Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

The last words her neighbors heard were “Stop, stop, you’re killing me!” as she fought hard for her life. The housekeeper found the body in the bathtub the next day, when she heard water dripping in the upstairs bathroom.

Because the apartment at 8493 Fountain Ave. is in West Hollywood, rather than the city of Los Angeles, the murder was handled by the Sheriff’s Department rather than the LAPD.

The victim was Georgette Bauerdorf, a Hollywood Canteen hostess who normally shared the apartment with her older sister, Connie, who was in New York, along with their father, George, and stepmother. Two days before she was killed, she wrote in her diary: “Call to Jerry [Pvt. Jerry Brown, a boyfriend] at 6:30 a.m. came thru—Jerry’s a lamb. Letter from Dud and Jerry—wrote Jerry.”

Family friends say that Georgette, a graduate of exclusive girls’ schools, was well mannered and never entertained men at the apartment. “Perhaps, on occasion, one of her gentlemen friends might stop in for a moment or two, but she never asked them to remain,” her father’s secretary said. “She was schooled in a convent in New York, on Long Island, graduated from a girls’ school here and had very definite ideas of propriety.”

With no signs of forced entry, sheriff’s detectives believed that the killer might have used a passkey to get into the apartment, but the two former employees who had passkeys proved that they had turned them in. Cosmo Volpe, the GI who aggressively cut in with Georgette’s other dance partners on the night she was killed, contacted detectives and proved that he had checked into his barracks at the Lockheed Air Terminal at 11 p.m. Another potential suspect, an unidentified man who was 6 feet, 4 inches tall, was also cleared by investigators, according to a 1950 story in The Mirror.

In December 1944, John Lehman Sumter, 22, who had been discharged from the Navy and court-martialed by the Army, confessed to the murder. Confronted with contradictions in his story, Sumter admitted that he had lied: “I wanted to die in the chair because I had nothing to live for.”

Although The Times never followed up on White, it did report further inquiries focusing on Ray Dempsey Gardner (1949) and Cpl. Chester Vukas (1950).
In later years, the Bauerdorf case has been lumped with half a dozen unsolved killings, including the Black Dahlia, and some writers have gone so far as to create a fictitious friendship between Elizabeth Short and Georgette and to turn the 6-foot-4 soldier into Jack Wilson of “Severed” fame. The truth is that Georgette was
killed in 1944, the Hollywood Canteen closed Nov. 22, 1945, and Elizabeth Short didn’t arrive in Los Angeles until the middle of 1946.

Bonus factoid: Holy Land death toll for the day is three Arabs, two Britons and 17 Jews. Deaths since the Nov. 29 partition of the Holy Land reaches 369 in Palestine and 490 for the entire Middle East. “Palestine is heading for the biggest and bloodiest flare-up ever known in the Near East,” says Izzadeen (Izzidine) Shawa Bey, head of the Palestine Arab political mission in London.

::

Hidden in the entries for the Library of Congress’ 2005 National Film Registry, along with Buster Keaton’s “The Cameraman,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “The French Connection” is none other than Kroger Babb’s 1944 “Mom and Dad.” An obscure film to most, perhaps, but not to studious readers of the 1947 Project. See the entry for July 1, 1947:

National Film Registry link

Quote of the day: “Next to a hamburger stand, a woman’s knee is the ugliest joint in the world.”
Mrs. Howard Hawks, on being named one of the 10 best-dressed women of 1947 by the New York Dress Institute. It’s amazing how much detective work it takes to discover that she had a first name besides “Mrs.” She became Nancy “Slim” Hawks in The Times only after she sought a divorce in 1948.

If you are a longtime reader, you may remember when the Daily Mirror was hosted by the Los Angeles Times. The Times holds the copyright on these items, even though the blog was killed in 2011 (thank you, Jimmy Orr), but I see no problem in linking to the archival versions of the posts.

From Jan. 2, 2008, looking back at the crime statistics for 1957, in “Our Lawless City.”

The entire post is here, hosted by Archive.org. Although The Times still hosts the blog (you can find it at latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror) The Times changed its Web platform several times and none of the images render correctly.

