94 - Elizabeth Short: The Enduring Legend of the Black Dahlia

[00:00:05] At the intersection of true crime and real estate, you'll find Crime Estate. I'm Heather. And my name is Elena. As real estate agents and true crime junkies, we view crimes through a different lens. So walk through the door of some of the most notorious true crimes with us and discover how sometimes the scene of the crime has its own story to tell. Well, hey, y'all. Welcome back to what feels like a new season of Crime Estate.

[00:00:32] We sort of inadvertently took the summer off, not on purpose. We just, between schedules, we just couldn't make it happen. But our kids are back in school. In Melanie's case, one has even flown the nest and is starting college. And we're all sort of back into our quote unquote normal routines. Yeah. If real estate agents had a normal schedule, but it's still good to be back in a routine. Yeah. That's good. But I do miss the lazy summer mornings. Yeah, I do too. I do too.

[00:01:00] Well, the summer was fun because we all traveled to at least one location that we've covered on the show, not on purpose. We've just done a lot of shows. But we found ourselves there and it was really interesting to see some of the houses in person that we've only seen in pictures up until now. Yeah. I think we should say this is everybody's cue to go follow us on social media because we're going to be sharing some of our favorite behind the scenes pics from our, let's call it our Crime Estate property tour this week.

[00:01:29] You know, you can find us on Instagram and Reddit and yes, Facebook, because of course we're old just by searching Crime Estate Podcast. We even did a little happy hour tutorial for today's drink, which is served at the Biltmore Hotel. Do you say it's called the Millennium, Millennial Bar? Millennium Bar? Millennial, Millennial, Millennial. Okay. The bar at the Biltmore Hotel serves a drink called the Black Dahlia. And so we gave you all a little tutorial on how to make it if you want to go find us on social media.

[00:01:57] You should definitely follow along, see all the fun behind the scenes. Yeah. So, okay. For anyone new here, the whole premise of the show is that we tell true crime stories with an emphasis and exploration of property at the center of the crime. The house can be a character in the story. Sometimes the house is the victim. And today, today the house might be the accomplice or completely innocent. We really can't decide. Today we're covering an infamous crime set against the backdrop of the grandeur of 1940s Hollywood.

[00:02:24] So, I have listened to so many other podcasts and read so much about this case over the summer. And it's fascinating because, like you said, not only is it still unsolved, but the victim actually wasn't found at the house that's the center of the story. So, here's my first of what I'm sure will be a lot of questions that I'm going to have and our listeners are going to have throughout this episode. Like, if the body was found across town, why is the house so famous? And it really is.

[00:02:52] Totally. But that's the exact knot we're going to untie on this episode because this is the suspect's house, not the crime scene, or was it? And the suspect was never even charged. So, we've got a stigma associated with the property, but no conviction attached to it. Yeah, that's really interesting that it's how loose, you know, quote unquote loose tied. But if you research anything about the story, this house also comes up on it.

[00:03:20] So, you're right. It may actually be tied. It may just be rumor mill, but it is definitely many years later associated with it. A quick tidbit before we dive in. This case generated over 150 suspects, dozens of false confessions. People lined up to say they did it. I mean, it's so weird.

[00:03:44] I mean, there's a, we are still talking about this story how many decades later. And I saw, there was like some news articles just the other day about it. So, this is a bizarre story. We're not going to do it justice in like every single suspect. But, you know, so when we say suspect, this is a crowded category. Right. Thanks, Mel. Well, so let's, ready? Yeah. Okay. Let's get started. So, before she was the black Dahlia, she was Elizabeth.

[00:04:14] So, let's start there. Elizabeth Short was born on July 29th, 1924, just outside Boston. And it was a third of five girls born to Cleo Alvin Short Jr. and Phoebe May Short. Cleo, Elizabeth's father, built mini golf courses during the 1920s, but lost everything after the stock market crash of 1929. In 1930, his car was found abandoned on the Charlestown Bridge in Boston. And it was assumed that he had jumped into the Charles River, ending his own life. Phoebe May became a bookkeeper to support the family.

[00:04:43] However, in 1942, 12 years after he was presumed dead, Phoebe received a letter from Cleo. He apologized and informed her that he was, in fact, alive and had started a new life in California. Why? Why? Messed up. Like, you've already decided to do this thing. Nobody ever needs to know. Nobody is going to be better because you have sent this letter. Right. Yeah. Yeah, this is a sense of having some sort of guilt many years later.

[00:05:11] So, if you think about it, though, he jumped, well, we know he didn't jump, air quotes jumped, in 1930. And if you think about it, in 1929 was the stock market crash. And when there was so many of these businessmen suicides. And so, it was very plausible at the time. 12 years later, 1942, World War II. Who knows? Maybe he's feeling nostalgic.

[00:05:38] Maybe he's feeling, you know, patriotic and a sense of guilt. You know, I don't know. But here, Phoebe May has left to, like, raise five children on her own in the middle of the Great Depression. Yeah, that's awesome. It's a real jerk move. I don't like it. Real jerk move. So, at the age of 18, Elizabeth decided to move to California to reunite with the dad she had not seen since she was six. Well, and from what I've read on Elizabeth, she didn't just make this move to, like, get to know her dad again. Though, I'm sure that was appealing.

[00:06:08] I mean, if she hadn't seen him since she was six. Apparently, she had some pretty serious respiratory issues. So much so that she had lung surgery as a child. Which, I imagine in, like, the 1930s, they did not do unless it was very serious. And her doctors recommended that she live in a warm, dry climate. Yeah, you're totally right. As a child, she would spend school breaks and winters with friends in Miami for her health. While the climate in California was good for her, the relationship with her father was not. And that living arrangement was short-lived.

[00:06:37] Cleo expected her to move to L.A. and keep house for him. Not exactly what she had dreamed of. So, in 1943, and with a job as a waitress, Elizabeth moved out onto her own in sunny Southern California. Yeah. Well, and can you move to L.A. and not be an aspiring actress? Was the fame and fortune of Hollywood ultimately her goal? Well, maybe. Yes.

[00:07:02] I mean, to be quite honest, there's no record of her ever having any acting jobs or credits in L.A. I mean, I think that the public perception of a young woman in the L.A. region at this time is, of course, they're aspiring actress. Of course, they are. I mean, maybe she was, but there's no evidence.

[00:07:27] She had a lot of run-of-the-mill random jobs along the way. So, she was young and beautiful and living near Hollywood. So, the aspiring starlet thing is, it seems to be more something that the papers built up later. And I think that's going to be a theme with this story is the press and lurid details and, you know, bending of the truth. Yeah. Right, Mel.

