Transcript of Episode 602: The Black Dahlia Murder Part III - Blood and Brown

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There's no place to escape to.

This is the last podcast. On the left.

That's when the cannibalism started. Who was that? Oh, shit. I'm coming in hot this week. I solved the murder by myself in my office over the break. I know everything that's happened. I know everything that will happen.

Just in time.

But I The key is now I'm deleting it. I'm going to forget the man I was. I was a private detective for about eight days because I had nothing but time. I had nothing but weed, Balder's Gate.

You were following people.

You got to go. Everywhere, asking them, You know Elizabeth Short? Yeah. Do you know Deborah Tal? But no, this is the... Oh, man. I'm dragging Marcus down fucking with me, man. I'm dragging his fucking ass down to the fucking hole with me, bro.

He keeps saying it so much that he thinks it's going to come true one day.

I'm bringing him down with me, man. I'm making him worse.

Well, it doesn't matter what your theory is because even if you're right, all the evidence has been destroyed and there's no way to prove it.

Some of it might be hidden.

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with true Detective Henry Zbrowski.

Yeah, time to fly a circle. Give me six beers. Honestly, that's how I should have started the show is with a six-pack like Matthew McConaher, but he's in the interrogation room. I just keep opening up and then cutting them into little men. I'm like, cutting the little men in half.

The equally inquisitive Ed Larson.

I'm curious, but at the end of the day, I don't care.

Eddie, you should care. You know why? Because if I was a highly artistic, motivated, full of himself serial killer, and I mean this with all love because of how much I love you and how close we are, the fun of playing with your guts, how thick and meaty would be to like... Because that's the thing, serial killers, they always do with these skinny minis, where it's the idea of coming at you, how much fun playing with your tits.

I'd be easy to drug and poison, too. You just take anything. Yeah, I love to eat and drink.

Especially if you meet him at a concert.

Oh, my God. Yeah, you can put it on the weed that you give me.

Dude, just fucking the idea of playing with your big fat cheeks and playing with your cut off body parts?

It does take a lot to take me down, though. Yeah, I know. You need an elephant gun, man. I'm ready. That is true.

I still feel like I can hit you with a cast iron.

Yeah, I know. Maybe, but at the same time, I could take more than one hit, and usually I'll fall on top of you. That's the problem. When I fight, I fall on top of you, and then I just smother your head into the ground a bunch of times until it becomes spaghetti.

Oh, wow. Well, here we are at Black Dahlia Part 3. Now, to recap our story thus far, let's start with the main suspect in the case, Leslie Dylan, and the reasons why he makes a compelling, if admittedly flawed, candidate in the murder of Elizabeth Short.

Interesting hesitation for Marcus Parks. You said that the crime was solved at the beginning of the very serious, Yes, that is true, and I shall address that statement later on in this episode. Bringing him down with me to the bottom of the well.

He didn't do anything. I came upon the conclusion by myself.

I'm bringing him down with me. I sent him stuff. He ran it.

We talked about it.

No, you're wrong.

All right, well, you know.

Leslie Dylan. Leslie Dylan, 25 years old when the murder took place, was a small-time crook who was suspected to have worked with the same underworld figures in Los Angeles that Elizabeth Elizabeth Short was associating with in the months before her murder. Two years after Elizabeth was killed, Leslie Dylan wrote to Dr. Joseph Paul De Ryver of the LAPD under the pseudonym Jack Sand, responding to an article Dr. De Ryver had planted about the Black Dahlia murder in True Detective magazine. Dylan later said that the only reason why he contacted Dr. De Ryver was because he had an interest in true crime and wanted to get into the business and had expressed in his letter a desire to collaborate with Dr. Driver in writing a book about psychopathic cases like the Black Dahlia murder.

Also, there was some lying on Dr. Driver's part where he then in order- He's getting the job done. Which is, you know, Eddie, sometimes you got to lie a little bit. I have truly no problems with Dr. Deriva's ideas. I have no problem. If I was allowed, if I was an unofficial fake doctor that arrived at the police and convinced the gangsters- To arrive, please. Thank you. Thank If I arrived and I was this forensics guy, I'm just making shit up as I go, this is exactly how we would do this.

