The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  Officer McBride, unlike her civilian counterparts, the downtown motel owners Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, could not be as easily dismissed by the Gangster Squad detectives as "being mistaken" in her identification of Elizabeth Short. The cat was out of the bag and into print on the front pages of the Los Angeles newspapers too quickly.

  McBride's original identification of the victim did not stand alone. It was also strongly corroborated by what Elizabeth had told McBride and was later found to be entirely consistent with personal facts of the victim's life. McBride's positive identification of the victim on January 17 was supported by McBride's reporting to police that Elizabeth Short had told her she was terrorized by a jealous suitor who "had threatened to kill her if he saw her with another man." These were the same threats that had caused her to flee to San Diego in fear for her life and the same story she told Robert Manley and the Frenches while she was in hiding at their home.

  LAPD detectives could not discredit or refute one of their own. Too much information had already been released to the press. The likely scenario back in January 1947 would have been for the detectives to approach McBride and "suggest" she take a moment to rethink her statement and positive identification of Elizabeth Short, and while she was rethinking it, consider what kind of light she was placing LAPD in with regards to the public! In all likelihood, the detectives asked, "Are you absolutely sure the person you released was a terrified Elizabeth Short, who told you she was going to be killed? Might the woman you saw possibly have been someone else? Think about it before you answer us." Then, by way of damage control, they told the press in reviewing the case with McBride, "she was no longer absolutely certain that the girl that came running up to her 'in terror' the day before the murder was Elizabeth Short."

  After she had become a witness who could place Elizabeth Short with a possible suspect or suspects during her "missing week," Myrl McBride was ultimately transferred to the Harbor Division, where she quietly and inconspicuously finished her career in a "Sleepy Hollow." Fifty-four years later, Myrl McBride reestablished unequivocally that the woman she saw exit the Main Street bar was Elizabeth Short.

  This interview with Myrl was the strangest of my career. On the surface, we were sitting together in her home, sharing a cup of coffee, linked as we were, "fellow retired LAPD" discussing the facts of an ice-cold murder case. Below the surface, the link was surreal. The last known witness to see and speak with Elizabeth Short — and that in the presence of her killers — was, five decades later, seated next to that killer's son, now an ex-homicide detective, who was putting the final pieces in place to solve the murder.

  Fifty-plus years after the Black Dahlia case was put into cold storage, at least three basic points remain clear.

  First, the victim herself has been obscured and vilified over time so that to the uninitiated she has been made to appear complicit in her own death.

  Second, profilers, detectives, and writers have relied on the myth of the Black Dahlia, instead of the facts, to come up with their own theories behind the murder. Simply stated: the facts about the case still speak for themselves. Elizabeth consistently reported to anyone who would listen that she was deathly afraid of a certain person. She told that chilling story to the Frenches, to Manley, and to police officer Myrl McBride.

  Finally, it's clear that the Black Dahlia file, which was handed down from case manager to case manager, had been sanitized or destroyed, probably by Thad Brown's brother Finis. None of the officers, from Galindo to Carr, probably ever saw the real file or even knew that the DA's investigators had considered my father to be the prime murder suspect.

  We know that, after discovering my father's connection to the Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French murders as the "wealthy Hollywood man," the DA's office had launched a separate investigation into LAPD corruption that they presented to the 1949 grand jury, based on their own "codified files" from their own two-year investigation. This meant that a DA case file existed on the case, separate and apart from LAPD's.

  Lieutenant Frank Jemison of the L.A. DA's Bureau of Investigation and his detectives knew that George Hodel was a prime suspect for the Black Dahlia and Red Lipstick murders. They had multiple witnesses who had independently connected him to both victims. They probably also suspected him of the brutal stabbing murder of Gladys Kern in 1948.