[00:07:56] Well, so much of what people know about her isn't true. The press also painted her as a call girl, but there was no evidence for that either. They built a character. They needed tragic glamour girl lurid details, so they wrote one. It's really sad and dark. You know, she doesn't really even get to be her own self in her own murder story, really. That's such a great way to put it. That's such a great way to put it. She became a brand, which we'll get to this, is the same thing that happened to the house. A real person in a real house got buried under a narrative and catchy nickname.

[00:08:25] And the nickname came after she was gone. She'd never heard it. The Black Dahlia was a press invention. One of the historians who runs an L.A. tour said it best. She almost had a chance to grow up here and live and be happy. The least we can do is keep her a person. That's a really nice sentiment. And it sounds like the press sort of came up with this moniker for her as a play on a movie that had just recently been released. You know, we love to talk movies if you've listened to any of our previous episodes.

[00:08:50] And so this movie was called The Blue Dahlia, which was a post-war film noir that was very popular at the time. Have you seen it, Melanie? I have not. Okay. So Elizabeth's hair was also jet black. And it didn't really take more than that for the press to rebrand her for eternity as the Black Dahlia. And so I had to look up last night what exactly is a Dahlia because I was like, I think it's a flower. But I was like, I don't 100% know. And yes, it is a flower. It's a perennial.

[00:09:18] It comes from Mexico and Central America. And it's typically a very bright colored flower. But there is some very rare, you know, varieties that are the black. And really black is a bit of a misnomer. It's more of a really dark maroon. Interesting. I just had to confirm myself because I was like, I think I know what it is. But I'm not entirely certain. Oh, a deep maroon like our drinks. Oh. Like the Vagdalia drinks. Yes. I've added a little water to mine.

[00:09:46] But don't you think this tastes like a lemon iced tea? Oh. A very alcoholic lemon iced tea. I could see that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. It's very good. I liked your drink. Thank you. And I loved being greeted as I walked in the house with it. Welcome. Do what we can. That's Southern hospitality. Yes, yes. Okay. So let's talk about the actual crime. Well, let me back up even more and talk about the days leading up to the crime.

[00:10:14] By December of 1946, Elizabeth is couch surfing in San Diego, staying with a mother and daughter, Dorothy and Elvira French. They'd basically taken pity on her, offered her a place to land for a few days, but she ended up staying up a few months. It sounds like she was one of those house guests a lot of places. She, like, from what I've read, like, she couch surfed a lot and just, like, wherever anybody would let her hang until she couldn't pay rent or anything anymore. She kind of was. And that matters because it kind of tells you where her life was. Yeah.

[00:10:44] She wasn't doing much around the house. She was out late dating, keeping her own hours. And by early January, the French family had enough and were ready for her to move on. Okay. So she's out of couches. She's out of welcome mats. I'm presuming she's out of money. Pretty much. And this is where she meets him. A traveling salesman named Robert Manley. Everybody called him Red for his hair. And Red is important because Red is the last person we can prove saw Elizabeth Short alive. So remember his name. Yeah. Okay. Tidbit, tidbit on Red.

[00:11:14] He was married and his wife was pregnant at home, you know, of course. He later admitted he was attracted to Elizabeth but always insisted that they never actually slept together. Married salesman, pregnant wife who insists nothing happened. Totally sounds on the up and up. Although, from what I've heard, Elizabeth did not, like, really put out a lot. A lot of men wanted to have sex with her and she found polite ways to say no.

[00:11:42] That's the impression I got as well. Also seems like maybe why she was kicked out of some houses. Like, they thought she was going to be their nice house guest. Right. Yeah. With favors that she was not. Gotcha. Yep. Yep. I can see where you're going with that. So we can follow Elizabeth Short almost hour by hour right up until a single evening. And then she vanishes for six days. So let's walk the countdown. Yeah. January 7th, 1947. This one comes from their French family.

[00:12:12] So treat it as reported, not gospel. But supposedly, two men and a woman came to the door. And the eerie part, Elizabeth saw them and wouldn't open the door. Whoever they were, they rattled her. She didn't explain. And it's right after that, she picks up the phone and asks Red Manley to come and get her. That's really chilling. I think I'd missed that part of the story. Do we have any idea who they are? Nobody knows. It may be nothing, but if it's true, it means something spooked her in the last week of her life and we never found out what.

[00:12:41] January 8th, Manley drives down and picks her up at the French house. He pays for a hotel room that night and they go to a party. According to Manley, quote, nothing happened that night. Sure. He says he slept on the bed and she slept in a chair. Which, jerk. Yeah. What a jerk. Oh. I mean, to be fair, he is paying for the hotel room. Well, still. Some versions say she slept in her clothes. Whatever the arrangement, that's the story. Two people in a room and a lot of distance between them.

[00:13:09] He's really committed to that detail. Anyway, go on. Yeah. That's certainly the story that Red's sticking to, which takes us up to January 9th. This is the last day you can actually account for her. Around 12.20 in the afternoon, they leave the motel and start to drive up to Los Angeles. Reportedly, Red notices scratches on her arm and he asks her about them. She told him, reportedly, that she had a jealous boyfriend. An Italian man with dark hair. Now, was that true? Was it a deflection? Was it nothing?

[00:13:39] We'll never know. But days before her death, someone noticed marks on her. And the only explanation we have is a story she told to a married traveling car salesman. And do you think that the scratches were there when he picked her up from the house or they came later? Do you have any idea? I don't, but that's a good point because that would have been, well, at least a day. I'm going to make an assumption. Okay. That Red is looking at her very closely. Okay.

[00:14:05] And probably would have noticed any scratches that were there when he picked her up at the house. But, I mean, he had been with her. They had been together the entire time. Unless she ran into somebody at the party. I mean, and we're also hearing so much, though, in hindsight 2020. And remember, this is revisionist history that he's telling the story. That's true. In a way that's going to make him look the best and to deflect blame as much as possible. That's true. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. But, yes.

[00:14:35] So, they get to L.A. And this, I thought, was interesting. She checks her luggage at the bus station. So, we don't really know where theoretically she's supposed to be going. But she's putting her luggage at the bus station because she has been kicked out of the French house. And that's another important detail is nobody is looking for her in the sense of, you know, no roommate is expecting her to be coming home. She's really kind of flying by the seat of her pants.

[00:15:02] And she tells Red that she's going to meet her sister at the Biltmore Hotel. And Red walks her into the Biltmore Lobby. He leaves around 630 in the evening to, you know, to get home to his wife and his, you know. Good, respectable husband. Yes, exactly.

