by Hodel, Steve
I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing Betty in the summer of 2008, some sixty-one years after that fateful morning of January 15, 1947, when as a Liemert Park resident walking her three-year-old daughter to the store, she chanced upon the victim’s body lying in the vacant lot.
My interview lasted just under an hour. Betty was eighty-eight years old, exceptionally gracious, and her memory of the event remained sharp and clear. The facts, as is always the case, varied somewhat from those publicly reported by the press, which invariably distorts and revises them to fit what they think their readers want to hear.
This meeting with Betty was very much like my in-person interview with LAPD police officer Myrl McBride, the last witness to see Elizabeth Short alive.
It was special, like stepping into a time-machine and being whisked back to 1947, as if I was one of the original detectives, taking her statement for the first time.
Here is Betty’s story just as she tells it. No reporter’s deadline to meet, no spin, just the facts, exactly as they occurred—in her own words.
The Interview
“Well, I got up in the morning. I had a daughter, Anne, and Anne was about four then. I put her in her little Taylor Tot, that’s what they called those things we tote the kids around in. It was a little stroller thing. And I started to walk down to Liemert Park, to the business area, and to take a pair of shoes that my husband needed to be resoled.
Type of “Taylor Tot” stroller that Betty Bersinger used to take her daughter, Anne, to the shoe store.
It was early in the morning. I don’t know, I assume it was about eight. Somewhere in there. I was walking by…. There’s a vacant lot. I was living on South Norton. I started walking down Norton and came to the vacant lot that hadn’t been developed yet. They had the sidewalks in and the streets but the lot was kind of overgrown with weeds.
I was just making my way through the clutter down Norton and I happened to look over to my side and I saw this…. It looked like a mannequin. That was the impression I had, “Oh, it’s a mannequin.” It was so white. It didn’t register. I had never seen a dead body before anyhow. “Oh, a mannequin.” It was divided in the middle, it was in two parts. I said, “Oh, dear, that’s kind of strange looking.” I thought, “Well, maybe that will scare the kids as they are coming to school.” Because the kids would be riding their bikes. I thought, “I’d better call and tell somebody to come out and clear that away.” So, that was my thought. I wasn’t thinking about anything other than an old ordinary dumped mannequin.
Black Dahlia crime scene, January 15, 1947
“Mannequin-like” body as it appeared to witness Betty Bersinger
So, I kept going down on Norton to the first house I reached. I don’t recall…. Anyway it was the second house that I went to, where a woman came to the door. I said, “Could I use your telephone? I just want to call the police and let them know that there is some junk up here that ought to be removed.”
This map shows route taken by Mrs. Betty Bersinger from vacant lot south to private residence of DR. WALTER BAYLEY, where the doctor’s wife allowed her to use the phone to notify police.
No, I didn’t know it was a body. I had no idea it was a body. I thought it was a mannequin because it was so white.
So, I called the police, and Sgt. Somebody answered. And I told him my story, and he said, “Where are you calling from?” So, I looked down and gave him the number of the house where I was calling from.
Then I went on my way and went on down to Liemert Park and got the shoes into the shoe repair place. I took my time coming back. And on my way back, I think I walked up Crenshaw. Yes, that was the next block over.
And…I saw all these people around the area where I had seen the mannequin. I just thought must be something going on. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t really think much about it. I went on home and it was time for my daughter’s lunch and taking a nap. I didn’t pay much attention; this was all before television you know. The only news we had was the papers. If there was anything really exciting, some little newsboy would be running down the street, yelling, “Extra, Extra.”
So, I continued with my life. I don’t think I even hardly mentioned it to anybody because it wasn’t that important to me. It just wasn’t that significant. And then I saw in the paper what really was going on. It was a body. And I said, “Oh, my goodness.” After that, I didn’t pay any more attention. My daughter was having a lot of trouble with breathing and asthma and colds, so I was busy taking her to get help to different doctors and getting her treatment. So, my life was really filled up with her health conditions.
