automobile and fled. I was so afraid I forgot to get the license plate of his car." The case was reported in the Examiner, but according to the public record of the Black Dahlia investigation, it was never incorporated into the Elizabeth Short case file and remained an isolated sexual assault.

  Tuesday, February 4, 1947

  Police reported to the press that they were on the lookout in San Diego for a "sleek-haired Latin type, one of the most favored of the host of admirers attracted by the Dahlia's flashing beauty." LAPD detectives told reporters they were "working with San Diego authorities to run down clues to the handsome Latin's identity, and that they were also checking some new leads."

  In a separate statement the same day, detectives reported that, "Due to the surgical neatness of the severed body, they were checking the possibility that she could have possibly been slain in a mortuary."

  Wednesday, February 5, 1947

  Famed mystery writer Leslie Charteris, creator of the fictional amateur sleuth "the Saint," was called in to analyze the Dahlia murder for the Herald Express. His profile described a "lone wolf" type, possibly suffering from impotence. Here is a brief excerpt from his long article:

  Whether the murderer's impotence was or was not due to alcohol, and whether his resulting rage was or was not inflamed by the same thing, I can see him saying something like "So you think you can laugh at me, do you? I'll keep that laugh on your face for good" — and he slashes her cheeks from the corners of her mouth to her ears, in the ghastly grin which is preserved on the morgue photos ...

  I am practically certain that the man will be caught and I base this on a rather gruesome reason. My reason is that even if he should get away with this murder, it is almost certain that he will repeat it, and the next time he does it he has another chance to make a slip.

  Thursday, February 6, 1947

  Not to be outdone by their morning competitor, the Evening Herald Express brought in their own hired gun, the popular mystery writer David Goodis, who had recently written the bestseller Dark Passage, which, at the time of the Dahlia murder, was in production at Warner Brothers Studios. The now classic noir film would be released a few months after his article appeared, and paired film legend Humphrey Bogart with sultry Lauren Bacall. Goodis's lengthy "profile" of the killer speculated that he met her in a bar:

  The man — and I am certain it was a man — met her on the street or in a bar. They talked. They found each other interesting. Somewhere along the path of their conversation they fell into the channel of an erotic subject. This was the initial spark. It grew. Within the mind of the man it expanded and formed a chain between the conscious and the subconscious.

  Suddenly, he was insane — completely. But Elizabeth Short did not notice this. She was intrigued by the man. There was something about him that magnetized her particular personality. When he invited her to his "place," she offered no argument.

  As if writing a fictional ending to his story, Goodis concocted a strange scenario in which LAPD would try to lure the killer using a Dahlia lookalike as bait. She could be "wired," and the police could pounce on the killer just as he was about to strike.

  That day, the Evening Herald Express ran a front-page story on a new suspect in the murder, a twenty-nine-year-old Army corporal named Joseph Dumais, who was purportedly in police custody at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Over the next four days, as more and more revelations were reported in the papers, particularly Corporal Dumais's own confessions, he became an even stronger suspect in the eyes of the public. Los Angeles readers were riveted by the unfolding story of the Dumais confessions that played across each day's newspaper editions like a serialized novel.

  February 6, Herald Express:.

  GRILL G.I. ON L.A. DAHLIA DATE IN TRY TO SOLVE LOST WEEK

  February 6, Examiner:

  SUSPECT IN DAHLIA SLAYING JAILED BY ARMY AT FORT DIX

  February 8, Daily News:

  "BLACKOUT" MURDER OF BETH SHORT CONFESSED SOLDIER ADMITS CRIME BUT HOLDS BACK HORROR DETAILS CORPORAL DUMAIS SIGNS 50 PAGE CONFESSION

  February 8, Herald Express, in four-inch bold headlines:

  CORPORAL DUMAIS IS BLACK DAHLIA KILLER

  Identifies Marks on Girl's Body in Long Confession

  February 9, Examiner:

  MILITARY CAPTAIN CONVINCED THEY HAVE THE DAHLIA KILLER

  February 9, Examiner:

  NEW DAHLIA CONFESSION

  Monday, February 10, 1947

  After all the week's stories about Dumais, whom newspapers now dubbed "the real Dahlia killer," since he had confessed to the crime, readers were jolted on February 10 by a sudden and startling turn of events. Dumais, it was revealed, was not the killer! The story was a complete hoax, a ruse foisted on the Black Dahlia Avenger by the newspapers, in which they "manufactured" a suspect to confess to the crime, a tactic not unlike Steve Fisher's suggestion that the police trick the real murderer by "rigging a phony killer" to bring the real culprit in. Here, however, it wasn't the police putting out a false story, but the media.

