Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder

by Piu Eatwell

  §§§§ Cabin 3 was toward the center of the strip of cabins, which ran from 1 to 10.

  ¶¶¶¶ The general view was that the black-haired girl lived at cabin 9, not 10. This was probably a slip by Lila.

  #### She had also begged Gordon Fickling for money. (See page 43.)

  ***** The threatening presence of “two men and a woman” returns repeatedly in accounts of Elizabeth’s last days. In addition to Officer McBride’s account, Dorothy French also recounted how a nocturnal visit by such a trio frightened Beth shortly before she left San Diego. If—as Jeff Connors first stated to police—Elizabeth was with him and his wife in a bar the night before the murder, it is possible that Leslie Dillon was the second man, the “ex-Marine” boyfriend of whom she was so afraid.

  ††††† The bars and clubs of Main Street in downtown Los Angeles were only two and a half miles from the Aster Motel, so just a short trolley car ride away. This area of town was also very close to the Biltmore Hotel.

  ‡‡‡‡‡ Officer McBride’s statement, which would have given a description of the “two men and a woman” seen with the girl who begged for help on the night of January 14, 1947, has never been released by the LAPD.

  §§§§§ Batavia: the old name for Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East Indies, now capital of Indonesia. Batavia was much in the news in the late 1940s due to the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian struggle for independence. Clearly, in this case, the identity was a fake, probably a cover for a foreign accent.

  ¶¶¶¶¶ The cabin next to the one occupied by the black-haired girl, i.e., cabin 9.

  ##### This corresponds to a description of Mark Hansen, although Hansen was slightly older at fifty-four years old.

  ***** Mark Hansen, as Officer Waggoner noted, had a distinctive Scandinavian accent.

  †††††† Earl Carroll’s nightclub on Sunset Boulevard was the main rival of Mark Hansen’s Florentine Gardens Nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard.

  ‡‡‡‡‡‡ This “downtown location” has never been revealed.

  14

  KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE

  Clemence Horrall was gone. It was the summer of 1949, and the downtown trolley cars clanked along the intersection of Temple and Broadway as usual. But in City Hall the chief’s office was bare, with just the desk and the empty cot in which old Horrall used to nap while his assistant Joe Reed ran the show. In the former chief’s position there was now a new man.

  General William Worton was a decorated Marine officer. He had been appointed interim chief of the police department by the mayor, Fletcher Bowron, pending appointment of a permanent replacement for Horrall. Worton had accepted the post reluctantly, having literally retired from his previous position earlier the same day. The general knew a great deal about administration. He knew next to nothing about the internal politics of the Los Angeles Police Department. But he had taken the position out of duty, a sense that his mission was to save one of the largest police departments in the country. A department that was, at that moment, in the throes of the biggest crisis in its history.

  And it had all begun with—of all people—the local gangster, Mickey Cohen.

  By the spring of 1949, Mickey Cohen was hacked off big time with the LAPD. For years now, the diminutive gangster had been the totemic fall guy for Mayor Bowron, in his weekly Friday radio broadcasts. Every time the mayor made one of his many public proclamations that the City of Angels must be swept clean of mobsters, it was little Mickey who was cited as the kingpin of them all, the prime target of the mayor’s efforts. And yet, as far as the Mick was concerned, he was the fatted calf from which they all fed. He was being squeezed from all sides, especially by the LAPD Vice Squad, which extorted huge amounts from him in protection money. The last straw came in January 1949, when a group of LAPD officers arrested one of Mickey’s key sidekicks, Harold “Happy” Meltzer, for possession of an unlicensed gun. Meltzer told his boss that the gun was a plant. Mickey was furious. This time, he swore, he was going to teach the LAPD a lesson.