  The DA knew that LAPD had a dozen more kidnappings and lust-murders, most of which had occurred after the Dahlia murder, up until Dr. Hodel's departure to the territory of Hawaii in the spring of 1950, when they suddenly stopped. Many of the bodies were found within sight of the DA's downtown office. From the grand jury revelations, we now know why LAPD was not solving these obviously serial, connected rape-murders, and the DA's investigators also knew why. That is why they took the drastic measure of going around LAPD and submitting their own investigation to the grand jury in secret, in an effort to reveal the cover-up and try to stop the killing.

  Desperate to survive, LAPD's top brass orchestrated a cover-up that they hoped would prevent these victims' brutal murders from ever being solved, with the expectation that their own crimes would be buried with them.

  31

  Forgotten Victims, 1940s:

  The Probables

  I HAVE PREVIOUSLY PRESENTED A SERIES of seven killings and one Dahlia-related assault-robbery. Based on all the evidence from my investigations, it is my confident belief that George Hodel and Fred Sexton committed those crimes. Those eight victims are: Ora Murray, Georgette Bauerdorf, Armand Robles, Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French, Gladys Kern, Mimi Boomhower, and Jean Spangler.

  The more I reviewed and researched the period 1943 to 1950, the more I became convinced that these two men were serial killers. I suspect history will ultimately prove them to have far outdone their counterparts of the late 1970s, Los Angeles's Hillside Stranglers Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who were charged with twelve murders of Los Angeles-area women. I am not alone in my suspicion; many of the crimes that follow were identified as "suspect" by the press as possibly being "Dahlia related."

  As we have seen, some law enforcement officers of other Southern California localities, including the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, the Long Beach police, and the San Diego police, also believed there might well be a connection between Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French, and their own unsolved murders. In the early months of the serial killings, even some "renegade" LAPD detectives believed that the Dahlia and Red Lipstick murders, as well as that of a third victim, Evelyn Winters, were connected, and went so far as to release their " 11 Points of Similarity" to the press, which printed the speculations in March 1947. The more I looked at the crimes and the patterns, the more I found.

  As preface to this next grouping of murders I will provide some personal and professional observations as relates to serial killers. First the personal.

  I have no desire to add to my father's and Fred Sexton's already horrendous body counts. Nor have I arbitrarily sought out unsolved L.A. murders to throw in "just in case."I'm an old-school homicide detective, trained by much older schoolers. As a rookie detective they told me, "Kid, you're standing in the shoes of the victim. It's your case. If you don't find the killer it's likely nobody ever will. Go get 'em!" I am proud that I was indoctrinated and "programmed" to believe that a detective's highest responsibility is to the victim and his family. That responsibility never stops. It remains as true fifty years after a killing as it did on the first day of the investigation. It is a sacred trust, handed down to the next generation of officers. They too stand in the shoes of the victims. Knowing this, even at the risk of overloading the reader with so many additional crimes, I believe it is my responsibility to make known what I see, what I believe, and what my professional instincts tell me is so.

  From a professional standpoint, I would point out that there exist many misconceptions about serial killers and their M.O.s. Often these misconceptions come from in house, from experienced homicide detectives, who are simply wrong! Fixed attitudes, quick judgm
ents, mixed with egos — a dangerous combination. Here are a few examples: "Can't be the same killer, all his victims were white girls." "Nope, he only liked dark-haired girls in their twenties. "Definitely not, he only used a white sash cord to strangle, not a stocking." "He stabbed them in the back, not the front." "He never struck on Saturdays." " That crime is too far away, our guy never went south of 5th Street." Endless reasons for detectives to say, "Not our guy." However, as we have seen so dramatically in the previous cases, one should not disregard or eliminate a suspect based on differences. Look at our proven cases and their obvious inconsistencies, yet the suspects were the same! Some completed rapes, some not. Ages varied from twenties to fifties. Inside residences and street abductions. Strangulation, bludgeoning, and stabbing. Acquaintances and complete strangers. Sending notes and not. Posing bodies and not. George Hodel and Fred Sexton were all over the radar screen. They were consistently inconsistent! The point being, a murder investigation must remain objective and inclusionary and consider all the facts, all the possibilities.

