Every disappearance has a final moment of certainty, a last sighting, a last call, a last place someone was known to be. The last known tells real true crime cases using only the facts. They are not long the days of wine and roses. Out of a misty dream, our path emerges for a while, then closes within a dream. Wow. That's that's incredibly heavy. Yeah, and beautiful in a really dark way. It is, isn't it. That's a stanza from a poem by a guy named Ernest Dowson. And I didn't just pull that out of, you know, some dusty old book to be dramatic or set a mood. No, there's a reason for it. There's a very specific reason. That piece of poetry has a tangible physical connection to the case we're looking at today. It was found hauntingly close to the source material, close to the tragedy itself, and it just it perfectly frames the absolute heartbreak of a life cut short, a life that has been I mean, let's be honest, mythologized, exploited, and frankly completely misunderstood for nearly eighty years. We are talking, of course, about Elizabeth Short. The woman in the world knows as the black Dahlia. It's you know, it's the ultimate American gold case. Yeah, or at least that's how we think of it. It's a cold case exactly. The date is January fifteenth, nineteen forty seven. Her body is found in a vacant lot in Limert Park, Los Angeles. And the state of the body, I mean. It's the stuff of absolute nightmares, bisected, posed, drained of blood. It's the image that launched a thousand noir films, right, And. That's the thing. Usually when you hear a podcast or watch a documentary on this, what do you get? You get the gore, you get the you know, the noir atmosphere, the trench coats, the shadows. You get the fem fatale image, this mysterious woman in black, you know, prowling the dark streets of Hollywood. You get the caricature. Yes, you get the black Dahlia, not Elizabeth Short. Yeah, you get a symbol, not a human being, exactly. And our mission today in this deep dive is to pivot hard, and I mean hard, away from that sensationalism. We are going to dig into a stack of sources that quite honestly blew my mind. We are not looking at the tabloid headlines from nineteen forty seven that we're just trying to sell papers. No, we are looking at the original police files, which is a huge distinction, a massive distinction. We're looking at distric attorney documents from nineteen forty nine and nineteen fifty. These are files that were buried for decades. We're also looking at the extensive, relentless investigation by Steve Hodo. And for those who don't know, he was a former LAPD homicide detective, so he knows this world inside out right. And he didn't just write a book and move on. He spent decades dismantling the accepted narrative of this case, piece by piece, using his skills as a detective. And this is the part that I'm not kidding. It kept me up last night reading the prep material. We are going to examine what I can only describe as the smoking gun. Yeah, we have transcripts, actual verbatim transcripts, not summaries, not recollections. Yeah, the real words. From electronic surveillance bugs that were planted in the home of the prime suspect. We are going to read the words of the police officers who are sitting in a room listening to a murder suspect in real time. This is the stuff that usually gets redacted or lost or conveniently destroyed. But thanks to some very careful archiving by one specific investigator who just refused to let it go, we have it. So if you think you know the Black Dahlia case, I promise you you don't know this part of it. We're going to debunk the biggest myths. We're going to humanize the victim, and we're going to walk you through the audio tapes that, in my opinion, solve the case. And it's not just a murder mystery. It's really a journey into the dark heart of nineteen fifties Los Angeles corruption. It explains why the case stayed cold. It wasn't that they didn't know, it's that they couldn't prosecute. Okay, let's unpack this. And we absolutely have to start with the victim herself, Elizabeth Short, because before she was a headline, before she was a corpse and a vacant lot, she was a person. And the sources we have do a really really good job of stripping away that bar fly image. That is the most important correction we need to make right at the top. The media at the time and history since then has painted her as this vamp. Right. The narrative was that she was a woman of the night, someone who prowled the bars of Hollywood, maybe a prostitute, maybe just in a loose Yeah, it was textbook victim blaming one oh one, the old. Virgin tramp narrative, or the drifter who got what was coming to her. It's disgusting, it is. But the files we have, the actual witness statements from people who knew her, they paint a picture of a much more tragic and shy figure. Let's go back a bit into her history because this is so important for context. In high school, she was known as Medford's Deanna Durbin. Now for our listeners who might not be experts on nineteen forty cinema, and I'll admit I had to look this up to get the full picture. Who was Deanna Durby. Oh, Deanna Durbin was massive. She was I think the highest paid female star in the world in nineteen forty seven. She was a singer, an actress, quintessential