The worst part is the guy who has the most information is the one who's filled with the most shit.

How often have we talked about this? Officer Crowley, Madame Blowatsky, LRH. But there is truth in that.

Except in LRH. But in the other two, yeah, there is a little- He was like, This is a boat, and it was a boat.

It's true. You later on. Then Dr. Dériver, what he did was he lied to Leslie Dylan, and the way he got him on the hook was saying, How about I offer you a job as my assistant?

Yes, there was many unconstitutional, unethical things going on when it came to Dr. Dériver and Leslie Dylan. Dr. Driver soon became convinced that Leslie Dylan was himself the Black Dahlia killer. So he and the other investigative body helping out with the case, the Gangster Squad, they lured Dylan out West where they unconstitutionally detained and interrogated him. During six weeks of, let's say, extra legal interviews- I like this term.

I like extra legal.

Did he have teeth when they were done with him?

Yeah, he did, but he definitely had a couple of burn marks from the radiator. Also, they took him on road trips around Southern California to various Black Dahlia sites.

What do you think of that? What do you think of it? How about this? We're good over here. How about this? Look, that's literally all they did. They just drove in front of the Aster Motel. We're Yeah.

They drove him to the Black Dahlia murder site and just like, he looks a little ill.

Are you confused? Now, when you say the Black Dahlia murder site, are you saying the Esther Hotel? The Dump site.

The Dump site.

Thank you. Eddie's learning.

Yeah, you're learning because the Esther Motel had not been discovered just yet. But they also took him to places in San Francisco where Dylan had worked as a bellhop during the time of the murder. And by the end of it, the men representing the LAPD discovered some interesting details about Leslie Dylan. Dylan had the same soft modulated voice used when the Black Dahlia killer called the Los Angeles examiner. He had experienced draining bodies of blood from working as a mortuary assistant, and he knew methods of mutilation concerning Shortscorps that were not public at the time. When they were forced to arrest Dylan after the press discovered they were holding him, authorities searched the suitcase he had brought with him on the trip and discovered even more evidence that pointed towards his possible involvement.

Even if it didn't, you'd say, Hey, I don't know if it necessarily points towards his involvement as much as it points towards, This guy's a fucking weirdo, which is what they were looking for, which is a flawed way to look for a candidate because you can't just say, Oh, you're fucking weird. You got a long Frankenstein looking head. You must be the Black Dahlia killer. You asked to be involved in this investigation when they don't realize, at the time, now we know, now we definitely know, that all of these types of cases involve many different hoaxers and con artists that want to get involved with something, anything that will give them attention.

Plus, he always wanted to make a Russian nesting doll out of a person.

We all do. The hardest part is the littlest one because you got to get a hold of a premie. It's It's hard because you ever take a one right out of the oven?

That's why the doctors were gloves.

Contained within Leslie Dylan's suitcase were 700 Fina phenobarbitol pills and a well-worn leather dog leash that appeared as if it had been used to hang something that was comparable in weight to a human body.

It was three Rodweilers.

There is so much phenobarbital at my house right now. It always freaks me out when you bring this up.

Yeah, because of the dog.

Yeah, my dog loves phenobarbitol. She could use more sleep. She's always waking me up in the middle of the night, so maybe I should start jamming more down her throat. That's what I'm learning.

Tootsie, actually, it She was really sweet to her. She offered me a bump the other night. I was just like, No, I'm sorry, I'm driving.

I can't. It was on a key.

Investigating Dylan further, they also found that his aunt lived two blocks from the diner where Elizabeth Shorts' purse and shoes were found, and that Dylan drove a black sedan like the one seen twice at the dump site in the wee hours of the morning just before Short's body was discovered.

Wrapping up. Yeah. That seems like a case close.

You would be wrong, my friend.

There was also the fact that the letter D had been carved into Elizabeth's flesh, and Dylan was the type of person to obsessively leave his initials wherever he went.

Again, just a fucking weirdo. This is just a weirdo. The idea of drawing, I draw my initials on things because I'm asked to for legal documents. Oh, yeah.