  The first shot in Mickey’s war against the cops was fired by Meltzer’s attorney, Sam Rummel.* Rummel claimed that the planted gun was part of an eighteen-month campaign by the LAPD’s Vice Squad to shake down Mickey Cohen. Why, Rummel asked pointedly, did the cops never actually arrest Cohen himself? Because, of course, “They did not want to kill the goose they hoped was going to lay the golden egg.” In return for an end to the constant harassment, claimed Rummel, Sergeant Elmer V. Jackson of administrative Vice, and his boss Lieutenant Rudy Wellpott,† had tried to squeeze some $20,000 off Cohen. Recklessly pushing the limits, Rummel brazenly claimed that Jackson had told Mickey the money was to fund Fletcher Bowron’s reelection campaign: Mayor Bowron, who even then was crusading against the infiltration of “Eastern gangsters” into the City of Angels. Mickey, Rummel said, frequently picked up checks for LAPD vice cops at restaurants like Slapsy Maxie’s and Musso’s Bar & Grill.

  But the allegation that the gun was a plant was just the opening round in Mickey’s war against the LAPD. Two years previously, Sergeant Elmer Jackson had already come under fire when he was caught in a car in the company of Brenda Allen, Hollywood’s leading vice queen. But now, Rummel said, Mickey Cohen had conclusive proof that Brenda Allen was not only Elmer Jackson’s girlfriend, she was also paying him protection money. Brenda, who had a vast number of the Hollywood establishment on her client list, was rumored to be raking in $9,000 a day. A third of it was earmarked for bribes, physician and attorney fees, and bail bondsmen. Rummel said that Mickey had in his possession audio recordings of Brenda and Elmer engaged in hanky-panky. He was prepared to play them in court. To prove it, Mickey showed up at Meltzer’s hearing with an ominous “sound-recording machine” and an “electronics expert,” who was none other than Jimmy Vaus, a wire-tapper who was two-timing the LAPD by secretly working for Cohen.

  Meanwhile, another member of Hollywood Vice, Sergeant Charles Stoker, had already testified secretly before the Los Angeles grand jury criminal complaints committee. Stoker had told the committee about overhearing the conversations between Brenda Allen and Elmer Jackson. Worse, Stoker said, the police establishment had gotten wind of the Allen/Jackson relationship fourteen months earlier and had started an investigation, which had mysteriously stalled.

  The scandal occasioned by the revelation of payoffs between cops and madams in the Meltzer trial meant that a grand jury investigation into the LAPD Vice Squad’s activities was inevitable. Chief Clemence Horrall and his assistant, Joe Reed, were duly summoned before the jury. The old chief was accused of taking one too many naps while his police department ran rife with corruption. He cut a sorry figure as he tried to explain away his lack of vigilance as the result of an overwhelming number of ceremonial duties. But the star of the show was, naturally, Brenda herself. Heavily made up, in dark glasses and immaculate dress, the redheaded siren told the jurors in a soft voice, with the hint of a Southern twang, about her payoffs—in money and kind—to Sergeant Jackson. The grand jury also heard about members of the Vice Squad beating up nightclub owners who refused to sell out to syndicates enjoying police protection, and allowing million-dollar bingo parlors to operate freely while charity lotteries were raided.

  The fallout from the grand jury investigation of the Brenda Allen scandal was prodigious. On June 28, 1949, Chief Clemence Horrall resigned. The old chief was tired, and while few believed he personally knew anything about the antics his Vice Squad had been up to behind his back, his negligence was no longer acceptable. One month later, the grand jury indicted Lieutenant Wellpott and Sergeant Jackson for perjury and accepting bribes. The grand jury wanted everybody involved in the scandal, including Brenda Allen herself, to take lie detector tests. In the end, none of the cops who had been indicted were convicted, and Elmer Jackson notably went on to serve many years in the police department. Jimmy Vaus, the wire-tapper who had been two-timing Mickey Cohen and the LAPD, never did play his incriminating tapes. Just as he wa
s about to do so before the grand jury, he announced that the six spools of wire recordings had been mysteriously stolen from the trunk of his car. Then he said they were buried in his backyard. Finally, he claimed he had lied about what was on the recordings and went to jail for perjury.‡

  One of Chief Worton’s first acts as the new head of the LAPD was to do what he did best: administration, in the form of a reshuffle of the police department. The former deputy chief, Bill Bradley, was moved from the position of chief of detectives to a new Bureau of Corrections. And the powerful, now-vacant job of chief of detectives went to the one man the Gangster Squad would have least wanted it to go to: the former head of the Patrol Division, with strong connections to the rival Homicide Division, Thaddeus Brown. But perhaps it didn’t matter what the Gangster Squad thought, because the squad itself no longer existed in its previous form. The former chief of the detail, Willie Burns, was transferred to day watch in the Venice Division. The other Gangster Squad officers were dispersed. Some—including Archie Case and JJ O’Mara—merely changed departments rather than their job descriptions. Archie and JJ now found themselves working for a new internal espionage division, set up by Worton. It was called the Intelligence Division.