[00:15:20] And the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel that evening of January 9th, 1947 is very nearly the last time anyone who knew her saw her. And before we talk about the night, I just wanted to pause because, you know, I love to set the scene a bit. The Biltmore Hotel, which is still around, was the place to be at that time in downtown L.A.

[00:15:44] And this 70,000 square foot, amazing Art Deco Mansion Hotel featured Spanish, Italian, Renaissance, Moorish detailing throughout with lavish high beams, wonderful ceilings. Anyway, at that time, the Biltmore was considered L.A.'s most elegant hotel. It actually hosted the Academy Awards in the 30s and the 40s.

[00:16:09] So, back to that night, Elizabeth was known to hang out at the Biltmore Hotel. So, she was recognized by some of the people that worked there. This was not the first time she had been there. But what we know importantly, she was not there to meet her sister. Now, we don't know if she was using that as an excuse to give to Red, to get rid of Red. You know, who knows? But that's what she told him.

[00:16:34] And she actually had a habit of apparently using her sister to get out of some social situations. So, anyway, last confirmed sighting, staff and guests reported seeing her making phone calls in the lobby, although it was never determined who she was trying to contact. The employees confirmed they saw her alone and saw her get up and leave as if she was signaled by someone outside around 10 p.m.

[00:16:58] The bell cappin opened the door for Elizabeth and she exited the hotel alone and walked south onto Olive Street in the dark. And then, like... Nothing. And then nothing for six days, a little bit short, simply disappears from the record. January 9th to January 15th is the missing week. Okay. So, nobody claims they saw her between January 9th and January 15th. Like, this pretty girl in L.A. Right.

[00:17:28] Yeah. Okay. And nobody was looking for her during that time. That's the other thing, is nobody was looking for her. She had just vanished. I mean, nobody knew she was missing. Yeah. But here's a detail I want you to sit with because it changes the whole shape of the story. When they found her, the chief autopsy surgeon estimated she had been killed less than 24 hours before she was discovered. So, she was found on the 15th. Correct. Okay.

[00:17:54] So, if she had been killed less than 24 hours before she was discovered, then she wasn't killed on the 9th. Right. Like, she had been kept somewhere. Alive for most of that missing week. Okay. Okay. That feels worse somehow than, like, a random attack. It's the worst version. I can't even imagine what that poor girl went through in that week. Okay. No. Mm-mm. Um, so, let's focus on what we, what we know.

[00:18:20] And trigger warning, the details I'm about to share are hard to hear, and I'll handle this in the way we always do, plainly, once, with respect, and then we'll keep moving on. Okay. On the morning of January 15th, 1947, a young mother is out walking with her little girl in Leimert Park, which was a master-planned community of houses and parks that was just taking off in the late 40s. Part of the neighborhood has newer residential houses, and part of it was Steelfield, to be developed at a later date.

[00:18:46] The area was fairly infamous for collecting trash and other discarded items, so when Betty Bursinger initially walked by, she saw what she thought was a discarded mannequin at first. Then she got closer. It was Elizabeth. Her naked body had been very deliberately, very brutally mutilated and posed and hid in the weeds of the abandoned lot, 12 feet from the street. The level of precision made investigators think the killer might have had medical or anatomical training. Her body was completely severed at the waist and drained of all blood.

[00:19:15] Her face was slashed from the corners of her mouth from ear to ear, resulting in what is known as the glass gal smile. The lower half of her body was found about a foot away from the top. Her body was posed with her hands over her head, elbows bent at a 90-degree angle, and legs spread apart in what would have resembled a risque pose from a men's magazine of that time period. According to the medical examiner, the cut across her face, which went from the corner of her mouth up to her ear, was done while she was alive. When she was discovered, she had been dead for 10 to 12 hours.

[00:19:45] Upon autopsy, it was determined that Elizabeth's body had been severed using a medical technique taught in medical school in the late 1940s called a hemicorporectomy. So, presumably, this would have been done by someone with advanced medical training. Now, there are some pretty gruesome details on the same of her body that I won't go into here, but if anyone is interested in those details, they're easily found doing a quick Google search. Yeah, but I want to talk about this procedure for a minute because I think it's really important.

[00:20:12] The hemicorporectomy, like, without getting into more gruesome details, this technique was fairly new. It actually wasn't even performed until the 1960s. So, they were teaching it in medical school in the 40s, but nobody had actually done it in surgery until the 60s. And it's very intricate. Essentially, it allows someone to dissect a person into two parts while still preserving vital life functions,

[00:20:40] meaning that people can survive after the entire half of their body is removed, including their legs, their pelvis, their genitalia, etc. And the surgery is performed by cutting between either the L4 and L5 or the L5 and S1, and the doctor transects the spinal cord. So, this would have been, like, a very deliberate, very timely procedure.

[00:21:03] Even if there was no intent to keep the patient, or in this case, the victim alive afterwards, there's no way this was done at the park. It would have taken substantial time to complete. Right, yeah. And knowledge. Exactly, exactly. Police concluded that she was killed somewhere else and then placed in the lot. Her body had not only been washed and moved, but, as I mentioned, it had been drained of all her blood. The scene on Norton Avenue is where she was found, not where she died.

[00:21:31] In fact, beyond her body, the police didn't find much at the crime scene at all. Not too far away, they found empty cement bags with some traces of blood on them, but they didn't find her purse, any ID, or any other personal effects to help them figure out who the victim was, which may have been one of the reasons the press was so quick to give her a clever nickname. I didn't realize how grotesque this was. Wow, that was a lot to take in. There's actually more that, and if I'm not going to talk about it, it's got to be bad. Oh my God.

[00:22:01] If you want to Google search it, it's pretty horrific. The Glasgow smile, that kind of settled in my imagination because I looked it up to see what it was. And honestly, it's the Joker. When you imagine what the comic book, the movie Joker is, where they had the scars from their smile up to their ears into a grotesque smile.

[00:22:27] It was done in the 1920s and 30s in Glasgow by gangs as a way of revenge on people. So that's where it comes from. But I thought that was bad enough when I was picturing it in my head, imagining the smile. I obviously did not imagine any of this dissection. Okay, well, one more tidbit on the investigation was, I mean, obviously, it was wild. It was a circus.

[00:22:55] And reporters reportedly trampled the crime scene. And at one point, they were literally answering tip-line phones at LAPD. It's crazy. It's crazy. The journalism at that time is crazy just in general. And obviously, the press contaminated the case from the get-go. An article I read in The Guardian said, the day after Short's body was found, the L.A. examiner sold more copies than it had any other day,

[00:23:25] except when it announced the L.A. victory in the Second World War. Sales were fueled by the tawdry way the tabloid press covered Short. As a street-walking, sexualized young thing, the rumors that she was a prostitute were untrue. And as a childhood friend later recalled, it was just horrible the way she was betrayed. It really was. Not only were reporters answering the LAPD tip-line and walking through the evidence, they were printing rumors as fact.

