Welcome to Murderous Roots, a podcast that explores the family history of notorious killers. I'm Denise, and with me is Zelda. Now, let's get started. Well, hello there, Zelda. Hi, Denise. How are you doing today? Pretty good. I'm pretty excited. I think I was telling you I'm going to be getting a puppy soon for our family, and we are thrilled.
I fully expect you're going to name it after a serial killer. Probably not, but you never know. I don't think anybody's ever had a puppy named Ted Bundy before. I would hope not, but you never know. There are some really strange people out there in the world. I might be fascinated with serial killers, but I don't. i don't look at the heroes either yeah wasn't there like a crime fighting dog besides scooby that was
Like Inspector McGruff or something like that. Well, there was that one and then, oh, it was super... There was a cartoon superhero dog. I cannot remember his name, though. Back in the 70s when we were kids. so listeners unless we think of it during the podcast that somehow comes out in the middle of an interesting conversation um if you can remember the name of it please send it to us so we're not going ah what was the name of it Are you ready to get started for today?
You know, I am. I'm intrigued because this is the first time we're talking mostly about the victims. as opposed to the murderer. And so this is just a little bit of a twist on what we normally do. So that's going to be fun. Yeah. I chose this one partly because I was motivated from the last
When we recorded with H.H. Holmes and really digging in to learn who Minnie R. Williams was, I felt like I wanted to really know who This one was The Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short, and I wanted to know more about her and her family because what you heard about at the time and even in movies since... it doesn't really get that deep in right but i'm excited i can't wait to hear what you have to share and then i've got some stuff to tell you as well
I'm excited too. Did you want to talk a little bit about your process or did you want to do that a little bit later? i'll get probably into it a little bit later but i will say i do a lot of census records research Since she was from the Northeast, there's some more sources available, a lot more birth records, death records. A lot more newspaper articles in some cases. So it's interesting. Where you live will determine what I can find online. You know, if I'm in person, there's...
And by in-person, if I'm in the county where the person was, I can go to the courthouse and do some research there. Or go to the local library and see what they have there. But without that, I'm doing that that's all from a distance and I am limited in that respect. But I did find some interesting stuff and it was some surprises.
oh i can't wait i cannot wait because her life was really fascinating and so i'll just go ahead and launch at this point then let me tell you about the black dolly so 1947 was a tumultuous year in the united there's rationing still going on because the recovery was still happening from world war ii and people returning from serving in the war were attempting some sort of return to normalcy
But even aliens, aliens landed in Roswell, New Mexico that July. Oh, yes. How can I say that? It comes in a story. Not at all. But on January 15, 1947, a young woman was found graphically mangled, raped, naked and dead in a vacant parking lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. The press nickname turned the Black Dahlia as an homage to a film noir that had been in theaters a few months before.
This would go on to be one of the most famous unsolved murders in American history, in no small part because of the unrelenting press that sensationalized every detail of the Black Dahlia.
and about the press so i'm not going to go into it but some of the things they did were just absolutely horrific and today they probably get arrested for um and i'll get into that a little bit into that a little bit but i just thought you know this is the big reason you know about the black dahlia today is because the press took it and ran with it whether they had the facts or not
so before she was the black dahlia this young woman was just elizabeth short from massachusetts her family and friends called her bet she was born the middle child of five daughters of cleo and phoebe may short in boston Her dad's job was building miniature golf courses, which would be an awesome job, until the crash of 1929 when the family pretty much lost everything.
so little elizabeth actually suffered very bad lungs and she had surgery on them when she was 15 and after that she started spending winters in florida to prevent worsening her respiratory problems She dropped out of high school her sophomore year because her dream with her sister and a neighbor girl was to take Hollywood by storm. And everyone seemed to enjoy this lively young woman Elizabeth had become. She was extraordinarily pretty, but also graceful, kind, and very light.
Her shot at acting came when she turned 18 and moved to Vallejo, California where her father was living to pursue her acting dream. she was only there a few months because they got on each other's nerves and he tossed her out and she worked in a few different clerking jobs hoping to find her big break into acting and model Now, Denise, as her life choices will show, Elizabeth was something of a hot mess.
She was, by all accounts, a young woman searching for validation from men. Mamas, don't let your daughters grow up to be women who search for validation from men. It might end up like this. the papers would paint her as a prostitute but she was definitely not a prostitute she was just as they say looking for love in all the wrong places as a result she moved to florida back to medford then back to california right before she got
Also, as a result, she dated quite a few men. Not enough probably to cause modern sensibilities to even blink, but it was a bit scandalous in the 40s. so in the weeks before she died she was living with a friend's family and continued her partying ways a late night During this time, she hooked up with a married man and the night before she disappeared, spent the night with him. He dropped her off the next day at the Biltmore Hotel as she had requested.
She told him she was meeting her married sister there and was planning to return to Massachusetts. What I can't find is whether or not that was true. That doesn't actually seem to be true.
say it but that she was actually meeting a married sister because there's no record that that was actually supposed to happen so either that person's lying or maybe she was lying to him to just kind of like shuffle off the guy that apparently wouldn't leave who knows but the last person to see her alive witnessed her using the lobby phone so that was january 9th okay no one saw her again until her body was found on january 15th by a woman walking by that vacant lot with their three-year-old
The woman ran to a phone, called the police, and within an hour, both police and reporters were swarming the scene. so this murder remains unsolved partly because whoever murdered her was meticulous about cleaning elizabeth's body now i'm not going to describe her injuries but if you want to see photos that'll haunt your dreams feel free to google it they are far fine, far fine, absolutely.
And the murder became sensational, not only for its brutality and the ease of making the victim's life scandal. but also because less than a week after Elizabeth's body was found, a letter arrived at the examiner, a local paper, from someone claiming to be the killer. He mailed some of Elizabeth's belongings to the newspaper to prove his claim.
And then, of course, because people are just trash sometimes, Denise, letters and anonymous tips began to pour in, and the vast majority of them were, of course, hopeless. And no fewer than 60 people confessed to killing her. So although this is a cold case, it has never been closed. There are currently 11 men on the list of suspects, all of whom are now. Now, because you know, it's literally almost a hundred years later, but well, okay, I do math bad.
