0:00

Hey Ellen. Hi Rabia.

0:03

How you doing? Good. Happy

0:05

summer. It's pouring out

0:08

here. Is it really?

0:14

Yes.

0:18

It is really humid. We are, but

0:20

no rain yet. Um,

0:23

well. But it feels like summer

0:25

finally. It finally feels like summer. I've been freezing for a

0:27

couple of days, so I've been over it. I

0:30

am freezing as you can tell by my turtleneck.

0:32

It is cold. Are you, do you run cold? You

0:34

run cold, Ellen, like me? Are

0:36

you joking? I am always cold. It's

0:38

like, it's like, it's such a joke. You need sleeping

0:40

socks. I'm kidding. You need sleeping socks. It's a joke on,

0:42

I think not. Everyone always makes fun

0:44

of me because I'm so cold. Because one time, this

0:47

is, this is what happens on a

0:49

podcast. You say something one time and you

0:51

are held to that because I said, well, you

0:53

know, cause like I'm really like small and I

0:56

get cold and that, oh

0:59

man, I have been paying for it. Everyone's like, oh,

1:01

are you so tiny? Are

1:03

you so cold? Yes.

1:06

I

1:06

am always cold. I am always cold.

1:08

I am always cold. Even, I mean like no

1:10

amount of back fat is protecting me. So I don't

1:13

know. And you're disappearing

1:15

right in front of my eyes. So. Yeah,

1:17

looking pretty much the same. But anyway, sleeping

1:20

socks for all of us everywhere. That's

1:22

how it's going to go now. But yeah,

1:24

it is summer and you're wearing a total neck.

1:28

Yeah, that's concerning. I'm

1:31

so excited about today's episode.

1:34

I am excited and confused

1:37

and perplexed. And I have been giving our

1:39

guests shit about it for a couple

1:42

of. We can blame her. Yeah. I was like,

1:44

what? Oh my gosh, this case.

1:46

Oh my gosh. It's got no solution.

1:49

This is the case that like it's, it's when

1:51

people hear what it, what it is, you all have

1:53

heard, you've,

1:54

you've all heard about the case, but

1:57

I, I didn't know are the details. All I knew was

1:59

like. This is a really famous

2:01

unsolved cold case. And we

2:04

know it by it's like this moniker,

2:07

right? That's not even like the name of the actual victim.

2:09

Some would argue it is the

2:12

most perplexing unsolved

2:14

case

2:15

of like forever.

2:18

I mean, it's kind of like one, yeah. Yeah,

2:21

probably. All right, so should we introduce

2:23

our guest? Go for it. All right, yeah.

2:26

Let me do the introduction because she, my friend, maybe

2:29

you'll be friends with her one day too, Ellen, if you're lucky. I

2:31

hope she'll be my friend. Yeah, I hope so too.

2:34

All right. We have on the show,

2:36

not just my friend, but a friend of the podcast and folks

2:38

who watch us on Instagram and who have listened

2:40

to us on Patreon, like she's been on before, I

2:42

mean, in different ways, but not as a guest, not

2:44

as a primary guest. So I'm very excited to welcome

2:46

this week,

2:47

Sarah Kalen. Hi, Sarah. Hi

2:50

guys, how are you? Sarah,

2:53

I'm so excited that you're here, mostly

2:55

because I love listening to you talk.

2:57

And I feel like I can just lean back and

2:59

I can just be like, go take

3:01

it away, Sarah. You know more

3:04

than probably Robbie and I put together

3:06

and I'm so excited about that. Well,

3:08

and that and

3:08

I just talk too much. No, never. Oh,

3:12

I've heard that. My entire life, every

3:15

report card I ever got was, such a joy

3:17

to have in class talks too much. Works

3:19

really hard talks too much. I

3:21

did leave Sarah a message this morning on WhatsApp

3:23

saying, your voice note took me three days

3:25

and 18 attempts to get through because it was that long.

3:28

But anyway. Do you have ADHD? I

3:31

do, and I'm on the autism spectrum as well.

3:34

And so I'm pretty good at reading

3:36

the room, but every once in a while, actually

3:38

not every once in a while, like I interrupt

3:39

constantly. I'm almost 50 and this

3:42

is something I'm still, like I promise I'm still

3:44

working on this. But

3:46

it's. I never noticed except for on WhatsApp.

3:51

I would just like to give a shout out to all

3:53

our friends out there who are listening that got

3:55

a report card that says talks too much

3:57

in class. What up talks

3:59

too much in. class. One

4:01

of these

4:02

things is not like the other. Yeah. Well,

4:04

I went into theater before

4:09

I did any of this other stuff. So

4:11

I was a theater kid like you, Ellen.

4:13

So let me tell our listeners

4:15

some of the other stuff that you've done. Why I even know you, frankly.

4:20

And then we'd love to talk, I want to talk about the theater stuff

4:23

too. So for folks who are not in the

4:25

know, Sarah is a former law

4:27

enforcement officer turned cold case investigator.

4:30

And I first connected with Sarah a few years ago when

4:32

I was investigating a case for undisclosed. And

4:36

I, I literally, it was, it was a kind

4:38

of a cold call. I was like, Hey, you want to work this case with

4:40

me? And she's like, yup. We met up

4:43

and we spent days in a car together, driving

4:45

around, looking for witness. I mean, Nick, but her investigative

4:48

instinct ever since then I have gone

4:50

back to Sarah over and over. And, and,

4:52

and we've got some other stuff we want to do together. We always have

4:54

cases we want to look at. And of course, you know, I

4:56

was doing it wrongful conviction, but

4:59

the flip side of the wrongful conviction is that means

5:01

there was an unsolved murder. So it's a cold case, right? But

5:04

what's actually even more exciting right now is the fact

5:06

that as Sarah comes to us at a time when

5:08

she is not just a cold case investigator,

5:11

she is the host and co-producer of

5:13

a chart

5:15

topping true crime podcast called,

5:17

why can't we talk about Amanda's mom?

5:21

How long have you been on the top of the chart, Sarah?

5:23

I know you know. We,

5:27

you know, we were really fortunate to, to get

5:29

some, some early traction. The

5:31

show launched February 22nd. It was eight weeks, you

5:35

know, one episode a week for, for eight episodes.

5:38

And we kind of, you know, after about

5:41

week three, we sort of started

5:43

noticing that we were in like top five, top 10

5:45

of true crime. We were, you know, pretty consistently

5:48

doing well in the, in like the top 20, 25 of

5:50

all podcasts.

5:51

And we, I'm

5:53

going to end up having to shout out another podcast

5:55

here, guys. I apologize. But we, you know, we started,

5:58

you know, we started, you know, we started We

6:00

just started to kind of dip out of the

6:03

charts. But you were almost topping

6:05

not just the true crime charts. You were topping

6:07

the regular charts. Yeah, we were doing

6:10

really well. We were very lucky. It was

6:12

primarily word of mouth. It was definitely

6:15

Robbie and Ellen,

6:16

you guys have been so generous with talking

6:18

about it on your Facebook group

6:20

and stuff. And I've been really excited to interact

6:23

with people on there. And then

6:25

a couple of

6:26

days ago, Georgia Hardstark

6:28

mentioned the podcast and did a post about it on

6:32

Instagram as well. And so I woke

6:34

up one morning to see

6:36

that we had shot back into

6:38

the top 10 again. Yeah,

6:41

so we're feeling really lucky. And

6:43

mostly I'm just excited to have people hear

6:46

it. I know it sounds crazy, but it's an almost 30

6:48

year old case. And

6:51

we're still getting tips. This is an active investigation.

6:54

And the more traction we have and the more

6:56

ears we have on it, the

6:59

more we're able to do with what we have

7:02

in the field. I would also just like to say, it's

7:04

funny that you, I'm gonna correct

7:06

you, but I'm gonna say I understand

7:09

because there is an element to

7:11

luck in podcasting. It's

7:14

getting the right ears and

7:16

everything, but it really is more than

7:18

luck. It is your work, your hard

7:20

work, your persona, your

7:25

intelligence. So I will let

7:27

you have a little bit of luck, but you also

7:29

have to take some of that credit for yourself because

7:32

luck can only take you so far. I thought the same thing. But

7:35

it's so funny because that is something I would say

7:37

too. But when I hear other people say it, I'm like,

7:39

no, no, you deserve that. That's

7:41

not luck. Don't give the universe credit for

7:43

that shit. Well, that's

7:45

very kind. I do appreciate that. I

7:48

mean, we're really

7:48

proud of it, the team at Discovery

7:50

ID and the team at Arc Media who produced it. We're

7:54

really proud of it. We worked really hard. It was

7:56

a very small team. This was a like

7:59

skeleton crew. on a shoestring budget. And

8:01

so we are really proud of what we were able to

8:04

say about this case and maybe more to

8:07

the point what it says about

8:09

these types of case in

8:13

like a broader context. And

8:16

that's one of the reasons I picked

8:18

the case that I did for this episode.

8:22

We are definitely going to talk about the similarities between

8:24

this case and your case. I just want to

8:26

say when I first met Sarah, the very first time I met Sarah,

8:28

and she told me I've been working on this

8:30

case for a number of years completely

8:32

like for zero money pro bono I'm

8:35

paying out of pocket to do the work hoping

8:38

I can it can actually get to air get some

8:40

media around it get some attention to help solve this cold

8:42

case. And I was just so

8:45

incredibly impressed and

8:47

so happy to see

8:49

that all come to fruition in the last year. Also

8:52

you think my favorite murder gave you a bump

8:55

wait till Robbie and Ellen's bump. Right, right.

8:57

Absolutely. Absolutely. I

9:00

when you when I saw you guys up on the

9:03

Times Square billboard, I was so

9:05

excited and also so

9:08

envious. So I

9:09

I'm very grateful for any reach that you guys

9:11

could give me. Yeah, I think

9:14

everyone is really excited. I think that all

9:16

of our guests have been so different in

9:18

so many different ways. And I think people have really

9:20

been wanting to have someone in law enforcement.

9:23

And you're that perfect combination of law enforcement and

9:25

entertainment. So I think you're

9:27

the perfect Venn diagram for our demographic.

9:31

I appreciate that. I was watching an old episode

9:33

of Saturday Night Live earlier was Gerard

9:35

Carmichael's episode and he right in

9:37

his opening monologue. You know, he's like I am the

9:40

least famous person to ever do

9:42

SNL. And I felt the same way.

9:44

I was like me too. I am the least famous person

9:46

to ever do Robbie and Ellen. So I feel like

9:48

I'm in good company with

9:50

with Gerard Carmichael. But there most

9:53

of the time you Robbie and Ellen are the least

9:55

famous people on this show. So it's

9:57

OK. Yeah. Yeah.

9:59

But so before

10:02

we jump into the case, you know our little game

10:04

that we play, and that's called the Big

10:06

Things. And

10:09

it could be about anything. Sometimes you

10:11

never know what's going to come out of my mouth, mostly her mouth. She

10:14

is a feisty one. You

10:17

have to keep your eye on her. Oh, I know. All

10:20

right, Raviya, go ahead. You go first, Ellen,

10:21

because I got to think about it. The thing is, a lot of questions that

10:23

I have in my head, I'm

10:26

like, I know the answer to that. You already know that. I

10:28

know. I know Sarah too well. You go first, Ellen.

10:31

Let me think. OK. What

10:33

is your biggest pet peeve

10:37

in the true crime space? Oh, I think

10:40

I have the answer to this. So I

10:43

think for the serious answer, or I

10:45

mean, they're both serious answers, but

10:48

the

10:48

most frustrating answer is there is an

10:50

element of true crime that I think is very much just,

10:53

it's like voyeurism true crime. And I understand

10:56

there's an audience for that. That frustrates

10:58

me because I think that is the aspect

11:01

of it that

11:02

gives the entire genre a bad reputation. And

11:05

the fact is, true crime as an

11:07

overall genre has done tremendous good in

11:09

the world. People don't realize that stuff like the burning

11:11

bed, which led directly

11:14

to domestic violence law, was a true

11:16

crime story. You know what I mean? Like, there's all these examples

11:19

of it. So the voyeurism

11:21

true crime gets a little frustrating. The

11:23

thing I swear to God, my biggest

11:26

pet peeve, though, when I'm just watching because I am

11:28

an avid consumer, is

11:30

this business about not locking doors.

11:33

We never locked our doors.

11:35

I'm sorry. I call bullshit

11:37

on this. I do. I researched

11:39

so many historical cases for some live

11:41

speaking events that I do. And

11:44

I'm constantly reading about, like, oh, well, they

11:46

knew it was an intruder because the

11:48

doors were all locked from the outside. I'm like, people

11:51

have always locked their doors. This,

11:53

that one always drives me crazy. That's

11:55

a good one. Yeah. I

11:57

thought you were going to say about the...

12:00

the description of every victim being exactly

12:02

the same. Yeah, she lit up a room. Yeah,

12:05

that one's up there. That's your number one. That's probably

12:07

my number two. Well, yeah, because I'm really,

12:10

I mean, like, I think it's a little tacky,

12:13

but in like the tacky corner of

12:15

my content creation, I want

12:17

to make one where they were like, you know,

12:19

Sandy was great. She was

12:22

grumpy, but she was like a funny kind of grumpy.

12:25

And, you know, and her cooking was awful.

12:28

Like nobody liked her cooking. All

12:30

her plants died. Yeah. She

12:32

always, she had that sign up that

12:35

said, please leave by nine. She was not

12:37

the life of the party. Yeah.

12:40

I don't know. One time she told me I didn't have to go home,

12:42

but I couldn't stay at her house. A

12:44

little bit too much. Has that ever happened, you

12:46

guys?