[00:23:53] And while it's apparent that the reporters were not necessarily helping identify the suspect, they did help identify the victim. One of the reporters suggested using their new fax machine to send her fingerprints to the FBI. And sure enough, the FBI had a match as Elizabeth was briefly arrested by the Santa Barbara police for underage drinking seven months earlier. And in what had to be one of the more horrific aspects of what the media was doing, one reporter tracked down Elizabeth's mother, called her on the phone,

[00:24:21] and told her Elizabeth had won a beauty pageant. The reporter asked for background information on Elizabeth, and only after he had this did he tell her mother that Elizabeth was actually found dead, had been murdered. That's horrible. It's really messed up. Yeah. Not a lot of journalistic integrity there. No, not at all. I mean, so at this time, the nickname that we now identify Elizabeth with, the Black Dahlia, was theoretically given to her by the Los Angeles Herald Express crime reader,

[00:24:52] Bevo Means, that's a name, due to her raven-colored hair and her preferred attire. Other reports said that multiple journalists used the nickname to refer to her because that was a joking nickname for her in Long Beach based upon her raven-colored hair. And obviously the movie that, you know, you, Heather, you mentioned earlier. You know, we don't really know where she got the nickname, but that's what she was in the press. Right. Yeah.

[00:25:19] And none of this over-involvement by the press was helpful at all. It only served to fuel a frenzy around the story, which elicited dozens of false confessions. Over 150 suspects, like Mel mentioned earlier, and no arrest to date. And this is one of the oldest cold cases in Los Angeles County. So, okay. So we know a lot about where her mutilated body was found, but we still don't know about the house or how the house even came into play, given that at this point, what we know, we don't have a main suspect. Right.

[00:25:48] And that's perfect timing because we have two different real estate pieces that over time were the same headline as being at the center of the Black Dahlia murder. But because we're making this story a multi-episode, we will dive much more into the primary suspect. But let me tell you a teeny tiny bit about the story of George Hodel. Okay. Dr. George Hodel was a prominent LA physician who owned 5121 Franklin Avenue, Los Angeles, California, or the Southern House, as it was known between 1945 and 1950. At that time, he was not publicly named a suspect,

[00:26:18] but it later emerged that the LAPD had in fact investigated him seriously to the point of wiretapping his phone. Interesting. So he's a real person of interest, but like quietly decades before the public name. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. That's interesting considering how much the press was like trying to beat everybody to the story and they just kept this very quiet. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So the theory that made the house famous comes from Steve Hodel, George's own son and a retired LAPD homicide detective.

[00:26:46] In his 2003 book, Black Dahlia Avenger, he argued his father tortured and killed short inside the Southern House in January 1947, pointing to circumstantial evidence, alleged connections, and interpretations of surrealist photographs he believed showed short. Many credible researchers and LA crime historians do not buy the basement theory. The LAPD never charged Hodel and the case is still officially unsolved. Wow. Wow. Okay.

[00:27:12] So basically George Hodel is a legitimate, fascinating suspect who was, we know now, generally investigated. Um, but the claim that the murder happened in this specific house is a son's theory that has never been substantiated. Um, so both of these things are factual. Right. And it's interesting that he was a retired investigator. So on one hand you're like, oh, like he may have been more attuned to these things.

[00:27:41] But then on the other hand is, you know, is he putting himself in the middle of a, you know, like a crime? Because it just seems like interesting. Well, those are all great questions and we're going to be breaking them down in part two where we dig only into George Hodel because it is a fascinating deep dive. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I want to talk about the other suspects, but I really want to talk about the Southern house. Yeah, we should. Very quickly. And not just as the potential Black Dahlia murder house, um, but because it's a masterpiece. And listen to this pedigree.

[00:28:12] Designed by Lloyd Wright, an eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1926, it is considered one of Lloyd Wright's most important works. When he died, the LA Times basically called it the peak of his residential career. So I guess I didn't realize that Frank Lloyd Wright had multiple sons. I mean, I know we covered him. Yeah. Okay. So like we do on a lot of our episodes, I love it when we have ties to other episodes and other houses.

[00:28:41] So yes. So, um, I'd be remiss for our listeners to not remember one of, we've done one of the coolest stories or at least most interesting story. If you like true crime and you like history and you like really important architecture on our episode 15, we covered Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, which is a famous one of his masterpieces of homes that he built.

[00:29:07] And the murders that actually occurred there with his family. Right. So I, I remember his second wife's children were killed there, but I guess I just forgot he had kids. So because with his first wife, he had a couple. And so his oldest son was, um, uh, Lloyd Wright and he ended up being a landscape architect or an irregular architect.

[00:29:33] Um, and he was, I think a set designer in LA with Paramount. And so that was, um, house, um, Salden, uh, which the name of the house is, um, named after had met him.

[00:29:47] And so that's how he, um, was tied into, uh, and I also wanted to mention like a randomness that I also recently heard somewhere completely different that the second son, um, was called John Lloyd Wright because, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright was nothing if not egotistical. And like to name all these, um, sons after himself. Like Mike Tyson. Yes. No, no, not Mike Tyson. You're thinking of George, uh, George, the, the grill guy. George Foreman. Oh, yes. He did do that.

[00:30:17] That's right. He did do that. Sorry. Random, random factoid. George Foreman grew up in my hometown. Oh, we are taking the random facts down the rabbit hole of random facts. So all the Georges went to school with my, my siblings. Uh, but yes. So, okay. So then the second son was called John Lloyd Wright. And he also was an architect as well. And it, and apparently it ran in the family, not just the name, but the career.

[00:30:44] And he had been working with his dad, although he got into fights with his dad. Shocking. Exactly. And this Lloyd Wright became famous as the inventor of the children's toy Lincoln Long. I love that. Yeah. So he had been working with his dad on some architecture in Japan. Remember how Frank Lloyd Wright was fascinated with Japanese architecture and the, the building and the, the way that they put the logs together.

[00:31:12] And so he then made a children's toy out of all that. You can always count on Melanie to bring the fun facts. I love it. So random. Um, but yes. Um, okay. So, uh, I just thought that was kind of a neat, uh, segue. Totally. Totally. So the style of this house is unique and unforgettable. The style is considered to be a Mayan revival built from these ornamented textile style concrete bricks.