As longtime readers know, I always begin a new year with an annual donation in memory of Elizabeth Short to Heading Home, which works with the homeless in the Boston area.

Partly because of my research on Elizabeth Short, I try to make the issue of homelessness a continuing theme of the Daily Mirror. I donate to an agency in the Boston area because of Elizabeth Short’s connections there, but Los Angeles also has a severe, chronic problem with homelessness and there are many local agencies that welcome donations.  I believe people will find this more meaningful in the long term than, for example, leaving a bottle of liquor and some cigarettes at her grave, especially since Elizabeth Short didn’t smoke and rarely drank.

This is another story that I don’t remember at all. The original post is here at Archive.org. The killing of Marina Elizabeth Habe remains unsolved (I see that I garbled her name in the original post).

See also Keith Thursby’s story on the bidding war for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor

Kenneth Savoy told holdup men “If you want my wallet, you’re going to have to kill me to get it.” So they did. The story of George Albert Scott and Curtis C. Lichtenwalter, who were robbing bars across Los Angeles.

The original post from 2009, via Archive.org.

A practical joke from 1947 is the source of the “Black Dahlia Avenger” franchise.

During the investigation of the Black Dahlia case, the killer mailed a small envelope of Elizabeth Short’s belongings to the newspapers. After that, crackpots and pranksters flooded the police and the newspapers with joke messages. One prankster using the name “Black Dahlia Avenger” sent a string of postcards and messages to the Los Angeles Herald-Express, often spelling the name “Hearld.”

Police and the newspapers attached no significance whatsoever to these prank messages. it wasn’t until Steve Hodel came along in 2003 that “Black Dahlia Avenger” was anything but a joke.

On Jan. 30, 1947, the Los Angeles Herald-Express published, under the subhead “ ‘Idiots’ Delight Messages,” a communication of cut-out words and the picture of a young man later identified as Armand Robles.

Here’s the actual photograph, from the Los Angeles Public Library. The Herald-Express retouched the picture for publication. It also ran the unretouched image.

The next day, the Herald-Express ran the picture of Armand Robles holding the previous day’s front page.

Here’s the image from the Los Angeles Public Library’s photo collection.

Here’s the Herald’s story. Notice that it calls the crackpot letters “a strange flotsam of venomous scribblings and low buffoonery.”   Armand Robles said the photos were in his wallet, which was stolen several weeks before. He described the robber (or “footpad” to use the archaic newspaper term) as “a well-dressed tall man driving a late model car.”

There were still more messages, signed “Black Dahlia Avenger” or B.D.A.

These two postcards from “B.D.A.” were sent Jan. 29, 1947.

Black Dahlia Avenger was nothing but a practical joke and whoever sent the messages must be laughing, if only in the afterlife.

This popped into my inbox this morning and golly it’s amazing just how many mistakes some crime buffs can pack into one blog post. Then again, the Internet.

Ready? Let’s find five obvious errors.

It is written in stone that the Black Dahlia story must begin with the discovery of Elizabeth Short’s body. In reality, Betty Bersinger was pushing her daughter in a stroller as she walked down to the stores in Leimert Park to run errands. The Black Dahlia myth demands that the willful, disobedient child runs off into the weeds and finds a body. (Extra points if she cries for “Mommy!”) But no. That didn’t happen.

Once again, the Internet gets it wrong.

Elizabeth Short’s body was found in the city of Los Angeles, making it an LAPD case. The FBI had no jurisdiction.

But let’s do drag in the FBI, because it’s the FBI. Trivia note: The FBI file is labeled Elizabeth “Ann” Short, which ought to be a warning about the quality of what it contains. Elizabeth Short had no middle name.

The LAPD refuses to give anyone access to its Black Dahlia files, noting that it is an open case.

Which means this is nonsense. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has released its redacted files on CD, but that’s quite different from the LAPD.

Government jurisdictions in Los Angeles are tricky things and confuse many people, like James Ellroy, who repeatedly writes that the Los Angeles COUNTY district attorney has some sort authority over the CITY of Los Angeles Police Department. Nope. Separate agencies.