American. Sweetheart, So like a Judy Garland type. Think of a mix between Judy Garland and a young Elizabeth Taylor. She was that big, She was wholesome, she was beautiful, She had this incredible voice. She was Hollywood royalty. So Elizabeth Short was compared to the biggest star in the world. Was it because she had this golden singing voice. Was she a performer? No? And the source is pretty clear on that she wasn't really a performer in that way. The comparison was purely physical. Just her look, just her looks. She had that look, the jet black hair, the fair skin, the blue eyes. She carried herself with a certain cinematic quality. Even back in Medford, Massachusetts, she just had an aura about her. And that beauty, that aura, it was recognized wherever she went. The sources mentioned that when she moved to California, she was voted the Camp Cook QT in nineteen forty. Three, right, And this was when she was working at the Post exchange the PX at Camp Cook. And just for clarity for everyone, the PX is essentially the retail store on a military. Base, right, correct. It's where soldiers go to buy snacks, magazines, toiletries, that sort of thing. So she was working the counter there, interacting with all these gis so kimp cook. Cutie was a morale booster title exactly. It sounds a little trivial now, maybe a bit sexist by our standards, but at the time it meant she was popular. She was seen as a bright spot for the soldiers who were stationed there before they shipped out to war. She was a friendly face. But here is the contrast that really struck me. Reading the files. We have this cutie title, which implies a kind of pin up girl vibe. But the manager of the PX, a woman named Enna's Keeling, described her completely differently. Yes, Keeling's quote is vital to understanding the real Elizabeth. She described her as, and I'm quoting here, one of the loveliest and most shy girls, won over at once by her innocence. Innocence. Innocence. That is a word you never ever hear in the noir retellings of the Black Dahlia. Never. It doesn't fit the narrative. The myth requires her to be corrupted to justify the crime. The reality from people who actually knew her and worked with her was that she was shy, she was polite, and she was so she was struggling. The struggle is the other big piece of the puzzle here. She had this reputation for beauty, absolutely, but also for extreme poverty. Friends noticed she was often broke, often hungry. She wasn't living the high life in Hollywood. She was CouchSurfing and trying to get by. And there was one specific detail from her roommate that just it really stuck with me. It highlights how much she was struggling to keep up appearances and honestly, it's just heartbreaking. Is this the candle wax? The candle wax? Yeah. A roommate noted that Elizabeth would take actual candlewax, melt it down and use it to fill the cavities in her teeth to hide. The dark spot so people wouldn't see them when she smiled. Yes, she couldn't afford a dentist. She had severe, painful dental issues, but she was so concerned with her appearance, with maintaining that Deanna Durban dignity, that vanity, that she used hot wax to plug her own teeth before going out. That is such a visceral detail. My teeth hurt just thinking about it. But it also pinks such a clear picture of her desperation. It tells you everything you need to know about her desperation and her pride all at once. She was trying to keep up appearances in a city, Los Angeles, that runs entirely on appearances, while she was literally starving and in physical pain. And speaking of appearances, let's talk about the name itself, the Black. Dahlia, the name that launched a thousand headlines. The common myth is that some cynical reporter came up with it to sell papers after she died. You know that it was a press invention, something catchy for the bold print. Which is the standard narrative you'll read in almost every book on the case. But the source material, the original files, they correct this. The name actually came from a drug store. Arnold Lander's drug Store in Long Beach, right. This was in mid nineteen forty, six months before she was killed. Elizabeth frequented the place, and you have the picture of the scene. It's a nineteen forties drug store, you know, soda fountain, fluorescent lights, the whole. Thing, and in walks. Elizabeth short exactly, and she would come in wearing these black, often lacy clothes, with her jet black hair piled high on her head. She just she stood out. She struck a distinct silhouette. She was creating a character for herself. She was and the customers, the regular folks sitting at the counter drinking milkshakes. They started calling her the Black Dahlia. It was a riff on the movie The Blue Dahlia, right, which was out at the time, exactly. He starred Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. It's a huge movie, so it was a pop culture reference. It was the meme of nineteen forty. Six, and how did the press get it? So this is where it gets really interesting. Regarding the investigation. A detective Edward C. Boynton, a Long Beach cop, he knew this nickname while she was alive. He knew her personally, he knew of her. She was a local figure. After the murder, when all the reporters were