[00:31:39] It's the same family of technique his father used right nearby at the Ennis house and the Hollyhock house. Oh yeah. So fun geography fact, uh, the Southern house sits between two of the senior Frank Lloyd Wright landmarks. Um, and people say it is one of the only spots where you can stand at one right house and set, see another one. That's cool. What a neighborhood. I love that. Well, do you also know what was just down the block from this house?

[00:32:09] I'll give you a hint. It's LA. Episode 14. Oh, what did we do right before that? Was that the house up on the hill with all the hoarding stuff that happened in it? What was that called? Los Feliz Mansion. That's right. So. Oh, that makes sense because we have a quote later on from the Los Feliz realtor. Okay. Yeah. So they were, they're only six minutes apart.

[00:32:34] So if you go to LA and you do any of these horror, horrid, uh, like crime tours that they stop at both of these houses. So, um, so listeners check out, uh, our old episodes 14 and 15. That's right. I like it. Uh, okay. So this house again. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. We can go back to this house. You keep trying to tell us about it and we're like, wait, but let's talk about this. Um, so the facade is a showstopper.

[00:33:02] There's a dramatic zigzag stone entrance, depending on who's looking at it. It reads as a Mayan temple or as the open jaws of a great white shark. When I was researching the story, I kept seeing places refer to it as the jaws house. And I was like, is jaws building there? I don't, but like, yeah, once you said that, I was like, Oh yeah, it, I can see to me. It looks like an Indiana Jones Mayan temple, not a shark, but I can see that. Well, when I was reading about it, it was called Mayan revival.

[00:33:29] Um, as the architecture saw, which I did not, I think was actually a thing, but when you look at a picture of this house, um, yeah, that's like a Mayan temple. Yes. Yeah. But yeah, I also completely see why they call it the jaws house. Um, you listeners, you could just got to look at a picture of this house. It's so interesting. Uh, you can watch us on YouTube and see it right now. Oh yeah.

[00:33:53] Uh, anyway, you walk through the sculpted copper gate and up this narrow, almost tomb like staircase into the home. Tomb like, not words we use to describe a house very often, not going in the listing description, but you're right. That's sort of what it looks like. It totally does. But the thing is, it wasn't built to be sinister at all. It was built in 1926 for a fun, loving artsy Hollywood couple, John and Ruth Salden, who wanted a theatrical show place for open air parties and performances.

[00:34:22] Lloyd Wright was designing film sets at the time and you can feel it. The whole house wraps around a central courtyard that was literally staged for an audience. I love that. Specs include roughly 5,600 to 6,000 square feet, about seven bedrooms, four baths, four wings around an absolutely stunning courtyard. It was added to the national register of historic places in 1971. Not only did it look like a TV set, it had been one for years. TV and film buffs may be familiar with this property as Ava Gardner's house in The Aviator

[00:34:50] or as a setting for a television series called I Am The Night, which has a tie to the story. Or, you know, on the set of season six, America's Next Top Model, the broad ranges of uses for this property. And speaking of beautiful women, I think this is the perfect spot to talk about our new sponsor. Yeah. No, good tie-in. Hey, Elena, can we talk about real estate influencers on Instagram for just a minute? Like, who are these women? They are stepping out of a luxury listing and a blazer and three-inch heels.

[00:35:20] And their hair is perfect. Like, not a drop of sweat anywhere. Yeah. And they're full glam. It's 2 p.m. It's hot in Texas. It's ridiculous. And then there's me. I'm, like, running from a showing to another appointment. I am, like, sweating through my blazer. My makeup and my mascara is, like, all down my face. I've already pulled my hair up in a bun because it's too hot to wear it down. So, yeah, I just, I don't understand who these people are. Yeah. Well, you're not alone. We have our car napkins, like, dabbing our face.

[00:35:48] Like the extra Chick-fil-A napkins that you just keep after you get your kids dinner at 9 p.m. Sure. Kids. Us. Yeah. But you know what Instagram realtors all have in common? They look rested and their foreheads are smooth. Meanwhile, my face has documented every difficult client I've ever had. Same. Same. I feel that for you. But this is why we're really excited about our partnership with La Lumiere Aesthetics.

[00:36:14] You can use the code THEGLOWCASE for $50 off your first neurotoxin appointment or 10% off any aesthetic service when you go to their website and book at la lumiereaesthetics.com. Of course, we'll link all that in the show notes. Because, you know, we may not have a photographer following us around every afternoon during golden hour, but we can at least show up to our next appointment looking rested. Yeah.

[00:36:38] So Dallas ladies, like Heather said, go to la lumiereaesthetics.com and use the code THEGLOWCASE. And if you're not in Dallas, same code works online for discounted skincare because a middle-aged struggle is universal and we are all in this together. That's right. So to every woman blotting her face in a hot car between appointments, this one's for you. We see you. We are you. Now go get your glow up. Okay. Back to real estate. Because we know you guys love that as much as your Botox.

[00:37:06] As cool as this house is, when these concrete block houses were new, critics hated them and called them cheap. Now there's some of the most celebrated homes in Los Angeles. The house had to survive being unfashionable and being infamous. In an article by real estate agent Debbie Fissaro on her website, losfeelessliving.com, Debbie writes, the blocks themselves were the cheapest material available at a time. Patterned concrete cast on site and stacked into the ornamented walls, a method close to the textile block system Lloyd Wright had helped his father build elsewhere in Los Angeles.

[00:37:36] Contemporary critics mock the idea of building an upscale home out of concrete, calling it a poor material dressed up as luxury. Opinion reversed completely. The textile block houses the Wrights built in the 1920s are now among the most studied residential landmarks in Los Angeles. And the Saturn house is the clearest statement of the whole experiment. So let's talk numbers. Between 1930 and 1945, the home was owned by various private owners. And in 1945, George Hodel purchased the home for $38,500.

[00:38:06] In 2001, it's listed at about $1.575 million. A designer named Zoran Bales buys it for around $1.2 million. He literally called it a wreck. Then he pours roughly $1.6 million into restoring it. He opened up the kitchen and added upscales bathrooms, which people liked. But he also dropped a pool and spa right into the historic central courtyard. Lloyd Wright's own son, Eric, praised the kitchen and landscaping, but called the courtyard pool a mistake because it broke up the original performance space.

[00:38:35] I mean, that is really hard to make any change to a historic landmark. I do feel like putting a hot tub in the middle of a Lloyd Wright courtyard feels wrong. But you know, that's just me. Yeah. You and everybody else. Everybody else. The home sells again in 2013 for an undisclosed amount. Then in 2017, it's on the market for around $4.7 million and bought by the philanthropist founders of a pet wellness company to use it as an event and fundraising space.