  The departmental reshuffle by Chief Worton reorganized and renamed the Gangster Squad, demoted its chief Willie Burns, and put Thad Brown in a position of power. This fundamentally changed the dynamics of a battle that—since the secret mission to investigate Leslie Dillon—had already been playing out between the Gangster Squad and the Homicide Division on the Dahlia case. Now it was the Homicide Division that was in the dominant position. As far as the Dahlia investigation was concerned, it was the first nail in the coffin.

  * Sam Rummel, a.k.a. the “mouthpiece,” acquired notoriety as the fast-talking attorney for mobsters including Mickey Cohen. His downfall came during the Guaranty Finance scandal of 1950, when it was discovered that members of the Los Angeles Vice Squad and sheriff’s department had been in cahoots with Cohen on a massive book-making operation, with Rummel as their lawyer. On December 11, 1950, Rummel was summoned to a secret meeting with members of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department to discuss the scandal. That same night he was shot dead at his luxurious Laurel Canyon Boulevard home. The perpetrators of the killing were never found.

  † The same “lieutenant called Rudy” who was accused by the fake confessor Christine Reynolds of having divulged secret details of the Dahlia mutilations to her girlfriend. (See page 68.)

  ‡ Jimmy Vaus was later to be “converted” by evangelist Billy Graham and devoted the rest of his life to preaching the path of the light. However, it appeared that he was never moved by the spirit to tell the true story of what happened to the missing recordings.

  15

  PANIC IN THE STREETS

  Before the Brenda Allen scandal and the subsequent near-collapse and reorganization of the LAPD, the Gangster Squad had been making impressive progress with the people at the Aster Motel. Officer Waggoner had extracted extraordinary revelations from the former motel owner, Henry Hoffman. Officers Case and Ahern had even persuaded Burt and Betty-Jo Moorman to permit them to tap their trailer so they could listen in on conversations between the Moormans and Mr. Hoffman’s ex-wife, Clora. Everybody, including the Moormans, felt that the Hoffmans had not been straightforward about the events that had taken place at the Aster in January 1947. Bugging the Moormans’ trailer might lead to revelations from Clora, in conversation with her brother Burt and his wife.

  But then, at the end of June 1949, Horrall went, Worton came, and Thad Brown was promoted to chief of detectives. The consequences for the investigation of the Dahlia case were sharp and swift. Within a week, Case and Ahern were given a new order. The Gangster Squad was to stop all work on the Aster investigation forthwith. The officers were to re-interrogate the witnesses at the motel, in the company of Finis Brown. And then they were to turn the case over to Homicide. Nobody in the gangster detail was able to explain why the plan to bug the Moormans’ trailer was summarily abandoned, or why the case was abruptly handed over to Homicide. The most Ahern could offer as an explanation for the transfer was that it was due to “a change in administration. A change in the command of the police department.”

  Aggie Underwood was, at this point, officially off the Dahlia story. She had, after all, been kicked upstairs way back in 1947 to stop her from interfering with matters that did not concern her. But through her close friendship with Dr. Paul De River, Aggie had gotten wind of something afoot. Nor was she the only one. Rumors abounded that the death chamber of the Dahlia had been located; that there were strange connections between it and a prominent local nightclub owner known to have friends in the LAPD; and that someone, somewhere, was trying to cover things up. Suspicion reached such a fever pitch that the 1949 grand jury, fresh from its investigation into police corruption in the Brenda Allen scandal, announced its intention to look into the LAPD’s handling of the Dahlia case, too. “There’s a bad situation over there in the police department, and we feel we are being deceived,” said a grand jury spokesman.