12:47

By the way, has that ever, I've had that happen to me once. What?

12:51

Somebody asked you to leave a party? Well, yeah. The

12:53

husband was like, well, y'all don't have to

12:55

go home, but you can't stay here. And we're like, oh,

12:57

okay, sorry. Time to get. That's

13:02

almost never me. I am 100%

13:04

like off the boat Irish. And so the Irish goodbye

13:07

is like a very real thing for me. I'm just like,

13:10

I'm out. Do you know that the Irish

13:12

goodbye is actually a

13:14

sign

13:15

of compassion

13:17

and like, and respect? Because

13:21

I read, I can see that. I read this

13:23

article because I love Irish goodbye because

13:25

I get anxiety like saying goodbye to everyone.

13:28

And I read that people who

13:31

Irish goodbye don't center themselves

13:34

in like the host's night. Well,

13:36

and the host is usually like,

13:38

Rabia at your daughter's engagement party,

13:40

I felt like this poor woman has enough

13:42

to deal with right now. I'm gonna pop over, give

13:44

her a kiss, and I'm gonna leave. She doesn't need

13:47

to worry about me right now. I have no recollection of you even

13:49

leaving. Exactly. That's exactly

13:51

how it should be. I love

13:53

an Irish goodbye. I love it. All

13:55

right, so my question.

13:57

My question is, If

14:01

you, I know you like to cook, Sarah, right?

14:04

You cook, you do cook. I do, I do. And

14:06

you like to cook. Same. Oh,

14:09

is that right, Ellen? Oh, we all need to rent a house

14:11

and cook for each other. That'd be fine. Oh gosh,

14:13

Ellen's totally making that up. Oh. Ellen

14:17

cooks charcuterie boards. She cooks cheese

14:19

and crackers. There's nothing

14:20

wrong with a good board. I had a whole board

14:22

party. You were there, Rabia. Thank you, Sarah.

14:25

I, listen, I'm having

14:28

a party in my house in a couple of days with 100 people.

14:30

And Ellen's like, how much cheese and crackers you gotta buy for 100

14:32

people? I'm like, she cooks cheese

14:34

and crackers. There's nothing

14:35

wrong with a good board. I had a whole board party.

14:38

You were

14:38

there, Rabia. Thank you, Sarah. I,

14:41

listen, I'm having a party

14:43

in my house in a couple of days with 100 people. And Ellen's

14:45

like, how much cheese and crackers you gotta buy for 100 people? I'm

14:48

like, none.

14:50

I am roasting entire legs of lamb,

14:52

okay? She read me for filth

14:55

over voice memo. I'm

14:57

gonna start putting your voice memos behind

14:59

our Patreon wall so people can hear. Yeah,

15:02

that's a lot of fun. All right, no. If you could

15:04

cook a meal with one person

15:07

in all of history, all of the world,

15:09

cook a meal, not just hand, cook a meal, who

15:12

would it be? Oh my gosh. And what meal?

15:14

Not specifically a chef, but

15:17

like just

15:18

any one person. I gotta

15:20

go Jane Austen. Oh, interesting.

15:23

And I think I

15:26

would wanna cook her something that she didn't have

15:28

to eat all the time. So I would not wanna have a bunch

15:30

of like overcooked potatoes and meat. I would want-

15:33

Are you making her fall? Are you making her fall, Sarah? Oh

15:35

no, I only get fall from

15:38

my very specific one.

15:41

I'm gonna shout out fall 75 on Washington

15:43

Avenue in Philadelphia. No,

15:46

I would wanna do something really

15:49

special. I don't

15:51

know what, but something very exotic, maybe fall,

15:54

I don't know. Something that she would

15:56

not have gotten because the

15:58

thing with Jane Austen, she was this-

15:59

incredible mind, this incredible

16:02

young woman. She died fairly young.

16:05

She lived this incredible life through her books

16:08

and her characters lived these incredible

16:10

lives. She mostly was just

16:12

sort of like stuck mostly in one

16:14

place. She was single, you know, and I

16:16

would love to not only be able

16:18

to talk to her, but offer her some

16:22

experiences of the world. Cause you know, when you read

16:24

Sense and Sensibility and the way the youngest sister

16:26

is obsessed with the maps and she's going to go here

16:28

and she's going to go there

16:29

and stuff, I feel like that's a little bit

16:31

of Jane and I would like to give her that

16:33

gift cause she's given us so much. I

16:36

love that answer. I do too. I'd

16:38

make her kabobs.

16:39

She'd probably

16:42

love a kabob. I mean, she's British and it's all kabobs

16:44

now. So it would be time

16:46

traveling. So.

16:48

All right. Well,

16:50

I mean, so the third question,

16:53

Ellen, go for it. The third

16:55

question is going to be kind of

16:58

obvious for our listeners, but the

17:00

third question is. Maybe not, maybe not. Maybe

17:02

not. How does true crime fit

17:05

into your life?

17:06

Needless to

17:08

say, I've thought about this a lot since. Yeah. Since

17:11

you guys asked me to come on, I've been like, okay,

17:13

don't

17:14

F this up. The

17:17

thing is it has never not been a feature of

17:19

my life. And I realized that a

17:22

year or two ago, I saw something on like

17:24

Twitter and it said, what's

17:27

the first like major news

17:29

event that you remember happening?

17:32

That you as a child were like hyper

17:34

aware of this news event.

17:37

And for me, I have two really, really

17:39

strong memories.

17:40

I was five years old for both of them. I'm

17:43

sure Google can tell us which one happened first,

17:45

but they happened in really close succession.

17:47

And the first was the assassination

17:50

attempt

17:50

of Ronald Reagan. I was living in Canada

17:52

at the time, but I remember it being all over the news. And I remember

17:54

being really like blown away

17:56

by it. And then

17:58

the second...

17:59

was the disappearance and then the ultimate

18:02

recovery of Adam Walsh. And

18:04

I remember like he's the same

18:06

age I am. This could be a kid at my school. And

18:09

it is

18:10

sort of never left.

18:14

The like the realm of fascinating

18:16

for me

18:17

ever since. Like I have have consumed

18:20

what is now kind of referred to as true crime

18:23

voraciously since since I was a kid.

18:25

Adam Walsh. Mm hmm. I

18:27

mean,

18:28

what was his dad's name? The John

18:31

Walsh. John Walsh. I still

18:33

see like.

18:35

That was just so tragic, but he did something.

18:38

He did something so extraordinary.

18:40

We have short and. Yeah,

18:43

not just not just America's most one. We have Nick

18:45

Meck because of John Walsh

18:47

and Nick, the National Center for Missing and Exploited

18:49

Children. Oh, I didn't know that was true out of

18:52

the the Adam Walsh case. And and that's

18:55

I mean, it's an incredible organization

18:57

that just does, you know, untold

19:00

heroics. Yeah, I'm always sending

19:03

Sarah memes of like, you

19:05

know, I relax by watching the murder.

19:07

I mean, that is Sarah and Sarah will drive from Philadelphia

19:10

to come park on my couch and we will just in our

19:12

P.J.'s watch true crime together and then

19:14

she'll go home the next day. Yep.

19:15

We do slumber parties.

19:19

I have moved a lot in my life. And one of

19:21

the toughest things about moving and there's a lot of tough

19:23

things is having to find new

19:25

doctors all over again for

19:28

my entire family, new pediatricians,

19:30

new OBGYNs, new internalists,

19:34

new E and T's, you name it. It's so

19:36

frustrating because you don't know where to start.

19:39

So then you ask people and then you get some recommendations

19:41

and then you call their offices and that takes forever.

19:44

And guess what? They don't take your insurance or they're

19:46

not taking new visitors or they can't see you

19:48

for six months. Anyhow, you

19:50

can dispense with all of that. And I did too

19:53

when I discovered ZocDoc. ZocDoc

19:56

is a free app where you can find amazing

19:58

doctors and book your appointments online. We're

20:00

talking about booking appointments with thousands of

20:02

top-rated and patient-reviewed

20:05

doctors and specialists. And

20:07

you can filter specially for ones who take your insurance,

20:10

are located near you, and treat almost

20:12

any condition that you're searching for. These

20:14

doctors all have verified reviews from actual,

20:17

real patients, not bots. And

20:19

get this, the average wait time to see a doctor booked

20:22

on ZocDoc is between just 24 and 48 hours.

20:25

It's amazing. You can even score same-day

20:27

appointments. Once you find the doctor

20:29

you want, you can book them immediately with just

20:32

a few app taps. No more

20:34

waiting on hold with a receptionist. I know

20:36

I'm never going to do that again. I've been using

20:38

ZocDoc for a couple of years now, and that's

20:41

exactly what I'm going to be doing for the foreseeable

20:43

future. I only use ZocDoc

20:45

now to book all my medical appointments for

20:47

myself and my family. And you should

20:49

too. Go to ZocDoc.com

20:52

slash solve the case and download the

20:54

ZocDoc app for free. And find

20:57

and book a top-rated doctor today.

20:59

That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com

21:02

slash solve the case. ZocDoc.com

21:05

slash solve the case.

21:07

I have to tell you, Rabia,

21:10

Lume is back, and every

21:13

time I use it, I love the products

21:15

more and more.

21:16

Yeah. It's the only deodorant I will

21:19

travel with because, first of all, I can travel

21:21

with it. It's not an aerosol, and you can use it like

21:23

everywhere on your body.

21:24

And it was started by an OBGYN,

21:27

a woman by the name of Dr.

21:29

Shannon Klingman, because she met all

21:31

these women that were concerned with odor

21:34

down below the belt. And so they did all

21:36

of this clinical testing, and turns

21:38

out, ladies, it's not the vagina to blame.

21:41

It's the bacteria on the skin. That's

21:44

how she created Lume, a skin-safe,

21:46

aluminum-free deodorant that actually

21:48

works, and it works everywhere. I

21:51

mean, I can't believe this is... It took this...

21:54

I was on the moon, what, decades ago. It took this long to figure

21:56

out you need deodorant in more than

21:58

just your armpits.

21:59

Yeah. What about- Thank

22:02

you, Dr. Klingman. What about your under boobs,

22:04

your thigh folds, your belly button, your

22:06

butt crack, your vulva, your feet? You can

22:08

put this stuff anywhere and it smells delicious.

22:10

Try the toast with coconut oil. Thanks for the visuals, Ellen. Thanks

22:13

for the visuals. Yeah.

22:16

It's aluminum free, baking soda free, and paraben

22:19

free and it's pH balanced. So yeah, you can

22:21

use it down below. And it blocks

22:23

the odor all day and controls

22:26

it for up to 72 hours. Lume

22:29

Starter Pack is perfect for new customers. It comes

22:31

with a solid stick deodorant, a cream tube

22:33

deodorant, and two free products of your choice,

22:35

like a mini body wash and deodorant wipes, and

22:37

it's free shipping. I love the deodorant wipes.

22:40

As a special offer for our listeners, new

22:43

customers get $5 off a Lume

22:45

Starter Pack with code

22:46

SOLVETHECASE at lumedeodorant.com.

22:50

That equates to over 40% off your

22:52

starter pack when you visit lumedeodorant.com

22:55

and use the code SOLVETHECASE. You

22:57

will love it.

22:59

I promise. Sarah,

23:01

why don't you tell our

23:03

Solve the Case listeners what case you chose?

23:06

The case that I chose is the

23:09

unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short,

23:11

better known as the Black Dahlia

23:14

murder.

23:16

Yep. I've

23:18

just always heard of it. I've heard the Black

23:20

Dahlia, the Black Dahlia, the Black Dahlia. I just never

23:23

knew what it was about. And

23:25

at what point did you kind of discover

23:27

this case, Sarah? And how long have you, like,

23:30

this been on your radar? I mean,

23:32

it's been on my radar as long as I can remember.

23:36

I went into, like, pretty quickly

23:38

when I decided to go into, I mean, the reason I

23:40

decided to go into law enforcement, it was sort of backwards,

23:43

was I wanted to go

23:46

into work around sexual homicide, serial

23:48

killers, stuff like that. I didn't really know what the

23:50

context was for that. I didn't really know what that looked

23:52

like in the mid-90s when I first started thinking,

23:54

like, this is the work I wanna do.

23:56

But I was devouring

23:58

a lot of content at that time. And so I've

24:00

been aware of the case. But

24:03

in 2000, Lord, where are we at?

24:06

2019, early 2019, when I first took

24:08

on the murder of

24:13

Renee Bergeron in Mobile, Alabama,

24:14

which is the subject of, why can't

24:16

we talk about Amanda's mom? The very

24:18

first time I laid eyes on the description

24:20

and then the crime scene photos, my

24:22

initial thought was, this

24:25

almost looks like a Dahlia copycat. Like

24:27

there are so many similarities. And

24:30

so, I became even

24:32

a little more interested with it then.

24:36

And then, like I said, I do these sort

24:39

of like speaking events around the country and

24:42

people will always ask me like, what's the true

24:44

crime case that you're obsessed with? And I never really

24:46

had an answer. And then for one

24:48

of my events,

24:49

I was going to discuss this case,

24:52

fully obsessed ever since. Once

24:55

I started really reading up on

24:57

it,

24:57

I'm down

24:59

that rabbit hole with everybody else. Well,

25:02

this is really a rabbit hole

25:04

because I feel like in so many cases

25:07

that we've covered, you can

25:09

go pretty broad and you can talk about

25:11

so many different things,

25:13

but

25:14

you could just not stop with this, with the

25:16

amount of false confessions and suspects.

25:19

I mean, they were basic, anybody with a penis

25:21

with a 20 mile radius was a suspect.