  Despite the Dumais "confessions," the public was never told, either by the police or the press, that LAPD detectives were almost certain from the outset that Dumais was not the Black Dahlia Avenger: four of his Army buddies had testified he was at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on January 15. The newspapers knew this too, but played up the story in the hope that, if Fisher was correct in his psychological assessment of the Black Dahlia Avenger, the killer's ego would force him to turn himself in to police, if only to expose Dumais as a false confessor. Unfortunately, the newspapers' hoax did entice the killer to make himself known — not by turning himself in but by striking again.

  *I don't pretend to be an expert on London's notorious nineteenth-century serial killer, "Jack the Ripper." However, on the surface, it would appear that the Dahlia killer had more than a passing knowledge of the famous case, and demonstrated that knowledge after his murder of Elizabeth Short. Like their modern-day counterparts, the newspapers of the 1880s published the handwritten, taunting Ripper letters, which included very similar wording, phrases, and drawings used by the 1947 Avenger. Jack the Ripper wrote, "Catch me when you can." In many of his letters he included the taunting phrase, "Ha ha!" and drew childlike drawings of a knife blade.
In addition, the Ripper mailed items connected to his victims, such as a partial kidney, to the police, leading some authorities to suspect the killer might well have been a surgeon.

  14

  The "Red Lipstick" Murder

  A SCANT TWO DAYS AFTER the Herald Express announced that the Black Dahlia killer, Corporal Joseph Dumais, had confessed and the Black Dahlia case was solved, the Herald Express put out a special edition on Monday, February 10, 1947, with the headline:

  WEREWOLF STRIKES AGAIN! KILLS L.A.

  WOMAN, WRITES "B.D." ON BODY

  This time the victim's nude body was found in an isolated vacant lot, on a direct parallel line some seven miles west of where Elizabeth Short's body had been found three weeks earlier. According to crime-scene descriptions, the victim had been "kicked and stomped to death." Like the Black Dahlia, her mouth had also been slashed, and the killer had used lipstick from her purse to write obscenities on the naked body, signing his now infamous initials, "B.D.," to let the police know — or think — he was the same person who had sent the notes in the Dahlia case. The local press quickly dubbed this second crime with two names: "Jeanne French: The Flying Nurse" and "the Red Lipstick murder."

  In the early 1930s, Jeanne French had gained a measure of fame and notoriety in the Los Angeles area as a socialite and starlet. She had worked as a studio-contract actress under the name Jeanne Thomas, had become a registered nurse, and had gotten her license as one of America's first female airplane pilots. The papers loved her and had nicknamed her "the Flying Nurse." Said to be one of the most promising candidates for screen fame in the early days of talking pictures, but dogged by a host of suitors, she finally married and gave up her career.

  Jeanne French had also been well-known in European social circles as the nurse and traveling companion of Millicent Rogers, the famed oil heiress of the 1920s. French was also the nurse of Marion Wilson, known to the public as "the Woman in Black," who for many years after the death of Rudolph Valentino returned on the anniversary of his death as the mysterious veiled woman seen placing flowers on his grave.

  Just after eight in the morning on Monday, February 10, 1947 — less than four weeks after the murder of Elizabeth Short — construction worker Hugh Shelby discovered Jeanne French's nude, bludgeoned, and lacerated body in a vacant lot in the 3200 block of Grandview Avenue.

  Detectives who examined the victim's body at the crime scene discovered that the killer had written an obscenity on her torso with red lipstick — an obscenity the police never disclosed — and then signed "B.D." The worn-out lipstick stub was found close to the body, as was the victim's empty purse.

  Foot and heel marks were clearly visible on the victim's face, breasts, and hands, indicating that she had been brutally stomped by a maddened assailant. Captain Donahoe told the press that the victim had been savagely beaten with "a heavy weapon, probably a tire iron or a wrench, as she crouched naked on the highway."

  The victim's stockings and underclothing were missing. However, the killer had ceremoniously draped her blue coat trimmed with red fox-fur cuffs and her red dress over the body before leaving the scene. A man's white handkerchief was also found near the body. There was also a wine bottle that search-team detectives found nearby that was taken to the crime lab in the hope of obtaining fingerprints.

  Police obtained photographs of the handwriting on the body and plaster castings of the clearly defined footprints found at the scene. Handwriting experts were called to the crime scene to study the macabre note on her torso before her body was taken to the morgue. Other letters were observed on the nude body below the "B.D." that were difficult to decipher but possibly read "Tex" and "O" or "D" or possibly "Andy D," leading to police speculation that possibly two men might have been involved in the murder.