In the last months of her life, Elizabeth Short posed for some pictures at John Marshall High School. She’s 22 in these pictures.

Oh dear. Elizabeth in high school. Tell me, does she look like she’s a teenager in this picture? Really?

And then there’s the photo of Elizabeth Short taken in 1946 when she stopped in Indiana en route to Los Angeles.

The Internet loves, loves, LOVES to speculate about the man in this picture. Is it “Ed Burns?” Is it “Mack Wayne Edwards?” Nope. Not taken in Florida and she was 21.

I could go on, but my head will explode.

One thing you know about evil sociopaths is that they like to treat impoverished people of color. Yep. That’s what evil sociopaths do, fer sure.

The website MEAWW.com has published a brief interview with actor Jefferson Mays, who portrays Dr. George Hodel in the upcoming TNT mini-series “I Am the Night.” The article, by Mangala Dilip, calls George Hodel “one of the evilest men [in] history.”

Really? (Evilest? Evidently MEAWW doesn’t have editors).

Now for some tiresome facts. Dr. George Hodel specialized in public health and treated poor blacks who lived in the segregated neighborhood called Bronzeville, formerly Little Tokyo, which was empty because the residents had been put in internment camps during World War II.

George Hodel never had a surgical practice in Los Angeles – he didn’t have the essential accreditation and thus no hospital was open to him.

He was also not a “Hollywood gynecologist,” as claimed in “I Am the Night.”

And there is zero evidence. Nothing. To connect him to any homicide, not the killing of Elizabeth Short nor anyone else. In fact, there is nothing to show George Hodel even knew Elizabeth Short. Nothing.

The only person to accuse George Hodel of murder is his son Steve Hodel — and anybody that repeats Steve’s claims. Independent research cannot verify even one killing and certainly not that he was a serial killer allowed to run rampant in Los Angeles because he knew about the sex lives of L.A.’s ruling elite.

“One of the evilest men [in] history?” I mean really.

In compiling my list of bad books about the Black Dahlia case, I neglected to mention William T. Rasmussen’s fringe publication “Corroborating Evidence,” which I had forgotten, mainly because it’s so nutty that I won’t even let it in the house.

Executive summary: The Black Dahlia case is utterly unrelated to any other killing. Not the Cleveland Torso killings. Not the Georgette Bauerdorf case. Not the Suzanne Degnan killing. And not the Jeanne French murder.

In “Corroborating Evidence,” Rasmussen tries to tie them  together. Apparently there is a “Corroborating Evidence” franchise with “new evidence.” Funny thing about crackpot books: There is always “new evidence” to support some bogus claim, while never addressing the fundamental weakness of the theory.

There’s also “It’s Me,” by John A. Cameron. Cameron claims that Elizabeth Short and Suzanne Degnan were killed by Edward Wayne Edwards, who would have been 13 when he killed Elizabeth Short and 12 when he killed Suzanne Degnan. Edwards also supposedly killed another victim when he was 12 and still another at the age of 11, and my head is going to explode if I don’t stop.

So you may not read any Black Dahlia books before watching “I Am the Night.” But you may turn to Google. You should be warned.

BlackDahliaSolution.org may be the worst of the websites on the Black Dahlia case simply because it is still online and causing problems. BethShort.com, an outlet for the late John Gilmore, went dark a few years ago (more about that later).

BlackDahliaSolution.org was run by an oddball named John Frederick “Jack” Kohne Jr., who died in 2016. His obituary says:

Deeply introspective and complicated, Jack lived his life true to himself and his beliefs and accepted and embraced anyone and everyone’s truth of their unique perspective of the world around him.

If you look closely at Kohne’s photos of Elizabeth Short, you will see that Kohne made some bizarre, primitive alterations.

Obviously, anybody who is making crude, bizarre changes to the photos of Elizabeth Short has a problem, no? Read this. Or try to read this:

Kohne gets super, super crazy about secret messages in the crackpot mail generated by the Black Dahlia case.