Keep it on the LD. Yeah. No one found out. No.

His interactions with Dr. Driver, reaching out after the article and such, they suggested that he also had narcissistic and exhibitionist tendencies, which spoke to the highly theatrical way in which the Black Dahlia's body was displayed.

This is all in the pro Leslie Dylan did it category. Sure. Yes.

After Dylan was arrested, however, he denied knowing or even meeting Elizabeth Short, and the LAPD backed away from him completely soon after, saying that they had discovered after further investigation that he was actually in San Francisco at the time of the murder. He was subsequently released without being charged. Then he'd go on to sue the LAPD. For $100,000. As he should. Until the LAPD said, Hey, we have evidence of you robbing a safe in Santa Monica, so unless you want to go to jail for that, drop the case. And he dropped the case.

Let's just call by gongs.

By gongs. So he got away with that?

Yeah, he got away with it.

Another Bellhop cry.

Now, all of this is admittedly thin. If this was all we had, then I would agree with you if you said that Leslie Dylan was a man tangentially connected to the case who took Dr. Dériver and the Gangster Squad for a ride. But after Dylan was arrested and released, the Gangster Squad the Esther Motel.

Now, this is another fun, which is now what I've learned about the Black Dahlia. Upon deep in my investigation, hours upon hours, putting a note D, what you discover is that every single big point in Black Dahlia is an awesome and complicated point of contention. Yes. And that there is somebody had just written something that it's completely debunked. Every single thing that you say, no matter what you say, no matter what you say. It's almost like there is no reality at the center of this case. The Aster Motel is the next big moment that you're like, What the fuck is this? What is happening here? Yes.

Now, around the time that Leslie Dylan was arrested, his mother gave an interview to the Los Angeles examiner in which she gave as much information as she could about her son in an effort to exonerate him. Look at how good of a boy my boy Leslie is.

They always end up saying something wrong.

Yeah, they're being like, He never did anything unless you pushed him easily. He was never prone to violence unless he was inside.

You're going to slip up, ma.

No, I just said, man, you only stabbed a chicken in front of us once.

God damn it.

It was mostly just because I had- Again with the ticket. Every time he Every time we get together, you always got to bring up the story of the fucking chicken ma. You cut its tits off and you stuffed it up the cavity. We eat chicken breasts.

Chicken breasts are a common meal.

Leslie's innocent. He's a good boy. No matter what he does to anyone.

Well, as we all know, the more you talk, the more trouble you're likely to get. Dylan's mother mentioned that when he lived in LA, he sometimes stayed at a place called the Aster Motel, which was just a 15-minute drive from the vacant lot in Mert Park where Elizabeth Short's body was found. Now, the Aster Motel was a ground-level strip of 10 concrete cabins. It was gross. Very thick walls. It's still there, by the way. Oh, really? It's now called the New Aster Motel. Well, the Aster back then had a reputation not necessarily for where sex workers did their business, but for a place where sex workers live.

Hey, I don't suck dick here. This is where I wash my pussy.

You don't come to my house and get your dick sucked.

A shittier hotel.

But honestly, we come here to pray.

Well, the Aster was owned by a syphilic ex-con named Henry Hoffman, who done time for mail fraud involving an oil scam in Texas.

When you say syphilic, that means he had syphilus? Yeah. Okay, cool. I just wanted to make sure.

Yeah, syphilic. It's like, you know how syphilus took 20 years to take Al Capone down? It's like this. At this point, Henry Hoffman was about 60 years old, and the syphilus had took his brain, but there was some floating around there.

The doctor said, I'm floated into a Zalcalander. You want to stay in the master suite? You're going to have to sit in my lap while I go to sleep.

You know you're not a great man when a hundred years later, you're remembered by that adjective.

The syphilitz.

Put it on my gravestone, I was hoarding to death.

Well, he'd been in trouble with the law on a domestic violence charge just weeks before the Black Dahlia murder. This colorful past, Hoffman and his wife said, was why they didn't report what they found in cabin number 3 of the Esther on the very morning that Elizabeth Shorts' body was found 15 minutes away. Okay. Motel owner Henry Hoffman, said that when he opened the door to cabin number 3 that morning, he found a room covered in feces and blood. Not feces.

