Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 603: The Black Dahlia Murder Part IV - Exquisite Corpse
Episode Date: January 10, 2025The story of The Black Dahlia Murder comes to a close this week as the boys look into one of the most popular suspects in the case: George Hodel, the possibility that the killing had connections to th...e world of Surrealist Art, "Mind Hunter" John Douglas's theory on the case, as well as the alternative theory that points fingers at a prominent Los Angeles doctor named Walter Bayley. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.
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There's no place to escape to this is the last on the left
That's when the cannibalism started
Wow a lot of people wondered would they ever record again
would God Wow a lot of people wondered would they ever record again would
God
Stop last podcast on the left
From happening due to one of his many myriad of mysteries and control of the elements
I think it's Los Angeles trying to keep our rap
Honestly we got to move Larry Hartner shot it down We gotta keep a rap on what we gotta fucking tell people about. You know what we gotta do?
Honestly, we gotta move Larry Harner out of town.
Because the fire is coming for Larry Harner.
Save Larry Harner.
Someone's gotta get the box of papers.
He's surrounded by books.
They can't be don't get caught up.
Someone go get the black dolly of papers.
Sorry Larry, we gotta leave you behind.
Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left ladies and gentlemen,
my name is Marcus Barks, I'm here with the concerned
Henry Zebrowski.
Not flammable, Henry Zebrowski, camp is in a place.
We're doing okay.
Too wet.
All of my horses are safe.
Yeah.
My pack of farm is doing so well.
Good, good, good.
I let my butlers go.
That was like the hardest part was letting them go.
I went to the servants quarters and I asked them like, I do feel like you should burn
alive with that house.
And my, the head concierge of my foyer, he said, yes sir, yes, I agree sir.
But still, against my own better wishes. I let them go. Yeah, and I've you know
I'm almost thinking about like I have a personal water reservoir and
I'm thinking about maybe letting the city use it, but I think for now. I'm good to just keep it for my own bath
Good water, you know, what do I do with my natural well my natural water source?
I'm using most of that water to perfect my white, white rice recipe.
Which is extremely good.
The whitest of all the rice.
White, white rice.
Well here we are in Los Angeles.
The fires are going and we're talking about Black Dahlia Part 4.
So now that we've covered our man Leslie Dillon, whose story shows more than anything just
what police corruption can do to a murder investigation.
Leslie, leave her alone!
Leslie!
Let's explore the worlds of two suspects who have nothing to do with the mob or the
LAPD.
These suspects are your old-fashioned Los Angeles characters, doctors who are both their
own little individual labyrinths
of secrets and lies.
There's something that gets added to, I think,
when you're an LA doctor.
Oh, yeah.
Like how, like, mysteriously attractive
your dentist is, Eddie.
Oh!
You know what I mean?
Like, there's certain things.
You meet somebody in, like, LA is one of those places
when you meet a doctor, you're almost like...
Well, because they're all actor wannabes. Yeah, or they are. They all have a script. There's certain things you meet somebody in like LA is one of those places when you meet a doctor you're almost like well
Cuz they're all actor wannabes. Yeah, they are the script. They all were like handsome
They were the beautiful people. My doctor has a better headshot than I do. Yeah. Hey, it's really good
You've only been in town for a year plus. That's true
Now our first spec is included here not necessarily because we think he killed Elizabeth Short
He probably didn't but he is included because he is absolutely fascinating with surprising connections to both Hollywood and the world of fine art.
It's the character most people lead with in a Black Dahlia series. But we're not like that.
You fucking pieces of shit. We went through a more important theory.
Now we're going to get to it because that's when we chose to do it
Right Marcus goddamn right. It's our fucking choice when we do what? Yeah, we put the most entertaining stuff in the end
Where it belongs as far as I'm concerned. Why do you think they do Rosalita for 15 minutes?
Our second suspect however has some extremely compelling
Our second suspect, however, has some extremely compelling personal connections to Elizabeth Short and the neighborhood where she was found, and this suspect also slides nicely into the
profile that Minehunter author John Douglas drew up for the perpetrator of the Black Dahlia
murder.
So, let's get into these suspects, starting with probably the most well-known accused
killer of Elizabeth Short, Dr. George Hodel.
With probably one of the most perfect, fancy pervert mustaches in all of history.
He has got such a good mustache for eating the ass of a child.
It's almost like, did he do it on purpose? Which was first?
An additional source for George Hodel, by the way, is Exquisite Corpse, Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder
by Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Baylis,
which is an absolutely fascinating book
full of incredible art, if you can find it.
You should have seen me reading that
by the light of my car.
So I was in my car, charging my phone,
or out of power for the last several days,
and I sat there and I'm reading the exquisite corpse book going through
I read it from cover to cover. Yeah, I did too. It's a great book. It's a great book
It's also like it's definitely a more
It's a better version of the George Hodel story
Even though doesn't have all the details that black dolly Avenger has and all this up
Even though you whether or not you think they're fake or whatever
But I'm sitting here reading this book and I get to this section with all the autopsy pictures,
mixed them, comparing them to the surrealist paintings
and my neighbor, I just hear a ding, ding, ding,
and a headlamp comes into it and I just look
into my neighbor looking down
and I just see the pool of light just onto the dead,
open pussy of Elizabeth Short.
Right, like, Anthony just sitting in the dark, you know, the wind's going to whip it around
and shit, and then he comes in and he's just like, I got that battery pack you asked for,
what are you reading?
And I'm just like, this is my show.
And then I'm not even joking, I sat with him for 20 minutes and I gave him the whole rundown
and I just, he got the podcast.
He got the podcast from me in the car.
So yeah, he got to see it too, and I was just yeah, it was fun
That's great now the reason why we know so much about George Hodel and his connections to the black doll you murder is because his son
Steve Hodel it's so convinced that his father did the crime that he's written nine books on the subject
Daddy never ate my ass.
No, that's not true. I'm sorry Steve Hodel. Please don't sue us.
Don't send the police after us.
Please Mr. Hodel.
But these guys are, it's interesting.
He not only thinks that his father did the Black Dahlia murder,
but he thinks his father is the biggest criminal that has ever lived.
He thinks his father has done every murder. He thinks his father is the biggest criminal that has ever lived. He thinks his father has done every murder
He thinks his father is a supervillain like his father is like the head of the guild of calamitous intent. It's cool. It's close
But he's bad. Yeah, he's definitely bad
But you know, let's get more into this story now while nine books make Steve sound like a crackpot with a penchant for self-publishing
He was actually an LAPD
detective supervisor for 24 years. He's conducted thousands of criminal investigations and has
been involved in 300 murder cases. But because of his resume, he does, according to his very
own book, hold himself in very high regard.
He really does.
Pretty good. Well, he doesn't sound not... I Don't want to be mean. He doesn't sound like he's sure of himself much like Papa was
See, I'm a Larry Harnish guy. So Steve can go fucking suck it
We're talking about Larry harness like the audience knows who the fuck he is.
The audience doesn't know who the fuck Larry Harnish is just yet, alright?
He's our fucking boy, man!
He's my fucking second-hand soldier, my main general!
We talked about him at the end of last episode.
He is the grumpy... he is now the self-proclaimed grumpiest man in the world.
I love him.
But according to Steve Hodel, according to himself,
Steve was a real-life hero born out of the imagination of Hollywood
Steve wrote this about himself
Citizens saw me exactly as they knew me from television tall trim and handsome with spit shine shoes and a gleaming badge
There was no difference between me and my actor cop counterparts on Dragnet or Adam 12.
Have you ever had a semen fucking shine?
Tell me buddy.
Have you ever shined your shoes to the nice dollop of African semen?
Come on, enjoy yourself.
Enjoy yourself at the airport.
Just like I did.
Looking handsome on my way down to my ninth rape case of the week.
I'm out of spit shine but never a cum shine shoe.
It's so hard to do because you gotta wait.
Yeah, yeah.
So...
It's like you gotta show him your breasts.
Yeah, you just look at him and he said to look away.
He said to look away while you sit there and he's just like,
Yes sir, yes, yes, very feminine son, very feminine.
I tried bringing him a magazine, He said he didn't want it.
Yeah.
Very good, sir.
Yes, good, proud American man, sir.
I come.
I told him I drew nipples on my balls for him.
Ah, very good.
Yeah, very good little tits.
Top and bottom the dick.
After Steve's father, George Hodel, died in 1999,
Steve went through his father's things
and found pictures of a woman he didn't recognize.
Pictures that appeared as if they were from the 1940s.
As Steve stared at these pictures more and more, he came to believe that these were never
before seen photos of Elizabeth Short.
Now we're not alone in saying that the girl in these pictures is absolutely not Elizabeth
Short.
We know for a fact, definitely one of them is not Elizabeth Short.
Yeah, I mean, and these two pictures don't even really look like the same woman.
No, they do not.
No, no, no, they kind of look kind of maybe the same, but they just kind of look like
ladies.
Yeah, black and white.
Yeah, and it's black and white, so we can't really tell.
But the photographs were close enough of a match to send Steve on a mission to delve
into his father's past to see if there was some nefarious connection, because Steve did know that his father, George
Hodel, had a checkered past, to say the very least.
I think that obviously just George Hodel's actions as a whole will put him on the suspect
list.
I think it makes a lot of sense, and I think that Steve and Hodel feels a lot of guilt
in that way. But he also might haveodel feels a lot of guilt in that way
But he also might have some of his father's traits in the way in terms of being extremely
Bullheaded about very arcane things could be so George is definitely a prick bastard whether Steve's right or not
I know Eddie don't let's don't tell him. Yes. Let Eddie choose after the story
Besides George Hodel is bad or not
So George Hodel Steve's father and the main suspect of this section was a Los Angeles native born in 1907
He was a musical prodigy with a genius IQ of 186 who eventually decided on a career in medicine
Yes, I did receive one more point than Einstein and and I believe it was because when I took the
test I was fully aroused.
I'm the horniest ten-year-old that's ever been.
He had the most Ashen Sea was five.
It fell off his mom's pussy when he was coming out.
Let me glue this on my son.
After med school, Hodel made a name for himself in Hollywood as a sort of doctor to the stars,
partnering with a mysterious Japanese physician about whom little is known.