Somewhere along the way, Kohne derived the name “Ed Burns” out of these messages by anagramming it from “Maurice” as in “Maurice Clement.”

There was no Ed Burns. Ever. And yet “Ed Burns” gets enormous attention among armchair sleuths.

From one crackpot website, “Ed Burns” spread around the Internet and became part of the “hive mind” on the Black Dahlia.

Although some people are skeptical – or confused.

Note: I’m aware of Black Dahlia in Hollywood, but I’m not a member and would never go into it. 

But here is one of Kohne’s doctored images that you might recognize. Graphics editors of various websites and news outlets love this picture because it looks real. But it isn’t. Kohne took the original photograph, cropped it slightly and dropped it into a scan of the Daily News front page.

Here’s the real front page. I have had to make obnoxious watermarks on my images because people treat anything related to the Black Dahlia case as clip art. Websites, book covers, pretty much everywhere.

Perhaps you think you can detect all of Kohne’s B.S. and filter it out.

No, you can’t. Because one of the Kohne’s craziest ideas …

Are you ready for it?

Is that the killer left Elizabeth Short’s body on south Norton Avenue as a pointer (is this starting to sound familiar?)

To Degnan Boulevard … Why yes. You may recognize Kohne’s crackpot theory because it shows up in the “Black Dahlia Avenger” franchise! A crackpot theory is bad, sure, but what’s even worse is stealing someone else’s crackpot idea.

And it’s even in Wikipedia!

So no, your B.S. filter will not save you when crackpot theories show up on Wikipedia.

John Gilmore’s “Severed” was once the most popular book on the Black Dahlia case, although it was eclipsed by Steve Hodel’s seemingly endless series of “Black Dahlia Avenger” books.

You may Google “Black Dahlia” while you’re watching “I Am the Night.” Here’s more of what you should avoid.

The late John Gilmore (d. 2016) was a conman, grifter, b.s. artist and pathological liar. Nobody seems to remember him with anything but disgust and disdain aside from Anthony Mostrom, the author of a glowing eulogy in the L.A. Review of Books.  (Note: I had my own turn at Gilmore in LARB that made the exactly opposite point).

“Severed” is 25% mistakes and 50% fiction, as I have said countless times – always incurring Gilmore’s wrath. I was told that Gilmore hated me and I take that as a great compliment. The hatred of a pathological liar is the highest praise for a conscientious researcher.

Since BethShort.com was a repository for Gilmore’s Black Dahlia photos and writings, it’s most efficient to take them as a whole.

ALSO

Are There Any Good Black Dahlia Sites on the Internet? Oh Dear!

The Black Dahlia website BethShort.com in 1999, when it was the dominant Web resource on the case.

BethShort.com, run by Pamela Hazelton, was once the primary website on the Black Dahlia case, but went dark in 2016 after appeals for money to keep it going. The domain is up for sale and after being up in the thousands of dollars, the price has dropped to its current $477 on GoDaddy. (JohnGilmore.com went dark in 2017 and is for sale on GoDaddy for $900. Maybe someone can get a Black Dahlia twofer).

(Note: I clashed with Hazelton early on about her use of all Gilmore’s body shots and complained to her ISP, so the photos were taken down briefly, much to the temporary relief of Elizabeth Short’s family. This was in the early days of the Internet, when such matters were still unresolved. BethShort.com was a major vector of Gilmore’s Black Dahlia body pictures, which were heavily copied and used on keychains, totes, album covers, notebooks, T-shirts, etc. The merchandising of the Black Dahlia – like the “Living Dead Doll” series is really bizarre.)

Now that Gilmore is dead, with “Severed” eclipsed by the “Black Dahlia Avenger” franchise, and BethShort.com defunct, they are mostly notable for the lies they perpetrated, which have lived on.

I’ll bet you have heard at least one of these:

Gilmore and “Severed” were the source for the “Elizabeth Short worked at the Hollywood Canteen” story.

Gilmore and “Severed” were the source of the “Elizabeth Short was forced to eat feces” story.