[00:39:03] Finally, in 2022, the home was purchased by Nate Van Chagar, whose family owns downtown Los Angeles Grand Central Market for $6.16 million. Track that with me. We're roughly 1.2 in 2001 to $4.7 million by 2017 and then $6 million in 2022. But with some like major renovations and restorations in there plus landmark status, you've got notoriety.

[00:39:32] All three of these like seem to push the value up for sure. Yeah. I don't know if I saw that coming because too often murder houses usually mean a discount. Yeah. In a lot of markets, yes. A stigmatized property can sit longer or sell well under comparable homes. You'll see a range from like 10 to 50 percent under. Yeah. That's a conventional wisdom, but not here. In LA, the notoriety becomes an amenity. The house works as a film and event location because of its aura and the legend pays the mortgage.

[00:40:00] I mean, I can see that like the dark story really ties in well with the style of the house too. Like the two marry very well. It's not like this is a very traditional, you know, Tudor home or something like that. Like it feels sort of dark. Right. And scary. And so, you know, it's almost like the style plus the story turns this house into like really a revenue stream. Right. Yeah, exactly. When it's managed right, it seems so.

[00:40:30] And remember, this is the alleged suspect's old home, not the documented crime scene. The stigma is associative, not the side of it. And it happened to attach to a house gorgeous and famous enough to absorb it. Yeah, I think it's a one of a kind house that there's no blood that's been found. There's nothing. It's more just iconic versus necessarily. Well, and there aren't any crime scene photos in the house, right? Like you're not looking at the living room with a dead body inside.

[00:41:00] You are. It's it's all supposition. And it's interesting that in all the people that have bought it, it seems at least in the last 20 some odd years, it's not a family house. It's being used for event spaces or businesses. It's not what you know, you're raising small kids. Yeah, for sure. OK. OK. Disclosure question because someone's going to DM us.

[00:41:26] If you were listing this in California, would you legally have to disclose anything? Well, that's a good question. And everyone hear this. We're agents in Texas. We're not attorneys. This is editorial. All the things. All the things. Check what you're doing right now. Well, generally in California, a death on a property is a disclosable material fact if it happened within three years of the sale. So there are nuances, but that's the gist.

[00:41:51] OK, so that's completely not related to this because a 1947 death is way outside the window and even more an unproven 1947 death connection further out. Right. Right. So even if you did believe every word of the basement theory, it wouldn't trip California's disclosure clock today. It's not a paperwork problem. Yeah.

[00:42:14] But I mean, look, not to like beat a dead horse because we've said this before, but our theory is always like disclose, disclose, disclose. That's what we preach to our clients, because even if you don't have to, sometimes you should. And people are going to find it out on Google or they're going to talk to the neighbors and, you know, just do the right thing. Totally. Totally. You know, I think if a client handed me this listing, like this death isn't the headache about this house. Like it's almost 80 years old.

[00:42:44] It's unproven. But people are going to find out about it. So I think you have to figure out how to tell the story of this house, like out narrate the potential death. You make the architecture the story before, you know, you're like the Internet makes the murder story. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Whole episode in two sentences. Oh, good job. I'm glad I've drawn that up for you. So what does the house do with all this? It does the boldest thing possible. It leans all the way in.

[00:43:12] It's a sought after a filming location and event venue right now. The current owners have basically said they want to take this wild history and use it in a positive way by sharing the house with the community and host fundraisers. I mean, it's kind of brilliant, honestly. Instead of like running from this legend, they've monetized it. They pointed it at charity. And to your point earlier, Mel, like this is not a family house. Like somebody is going to have to do something unique with this property. So they're probably doing the best thing they possibly can with it. It has a pretty good website. Oh, OK. Yeah.

[00:43:40] And the pop culture footprint has kept it alive, too. The film, TV, music videos, the whole paranormal show circuit treating it as haunted. Every one of those keeps it searchable and keeps it mythic. It's sort of that same playbook as like Lizzie Borden's house, you know, because they made that into a bed and breakfast. Right. It's like you're already branded by this crime. So let's lean into it and figure out how we can make it work for us, you know.

[00:44:07] And I think despite the fact that like the whole brand of this comes from George Hodel, who was a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder, that there are still a lot of other suspects that are tied to this crime, too. So it's like you're not even a sure thing that anything happened. Right. Yeah. And like you said, we're going to talk about this more in the second episode, but just to briefly touch on it, it should come as no surprise that the last person to see her alive is an obvious suspect. And that was Robert Red Manley because he dropped her off. Good old Red.

[00:44:37] Yeah, old Red dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel. The police gave him a polygraph test, which he passed, and never could find any other evidence to tie him to the case or the crime beyond the fact that he had dropped Elizabeth off at the hotel. And he didn't have the medical training to do so precisely cut her body in two. While it's unclear if Red struggled with his mental health prior to Elizabeth's murder, the rest of his life was plagued by psychiatric episodes. In 1954, his wife, who I guess stayed with him even though he's picking up strange women on street corners, had him committed for hearing voices.

[00:45:07] While there, the doctors gave him sodium pentothal? I think it's, yes, sodium pentothal. Yeah. Otherwise known as truth serum and asked him about Elizabeth Short. His story didn't waver. Red passed away on January 9th, 1986, exactly 39 years to the day after he dropped Elizabeth Short at the Biltmore Hotel. That's sort of an eerie coincidence, don't you think? Super eerie. Oh. Oh. Yeah. I had to think that through. Yeah.

[00:45:32] But I would say, remember, she wasn't killed for what, five, six days? That's what I'm thinking too. The fact is, I'm assuming that there was eyewitnesses that he was at home or going about his job between that time period. Right. So I think that that probably is why they investigated him, but probably didn't investigate him too much if they knew that. Right.

[00:45:59] His wife probably would have known if he was keeping somebody tied up, like in the basement or the attic or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, tell us maybe any other good suspects. Sure. There was another main suspect, number two. A man some people think may not only have been the Block Dahlia killer, but also the Zodiac killer as well. That's a big claim. Yeah. Yeah. Marvin Margulies served as a Navy medic in the Pacific during World War II. The war broke something in him.

[00:46:25] At one point, he was buried alive in a cave and had to claw his way out. By discharge, he was described as resentful and aggressive, separated partly on grounds of mental disability. Back in California, he enrolled at USC Medical School where he spent his days dissecting human corpses. And somewhere along the way, he met Elizabeth Short. The two may have dated briefly, but they certainly lived together for several days. We know Elizabeth had that tendency to be from house to house.