So one of the things I wanted to pop in here was with the press. So one of the newspapers Called her mother. And they were the ones who informed her that her daughter had died. But before they told her, they pretended that her daughter had won a contest and was being interviewed and so gleaned all of this information from her mother.
before then disclosing oh well you know really your daughter's dead but we'll pay for your plane ticket to come out here to california so you can help with the investigation So they took her to California and then she didn't get to talk to the police forever because this newspaper just didn't want to get scooped.
So they literally manipulated this family's pain just to make some money and sell some papers. And of course, today, I can't imagine that somebody could get away with that. They could at least get sued for of emotional distress or something, but. Well, and today.
With the social media and stuff, I can't imagine they'd be able to pull that off as well. Because back then, as maybe our younger listeners might not realize... it was telephone and letters mail mail and that's how you kept in touch with people or sometimes a telegram but yeah that was for somebody who had some money And Elizabeth didn't have the money to sit there and send a telegram and go, hey mom.
so and you know even though phones were more popular not everybody had a phone in 1947 no and i'm not entirely sure that they actually did have their own You know, it could have been calling like most people did. They called in the drugstore down the street. Somebody would go fetch them. They had to pay to talk to the folks. So it was a lot more complicated.
So one result of this infamous murder was that on February 2nd, 1947, just two weeks after Elizabeth Short's murder, California State Assemblyman C. Don Field was prompted by the case to introduce a bill calling for the formation of a sex offender.
and so the state of california would actually become the first u.s state to make registration of sex offenders wow i didn't know that isn't that cool i was like okay nothing good really came out of it but that kind of did right so like the national the sex offenders list and stuff that's a more recent development nationally um emperor's law or somebody's law i think it's adam's law was it maybe i don't know but
so well anyway so um just if you didn't know this maybe maybe our listeners don't elizabeth shorts interred at the mountain view cemetery in oakland Although her murder is unsolved to this day, two of the suspects really stood out to me. Dr. George Hodel and Dr. Patrick O'Reilly. Some of the aspects of the murder point towards someone who had medical training and these two losers stood out like sore thumb. So I'm going to talk about Patrick O'Reilly first.
because i don't think he's the one that did it and it's shorter so but dr patrick o'reilly was disgusting but he was also a medical doctor who had known elizabeth short According to the Los Angeles district attorney's files, O'Reilly was close friends with a mutual friend, Mark Hansen, and frequented the nightclub that Hansen owned around the time of the murder.
He also allegedly attended sex parties with Hanson at which Elizabeth Short may have been present. O'Reilly had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. Forget this. taken his secretary to a motel and sadistically beating her almost to death apparently for no other reason than to satisfy his sexual desires without This meant that O'Reilly had a history of violent crimes with sexual motivation. He was also linked to illegal abortions.
The files noted that O'Reilly's right pectoral had been surgically removed, which was similar to the mutilation present on Elizabeth Short's body. The history of violence, medical training, and the fact he knew Short makes him a strong suspect for the murder. The LAPD was notoriously corrupt during this period, by the way, and corruption is suspected to have played a role in why a murderer was never brought to justice.
Notably, this makes O'Reilly an even stronger suspect because he was once married to the daughter of an LAPD captain. so we're moving on to scum number two number two is dr george hotel George Hodel, who had 11 children by five different women, was charged with raping and impregnating his 14-year-old daughter, according to no fewer than three witnesses. two of whom participated in the race. Although he was surprisingly acquitted, this led him to land on the suspect list right away.
A few years after Elizabeth Schwartz's death, police bugged his home. And this next part I actually lifted from blackdahlia.web.unc.edu because it was just such a succinct summary. They wanted to see if Hodel would make any comments to insinuate that he was involved in Elizabeth Short's murder. Most of the transcripts dull at first with Hodel having sex, berating his secretary, and talking about However, on February 19, 1950, three years after the Black Dahlia was killed,
There is something horrific in the recording. 8.25 p.m. Woman screamed. Woman screamed again. It should be noted the woman was not heard before the scream. Later that same day, Hodel was recorded talking to his confidant. Realized there was nothing I could do, put a pillow over her head and cover her with a blanket. Get a tacky. Expired 1259. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out.
the surveillance routinely continued catching a highly incriminating statement 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 So the secretary referred to in the transcript was Ruth Spalding, who had died from a drug overdose. Now, due to those comments, he was investigated for her murder, and he had actually been present when the secretary died and had burned some of her belongings before the police were called.
which caused that case to be dropped for a lack of evidence because he destroyed the evidence, right? I'm like, oh my gosh. So documents were later found that indicated Spaulding had been planning to blackmail Hoda. she was about to come forward about hodl intentionally misdiagnosing patients and billing them for laboratory tests medical treatments and unnecessary unnecessary prescriptions and of course he too like o'reilly was linked to illegal abortion
This is what I love is that Hodel's son, Steve Hodel was all like, yeah, my dad did it. So he actually, you know, dug in and did some investigating. He was actually an LAPD homicide detective. So the LAPD had retrieved a photograph of a nude Elizabeth from George Hodel's personal effects, and there was a fair amount of other evidence. Now, I don't know why the LAPD didn't investigate his medical.
Later, with the help of Steve Hodel, George Hodel's son, they would test the area around Hodel's office for signs of short. They didn't find Elizabeth Short, but they did find remains of several other young women. So more than likely, Hodel was a serial killer. And let's face it, the methodical nature of the Black Dahlia murder was likely the work of someone with experience.
In April 1950, Jemison, who was the lead detective on this case that's now three years old, had gathered enough evidence to charge Hodel and was about to arrest him for Elizabeth Short's murder when Hodel left the United States. So he went to Hawaii, which was a territory at the time. He got a degree in psychiatry and counseled patients or I'm sorry.