Gilmore and “Severed” were the source of the “Elizabeth Short had infantile genitalia” story.

Gilmore and “Severed” were the source of the “Elizabeth Short traded oral sex for shoes” story.

All of them complete lies (welcome to the world of John Gilmore, liar par excellence).

Gilmore’s favorite technique for lying, which he used again and again in “Severed,” was to introduce two actual people, for example homicide Detectives Harry Hansen and Finis Brown, and then make up a third person accompanying them who was Gilmore’s supposed “source.”

The best example of Gilmore’s lying technique is his fictitious source on Elizabeth Short’s autopsy, when he introduces the entirely fictional Detective Herman Willis, who was supposedly at the autopsy with Hansen and Brown. This was impossible to confirm when Gilmore wrote “Severed” (1994) but the Los Angeles County district attorney’s files make a note of who attended the autopsy. Guess what. No HermanWillis. And nobody who could have been given the bogus name Herman Willis. The LAPD also stated that there was never a “Herman Willis” or “Willis Herman” on the force.

Another of Gilmore’s favorite techniques was to write to someone famous, like Gore Vidal, and say “Here’s a quote (or book jacket blurb) I’m going to attribute to you. I know you’re a busy person and all of that, so if I don’t hear back in, say, six months, I’ll just assume it’s OK to use this quote.”

The average person equipped with any sort of conscience or moral compass cannot imagine just how sleazy John Gilmore was.

Gilmore also pushed back hard unless you had concrete proof that he was lying. Then he just vanished. He used to claim that his father was an LAPD officer (true) who worked the Dahlia case (maybe knocked some doors during a neighborhood canvass, otherwise no). Gilmore was adamant about this until I produced an old L.A. Times story that said his father was a traffic officer (as you can tell from the uniform Gilmore Sr. is wearing in a photo in “Severed”) and showed a safety film at some event. Gilmore disappeared, without saying another word about his dad.

::

And guess what happens when a liar meets a liar. Because that’s what happened to Gilmore.

The “Elizabeth Short had infantile genitalia” story actually came from former Examiner reporter Will Fowler, who was another pathological liar (the Black Dahlia case seems to inspire extravagant lies). I spent a fair amount of time with Will over the years and eventually figured out just how much he was lying, using techniques that wouldn’t necessarily be noticed in a one-time interview. Will did it because he liked to “put one over on the competition,” for he considered the Black Dahlia his literary property, and also because he liked to feel superior to whomever he was talking to.

(Trivia note: Will Fowler was the one who made up the “Robert Slatzer was married to Marilyn Monroe for three days and the studios quashed it” story. Straight-up total lie.)

You will notice in the first edition of “Severed,” cover shown above, that the book is dedicated to Mary Pacios. You will also notice that Gilmore deleted her from later editions.  If you read Will Fowler’s book “Reporters” (also full of lies and other pitfalls for the unwary) you will get his take on Gilmore and Pacios.

Why is it so important to know the Gilmore’s lies and mistakes in “Severed” and BethShort.com?

Because they take on their own life and appear in what would seem to be credible books. What does FBI profiler John Douglas and co-author Mark Olshaker use in “The Cases That Haunt Us?” when examining the Black Dahlia case. You got it. “Severed.”

And, yes, these lies show up in Wikipedia.

Worked at the Hollywood Canteen…

Forced to eat feces…

Infantile genitalia…

Be wary, Black Dahlia novices, there are pitfalls everywhere. (Gosh, I seem to be getting some space in the Wikipedia entry. “Harnisch disputes” … “Harnisch denies” … “Harnisch claims” … In the early days of Wikipedia, everything I ever contributed was ruthlessly wiped out as “self-promotion” and “not neutral POV”)

The Short family rarely speaks on the record, but in 2003, they were so incensed by Steve Hodel’s “Black Dahlia Avenger” and his bogus claims of photos purportedly showing Elizabeth Short that they issued a public statement through me.

“The first thing I noticed was that [it] was definitely not Betty. She never wore flowers all over her head only one on her ear. She always loved Hawaii and I think it made her think of that and Dorothy Lamour.”