George also ran a venereal disease clinic, and as a result, he was put in charge of controlling
venereal disease in the city of Los Angeles when he was named head of the LA County Health Department
in 1939.
In other words, Hodel had direct connections
to the grubbiest parts of this city.
And he was a powerful man with a lot of connections to boot.
I consider myself more of a vagina sheriff.
I try to make sure every vagina is clean.
It is within the justice system.
And when it is not, it is thoroughly punished.
So George, how do you do those things?
Like what's your main, like, what's your main goal here?
I just can tell when a woman is clean
by the way she sits in a chair.
What is your favorite venereal disease?
Honestly, it's so hard to choose.
It's like choosing which child of mine to have sex with
Coma doesn't allow you to see who you're having sex with the best that go on a pretzel
No, I don't know for sure but it seems like George Hodel's inside track to Hollywood and beyond ran through a childhood friend
This is incredible George grew up with Hollywood legend John Huston.
Oh!
He fucking directed the Maltese Falcon,
played the main villain in Chinatown.
That's probably where- Angelica Huston's dad?
Yeah. Yes.
Danny Huston's dad.
And they all, they whole, they, it,
that's the connection.
What? I'll get back to it.
Yeah.
The street I used to live on was named after him.
No shit.
Yeah, that was like where he,
I honestly think that that where we lived specifically
in North Hollywood, I do weirdly think
that's a lot of places where they would like
put their like malls.
They would put their like ladies
when they were working at the studio.
Oh, the gun malls.
Yes, the ladies, their girlfriends would stay
where we live in North Hollywood
and their wives would be in the homes
that just got burnt down.
And then they are just, and then John Houston would work at the studios that
are down the street to come over North Hollywood fuck all the ladies on the
side and then go home come wash their penis and then come home.
Now George and director John Houston remained friends into adulthood and they
were so close that after John Houston divorced his wife in 1933 George married her soon after. Is that close? I think it is because he
well he knew John Houston's that's how he knew this woman. And they used to go on double dates with
each other's wives and then they swap wives essentially? I don't know if they
swapped wives I just know that John Houston divorced this woman Dorothy and
you know George Hodel picked her up. Yeah, yeah, sucked her up. I can still taste John's kisses. I love five layers of my
friend's kisses right on your lips. John Houston is a scary-looking man. Yeah,
that's why he's one of the greatest of it like his villain and his portrayal
of the villain in Chinatown is one of the greatest villain portrayals in
cinematic history. Yeah, absolutely.
Well, John Huston's ex-wife would become Steve Hodel's mother,
although she and George Hodel were divorced by 1944 after Steve's mother filed a complaint of extreme cruelty.
By 1945, George Hodel was one of LA's reigning shady weirdos,
performing illegal abortions in between hedonistic orgies held at his Frank
Lloyd Wright Jr. designed home, which had been bizarrely constructed in the style of
a Mayan temple.
The Shangri-La of Los Angeles.
Yeah.
Have you ever seen it?
Have you ever driven past it?
No.
It is, it's beautiful.
It's in Los Feliz.
You go by, it is this giant, it looks sort of like a mini Mayan version of the Chrysler
building where it's like, it's got like these kind of mirrored tower to the top
It's extremely beautiful and you can see you're like, oh where do
Course girls go to get murdered on group my Hollywood Millionaires. You're like
If you look at the inside of it all the sales sales pitches of it, because there was a whole,
when he was trying to sell the house,
George Hodel took all these self-pictured,
like all the pictures inside the house of him
like modeling it,
and it looks like a James Bond villain's house.
And it's just him just being like,
wouldn't you love to live in the opulence of Shangri-La?
Wouldn't you love to sit in the living room of Shangri-La?
And it's just all like,
looks like Kanye West's house,
where everything's made out of cinder blocks yeah and it's all tile and concrete so
if you kill a girl you can just clean it with a hose super easy
now on May 9th 1945 suspicion fell on George when his secretary suddenly died
in his presence on that night George allegedly called his ex-wife and told her to come over to his secretary's
apartment.
When George's ex-wife arrived, she found George's secretary unconscious from a barbiturate
overdose.
Incredibly, Hodel's main concern was not his secretary, but the two manuscripts that
she had written.
Manuscripts that he gave to his ex-wife to burn.
Hodel's ex-wife did as she was told, and the secretary quickly died from an overdose.
While Hodel moved on with his life, having squashed whatever secrets she may have had.
So just, let that stick in your head.
That is like one of the big cruxes of this entire story.
That is extraordinarily easily disproved.
Of course.
But it's like, this is the things that Steve Hodel will build the George Hodel story around stuff like this the idea that he said burn these
manuscripts do these and it's also crazy to think that he was so mean and so
crazy but his ex-wives kept coming back yeah you know powerful man yeah lots of
money and stuff yeah that happens a lot in abusive relationships true yeah it's
also just like shows how easy it was to just get away with killing someone back then if you had just like a moderate
Amount of money. Yeah, go in it's they continues to this day Eddie. Don't worry
Now when it comes to hotels connections
He would host gatherings at his home that centered around drug fueled hypnotism sessions that were led by George himself
Yeah, and that's when he wasn't hosting the orgies
Now we're going to be fair deeper one on the count of three. You will turn into the horniest chicken
I've ever seen three
cock
Are you not a chicken anymore wolf wolf wolf Very good. Cock, cock, cock. Yes, very good. Cock, cock, cock. Yes, very good.
Cock, cock, cock.
Why, you're not a chicken anymore?
Wolf, wolf, wolf.
Yes.
I'm not telling you hypnotize a dog.
Easy to do, let's all fuck it.
Come on, John Huston, let's get Betty Davis.
Let's get her a fake cock and have her fuck this dog in front of us, huh?
Yeah, all right.
Sure, she has Betty Davis eyes, but how about a Betty Davis vagina?
Yeah, let's check her
Let's things that Betty Davis and George Hodel probably did meet each other at the very least
Because Betty Davis was actually very big in the modern art scene in Los Angeles
That's it
That's one of the things I found out is that actually the the people that are most responsible for modern are coming to Los Angeles are Vincent Price number one. That makes sense.
Yeah Vincent Price, John Huston and Edgar G Robinson. That's awesome. Yeah is it
crazy and but also the story will go on. And Bette Davis is also in the art scene a lot as well.
Yeah yeah all of basically most of LACMA was like brought here by Vincent Price.
Yeah. It's fascinating. That's very cool. Yeah. Yeah it's crazy shit but All of, basically most of LACMA was brought here by Vincent Price.
It's fascinating.
That's very cool.
Yeah, it's crazy shit.
But George Hodel was ensconced within the Los Angeles art scene at this time.
And these gatherings at George's place were attended by a wide range of artists, writers,
and people in the film industry.
For writers, for example, novelist Henry Miller was a frequent guest at George
Hodel's home. And Henry Miller, if you'll remember, could himself write quite the tawdry
tale.
Yes, when I dropped off some tropper of... I had two extra copies of Tropic of Cancer
for some reason. I dropped them off in some little libraries in my neighborhood.
Oh my God. Nothing makes me happier than putting a satanic book in a church library.
It really makes me happy. I just think it's important for some lady to read about poetry, about anal warts.
It's important. Have you ever read Henry Miller? No. I'll give you some.
Okay great, I'll not read it then too.
But George's company most infamously included the surrealist painter and photographer Man Ray.
Now while people like Henry Miller came in and out of George's world and knew him pretty much as included the surrealist painter and photographer, Man Ray.
Now while people like Henry Miller came in and out of George's world and knew him pretty
much as a local eccentric, Man Ray was a family friend of the Hodels and took what I'd call
a suspicious amount of photos of both George and his ex-wife.
The reason why it's suspicious is because they are like, because Man Ray will go on
and kind of deny whatever connections connections everyone denies connections to George
Hodel, but he obviously was friends with them
He took pictures of like candid pictures of his kids candid pictures of them hanging out. Yes, man
Ray could be people did pay him to go and take pictures at their home, right?
Like to come and do a big photographer like, you know, you go do whatever
I don't even know what the term it is like a big like actual put-together
choreographed films photo photo shoot. A family photo?
Yeah!
But with families.
A family photo shoot!
Family photo, yeah.
But Man Ray would do them.
What do you think is fascinating?
I mean, you get incredible fucking photos.
I mean, Man Ray is nothing if not extraordinarily talented.
I mean, his work is incredible.
Despite what we may say about his personal life.
How many photos of your wife in someone else's possession is too much?
I'd say like five.
Well it depends on what situation.
If it's from across the street.
If I paid them to take pictures, as many as I paid for it.
And they're going to go through all the negatives anyway and choose
Yeah, you don't even get to choose those pictures. Yeah, but to understand why the connection between George Hodel and Man Ray is so interesting
You got to understand a little bit about surrealism
Which is the art movement that Man Ray belonged to and the one that George Hodel was obsessed with so fucking get your holes ready, dude, because it's time for... Oh shit, do we got a good lick for this shit?
It's art history!
You know what, last podcast, oh no, this is the most extreme shit we have ever covered, dude!
Look, it's coming for you, surrealism!
It's the art of space!
The art of space!
Continue working.
Yeah, no, I'm glad you guys fucking prepped up.
You guys lubed up the chamber.
Thank you.
Ready.
Ready for art history.
Well basically, surrealism was the next step after the Dada movement, defined in the book
Exquisite Corpse as a heady call to arms, extolling freedom of imagination and liberation
from social constraints.
All anal. Ha ha ha!
Style-wise, it's just like it sounds.
Like, it's surreal, it's unsettling stuff.
You know, Salvador Dali.
He's the most well-known surrealist artist out there.
Okay, so the good shit.
Everyone, yeah, the good shit.
Everyone's got, everyone's seen
a surrealist painting in their life.
Yeah, fucking stupid clocks can't not be melted
and shit, but you timed it, so dumb.
It's hard, you never, I know you were afraid of clocks in the first place
because you don't even like the concept of time.
I know, Eddie.
You said clock!
I know.
Y'all fucking rip your hand off.
You put a watch on it.
I know.
I'm gonna fucking chew on your fingers.