scrambling for a hook and asking cops for any little detail, Boyton mentioned it probably just casually. Oh yeah, down at the drug store people called her the Black Dahlia. And the source says the reporters headed for the phones like a covey of quail. And a legend was branded right there. Yeah, but it's so important to Remember the name wasn't an insult. Initially it was a recognition of her unique style. But once she died, it completely stripped her of her humanity. She stopped being Elizabeth Short from Massachusetts, and she became in war trope. So we have this young, struggling, beautiful, shy woman. She's in la She's trying to make it, but she's barely hanging on, and then she disappears. This brings us to what I think is the biggest myth of the entire case, the Missing Week. This is the cornerstone of the mystery for most amateur sleuths and even for a lot of historians. The narrative goes Elizabeth Short was dropped off at the Biltmore Hotel on January ninth, nineteen forty seven, and she vanished from the face of the earth until her body was found on January. Fifteenth, a seven day voord. And the theory that usually comes with that is that she was kidnapped, immediately, held captive, and tortured for a week straight. It implies a dungeon somewhere. It implies she was tied up, hidden from the world for days on end. It turns the killer into this kind of long term sadistic captor. But Steve Hodell's investigation based on the original police files, not the newspaper. It's the file style completely demolishes this. Oh completely. We are looking at a timeline here that documents twelve individual witness sightings during this so called missing week. Twelve sightings. That's not a missing person, that's a person who is out and about exactly. And these aren't just you know, random people claiming they saw Elvis at a gas station. Yeah, these aren't reliability zero sightings. These aren't crack pods. No. Six of these twelve witnesses personally knew her. They knew Elizabeth Short by name and by face. They weren't mistaking her for someone else. Okay, let's track the timeline the sources provide, because this changes the entire nature of the crime. So January nine, she is at. The biltmore right. A hotel employee, a mister Studholme, sees her there until about ten pm. She leaves. The notes say she possibly left with an unknown person or was maybe signaled by someone from the lobby doors. Okay, that's the part we know. But the story usually ends there. For a week, but it doesn't between January nine and January fourteenth, there are eleven more sightings. She is seen in Hollywood, she is seen in downtown LA. She has seen at bars, at cafes, she is moving around the city. This changes the whole profile of the crime. If she's being seen in public, she's not being held in a dungeon precisely. She is likely with someone she knows or someone she trusts, or maybe she's just drifting between places trying to figure out her next move. But she is not bound and gagged somewhere. She is to some extent free. But the most crucial sighting, the one that really just makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, is the very last one January fourteenth. This is the sighting by Meryl McBride and MARYL. McBride. Wasn't just some random pedestrian. Who was she? She was an LAPD policewoman. Okay, So that gives this citing immense credibility. Absolutely. McBride is trained to a She's not going to mistake a random woman for someone she is observing. She knows what she's looking at, and. She sees Elizabeth exiting a bar in downtown LA. But she's not alone. Who is she with? She is with two males and a female, a group of three other. People, so it's a social setting it. Appears to be, and McBride actually stops her. She either recognizes her or just senses something is off. The report isn't clear, but maybe Elizabeth looked distressed or disheveled. She approaches her and asks are you okay? And Elizabeth Short looks at this police officer and says what she. Says, Yes, I'm going to meet my father at the Greyhound bus depot. I'm going to meet my father. Now, knowing what we know about her relationship with her dad, that's a huge red flag. It's almost certainly a lie. Her father, Cleo Short, had kicked her out years prior. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with her, so this is a cover story. She was deflecting the police officer. She was telling her, don't worry about me, everything's fine, move along. She didn't want the cop to intervene, trying to handle it herself. Right, And think about the timing here. This sighting is on January fourteenth. And the body is found on the fifteenth. This sighting is just ten hours before the coroner's estimated time of death ten hours. She wasn't missing for a week. She was alive in public in the company of these people, two men and a woman, less than half a day before she was killed. It suggests she walked into her death. It wasn't a violent snatch and grab from the street a week prior. It was very likely a social interaction that turned horrific. Yeah, it creates a picture of entrapment. She thought she was safe, She thought she was with friends or at least acquaintances she trusted, and she waved off the one person, Officer McBride, who could have saved her life. That is the