Jan. 14, 1959: Paul Coates has the amazing story of three boys, ages 7, 9 and 10, who shot their father to death as he slept. Coates says that the mother (and the boys planned to kill her as well – they thought they had been unjustly punished) had regained custody of the children and was struggling to get her slain husband’s Social Security payments. The boys were denied their Social Security benefits.

Coates says: Because the children were never charged with a crime, they can’t be cleared. That apparently, is the logic of the Social Security office.

The column originally appeared in the L.A. Mirror in 1959 and was republished on latimes.com in 2009. It is available via Archive.org.

Jeanne French was found beaten and stomped to death Feb. 10 1947, almost a month after Elizabeth Short was killed. French died from a broken rib that punctured her heart. Heel prints were found on her chest and near her body, according to Los Angeles County district attorney’s files. The prints were identified as a man’s shoe, size 6 or 7, someone with unusually small feet. Dr. George Hodel had, according his family, much larger feet.

Many armchair sleuths and authors of crummy books on the Black Dahlia case (notably “Severed” and “Black Dahlia Avenger”) claim that the Black Dahlia and Jeanne French killings were related. The concise answer is no. The full analysis is much longer and reaches the same conclusion.

The takeaway is that George Hodel could not have killed Jeanne French because his feet were the wrong size. And he had no connection to Elizabeth Short and was not the Black Dahlia killer.

Period.

Aug. 8, 1998: A post on the old usenet alt.news-media by Janice Knowton was the first to publicly link Dr. George Hodel and the Black Dahlia case.

At this point, George Hodel was alive but would die in a bit less than a year. He was never publicly identified as a suspect – and certainly not a “prime suspect” before then, despite claims by the “Black Dahlia Avenger” franchise.

Knowlton killed herself in 2004, a year after “Black Dahlia Avenger” was published.

Here’s the link.

Today is Jan. 15, the anniversary of Elizabeth Short’s death. As is the custom, the Daily Mirror will be dark.

Trim your roses in her memory.

Back in 2003, a few photos from Elizabeth Short’s scrapbook were sold on EBay for $7,611.11 Perhaps they look familiar. I archived the page (it has vanished from EBay, of course) to keep anybody from claiming that they found them in their dead father’s belongings. (Ahem).

In preparing for the launch of TNT’s “I Am the Night,” I thought it would be interesting to do a bit of research on Fauna Hodel. Just to see if she ever mentioned Dr. George Hodel earlier in her life.

I found a Nov. 24, 1990, feature in the Reno Gazette-Journal on “Pretty Hattie’s Baby,” which was being filmed on location in Reno. The film starred Alfre Woodard, Charles S. Dutton and Jill Clayburgh. For complicated reasons, it was never released.

In the feature story by Sandra Macias, Fauna Hodel calls her biological mother, Tamar, “the hippie of the year.”

And there isn’t a word about the Black Dahlia or Dr. George Hodel. Nada.

If you’re curious about whether “I Am the Night” is indeed “inspired by a true story,” I did a bit more digging into the tale of Fauna Hodel and her unfinished film “Pretty Hattie’s Baby” (spoiler alert – there’s nothing about the Black Dahlia or Dr. George Hodel).

“Pretty Hattie’s Baby” was filmed in Reno in 1990. When the shoot finished, the Reno Gazette-Journal published a letter from Fauna “Pat” Hodel thanking the city for being so generous to the cast and crew.

But on Sept. 17, 1992, the Gazette-Journal reported that the $7.5-million film was never finished because of “litigations and financial problems.” The story by Sandra Macias said that the legal problems were settled, but that Fauna Hodel was trying to raise $3 million to finish the movie herself. Fauna said that two days of filming remained, plus two months for editing.

On June 3, 1996, the Honolulu Advertiser reported that Fauna Hodel was staging “Working the Dream: The Fauna Hodel Story,” which featured her and some friends as well as clips from the unfinished film.

Again, no mention of the Black Dahlia or Dr. George Hodel.