This is just art history, Eddie.
Not times.
It's not real.
You calm down?
You good?
Yeah, we're very warm.
Any number under 13 just fucking gets me going.
He has a hard time with it.
He has a hard time with it, he can't deal,
he loves it, Baker's doesn't.
But the surrealism, I'll just remember,
the goal was to break through,
they were having problems with what they did,
viewed as like the staid kind of realism movement
that was happening, and surrealism came out of World War I
because of the horrors and the atrocities that humans did.
The idea was to sort of break through to the subconscious
in many different ways.
So they would try all these different exercises
to try to get through to the subconscious and create that,
and from a direct concept, from the artist to the canvas.
Now, at times, surrealism was an interplay
of irrationality, eroticism, and violence.
And when it came to women eroticism, and violence.
And when it came to women in Surrealism, they were rarely displayed as fully human entities
in Surrealist art.
Rather, the women in Surrealist paintings and photography, particularly the works of
Man Ray, featured recurring motifs of bisected and fragmented women, just as Elizabeth Short
was bisected and fragmented.
Now many of the Surrealists were fascinated with violence,
both real and imagined.
In the real world, they were captivated
by true crime stories, violent accounts of Catholic saints,
and Jack the Ripper.
But they were also obsessed with the fictional writings
of the Marquis de Sade,
particularly his unfinished novel, 120 Days of Sodom.
Yeah, dude, it's about 30 days too long.
I watched Solo.
We all see, you saw Solo, right?
I didn't see Solo.
You've never seen it?
No.
Just go take a look at it.
I've read like graphic representations of 120 days of Sodom though.
It's fucking foul.
Yeah.
It's awful.
Yeah, it's fun or whatever.
Some people like it.
No, I haven't seen, I mean it's not like every graphic representation because if you graphically
represented the things that happened in 120 Days of Sodom, you would be producing child
pornography.
Well that's the part you really gotta skip.
That's what I'd say.
I'd say that is less is more.
Now to briefly recap the story because it is important 120 Days of
Sodom is a novel from 1785 about four rich libertine Frenchmen who spend four
months in a secluded castle in the middle of the forest trying to top each
other in the realm of sexual perversion. It's a true exploration of the raref
fragrances. And what are the raref fragrances? Every single time you hear the term,
like George Hodel, this is a thing that comes up a lot
in like artsy fartsy old school erotica,
like ah yes, ah an exploration of the rarer fragrances.
Which always means butthole.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
The rarer fragrance.
Yeah, pussy juices.
It's pussy juices and butthole masses.
We're using 20 victims and eight male accomplices with large penises.
Accomplices de Sade simply called the fuckers.
Yes, hey, we're the fuckers, you order?
Yeah, we're the fuckers, just so you know, I got a heart out at 8.
Yeah, I gotta be fucking at the White House tonight.
But what I'm done with is the Brown House.
You know what I'm saying anyway, but that's just kind of a joke between fuckers.
We mostly say that.
You know how it is.
I come out, I fuck.
You know, sometimes I shoot myself in the head and I wake up and I'm just alive again
and I just go out and I fuck again and on a bunch of stuff and then I get ripped apart
by a bunch of dogs and then all of a sudden I just wake up again and then I go and I just go out and I fuck again and I got a bunch of stuff and then I get ripped apart by a bunch of dogs and then all of a sudden I just wake up again and then I go and I fuck and then I get burnt alive with a bunch of acid and shit. I don't know man.
I'm sorry, did you mean to order suckers? Because we're fuckers. That's the sucker. We're using 20 victims in this story.
The four Frenchmen engage in incest, rape, necrophilia, bestiality, coprophilia, urine
drinking, vomit drinking, and child sex abuse until it all culminates in murder most foul.
And I do mean foul.
I do everything but feet stuff.
That's the only thing I can't stand.
I can't stand. I can't stand feet, but otherwise I'll
fuck a jar of peanut butter into the mouth of a giraffe. I will fuck whatever it is you
knew. I got a nine inch cock and it doesn't matter. It works until I'm dead.
What's coprophilia?
Eating shit.
Oh cool.
Hell yeah. You learned something new today.
Thank God.
But above all else, the novel 120 Days of Sodom is so depraved as to be totally surreal.
And the surrealist movement of the 20th century loved the novel for both its style and because
they fancy themselves as libertines free from all social constraints.
Surrealists, much like any group of artists, they fancy themselves a little bit more hardcore than they
actually are. Oh yes as the wife of surrealist painter Max Ernst put it
most surrealists flew close to the flame of Desaad on an intellectual level but
as for emulating the fantasies of Desaad's personae they didn't even try.
There are a bunch of people that wear suits too much to be eating that much
shit. Oh yeah. You know they all wear suits. But because be eating that much shit. Oh yeah, yeah.
They all wear suits.
But because the Surrealists didn't dabble,
that did not mean that some of them weren't associated
with the people who did, people like George Hodel.
I view George Hodel as a Jeffrey Epstein-like character.
Yeah, he's very close to that type.
Yeah, just like this sort of rich puppet master
with a lot of very famous friends,
a lot of very well-known friends. That's insulated him. That with a lot of very famous friends a lot of very well-known friends
that throws a lot of parties and comes very close to getting some sort of come up ends
but never quite gets there.
Someone who's a lot of fun until you really get to know him.
Well the problem is-
A lot of fun for about an hour and a half.
And it's a lot of fun that you're definitely having somebody else's expense and you're
not asking a lot of questions about and then what you would does in its own way
Is that it creates its own?
Secret-keeping mechanism as we've seen George Riddell is a he is a lot of money
He has weird we don't really know what he does for a living. He does a bunch of different stuff, right?
He has a doctor Hollywood doctor to the stars, but it's very vague. So it gives them drugs
Yes, And helps them
with venereal diseases on the down low, helps them with abortions on the down low, helps
them with any, any various problems that would be considered publicly embarrassing. That
is somebody who traffics in secrets. Like that is his job is to traffic in secrets.
So then what is happening is that then other secrets congregate and it takes a type of
person. And I think George Hodel, it's why we think he could have within his depths,
he might be one considered to do,
he would have considered to do the Black Dolly a murder
because he just was so kind of in his own world of ideas
that no one cared.
He viewed himself as past everyone.
If Steve's blowing up daddy's spot, man.
You leave daddy alone, Steve.
Now the surrealist painter and photographer, If Steve's blowing up daddy's spot man, did you leave daddy alone?
Now the surrealist painter and photographer man Ray moved to Los Angeles at the age of 50 after escaping World War two Europe And he eventually made friends with George Hodel in Los Angeles
Man Ray's work which often featured nude women was said to be the finest defense of surrealism central theme of
was said to be the finest defense of surrealism's central theme of transgressions via eroticism, which pointed more towards death than sexuality.
In one photograph, Man Ray did a self-portrait of himself lying on top of
the dead body of a woman killed by a gunshot, and in one of his paintings, Man
Ray portrayed an abstract female bisected at the waist, just like Elizabeth Short
was. Both of these works were finished in the 30s, years before the Black Dahlia murder.
And we're not saying that Man Ray was directly involved
in the killing of Elizabeth Short,
but he has been named as a person
who may have involved himself
in George Hodel's more disgusting pursuits.
He was around for the parties.
Yeah.
Man Ray was probably around for a lot of the parties,
and Man Ray was one of these guys.
But I think that that was his main connection to this art world. Like, he had other... Was Man Ray was probably around for a lot of the parties, and Man Ray was one of these guys. But I think that that was his main connection
to this art world.
Like he had other-
Was Man Ray?
Was Man Ray was the guy that was his like buddy.
That was the guy that was like showing up
and taking pictures of other people
and doing other things,
and then may or may not have taken a bunch
of naked pictures of his daughter.
Yeah, so you don't have to be so weird.
Now, did he took a picture on top of an actual dead woman,
or was it staged?
No, it was staged.
Yay!
It was art!
We don't know for sure how Man Ray and George Hodel connected in the first place, but George
Hodel was certainly an arty weirdo and the Los Angeles art world in the 1940s was predictably
small.
George Hodel's thrown around a lot of money and he's buying a lot of works of art.
And that's the thing, is that no one can really figure out why Man Ray went to Los Angeles in the first place.
Although he said it was to get as far away from the war as possible.
What we do know is that Man Ray was close to George Hodel in the 11 years
he lived in Los Angeles and this was confirmed by George Hodel's daughter Tamar.
There was a little bit of a hint of why he went to Los Angeles in terms of apparently the art scene itself
Was starting to die out in New York
So all of surrealism right after World War two came to New York and it turned into this essentially
Kind of a commercial enterprise Salvador Dali everyone kind of got mad at Salvador Dali because at this point Salvador Dali was on like
Television shows he was showing himself to be the face of surrealism.
He's working with a lot of Disney.
Yes, he's doing all of these things and he's making a lot of money and he's taking private
commissions and to them he's ruining surrealism because he's making it about commercialism.
And so that might be one of the reasons why Man Ray moved from New York to LA.
Yeah.
But as far as Man Ray's connections to George Hodel goes, George Hodel's daughter, Tamar, said that Man Ray
often photographed the whole family,
and she said that he took nude photographs of her
on occasion when she was still a young teenager.
That, however, is not the worst of what happened to Tamar
in George Hodel's home,
because the thing that happened to Tamar is the catalyst
to why we even know about George Hodel in the first place.
And that's what makes me fucking wonder so much is like, we just know George Hodel
because of what I'm about to talk about.
How many George Hodel's have existed in Los Angeles?
Like how many have existed in this city over the last 120 some odd years?
Up to like this century.
Oh, of course.
It was because-
There's still a George Hodel today, but how many have there been?
I mean, at least, I'm going to say 150.
Oh, years up, there is a pack of them.
I think that anybody could go to a place where it is, it was lawless out here.
And if you had a lot of money, you could really figure it out.
And then if you read the works of Kenneth Anger, this happened way more
than we even think it did.
But then that might be exaggerated.
It's also not only was it lawless, like it wasn't even in check like New York's in check
with the mafia.
You know, like the mafia wasn't even in control out here.
No.