He obtained a degree in psychiatry and counseled prisoners in the territorial prison in Hawaii for three years, then moved on to the Philippines where he started a new family and appears to have remained there until 1990. finally dying in 1999 in San Francisco without charges ever being fired. However, his son Steve has written that he believes George Hodel reentered the United States multiple times each year from 1958 through 1988.
specifically in 1966 to 1969 to commit more murders and then just returning to the Philippines each time. Dorothy Hodel, George Hodel's daughter, once stated that her father had been out partying on the night of the murder and stated they'll never be able to prove I did that murder. In July 2018. So this is just two years ago, like right at two years. Sandy Nichols of Indianapolis, Indiana, while going through her recently deceased mother's personal effects.
discovered a dying declaration letter written by her grandfather, W. Glenn Martin, some 70 years before on October 26, 1949. the handwritten envelope read in case of Margaret Ellen's or Glenn and Jean's death and was initialed WGM. The letter was written out of fear that one or both of his teenage daughters might be killed. The three-page letter identified W. Glenn Martin as a paid LAPD police informant working for Sergeant McCauley from the LAPD Internal Affairs Division.
He described his activities as working undercover for LAPD detectives to help them identify and arrest corrupt police officers. In his word, it was to try and see if other officers could be invangled into crime. So it went on to name GH on 17 separate occasions, identifying him as a personal acquaintance. of himself as well as Sergeant McCauley and named him the killer of both the Black Dahlia and a second woman, Lois Springer, the Green Twig murder.
And the Green Twin murder was another famous L.A. King. Martin's letter claimed that both he and GH personally knew the Springer woman and that he believed GH also killed her. LAPD at the time was actively investigating the Louise Springer and Black Dahlia murders and had publicly identified them as probably connected. Springer was garroted. The Green Twig murder was on June 13, 1949, just two blocks from where the body of Elizabeth Short was found in 1947.
Included in the letter was the fact that the LAPD, after being informed that GH knew victim Springer, that GH was taken in and grilled about the Springer murder. The Martin letter made it clear that G.H. was known and protected by law enforcement officers and that they let him go. Martin's instructions were that his letter was to be opened only in case of harm coming to either of his daughters.
No harm came to either of them, so the letter remained unreported and in the family's possession for 70 years until discovered and read by Martin's granddaughter. Steve Hodel. has linked his father to many other unsolved murders as well, including the Zodiac Killer and presented evidence that George Hodel may have been the writer of the legitimate 1970 Zodiac-coded cipher. mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle and turned over to SFPD.
The solution and cracking of the cipher was performed by Eve Person, a high school teacher in Paris. According to person, George Honol using algam. an ancient Celtic alphabet, signed his real name, H-O-D-E-L, placing it both as the return address on the envelope and as a signatory inside the card, which read, you ache to know my name, I'll clue you in. The code had remained undeciphered for 45 years.
And Steve Hodel's theory on why George Hodel killed Elizabeth Short was that she suspected him of committing another unsolved murder in Chicago known as the Lipstick Murder and had found evidence to link it to him directly. And that's Steve Hodel, who is George Hodel's son. Right.
And some of his stuff's controversial. The LAPD at this point has looked at it and said, good enough for us, your dad was the murderer. But other people are like, yeah, I don't know. You're just assuming all this stuff is right. instead of some of it being conjecture. I don't have a problem with him thinking George Moodle killed her. Based on the way she was killed, I do think it would have been a serial murder because
One thing you did mention about the body was that all the blood had been drained out of the body as well. So there was a lot of time involved in this murder. somebody yeah and she was bisected uh in a basically a medical procedure and so there's nobody if you didn't have knowledge of how to do that then it would have been a much different looking job um but doesn't it kind of give you the creeps about how many doctors are involved in this like
I listened to another podcast, The Murder Squad, and they were actually, even though we were working out as they recently covered this, and they were talking about how the body was found, and one of the commentators is a former homicide detective. and retired and he was talking about back in the day it was seen as it had to be a doctor but where it was bisected it could have been anybody
Because it wasn't in a particular place where you had to do it there, it just could have been luck. Or it could have been a butcher even. the police wanted to i think think that the average person wanted to do something like that so it'd have to be somebody with knowledge So we might not ever know that part, but I know it had to be a serial. My only problem with Steve Hoddle's theory is that I think it goes too far when he's adding murders like the Zodiac. Most cereals follow a pattern.
And that was completely different, not even close to what had been done before. i could see possibly the lipstick killer and the green twig murder because there is some similarity but we get right to it that one just seems far off and i think that's where steve hodl has gotten controversy because he's gone beyond the scope right right and who knows right but in my mind it just seems Well, it's unlikely, I think, with George Hodel that...
A serial killer has to keep killing. It's rare that they just stop. And the fact that he was in the Philippines, his son linked him to a series of killings in the Philippines. But again, he was never charged for any of these crimes that his son is asserting he committed. with the Zodiac Killer. I mean...
I can go either way with it, to be really honest, because there's a lot of evidence, circumstantial evidence, that it could be George Hodel. Especially that, yes, it's different, but it's also, you're talking over 20 years later. So people evolved their technique, but apparently the handwriting was substantially similar. And the idea of, I mean, I don't think it was new to him in the 40s to, hey, I'm going to clue the police in with this letter so I can lord over how smart I am.
But, you know, if you look at it, this guy was all around just a horribly nasty person. And I mean, let's face it, raping his daughter Tamar, getting her pregnant. And then she had a back alley abortion to get rid of it. And then the whole trial basically made her out to be this huge liar when she wasn't lying and everybody was a little bit surprised he actually got to walk away from it.
But, you know, again, the times being that, you know, a 14 year old would be considered not a child, but an underage woman. Right. Which, you know, so there's this.
distrust that what women are saying about it is true anyway but yeah so i'm leaning toward joe total having killed the black dahlia is what this kind of all or he might have been in cahoots with o'reilly who knows but as you were talking something struck me and we'll get there because i I was busy doing a little bit of quick research.
to make sure i remembered what i thought i saw because it was one of those newspaper articles i ran into and i'm like oh i don't have any purpose for this and then you mentioned something like Let me go take a look at this again, and we'll bring this up in a little bit. But before that, we'll go back to Elizabeth unless you have anything else to add about the case. I have hit the high points. So, so I'm good at this time. Now I'll just pester you with.
oh that sounds good well as you said she had five sisters and her father was cleo alvin short jr and mother was phoebe may soya And it was, you know, a house with five girls of the house of seven. They lived in, not Millbridge, I'm getting really confused for a second and you'll understand why in a minute, but they lived in Medford, Massachusetts, which is a suburb in Boston, basically. i want to talk about cleo really quick because
My impression of him is he was a nasty man. He was not a good guy. In an AP article on 18th January 1947. The following was mentioned. Cleo Short, Elizabeth's father, was located here, meaning Los Angeles. He said he had been estranged from his wife and daughter for several years and did not intend to attend an inquest for Elizabeth.