25:24

And some without, some without, there was

25:26

a female who confessed to it. We'll

25:28

get into all that I'm sure. So I

25:31

can see when you say rabbit hole, this

25:33

is probably one of the rabbit-iest

25:36

of all the holes. That is a technical term

25:38

you guys can look it up later. Technical term. I know

25:40

I sent Robbie a- You've written up all kinds of imagery for me,

25:42

but- All kinds of imagery.

25:44

I sent Robbie the 900 page

25:46

FBI files. I was like, here you go, have fun.

25:51

I didn't get through all of them. Let's just put it like that. I

25:53

haven't been through all of them, so it's okay.

25:56

I think I went through the stuff

25:58

that matters enough for this conversation. So Ellen,

26:01

should we tell our listeners all about it, give

26:03

them the crash course? We'll give you our crash course, and

26:06

then we have so much to talk about. All

26:09

right, let's do this. I am from

26:11

the generation that grew up with the nightly news, no

26:14

round-the-clock cable news in my childhood. And

26:16

I always remember being kind of, like, impressed

26:20

at the risk of sounding weird with the people

26:22

whose deaths were reported every night. I thought

26:24

they must be really important people to have the news

26:27

report that they died. And I wondered if

26:29

I'd ever be that important.

26:29

But it wasn't until I was an adult that

26:32

I realized, dear God, most of those stories

26:34

are reported because the person died in a terrible

26:36

way, in an accident, or as the victim

26:38

of violent crime. Since that realization,

26:41

I've always said a silent prayer that when it's time for

26:43

me and my loved ones to go, it doesn't

26:45

merit a news story. Unfortunately,

26:48

the more horrific the circumstances of someone's

26:50

demise, the more notorious

26:52

the story becomes, and the longer

26:55

it lingers in the public imagination. And

26:57

when there's a mystery at the heart of the story,

27:00

it adds even more intrigue, which

27:02

is why today's case is one of the most

27:04

infamous true crime stories of the past century,

27:07

the Black Dahlia murder. The

27:09

real name of the woman who became known

27:12

worldwide as the Black Dahlia was

27:14

Elizabeth Short. Her grisly

27:16

murder in 1947 remains one of the most obsessed

27:20

over cases of all time. Elizabeth

27:22

Short was a native of Hyde Park, Massachusetts,

27:25

who moved to Los Angeles in 1942 to reunite with

27:29

her estranged father, a man

27:31

that had abandoned Elizabeth and her mother and

27:33

siblings when she was only six years old. He

27:35

had so thoroughly disappeared, in fact,

27:38

that the family and authorities thought he

27:40

must have committed suicide after

27:42

being financially ruined in the stock market crash

27:44

of 1929. It wasn't until

27:47

years later that Elizabeth's mother received

27:49

a letter from him apologizing for

27:51

leaving the family and admitting that he had

27:53

just been fined the entire time and

27:56

that he was living in Vallejo, California.

27:59

A few months later, in January of 1943, Elizabeth

28:03

moved to Vallejo to be with her father, but

28:06

they didn't last long together. Within months,

28:09

he had kicked her out and she found herself struggling

28:11

on her own. Records show that

28:13

Elizabeth then got a job at Camp Cook in

28:16

Lompoc, California, and was living with a U.S.

28:18

Air Force sergeant. According to what

28:20

she told friends, the sergeant was abusive,

28:23

and months later, she moved out again. She

28:25

bounced around a bit, going back home to Massachusetts

28:28

and then to Florida, where she fell in love with a

28:29

major who was killed in combat

28:32

a week before the end of World War II. She

28:34

returned to L.A. in July of 1946 in

28:37

the hopes of being discovered and acting. Elizabeth

28:40

had good reason to believe she could. She certainly

28:42

had the looks that were all the vogue at the time.

28:45

She had lily white skin and raven black hair

28:47

and had begun dressing in all black, earning

28:50

her the nickname Black Dahlia from her friends.

28:53

The moniker was also inspired by the fact that

28:55

one of Elizabeth's favorite movies was

28:58

the 1946 noir murder

29:00

mystery film, The Blue Dahlia. Little

29:03

did Elizabeth know that she would soon

29:05

herself become the center of a real life

29:07

across a grisly scene. Laying

29:09

right next to the sidewalk was a nude female

29:12

body that had been neatly bisected in

29:14

two precise pieces. The

29:16

two sections of the body lay a couple of feet

29:18

apart, but were placed misaligned

29:21

to make it clear to anyone looking that the

29:23

body was not in one piece. The

29:25

arms were raised above her head at a 90 degree

29:28

angle and the victim's legs were splayed

29:29

wide open. It was clear that the

29:32

killer or whoever left her there had not

29:34

just dumped the body. They had in fact

29:36

carefully positioned it and left

29:38

it out in plain view in order to be discovered.

29:41

Eerily though, there was a mannequin-like appearance

29:43

to the body because of the lack of blood. There

29:46

was no blood anywhere, not on the body

29:48

and not on the area around it. The authorities

29:50

arrived pretty quickly within 10 minutes,

29:53

but someone else arrived even sooner

29:56

for reporters. By the time the police

29:58

got there, reporters were already in the area.

29:59

already trampling all over

30:02

the crime scene and taking dozens of pictures

30:04

of the body. There are even pictures of

30:06

the photographers taking pictures, literally

30:09

right on top of her. These

30:11

pictures aren't hard to find online, but by

30:13

or beware, they are graphic and gruesome.

30:16

The photos show the brutality of the

30:18

mutilation the victim endured. Chunks

30:21

of flesh from her breasts, right thigh

30:23

were carved out, long gashes extended

30:25

the sides of her mouth into a macabre

30:28

smile, and her head was full

30:30

of bruising and gashes. The eventual

30:32

autopsy report would reveal that

30:35

she had been exsanguinated, drained

30:37

of blood and thoroughly washed. Her

30:40

cause of death was a combination of hemorrhaging

30:42

and shock due to deep knife

30:44

lacerations of the face and repeated

30:46

blows by a heavy metal object to the face

30:49

and head, and the medical examiner

30:51

believed she had been dead less than 24 hours

30:54

before she was found. From

30:56

the minute reporters got to the crime scene before

30:58

the police, the investigation was hampered.

31:01

The examiner, a large LA newspaper,

31:03

seemed to be more plugged into the investigation

31:05

than the authorities themselves. In

31:08

fact, the police weren't able to identify

31:10

the victim until the examiner, which

31:12

somehow got ahold of the victim's fingerprints,

31:15

sent them to the FBI and

31:17

got a match to Elizabeth Short.

31:19

When she was identified, the media very

31:22

quickly dubbed the crime the Black

31:24

Dahlia murder. The media was in

31:26

deep on this case, covering it

31:29

incessantly on the front page every day

31:31

for months. Every step of the way,

31:33

the examiner and the other news outlets

31:36

had detailed information about what the

31:38

investigators were up to, the suspects

31:40

that emerged and dismissed, the

31:42

many confessing sans that came over,

31:45

and yes, they reported all

31:47

of them in real time. The examiner

31:49

was in so deep that FBI memos

31:52

showed that the editor of the paper, who was

31:54

getting information from the mayor, was

31:56

in touch with the bureau to express his concern

31:59

about local crime.

31:59

police incompetence. Not

32:02

only that, it wasn't local authorities

32:04

or the mayor that requested the FBI step

32:06

in to help with the investigation, it was

32:09

the examiner-editor who did

32:11

so. As egregious as the media's

32:13

involvement was, the editor's concern may

32:16

have been merited. Investigators

32:18

were able to pinpoint and corroborate that

32:20

Elizabeth was last seen alive on January

32:22

9th, six days before her body was found,

32:25

when her boyfriend dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel.

32:28

But where she disappeared to after that,

32:29

they had no clue. While hundreds of officers

32:32

were involved in the investigation, over 2,700 reports were

32:34

taken, over 300 named suspects, and dozens of false

32:39

confessors wasted law enforcement's time

32:41

and resources, it all ultimately

32:43

amounted to nothing. Two years

32:45

later, in 1949, an almost

32:48

coerced confession by a suspect who

32:50

then sued the city prompted a grand

32:52

jury investigation. The grand jury

32:54

convened with the purpose of holding the LAPD

32:56

responsible for failing to solve Elizabeth

32:58

Short's murder and the murders and disappearances

33:01

of numerous other women in the 1940s, but

33:04

it too ultimately amounted to nothing.

33:06

No indictment, no accountability. And

33:09

now, all these decades later, the

33:11

Black Dahlia murder, the murder of Elizabeth

33:14

Short, remains one of the most infamous cold

33:16

cases in contemporary American history.

33:19

So, let's talk about it. We

33:21

made USAA insurance

33:23

for veterans like James. When he found

33:25

out how much USAA was helping members save,

33:27

he said, this time a switch. We'll help

33:29

you find the right coverage at the right price.

33:32

USAA, what you're made of, were

33:34

made for. Restriction supply.

33:36

Oh, okay. Oh, boy. I

33:38

always feel like I don't breathe during the crash course. Because

33:42

then I'm like, okay. Reading

33:45

the script is a little, yeah, it's a little harder. Okay.

33:48

So, I want to start off by talking to you,

33:50

Sarah, about like you said, that when you started

33:52

looking at this, like, that's when you became obsessed. But why

33:55

are people, why is this still long?

33:57

Why does it have such a long, a whole still

33:59

long matter?

33:59

in the American imagination, why

34:02

are people obsessed with it? I think part of it

34:04

is the extent of the brutality. The simple

34:07

fact is no matter how much

34:09

we want to say that the voyeurism,

34:12

true crime is problematic,

34:15

there are elements of it that roll

34:17

into all media consumption of

34:19

crime, and

34:21

the worse the case, the more shocking

34:23

the case, the bigger the impact it has

34:26

on the public, right? So

34:29

when we see a victim treated

34:31

the way Elizabeth was treated, her

34:34

body destroyed the way it was,

34:37

it really, really hits

34:40

on our own, like our instinctual

34:43

level, base level fears. And

34:46

so we become obsessed because it's

34:48

this feeling of like, could this happen

34:50

to me? Was she like me? Could this, you

34:52

know? And

34:54

I think that that is a huge part of it,

34:56

the brutality of the case in particular.

34:59

I think part of it too, Rabia and I, you

35:01

have

35:02

talked about this a lot when

35:04

we debate the question because we're both sort

35:06

of publicly asked a lot like, why

35:09

are people fascinated with true crime, right? And

35:11

so she and I have talked about this a lot. And

35:14

one of the answers that Rabia gives that I think is

35:16

really salient here is

35:19

that it is such a crazy mystery

35:22

that you can spend hours and hours

35:24

and hours and never begin to scratch

35:26

the surface. And the fact is, smart

35:29

people like mysteries. We like to dig,

35:31

we like to explore,

35:32

we like to see if we can solve the

35:34

question that hasn't been solved. I mean, when

35:36

we look at

35:39

Zodiac, right? Who was

35:41

it that first theoretically broke

35:43

the cipher? It was a husband and wife at their

35:45

kitchen table who liked to do puzzles for fun.

35:48

So like, we all sort of think, maybe

35:51

I'll be the one to solve this. And I think that

35:53

because this case has so many

35:55

avenues and so many questions that

35:59

it really lends.

35:59

itself to that obsession factor.

36:03

I mean, but you know, I

36:05

think, but from the jump,

36:07

I think the obsession might have been, there,

36:11

obviously the brutality is like breathtaking

36:14

in this case. I mean, like rarely do you see

36:16

like

36:17

this level of just like

36:19

what was done to Elizabeth. But

36:22

from the jump, I also think there was like the, there

36:24

was a lot of the rumors around who she

36:26

was, a lot of judgment around who she

36:29

might've been that also maybe fueled it.

36:31

People love like a sex crime type of,

36:33

you know what I mean? Like I feel like that might've been it,

36:35

you know? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. One

36:38

of the articles that you pulled, you know, was talking

36:40

about the similarities,

36:41

and I don't want to spoil

36:43

anything, but the similarities between this and

36:45

a series of murders in, in San

36:47

Diego a few years earlier. And

36:50

the fact is, even though we weren't calling it serial

36:52

killers and Ted Bundy was, you know, a

36:54

glimmer in somebody's eye or whatever, people

36:57

have always been obsessed with

36:58

what we now recognize as serial killers,

37:00

this particular breed of monster. And so I

37:02

think it's clear to anybody looking

37:04

at this, like, this probably wasn't a one off. And

37:07

I think that that, like you said,

37:09

it's that, it's that fascination with this particular

37:12

type. Yeah. I mean,

37:14

this case really does encapsulate

37:17

so many things in terms of the

37:20

parts of true crime that we're obsessed

37:22

with. We're obsessed with beauty,

37:24

you know, and she was gorgeous.

37:26

That was, you know, and then of course her autopsy

37:30

said all these like awful things about

37:32

her and her teeth. And it was

37:34

a lot of things in, in, and then it, and

37:36

then the media, that's a whole other layer

37:39

of the onion. And then really

37:41

the,

37:43

really, I, I, I

37:45

don't, I would want to say gruesome.

37:48

That doesn't even seem like a, uh,

37:51

an enough of a word to

37:53

the way that she was left

37:56

in terms of the

37:58

way her body. was posed.

38:03

She was posed. She was presented. Yeah, she was posed.

38:06

And the blood being gone. And

38:08

it just seems like a movie.

38:11

I was going to say, yeah. Like a horror movie.