Well, in October of 1949, Tamar Hodel, who was then just 14 years old, she told police
that during one of her father's orgies at their home, he had raped her and this act was witnessed by two other people. Hodel was soon
arrested and put on trial for this horrific crime. George Hodel's lawyers
had a simple plan for getting their client acquitted. Their plan was to
discredit Tamar Hodel completely to make her look crazy and they partly did so by
using the black Dahlia murder. During a conversation with the man who rented a room in their home, Tamar had said that
her father's house had secret passages, and that her father was going to kill her and
everyone else in the house because he had an insatiable bloodlust.
That bloodlust, Tamar had said, had already taken a victim.
The infamous Black Dahlia.
Now, Tamar was obviously making a joke.
She said so.
Yeah, she said that they were talking about it sort of in a ridiculous way of the other
things that he could have done.
Yeah.
Because it was the most popular news story of the time, probably.
Exactly.
It's the worst thing you can say that someone did.
Like, oh, he killed the Black Dahlia killer.
You know, it's like, it's a byword for psychopath.
But the lawyers used these comments to make Tamar look like she'd say just about anything to smear her father and their scheme
Worked perfectly while there was plenty of evidence against Hodel
He was eventually acquitted of all charges although he did make a few well-placed bribes along the way. Yeah, make sure that happened
Again, the corruption muddles things but what was interesting about the acquittal was the reaction from Man Ray, or should I
say the lack of reaction from photographer Man Ray.
A year after George's incest trial, Man Ray sent a friendly postcard to George from Paris,
asking Hodel if he wanted anything from France besides a coquette, which is another word
for a tart or a floozy.
You know, I always like to write postcards casually, my friends say, you want me to traffic a woman for you?
I heard you're lonely.
I can abduct a woman for you and take her from this country
if you want.
Even in joking, who says that?
Hey, buddy.
Hey, Marcus.
Oh, you're going, oh, I see you're leaving town.
When you come back, could you bring me a trafficked woman?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't like her to like it.
I don't want her to agree. I want her to be against her will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't like her to like it. I don't want
her to agree. I want her to be against her will. Yeah, younger the better. Thank you
if you could. Baby, looking for a baby.
This stone suggests that Man Ray was not in the least bit disturbed by Hodel's incest
trial. But when it comes to the surrealist link to the Black Dahlia murder, one of the
most interesting parallels involves a game called Exquisite Corpse, which is what the book we use today is named after
Does sound like one of those like the blood on the dance floor kind of like weird like new metal
Yeah bands. Yeah, I mean like one of those weird scream metals
Oh there had to have been a screamo band called exquisite corpse at some point. Yeah, right
There's a band called the black doll you murder our friend
It's like if artists played the aristocrats.
Aristocrats.
Yeah.
Well, the exquisite corpse is a fun name, but it is just a game.
Yeah, and it's not necessarily to see who can do the most disgusting thing or anything
like that.
It's just to kind of see who can do the most inventive thing.
In the exquisite corpse games, three artists take turns drawing a section of a body without
seeing any other section.
The first takes the head and shoulders, the second draws the torso, and the third finishes
up everything below the waist.
Exquisite corpse was particularly popular with the surrealists, and in 1934 an exquisite
corpse drawing by four noted surrealist artists that bore a large number of similarities to
the mutilations performed on Elizabeth Short's body got published.
And this is about 13 years before
Elizabeth Short was killed. In this delicate crayon on paper depiction of a woman's body,
the figure's breasts are replaced by simple circular shapes that enclose
asymmetrical triangles. As you might remember when we talked about Elizabeth Short's autopsy, her right breast
was removed which left behind a circular wound, and on her left breast, a triangular shape
was cut out of her skin, just to the right of her nipple.
In the exquisite corpse drawing in question, there's also a yellow mark just above the
genital area, which corresponds to the vertical incision made on Elizabeth Short's body in the exact same place. But most important was the position of this drawing's arms.
See, a woman with her arms raised above her head was a weirdly common motif in Surrealism,
but it was specifically common in the works of Man Ray. In multiple Man Ray photographs,
he features solitary nude women over and over again with
their arms bent, held over their head. And the woman in the exquisite corpse drawing we're
talking about here has her arms in the same position. The position of the arms in both
the drawing and Man Ray's photos mirror the exact way Elizabeth Short's body was found.
I feel like I know her her but sometimes my arms bend back
Yeah, it's again. There's another David Lynch connect. Yeah, man. It's just a picture of the the picture of the lady is a definite connection
Yeah, but this motif didn't stop with man Ray
There was an incredible amount of surrealist art by multiple artists created both before and after the black dolly of murder that look
Uncannily like the crime scene photos taken in Leimert Park, in a way that no other
art movement connects to a specific murder.
But you know what the Minotaur means?
The Minotaur?
I mean the Minotaur is...
I mean that's a little too far...
Like I thought about going into the Minotaur, but the Minotaur is like a massive side quest.
Just quick!
The reason why the Minotaur is even used, the position that she's in, it was considered
to be the Minotaur is even used, the position that she's in, it was considered to be the Minotaur position.
The Minotaur was this half-man, half-beast character that was put in the center of a labyrinth,
and because he was this abomination, and then Theseus went all the way through to attack the monster,
and then he used a golden thread to find his way out of the labyrinth,
but the whole thing is about what they say, it's about the Freudian dip into the subconscious subconscious Going through the labyrinth to find the minotaur which is the thing inside of you
You maybe don't want to see or the thing unknown inside of you
You don't want to see and then pulling it out which is why the surrealists were using that so in this theory
Elizabeth short was an art piece. Yes, let's get into it
Now the posing of Elizabeth shorts body has always been one of the biggest question marks
in the Black Dahlia case.
One that no one has ever been able to fully satisfy.
In fact it's one that most people haven't even been able to approach.
But author Steve Hodel, George Hodel's son, he thinks that he cracked it using something
he calls a thought print.
You know how your fingers got a print and your butt's got a print when you sit in the
sand?
I'm with you. Sometimes your thought could have a print and your butt's got a print when you sit in the sand sometimes your thought
could have a print.
Oh Jesus.
Yeah, no listen, no listen, it's easy to do.
My thumb print, my finger print, my butt print, my thought print.
I don't like it.
According to Steve, thought prints like finger prints.
It's like a finger print.
Okay, alright.
It's like a butt print!
It's different every time, everybody's got a different butt!
God damn it, Steve, you gotta get out of here.
Thought prints relate to the potential identification of a specific individual
through his or her own unique thinking and thoughts.
It's a thought print!
Yeah.
The thinking behind the posing of Short's body, Steve maintains, is that the killer
was a surrealist who wanted to shock the world with the most transgressive work of art in
history.
This would be a surrealist who took the motifs of bisection, raised arms, and mutilation
to the next level by using an actual woman as the canvas. Genius! Absolutely exemplary! And the reason why they call it the Minotaur position, you know, with the arms raised up
is because of a Man Ray photograph called Minotaur, which shows just a woman's torso
and her arms raised up above her head, and the shadows make it look like a bull's head,
you know, like the breasts, the nipples of the eyes, you know,
and the arms are the horns,
but that's how it came to be known as the Minotaur position.
I gotcha.
I just don't think an artist could keep their mouth shut
if they did accomplish this.
Well, that was the idea, is that then the show off
of the corpse is their gallery.
Oh, but they would like to say that I'm the one,
I'm the greatest, I created the Minotaur of short.
It's possible, yes.
Well, and that's the thing, is that there are other theories that would make that even
more difficult.
It's been posited in the past that the Black Dahlia murder was the work of more than one
person because of the differing ways in which the body was mutilated and manipulated at
the crime scene, but the authors of the book Exquisite Corpse take that theory one step
further.
They submit that a group of people familiar with surrealism may have tried to recreate an exquisite corpse game with the body of this young
Woman what's so hard is to be the first one and then you got her there
She's alive and stuff and you're like, well if I just put a hat on her, you know
Well, then what do I do? Like, put a sash on her or something?
And next thing you know, honestly, you just become fashion designers.
And you're just dressed in this woman.
If she was art, it could have birthed the first murder critic.
Whoa, and that's what we are. That's what we are.
You know what? I don't get it.
Two thumbs down. Sorry, uninspired.
Well, in keeping with the general idea of the exquisite corpse game,
multiple people may have taken turns with Elizabeth Short's body,
each of them inscribing their signatures on her legs, genitals, torso, breasts, and face.
What if I just, again, what if I just wanted to draw on her? We're artists, right?
Can I just draw a circle on her or something?
Here's a knife have fun. I just wish I could get a marker so I get a paintbrush
No knives only I just I hate this surrealist thing I thought this was imagination
D could be for Dali
Oh shit he did it with the lobster
Lobster did it or do come
And all the poop in her from poopcasso.
That doesn't even make sense.
I wouldn't allow that.
That doesn't make any sense.
Peecasso.
If it was piss.
I was told to, but I realized that she wasn't filled with piss.
Thank you.
I changed it at the last minute.
Quick thinking.
True.
Thank you, committee.
Yeah.
You're just sitting here doing piss
and shit man. She's a regular Cumbrant. Cumbrant? No Rembrandt. Now we're over. We're in the
Palisades.
Well thus inspired the authors wrote, this group would have crafted what they viewed
as the most exquisite corpse of all.
Yes!
Would not be the most devilish of all.
And that's kind of the problem with a lot of these theories is that they do require
cartoonishly villainous characters.
Yeah.
Well and I also will put the exquisite corpse book
Which I love and I love all the art history in it. I will put it toward almost in the true crime like
overboard world of thinking
They kind of act like they're treating these surrealist painters like the West Memphis three
They just because they were like hanging out and doing all these like quote-unquote like weird dirty things like that
They were then criminals it kind of feels like you're getting mad at people for listening to Marilyn Manson
And you think it's gonna cause it's causing school shootings where it's like no this is that artists are inherently I love artists
Pussies, you're not going to do this
Physical they're not physical
Mental you know I mean this is a mental They're going to do this. They're cowards. It's just physical. They're not physical. They're mental.
You know what I mean?
This is a mental, spiritual creatures.
It's going to be the big jump.
The idea of four of them getting together to do it would be, I think, a bit impossible.