Basically, he wasn't interested in learning anything about her death. And this is his quote. I want nothing to do with this, he told reporters. I broke off with a mother and family years ago. My wife wanted it that way. I provided a trust fund for their support. In 1943, I told Elizabeth to go her way and I'd go mine. Wow. Now it also came out that he refused to identify her body. Yes, making his wife Phoebe and Elizabeth's sister be the ones to identify the body.
Wow. He wanted nothing to do with his family. There's so much wrong. So, like you said times got tough in the 1920s for the family and with him apparently he decided to stage his own suicide slash disappearance wow in 1930 they found his car empty parked in a parking lot next to charlestown bridge and he was nowhere to be found now He left. He disappeared. At some point he found himself in Texas. He contacted Virginia, the oldest sister of Elizabeth.
He never contacted Elizabeth from anything I could find, but he contacted Virginia to let him know where he was at one point. This is where it gets interesting because I think Cleo is clearly lying about... how he split with the mother and that quote i mentioned um saying that
his wife had agreed to it and all this because according to la times january 1947 on the 19th mrs short was surprised to learn that the husband from whom she never bothered to get a divorce is now living in la if betty knew her father was here she never told me as far as
the mother knew he was he disappeared he was gone he was dead did not know about his existence and in 1947 he was working as a refrigerator engineer by that time and let's go back really quick because what i did forget to mention was that in 1942 it's clear that by then he had made contact with Virginia because he had filled out the World War II draft registration.
and he left his oldest daughter as his familial contact or his emergency contact wow right and at the time he was living in robertson town eventually making its way to California between then and 1946. so i will talk about it's where do i start with this whole family But there were happier times. Phoebe and Cleo got married in 1918 in April, and they had their daughters. The first one being Virginia May Short, was born in 1920.
She married Adrienne Charles West, an engineer, and they married in California in February 1945. Now, I have no idea what brought her to California, but I wonder if it's not possible that she went and stayed with her father briefly. um i believe that virginia and adrian had children um i think one girl and two boys but it's hard to verify because the last names of west and short are very popular and to find this information the california birth index is wonderful
I can put in the last name of the child and put the last name of the mother and see who was born. Well, sometimes it works great because you have such a unique name and the combination is rare. But in this case, it wasn't. Throughout the trial, there's pictures of Virginia with her husband and her mother. and they were present at the not the murder they were present at the burial of Elizabeth in Oakland naturally their father never came to the funeral either
Virginia and Adrian divorced in 1967. He remarried two years later. She never remarried and passed away in 1985. the second sister was dorothea short who was born 1922 and let me tell you this is one kick-ass woman i gotta say this because she during world war ii joined the navy wade the women volunteer emergency service that's cool yes and during her this time she worked in dc as what's called a stripper
That is not somebody who's taking off their clothes. No. But she was doing it out of patriotism. yeah so she was doing it she was on patriotism she was cracking codes and i found this by finding her obituary from 2012 and it says that and this was on may 11 2012 in the kansas city star that at less than five feet tall and under 100 pounds she didn't meet navy's the navy's physical criteria
They sent me home and told me to eat a lot of bananas and milkshakes. She went on to become what she laughingly called a stripper. strips of paper from the teletypes relaying intercepted Japanese code. As we were decoding messages, we got a pretty good idea of how things were going in the Pacific, she told elementary kids when she was there for oral history.
that's cool i thought that was very cool while she was doing that job she met her husband also from medford massachusetts norman schlosser or schlosser who was a bomber during world war ii and they got married in 1948 had five children nine grandchildren some greats and that number has probably increased since 2012. i thought that was pretty amazing that's cool sister number three or i guess number four the fourth child
was Sister Elnora, and she was born in 1925. Now, I have to say something here to any genealogist who might be listening. You are all wrong if you are saying that she is dead. She is very much alive.
That's exciting. And I won't reveal what her married name is, but people found an Eleonora Short who died in 1998 in Tennessee and have now put... this information on these family trees making it seem like this poor woman's dead when she is far from it she at last i checked which was a couple days ago She's a 95 year old or almost 95 year old woman, very happily enjoying life.
And I call... um but please be careful before you start saying somebody said verify the information because she's very much alive And the last sister, Muriel Short, she was born in 1929, so this means when her father left, she was one.
Oh, and let me go back to Eleonora really quick because... her gravestone you can find it because she's she is going to be buried next to her husband someday and what was sweet was that on her husband's it says beloved son of atlas both of his parents i found it telling that said on under her name for when she's buried says beloved daughter of baby and known as and why would he be he wasn't there for her at all Muriel is still very much alive.
And this is kind of cool. I mean, she fell in love with her husband probably in high school. They graduated in the 1946 class at Medford High and got married two years later. and he was a navy that named earl but he died pretty young at 30 age 36 in 1964. i know as far as i can tell she's never remarried she ended up raising three daughters on her own oh wow
So let's leave them alone, though. And that's the most I'm going to say about the girls. Now, Phoebe, well, before we get into Phoebe, I'll talk about Cleo again. Cleo is a hard fun. and what i mean by that is cleo was born in 1885 according to the um world war ii draft records and his death records he was born in october 1885 in gloucester virginia and he died in the 60s in california but what i found really interesting is being a junior i can't find his parents at all and he lists their name
He said his mother's name was Alice Billups, and there's a couple of those, but I cannot find them with his parents. So it makes me to wonder, because this guy would disappear, is it possible? Because he would have married. Phoebe at the age of 33, is it possible that he was lying again and that wasn't who he was? It makes me wonder because it's so impossible to find him. And I looked at other people's trees just to see, was there a hint?
