Eatwell Piu Marie - Black Dahlia, Red Rose: the crime, corruption, and cover-up of Americas greatest unsolved murder

ALSO BY PIU EATWELL

The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue

BLACK DAHLIA,
RED ROSE

The Crime, Corruption,
and Cover-Up of Americas Greatest
Unsolved Murder

PIU EATWELL

Copyright 2017 by Piu Eatwell

All rights reserved
First Edition

Portrait of Elizabeth Short, Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives (Collection 1429).
UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

Three articles reprinted from the Los Angeles Evening Herald Express , dated September 9, 1949, September 13, 1949, and September 14, 1949. One article reprinted from the Los Angeles Examiner , dated September 15, 1949. Hearst Newspapers.

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Book design by Lisa Buckley
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JACKET DESIGN BY STEVE ATTARDO
JACKET PHOTOGRAPHS (FRONT): BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Eatwell, Piu Marie, author.

Title: Black Dahlia, Red Rose : the crime, corruption, and cover-up of Americas greatest unsolved murder / Piu Eatwell.

Description: First edition. | New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017035228 | ISBN 9781631492266 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Short, Elizabeth, 1924-1947. | MurderCaliforniaLos AngelesCase studies. | MurderInvestigationCaliforniaLos AngelesCase studies.

Classification: LCC HV6534.L67 E23 2017 | DDC 364.152/30979494dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035228

ISBN 978-1-63149-227-3 (e-book)

Liveright Publishing Corporation
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This book is dedicated to Donald and Patty Freed

CONTENTS

T his is the story of one of the most notorious unsolved murders in California historyprobably in American history. The story of the murder of a twenty-two-year-old girl, whose bisected body was found in the grass beside a sidewalk in a Los Angeles suburb in January 1947. Perhaps, if the newspapers had not come up with the name, the case would have languished in obscurity along with the hundreds of others marked unsolved in the basement of the Los Angeles Police Department. But the moniker Black Dahliaevocative of an exotic flower, of desire both toxic and intoxicatinghas ensured that the case remains forever imprinted in the public consciousness, a potent symbol of the dark side of Hollywood, and, by extension, of the American dream.

This book is part detective story and part history. Partly, it is also a snapshot of a great American city and its police department as they stood at a specific moment in time. This era is commonly visualized through the movies, as the era of film noir: a time of corrupt cops and gun-toting gangsters, cynical heroes, and bottle blondes doling out deadpan one-liners. But the slick film noir repartee belied the brutal inequalities of reality. In truth, it was a tough time after a tough war in a tough world. The Black Dahlia case tapped into both the imagery and the issues. As such, it became a real-life noir story, acquiring its own mythic dimensions as fact and fiction became hard to disentangle.

In the following pages I tell the story of this extraordinary case. However, despite its narrative form, this is not a work of fiction. Anything between quotation marks comes from a letter, memoir, or other written document. If I describe the weather on a particular day, it is because I checked the contemporary weather reports. The action takes place almost exclusively in Los Angeles, but I must beg forgiveness for a wide sweep across the decades from postwar to the present. Such a range is necessary to present the story in its entirety. I hope the reader will also allow for a change of narrative voice at the end of the story. This is necessary to broaden the scope of the account, from a historical retelling of the tale to the context of a modern-day investigation. Readers who find the chapter headings evocative of film noir movie titles of the 1940s and 50s would be absolutely correct.

An especially challenging aspect of investigating this particular case is that the Los Angeles Police Department has consistently refused to release the crime scene photographs and the full autopsy report. In addition, various key items of evidencein particular, physical evidence such as the victims purse, shoes, and lettersare no longer available or have disappeared. The main source of contemporary evidence remains the important cache of papers related to the case collated for a grand jury investigation in 1949, and recently released by the Los Angeles district attorney. While it is highly probable that some items of contemporary evidence were suppressed by certain members of the police department at the time, it should be emphasized that police practices in general and the conduct of the LAPD as described in this book are limited to the period of the historical events discussed. There is no evidence whatsoever that todays LAPD was involved in any cover-up, or indeed has any idea whether these items of evidence actually exist, or, if they exist, where they are.

In the end, this is a story about truth: the search for truth and its suppression. The sixteenth-century English philosopher Francis Bacon has said that truth is the child of time. If this is the case, then I offer this book as the offspring of the years, which, like Moses in the cradle, has finally come to rest in the bulrushes of the Nile (or, in this case, the Mississippi).

Piu Eatwell, 2017

(A full list of dramatis personae begins on pp 275.)

THE COPS

Chief of the LAPD

Clemence B. Horrall (until summer 1949)

William A. Worton (after summer 1949)

Assistant Chief of the LAPD

Joe Reed (until summer 1949)

LAPD Chief of Detectives

Thaddeus Franklin Thad Brown (from summer 1949); elder brother of Finis Brown

LAPD Homicide Division

Head of Homicide:

Captain Jack Donahoe (until September 1947)

Captain Francis Kearney (after September 1947)

Homicide Detectives Assigned to the Dahlia Case:

Lieutenant Harry the Hat Hansen

Sergeant Finis Albania Brown; younger brother of Thad Brown

LAPD Gangster Squad

Head of Gangster Squad:

William Willie Burns (until late 1949)

Gangster Squad Detectives Assigned to the Dahlia Case:

John J. JJ OMara

Archie Case

James Ahern

Loren K. Waggoner

Con Keller

LAPD psychiatrist

Dr. Paul De Riverpolice psychiatrist to LAPD from 1937 to 1950

Fred Witmanprivate investigator and close friend of Dr. De River

THE JOURNALISTS

James Hugh Jimmy Richardsoncity editor for the Los Angeles Examiner , Hearst newspaper

Agness Aggie Underwoodcity editor for the Los Angeles Evening Herald & Express , another Hearst newspaper and rival of the Examiner