  Here then, in this chapter and the next, are summaries of an additional nine murders and one attempted murder that I believe need to be examined by law enforcement as attributable to the same two men.

  For various reasons, these ten are a rung or two down the evidentiary ladder from the victims cited earlier. Therefore, lacking additional information and documentation, I am classifying them as "probables."

  These crimes span the years 1947 to 1959. The victims include: Evelyn Winters, Laura Trelstad, Rosenda Mondragon, Marian Newton, Viola Norton, Louise Springer, Geneva Ellroy, Bobbie Long, Helene Jerome, and a "Jane Doe."

  With very few exceptions, these crimes followed similar patterns: abduction; savage, sadistic beatings; occasional mutilation and laceration of the victim's bodies; generally followed by ligature strangulation and dumping of the nude or partially clad bodies in public places, with no attempt at concealment. In many of the crimes, the suspect(s) ceremoniously wrapped or draped the victim's dress, coat, or cape over her body, and in at least one inserted a large tree branch inside the victim's vagina. I interpret all of these actions as a variation of posing, as Father and or Sexton had done in the White Gardenia, Dahlia, and Red Lipstick murders.

  Evelyn Winters (March 12, 1947)

  On the morning of March 12, 1947, just fifty-eight days after Elizabeth Short's murder, and thirty-two days after that of Mrs. Jeanne French, another woman's body was found in downtown Los Angeles.

  She was quickly identified as Evelyn Winters. Her crime bore strong similarities to both the Jeanne French and Elizabeth Short killings.

  Evelyn Winter's nude and severely bludgeoned body was found dumped on a vacant lot at 830 Ducommun Street, near some railroad tracks, just two miles from downtown Los Angeles. The victim's shoes and undergarments were found at Commercial and Center Streets, one block from where the body lay. The victim, who was forty-two, had been struck repeatedly with a club or pipe about the head and face.

  Before he — or they — left the scene, the killer wrapped the victims dress around her neck. Police believed she had been slain elsewhere, then the body dragged from an automobile to the dirt lot. Footprints and tire tracks were visible nearby. The cause of death was due to "blunt force trauma causing a concussion and hemorrhage to the brain."

  A check of the victim's background revealed that Evelyn's life had taken a downward spiral, most likely because of alcoholism. From 1929 to 1942 she had been a secretary at Paramount Studios. In 1932 she met and married the head of Paramount's legal department, attorney Sidney Justin. Divorced five years later, Evelyn married a soldier during the war, but they too were divorced within a few years.

  The victim's arrest record in recent years showed that she had been booked by police for a number of alcohol-related offenses, all in downtown Los Angeles.

  The victim was known to frequent the downtown bars on Hill Street and was last seen on Monday night, March 10, by James Tiernen, a friend, when she left his apartment at 912 West 6th Street.* Tiernen, a thirty-three-year-old bowling-pin setter, was detained and arrested by police but considered "not a good suspect" and promptly released. Tiernen told police he had known Winters for two years and "had run into her in the public library" on Sunday, March 9, where Winters had told him "she had no place to sleep."

  He offered to share his hotel room with her and she accepted, staying Sunday night. Tiernen told police, "She was gone all day Monday, then came back about 8:00 p.m. very drunk," imploring him, "Talk to me. I want to talk to someone." Tiernen told her she was "too drunk to talk," at which point she left. That was the last time he had seen her. Her body was found the following morning.

  An article in the Los Angeles Examiner of March 14, 1947, headlined "Dahlia Case Similarities Checked in Fourth Brutal Death Mystery," offered an eleven-point list of similarities provided by LAPD that detectives believed strongly supported the theory that the murders of Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French, and Evelyn Winters were all related. This was published in the early months of the Dahlia investigation, before the need was fully recognized by LAPD to disconnect and isolate the murders. The article notes:

  Checking similarities between the death of Miss Winters and the

  Short and French killings, police listed the following:

  1) All three girls frequented cocktail bars and sometimes picked up men in them.