Especially if somebody like George Hodel, unless George Hodel killed all of them.
The only way this holds, that theory to me holds, is that George Hodel did the black
dolly, but he also killed everybody involved
Mm-hmm. I just don't think they would stop at one person
I think if it was an art piece they would kill multiple people
And especially if they didn't get caught and got this much press look at Leopold and lobe
Those are guys that were definitely did it for the art of it. They did it for the mental exercise of it real. Yes
Yeah
So now that we've talked about the surrealist links to the murder
Let's return to George Hodel and how he came to be connected to the Black Dahlia. See,
while his lawyer did succeed in getting George acquitted by making George's daughter look crazy
because of what she'd said about George being the Black Dahlia killer, the plan backfired when the
police opened a file to thoroughly investigate George for the murder. Isn't this interesting
in the fact that this is how much time has changed, where back in the day they actually were
offended by the fact that they thought that he fucked his daughter instead of
it like covering for him. Like they were mad they covered for the other people
but they didn't cover for George Hodel. They went looking for George Hodel
unlike Jeffrey Epstein when the entire South Florida judicial group all like
flipped over backwards to make sure that he
was fine.
Yeah.
No, not in Los Angeles, not with George Hodel.
Not with this one.
Yeah.
Well, the cops snuck a bug into Hodel's house and tapped his phone.
But because George had connections, he was well aware he was being monitored and therefore
engaged in lots of loud sex, erotic poetry readings, and an inordinate amount of toilet
flushes
to toy with the cops.
Another log gone.
Another log missed.
I hope you enjoy this next show
I'm about to do for you, Lieutenant.
Oh, oh, oh, I'm touching my butthole.
I'm touching my butthole, Mr. Homicide Detective.
Oh, oh, oh.
I'm shitting on a plate and feeding it to my daughter.
Shitting on a plate!
Coming get me!
Coming arrest me!
Well, Hodel was also aware that his phone was being tapped, and during a conversation
with a friend, Hodel said, quote, Supposing I did kill the black dog, yeah, they couldn't
prove it now.
They can't talk to my secretary anymore
because she's dead.
Now, a lot of people have used this statement as proof that George Hodel killed Elizabeth
Short. But one has to question why Hodel would say something so damning when he knew the
police were listening.
Because why wouldn't they come and arrest him immediately?
Most likely, Hodel said it because he knew there was no truth to it, because Hodel obviously liked playing with people.
For example, his secretary died in May of 1945, almost two years before Elizabeth Short
was killed.
In fact, the secretary died before Elizabeth Short even came to Los Angeles.
So the manuscripts that she was asked to burn, whatever that was...
It's filled with a bunch of other haunted shit.
That's the thing, that's my main thing with George Hodel is I think he's guilty of plenty of other things that he didn't
Want people to know about he's physically could not have ran into Elizabeth Short
I know every suspect has killed somebody but Elizabeth
The only person has not been touched by any one of these people.
George Hodel definitely killed his secretary.
I think he absolutely is a murderer.
I think he's a pedophile and a rapist.
But he's not the Black Dahlia murderer.
See when it comes to making George a good suspect, the connections more or less end
with all the surrealist stuff.
It's very interesting of course.
That's why we talked about it.
It's fascinating to see all of these parallels.
Also, you wonder if it's just because their goal
is to go back into the subconscious.
So they're creating these subconscious works of art,
oftentimes because of the material that they were reading,
too, all the Ferdinand analysis, all the other stuff.
All the Marquis de Sade.
It was all very sexual and dark.
So what they were doing was accessing their imagination to be totally pure. But let's just say maybe they
had preconceived ideas of the drawings that they want to make humanity. They're trying
to do what they're trying to do experiments, but you're pulling stuff out that just might
be really common. One female surrealist, I've got her name. She talked about the bisected woman imagery for as a celebration
of women. This was like what she was. She was the only painted vagina. Yes. But she said that it was
a way for essentially these nerdy sexless men to understand women. Like they actually viewed it as
a way for they put women on a pedestal in that world. That's kind of why they were torn apart all the times,
because they were kind of viewed as sort of like art pieces,
which is dehumanize, dehumanize a woman,
but it doesn't mean you're killing them.
Yeah, that doesn't.
As far as George Hodel goes,
Steve Hodel maintains that George's handwriting
is similar to the letters
that the so-called Black Dahlia Avengers sent,
but there's absolutely no evidence connecting Elizabeth Short to George Hodel in any way whatsoever.
There isn't any.
The handwriting analysis goes back and forth.
It really does.
Like I said, that's something that Steve claims and there's plenty of arguments to be made
against the handwriting analysis.
Did you try to read the chapter on the handwriting analysis in Black Dahlia Avenger?
No. Did you try to read the chapter on the handwriting analysis in Black Dali Avenger? Uh, no. It's like 40 pages talking about T's and P's and B's and H's and O's and N's.
How about Q's?
No!
Uncommon letter!
Uncommon letter!
Not in, I don't think they were in the Black Dali Avenger book.
But it's just this breakdown of like, as can see with the little team service surface of the of his second
Oh's within each one of his words with two Oh's you're like no I don't
It's a size goblin cock. I'm a fucking jump off a bridge
I'm gonna walk into the fires. What do they think about lowercase J's?
Because those are very important.
A lot of them really tell you how you feel
about certain religions.
How crooked your J's are.
Well, the thing is that two women who knew Hodel,
they were convinced that he knew Elizabeth.
But most of the people who knew and worked
with George Hodel said that he never met her. And Elizabeth Short never mentioned George Hodel they were convinced that he knew Elizabeth but most of the people who knew and worked with George Hodel said that
He never met her and Elizabeth Short never mentioned George Hodel nor did she mention a George Hodel type to anyone she knew and
The thing is that also the people who knew George Hodel said that there was no way he would have like
Just if he would have killed a woman
He would not have displayed her body out for all the world to see and then
Communicated with the press about it. he would have kept it a secret yeah like
George Hodel was a man of secrets yeah I in my mind it's the if you did that as a
George Hodel why in the ever-living fuck it would ever leave that killing floor
like I feel like it's one of those things where you would bring people to
the killing floor yeah your George Hodel was he always he did not like go he didn't leave his house. You know, I mean like the parties came to him things came to him
So the fact that he would then go out of his way to portray this does that it doesn't fit his character
Yeah, but she was hollowed out. They took the blood out of her, you know, maybe they were trying to make it
So it wasn't as stinky they could have you're correct
You know, they did they definitely was for transport now
But the thing that drives the story the furthest from George Hodel is the location of the body
Hodel had no reason to be in Leimert Park
It was a 30-minute drive from his home and there's no reason why George would dump Elizabeth Short's shoes and purse in a trash can
On Crenshaw Boulevard
Hodel also didn't drive a black Ford sedan like the one seen in the morning of the body's discovery, seen by two different people, and most importantly, he was recovering from a heart attack in January of 1947.
That heart attack had kept him in the hospital for a month,
which meant that he was far too weak to murder Elizabeth Short with such brutality,
never mind strong enough to move the body.
Basically, Hodel was investigated because he had bribed his way through his incest trial and it skated the charges
And he was probably a pretty well-known creepest. Yes. Yeah, and I think that George Hodel
He's one of those characters and I think people like him and Jeffrey Epstein that they do have their claws in deep to certain people
In the government and certain people out there like in
Administrative positions but others take one look at him and say I'm not going within ten fucking feet of that guy and I want to see that fucker in
A jail cell because they were correct because you look at somebody Jeffrey Epstein technically the I mean yes
He was a financial advisor
But the way he really made his money was by being a spy and then you also wonder with George Hodel if he did
Something along the same lines
Well two members of the DA's office were demoted because they lost George Hodel's incest
case.
So it's said that the DA put him on the suspect list for simple revenge.
Totally can see it.
That makes total sense to me.
Oh yeah, let's just make his life hard for a little while.
Fuck this piece of shit.
He thinks he's bigger than us?
He's not bigger than me.
We're the gangsters.
We're the LAPD.
He's not bigger than us.
This whole theory, so like leading from last episode into this episode. This is getting towards the end of the actual of the time
Investigation yeah, because as they were going there were this is one of the last real suspects that they hit too
So by the time they got to him
I think they were so angry at being questioned for so long that they were like
You're not bigger than us like we cover up other crimes, buddy.
Yeah.
We cover up.
We are.
Yes, we're the LAPD.
Yes, we run a racketeering organization.
Yes, we do human trafficking, but we're not pedophiles.
Like that was the line at the time.
Yeah, it was an embarrassment to them.
That's kind of the reason why they threw the book at OJ when they finally got him for the
trophy thing.
They had to because someone had to say something.. Yeah what they call the fifth quarter. Yeah. Yeah.
Now Steve Hodel still believes wholeheartedly that his father is the best suspect. Despite his best
efforts though, Steve says that the Black Dahlia case is still unsolved for several reasons. For
one, when Elizabeth Short was still alive, she obscured her life to everyone she knew, which makes
putting together a clear picture of her a near impossibility.
That is actually, that's absolutely true, but it's not proof of George Hodel's guilt.
No, it just shows how difficult it is to investigate a crime when the killer, like what we are
now in the world of in these theories is that the killer was not remotely connected to Elizabeth
Short, did not know Elizabeth Short, was not connected to anybody around Elizabeth Short.
This is somebody outside, this is an outside actor,
and it's extremely difficult to catch somebody
for a motiveless crime.
Yeah, especially if they just do it once.
Yeah, and they do it for sexual thrills.
Yeah, because that's the reason why most serial killers
get caught is that it's not necessarily
because the cops are so damn good at their job,
it's that when a serial killer kills another person, another person, another person, they
get sloppier the longer they go on and they eventually just make a mistake that's so egregious
that basically they fall into a cop's lap.
Yeah.
It just happens again and again.
Start getting cocky.
Yeah, damn.
Well, second, Steve says that reporters and detectives have bought into various myths
about the case, which have clouded their minds to the truth, which is what every single person who covers this
case says about every other person's theory that isn't their own.
Exactly.
That's why I am sick of the various myths and I'm sick of people having their minds
clouded because I know what happened.
We talked about it last episode.