38:13

And something, well, that would never happen. It seems

38:16

like something that would never happen. So that,

38:18

I think, and I totally,

38:19

like, Rabia, you said something really important. And

38:21

I completely

38:23

failed to get all the way back

38:24

around to it. And that is like the rumors that people

38:26

had said about her. And part of the

38:29

reason that people will come up with these

38:31

rumors is because they want to say, well, it couldn't

38:33

happen to me. And that is part of that obsession

38:35

too. It's like, well, I'm not like

38:37

that. I'm not

38:39

this or I'm not that. I'm not promiscuous. I'm not a

38:41

sex worker. I'm not saying that that, you know, that she,

38:43

but like, that is the way that we

38:45

distance ourselves when we see those. Because we

38:47

want to

38:48

reassure ourself that it couldn't happen to us.

38:51

That it's so horrific, but it couldn't happen to us. And

38:53

that is a lot of what fuels that

38:56

sort of rumor mail. I mean, in

38:58

addition to just rampant misogyny that we generally

39:01

seem to hate women

39:02

and, you know, it's

39:04

a tale as old as time. Oh, yeah. I

39:06

mean, it's the old, well, you

39:08

know, I mean, you do this kind of stuff and you're inviting

39:11

that kind of, I mean, you know what I mean? Like,

39:13

it's risky behavior. But the thing

39:15

about those rumors,

39:17

and I remember when you first kind of briefed me

39:19

on the case, you're like, you

39:21

know, all these rumors surrounding her, like literally

39:23

every single one was false. Like every

39:26

single one was false. And it's shocking. But that

39:28

takes me to something I want to talk about that's really important,

39:30

I think, in a case like this. Because I have listened

39:33

to you talk about this stuff, but also there's a lot of misconceptions

39:35

around this entire kind of field of investigative

39:38

work. And that's victimology. And

39:41

I know some

39:43

people hear that word and they think victim blaming.

39:46

Right. So Sarah, can you

39:47

tell us a little bit of victimology? And then I want

39:49

you to walk us through the victimology of Elizabeth

39:51

Short. OK. So I

39:53

actually have sort of a rote answer. I'm going to read it. And

39:57

Josh, you can trim this down

39:59

as you need.

39:59

victimology in its simplest

40:02

terms, like when we speak of it academically,

40:04

is the study of crime from the perspective

40:07

of the victim's role in the event. And

40:09

again, that is not to say their responsibility,

40:12

but their role, just who they were in

40:14

the equation. Right. And

40:16

when we speak of it, oh, go ahead. For

40:18

the dumb people in the room, and I'm just raising

40:20

my hand, the role in the event meaning like

40:24

she went to that bar. Well,

40:27

or just who was she to the killer?

40:29

Right. Got it. What

40:31

is her role? Because really what we need

40:34

to remember when we're talking about any

40:36

homicide is that the action is

40:39

the choice of the killer, not the choice

40:41

of the victim, of course. And

40:43

so when we talk about the victimology, it's about

40:45

understanding who that person was. And

40:48

then that can help you work backwards

40:51

to understanding why that killer chose

40:53

that person.

40:54

And

40:56

so it is the exact opposite of what people

40:58

tend to think. They hear the word and they think this is

41:00

terrible. You're talking about blaming the victim.

41:03

And it's not just about

41:05

what job did they do or who were they

41:07

friends with or God forbid, what were

41:09

they wearing? Are those things also victimology though? Like the

41:11

people can... They can be a part of it.

41:13

Yeah. But really what you need to know is who

41:16

was this person? What

41:19

kind of things was she into? What

41:21

kind of... What sort

41:23

of trust level did she have with

41:26

people that she met for the first time? Stuff

41:29

like this will help you understand

41:32

how the killer targeted them, what

41:34

their MO was, how that

41:36

fed their signature, all

41:37

of these things. And you

41:39

can only get there

41:42

by really, really, really getting

41:44

to know the victim. And that means getting to

41:46

know the people around them because they're not there

41:48

to speak for you. It does mean stuff like reading

41:50

diaries if you can get them, but it means

41:53

talk to their roommates, talk to their friends. Don't

41:56

ask them, don't just talk to them and say...

42:00

What time did she come home the night before?

42:03

Talk to them like

42:04

what movies did she like to go see? What

42:06

kind of, you know, what was her favorite food?

42:09

And all that stuff- Did she lock her door at night? Did

42:11

she lock her door at night? Did she in fact

42:13

light up a room? You

42:18

have to get to really know

42:20

the victim and then you

42:22

can from there work backwards to get to

42:25

understand who targets

42:27

that victim

42:28

and why that victim was targeted. And sometimes

42:31

it's deeply personal. The two of them knew each

42:33

other and the only way you're gonna find that

42:35

out, you know, if you have somebody, say

42:38

they were a sex worker, right? Okay,

42:41

but if you go at it from the aspect

42:43

of, okay, I'm gonna start with sex worker

42:46

and go from there, you are only, you're gonna

42:48

look at drug dealers, you're gonna look at pimps,

42:50

you're gonna look at this and that and everything. Okay,

42:52

but sex workers have families and friends too.

42:55

And sex workers have lives

42:57

outside their jobs and they've got all the rest

42:59

of us. They've got boyfriends and partners. They've got boyfriends and partners

43:01

and like who else were they interacting with?

43:04

And if you don't bother to talk to the people

43:06

who really knew them, you're

43:08

never gonna know that. And you're going to overlook

43:11

quite frankly, statistically, the people most

43:14

likely to kill someone. Well,

43:16

bringing it back to this case though, that

43:18

again was such an issue

43:20

because

43:21

she didn't have any family.

43:23

She didn't have any like

43:25

besties. She didn't have any

43:27

roommates. She didn't have people

43:30

that even noticed she was gone for

43:32

six days or seven. She hadn't

43:34

been seen for six days.

43:36

Not to say she was missing, but. Right,

43:39

I would actually, so there is an element of that

43:41

that is true, right? So she had moved around

43:44

a truck. She was basically couch surfing

43:46

is the way we would think of it now. Which is so funny

43:48

because that's very common. That's

43:50

very common around performers. In

43:53

your early 20s, are you kidding me?

43:55

Like who hasn't done that? But

43:57

she did have people in her life and there were, she

43:59

had a.

43:59

good friend who specifically said to the police,

44:02

you must look at this one man. And

44:04

they wrote him off very quickly. They

44:06

were afraid for her from this one

44:09

man, and they barely looked at him. She

44:11

did have, I mean, her mother, when

44:13

her mother came out to California to identify

44:16

her body, she said, she wrote to me every

44:18

couple of days when

44:21

she was traveling. She was very close

44:24

with her family. You

44:26

know, in a lot of aspects, she had

44:30

this sister who lived in California who said she hadn't

44:32

seen her in a couple of years. But don't

44:34

we all, I mean, we all have family that we're closer

44:36

to and family that we're not as close

44:38

with. And they just didn't really try.

44:41

Yeah. And also, it's just different

44:43

time. You can't just text someone and

44:46

if somebody calls

44:49

you from a pay phone and you're not home, you miss that

44:51

call. That's just a total different

44:53

time. Yeah. I know this show is called

44:55

Robbie and Ellen Solve the Case, but in this episode, Sarah's

44:58

going to solve the case because she's going to walk us through what she

45:00

does as an investigator, which brings me

45:02

back to what does

45:04

victimology in Elizabeth Short's case look like,

45:07

like through your eyes, through your analysis. And

45:09

is that part of your presentation, too,

45:11

that you do or no?

45:12

Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's a huge

45:15

part of my presentation when I talk

45:17

about this case. Yeah,

45:20

so Elizabeth Short was obviously, like we

45:22

said, she's 22. Like everybody

45:25

stop for a second and think about what you,

45:27

like how you were painting, how

45:29

you were acting at 22, exactly. She

45:32

had been in and out of love. She

45:34

was like crazy about the pilot

45:37

who was killed in India. She

45:39

was crazy about another

45:41

military guy. She definitely seemed to have like military

45:44

guy type, which was really common.

45:47

You know, a man in uniform right around

45:49

World War II, she had

45:51

gone back and forth between California

45:53

and just outside Boston, like Rabia

45:55

said. But she

45:58

had also struggled with.

45:59

with breathing issues, with asthma,

46:02

and with like pretty severe respiratory

46:05

issues. So she tended to favor a warmer

46:07

climate because

46:08

that's what doctors at the time said that

46:10

you needed. I don't know how much that

46:12

really helps, but that's what she was always told. And

46:15

that was part of the, you know, she lived in Florida

46:17

for a while,

46:17

and that was part of the

46:19

reason that she had moved out to California.

46:22

Now we know victimology in

46:24

terms of like her dad describing her

46:27

is that he brought her out there under

46:30

the agreement

46:32

that she would cook and clean for him. And

46:35

after three weeks, he was like, she

46:37

didn't cook and she didn't clean. Okay.

46:40

So you wanted a housemaid, not a

46:42

daughter. She rebelled against that.

46:44

And so you guys parted ways. Again,

46:47

all of this makes, like looks perfectly

46:49

normal, but in the lens of that

46:51

time, they're like, oh, she was a wild,

46:54

wild girl who's dating.

46:57

She won't cook and clean. But you

46:59

can see in this constant, like

47:02

the mother

47:04

of the pilot who was killed, who she was

47:07

engaged to, had expressed

47:09

like some reservations about her. She almost

47:11

seemed like, wow, this happened really fast. This

47:13

girl is a little Gaga for

47:15

him. It's

47:17

definitely, she's definitely in love with him.

47:19

But like, my god, should these crazy kids get

47:21

married? And I think we can see

47:23

from that just, you can imagine we

47:26

all had friends like that at 22 who

47:28

were just like, I was that friend. I was that

47:30

friend. I got married then. Yeah. And like

47:32

we were just, you know, you were desperate to,

47:35

she did want to get married. She did because that was

47:37

the expectation of the time. And

47:40

so she was bouncing around. Her mom

47:42

said, I never even knew she had money problems,

47:44

which was clear that she did with

47:47

all this couch surfing. She would like borrow money

47:49

from people and stuff. And that also

47:51

shows

47:51

a kind of resilience, a kind of like,

47:53

no, I got, I got my shit together. I don't

47:55

need to ask my mom for money. Right. And that

47:58

comes, there's a sort of naive.

47:59

and that and I think that that's the biggest

48:02

thing we see in

48:04

her

48:05

and that may have been you know

48:07

the thing that made her a target for whoever

48:10

chose her is just this sort of like

48:13

I'm very mature and confident

48:15

and in fact she's really quite quite

48:17

young at the at the heart of it all. She really

48:20

is and moving it's the tale

48:22

is all this time you know moving to Hollywood

48:25

to be an actress for all intents and purposes

48:27

she never acted which please

48:30

I know it's it's so hard

48:33

but I mean it's that thing you know that line

48:35

from pretty woman welcome to Hollywood what's

48:37

your dream everybody's got a dream everybody

48:40

comes there with their you

48:42

know

48:43

all of these great expectations and then reality

48:45

hits you how am I gonna pay rent

48:47

she was staying in that sort of like girls hostile

48:50

nightly thing every once in a while

48:52

yeah but you know a bulk

48:55

of her time was spent kind of like they

48:57

made it seem really

49:00

tacky and they made it seem really

49:03

low lifey and I was like the

49:05

amount of times that all of our friends growing

49:07

up especially performers when you're in and out

49:09

of town waiting for a gig waiting for a check

49:12

it's really really not it really is

49:14

very common and they made her sound

49:16

kind of like a swindler in that sense

49:18

like she was trying she was just trying to make

49:21

it in a in a town and make

49:23

it on her own yeah she was trying to do it

49:25

with a father who was quite frankly a giant

49:27

piece of shit for what he did to that family

49:30

with a mother who she clearly didn't want

49:32

to share her burdens with I mean her mom still had young

49:35

kids at home you know and

49:37

and she she kind of thought she could do it and and

49:40

and I you know I get that

49:43

and maybe she was maybe there was a level

49:45

of manipulation right that's you know like

49:47

oh I'm so pretty and like I kind of need a

49:49

place to stay like okay that

49:51

doesn't

49:53

that doesn't make a whole person right

49:55

like that is just like that's survival mode

49:58

it seems like I mean like the statements

49:59

that were taken from friends and she had a lot, she

50:02

had a, it seemed like a pretty strong

50:04

circle of friends. They all described it as somebody

50:06

who was just really likable and easygoing

50:09

and I don't know if they even

50:11

have to be manipulative to be like, can I crash at your place? I

50:13

think she was way too single. She had only been back in LA for

50:15

six months before she was killed. It's not like

50:18

she had years to pursue this dream. She

50:20

literally was just kind of getting her bearings.

50:22

Her friends, or a friend did describe

50:25

her as kind of never having rent and always being

50:27

broke. And I

50:29

wonder, I mean,

50:29

like, you know, and she was seeing the company

50:32

soldiers a lot, having a drink with them, partying

50:35

with them. And I think, like you said, that was kind of

50:37

the thing that was happening then. Also, I read

50:40

about this entire campaign,

50:42

a government campaign that would encourage

50:45

this and say, you know, these soldiers

50:48

need a warm meal and need

50:50

company and so talk to them and

50:52

share, you know, go out with them. And there

50:55

was a lot of encouragement for young women. Well,

50:58

and a young, very pretty girl. I mean,

51:00

you really had no choice but to get married

51:02

at that time if you wanted to

51:04

survive. And so what is

51:07

a drop

51:07

dead gorgeous woman going to do but flirt

51:09

with soldiers who were just back from the war? Like,

51:12

yes, that makes a lot

51:14

of sense if you are programmed to believe

51:17

I have

51:17

to get a husband. It's the only

51:19

way to be secure. There's no evidence, though,

51:21

that she ever asked any of those men to pay for her

51:24

rent or to put her up. I

51:27

think there was one guy who said, I loaned her five

51:29

bucks a couple times. Like,

51:31

no, you're absolutely right. She did

51:34

not even seem to stay with

51:36

most of them. She seemed to stay with either friends

51:38

of friends

51:39

or there was the woman in San Diego she stayed

51:41

with for about a month. Like, I guess,

51:44

you know, how awful can she be if she's a

51:46

guest for a month someplace? I don't think I would

51:48

do that to anybody. Yeah, all

51:51

the rumors about how

51:53

many men she had been with, someone was like,

51:55

she could be seen with five

51:57

men in a week. I was like...