The FBI file perpetuates the error that Elizabeth Short’s middle name was “Ann.” She had no middle name.

Note: This item was originally posted on lmharnisch.com in 2005.

Here’s a quick guide to the most frequent errors made in writing about the murder of Elizabeth Short:

Myth: Her name was Elizabeth Ann Short.

Fact: Her mother testified at the inquest that she had no middle name.

Origin: A Los Angeles Times story in the 1970s erroneously added a middle name, which now appears in seemingly reputable sources on Los Angeles history. To add the semblance of authenticity, the middle name has even made its way into her FBI file. Whenever you hear someone call her Elizabeth Ann (like “Black Dahlia Avenger”) you can be sure they don’t know what they are talking about. A headline with the same story erroneously said there were hundreds of confessors. As the story says, there were hundreds of suspects.

Myth: The newspapers nicknamed the case.

Fact: Elizabeth Short got the “Black Dahlia” nickname in a Long Beach drugstore. The Los Angeles Herald-Express tried to nickname the case the “Werewolf Murder,” but dropped it after several days.

The Los Angeles Herald-Express tries to nickname the murder of Elizabeth Short the “Werewolf” killing.

Myth: She was a lesbian.

Fact: She disliked homosexuals, according to a report to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury.

Origin: In trying to determine how she survived for a week without her luggage or any change of clothing, the original detectives  theorized that she had been with a woman and from that, guessed that she had been killed as part of a lesbian love triangle. The idea that lesbians are murderous degenerates certainly reflects the thinking of the 1940s.

Myth: She worked at the Hollywood Canteen.

Fact: The Hollywood Canteen closed in 1945, while Elizabeth Short didn’t get to Los Angeles until late July or early August 1946, according to a time line of her life prepared by the district attorney’s office, among many other sources.

Origin. “Severed” claims that Elizabeth Short worked at the Hollywood Canteen  as part of its attempt to link this killing to the 1944 murder of Georgette Bauerdorf.

The claim in “Severed” that she met Gordon Fickling at the Hollywood Canteen is even more ridiculous. As an officer, Fickling wouldn’t have been allowed inside because it was strictly for enlisted men, as any photo of the front will prove. (The sign above the door said: For Service Men.”) As I say many times throughout this Web site, “Severed” is 25% mistakes and 50% fiction. For the record, when I interviewed Fickling in 1996, he said they met in Florida.

Myth: She lived at the Alto Nido Apartments

Fact: The original newspaper accounts identified three places Elizabeth Short lived in Hollywood: The home of Mark Hansen at 6024 Carlos Ave. (demolished), the Hawthorn Hotel  on Orange Drive (demolished) and the Chancellor Apartments at 1842 N. Cherokee (still there).  I have identified two other locations where she stayed briefly, but since they have never been publicly identified, I’m withholding them for my book.

Origin. This relatively new myth appears in “California Babylon.” Since she couldn’t afford $1 a night for a bunk bed at the Cherokee, I can’t imagine how anyone would think she lived at the Alto Nido.

“Famous” people who actually lived at the Alto Nido, 6350 Franklin Ave., include the prolific, obscure screenwriter Eugene Walter, who died there in 1941; building manager Burt Berry, who died there of acute alcoholism in 1937 at the age of  48; Bunco artist Roy Kirkham in 1938;  Harry Michael, a witness in the 1944 fatal shooting of Hollywood figure Harry Lucenay (trainer of Pete the bulldog in the “Our Gang” comedies) over allegations of a crooked card game;  actress Collette Lyons (you may remember her as the telephone operator in “Return to Peyton Place”), whose nylons (a rationed item) were stolen there in  1945; and my favorite, Lila Leeds, who took an overdose of sleeping pills there in 1948, a few months before being arrested with Robert Mitchum for possession of marijuana at her house in Laurel Canyon.

Myth: She was a regular at the Snow White Waffle Shop, the bar at the Biltmore Hotel,  the Spanish Kitchen and just about every other restaurant in old Los Angeles

Fact: Except for one or two places, nobody knows for sure where she ate her meals. The laundry lists of restaurants that appear on the Web are–at best–nothing but fantasy and wishful thinking with absolutely no supporting proof. The amusing thing is that the few places where she was definitely placed by investigators are never mentioned in these lists.