Her waist just did that.
She did this to herself.
This is suicide.
All of this was simple cool.
Actually I did read, and I can't remember which book it was, but when they were at the
crime scene, one of the detectives did step over Elizabeth Short's body and say, God,
these suicides just break me up.
Jesus Christ.
People are made out of Legos?
But most importantly from Steve's perspective,
he claims that every detective who worked this case
has intentionally sanitized or destroyed information
connecting the killing to George Hodel
because of Hodel's powerful connections
and the possible compromise he may have obtained
on those connections during his mini orgies.
It's been like 80 years. Wouldn't, some of that heat died down on some of these.
It's all been burned away.
It's never coming back.
You know, I've never been to an orgy without a bunch of cops.
Well, somebody's gotta hold the line.
That is true.
Absolutely.
With all the ticker tape everywhere and you got all the cars driving through.
They got the cuffs.
I mean, all the orgies that I've been to have been pretty chill affairs. Yeah
I've watched a lot of orgies through glass and
What I've noticed from watching them I can see that yes humans do need to communicate don't they mm-hmm
Orgies are more awkward than anything yeah, but they're very awkward
I just know I come in three minutes and I can't imagine the hang
I can't imagine right soon as I've done blown and I'm just sitting there like well
And you gave us oh, we get food and that's the awkward part. Yeah. Oh, yeah
Well, I guess I'm
Let me let you let me let you go. Yeah I'm not sure if they were all great conversationalist
They wouldn't have to fuck each other
Then it would turn into an improv show
Well Steve also claims the destroying of dozens of unsolved Los Angeles kidnappings and murders suddenly stopped in
1958 when George Hodel
moved to the Philippines,
which is where he died some time after.
In fact, Steve lays dozens of murders at his father's feet,
making George Hodel one of the most prolific
serial murders of his day.
Well, this is the issue.
The issue is what he lays on George Hodel after the fact.
It'd be different.
I honestly think it would be different
if he just, he killed the black doll, yeah, and that was like it. Like if it was just that and he wrote
the one book, I'd actually be way more like willing to believe the theory. But then it's
like eight books later, now it's like he blew up the Hindenburg, he's the Zodiac Killer,
he's the fucking Zebra Killer, he shot Abraham Lincoln, like every single crime that was
around he just applied to his father.
How little was he around his own dad?
Very little.
That is true.
Yeah, very very little.
But in the end, as much as I admire Steve Hodel's enthusiasm, I agree with the many
people who say that there's just not enough evidence to make George Hodel the one who
killed, mutilated, and posed Elizabeth Short.
As far as the surrealism angle goes though, I'm not going to say that a surrealist artist
murdered Elizabeth Short for an art piece, but it is possible that surrealist art, however
unconsciously, may have influenced the killer as opposed to being a straight up inspiration.
Yeah, because we know it was mainstream.
Yeah, well, I mean, by the year Elizabeth Short was murdered, it wasn't necessarily mainstream in America,
like, but it was still pretty popular, you know?
They were using it in, like, commercials, it was in, like, magazines, it was very fashionable.
It's around.
It's mainstream, like, amongst artists, probably.
Oh, very much so.
But they were using it in commercials, like, Salvador Dali was on television.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, I mean, it had certainly stabbed its way into the collective unconscious of the country,
and it is possible that whoever killed Elizabeth
Short may have either seen some surrealist artwork or may have accidentally tapped into surrealist imagery during the murder and the posing of
The body because the similarities between the crime scene and the dozens of surreal art pieces is just too crazy to ignore
But there's also there is which we're gonna get into now. There is a
Practical stuff there is practical things that could have happened
Mate well as far as the bisecting of the body goes yes
But as far as the posing goes and the very specific way in which everything was left
Unless you flop a bag down with a body in it and you drag it out by the arms you leave it one side you grab
Out you have that bag you put it back in the car
You could the other half of the body come back out drag it out flop it there. You're running
You're not even thinking about it. You just dragged it and you've left it arms open like a
Wheelbarrow, maybe you were there like footprints around and stuff. No, they all got destroyed by the reporters of the police
There was one footprint. Yeah, there was one footprint, but it didn't match anything that they ever found
Well FBI serial killer criminologist John Douglas does not think that the Black Dahlia
killer is an art lover, nor does he think that our main suspect Leslie Dillon is the
culprit.
And this brings us to the next section of our episode, the profile.
We're going to nail this down!
We're getting them!
Now, I know some people have problems with John Douglas, but while he can be hit or miss,
you have to admit that he does sometimes nail it.
So his opinion on who might have killed Elizabeth Short
at least warrants a listen.
John Douglas is the guy that, like he wrote Mindhunter,
and the TV show was based on him and so on and so forth.
Well, I want to hear what he has to say.
Here's the thing, he created modern profiling.
And so anything that you could say, yes,
I don't think he's 100% on the money,
but if there's one person that knows and then is research the criminal mind for ten thousand hours
It is John Douglas
So in his profile of the black doll your killer John Douglas surmises that the man who murdered Elizabeth Short was white and in his late
20s possibly older but possessing no more than a high school education racist
but possessing no more than a high school education. Racist.
This man lived alone and worked with his hands instead of his brains,
possibly as a butcher, slaughterhouse worker, or some other profession where buckets of blood was the norm.
At the very least, this man might have been a hunter who knew how to field dress a deer.
The killer, Douglas continued, was compulsive, patient, rigid, and deliberate in everything he did.
And when he drank, he was likely to
become even more of a difficult person.
Because of this, the killer probably had a record for either threatening or assaulting
someone with a knife.
Lastly, the killer probably frequented sex workers and was under a lot of financial and
personal stress in the time leading up to the murder.
As far as how the murder went down, Douglas painted a picture in which the killer and Elizabeth
Short spent several days together, days that the killer would have spent drinking.
At one point, Elizabeth may have rejected his advances or mocked him for some physical
or mental disability, and when that conflict met the underlying stress and the alcohol,
the killer snapped and took out all his rage on Elizabeth.
As far as Cut her in half went,
that was just to make the transport of the body
a little easier.
Yes.
Which is where we land on almost everybody.
Pretty much.
For the most part, some people still,
like, cause this is where he's-
Except for the surrealists.
Yeah, if you're in the hotel camp,
then her body was cut in half deliberately
as a part of the art piece.
Yeah.
But for Douglas and those who subscribe to his profile,
the location
where Elizabeth's body was found is the single most important clue.
This is, I believe this. This is my big thing.
Douglas suggests that the killer, quote, wanted to put the fear of God into the neighborhood
in Leimert Park for personal reasons.
Part of the reason why I agree with this is the old timey pictures. If you go back and look at the black dolly of crime scene, one thing that's particularly very
interesting about the field is how literally how flat it is. They said that
from that street on a clear day during that time period 1947 you could see the
Hollywood sign. And so this thing was flat. This is flat flat flat. It's a canvas
It's a literal and the way it was placed was so obvious
It was so it it was obviously what we've been talking about forever
It was meant to be seen whoever did this wanted people to see it and it's who's gonna see it
Yes, the world but first Lomette Park
Mm-hmm as far as personal reasons go the killer may have been working a construction job in the area that was put on hold
Or he could have had an emotional connection that was severed
Like I say, he played sports in a field that was bulldozed for new housing developments
He'd be mad at the neighborhood. It's like basically this guy's who's mad at the neighborhood
Yeah, over mad at somebody in the neighborhood. Yeah the t-ball coach
mad at the neighborhood. Or mad at somebody in the neighborhood. Yeah, the T-ball coach. He did it.
Seems like they were mad at Elizabeth Short.
Yeah, also mad at Elizabeth Short, but mad at the neighborhood as well.
But no matter what it was, the killer almost certainly had a personal connection
to Leimert Park, or specifically that street or that block.
Additionally, Douglas thinks that the killer's behavior after the body was found would stand
out because he would have been anxious about leaving behind evidence or about someone seeing
him dump the body.
His neighbors may have noticed him cleaning his car or his home in a panic.
They may have seen him ravenously consuming every piece of media about the murder.
He would also have been heard ranting about how ineffective the police were in their investigation
and about how LeMurte Park used to be a safe neighborhood.
You see this time and time again, zero killers more often than not, they're cop groupies.
They like to go and they like to hang out. They go to where the crime happened again and again and again.
They go and they talk to police that are actively
investigating the crime because they're obsessed with their own crime and half of them fancy themselves a police officer.
Yeah, and they also like to hear the cops describe the crime back to them, and they're also trying to see how much information the cops have and if it's
possibly running towards them. Yes. But this guy's need to consume information may have inspired him
to create his own news stories, which is why he mailed Short's belongings to a newspaper instead
of the police, and why he communicated with them for a short time afterward. Because we still believe that the person who sent the Mark Hansen book and all of her personal
effects, if isn't the killer, knows the killer and has access to the killer.
Or just found the shit.
That's the other possibility, is that he may have just found it in a trash can and decided
to have fun.
You know, you just, you really have no fucking idea
No
And as far as why there were no more killings in the same style as the black doll you murder
Douglas thinks that the killer removed himself from society by either engaging in a concentrated campaign of self-destruction or by committing himself to a
Mental institution it's also possible
Douglas thinks that the killer just drifted away into the darkness after it became apparent that the police were never going to come close to linking him to
the murder of Elizabeth Short.
One of the people who thinks that there's very much something to John Douglas's profile
is a former Los Angeles Times reporter named Larry Harnish.
We're finally here to Larry Harnish.
I want to tell you, Larry, you got a good sense of humor already.
And listen, we're here. We're here. We're here. We'rearness. I want to tell you Larry, you got a good sense of humor already and listen, we're here.
We're here.
We're here, we're helping.
We're around, yeah.
And that brings us to the third section of this episode, the actual good suspect.
Now, author Larry Harness disputes almost every fact about the Black Dahlia case that's
been put forth and says that he has the proof to back up most of his debunks, if not all.
But he's waiting to release this information
until he finds a publisher for his Black Dahlia book, which is totally understandable.