51:59

go off girl, live your life. You're

52:03

not married, you're not tied down, you don't have kids.

52:05

And so that whole thing about

52:07

the media, and I think there's a lot of things

52:09

that is gonna come back to the media surrounding

52:13

this case, just like the perpetuation of

52:15

rumors and the way that they made her sound

52:17

and how misogynistic their reporting was, but

52:20

they love to really paint her as this, I

52:23

mean, they actually wrote like horror

52:25

in the paper. Yeah, and a harlot. Well,

52:29

and I wanna point out too,

52:29

you were talking about the examiner, and the examiner

52:33

was the main paper,

52:34

it was like the flagship paper of William

52:36

Randolph Hearst. And I can't

52:38

remember if it was this case or

52:41

another like big LA case, it

52:43

may have been a different one,

52:44

but Hearst

52:47

in some case in LA around this time

52:49

specifically said to his reporters, I don't

52:51

give a shit if you gotta make stuff up, sell

52:54

papers, and as soon as it would start to die,

52:57

that it would turn back up in the thing. And

53:00

so, whether it was this

53:01

case or not, obviously Hearst, that

53:03

was part of the business model.

53:05

Yeah. What I wanna do next

53:07

is actually, because I mean like Sarah, I

53:09

know how she worked as an investigator

53:11

in terms of like what are the elements of like a

53:14

crime she looks at, and so what I want

53:16

her to do is walk us now through the crime scene and

53:18

what that says to her. So a couple of things

53:20

that really struck me was the fact that, I

53:22

mean, whoever killed her and left her body

53:24

there, they were not trying to hide anything.

53:27

She, I mean, there was a vacant lot. She could have been

53:29

carried well into the vacant, and she

53:31

wasn't just dumped and ran.

53:33

This person took their time, put her

53:36

right next to the sidewalk, literally

53:39

like inches from the sidewalk. And

53:43

I'm like,

53:44

you know, and the crime scene was otherwise

53:47

almost spotless. There

53:49

was apparently a tire track that was found close to

53:51

her body, maybe a bloody smear on the

53:53

tire track, but like even the lack of blood

53:55

to me is astonishing. And

53:58

so I want you to talk about that, and also I'll talk.

53:59

about like, I mean, isn't that

54:02

kind of what you're dealing with, with, with, with a case at

54:04

the heart of your podcast? Yes. So

54:06

the, the word that comes to mind, it's not,

54:08

you know, sometimes when we talk about these types

54:11

of sadistic sexual homicides,

54:13

we talk about posing, right? Like the ritual

54:15

involved in the sort of posing. This

54:18

to me, this case goes

54:19

beyond posing and goes to full

54:21

on presentation.

54:23

This was to this person,

54:25

this was a presentation.

54:28

Like you said, one of the things that jumped out at me,

54:30

if you were going to pull a body out, you know, yeah,

54:33

vacant lot kind of makes some sense if you're

54:35

going to dump a body and run, but

54:37

the,

54:38

where the tire tracks were and where the blood

54:40

droplets were and stuff were actually,

54:42

you know, a little ways down

54:45

from where the body was actually located, which

54:47

means whoever did that took

54:49

the additional risk, right? Rather than

54:51

just like pulling up, dumping her

54:53

out the side of the car where you're obscured by

54:56

the door and stuff, and then taking off, they,

54:58

they walked and carried and took the

55:00

time to lay her out the way her arms were posed,

55:03

the way her body was, you know, was angled,

55:06

the way her legs were, were

55:08

presented.

55:09

That was so, so

55:12

specific and so meant,

55:14

I would go so far as to say it's probably, it may

55:17

be meant for a specific person or

55:20

at least in, in the killer's

55:21

mind, it's meant for a specific person, whether or

55:23

not, you know, whether or not that person

55:25

exists. What do you even mean by that?

55:28

Like what do you mean? I mean, to see it, like someone

55:30

to see it? Oh yeah. I mean, like beyond

55:32

wanting just somebody to see it,

55:34

right? It seems to me that when a killer is

55:36

doing that,

55:38

they have something in their mind. They,

55:41

this is a story that they want to

55:43

tell

55:43

and whether it is a story they want to tell to

55:45

the world or a story that they want

55:47

to tell to like, you know,

55:49

an imaginary person or a person they

55:51

are obsessed with and have been stalking. Or

55:54

you know, when we look at Golden State Killer

55:56

or even Ted Bundy, we hear these

55:57

stories about like the girlfriend they never got.

55:59

got over, right? And

56:02

so sometimes you see that as like a driving

56:04

factor where it's like everything is in

56:07

some way sort of show with this in

56:10

mind. And like one of the things that

56:12

struck me, I was like, did

56:15

they bother to see if anybody in the homes

56:17

directly in the

56:18

line of sight of where she was found

56:21

knew her or knew anybody who behaved

56:23

strangely? You know, like those people,

56:26

but it doesn't seem like they even

56:28

canvas to the neighborhood because they said they

56:30

spent weeks trying to find the woman

56:33

who had called in the body. I

56:35

couldn't believe that. I couldn't believe it. Couldn't find

56:37

this woman, she lived a half a block away.

56:39

So you clearly didn't knock and talk. You did

56:41

not canvas the neighborhood. So they have no

56:44

way of knowing like did, you know, was

56:46

there some connection

56:47

to a home like directly across

56:49

the street or nearby or something like that? I

56:53

think, when

56:56

you see, Dr. Burgess talks

56:58

about this a lot, right? The level of ritual

57:00

and the level of- Well, can you tell folks who Dr. Burgess

57:02

has said that he's given? Dr. Anne Burgess

57:06

is for those, for people

57:07

who saw Mindhunter, the character

57:09

with Dr. Wendy Carr is based on her.

57:11

So while

57:13

some, you know, definitely some great

57:15

FBI agents went around and conducted

57:17

interviews with serial killers, Dr.

57:20

Burgess is the one who created the science behind

57:22

it. She is the one who developed

57:24

the questionnaires. She is the one who interpreted the

57:26

questionnaires. She really is the true, the

57:31

brilliance behind the idea

57:34

of criminal profiling or

57:36

criminal psychology as we understand it with serial predators.

57:39

And so one of the things that Dr. Burgess talks

57:41

about a lot is how

57:44

long did they spend with the body after

57:46

the death?

57:48

To some degree leading up to it, right? Like how

57:51

sadistic they are will sometimes be reflected

57:53

in how long they spent sort of torturing

57:55

this person, whether it's physical torture or

57:57

just the emotional torture of knowing that you're probably

57:59

gonna-

57:59

end up dead. And we know in her

58:02

case that that she

58:04

she had ligature marks on her on her

58:06

wrists and her ankles and and and

58:08

had been strangled, and so we know there was

58:10

some element of she was held for at least

58:12

a little while. We really

58:15

have ended up dead, and we know in her

58:17

case that that she

58:19

she had ligature marks on her on her

58:21

wrists and her ankles and and and

58:23

had been strangled, and so we know there was

58:25

some element of she was held for at least

58:28

a little while. We really

58:30

have no way of knowing if she was held

58:32

that whole time because like you said,

58:36

she she would kind of come and go, and it's

58:38

not like we have texting. And so you know

58:40

six or seven days is really not that long

58:43

for for

58:43

nobody to necessarily have seen her,

58:47

or it's also possible she was held that entire

58:49

time by somebody from from when

58:51

she was last seen at the Biltmore.

58:54

But so then after the the murder is committed,

58:57

how long do they spend with the body afterwards?

58:59

And and in this case they

59:01

they obviously spent significant

59:03

time not just with the mutilation but with

59:06

the the the the the cleaning

59:09

the ex-angination the

59:11

picking a place to bring it because there's

59:13

no no place is an accident,

59:14

you know, I mean if they put her in a dumpster

59:17

that's just get rid of the body. If you chose that

59:19

place he chose that place for

59:21

a reason. Just the dramatic nature

59:24

of the pose and how the two parts of

59:27

her body were in different places. I

59:29

mean it really is so unbelievable.

59:31

Yeah. All her mutilation

59:34

other than like the gashing

59:36

on the face and maybe even the cutting that was all

59:38

post-mortem right? I believe so. That's

59:40

my understanding is that they

59:43

they felt that the mutilation to the face happened

59:46

pre or perimortum that that was

59:47

like a secondary cause of death that

59:50

she had so much blood loss from from the facial

59:52

wounds. But

59:53

it's my understanding that the

59:56

you know the cuts in the in the womb area

59:58

and all of that stuff

59:59

And from her thigh, there's a chunk out of her thigh.

1:00:02

Right, and the cuts to the breast and stuff,

1:00:04

that's done. Somebody took a

1:00:07

long time and care and precision

1:00:10

in their own mind with that. Yeah, see,

1:00:13

I read a lot of conflicting things on

1:00:16

those,

1:00:17

the cuts on her, the

1:00:19

cuts on her face. Is

1:00:21

that kind of still sort of a

1:00:24

guess? Is that still like an

1:00:26

estimation about when that happened? Because

1:00:29

the reason I ask is because somebody had said

1:00:32

that that pain and shock of

1:00:34

an injury like that could actually

1:00:37

kill someone, give them a heart attack. Not that she

1:00:39

died of a heart attack, but I'm just saying that amount

1:00:42

of intense pain.

1:00:44

So was that ever decided or is

1:00:46

that still up for debate? I think I

1:00:49

have always understood it that that was a secondary

1:00:51

cause, that it was like that they said

1:00:53

that the blows to the, yeah,

1:00:56

the blunt force trauma, particularly the

1:00:58

front of her head was the primary cause

1:01:00

and then the blood loss from the lacerations.

1:01:03

And yeah, I mean, I'm not a

1:01:05

forensics person, I'm not a criminalist. So

1:01:08

I can't talk about it in super

1:01:10

detail, but I do know that the amount

1:01:12

of blood that is produced when

1:01:15

a wound

1:01:15

is given is

1:01:18

indicative of

1:01:19

whether they were alive, how long they had

1:01:21

been dead,

1:01:21

you know what I mean? Whether there's a heart still pumping.

1:01:24

Yeah, exactly. I know that what

1:01:26

I was trying to remember, I'm sure I'm gonna pronounce

1:01:28

this wrong and I'm gonna get 700 DMs.

1:01:31

Echinosis, echimosis.

1:01:34

Never even heard of it. ECHY, E-C-C-H-Y-Mosis,

1:01:40

which is basically that bluish discoloration

1:01:43

that I was trying to explain. And

1:01:45

that is evidence

1:01:47

that the internal bleeding was caused

1:01:51

to live tissue.

1:01:52

So that was what was, but

1:01:55

maybe tissue still has oxygen or

1:01:57

it appears to be alive even if someone is

1:01:59

recently.

1:01:59

internal bleeding is probably what happened because

1:02:02

of the blunt force trauma. The question is about the external

1:02:04

bleeding, like how, you know, because like

1:02:06

the chunks of, I mean, like they

1:02:08

were parts of her that were carved off of her body,

1:02:11

right? Like so, and it

1:02:13

is hard to judge because that's not

1:02:16

even the crime scene. Like the police

1:02:18

were never able to identify where she was actually

1:02:21

killed and or, and she

1:02:23

was definitely held for some amount of time because a

1:02:25

ligature marks show that she had been like bound and stuff.

1:02:28

I think one of the most gruesome, I mean,

1:02:30

the whole thing bisecting

1:02:32

the body in half is, is it's unfathomable.

1:02:36

But I, I thought about

1:02:38

the, the, the,

1:02:41

the slashes on the sides of her mouth extending

1:02:45

into like this really terrifying, like kind of

1:02:47

grin. And I think that's, I

1:02:49

don't know, it's one of the scariest aspects of this, like

1:02:51

that just seems,

1:02:52

I mean, like

1:02:55

evil, I mean, like evil, and

1:02:57

it is, it is so deeply personal.

1:02:59

And that, you know, when, when we use the

1:03:01

term personal in criminology,

1:03:03

it doesn't necessarily mean that the two

1:03:05

people knew each other, right?

1:03:08

It can, but it does mean

1:03:10

that it was very specifically about

1:03:12

this victim for the killer. And there was

1:03:14

something about her that he

1:03:16

was filled with tremendous rage, particularly

1:03:19

about her femininity and her sexuality,

1:03:22

because in addition to like her beautiful

1:03:24

face being

1:03:26

completely disfigured, she

1:03:28

was also, her sexual

1:03:31

organs were mutilated as well. Like this was

1:03:33

a very specific target

1:03:36

directed at whoever he saw her

1:03:38

as in his world, in his life, she

1:03:41

represented something or he knew her.

1:03:43

I mean, that's also possible, right? But

1:03:45

she represented something to him that

1:03:47

he was just fucking

1:03:48

furious about, and like he was going

1:03:50

to show her. There's something about

1:03:53

mutilating and hurting someone's face.

1:03:56

Do you remember Samantha Koenig?

1:03:59

She was

1:03:59

Israel Kiese's last

1:04:02

victim in Alaska.

1:04:04

And

1:04:06

sorry for the graphic explanation, but

1:04:08

he sent a picture of her with

1:04:10

her. She was actually deceased in her eyelids.