ultimate sliding doors moment of this entire case. If she had just said to McBride, no, I'm not okay, I need help, history is completely. Different, absolutely a different world. So if she wasn't kidnapped on the ninth, who is she with? Who are these two two men and a woman. This brings us to the investigation and the characters surrounding her. We have to talk about the White Knight, Robert Redmanley. Core red Manly. He really does play the role of the innocent bystander who gets dragged into history just because he was trying to be a nice guy. He was the man who drove her from San Diego up to Los Angeles on that fateful trip to the Biltmore. He's the one who dropped her off, so he was. The first suspect. Naturally the last person, seeing rule always applies. He dropped her off, so he must have done it. The police focus on him immediately. But he was cleared really quickly, right, very quickly. He passed a polygraph test, which the LAPED relied on very heavily back then, and critically he had a rock solid alibi. Where was he He. Was back in San Francisco with his wife when the murder occurred. He was hundreds of miles away. Couldn't have done it. Okay, so he's cleared. But there is this fascinating detail in the source material regarding a nineteen fifty reinterview of Red Manly. This is years after the murder. The District Attorney's office is taking an another hard look at the case. This is where you have to put on your detective hat. I mean, you really have to look at what the police didn't ask as much as what they did ask. It's all about negative evidence. Okay, lay it out for us, this felt like a real Sherlock Holmes moment when I was reading it. So a guy named Lt. Frank Jemison, he's the lead DA investigator, very sharp guy. He sits down with Maley in nineteen fifty. He starts rattling off this long list of names. He asks, did Elizabeth ever mention doctor Morris? Did she ever mention a doctor Scott, a doctor Brooks? So just a long list of doctors. A long list of doctors. He's clearly trying to find a connection to a medical professional, because remember the body was bisected with surgical precision. They knew the killer had medical training. Exactly, They knew the killer had medical skill. But there is one name that is conspicuously absent from that list. Jemison explicitly does not ask if she mentioned doctor Hotel. Why. I mean, if Hoteal was a suspect, wouldn't that be the first name you'd ask, Hey, does she know George Hodel? It's the opposite. The analysis suggests that by nineteen fifty, doctor George hill Hotel was already their prime. Suspect, their only suspect. Really, Jemison didn't ask manly about Hodel because he didn't want to tip his hand. He didn't want to reveal who they were really targeting. So they were treating Hodel completely differently than the other three hundred plus suspects they had looked at. Precisely, if you ask a witness about a random doctor, it's just general information gathering. If you ask about your main target, you risk the witness talking to the press, or worse, talking to the suspect or an associate. They were circling the shark, and they didn't want to splash the water. Wow, that is fascinating. It shows they were building a specific case against Hodel long long before the public ever knew his name was connected to this. It confirms he wasn't just one of many by nineteen fifty, he was the one. Before we get to the shark himself, doctor Hodell. Let's quickly touch on the other characters Manly might have known about or who were in the police file. There's a guy named. Ark Hanson the theater in Pisario. He was a somewhat shady figure in the Hollywood nightlife scene. Elizabeth stayed at his house for a while. What was their relationship? The sources say he was possessive, He wanted her to stop seeing other men, but for her, he was a means to an end. She needed a roof over her head. He wanted a beautiful young girlfriend on his arm. It was a very transactional Hollywood relationship. And then there's her father, Cleo Short. We mentioned him earlier, such a tragic relationship. She came all the way out west to live with him in nineteen forty two. He basically kicked her out for being lazy and not cooking for him. For a teenager who just moved across the country to. Be with him, it was incredibly harsh. And then when she died, Yeah, his reaction was just it was as cold as ice. He refused to identify the body. He refused to come in the funeral. He told the press, quote, I want nothing to do with this. That is just. It really emphasizes how utterly alone she was. She had these men in her life, Manly the Good Samaritan, Hanson, the User, her father, the Apple and Tea, but no one who is truly looking out for her. Except perhaps in a very twisted way, the man she was trying to impress or get help from in those final days, Which brings us to the doctor. Doctor George hill Ladell, Part three of our Deep Dive, the prime Suspect. This is where the story shifts from a murder mystery to a full blown conspiracy thriller. Okay, let's set the scene. It's February nineteen fifty. The DA and the LAPD have carmed a secret task force. They are convinced Hodel is their guy, So on February fifteen, they execute a very bold and very illegal move. They break into doctor Hodele's home, the