So while I'm saving it for the book argument that might sound a little cagey,
I'll say that the theory Larry Harnish puts forth as far as who he thinks killed Elizabeth Short
is highly compelling. I for one would absolutely read his book once it gets to a publisher,
because it does seem like Larry
Might have the goods to blow the lid off this whole fucking thing
He's got two things that I like number one is I love his attitude right he's at he says that black doll you changed his
Life he doesn't like true crime. Hey, it's the rest of true crime, but he says that his job is to take he's trying to take the story
Right he's trying to flushes out fully number two. I kind of love a guy who hates the Johnnery's end though
Yeah, I kind of like that
I didn't expect to be a podcaster. Yeah
Yeah, and then number two is like he says so yes all this he has all this proof that we're waiting to hear on and but I
I do think that it's in there because what I know that what he does have access to files that are no longer available
Yeah, and he talks about them all the time and he also says the only
actual dependable information that you could tell about the black dolly is from the original
Newspaper cluppings, of course that makes a lot of sense and also it's not like the killers out there killing people, you know
It's like the information isn't hurting the world if he keeps it secret for now for his own good
So no good on you Larry
We just want to find out what the exact details of how he debunks everything
Publish the book now as far as how harnessed got into the black dolly a scene
He was a copy editor for the Los Angeles Times who got an assignment to write a 50th anniversary story
About the black dolly a murder in 1997 and he soon became obsessed like so many others before and after I literally don't know what I'm gonna do
after the series
Consuming nothing but black dolly information for about a month. It's got you to stop talking about drones, which is wild
It's it's the only other thing I can talk about. Yeah
Well so far Larry harnessed has interviewed a hundred and fifty people including people who knew Elizabeth Short personally and members of the Short family. He got everybody
Yeah, as such Harnish obviously feels quite close to the story and wants to reclaim Elizabeth Short from what he calls the Dahlia Freaks
That's me! I'm a Dahlia Frick! You better come and punish me Larry!
Oh you got a problem Larry? Why don't you come down and give ol' Henry a spankin'
Because I need some discipline. I'm just and give ol' Henry a spankin' because I need some
discipline I'm just a dirty ol' stinky Dahlia freak.
Side stories LPOPO, I wanna reach out Larry.
Well he also I remember, you know why I liked him, one of the first things I liked him was
I watched one of his October AMAs and the first thing he said he's like, I don't wanna
see a single black Dahlia costume on Instagram.
He was like I don't wanna to see one it gets me angry
Yeah, that's intense. Yeah. Oh, yeah
Now when harnessed started looking into the story
He was focused on Lamar Park because he like John Douglas believed that the location of the body was the most important clue
But after looking into the history of the neighborhood from every possible angle
The most interesting thing about it was that a famous mobster lived just a few hundred
feet from where Elizabeth Short's body was found.
But that was more or less common knowledge by that point.
But in August of 1997, a filmmaker sent Harnish a box of materials related to the case, and
amongst the paperwork was a wedding certificate for Elizabeth Short's older sister.
When the witness listed for the wedding,
her address was 2959 South Norton Avenue,
which was exactly one block
from where Elizabeth Short's body was found.
And he said, which I do agree,
he was like, this seems to be a key,
like this is a big key to this case
that we have not seen yet,
which is what puts Elizabeth Short anywhere
near Lamount Park?
Like what puts her there directly?
And having her older sister be connected to somebody that lives in the very block where
she was put is so suspicious, I don't know what to say.
I mean, it's fucking, it's huge and it's completely verifiable.
Like this is something there, there's no rumor here. There's no he said she said this is paperwork
There's a paper trail. Yeah, and the witness of a wedding is obviously someone who's incredibly close to the family
Well, they said it was technically they said it was whoever they could get but it was a neighbor
It was somebody that they knew so it was someone from it was actually they went to their church
They were church together from Presbyterian people. Yeah
Well as it turned out, this witness was the
daughter of a prominent Los Angeles surgeon named Walter Bailey, a surgeon who was well capable
of bisecting a body. Yeah, yeah, because they own the house that the witness lived in. So first thing,
he's like, all right, who lives at this house? So he found it, he belonged to Walter Bailey,
and he was a surgeon. Now, that alone doesn't make Walter Bailey a suspect, but when Harnish began looking
more into Bailey's story, he found a heretofore undiscovered web of scandal and controversy,
which all pointed towards Bailey being the guilty party here.
See, Bailey was a respected Los Angeles surgeon in the 1930s up until the early 40s, and he
had a private practice
just five blocks from the Biltmore Hotel.
Like I said, the little pieces just kind of fill in bit by bit by bit.
If you'll remember, the Biltmore was the last place that Elizabeth was seen alive.
By 1946, Walter Bailey had fallen on relatively hard times, having lost much of his status
as a surgeon because he was suffering from early onset Alzheimer's disease and his
personality was changing as a result.
I'll kill!
I mean, I'll have breakfast!
Are you my son?
No good!
Bailey was therefore under a lot of emotional and financial pressure.
That ticks off a big box on John Douglas' profile.
Even more stressful though was Bailey's personal life.
During the time of the Black Dolly murder, Bailey was in the process of separating from
his wife because he'd been having an affair with a fellow doctor.
This doctor had immigrated from Austria during World War two and had become a partner in Bailey's medical practice
Now multiple people said that Walter Bailey had become a totally different person in the last years of his life
He actually died not too long after Elizabeth Short was killed like a little under a year, right?
Yes. Yeah, and his death certificate listed a condition called encephalomalacia
Which might explain quite a bit here this condition encephalomalacia, which might explain quite a bit here.
This condition, encephalomalacia, effectively shrinks the brain and causes mental impairments
that can lead to atypical violence.
Dude, that's what the wife was saying, that he had changed into somebody else.
When she was dealing with him, all of a sudden he slipped into this early onset dementia and
it made him extremely mean and then have you seen the pictures of?
Alexandra partika no Dr. Partica his not deal. Let's not get too many names in here. I love I love her
Yeah, okay. Oh did the Austrian doctor? Yeah, yeah
She was fleeing the Nazis. Oh, yeah, Yeah, she looked evil. She had an evil face.
Continue.
Well, Harnasch also spoke to a professor of neurobiology who said that Bailey may have
suffered a series of dementia-related mini-strokes that could have resulted in lower impulse control
when it came to violent and or sexual urges, but would not have greatly affected his ability
to be an effective surgeon.
But most interesting is what went down with Walter Bailey's lover.
See Bailey changed his will in December of 1947, almost a year after Elizabeth Short
was murdered and just before he himself expired.
Well, you had to take her out of the will because she was dead.
That's the thing.
In the change, Bailey disinherited his wife and his adopted children, leaving half of his estate
to his siblings and the other half to his Austrian lover.
Yes.
Who may or may not have been controlling
Walter when his mental faculties faltered.
That's their saying that maybe he pulls Elizabeth
short in there.
They're playing these weird games
with his new hot Austrian evil wife, girlfriend, whatever.
That is how you do a C-section. This is how, yeah, you want to see what happens? games with his new hot Austrian evil wife right girlfriend whenever
Do a c-section. This is how yeah, you want to see what happens. Well, it's not what Larry Harnish says. Come on now. Let's get all in
There's an entire there's a talk about every every direction there's a whole other dr. Alexandra partica
Fucking yeah to go down
But Walter hadn't yet divorced his wife when he made this change to his will. So his wife started a lawsuit for her share of Walter's estate, claiming that Walter's
lover was blackmailing him with a secret that would destroy his life.
A secret that would be exposed if he ever went back to his family.
These are court filings. And this court case was covered in the newspaper.
Like it was a fairly big deal.
It was a minor story actually in Los Angeles at the time,
but multiple newspaper stories about this lawsuit.
Yeah, and the Austrians love secrets.
They do.
They do.
We know that, we've proved that for a fact.
Very much so.
A little cubby holes.
Yeah.
Well, but this whole secret keeping mechanism was why Walter cut her and the kids out of his
will.
Now, you can go to Larry Harness's website, LMHarnish, that's H-A-R-N-I-S-C-H dot com,
put in the code GROMPY for 20% off, to read his theory as to how the murder might have
gone down and why Elizabeth Short may
have called Walter Bailey from the Biltmore Hotel on January 9th, 1947.
In fact, you could rent a room at his place, you could stay there and he'll just talk at
you all night.
All night.
It's called layer B and B.
Have you been?
The key though is don't even bring up George Hodel because you will be on the street.
But the most important thing linking Bailey to Elizabeth Short is the body's location.
I just can't.
How do you put it?
It's the only evidence.
It's the only actual evidence that actually points towards an actual suspect.
In terms of that we know
something about what puts her in that field. So there's one there's one investigative direction. Yes. That is the only one we found. Well going off Douglas's theory that the killer had an emotional connection to the neighborhood,
Walter Bailey's wife was living at the house in Leimert Park at the time and it's assumed that Bailey left the body just a block from his wife so
he could frighten her and put the fear of God into the neighborhood, as John Douglas
put it.
And that would fit the profile.
Yeah.
Now, Larry does hold back on quite a few details that I would love to hear explained further.
Oh yeah, truly.
And I truly do believe that he has the goods to back up his claims.
You know why I do believe the goods that he has?
Because of how much I've listened to him.
And I've listened to him for hours and hours and hours and hours and his AMAs, people are
just asking random ass questions and he's got an answer.
He says, I know.
I like when he says, I don't know.
Cause he doesn't know.
I see him saying, I don't know.
He's not just making up answers.
And he's also like, he has an answer for everything.
He says it's all in the book.
And it's like, I just want to read the goddamn book yeah I
mean what a scare your ex-wife though you don't kill another woman that is the
true no it's but it is the recipe yeah I don't like that's the thing is that
like it is a connection it's just the motivation is a little like I don't know
like it's a little wonky yeah like the motivation is a little like I don't know like it's a little wonky. Yeah, like the motivation
window
That's honestly Eddie great advice
Great advice don't kill a woman and leave it in her neighborhood. Just break her windows to scare her a little bit
This is the problem right is that there is this is the problem, right? Is that there is, this is the best one.
And it's still not particularly great.
I'm still on Leslie Dillon and Mark Hansen.
Sure.
And so am I.