And there's nothing I can find. A couple people have theories, but they don't really fit, I don't think. So it has me at a loss. Okay. but phoebe was 17 when she married she made a 33 year old when she was 17. yeah now she was born in 1901 she was the daughter of charles turner sawyer and ella lenore brown and she was originally from millbridge maine which is where i made that mistake with medford And let me tell you a little bit about Millbridge Made.
Millbridge, Maine is situated in Washington County and it was originally settled in 1765 and was incorporated in 1848 from a part of Harrington, Maine. Millbridge sits on the mouth of the Narragas. Because Narragagas River, if I'm torturing it, I'm sorry. We're all young, maine. It's a very small town, a coastal community right now with a population of close to 1,300. The biggest the population ever seems to have gotten was 1,900. And that was closer to the turn of the century.
Washington County and Millbridge, that area, is noted as being the most eastern part of the United States. Now, since it's not a coastal area, there's a lot of fishing there, a lot of seamen, sailors. I know, go ahead and laugh. She said semen. Thank you. okay sorry um but her family were early settlers there in millbridge there is one tragedy that came about the same time not exact same time but around the same decade
Elizabeth Short's death and that involved Phoebe's sister Edna. Her sister had four children so Edna would be Elizabeth's aunt. She had two girls and two boys. Only the boys made it to adulthood. The first daughter Alice died as a baby. And the second daughter was Genevieve. And I found this article in the Bangor Daily News on June 6, 1941.
Bar Harbor girl dies as a result of a car accident. Jen V. Barstow, 18, was to be graduated this month. So apparently she was in a motor collision and she died right before she was supposed to graduate from high school. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And this was Phoebe's sister. That was her name.
so Genevieve would have been first cousin to Elizabeth okay now it might not it probably isn't related but I find it interesting but that is also the year that Elizabeth dropped out of high school because elizabeth dropped out of high school her sophomore year in 1941 so i've been months after probably but still
kind of frightening so elizabeth's grandfather was charles turner sawyer he was born in 1863 and died in 1901 not long you know what i made a mistake and i need to correct that now for our listeners Because I think my notes were just bad notes. And Phoebe was actually not 17 when she got married. She was probably 20. but still marrying a 33 year old that's
a little much she was born in 1897. the reason for my confusion is that poor phoebe her father died when she was only four years old he died in 1901 a bit of a pattern with fathers dying young on the Sawyer line. because Charles's father was Emory Sawyer and he died in 1883 at the age of 51. So there just seems to be a little bit of a pattern there. The Sawyer Line goes pretty far back. In fact, the Sawyer Line was part of the Aboriginal settlers in Millbrook.
starting with josiah sawyer but we're not going to follow the sawyers too far back although some of it's very interesting because i want to get to the brown side of the fan Bebe's mother, Elizabeth's grandmother, was Ella Leonore Brown and she was born in 1869 in Millbridge. and she lived a long life. She died at the age of 89 in Portland, Maine. Her parents were John Haskell Brown and Mary Ann Campbell.
John Haskell was a mariner, and I can't emphasize this whole line of Browns was basically nothing but sailors and sea captains and fishermen. I mean, they are everywhere. The sea was in their blood. Right. The salt was in their veins. That makes sense. They're sitting along this mouth to this bay that goes right into the Atlantic Ocean. They're right on the coast. It's a seafaring village.
That's their livelihood. So we're going to explore the brown line because it gets really interesting. And using birth and marriage records in Maine and Massachusetts, I found the following. John's father was Captain William Brown who was born in 1803. His father was Simeon Smith Brown Sr. born in 1777.
Simeon was the son of Revolutionary War soldier Jesse Brown Jr. born in 1738 don't worry i'll catch up where we're at in just a minute with elizabeth his grandfather so jesse brown jr's grandfather was james brown He was born in 1675, I believe. So James Brown would be Elizabeth. great-grandfather. He was married to Ruth Snow, her sixth great-grandmother who was born in 1679.
Ruth was the granddaughter of Nicholas Snow. Nicholas arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1623 on the ship Anne. The Anne was a ship that carried passengers as well as much needed supplies. to the original pilgrim. A week later after the Anne arrived, the Little James, a smaller ship carrying primarily cargo and only 15 passengers arrived. Now the crew left the passengers at the colony and returned with cargo, such as timber and beaver skins, but Nicholas Snow stayed.
And four years after Nicholas arrived in 1627, he married Constance Hopkins. Nicholas and Constance would be Elizabeth's eight great grandparents. And this is where it gets really cool because let's talk about Constance. Constance was the daughter of Stephen and Mary Kent Hopkins. Her mother died when she was just a child. and her father married Elizabeth Fisher in 1617. In 1620, he and his family boarded the Mayflower headed for the New World.
In fact, Elizabeth gave birth to Constance's half-brother Oceanus, the only child born on the Mayflower along the journey. This basically means that Elizabeth Short is a Mayflower descendant. Wow! i wonder if they know that i don't believe they do or if they do they haven't recorded because i haven't found anybody else who made that connection because unlike hh homes where everybody's done his tree Nobody's really done, Elizabeth Short.
There's a couple, but the big clincher was trying to find the connection between William Brown and Simeon Smith Brown Jr. And when I finally found it, I found it through marriage records that were on the... let me go back for a second easton massachusetts which is part of the cape is where the brown family first i mean they got to clement they didn't stay there very long then they went to easton and i think i talk about that later but i might not um But that's where I found the record.
as i had a list of all the marriage and birth records from the time and that's when i was able to make the connection Otherwise, now if I've made a mistake in connections, feel free to let me know. But this is why I found and I do believe it's pretty solid that she's a Mayflower descendant. But there's even more, because that's not all, okay? Constance's father, Stephen, right? Well, Stephen Hopkins' first trip to the New World wasn't on the Mayflower.
Oh no, in 1609 as a minister's clerk, he voyaged to Jamestown, Virginia. a settlement that was established in 1607 and he did so on the ship the sea bench Unfortunately, his ship wrecked in Bermuda. They were stranded for 10 months on this island. Six months in, he and others mutinied against the governor. and stephen was sentenced to death oh yes for mutiny he begged and pleaded for his life
mentioning his wife and family back in England and his life was spared. During this time though, during that 10 months while they were on this island, the castaways built a new ship. and eventually made it to jamestown now it was while he was in jamestown at least that's what people seem to believe that his first wife Constance's mother, Mary Kent, died in 1613. So he's left in 1609. It's now four years later.