Selden House. It's also known as the Franklin House. Have you ever seen photos of it? You know it. It's that distinctive Mayan temple looking house in Hollywood. It looks like a fortress, it does. It has this inner courtyard. It's beautiful, but it's imposing. And the police break in and they plant microphones in the bedroom, in the living areas, they bug the entire place. Now some context here is really important. Hodel was already on their radar for something else entirely right. Yes, the incest of his fourteen year old daughter, Tamar. He had actually been acquitted of that charge in a very controversial trial, but the police clearly didn't believe he was innocent. They kept digging, and that digging led them to suspect him of. Murder, and thank goodness they did, because what they captured on those tapes, well, it's the smoking gun we promised at the top of. The show, and we should issue a warning here. This content is disturbing. We are going to be reading from the summaries and the direct quotes from the logs of the police officers who were listening to these tapes live as it happened. Okay, February eighteenth, nineteen fifty this is just three days after the bugs are planted. At eight twenty pm, what did the officers hear? The officers log the sound of a woman screaming, a. Scream coming from inside the house. Then five minutes later, at eight two five pm, the log says, and I'm quoting, sounds of two men went downsteps and entered the basement and began digging. Let's just pause. There a scream, two men the basement and then digging. It's a sequence of events that implies only a few things, and none of them are good. You don't scream and then start gardening in the basement at eight thirty at night. It sounds like an assault in the disposal of something or someone. Precisely, and then doctor Hodele's voice is captured on the wire. He says, quote, realize there was nothing I could do. Put a pillow over her head and cover her with a blanket. Expired at twelve point thirty nine. Expired at twelve point thirty nine. That's not how a normal person talk. No, that is a physician's terminology. He isn't saying she died. He is calling a time of death. It's clinical, it's completely detached. He's documenting it like a medical procedure. He mentions putting a pillow over her head. Which aligns with suffocation or silencing a victim. But then comes the bombshell, the absolute bombshell. Hodell is talking to a visitor. The source identifies him as a baron, possibly an associate named Ernst von Heringe, a guy with a German accent. And Hodel says this, and I'm going to read it vobatim from the transcript because it gave me chills. He says, Suppose and I did kill the black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it. Now they can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead. Just stop right there. Let that sink in for a second. Suppose and I did kill the Black Dahlia. It sounds like a taunt, like he's bragging. It is a taunt. People who have tried to defend Hodel, and there are fewer of them now, they often say, oh, he was just speaking hypothetically, he was joking around. But you have to look at the second half of that sentence. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead. That is not a hypothetical. That is a statement of fact, and it's a threat. Who was the secretary, a woman named Ruth Spalding, and what happened to her? She died of a drug overdose back in nineteen forty five. Two years before the Black Dahlia murder. But Hodell is linking them. He is saying the person who knew what I did is gone. He's suggesting that his secretary knew something, maybe that is illegal activities, maybe she was a victim herself, and that she is conveniently gone. Later in the tapes, he actually says, maybe I did kill my secretary. So he is effectively confessed to two murders. In one single breath, he's admitting he silenced a key witness and he feels untouchable regarding the Dhalia murder because the primary link, the secretary, is dead. It's the sheer arrogance of a man who believes he is smarter than the police, and frankly, for a long time he was. He's bragging to his friend, the baron. It's the confidence of a serial killer. And the audio snippets they don't stop there. He talks about corrupt connections, and this is. Absolutely crucial for understanding why he wasn't arrested immediately. Hodell brags on the tape, this is the best payoff I've seen between law enforcement agencies. The best payoff I've seen. He is literally complimenting the efficiency of the bribery system in Los Angeles. He mentions Power, which is possibly a reference to the district attorney at the time, Joseph Power, and he talks about checking his connections. He is basically auditing his network of bribes to make sure it's holding up under the pressure of this new investigation. He's not just a killer, he's a criminal entrepreneur, and he explicitly admits to other crimes on these tapes. On March twenty thin, he is recorded discussing an abortion ring. Yes, he refers to them by the medical term DNC, dilation and curate mom. He tells the woman on the tape that he has done lots of them. And we have to remember abortion was illegal and highly prosecuted at this time. This confirms he was operating a criminal medical