I think I may have called my mother-in-law who lived down on Buckingham Road up. I told her that there was a lot of activity going on; that they found a dead body here. I don’t remember when I called her? That day, or maybe a few days later. There wasn’t a lot of news coming out, like you get it today—every five minutes.
So, I kind of forgot about it. Then, sometime later, my husband—he worked downtown in Westlake—was going to lunch with some of his friends, and he happened to look at the newspaper stand and there was this headline, “Police looking for finder of Black Dahlia body.” Then he called me up and said, “Hey, we had better go down and see the police because I think they’re looking for you.” I said, “Oh, my God.”
As soon as my husband came home, we went down to the police. So that is what happened.
They took my picture at the station and kind of interrogated my husband. (Laugh)
On Norton Avenue, the block I lived in had houses, and then they stopped. Then I think it was one or two vacant lots, I don’t remember. Then there was a street, then more houses. A woman was at the house I made the call from.
The police only asked me what number I was calling from, not my name. And I gave them the phone number that was listed on the dial. Yes, it was several houses down [south] from Thirty-Ninth street.
No, I didn’t think it was human, just a mannequin. My fear was that it might frighten the kids, because they might think it was human.
I know they made some movie where they said a man was taking his son down the street, and I said, “Well, that’s not right.” I think that was a television movie. I don’t pay any attention to it, I know that they take liberties with the facts and do what they want.
You can take my picture. But first, let me brush my hair.
END OF INTERVIEW….
Mrs. Betty Bersinger seen “reenacting” phone call to police for reporters at University Police Station on January 23, 1947. She made the original call on January 15, 1947, from home of neighbor, DR. WALTER BAYLEY, at 3959 S. Norton Avenue, just a short distance south of Thirty-Ninth Street.
Betty Bersinger, 2008 interview with author
Dr. Walter A. Bayley
Dr. Walter A. Bayley circa 1919 wearing his WW I uniform
Dr. Walter Bayley was a former chief of staff at USC Medical Center [General Hospital] and in the mid-1940s his private medical practice was located in the Professional Building, 1052 W. Sixth Street.
According to LAPD Sgt. Charles Stoker, as summarized in his expose, Thicker’N Thieves, this was the same building where Dr. Audrain, head of the protected LA abortion ring also had his practice and where Audrain’s nurse/secretary [probably his wife] had scheduled an abortion with Stoker’s undercover policewoman partner. Dr. Audrain was subsequently warned of the “sting” and pending raid. And when Sgt. Stoker and his partner arrived at the scheduled appointment to make the arrest, Dr. Audrain was a “no show” and his “office remained closed and locked for a week.”
While there is no hard evidence that Dr. Walter Bayley was performing abortions, there is a suggestion that he may have been. Clearly working in the same office building as Dr. Audrain and both doctors having long established LA practices, they certainly would have known each other and have been well acquainted for decades.
That said, Dr. Bayley’s name has never appeared in any official law enforcement report connected with eit
her the Black Dahlia or any other criminal investigation that I have had access to and reviewed. Other than the 1999 reference from the one amateur Black Dahlia theorist, his name remains completely off the radar screen.
According to newspaper accounts in 1948, immediately after Dr. Bayley’s death at age sixty-seven, civil litigation ensued over his estate. Mrs. Bayley, in formal court papers, alleged that her husband was being blackmailed by his female associate, one Dr. Alexandra von Partyka.
It was established that Dr. Partyka, in December 1947, had gone to the VA Hospital where Dr. Bayley’s had been hospitalized for over a month and was literally on his deathbed. [Bayley died on January 3, 1948.] And just weeks before his death Bayley had signed papers agreeing that she should receive half of his estate.
Mrs. Ruth Bayley alleged, through her attorney, that Dr. Partyka obtained her husband’s signature under duress as his medical partner had threatened to expose him by revealing certain medical practice secrets. Here is an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times article of January 19, 1948:
Dr. Partyka represented that she had obtained certain secrets concerning his [Dr. Bayley’s] medical practice and would expose and ruin him [emphasis mine] if he returned to his wife, from whom he had separated a year before his death.
… Dr. Bayley lived in constant fear that Dr. Partyka would “disgrace him in his declining years” and accordingly consented to execution of the document.