He received the news by letter in 1614 because mail back then was not nearly as fast because you had to do it by ship. and soon after learning of her death he returned home at this point by the time he gets home he's been gone for five years now keep in mind what this would mean for the family Constance would have only been three when he left. And her brother Giles would have been only one. So here comes his father. They don't know. So then he remarries.
partly in part to help raise his children i imagine they have some children and they go to massachusetts now nicholas and constance moved to the Cape, like I said, in eastern Massachusetts in the 1640s. And they are noted as having had 12 children. Oh my. She was very generous to God. Yes, she was, including Ruth Snow. Now that's her family. and i wish i could have gotten more on her dad but like i said i was very stuck and it frustrated me to know and
Well, I have to tell you, I find it intriguing that you think that, okay, he may not have been using his real name. Yeah. That was not the most unheard of thing around that time because the records were so poor that, and look at H.H. Holmes. I mean, you know, look at other people at the time or the people, you know, who, you know. what, 3,000 people went missing during the Chicago World's Fair. A lot of those people just adopted new identities.
so it wasn't unheard of and it would be fascinating to if we ever learn like what his family story really Because he obviously had no problems with doing things like faking his own death.
right you know leaving his family abandoned faking his own death and then even not wanting to have anything to do with her after she died i mean the callousness of just that yeah yeah no problem leaving her and his kids were when he left the oldest would have been nine and the youngest would have been one he didn't care about them it wasn't so i i doubt the issue had anything to do with the money that was lost from
the great depression and the stock market crash i think he used that as an excuse to escape a situation he didn't want to be in anymore do you know did he ever remarry i found nothing showing that he remarried i don't believe well let me just double check really quick because after a while with all these names I sometimes lose track. Now, if he did, I didn't find evidence of it. And I did look. I also wonder, because I can't find him in the 1940 census.
So it makes me wonder was he busy moving and wasn't at a place where they could catch him or had he changed his name so his family couldn't find him? And then he decided for some reason by 42 to get in touch with his older daughter. Or maybe she somehow found him. I don't know. But it makes me question whether or not he is who he said he was. And I don't even know how to prove that other than there are some things I could do.
like requesting his application for a social security card and those things, but since it's self-reported, he would probably lie on that too if he is lying. so it's not going to do me any good because back then and this is the social security was so new he was born in 1885 there weren't necessarily birth records
birth records weren't officially being kept in most places at that time. There's some communities that did anyway, there's some people that had churches that were keeping track, but birth records themselves are more difficult to find. especially back then now we'll go i decided at the last minute as i told you last night i was like i want to kind of look into what i can find on these suspects And there's so many to choose from, so I asked you specifically, I'm like, Zelda?
which ones are you going to be mentioning just so i have an idea Because you're right, there's like 60 suspects, people who are turning themselves in. It's like they wanted the fame that would come with a murder. I mean, how sick is that? But I guess people do that no matter what. But he's kind of an enigma as well. And I might be able to find him if I can give him more time. His name was Patrick S. O'Reilly. And according to the World War II draft records, the S stood for shame.
patrick shane o'reilly and on that record he said he was born in leavenworth kansas in march 1900 but yeah i can't really find any o'reillies in kansas in 1900 if i do it's it's and o'reilly is a very common name and there was multiple different spellings of it so like i said given enough time i might be able to find more but this was just the last day And he listed himself as a surgeon in the 42 draft. In the 1930 census though, he is listed as being from Northern Ireland.
So now, and I've mentioned this before on the podcast, when it comes to the census records, sometimes it's the neighbor reporting it, not the person who's there. or it could have been his wife at the time and she didn't know like oh well her his family's from Northern Ireland and forgot where he was from you never know but in 1930 he was married to a Ruth in fact they got married in March 1930. And they were divorced by 1940.
And I have a guess it had something to do with what happened in 1939 that you brought up and I'll re-bring up. He kept practicing medicine at least as late as 1963, if not a little bit longer. And I found that in the California License Directory.
time that's just so gross and he had a practice in glendale california and in 1963 he was married to a woman by the name of lillian i could not buy marriage records for them could you imagine finding out your doctor was a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder case I'm like I felt weird when my chiropractor when I lived in Arizona was arrested and put in jail for stalking someone.
and i was like that was my chiropractor how weird and he was not accused of murder you know or even like assault or anything it was just stalking but not just but you know what i mean and i felt strange and i'm sure he lost his practice over it how And there were so many other things that could connect to O'Reilly. It boggles my mind. You discussed what he did in 1939. I'm going to go over it again because I have a couple of details. I figure you might enjoy some of our listeners.
that in the paper it's listed that he was charged of attempt to outrage. And outreach is another way of saying like molest or rape, those types of things. I'm Waleen Jane McCarthy, who was a telephone operator at his practice. And the LA Times in June 1939 gets into it. the testimony and that Walene had testified that she accepted the ride home from the doctor and agreed to have dinner and drinks before returning home and then he said oh I need to make a phone call do you mind if I stop?
And then when they stop at his house, she refuses to go inside with him. Good girl. Right. When she declined, he hit her until she agreed. Then once in there, when she refused him, he beat her further. I believe it was doctors from his own practice who treated her afterwards.
Yes. So the trial got delayed. He was doing all this maneuvering, so he wanted to go to trial on this. He claimed in testimony that she was the one who wanted to make a phone call and that she just tripped and it was a fall wow and obviously it wasn't believed Because he was found guilty on the 29th of September 1939. but this is the part that gets me he attacks a woman he's found guilty he's only fined twenty five hundred dollars which granted that times a lot of money and 10 years probation
And he didn't have to give up his medical license. Exactly. Wow. I will say kudos to Waleen, and I don't know what the result of this is, but she sued him for $50,000 in damages. Good on her. Yes. Now, what caught my interest when you were talking, and I'm bringing something up right now so I can take a good look at this, was the right pectoral was removed. You said correct? There is an article in 1934 about Dr. Patrick S. O'Reilly, about an actress.
by the name of Lucille Laverne. She was 56 at the time. and she had had a surgery.
apparently dr o'reilly literally and this is i'm gonna quote it is from the san francisco examiner 18 october 1934 dr o'reilly literally created a new muscular system along the right side of miss laverne's body for several days she was near death and then with a new muscular system beginning to work she took a turn for the better and will live it gets into more specifics about it but apparently whatever was going on with her body It was causing her to suffocate.