Myth: She was a prostitute.

Fact:  The final report to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury states that she was not a prostitute.

Origin: Although this myth is deeply entrenched in the public imagination, it is relatively recent. Accounts as late as Jack Webb’s “The Badge” (a fairly flawed account in its own right) portray her as a drifter, con artist and tease, but it isn’t until the 1970s, with “True Confessions” that Elizabeth Short is first cast as a prostitute.

Myth: Her body was found at 39th and Norton or at 3925 S. Norton Ave.

Fact: The body was found on South Norton Avenue halfway between 39th Street and Coliseum, 54 feet north of the fire hydrant, according to the coroner’s inquest.

Origin: The mislocation of the crime scene appeared quite early, presumably because it’s easier to say “39th and Norton” than “Norton between 39th and Coliseum.”  While this may seem like a trivial distinction, I hate to think of all the tourists who come to L.A. to see where the body was found and visit the wrong spot. “California Babylon” inexplicably places the body a block away and includes a picture of the house at that address. How the authors could be that far off is truly amazing.

Myth: William Randolph Fowler of the Los Angeles Examiner was the first reporter at the crime scene.

Fact: Based on a lengthy analysis of crime scene photos, I believe Will was probably one of the last reporters to arrive, just as Aggie Underwood said. The photograph he always used as proof (the one that appeared on the front page of the Examiner) was cropped to eliminate the fender of a car that is visible in the full image.

Origin: Will Fowler adamantly insisted for years that he was the first reporter on the scene, and told a  long, dramatic story of encountering the first police officers (who drew their guns, of course) of rushing back to the Examiner, which put out an extra, and returning to the crime scene to fool the competition so they wouldn’t realize they had been scooped. He claimed that he had another photo of himself with the body, but that it had “disappeared.” Even I fell for this one. It’s impossible to state with 100% certainty since I wasn’t there, but to the best of my knowledge, the first reporter on the scene was most likely Marvin Miles of the Los Angeles Times, based on the position of the shadows in the photos and the other people who are present. .

Myth: The killer washed her hair, dyed her hair or gave her a makeover.

Fact: Her hair had been hennaed and was growing out so the roots showed.

Origin:  This myth appeared in one of the Los Angeles newspapers within two weeks  of her death, then  vanished for many years until it resurfaced in various crime books.

Myth: She was covered with cigarette burns.

Fact: False. There were no cigarette burns.

Origin: A few weeks after the killing, a teenage  girl disappeared and  then returned home, claiming to have escaped from her abductor. To bolster her story, she burned herself with a cigarette, all of which was reported in the Los Angeles newspapers.

Myth: She was strangled.

Fact: False. Although the body showed restraint marks around her wrists, neck and ankles, the coroner’s inquest says Elizabeth Short died of shock and loss of blood. 

Myth: She was hacked in half.

Fact: Her bisection was a clean, professional job, according to one investigator who was at the crime scene. In sworn testimony before the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, Detective Harry Hansen said he believed the bisection was done by “a very fine surgeon.”

Origin: This is one of the claims in “Severed.”

Myth: She was forced to eat feces.

Fact: The fecal material found in her stomach was from the natural digestion of food and a result of her being cut in half, according to doctors and investigators I have interviewed.

Origin: Still another claim from “Severed,” attributed to a nonexistent LAPD detective.

Myth: She was disemboweled, her ovaries were “switched,”  etc. etc.

Fact: Her body was mutilated, cut in half and drained of blood, but all her internal organs were present, as the coroner’s inquest shows.

Myth: She had a last drink at the Biltmore bar before vanishing to meet her grisly fate.

Fact: Elizabeth Short didn’t drink except for perhaps the last month or two of her life (her autopsy showed a very slight presence of liquor). Her alleged sighting in the Biltmore’s bar is nothing by P.R. hype, unsubstantiated by any official reports whatsoever.