Clearly, “secrets concerning his medical practice” would suggest at least the possibility that he was either a member of the abortion ring, or perhaps simply performing abortions on his own to earn extra money.
In 1949, Dr. Eric Kirk, the Angel City abortion ring whistle-blower agreed to testify before the grand jury as to his knowledge of chiropractors and others involved in the abortion ring, as well as naming law enforcement officers, but said that he would not identify MD’s. As he so succinctly put it to the press, “I’m not going to name other doctors. I’m no stool pigeon. If all the doctors who perform abortions in Los Angeles were cleaned out, there wouldn’t be many doctors left.”
Obviously, despite the risk of going to prison, performing abortions remained a very common and profitable practice. And if a doctor could join a police protected ring, and pay a little “insurance-juice” to avoid being arrested—it was well worth it.
Los Angeles Times, January 19, 1948
Dr. Partyka threatens to reveal Dr. Bayley’s “medical practice secrets.”
LAPD Sgt. Finis A. Brown—The Lead Dahlia Detective
When asked the question, “What detective was originally in charge of the Black Dahlia Murder?” Most cops and newspaper reporters back then and today would say, “Sgt. Harry Hansen.” Wrong answer! Another myth!
The real lead-detective was Sgt. Finis A. Brown, brother of chief of detectives, Thad Brown.
By all accounts Finis did most of the leg work and pretty much all of the thinking in the first three-years of hardcore Dahlia investigation.
Black Dahlia victim, Elizabeth Short, and lead-detective, Finis Brown shared the same birthday—
July 29
In December 1949, the grand jury subpoenaed a number of LAPD detectives to testify as to the original investigation.
Lead Black Dahlia detective, Finis Brown, was called, as was Lt. William Burns, formerly in charge of LAPD’s Gangster Squad who had “assisted” in the Dahlia investigation by loaning his men to Homicide Division to “help work the case.”
Unfortunately, the Gangster Squad detectives, who were for the most part untrained and inexperienced in homicide investigations, had made a mess of things and had a tendency to jump on their horses and ride off in all directions.
With the help and encouragement of the LAPD’s “department psychiatrist,” Dr. J. Paul DeRiver, the Gangster Squad was persuaded to pursue the doctor’s red-herring suspect, one Leslie Dillon, who [much to his later regret] had originally contacted Dr. DeRiver from Florida by mail, “with some thoughts on the case.”
In January 1949, two years after the murder, Dr. DeRiver and a couple of detectives from LAPD’s Gangster Squad lured Dillon to California “to meet and discuss his theories,” where—after holding him “incognito” at various hotels for three days—they arrested him as Elizabeth Short’s killer.
The Leslie Dillon affair made headlines after the “three-day-detainee” was able to drop a note out of his downtown LA hotel window which gave his location and pleaded for someone to contact famed criminal defense attorney Jerry Giesler to come and rescue him.
Dillon was released several days after his arrest. But the Gangster Squad and Dr. DeRiver remained convinced that he was the actual Black Dahlia killer, and, for the rest of 1949, kept on trying to “build a case.”
In October of 1949, at the request of Lt. Jemison, Sgt. Finis Brown conducted a follow-up to San Francisco and was able to establish and verify Leslie Dillon’s alibi that he was in that city in the days preceding and following the murder of Elizabeth Short.
The entire affair was a huge embarrassment to LAPD Homicide and both Lt. Burns and Dr. DeRiver were both called on the carpet. Burns had been reassigned and transferred from the Gangster Squad in 1949 and Dr. DeRiver, six-months after the Dillon affair, left his position as “LAPD department psychiatrist.”
Los Angeles Times, December, 9, 1949
My review of the DA files included Sgt. Finis Brown’s testimony before the 1949 grand jury. The transcript covered various aspects of his then three-year-old investigation; however, what I found most revealing were several questions asked of him by the grand jury foreman, Mr. Harry Lawson. These were made in the presence of Deputy District Attorney Arthur Veitch and Lt. Frank Jemison.