The surgeons removed the muscles along the right ribs down to the lower ribs. They then split the muscles of the lower ribs. and ribbons and muscles along the ribs to create muscles that would lift and lower the ribs and breathing wow and if i'm correct and guessing even though i'm not always the best at anatomy i would guess that's the right pectoral And he perfected the technique. Makes me wonder.
i mean he's perfected this technique which sounds vaguely like what happened to the dahlia and it makes you know huh yeah which is a connection i hadn't made before and i wonder if anybody else has okay we're gonna go to the other suspect george hodell actually george hill hodell jr he was an only child he was born in october 1907 in los angeles his parents were immigrants His father, George Sr., and his mother, Esther Leah.
George could not. He married so many women, I have no idea how many there were. Now, in the papers, it's mentioned that his first wife was a common-law wife. Now, we're talking 1920s, 1930s, a common law wife. California's liberal. And even back then, it was a little bit more liberal, but it wasn't necessarily that liberal for that type of thing at the time. but what i find interesting is i'm not sure they weren't married um and i'll tell you why in a minute
But her name was Amelia or Emily J. Lawson. She was born in Indiana. They had a son named Duncan in 1928 and lived in San Francisco. on the 1930 census they marked themselves as married and that they married around 1927 and this is where i question if they were married or not after they separated she continued to use the last name hudel until she remarried and she married a man by the name of franz bergman in 1937. so was it common law
and she just saw herself as Hodel? Or did she think that they were really married and there was nothing legal about it?
Well, a common law marriage is a legal marriage in the states that it's recognized as. And honestly, it was a lot more common than you would think. It was sort of something... i mean i hate to put it this way but hillbillies did it a lot because it's kind of you know it's a little hard to get to the courthouse sometimes and you just end up moving in and then all of a sudden you start having children and okay guess we're married now you know
um and as long as you did that for a certain period of time and tell people you're married and set yourselves out as married everybody just kind of shrugs and goes cool you're married you know um so i mean you know this i mean what they call called common law they were only together three years living together It depends entirely. I don't know California's law. I do know that in many states it's 70.
So I don't know. But if they're telling people they're married, I mean, I'm not, how long were they together total? According to them, in the 1930 census, they were married in 1927, so three years. at the time okay well but then you have to put yourself out as married to be considered common law married so that makes sense that they would do that when did they end up getting splitting up i believe they split probably around 1935.
Okay, so they may well have passed that limitations where they would have been considered legally. should probably look that up to see what the common law laws were in california i mean they got married in california or i believe so if they were married there but they were considered common law um what i did find kind of fascinating was that 1939 in the california voter registration
She is listed as her occupation as being a reporter. Oh, that is interesting. That is interesting. George's next wife was Dorothy Anthony. um she was born 1911 so she was only a few years younger than him they had a son by the name of michael who was born 1939 and
They also had their daughter, Tamar, that you mentioned. And what I find interesting, and I didn't get a chance to dig any further, was that and the 1940 census they're together with michael and tamar's nowhere there so it makes me wonder where tamar is but i ran out of time George was not a good man. especially not to women so the 1940 census it's counted by like june as of october 16 1940 on his world war ii draft card he lists his wife as the contact person but
Then I noticed something about the card. His address is scratched out and it's changed on the top. So I suspect they were separated at this point.
because his wife's address remains the same and then just two months later in december 1940 so sometime between that october and december they divorced because on december 2nd 1940 according to the marriage records in sonora mexico he marries dorothy gene harvey and Her first husband, and she was also the first wife of this person, happened to be film director John Houston.
oh wow so dorothy jean harvey married john houston and he married her when they were both 19 years old in los angeles in 1926. and they divorced in 1933. Dorothy now marries George Hodel, but they divorced in 1946. And there's an article in the Hartford Sentinel on the 1st of May, 1946.
saying mrs dorothy hotel 39 was sentenced today to 90 days in jail for allegedly neglecting her children after she testified she was so busy writing two books Poor children, she didn't have time to care for her own. Wow. And the children that they were referring to are Michael. Stephen, the one who ended up writing the book, and Kelvin. There was also a note that she had been arrested for neglect twice before. You might wonder, where was George Hodel? He was in Shanghai.
of course he was he was working as medical director for the unrra which is the united nations relief and rehabilitation administration he returned in september 1946 according to a passenger list of the USS General J. E. Anderson. now i found interesting is she never remarried after the divorce and she lived a number of years later now The case involving Dr. Hodel and his daughter happened in 1949, I believe you said that. So this is a couple years after the Black Dahlia case.
He wasn't really ever considered a suspect in the case until after 1947. And it wasn't until after the rape of his daughter. Now, what I found interesting about this whole... case because i was looking at it as well was that her mother was put up as a witness this would be the first door thing
Ah, it's heartbreaking. The mother testified that she wouldn't believe her daughter under oath. She added that the girl for many years had made charges that men had molested her, saying they were proven false.
wow she testified against her own daughter saying she made up stories that's crazy you gotta wonder if he was if she was still dependent on money from him or something you know now she was remarried at this point So, you wonder... it's fascinating but that was in the Los Angeles Times in December 1949 and there was also a note that
As you noted, Tamar had an abortion and she was pregnant with her own father's child. And two other people were charged with giving her the abortion. And then, like you said... and this is right before christmas he's found not guilty and what i found interesting was that the jury makeup was seven women violent i'm judging them me too Do you wonder if later when all this stuff came out, did they ever look back and go, damn, we did a bad thing? You know? I hope so. I hope so too.