I mean, that's the, I really,
I wanna hear Larry Harness's explanation
as to why, like, Walter Bailey would send all the shit
to the newspaper, even if he was
in a debilitated mental state,
it doesn't make a lot of sense.
It could have been another person threatening him.
Or it could, yes, it could be.
Yes, it could also be he's-
But who is the soft-voiced man?
Like, you know, who called, like,
before sending the shit?
There were so many people claiming shit,
you know, left and right.
But the soft-voiced man called and said
that he was gonna send shit before he sent the shit.
So that-
Well, it could still, unless,
what we were saying before,
that he just knew who did it, versus did it. Or he may have just found the shit. So that's still unless what we were saying before that he just knew who did it
versus did it. Or he may have just found the shit and decided to play his own game. That's also
possible. Larry Harnish, which I do sort of agree with. I do think a lot of this has to do with that
he was a high profile case and a lot of people are trying to get in on it. So there was like
people were playing games. He thinks that the black dolly Avenger was a prankster, which I think
that goes, I think that might go too far. I don't know. It's a hell of a prank! It is! It's the truth!
See Ashton Kutcher pulling this shit off. The only prank that Ashton Kutcher could pull off was
convincing us all that he's a normal human being. But as far as why Harnish
couldn't get his book published he thinks that it's because Steve Odell
blew up the Dolly investigation with his book, Black Dolly Avenger.
Not surprisingly, Harnish does not think much of Hodel and his theories, but the two of them do agree that Leslie Dillon was not the man who killed Elizabeth Short.
Larry, I'm not trying to be angry with you, it's the fact that the story, the George Hodel story, is great for TV.
It's great for TV, it's great for movies, it's the funnest storyline, it's the one with the most fun characters,
it's got the most L.A. history
that everybody likes to hear about.
There was an entire television show
that was made about the entire fabrication
of the George Hodel story that even blew that further,
even exaggerated it further.
So that's why they like the George Hodel story, Larry.
I think you're more correct,
but the other one's more fun.
Well, concerning the Leslie Dillon story,
Harnesh says that author Pugh Eatwell cherry-picked information
to make Dillon look like the only possible killer.
Harnesh believes that Dillon was absolutely in San Francisco at the time of the murder,
and he said if Eatwell had talked to him for five minutes, he would have told her so.
No, Larry, we're answering your calls.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're here.
We're talking with you about it man.
All right it's not like these other people won't. Tarnish actually doesn't like any of
the Black Dahlia books out there and he has something to say about every single one.
Severed by John Gilmore, 25% mistakes and 50% fiction. Boom done got you. Black D Dolly Avenger, fabricated crap. Roasted!
Black Dolly-a-files, painfully stupid.
Common form!
Larry, can I just ask honestly, you didn't do this, right?
As a toddler?
Did you do this as a toddler?
Yeah, and personally, I still think Leslie Dillon's a pretty good suspect despite the problems and I I guess maybe I should say that like Mark
Hanson is still a really good suspect as far as being involved goes
But you know, I'd love to be proved wrong if there's a more likely story out there if I could hear all this fucking debunk
Evidence that Larry Harnish has I want it
But I wonder like the main explanation would be if it is somebody if it is Walter Bailey
Even just in the line of Walter Bailey
Right somebody that he has all the kids. He could have been in the neighborhood all he had to do was
Take the black Dahlia like see Elizabeth so short on the street
Let's say he is now a dot top of his fugue. He picks her up for the quote-unquote missing week
She is dead in a in this man's house, like for that week,
and then eventually is put outside.
Like she's either refrigerated
or there's something else that happens within it.
But can't they tell if someone's been dead for a while?
I don't know if they could in 1947.
I think they would have been able to tell.
Like if she was frozen, it'd be different,
but if it was a, she must have been somewhat.
Her skin would start curling up or some shit
Yeah, if the dead body if the body was dead for that long like a haze neck
No more bacons in your black Dahlia
No, I know her body definitely would if it would have been if they the most likely thing is
Quite possibly like if we're talking about Walter Bailey here that you know she was going through her address book
She just was there for hours trying to call anybody and then just Walter Bailey was like a name
Maybe she had the address of his office written down which was five blocks from where she was sitting at that moment
So she may have called him up and say like hey think he can help me out
Oh, thank you think maybe can help me out? Oh, sure.
Thank you. Think maybe you can do something for me. And then, you know, they start hanging
out. They hang out somewhere for days. Because that's the thing is that or does he need all
of this unless he just sees her says, I'll give you a ride. That's all you got to do.
She's now in his car. Like if she's just five blocks from him, I was saying a motive list.
What we're talking about is a motive-less murder.
And that is the hardest part.
That is what we're looking for in all of this chaos is the why's.
Everyone wants to know why.
We don't even know how.
We don't know where.
Yeah, and there's the connection between Bailey and Elizabeth Short is that Bailey went to
her sister's church So like, you know, he's a well-respected surgeon
So it's you know quite possible that Elizabeth short did know or really knew or had or friends of friends of friends knew
Or at the very least had his address, you know, maybe his net maybe is I don't know
Maybe his number but Larry Hardin
She's also the one that showed that it's the hardest people to get the information from other people that actually knew what was happening
Yeah Showed that it's the hardest people to get the information from are the people that actually knew what was happening Yeah Is that the people that would have answered these a lot of these questions didn't want to the family were very closely guarded
And he said you just noticed that anybody whose life was actually affected by this crime doesn't want to have anything to do with it
But everybody and their mother can't wait to jump in on this story because of just how juicy it is
Now in the end the thing that makes all this so difficult to piece together is
the mystery of Elizabeth Short herself. She lied about her life to just about
everyone she spoke to, telling people that she was an actress or a waitress or
a war widow or a grieving mother or the grieving mother of a dead child, none of
which was true. But because we know so little about the facts of Elizabeth
herself, it's difficult to put together a narrative, and it's especially frustrating by the fact that living memory
in this case is just out of the reach of present day.
The youngest people involved in this now I think are in their 80s or 90s, and that's
like the paperboy.
Oh man, I don't want you to just hope that they are really doing well with the congressional
hearings coming up and it's so important for 80 year olds to have something to do. Well that's why the Black Dahlia murder
drives people crazy. Why every person who has a pet theory thinks that everyone
else is an idiot. Everybody else is an idiot! Fucking Tom Tom. People are stupid. I know what's up.
And why no one can seem to agree on even some of the most basic facts of the case.
But if there's a single thing that everyone can agree on it's that the history of the black Dahlia herself
will forever remain the most elusive mystery of all and that lost history really is the only thing that could ever put together all the
pieces that would give us a clear picture of just who killed Elizabeth Short.
Sir saying the person that most obfuscated the person who killed Elizabeth Short
Was her her himself. Yes. Well, well the person who obfuscated the story the most she did was was herself
God help us
Because just we can never put together because all of the stories that she told to everybody else
Like you just can't you have this entire group like you just have it's trying to solve a murder based on a novel,
about like a novelization of someone's life.
You know, like it doesn't, you can't really,
you don't know what's true, what's not.
You can't really follow any sort of investigative lines
and you can't really make it anywhere
because Elizabeth herself was not truthful to,
even her mother, even, well, yeah, of course,
even her mother.
How many of us, are you truthful to your mother Henry?
I tell her how many times I masturbate every week
Sisters or friends you know like everybody she told a different story to everybody she knew and I'm hearing you made it a complete mystery
I'm hearing you Marcus. We're doing a fifth episode
No, I'm hearing you buddy. I'm done. I'm hearing it. No. Yeah, we're about to head into some
Rough waters. Yeah for this next series. I'm very excited. Um, we are
Extremely sorry. Yeah, we are not in Atlanta. Yeah, we are currently
We are working because we are broken, but we're here in Los Angeles in the center of three different fires
We're not going anywhere.
I think it's five.
We're a couple of them small.
We got little baby ones.
We got some big ones.
We got some baby ones.
They got the sunset one under control.
I think it's back to three.
Ah, good.
I just want to say thank you guys for people reaching out, asking us if we're okay.
Everybody is so sweet.
They really are.
Here's your episode.
You got your episode.
So know we're alive.
And we're going to continue forward. and I think that this should just show that
Kovac didn't stop us. Nope. Nothing stopped. We're fucking this train goes this train goes all of the trains
Don't go this train goes one way or another we figure it out this train and that's what we're gonna keep doing
We're gonna chug a chug a chug a chug all the way through every single piece of tragedy that 2025 is gonna give us.
This is our version of a fireside chat.
Yeah.
I am physically warm from the flames.
Yes.
Go to patreon.com slash last podcast on the left
to see us be physically warm.
We have video episodes available.
You can watch side stories on YouTube.
You can also follow us on TikTok and Instagram at LP on the left
Don't forget to check out our twitch streams at LPN TV
They're canceled for the week, but they're back on there. They're on there there. You get them on there
Yeah, twitch.tv slash LPN TV and see all the VOD stuff on
YouTube and don't forget to come out see us on tour
I mean, I know we can't make Atlanta, but we're goddamn gonna make it to Texas
Oh, yeah for our show in Dallas. Well that in Atlanta is postponed. We will be redoing the show
Oh, yeah, hold on to your tickets. Yes, we're coming right back. Don't worry about it. It's definitely gonna happen
We just not leaving our fucking wives behind. Yeah
Coming back as soon as we can and yeah, don't forget about shows in Toronto Detroit
and
Nashville coming up in the next few months and this shit's gonna be good. I'm so exhausted. I'm about to die
Can I go home now? You are?
Released wonderful job Marcus
Hail sweet Satan no hell hugging. Hail Larry fucking harness
I want to see your dick. Come on, buddy. We're serious broadcasters. We have a New York Times bestseller
We have a New York Times bestseller.
Unfortunately, that is true. How about that Larry? Does that hurt? I know it does.
I'm sure it hurts quite a bit.
I'll fix it though.
I'm sure it really...
We're gonna fix it, Larry.
We will plug your book.
I promise you.
We're trying. That's what we're here to do.
We're really trying to make this book deal happen.
We want you to get a publisher.
Just Larry's for us. Just don't turn like Zionist.
Just don't do bad shit in the next six months. Just stay under the radar and get that book out. to get a publisher.
Which is what this podcast is about to become....