1:04:14

He sewed her eyelids open. There's something

1:04:16

very, I guess, personal.

1:04:19

Yeah, there's something so...

1:04:22

I

1:04:25

am really at a loss for words today. It's as masochistic

1:04:28

or it's as sadistic as it gets. It is sadistic.

1:04:31

As sadistic as it gets because

1:04:33

it is like...

1:04:34

Murder plus one. It's like also

1:04:37

this thing that your loved

1:04:40

ones might be able to say goodbye to

1:04:42

or that will be your memory.

1:04:45

I'm taking that too. It just seems like a lot of hate. A lot

1:04:47

of hate. It's a lot of hate. And now, so

1:04:49

here's where we say, OK,

1:04:52

now we have to flip the script and say, what

1:04:54

does this say about the killer? And what

1:04:56

this says about the killer, generally when we see

1:04:59

the need to punish someone's

1:05:01

physical appearance,

1:05:03

usually means they are deeply

1:05:05

insecure about their own physical appearance. Deeply

1:05:08

insecure. They hate

1:05:10

the world

1:05:11

for viewing them the way they think the world views

1:05:13

them. Again, sometimes this shit is all

1:05:15

in somebody's head, but it is,

1:05:18

they believe they are perceived

1:05:20

a certain way. This person is

1:05:22

like the epitome of all of that. We

1:05:26

kind of see it to some degree with,

1:05:28

when we talk about in-cell murders, right?

1:05:31

Like Elliot, Elliot

1:05:33

Rogers and stuff like that, where it's like,

1:05:34

I don't think

1:05:36

I can have these women, so I'm going to destroy

1:05:39

them. And that's like, for

1:05:41

this woman, he had to

1:05:43

destroy what he

1:05:45

felt insecure about in her.

1:05:49

Or maybe it was someone she had rejected or

1:05:51

something, that the fragility

1:05:54

of the male ego, it's like a little

1:05:56

crystal egg.

1:05:57

profiling

1:06:00

and this kind of this is Sarah's

1:06:03

you know like Lane not mine

1:06:05

but it feels like

1:06:09

I mean here's one of the things that's

1:06:11

shocking to me I mean there's so many things talking every single aspect

1:06:14

is the incredible

1:06:17

discipline with which this whole thing was

1:06:19

done right this is not a messy

1:06:22

rage-filled crime this

1:06:24

is a very carefully executed

1:06:27

crime leaving no evidence washing

1:06:29

the body there was they tested her for sperm nothing

1:06:31

there she had clearly been sexually assaulted

1:06:33

I mean that's you know for sure but like

1:06:35

this guy he I

1:06:37

mean it's meticulous it's meticulous

1:06:40

and and so I'm like how that

1:06:42

can't to me that can't be somebody like she

1:06:44

rejected me I'm gonna come for her this is like somebody

1:06:46

I'm like who's got some practice or something like how do

1:06:48

you write that can't be your first crime can that

1:06:50

well that's yeah that's the thing I would be very

1:06:53

very surprised

1:06:53

to learn that this was somebody's first crime

1:06:56

like this is

1:06:56

a very advanced scene everything

1:06:58

about this now we were also dealing

1:07:00

with the Keystone cops with the LAPD of 1947 and so maybe

1:07:03

even a sloppy

1:07:06

scene would not have been would not

1:07:08

have been picked up but it does seem

1:07:10

like everything that we know about it it

1:07:12

was extremely well planned it's extremely organized

1:07:15

like when we talk about organized and disorganized

1:07:17

killers it it doesn't

1:07:19

mean that there wasn't

1:07:21

to again to that person's mind because

1:07:23

we have to not think like like

1:07:25

we think right we have to think like so

1:07:27

if she didn't smile at

1:07:30

him she

1:07:32

yeah or you

1:07:34

know if she rejected

1:07:37

him that doesn't mean that she wouldn't have gone to this it

1:07:39

just means that like okay there was there might have been

1:07:41

a period of time through which he

1:07:43

he he simmered

1:07:44

on that rejection and yes this was like his

1:07:47

tenth or whatever the

1:07:47

other thing that's possible is sometimes

1:07:50

we see the inability for

1:07:52

a rapist a serial rapist

1:07:54

who has escalated to homicide the

1:07:57

inability to perform perform

1:07:59

in quotes because

1:08:01

like rape obviously is not a

1:08:02

performance, but that is where then

1:08:05

we will see object rape and the stuff like

1:08:07

the blade rape and then the like the rejection

1:08:09

of the face, like he's blaming it on her

1:08:12

when, you know what I mean? So again, this is why like it

1:08:14

can be a total stranger, but it's deeply

1:08:16

personal. Absolutely, I totally understand

1:08:19

that. Yeah. So there's one piece

1:08:21

of evidence, I mean, there were like a couple of bags

1:08:23

found and I think like the question, I mean, like, okay,

1:08:26

maybe her body was transported in those bags or not, but

1:08:28

one of the pieces of evidence that I thought was

1:08:30

really fascinating was

1:08:31

there was these fibers that were found on her body

1:08:34

and they turned out to be like these palm

1:08:37

tree fibers that are used in

1:08:39

manufacturing like cheap brushes, like

1:08:41

brushes meaning and I don't, from

1:08:44

the FBI reports, I can't tell if they mean like

1:08:46

a hairbrush or which I don't think, but I

1:08:48

think they mean like paintbrush type of thing or

1:08:51

what do you understand that Sarah? The thing that

1:08:53

I read,

1:08:54

I did get the impression hairbrush

1:08:56

and what that said to me was like, oh

1:08:58

shit, this is a cop, right?

1:09:00

Because like if he had had sex with

1:09:02

her and he knows enough to know they're

1:09:05

going to look for fibers and hairs because you

1:09:07

know, forensics has come a long way, but they did

1:09:09

look for fibers and hairs back then, you

1:09:13

know, that they might, because they would do like hair

1:09:15

type and stuff like that, that

1:09:17

he might've thought to like

1:09:19

comb out the pubic region, you know, I mean,

1:09:21

that's just one thing that jumps out, but if it's

1:09:24

a paintbrush, yeah, maybe that's how he

1:09:26

lured her in, do you want to come model for me? How

1:09:29

many, you know, Rodney Alcala, how many

1:09:31

cereals do we know who said pose

1:09:34

for me? And you know. So

1:09:36

when I read it, I thought it was

1:09:38

a brush from her like being

1:09:40

cleaned because her body

1:09:42

was so clean, like a body

1:09:45

brush because back then they weren't quite as

1:09:47

soft as they are now and they were made

1:09:49

of like different like animal hairs or some

1:09:51

like fibers or something, or even like

1:09:54

burlap bags, like kind of to clean

1:09:56

and to pumice. So that's what

1:09:58

I thought it was because her body.

1:09:59

her body was so clean.

1:10:01

No, it was drained of blood,

1:10:04

but there wasn't a spot on her

1:10:06

or any semen on her. There

1:10:08

was nothing. So I thought her body had literally

1:10:11

been scrubbed. That actually, I mean,

1:10:13

that might be the simplest

1:10:15

explanation, which as Occam's

1:10:17

Razor tells us is usually the truth. Which

1:10:20

is funny, because I usually go the opposite of Occam's Razor. I'm

1:10:23

like, a hot air balloon came down. Go with

1:10:26

me. And then

1:10:28

a zombie came out, a lot of real zombie,

1:10:30

a fake zombie, like the ones at Disneyland. Okay,

1:10:32

anyway. Well, actually I was gonna say one more thing

1:10:35

about

1:10:36

what was done to Elizabeth. And

1:10:38

that is that, it wasn't that she was just killed

1:10:41

the mutilated post-mortem maybe, and

1:10:44

then cut in half, but there are signs

1:10:46

that she was tortured. For example, the

1:10:49

medical examiner found that in her stomach, it

1:10:52

seemed like there was fecal matter or fertilizer

1:10:54

or something. I mean, there was definitely

1:10:56

like something that didn't belong to her stomach was in her

1:10:58

stomach, which seems to suggest she might've been

1:11:01

forced to eat that kind

1:11:03

of stuff. I mean, so it seems like there was like this,

1:11:06

just the rage and hate filled like

1:11:09

humiliation that she was forced into

1:11:11

her first. Yeah,

1:11:14

and like the tic-tac-toe marks

1:11:16

is the way the guy described it in the police

1:11:18

report. There were like, they were not deep

1:11:20

cuts. I mean, they would have hurt, but

1:11:23

they would not have wounded, but there were

1:11:25

like hash marks essentially on

1:11:28

unlike parts of her where that, you know,

1:11:31

that feels like emotional torture.

1:11:36

Yeah, what do you make of the fact that that

1:11:38

chunk was cut out of her? I mean,

1:11:41

her sexual organs were mutilated, but

1:11:43

the chunk was cut out of her thigh. I mean, what I

1:11:45

have read is that Fran said that she had

1:11:47

a tattoo on her upper right thigh, a tattoo

1:11:49

of a red rose or something, and the

1:11:52

body didn't have one on it. So

1:11:53

the assumption is maybe the killer cut

1:11:56

out that tattoo. Why

1:11:58

do you think that they would do that? Well,

1:12:01

again, there's something about it that is personal

1:12:03

and offensive to him. So again, it's part

1:12:05

of that. If he hates her- Was this

1:12:07

an era in which a woman can't get a tattoo because

1:12:09

it made her swim like a- Yeah, that's

1:12:11

what I was-

1:12:12

I didn't think it was appropriate for me

1:12:14

to have a tattoo until I got one in

1:12:16

whatever it was, 2011 or something. You

1:12:19

know what I mean? So yeah,

1:12:21

in 1947, no women were not supposed to have tattoos.

1:12:23

That's more like whore behavior.

1:12:26

And so yeah, there is something offensive about that to

1:12:28

this guy. When everything about her, he

1:12:30

is mad at her particular

1:12:34

expressions of femininity, whatever

1:12:36

that is. I mean, it's all inadvertent

1:12:39

on her part. She's just living her life, but whoever

1:12:41

this person is, all of these things are offensive.

1:12:44

I had seen differing reports about that tattoo,

1:12:47

so

1:12:47

that's why I've always been-

1:12:50

So that's

1:12:53

called folia due when you're talking about

1:12:56

two killers who operate together. And

1:13:00

the toolbox killers were the names

1:13:02

of

1:13:02

two guys who operated in California in

1:13:05

the early 80s.

1:13:06

And there was a lot of

1:13:08

really sadistic behavior between the

1:13:10

two of them.

1:13:10

Typically you don't see it quite

1:13:13

this prolonged and sadistic with multiple

1:13:15

people because you

1:13:17

really are kind of counting on somebody

1:13:19

else being just as messed up

1:13:21

as you are in terms of being willing

1:13:24

to go this far. But it does happen. Yeah,

1:13:27

I tend to think of it as one person, but

1:13:31

we've definitely seen this level

1:13:33

of sadism exhibited

1:13:36

by multiples. Well, I was just going

1:13:38

to say, I mean, this

1:13:40

is unsolved, obviously.

1:13:43

We're here because of that. And

1:13:45

they basically treated everybody

1:13:47

Elizabeth knew as a suspect. Everybody

1:13:50

had to be cleared. That included

1:13:53

friends or people she had been seen

1:13:55

with. I mean, well, they questioned a lot of

1:13:57

people. So I was like, nope, they didn't

1:13:59

do enough.

1:13:59

Well, they cleared people

1:14:02

that in my opinion, they probably shouldn't have cleared.

1:14:04

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, I'm not saying that.

1:14:06

I'm just saying that everybody was

1:14:08

considered a suspect. They did not do their due diligence.

1:14:11

We'll get to that, obviously, because the murder. Except

1:14:13

her dad. Her dad was never a suspect.

1:14:16

Where was her dad? He supposed, in

1:14:18

LA, like a mile away, he

1:14:21

supposedly has a pretty solid alibi.

1:14:23

And I am inclined to think it's probably a

1:14:25

good alibi. But I don't know. There's

1:14:28

a lot about this.

1:14:30

Well, hundreds of people were considered.

1:14:33

Over 60 people confessed,

1:14:35

like you said before, men and women.

1:14:39

But there is like, you could make

1:14:41

several lists. There's several lists online. There's the

1:14:43

top 24 suspects. There's the top 20.

1:14:46

There's the top 10.

1:14:49

Rabia, do you have

1:14:51

a top, should we do five? Or

1:14:54

it can go on. We're going to be like a 17-parter.

1:14:57

Yeah, no, we're definitely going to talk about

1:15:00

some of the most, I think,

1:15:02

salient ones. But the father thing

1:15:04

to me is, again, I

1:15:05

keep going back to the meticulousness,

1:15:08

is that a word, with how this was done.

1:15:13

Like, it just doesn't seem like a one-off to me. I'm like,

1:15:15

this guy's a pro. I completely

1:15:17

agree. But those two

1:15:19

things aren't mutually exclusive. Her dad

1:15:21

had like vanished for 10 years.

1:15:25

I was going to say, unless her dad is a serial killer, I

1:15:27

feel like, that's a

1:15:29

theory that I actually have not read online.

1:15:32

I have not either, because he does

1:15:35

have an alibi. I was impressed,

1:15:37

as somebody who deals in a realm

1:15:40

where people who falsely confess get wrongly

1:15:42

convicted all the time, with the fact that the police

1:15:45

were able to be like, no, this person's crazy. They did

1:15:47

not kill this person. They dismissed.

1:15:49

I mean, they did their due diligence. And

1:15:51

they did their interrogations. And

1:15:54

they cleared like 50 people who were just like,

1:15:56

off their rocker, and who were confessing to something

1:15:59

they hadn't done.