Now, George's father was George Hill Hodel Sr. He was born in 1873 in Odessa, Ukraine, and he died in 1954. He was a life insurance salesman according to the World War I draft, and he arrived in the U.S. May 1901 in New York City, so he probably did come through Ellis Island. and i finally found the record where he arrived it took a little bit and he arrived with his wife Esther Liab on the first Bismarck that departed from Homburg, Germany.
And his name was not originally Hodel. Really? No, no. This is why it took me a little bit to find him. It was Hold Hefter. or it could have been old fester it's hard to tell with the handwriting and it was written in differently a couple places that's interesting and they were nationalized citizens in 1906. and his wife was born in shark garage i think it's shargarad ukraine which was an area filled with russian jews
And I've seen other references that this was a Jewish family. And my guess is that they're coming at that time. There was a lot of persecution of Jews in Russia, and they needed to escape that. And that's what I've got. on Black Dahlia's family and other people involved. You found some really intriguing stuff there. I tried.
wow was there anything that what did you find the most surprising that you found for me i think it was the mayflower because a lot of people will try to claim that they're mayflower descendant but they aren't and it was fascinating and she there's a lot of her family that were soldiers in the Revolutionary War. In fact, one I didn't mention goes back to her grandfather, Charles Turner Sawyer. His mother was Phoebe Turner.
i gotta count this back really quick so we have her grandfather great grandmother great great very great her fourth great-grandfather was abl turner who was born in 1741 in plymouth massachusetts and he was also a revolutionary war soldier was proven by the daughters of the american revolution oh wow and that family happens to be listening, you can become a son of the American Revolution or a daughter.
Because that's one of those proved lines. But there's a lot of them. It's just very deep roots in that community. I think that was the other surprise is how many fishermen and how many sailors. and sea captains they had in this family. Not surprising when you look at the geography of Millbridge.
but still surprising all the same because most of my family is farmer farmer farmer so to me it's like something different it's so exciting and i i do want to add some of my sources i didn't mention yet for wikipedia pilgrim hall museum plymouth patuxet webpage and mayflowerhistory.com Well, thank you so much. I learned a lot today. This was fun.
I had some, it was fun. It was kind of nice to do a different perspective, kind of a fresh air. Granted, how she died wasn't fresh at all, but I kind of like when we can and we won't do this. that often, but giving back that person, their agency, their family, in a positive way, I hope. Because nobody deserves to be murdered, much less like Elizabeth was. Well, and it just, what is so tragic about... is that she had a rough life, but was basically a happy person.
You know, from all accounts. She, you know, okay, she liked to date. Okay, so what? She was, she was 23. I mean, hello. It was after the war. We won the war. Everyone's in a celebratory mood, you know. And she had dreams that would not be denied. And that she ended up the way that she did was purely because of people she just happened to meet. And that it's just so tragic.
well and as somebody recently put and it might have been on this other podcast i listened to you know they try to paint her as a prostitute because she was going on all these dates well whether she was definitely aspiring to be an actress or not she's single money is tight somebody asked you on a date that means a meal so you go And one thing you didn't mention and I forgot about is she had been actually engaged at one point.
Yes. Yeah. I kind of like just brushed over relationships because, you know, there were several people where, you know, she lived with that first guy for a little bit and then they broke up. He reportedly was abused. But you know, the papers, I mean, what they did to her reputation, what they tried to do.
I mean, even some went as far as to say, you know, that she was killed to cover up a botched abortion and she hadn't ever been pregnant. I mean, it was just all this stuff that they felt they could get away with. just to sell newspapers she was actually arrested um around the time that i think she was saying and oh gosh yeah and santa barbara i believe yeah i was first underage drinking like And then they're like,
she's this criminal element and i'm like uh yeah yeah that's like me and my whole generation would have been i was talking about was apparently killed on in a plane crash on his way back from india oh yeah that's right and so that just acts it's like another tragedy she's dealing with and it's just
she had a hard hard life in so many ways and i can't imagine her mother was so strong through all this and you see all these papers and she was really advocating for her daughter the best she could at the time and there were some limits Well, I have to say, you know, she came from some strong stuff because Phoebe was a badass in her own right.
I mean, think about having five small children. You know, you'd been married to a near-to-well as it was. He takes off. It's on you. And she raised them working as a bookkeeper.
right you know and it's like and back then it's not like i mean bookkeepers aren't overpaid now but they really weren't paid very well back then but you know she got those kids she raised those kids and they were basically good girls you know and she never married again she she raised some strong girls some amazing girls as shown by each of her daughters
It seems like the ones that are still living have some happy lives going on, from what I could tell, and strong families. And that came from mom. Well, and even, you know, when people are talking about how, you know, Elizabeth was, well, you know, she was glomming on the men and all this stuff. It's like she had jobs. She was working as a clerk here and there. Did she like to work? Well, she had a little bit of a reputation for being a little lazy.
Okay, well, that's like everybody, right? I'm like that old child. And she was a middle child, always overlooked. But I think it's just a great disservice that the press did to her. But this really was a case of everybody's trying to sell newspapers and they didn't mind completely tearing apart a young woman and her family in order to sell these papers. Well, yeah, they were trying to blame her for her own murder instead of...
We're linking at who did it, which is so indicative of how female victims could be treated especially at that time but i think part of it was you know they've been at the war they're going it was a news story it was a slow news period and this was an outrageous act it wasn't your typical shot in the back alley type of story this was something unseen really before yeah so It's fascinating. So I look forward to getting back to a serial killer.
and i've already worked on it a little bit and i'm getting ready to really go back at it and revisit it and start putting down notes so i we can discuss it but we're gonna probably touch on glenn edward rogers next i've not even heard of this person this is exciting Yeah, he's actually been linked in recent years to possibly being involved in the Nicole Brown Simpson. Really? Yeah, the police aren't taking that link very seriously, but according to his own brother, he thinks he was involved.
Well, people are turning their relatives over left and right in these things, man. If it's not your brother, it's your kids. so that one will be interesting so i look forward to meeting up with you again i'm doing this soon sounds lovely you have a good night now you too Thank you for joining us today. If you enjoyed our podcast, subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And leave us a good review so more people find us. You can also find us on social media as well as our website, Murderous Ruth.
or murder and family.