[00:46:51] But this was a fact he deliberately hid from investigators when her body turned up, bisected at the waist with surgical precision and arranged in a vacant lot like a display. When police finally questioned him, he fled Los Angeles almost immediately, drifting through Chicago, Atlanta, Kansas, Arizona under a fake name, Marvin Marrill, possibly to stay ahead of the investigation. Okay. That is suspicious just unto itself. Okay. Well, and unlike Red, he had the medical training. Right.

[00:47:21] That was the other thing about Red. Right. You wouldn't have known how to do that. Yeah. Red just seemed, Red seems like he was being used a little bit by Elizabeth. I don't know. Like we're reading a lot into a few old stories, but yeah, he doesn't seem as credible. But this guy seems a little suspicious. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Red reminds me like just a kind of big tum-tum. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:47] Decades later, the Zodiac Killer began terrorizing Northern California, taunting police with cryptograms and claiming a body count of 37. One cipher sent to the San Francisco Chronicle in 1970 read, My name is, followed by 13 encrypted characters. It went unsolved for over 50 years until self-taught code breaker Alex Bapper cracked it with the help of AI. The name it revealed, Marvin Merrill. Oh. Connected. Was this recent? Mm-hmm. I think so. When did this happen? Very, very recent.

[00:48:15] Like cracked by the help of AI. Within the last decade. Uh, okay. The connections pile up from there. The medical training to perform a surgical dismemberment. A Japanese bayonet matching the Zodiac's weapon Margulies had brought home from the Pacific. A motel near the body dump site called the Zodiac Motel with bad tubs deep enough to drain a corpse of blood. And in his final years, Margulies drew a dark-haired nude woman seen only from the waist up, titled it Elizabeth and hid the word Zodiac inside the sketch.

[00:48:45] Retired LAPD cold case detective Rick Jackson put it plainly. I have no doubt this is the person. Alex solved the Black Dahlia. The former chief code breaker at the NSA backed the cipher solution. Critics say the theory works backwards from a conclusion, but it's hard to ignore all the coincidences. Okay, I think that's interesting. I don't know that when I was doing research on this case, I gave him enough thought. Yeah. But all of that, I mean, we have talked about cases where there's so many coincidences.

[00:49:14] You're like, oh, it has to be that person. And it's not. That's a lot of coincidences. It's a lot. Yeah. Do we need a third episode? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe we need a deep dive into this Marvin Merrill. But we, yeah, because we don't really know then what happened to him or why they didn't. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll see how this all fleshes out. Okay. And the Zodiac killer case is one that I've always been interested in.

[00:49:40] I don't know a ton about, but it's, they're not murdered in homes. Aren't they like in cars or something like that? I don't know. It's one of those things where like, I feel like I should know about it, but I don't. It's just in like the cultural vernacular. And I, yeah. Yeah. It was during that time period where they all used to send letters to the press. Yeah. I wonder where that was. It was definitely a thing back then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:10] Um, can we briefly discuss suspect number three? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, could only because if you research the story, his name's going to come up, but to me, his, the connection is super weak. But according to history.com, a 2017 book by English true crime author. That's another one. Sorry. I'm sorry. What? How are you going to say that? I don't know. Okay. That's why I thought you were laughing. You say it. I'm going to say it's. Pew. Eat well. Pew. Eat well. P-I-U.

[00:50:40] Eat well. Eat well. I mean, I'm pretty confident the last name is Ego. Uh, entitled Black Dahlia. Red Roses, the crime, corruption, and coverup of America's greatest unsolved murder pins the crime on a mortician's assistant turned bellboy named Leslie Dillon. The book suggests that Dillon committed the crime at the request of nightclub owner Mark Hanson, whose sexual advances short had reportedly rebuffed. According to Eat well, the crime took place at the local Astor Motel, where she says the

[00:51:07] owner found one of his rooms covered in blood and fecal matter the day following her murder. But having had domestic abuse, trouble himself with police chose to clean it up rather than report it. Hmm. Why does Eat well think Leslie Dillon is a Black Dahlia murder? Well, Dillon couldn't seem to stay away from the case. Shortly after Elizabeth Short's murder, he moved to Florida. And then in 1948, he did something strange. He wrote to LAPD psychiatrist J. Paul DeRiver saying he wanted insider details about the

[00:51:34] killing for a book he was researching on sexual psychopaths. Eventually, he went a step further and claimed he knows who did it, that a friend of his was Short's killer. DeRiver wasn't buying it. He tracked Dillon to Las Vegas and interrogated him over several days. Whatever came out of those conversations was enough to take Dillon into custody. And then according to Arthur P.Eatwell, the LAPD let it go. Eatwell can stop. Be more mature. He can't say his last name.

[00:52:04] Mr. Eatwell. Eatwell contends that a notoriously corrupt department backed off Dillon for reasons that were never explained and that the Dillon investigation was quietly buried. Dillon himself later sued the department over how he's been treated. Did he do it? There's no confession, no conclusive proof. Just a man who inserted himself into a murder investigation with claims of inside knowledge into Elizabeth Short's death. That's nothing. I mean, I think this is one of those examples of somebody claiming they did it that didn't do it.

[00:52:34] Although like the writing in and saying you're like, you want details because you're writing a book. That's weird. Yeah. It's just creepy to me. It sounds creepy. And the last suspect today, but certainly not the least, the man, Los Angeles Times colonist and historian Larry Harnage believes killed Elizabeth Short. Is it some shadowy drifter? He's a surgeon. A respected one, at least on paper. His name is Walter Alonzo Bailey. And the web of connections tying him to the Black Dahlia murder is hard to dismiss as coincidence.

[00:53:02] Bailey owned a home at 3959 South Norton. Just one block south of the vacant lot where Short's body was discovered on Norton Avenue. His daughter, Barbara, was close enough to Short's family that she served as a witness at the wedding of Elizabeth's sister, Virginia. He kept a medical office near the Biltmore Hotel, the last place Elizabeth Short was seen alive. And when Short's bisected body was left in that lot, it was a 45 second walk from the home of Bailey's ex-wife. Harnage believes that placement was no accident.

[00:53:30] That Bailey dumped her there deliberately as an act of terror against the woman he had just divorced. Bailey also fits the FBI profile drawn up by legendary profiler John Douglas almost point for point. He was comfortable with a knife, desensitized to blood, and crucially, a man who worked with his hands. At the time of the murder, his life was unraveling. A messy divorce, an extramarital affair with an Austrian physician who would later threaten his widow with the exposure of, quote, terrible secrets.

[00:53:58] And what Harnage believes was undiagnosed Alzheimer's disease eating away at his mind. Then there's the details that could stop you cold. Short had a habit, sad, strange habit of telling people she'd lost a son. It wasn't true, but Walter Bailey actually had lost a son at a young age. And Elizabeth Short's body was found two days after the anniversary of that boy's death. On his website, Harnage writes, What is known is that Betty was broke when she arrived January 9, 1947 at the Biltmore Hotel with Red Manly. It was late.