enterprise out of his. Home, and critically, it confirms he had the surgical tools and the skill set. A DNC requires specific surgical instruments, the very same type of instruments that the coroner set were likely used to bisect Elizabeth Short's body. The bisection wasn't a clumsy, violent act. It was done by someone who knew anatomy. It wasn't a hacksaw job exactly. The coroner called it a hemi corpor ectomy. He cut cleanly between the second and third lumbar vertebrae. He knew exactly what he was doing. This wasn't an act of rage, It was a skilled dissection. There is one more connection I want to bring up here that ties Hodell directly to Elizabeth's psychology, the Chicago Badge. Ah. Yes, this helps explain the Why why did she go with him? Why would this young, beautiful woman be hanging out with this much older sinister. Doctor Elizabeth Short reportedly told several friends she was seeing a man who had a Chicago police badge. She was impressed by it, or maybe a little intimidated by it. It was a big deal to her. And it turns out doctor Hodell had a connection to a famous Chicago lipstick murder case from that era. He used it as a ruse. He would pretend to be working undercover for the authorities investigating these high profile crimes. So he poses as an authority figure, a Chicago cock. And that explains why Elizabeth might have gone with him willingly, why she might have been seen with him in public in those final days. She thought she was with someone safe, or maybe someone exciting, who was on the right side of the law. She thought she was on the inside of something. It fits the psychology of a predator perfectly. Deception, allure of authority, and then isolation. He lured her in with a story of safety and importance, and then and he sprung the trap. So let's step back. The police are listening to all of this. They hear the digging. They hear the confession, they hear the bribery talk. They hear about the illegal abortions. Why in the world didn't they kick down the door? That is the million dollar question, and the answer is likely the very thing Hotal was bragging about on the tapes. Corruption Part four, the escape and the cover up. Because Hodel doesn't get arrested, he gets spooked. The transcripts show the exact moment the investigation starts to fall apart. Hodel starts becoming suspicious of his own phone, of his own house. March four, nineteen fifty. Hotel answers the phone and he's heard telling the caller, don't say anything over the phone. It is tapped. He mentions hearing feedback on the line echoes. You know, the bugging technology of nineteen fifty wasn't exactly stealthy. He heard the clicks, He heard his own voice bouncing back at him. He knew. He starts speaking in code after that, or he leaves the house to have important conversations. The net is closing, but he can feel the threads. And the surveillance then captures him planning his exit. And this isn't the panic. It's a very strategic withdrawal. He discusses going to Mexico. He mentioned setting up a sanitarium scheme and Sonora. The sanitarium, which was likely just a front for his illegal practices, or maybe just a safe house to lay low. He's setting up his landing pad before he jumps. He also talks about getting girls to find out what the police know. He is using his network, likely women he has compromised or controls through his abortion practice, to counter surveil the police. He's running his own intelligence operation against the LAPD. And then the final entry in the log March twenty seven, nineteen fifty, the house is empty. Doctor George Hodell has fled. He's gone. He crosses the border into Mexico, hopefully, and the official investigation just stops, it goes cold. But wait a minute, if they had these tapes, why didn't they issue an arrest warrant? Why didn't they work with authorities to drag him back from Mexico. He confessed to murder on a police wire tap. And this brings us to the lost files. The official lap recordings of these wiretaps disappeared. Destroyed, or lost. Conveniently, the official record was scrubbed clean. But el Ten Jemison, the investigator we mentioned earlier, the one who so carefully didn't ask red manly about Hodel. He was smart. He was a careful cop, good cup. He kept a personal copy of all these transcripts. He locked them at a bank vault. He essentially kept a second set of books. And that is what Steve Hodell The Sun found decules later in Jemison's personal effects after he passed away. If Jemison hadn't hoarded these files, we would never know about this, suppose and I did kill the black Dahlia comment. We would never know about the digging in the basement. And the transcripts reveal why the investigation was shut down. High ranking officials in the LAPD in the DA's office likely killed the case. Why because Hodell mentioned the payoffs on. Tape, the best payoff I've seen. Think about it. If they prosecute Hodell for murder, that tape gets played in open court, it becomes public record. And if that tape gets played, Hodell exposes the entire bribery ring that reached the highest levels of the LAPD and the DA's office. So he was a walking hand grenade to prosecute him. Was to destroy themselves exactly. If he goes down, he takes the chief of police or the DA down with him. They couldn't