  2) All three were slugged on the head (although Mrs. French was trampled to death and Miss Short tortured and cut in two.)

  3) Ail three were killed elsewhere and taken in cars to the spots where the bodies were found.

  4) All three were displayed nude or nearly so.

  5) In no case was an attempt made to conceal the body. On the contrary bodies were left where they were sure to be found.

  6) Each had been dragged a short distance.

  7) Each killing was a pathological case, apparently motiveless.

  8) In each case the killer appears to have taken care not to be seen in company with the victim.

  9) All three women had good family backgrounds.

  10) Each was identified by her fingerprints, other evidence of identity having been removed.

  11) Miss Short and Miss Winters were last seen in the same Hill Street area.

  The murder of Evelyn Winters, like the other murders, was never solved. It remains in today's LAPD files as another "whodunit" — with one major distinction. Today's detectives no longer are treating it as possibly, or as we see from the above article, probably, connected to the other crimes. Knowing now that George Hodel did commit the Short and French murders, we must concur with LAPD's original speculations that he was doubtless also guilty of the brutal murder of Evelyn Winters, either alone, or with the help of Fred Sexton.

  Laura Elizabeth Trelstad (May 11, 1947)

  On May 11, 1947, the body of Laura Elizabeth Trelstad, age thirtyseven, was found in the 3400 block of Locust Avenue near the Signal Hill oil fields of Long Beach. The newspaper reported, "An oil field pumper discovered the body at 5:00 a.m. while coming to work." She had been strangled with "a piece of flowered cotton cloth, believed torn from a man's pajamas or shorts."

  Signs of a struggle were visible, and the police found both tire marks and footprints near the body. Detectives told reporters, "Their best evidence and only clue was a plaster casting they obtained of a footprint found close to the victim's body at the crime scene."

  Dr. Newbarr determined the cause of death to be "asphyxia due to strangulation, and a skull fracture and hemorrhage and contusion of the brain." The coroner's office indicated the latest victim had been drinking and had been forcibly raped. Long Beach Police Department detectives told the press that the victim had been slain elsewhere and the body dumped in the vacant lot close to the oil rigs.

  Detectives discovered she had been drinking and had left a party after a minor argument with her husband, Ingman Trelstad. She told him, "If you won't even take me out on Mother's Day, I'm going to a dance at
the Crystal Ball Room [on Long Beach Pike] by myself." In tracing her movements, detectives discovered that a bartender had refused to serve her alcohol at a Long Beach bar after she got into an argument with other patrons. A sailor, who had been drinking with her earlier at this same bar, placed her on a homeward-bound bus.

  The sailor was eliminated as a suspect, and police believed the victim had missed the bus stop for her home and continued on to the next stop, where she then got off the bus and began walking back.

  On May 16, 1947, almost a week after the crime, Long Beach homicide detectives finally located and interviewed the bus driver, Cleve H. Dowdy, who had been vacationing with his wife in Kansas City. The driver clearly recalled the victim being on his bus during his last run on Sunday, May 10, at 11:30 p.m. He told authorities, "She had argued with me, telling me I had passed her stop at 36th Street and American Ave." He recalled that when the victim exited the bus, a stranger, whom he described as "a tall and well-dressed man," followed her off.

  The Long Beach homicide was never solved.-This is one of the few crimes where the police actually released a confirmation statement that "the victim had been raped." This affirmative statement would suggest that during the autopsy they were able to obtain slides confirming the presence of sperm, which, if not disposed of, could yet prove to be valuable evidence for blood typing and possible DNA linkage. Also, should the plaster casting still exist, it could be compared to the known foot size of George Hodel.