1:15:59

I posed a question on the Google Doc and I

1:16:02

actually have an answer for it. Okay.

1:16:05

Yeah. Super nerdy. Give me

1:16:07

the answer. How do they know better in the 1940s

1:16:09

how to look at, how to assess

1:16:11

whether or not there's a false confession than

1:16:13

they did in the 1990s where every

1:16:15

confession was considered a real confession? Well,

1:16:18

it was considered. So not necessarily how to interpret

1:16:20

a false confession as being false, but

1:16:23

how many, like, you can usually tell

1:16:25

like with this woman, right? Like she came forward.

1:16:27

The first thing she did was tell the press and

1:16:30

then she told

1:16:30

the police, right? So there was, and she only

1:16:32

had details that were known in the papers

1:16:35

and stuff like that. So you can usually,

1:16:37

you would hope that most cops, even

1:16:39

crappy ones would be able to write those off. But

1:16:42

the primary difference is

1:16:44

not so much in the, in those like giant

1:16:47

weird crazy people, false

1:16:48

confessions as how do we end

1:16:51

up with false confessions like with Jason

1:16:53

Carroll, right? So the answer to that question

1:16:55

is what was developed in the late forties and early

1:16:57

fifties,

1:16:58

the reed technique. The reed technique. Yeah.

1:17:01

And, and that changed the face of interview. And that's how we ended

1:17:03

up with, with quite frankly, so many

1:17:06

false confessions that just started piling up after

1:17:08

that. And it got, you know, it was

1:17:10

always pretty brutal back then. There were a lot

1:17:12

of people beaten into

1:17:13

confessions, even in the, you know, thirties and

1:17:15

forties, but it certainly,

1:17:18

it became a lot more manipulative once

1:17:21

Reed came onto the scene. So I was

1:17:23

kind of gobsmacked when I read that Woody, sorry,

1:17:25

that, yeah, that, that Woodrow Guthrie who

1:17:28

wrote this land is your land

1:17:30

was considered a serious suspect at one time.

1:17:32

But he was a suspect because he basically violated,

1:17:35

what was it? The Comstock act? Like he was sending

1:17:37

supposedly pornographic material through

1:17:39

the, the mail. And that was

1:17:41

like, why he was stalking this woman. Right.

1:17:44

He had, yes, he

1:17:45

had been stalking. And then they said they pulled him

1:17:47

in on the federal crime of like sending

1:17:49

pornography through the mail. So, but

1:17:51

then they said, When they do that. Yeah, he was

1:17:54

cleared. He was cleared because

1:17:56

he was not in the area at the time.

1:17:59

You know what I mean?

1:17:59

not even in the state or anything, so they were able to clear

1:18:02

them. I didn't know this was a sicko then. I just always like it when they get

1:18:04

a back door, where they get like a, oh, I like

1:18:06

it when they back door. Okay, I'll be

1:18:09

hearing that on repeat from, hi guys.

1:18:11

No, I like all of them. From Joey's and back doors. Exactly,

1:18:14

well they got Al Capone on tax evasion.

1:18:17

Yeah. Like I love those things where they're

1:18:19

like, that's the thing we can get them in on. But

1:18:23

the suspect list though, the

1:18:26

main suspect list reads

1:18:29

Maurice Clemens, Salvador Torres,

1:18:32

Vera, Marvin Margolis,

1:18:34

Glenn Wolf. This says a Chicago

1:18:37

police officer. But there

1:18:39

are some main ones that

1:18:42

keep coming up that a lot of people

1:18:45

come back to. There are podcasts about

1:18:48

it. Who is

1:18:50

your

1:18:51

number one person you want to talk about, Sarah?

1:18:54

Actually, no wait, scratch that. Who is the

1:18:57

person that comes up

1:19:00

in the conversation that you're like, why is

1:19:02

this person coming up? This is such

1:19:04

a hard no, but their name keeps

1:19:06

coming up because there are several of them. I

1:19:09

mean, the one that comes up that I'm just like, no,

1:19:11

stop that, is

1:19:14

Ed Edwards, who was a serial killer.

1:19:17

But he was a bad dude. He

1:19:21

did

1:19:21

horrible things. But he is somebody

1:19:23

who's, and we've had a few of these,

1:19:26

and we're probably gonna talk about one, where this

1:19:28

person's adult child later came forward

1:19:31

and said, I believe my father did

1:19:33

this. Now, he did not just

1:19:35

say that he did Dahlia in addition to

1:19:37

the crimes that he's known for. They

1:19:40

have attributed everything from Black

1:19:43

Dahlia to John Bonet Ramsey and

1:19:45

the Zodiac Killer to this

1:19:47

one person. Actually, and Lacey

1:19:49

Peterson. And Lacey Peterson, oh my God, I forgot

1:19:52

about Lacey, my bad. And that

1:19:54

is always like, you wanna talk about a pet peeve

1:19:56

of mine. This idea that like, we

1:19:58

can take all of these.

1:19:59

horrible cases and ascribe them to only

1:20:02

a few people. That happens with Israel

1:20:04

keys too. It happens with

1:20:06

Israel keys. Yeah, that happens all the time. It's a

1:20:08

very easy way to make

1:20:11

your brain go to the scariest

1:20:13

place and solve it. Great, it was Israel keys

1:20:15

and he's gone. Exactly, and I think

1:20:18

it gives people, I mean, true crime gets blamed

1:20:20

all the time for making women afraid all the time. I

1:20:22

think if you were thinking that there are five

1:20:25

people who have committed all the famous serial murders,

1:20:27

then you are walking around with a false sense of security.

1:20:29

Because there are a lot more of them. Sarah's

1:20:32

like, there's serial killers everywhere. There

1:20:34

kind of are. There kind of are. Look,

1:20:37

I mean, like so- There's so many people I've never

1:20:39

heard of. You know, at the top of the episode,

1:20:42

we talked about why this case was so notorious and

1:20:44

had such a memory of it, just when

1:20:46

people are obsessed with it. And you said, because it was so horrific,

1:20:48

but I remember we

1:20:51

talked about possible suspects and you

1:20:53

brought up the Cleveland torso murders

1:20:55

and I said, what? I mean, like, so

1:20:57

that was a thing. Apparently seven

1:20:59

San Diego women had been murdered and

1:21:02

mutilated in the years leading up to

1:21:04

it. Very shortly after Elizabeth's

1:21:08

murder, there was the killing of the

1:21:10

red lipstick murder, as it is dubbed, of

1:21:13

Jean French. And she was a naked corpse found

1:21:15

in a vacant lot in LA. I mean, like literally,

1:21:18

I think like the next month, right

1:21:20

after- Yeah, I mean, that one

1:21:22

feels awfully close, doesn't it? You know

1:21:24

what I mean? Like, that's the thing is, I think,

1:21:27

and on those San Diego ones, I looked through those

1:21:30

and

1:21:31

some of them to me don't even feel like they're

1:21:33

connected to each other necessarily. Like

1:21:35

they're just too far afield. I mean, people

1:21:38

will, some of these guys work

1:21:40

very chaotically. You know, you

1:21:42

look at like Richard Ramirez

1:21:45

or even Bundy, right, where they

1:21:47

use all these different methods and they, you know what I

1:21:49

mean? They kind of like vary around. So you can't, and they'll

1:21:51

vary in who they choose. Israel Keys

1:21:54

is one where like, there's just no way to identify

1:21:56

who he's gonna pick. But with this one,

1:21:58

because it's so specific,

1:21:59

and the signature

1:22:00

is so specific, the MO would

1:22:03

almost have to match. You know what I mean? So

1:22:06

the San Diego one, but there are a couple in

1:22:08

there that I'm like, oh, that feels like that, that

1:22:10

those might be connected to each other and could

1:22:13

be connected to this one. Honestly,

1:22:15

if we're talking though about the far

1:22:18

field ones, the Cleveland Torso Killer is the

1:22:20

one that for me

1:22:22

rings the closest as

1:22:24

being like, okay, I know I

1:22:26

just said that we can't

1:22:29

connect

1:22:29

all of these serials to each other and this is

1:22:31

one in Cleveland and this is

1:22:32

in LA, but this guy, he's unsolved,

1:22:35

but this particular killer, the cases

1:22:37

were linked to other cases in Pennsylvania,

1:22:39

upstate New York, and then Dahlia, and they

1:22:42

do really look

1:22:44

similar, not just in the presentation, but in

1:22:46

like, don't ever- Don't any of those cases have like DNA

1:22:48

and somewhere in a vault that we can like now use with

1:22:50

genetic genealogy? Yes, I don't understand

1:22:53

the Cleveland Torso murders. I keep asking about

1:22:55

that, like why there's so much evidence

1:22:57

left on there. I'm pretty sure there's evidence left

1:22:59

with Dahlia, like why are we not

1:23:02

testing for touch DNA? Maybe it's degraded,

1:23:04

but maybe it's not. I mean,

1:23:06

that was the Cleveland

1:23:08

Torso killers, which by the way,

1:23:10

we're not giving that a fancy name, that is

1:23:13

an unidentified person, we

1:23:14

don't know who that is. And

1:23:17

it's 12 people officially- 13, 13. 13, okay.

1:23:21

That they have linked to it

1:23:23

and that was in the 1930s, but

1:23:26

would it be fair to say by both

1:23:28

of your estimations that this had to have

1:23:30

been done by someone with some

1:23:33

medical training because of the, you

1:23:35

don't think that, because of the precision

1:23:38

of the cutting- That was like kind of a leading

1:23:40

theory of the investigators always,

1:23:42

right? What about the draining of the blood? Because

1:23:44

that is very, very

1:23:46

specific, which like an

1:23:49

embalmer can do. Why do you say no?

1:23:51

Because I thought that was the thing I was like,

1:23:53

well, you have to be dealing with a highly sophisticated-

1:23:55

How do you even drain blood out of an entire body?

1:23:57

It's a lot of blood.

1:23:59

Yeah. Well, people who do it who

1:24:01

embalm, right? People

1:24:03

who do it who hunt. If you've ever

1:24:06

gone deer hunting, you have exsanguinated a

1:24:08

creature. Have you deer hunted, Sarah?

1:24:10

I have not, but my daughter's father,

1:24:13

my

1:24:13

ex-husband from many moons ago,

1:24:15

is a very

1:24:18

ethical avid hunter. He literally

1:24:20

lives in a forest. He

1:24:22

consumes all his meat. I don't want to have PETA

1:24:24

coming after me or whatever. No, they're at my

1:24:26

place. So I know the process from

1:24:29

the time that we were together, I know what

1:24:31

that entails. But

1:24:33

even that being said. Yeah, tell

1:24:35

me why, because I was really on

1:24:38

that it had to be a medical professional. So tell

1:24:40

me why that's mischagas and

1:24:42

fakies. I'm grinning like

1:24:44

crazy over here because every

1:24:47

mutilation murder I have ever seen,

1:24:50

including ones that I have

1:24:51

participated in the investigation in some capacity

1:24:54

or another, at some point,

1:24:57

the theory is it has to be a medical

1:24:59

doctor, a medical student, or a butcher.

1:25:01

That is the other one that always comes up, right? And

1:25:04

they always say like, oh, because of the precision

1:25:06

and because of X and because of Y. And

1:25:09

I have, now again,

1:25:11

there are two good doctor

1:25:13

suspects for this case, including the lead

1:25:15

suspect in the Cleveland torso murders. And

1:25:18

this one, of course, I'm sure we'll talk about the other

1:25:19

one. But in

1:25:21

cases where we have then later identified

1:25:24

the killer, it has never been a doctor,

1:25:26

even in these ones where everybody was like positive.

1:25:29

And, you know, part of my. It's so precise.

1:25:32

It's so precise. And like, you know, my

1:25:34

origin story, Danny Rolling, the Gainesville student

1:25:36

murders, he,

1:25:38

you know, I was 15 the summer that happened. And

1:25:40

the lead suspect for months and months and months was

1:25:42

a pre-med student named Ed Humphries. And

1:25:45

part of that,

1:25:47

the reason that was given to us, I mean,

1:25:49

he did a lot to make himself

1:25:51

a suspect up to and including saying, I'm

1:25:53

pretty sure I have information about the cases that

1:25:56

wasn't helping him any. But

1:25:58

part of the explanation that I.

1:25:59

remember reading in the newspaper was that a particular

1:26:02

muscle had been carved

1:26:03

out of one of the victim's

1:26:04

calves and it was so specific and

1:26:07

so perfect that it could only be

1:26:09

in a spot that somebody with a scalpel who knew

1:26:12

anatomy would be able to do it. Danny

1:26:14

Rowling didn't know shit and like

1:26:16

the guy who ultimately

1:26:17

you know turned out to be the killer it

1:26:20

doesn't have to be that and

1:26:22

with this one in particular the thing that everybody

1:26:25

attributes that to and here's where I'm

1:26:27

going to say the word wrong. Pemba

1:26:29

corporectomy right is the so

1:26:32

where she was bisected. All right two

1:26:34

things if you as a layperson

1:26:36

were going to

1:26:38

sorry to be crass but carve a body in half

1:26:41

wouldn't you just do it at the belly button or

1:26:43

right above the belly button like that's where this

1:26:45

is. The other thing

1:26:47

is everybody attributes

1:26:49

this because of one

1:26:51

particular doctor and they're saying like oh he

1:26:53

had this trading and stuff you know

1:26:56

maybe there's information out there that I have not been able

1:26:58

to find the only thing I can find and

1:27:00

according to the National Institutes of Health

1:27:02

the United States government's entire

1:27:04

medical history that procedure

1:27:07

was not developed until 1951. That

1:27:10

the Hemi corporectomy thing.