  The police criminalists recovered important physical evidence in the form of black hair follicles found under the victim's fingernails, which indicated that she had put up a violent struggle before being slain. In their reconstruction of the crime, homicide detectives speculated to the press that the victim "was stripped naked in the parked car and then beaten."

  Detectives also concluded that because a large pool of blood was found in the highway near the crime scene, the killer must have dragged the victim from the highway to the lot, where he wrote the message on her body, then draped the clothing over her. As a last act, he had carefully arranged her shoes on either side of her head at an equal distance of approximately ten feet, then fled.

  The coroner's physician, Dr. Newbarr, conducted the autopsy and found the cause of death to be "ribs shattered by heavy blows, one of the broken ribs having pierced the heart creating hemorrhage and death." Dr. Newbarr stated that the victim had "dined on chop suey within an hour of her death." Newbarr determined that the victim was murdered the same day her body was found, sometime between midnight and 4:00 A.M. Results of a blood alcohol examination by the chemist returned a level of .30, twice what was then considered legally drunk, and more than three times the level by today's standards in California.

  Police described the Lipstick crime scene as a "sort of lovers lane area" — the same phrase that had been used to characterize the vacant lot where Elizabeth Short was found. They also put out an all points bulletin to law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, notifying them that "the killer would have blood on his shoes and pants, and possibly in his vehicle."

  In tracing Jeanne French's movements in the hours before her death, the police and witness statements established that at 7:30 P.M. Sunday, February 9, 1947, she had gone into the Plantation Cafe, 10984 Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles, in the company of two men, one of whom was described by waitress Christine Studnicka as having "dark hair and a small mustache." In its coverage, the Los Angeles Examiner also reported that the description matched that of a dark-haired man the victim had had dinner with five hours later. Studnicka also observed that "the two men entered a booth and ordered food, while the victim went to a pay telephone in the restaurant." The victim's phone call to the unknown person lasted approximately ten minutes.

  During the phone call, Studnicka said people nearby could hear French bark into the receiver in a very loud voice, "Don't bring a bottle, the landlady doesn't allow it." While still on the phone, the victim yelled to the two men in her booth, "Don't put any liquor in the car" and "Don't take any liquor." Studnicka observed that the two men appeared "to be arguing between themselves," and it was her impression that they were "arguing over which one was going to accompany the victim."

  After they had eaten, the two men left the restaurant, followed shortly by Jeanne French. Studnicka did not know whether the three met up outside the restaurant, nor could she provide a further description of the second man who accompanied the "dark-haired man."

  Later that Sunday evening, at 9:30 P.M., witnesses saw Jeanne French driving away from her home at the wheel of her 1928 Ford Roadster. Half an hour later, restaurant owner Ray Fecher saw her inside his Turkey Bowl restaurant at 11925 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, where, he told police, "She was intoxicated, making loud remarks, while drinking a cup of coffee."

  At 10:30 P.M., French was identified as the person inside a bar at 10421 Venice Boulevard on the west side of Los Angeles, where she told bartender Earl Holmes she was going to "commit her husband to a psycho ward at the Sawtelle Veteran's Hospital the following morning." Police later verified the accuracy of this statement, because Jeanne French's husband, whom she was planning to divorce, had slapped her a week before, and as a result she had forced him to move out.

  At 10:45 P.M., Santa Monica PD officers Chapman and Aikens received a radio call in their patrol car reporting "a drunk driver, driving an automobile described as a 1928 Ford Roadster." They searched the vicinity and located an empty car of that description parked curb-side at Stanford and Colorado Boulevards. But because they were unable to locate the driver, they left.

  What the officers did not know was that French was in an upstairs apartment at 1547
Stanford Avenue visiting her estranged husband, Frank. She told him to "meet her at her attorney's office the next day at 11:00 A.M., as she was filing for divorce and wanted to commit him to the hospital as a psycho." The drunken woman argued with her husband for approximately the next thirty minutes, then drove away, arriving at the Piccadilly drive-in restaurant, at 3932 Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles, shortly after midnight.

  Between 12:10 and 1:00 A.M. Monday, February 10, Toni Manalatos, a carhop at the Piccadilly, served the victim what would turn out to be her last meal. She told police she saw Jeanne French in the company of a "dark-haired man with a small mustache."

  French's Ford Roadster was later found, still parked in the Piccadilly's parking lot, at 2:00 A.M. by Mr. Anzione, a cleanup man coming to work at the restaurant. Doubtless she had left her car at the Picadilly and driven away with the dark-haired man. Her body was found only fifteen blocks away, and, given the medical examiner's estimated time of her death, that man was probably the last person to have seen her alive. Based on time of death and the murder's proximity to the restaurant, he was also probably the killer.