Here is the verbatim excerpt:
Testimony of LAPD Sgt. Finis Brown
Date: December 6, 1949
Questioned by: DDA Arthur L. Veitch and GJ
Present: 1949 grand jury members and DA investigator Lt. Frank B. Jemison
(Excerpt from page 30 of 1949 Secret Grand Jury Transcript):
Grand Jury Foreman, Mr. Harry Lawson asks Sgt. Brown
Q: Do you care to express an opinion to this Jury as to who you think killed Elizabeth Short?
Sgt. Finis Brown:
A: I can’t express an opinion. I don’t know. I can this:
That there is over 100 pages of names cut out of this address book; also, it is known that she was in care of some doctor.
We don’t know who that doctor is yet. We have never been able to find out. We do know this; that on two or three occasions a doctor identifying himself as a doctor, but refusing to give his name called the Hollywood Station and gave some information of where the information—some information might be picked up on her around Hollywood Boulevard.
Scan of excerpt from original transcript found in DA Dahlia Files
Keep in mind that this statement was made just a week after Lt. Jemison’s report was submitted to this same grand jury informing them that a list of over two hundred possible suspects had now been reduced down to just five named individuals, only one of whom was a trained physician and skilled surgeon. His name—George Hill Hodel, MD.
In the following grand jury transcript, we will find that Sgt. Brown was questioned by the jurors as to his opinion of whether the bisection was done by a doctor? Here is the verbatim Q&A from page15b. Answers are coming from Sgt. Finis Brown.
Q: You have handled many murder cases, had you not, Sgt., you have seen bodies that have been dissected and bisected and so forth?
A: And otherwise mutilated, yes.
Q: Mr. VEITCH: Is this kind of cutting that occurred at all unusual?
A: Yes, it is unusual in this sense, that the point at which the body was bisected is, according to eminent medical men, the easiest point in the spinal column to sever.
Q: And he hit the spot exactly.
A: He hit it exactly.
Q: And he made clean cuts?
A: That, in my estimation, I’m still only q
uoting my opinion, my own pet theory, that wasn’t an accident, I’ve seen many horrible mutilation cases, many of them, and if any of you ladies and gentlemen ever seen a case like that, and would see the pictures of this Elizabeth Short case, you could detect the difference immediately.
Q: GRAND JUROR: Could a student, that had three months training studying to be an embalmer, three weeks, could that have been possible that he could have had the knowledge to dissect?
A: My opinion would be only a layman’s, I’m not a medical man, I rather think that question should be answered by a doctor, my own personal opinion is that a person whom you have just described, would not be capable of doing it.
Q: Following up your thought, you say as an individual, had you thought very much about that medical side of it, have you elaborated in your own mind where that party could be, who it could possibly be?
A: Well, this we know, the body had been thoroughly bled, and the body had been washed, common sense tells us that it couldn’t be done in an automobile, couldn’t be done on a bed.
Q: Had you discussed your pet theory as you call it, with any medical expert?
A: Yes, I have discussed at length with Dr. Newbarr, the County Autopsy Surgeon.
Q: And I suppose he concurs in your opinion as to the ability of one?
A: Well, he said himself, his remark, “There’s a fine piece of surgery.” And he said further that couldn’t be done in any 15 minutes, half hour or an hour.
Scan of page 15b of Sgt. Brown’s testimony to 1949 Grand Jury
“There’s a fine piece of surgery. That couldn’t be done in any 15 minutes, half hour or an hour.”
Dr. Frederick Newbarr
Chief Autopsy Surgeon
L.A. County Coroner’s Office
[Statement refers to the bisection of Elizabeth Short’s body and was made directly to Sgt. Finis Brown]
That is one hell of a quote!
Dr. Frederick Newbarr performed the January 16, 1947 autopsy on Elizabeth Short. He was the chief autopsy surgeon for Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office and had been in charge of the office for decades.
Dr. Newbarr was the “top-dog” and had performed nearly all of LA County’s high profile autopsies. For Dr. Newbarr to make that statement to Sgt. Finis Brown, the lead detective—CARRIED TREMENDOUS WEIGHT AND AUTHORITY.