1:27:12

Yeah it was presented at a medical conference

1:27:14

in 1951 and

1:27:14

and that was the first

1:27:16

time it makes it into the

1:27:18

like medical lexicon.

1:27:20

Well I think the I mean one

1:27:22

of the reasons that it's there and they're saying like oh well maybe I value

1:27:24

this problem of how to make

1:27:26

the Alberto Ghosn problem because there isn't a relation to evidence

1:27:29

because I think I actually have knowing everything

1:27:32

that the ($1leasing� blood mask or something else is a

1:27:34

bit stating that actually accomplishments

1:27:37

are on set and a apologies if I am making

1:27:38

that in a claim that I did not

1:27:41

feel that this is a situation between one person and another

1:27:43

so I think that people must

1:27:47

be as different over time. Andreeal, please

1:27:49

take this time GO blow your

1:27:51

his trumpet yeah. I mean one of the reasons that it stood out

1:27:53

was well that means that the killer knew

1:27:55

how to do it before even doctors

1:27:57

were trained in how to do it because

1:27:59

It was done in a way where it was

1:28:03

the only point at which the body

1:28:05

could have been severed into pieces without breaking

1:28:07

any bone,

1:28:08

apparently. So it seemed

1:28:10

like it was a pretty precise location. But

1:28:13

that takes us to who I think is, it

1:28:15

seems like one of the most

1:28:17

popular suspects. I don't know if that's the right term. And

1:28:20

that is the doctor,

1:28:22

Dr. George Hodel. And can we talk a little bit

1:28:24

about him? Because I feel like you can't talk

1:28:26

about this case and not talk about this guy. Totally

1:28:28

agree. I think, you

1:28:30

know, I always want to say at the outset, I do not

1:28:33

dismiss Hodel. He said

1:28:34

a lot of incriminating things. He absolutely

1:28:36

sexually assaulted his daughter. He most

1:28:38

likely murdered his own secretary because she

1:28:40

was going to

1:28:41

turn him in for

1:28:44

fraud. He is a really,

1:28:46

really awful human being. It seems like he

1:28:48

probably, you know, was committing incest

1:28:50

against numerous victims within his own family.

1:28:53

However, there

1:28:56

is no link between them. I

1:28:59

mean, that I have seen, again, this is a rabbit hole.

1:29:03

There are plenty of things that I don't know about this case. But

1:29:05

anything I have ever seen, the reason

1:29:07

he was looked

1:29:08

at was because he ran an STD clinic

1:29:11

for the city of Los Angeles.

1:29:12

And the assumption was if

1:29:14

she was as big a slut as we

1:29:16

think she is, she must have been treated

1:29:19

for an

1:29:19

STD at some point. And therefore, she

1:29:22

would have encountered him. He

1:29:24

always had a reputation. He had a reputation,

1:29:26

girl. It wasn't like... He's awful.

1:29:28

He's awful. I'm not saying... But

1:29:30

I'm saying that they already know that reputation. They must have

1:29:33

known. They're like, it's not just that he runs his clinic. This guy

1:29:35

is problematic. Absolutely. Yeah. But

1:29:38

how... Like, what is the link between them? There

1:29:40

is no link between them. And

1:29:44

some of the evidence, again, that people cite

1:29:46

is this stuff with the surgery. They're like, oh, he knew how

1:29:48

to do this surgery years earlier.

1:29:50

And I'm kind of like how. Surgery

1:29:53

wasn't developed at that point. Now,

1:29:56

again, that could be wrong. I'm definitely

1:29:58

not an expert in this case.

1:29:59

But it also, you know, one of the things cited is

1:30:02

like the removal, the excising

1:30:04

of her breast. Well, you can see the

1:30:06

breast there. So unless somebody

1:30:07

is just misusing the term excising,

1:30:10

you can see it in the photographs, you know, the

1:30:12

unfortunate photographs. Like part of it's

1:30:14

been removed. Yeah.

1:30:16

It's been peeled, which

1:30:18

sounds terrible, but it's not taken

1:30:20

off her body. Right. It's

1:30:22

weird. Like when you read the reports, like there are

1:30:25

reports in the FBI files where it's like the

1:30:27

breast has been removed and then in other

1:30:29

places. But like you said, you can actually see the photographs.

1:30:31

So it's a little confusing. Yeah. Unless

1:30:34

that person writing the report doesn't know what a breast

1:30:36

looks like. I don't even know how to understand that. Or was it completely

1:30:39

cut off and then placed back on? That's

1:30:41

you know, I mean, like for the and that's what we're seeing

1:30:43

in the photo. Maybe it's really it's

1:30:45

hard to know. It's really hard to know. The

1:30:48

person who's convinced that it was definitely Dr. George

1:30:50

Hodel is his son, Steve Hodel, who is

1:30:53

a retired police officer. Right. He's

1:30:55

a retired homicide detective. Yeah. Which I

1:30:57

yeah, I lend a lot of credence to.

1:31:00

Yeah. And listen, you can find his

1:31:02

his his. If you find you

1:31:04

want to rabbit hole, go to his website. Yeah. Yeah.

1:31:06

Steve Hodel dot com. Holy moly. There

1:31:08

is I think he's written

1:31:09

three or four books. You know, he

1:31:11

has he's convinced for lots of different means. Some

1:31:14

of some of the things like it all started where

1:31:16

he was going through his dad's stuff and he found

1:31:18

a picture of a woman that looked to him a lot

1:31:20

a lot like Elizabeth Short.

1:31:22

And then from there, it just kind of kept going. Then he

1:31:25

found receipts for cement bags and then he did

1:31:27

handwriting comparison. We even talk about like the handwriting

1:31:29

letters, the crazy stuff. I mean, yeah, yeah. The

1:31:32

LAPD got like, you know, they got like

1:31:35

a package that had those literally

1:31:37

that's what you see in the movies, the serial killer cut

1:31:39

out letters

1:31:39

from magazines or whatever

1:31:41

in a letter and and many

1:31:44

of her personal items, which is interesting because like

1:31:46

they got a package with all these personal items of hers, including

1:31:48

her birth certificate and the diary and all this stuff. I

1:31:51

would bet you dollars to donuts. Reporters

1:31:53

bought that from her roommates or bought that

1:31:55

from somebody. Yeah, probably. One

1:31:57

of the reasons actually that that diary of hers,

1:31:59

which is.

1:31:59

When I say diary, I mean like a journal.

1:32:02

I mean like the way people used to. Address

1:32:04

book kind of. An address book, yeah. Yeah. It

1:32:07

did have the name of dozens of men and numbers and

1:32:09

I think that was one another reason that the rumors

1:32:11

around her started that she was just like having

1:32:13

like a lot of different relationships. Now that

1:32:16

guy though, the guy whose name is actually

1:32:18

embossed on the address book

1:32:20

who it was like his property but she

1:32:22

was staying with him through a friend and

1:32:25

so he gave it to her whatever and she

1:32:27

used it as her address book was a guy named Mark

1:32:29

Hanson

1:32:29

and that is a guy who I'm

1:32:32

not not we're not talking Chris Hanson.

1:32:35

This is a guy who had apparently

1:32:38

made multiple overtures on her who

1:32:41

according to her friends she had not

1:32:43

only you know declined his advances

1:32:46

but this was the guy who her friends

1:32:48

told the police you need to really look

1:32:51

at him.

1:32:52

We were afraid of him. She was afraid of him.

1:32:55

But she was staying with him. She briefly

1:32:58

said this was another one and it wasn't like

1:33:00

she knew him

1:33:01

through a friend. It was one of these like she needed

1:33:03

a place to stay in a friend

1:33:04

and he he had multiple people staying

1:33:06

in his house. He was my understanding fairly

1:33:08

well off. It was a great big house with lots of rooms.

1:33:11

Okay. Okay. Well

1:33:13

there's also which I mean like Dr.

1:33:15

Houdel became a serious enough suspect that

1:33:18

he got bugged. Yep.

1:33:20

His his telephone and I think his

1:33:22

residence was a bug and there is a part of

1:33:24

a. One of the transcripts I'm like well this

1:33:26

seems a little incriminating in which

1:33:28

Houdel is talking to somebody

1:33:31

and he says suppose

1:33:33

and I suppose and I did kill the black Dahlia.

1:33:36

They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary

1:33:38

anymore because she's dead.

1:33:39

Yeah. That's the one that gets me to where I

1:33:42

just keep coming back and I'm like I

1:33:44

you know I know we always say like oh I

1:33:46

would

1:33:46

never say this I would never confess and you don't know all

1:33:48

that stuff. But like what is the psychology

1:33:51

behind using the term. They can't prove

1:33:53

it now.

1:33:55

Yeah. Without it meaning exactly what it

1:33:57

sounds like. That is yeah that is the one I always

1:33:59

come.

1:33:59

back to you too where I'm like, I could never dismiss

1:34:02

this guy. Yeah, can't be dismissed. But

1:34:05

then I mean, I think the thing

1:34:08

about, and

1:34:09

like you said, he is a retired homicide

1:34:11

detective, Steve Haddell, but then he does

1:34:14

seem to take it further than that. He's like, not only did

1:34:16

he kill the Black Dog, he's also the Zodiac killer, my dad's Zodiac.

1:34:19

And so that's what, but I think he's apparently still compiling

1:34:21

evidence to that effect. I don't know.

1:34:24

That's my understanding. Why does everyone

1:34:26

want to be the Zodiac? Because that's the

1:34:28

other one. Why does everybody want to be the son

1:34:31

of the Zodiac? Guess what always happens? Everybody

1:34:33

wants to be like, also, you

1:34:35

know what, let's put the Zodiac in there too. It

1:34:38

always comes back to the

1:34:39

Zodiac. Always. So I'm going

1:34:41

to, I'm going to make a liar out of myself when I'm

1:34:43

like, nah, I don't think it was a doctor. But Rabia,

1:34:46

and if you look at the Google Doc that

1:34:48

you had shared with me, right? So one of the, at

1:34:50

the very bottom of the Google Doc, I added

1:34:52

a photo that was pulled out of the FBI files.

1:34:55

Oh yeah. And then they sent an anonymous letter to the FBI

1:34:58

and it said, if you want to

1:35:00

find the Black Dahlia killer, look for this

1:35:01

guy. And there's a drawing, this person

1:35:04

is a good drawing. So well, but

1:35:06

look who's on the right. That's the Cleveland,

1:35:08

that's the main suspect in the Cleveland torso killers who

1:35:10

looks exactly like hotel. It's

1:35:13

correct. To me, they're all the men

1:35:15

in the thirties and forties kind of look

1:35:18

like miscellaneous. You

1:35:21

should look

1:35:21

at this document. You guys put this up on Facebook. Like

1:35:23

it is bananas how much both of these men look

1:35:26

like each other and look like this drawing. I

1:35:28

think they're all a little bit related when Daisy

1:35:30

Egan was doing her stuff on

1:35:32

the Alcatraz and she was talking about all

1:35:35

the men in Alcatraz. I was like, are they all brothers? They

1:35:38

all kind of just have a

1:35:40

plain sort of face. I

1:35:42

am, I really, really

1:35:44

went in deep with George Hodel again.

1:35:47

What is wrong with me? I don't know.

1:35:49

That sounds awful. But everything

1:35:52

he, a lot of people will

1:35:54

just say he's just a creepy dude.

1:35:57

I'm like, Oh, he's beyond creepy.

1:35:59

He's a serial sexual assaulter. There's

1:36:03

no doubt about that. There's no doubt about that.

1:36:06

I think if you are mentally capable

1:36:09

to sexually assault your daughter, you absolutely

1:36:12

can take a life. Because basically that is like taking

1:36:14

someone's life, taking someone's innocence. Absolutely.

1:36:17

You're capable of it. But we

1:36:20

do also know that these

1:36:21

are kind of like two different,

1:36:23

often, not always, two

1:36:25

different types of offenders.

1:36:28

So one does not necessarily follow

1:36:31

the other. Sure. But I do

1:36:33

think that sexual assault is really

1:36:35

about control. Oh, absolutely.

1:36:38

And I think this murder was very, very much

1:36:42

into the controlling,

1:36:45

the dramatic nature of this

1:36:47

murder. It seemed like very, very much a control

1:36:50

freak as well. Oh, absolutely. And

1:36:52

we will always see

1:36:53

they escalate usually from

1:36:56

some type of domestic violence, right? Either

1:36:58

within their own home growing up or then in

1:37:01

a relationship. Then they escalate to sexual

1:37:03

violence. And then they escalate to

1:37:05

homicide. Like, yeah, of course, that's

1:37:07

a rung on the ladder

1:37:09

for these guys.

1:37:10

Look, if you guys want to go

1:37:12

down the rabbit hold of Dr.

1:37:15

George Hadel, there is a lot there. Again,

1:37:17

you can find a lot of it. Steve

1:37:20

Hadel has written, I think, probably thousands of pages.

1:37:22

And I think this is his entire life, is

1:37:24

to try to prove this. But you said something earlier,

1:37:27

which I think actually

1:37:29

might not be right.

1:37:31

And that is that there must

1:37:33

be some evidence in this case that

1:37:35

could be like touch DNA. But what could have been? Like

1:37:37

the cement bag? There's two bags that

1:37:40

were found near her body. Nothing on the body.

1:37:42

I mean, the body is gone anyway, obviously. She's been

1:37:44

buried and gone. I mean, I don't know if she was buried or cremated.

1:37:47

But that body, there's nothing there. There's no clothing

1:37:49

that was found. There's no personal

1:37:52

items. Well, her shoes and her purse

1:37:54

were found. One

1:37:58

of her shoes and her purse were found.

1:37:59