risk it. So it was a cover up, not necessarily to protect Hotel, the murderer, but to protect the corrupt system that Hodel had bought into. He was too radioactive to prosecute, so they let him go. They let a man who they heard digging in his basement after a woman screened, just leave the country and live out his life. It creates a picture of justice that is completely transactional. Elizabeth Schortz, justice was traded for the reputation and freedom of the city's top officials. That is the heartbreaking reality of it. Before we wrap up, there are a few loose ends in these transcripts that we need to connect because Herdell didn't act entirely alone, or at least he had people around him who knew. Part five the unknown woman. Right, let's go back to that January fourteenth setting. Policewoman McBride sees Elizabeth with two men and a woman, and then. We go to the tapes from February eighteenth. A woman is heard screaming in the basement, but Hodel is also heard talking to another woman during these events, someone who seems to be an accomplice. The transcript suggests this could have been his ex wife, Dorothy. Hodel, Steve Hodele's mother. Yes, the transcript show that even after their divorce, she was still in contact with George. She was feeding him information about the investigation. She was at the very least complicit in protecting him. So the woman in the group sighting could have been someone from Hodel's inner circle, someone used to make Elizabeth feel safe, A female accomplice exactly. A woman makes the whole situation feel less threatening. If two strange guys approach you, you might run. If you see a couple and a friend, you might stay for a drink. It's a classic predator tactic. And there's one more woman mentioned in the files, Lillian Lenorak. This is a really tragic side story that just corroborates Hodell's brutality in his methods. Lillian was another witness or possibly another victim, and the transcripts mention a stage suicide attempt involving her. A staged suicide. What does that mean? Hodell has heard on the tapes talking about her being drugged and having her wrist cut at his house. He did this to her. The implication is he set it all up. He wanted to discredit her as a witness. If she ever went to the police to talk about what she saw at his house, they would look at her record and say, oh, this woman is unstable. She tried to kill herself. They wouldn't believe her testimony against the prominent doctor Hotal. It's gas lighting with a scalpel. It's psychological warfare. It shows his modus operandi. He controls the narrative, he controls the bodies, and he controls the minds of the women around him. So what does this all mean. Let's bring it home. We have walked through the myths, the investigation, the tapes, and the cover up. When you synthesize all this new evidence, the Black Dollia case looks very, very different than the movie version. First, the murder of Elizabeth Short was not a random act by some drifter. No, she was a targeted victim of a highly intelligent, highly connected, and deeply sadistic predator. Second, the missing Week wasn't missing. At all, not at all. She was in La She was interacting with Hotal circles she was seen, she was alive, she walked into that trap. And Third, and this is the most important takeaway for me, the case wasn't unsolved, not in. The traditional sense. The investigators knew who did it. They had a confession on tape. They knew that murder weapon was his surgical skill. They had witness corroboration putting her in his circle. They had it all. It wasn't unsolved. It was unprosecuted, unprosecuted because of corruption, unprosecuted because of the convenient death of his secretary, and unprosecuted because Hodell was allowed to flee to protect the police department's own dark secrets. It leaves you with such a heavy feeling. It shifts the blame from some mysterious, shadowy killer to the very institutions that were supposed to protect people like her. It should leave you angry. It certainly makes me angry every time I read these files. I want to leave you, our listener, with one final thought, a provocative thought for you to carry around today. Go on, think about those police officers, the one sitting in that surveillance van or that listening post on the night of February eighteenth, nineteen fifty. They have headphones on. They're probably drinking lukewarm coffee, taking notes. And at eight twenty pm they hear a woman's scream. At eight point twenty five pm, they hear two men go down to the basement. They hear the unmistakable sound of digging a shovel hitting. Bert And they sit there and they listen. They don't move. Why why didn't they kick down that door? Was it just to protect the wiretap operation at all costs, don't blow the cover? Or was something darker? Do they already know that Hoda was protected? Were their orders from on high to stand down no matter what they heard? That's silence, the silence on the part of the place, hearing a crime in progress and doing nothing. That is the sound of the system failing. Elizabeth Short one last time. And that is the reality of the Black Dahlia, not a mystery, but a tragedy of corruption. Thank you for listening to this deep dive. Keep question in the narrative. We'll see you next time.