[00:54:27] She had nowhere to stay and little money for food. It isn't hard to imagine that under those circumstances, she would reach out for help to a friend of a family, a doctor, and a member of her brother-in-law's church. There is certainly the possibility that she had contacted Walter Bailey at any time during her six months in Los Angeles. Walter could have been accommodating and his office was only a few blocks away, an easy walk. They spent a few days together. Then something went wrong.

[00:54:52] Perhaps there was, as John Douglas suggests, a seduction of progress and she rejected him as she had so many other men. Only this time with a combination of financial and emotional stress plus Walter's declining mental faculties, all fueled with alcohol and anger at his wife, who was living at 3959 South Norton Avenue, he exploded in a murderous rage. He had found a way to put the fear of God into the neighborhood. Afterward, he would be certain that no one would ever connect him to the killing because

[00:55:19] the link between his daughter and Betty's sister was so obscure. He was enjoying the publicity and even mailed some of Betty's thanks to the examiner just to keep the publicity rolling. But somehow, Alexandra, his partner and lover, began to suspect him. Now he was afraid that she would reveal him as the killer. Alexandra kept him safe and hidden from the family. In early January, not quite a year after the killing, Walter died at the VA hospital. The death certificate lists the cause as pneumonia. Bailey died in 1948. Never charged, never questioned.

[00:55:49] Whatever he knew went with him, except perhaps for those secrets his mistress held over his widow's head. That's interesting. The location of the body being left so close to the home of his ex-wife. That's a really odd coincidence. I mean, there's a lot of circumstantial. I mean, it's entirely circumstantial, but it writes well. It's a good story.

[00:56:12] When you lay it all out like that, it sounds plausible, but without any actual evidence, it's so hard. Thank you. And one thing that's always stuck with me about this case is that for something so grotesque, most of the serial killers, there's a whole variety of murderers that are similar in nature and over time.

[00:56:42] And from what I, the little I know about the story, there is not like a similarity, which kind of like, okay, well, why this one time? Well, maybe it's a person died. Yeah. I don't know. When you first started telling us about him, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the fact that there's like no evidence whatsoever, I don't know. But it's very curious. I can see why he wrote a book. It made a good story.

[00:57:11] Do we need a fourth episode? Oh. We'll just have a whole season about the Black Dahlia. Oh, and you touched on something when you were quoting from that article. And I don't know if you're going to go into it, but so somebody was mailing things to the press with some of Elizabeth's things afterwards? Yes. Let's hold on to that. Okay.

[00:57:37] Until the next four or five episodes on the Black Dahlia. Because yes, that happened. Yeah. It was a frenzy. Okay. Because that was a teaser. That was just a teaser because I thought that was an interesting little snippet. Yeah. Well, it was an accidental teaser. Okay. You're just good that way. Sorry. Well, it just leaves you wanting more. Right. Exactly. Can we briefly talk about Leemert Park, the vacant lot where Elizabeth's body was found? Yeah. Because that's another like real estate thing that we haven't touched on. Yep. Yep.

[00:58:08] So Leimert Park, nicknamed the Black Greenwich Village by late filmmaker John Singleton, is widely accepted as their cultural hub for Los Angeles African-Americans, because of its storied history of jazz, hip-hop, and visual arts. Walter H. Leemert created the development in 1928, and the Olmstead brothers designed the neighborhood layout. It featured tree-lined streets, Spanish colonial revival homes, and hidden utility wire. Leemert Park was considered a model of urban planning. Some great talents also came out of Leemert Park.

[00:58:36] Some notable names include Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, and L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley. It is estimated that Elizabeth's body was found on or near 3825 South Norton. According to the Compass website, the home is a two-bedroom, two-bath home built in 1956, nine years after Elizabeth Short's body was found on the property. Okay. Okay. We know the drill. Live there or list it. So the house in Leemert Park where her body was found. Yes. Was parked there.

[00:59:05] So to refresh everybody's memory, it was a vacant lot, and the house was built nine years after her body was found there. Grotesquely found. I'm a no. I'm a no. I wouldn't live there. I would list it, but I wouldn't live there. I don't know. At first I was like, yeah, yeah. I mean, because there was no house there at the time. But then I remember remembering how grotesque it was.

[00:59:32] You know, so I don't know. It feels like a kind of a horror movie situation. So I'm guessing no. Yeah. I would list it. I don't think I would live there. That's what I would have said for you. I mean, let's be honest now. You ladies are hustlers. Of course, it's going to take a lot for you to say no, that you won't. Well, and I'm going to have to be real honest with you. It took me off.

[00:59:59] I had to really dig to find like the address for this. Well, it was an empty lot. Right. So even that's a little bit of a guess, right? Like it was like this lot or that lot. But so, you know, it doesn't have the Google problem that we talk about on a regular basis. But yeah. OK, what about the Southend House? Well, the Southend House is not my style. Not that that's really part of the decision.

[01:00:29] But I think I would live there because we really don't know if anything happened there. Actually, I want to reserve my answer for episode two. I suspected you were going to say that. Yeah. I feel like that was very smart. OK, should we wait then? Yeah. Wait to wait. Yeah. We'll wait to wait on that one. Yeah. OK. Right now, I just think it sounds like an interesting house. Yeah. Yeah. I think we need to wait. OK. OK. So that's our verdict. But we want yours. A washed up body in a vacant lot.

[01:00:57] A theory in a dirt floor basement. And one of the most beautiful homes in Los Angeles caught in the middle. Would you live there or list it? Tell us. DMs are open and the online poll is open. Yeah. Absolutely. Probably a good time to note. If you like the podcast, want to support us, help us to keep the mics on. We'd love for you to buy us a coffee or a cocktail. Just go to our website, CrimeEstate.com and click the link to support the show.

[01:01:23] Or go to buymeacoffee.com forward slash CrimeState. Seriously, every dollar donation helps. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. If you love the podcast, please leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcast and subscribe so you never miss an episode drop. And don't forget to tune into part two of The Black Dahlia and the Southen House next week where we take a deep dive into George Hodel and the Southern House. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Hey, y'all.

[01:01:51] Thanks for listening and being a part of our Crime Estate family. If you're curious about today's featured Crime Estate, you can find additional photos and details from today's episode online at CrimeState.com or on Facebook and Instagram by following at Crime Estate Podcast. Have a Crime Estate we should cover? Let us know. Shoot us an email at CrimeStatePodcast at gmail.com. Until next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.