  Somehow, Aggie had gotten her hands on Loren Waggoner’s last report. It was the report he had filed with Garth Ward, recording the revelations that Henry Hoffman had made in the car; the final report the rookie cop had submitted before, disillusioned, he and Ward had asked to be transferred off the case. Aggie read it and then, just as with Robert “Red” Manley, whose innocence she had fearlessly pronounced, she now pointed the finger at the man of whose guilt she was certain. It was a daring, perhaps unprecedented move for a Los Angeles journalist of the time. For, while the press loved sensational murders, the cozy relations between cops and the newspapermen meant that the papers tended to steer well clear of stories involving any hint of police graft or corruption.

  On September 13, 1949, the Herald-Express ran the following article, under the banner headline, “Black Dahlia Murder Room Located”:*

  SLAIN IN HOUSE ON BUSY STREET

  Death Chamber Where Beauty Was Mutilated Finally Has Been Found, Investigators Reveal

  The “Black Dahlia” death chamber finally has been located, according to expert investigators. The Herald-Express is able to disclose today as the County Grand Jury prepared to probe the butcher murder mystery, still officially unsolved after more than two and one-half years.

  Blood-stained clothes of the same size worn by the “Black Dahlia,” Elizabeth Short, 22 year old dark-haired beauty, and blood-covered sheets are known to have been seen in the suspected death room, investigators declared.

  Near Death Lot

  The quarters in which the victim is believed to have been slain and her body mutilated and bisected are situated in a structure on a busy street less than 15 minutes’ drive from the weed-covered lot in which the body was found Jan 15, 1947.

  The lot, near Norton Avenue near Coliseum Drive, is located almost on a bee-line with the place where investigators contend Miss Short’s gay life was ended in fiendish death.

  The Grand jury will subpoena a number of witnesses who have information about the death chamber, a jury spokesman said today.

  Nationwide Hunt

  The murder of the “Black Dahlia” who was so nick-named because of her penchant for wearing sheer black clothes, touched off a nationwide manhunt in which hundreds of persons were questioned, and scores were arrested, only to be released when investigators cleared them.

  Many notoriety-seeking fanatics and chronic alcoholics in Los Angeles and other cities throughout the country even “confessed” the murder, but they were freed when their stories proved false or incoherent.

  The follow-up article in the Herald-Express the next day, September 14, was even more explicit.

  LINK L.A. MOTEL ROOM WITH DAHLIA MURDER

  Identify Photo of Victim Owner Feared Trouble, Failed to Tell Police

  A heretofore undisclosed police report† which placed the “Black Dahlia” Elizabeth Short, 22, in a South Flower Street motel room in whi
ch blood-saturated clothing and sheets were found by the motel owner was located by the Herald-Express today.

  The report states that H. H. Hoffman, the motel owner, identified the dark-haired beauty as the girl who occupied the room three days before her bisected body was discovered in a vacant lot in southwest Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 1947.

  Hoffman said his wife found blood-covered shorts, blouse and skirt in the room which he said the Short girl had occupied, according to the report on file with the police department.

  Sheets discovered in the room were so saturated with blood that Hoffman said he had to “soak them in a bucket of water” before he sent them to the laundry to be cleaned.

  Girl Identified

  The report, filed approximately six weeks ago, stated that officers had shown Hoffman a picture of the murder victim and that he had replied:

  “That is the girl who was here.”

  Hoffman said he did not report the information to the police at the time of the murder because he “didn’t want any trouble with the police,” according to the police record.

  Hoffman said that the Short girl “must have been killed in the motel because of the bloody clothing and sheets,” the report continues.

  Suspect Named

  In a later interview, recorded in the same report, Hoffman named a man he said “came to the motel and stayed about four or five days” in the room next to the one he said the Short girl occupied.

  The man, police said, was a known acquaintance of the Black Dahlia.

  The man who was “named” in the police report, but not in the newspaper article itself, as the man who had stayed in the cabin next to the Dahlia, was of course, Mark Hansen.‡