Fecies.

That seems like something that seems like evidence.

Dirty fessies. Soaking. Dirty fessies. Brown. Brown everywhere. Brown and red.

It soaked the bedsheets and blankets. It was smeared on the bathroom walls. It was fucking everywhere. Now, After cleaning the room from top to bottom- Brown. Again- Brown. Not reporting it because Henry Hoffmann had just been arrested, the Aster Motel sent out what laundry they could salvage, and they burn the rest. It is documented that just after January 15th, the Aster Motel did indeed have a large laundry bill, the only large bill in its history.

I just got to confess it's the only time we've ever done it.

It was It's true.

We waited until the 10-year anniversary. And the next thing I know, that's not the only place that had brown. Number three had brown, number 9 had brown, number 12 had yellow. You know what?

We're going to wash the sheets this year. That's why that's such a big bill.

They're like, This is the year we wash the sheet.

Everybody gather around. Burn the ones we can't kill. It was a fun Los I think that's how you got to start looking at the laundromats and the drag cleaners.

That's who knows because you want me to cover up this murder.

Now he's thinking like a fucking detective. Yeah, exactly. Super complicated. It makes things harder than they need to be.

But cabin number three was not the only room with the Aster that was in suspicious condition on January 15th. The motel owner's wife, Cora Hoffmann, found a pile of clothes neatly tied in a bundle on the bed in cabin number 9.

I mostly consider myself a roommate to my husband's syphilis. That's me. I share him with the syphilis.

Well, the clothes were wrapped in brown paper and a cord, as if the intention was to mail them, much like Elizabeth's documents were mailed to the Los Angeles examiner. Inside the package was a woman's skirt, a blouse, and a pair of men's shorts with blood spatter on them. Okay. Motel owner Henry Hoffman said that he told to burn the clothes along with the blood-soaked towels and linens in the incinerator out back. Just after, they scrubbed down what may have been the Black Dahlia murder kill room before the story even broke.

See, but who kills somebody in shorts and January.

That is my biggest issue with this whole thing. Oh, my God.

It's January in Los Angeles. I see shorts every single fucking day here. I think Rob's wearing shorts. No, he's not. No, he's not.

It's for the delusional. It is for the delusional. There is like- That's for an out-of-towner. You know what, like Wisconsin?

I My friend Adam Wurz, he wears shorts every single day, no matter what fucking- But he's from Wisconsin.

But I know he's cold. He's lying to everyone.

He always got his feet out.

I know he's cold. I know you're cold. Wisconsin, I know a lot of you like that. You wear shorts.

40 degrees, washing your car like you're some hero. I know you're cold.

You're lying to yourself. You're lying to us.

Now, it's important to note that the Hoffmans only owned the Esther Motel for six months. These interviews were done two years after the murder, two years in which none of these people said anything to anyone about what they'd seen on January 15th.

When do you want me to jump in? Do you want to wait to the end?

You want to wait to the end before I start? Don't just pick it apart piece by piece. That's not fun.

I'm not going to do this to us, Marcus. I just am sitting here because it is- That's great.

You're going to be silent in the rest of the show. That's amazing.

Studio. That's great.

My thing is- I'm really excited about it. Not get interrupted, just be able to go through the narrative. As a co-host in the show- It was meant to be written.

I think what's most important in an audio medium is to reflect. I sit and I listen. I'm holding space for whatever it is that you do. Sure. Actually, let me interrupt you there.

That's just fun.

That's a fun day.

Well, this gap in the interview, between the interviews and the actual murder itself, that's why I think the interview of the maid is so interesting. When the gangster squad tracked her down, she was a person who had no further connections to the Hoffmans.

She said, You want extra pillow?

What hotel is this?

She It's always the way it ever end.

But she also remembered the bloody room and the bundle of clothes quite well. The clothes, she said, were a white blouse with raffles and a black skirt, which was the same outfit Elizabeth Short had been wearing the last time she'd been seen alive at the Biltmore Hotel. Eventually, that same maid admitted that she'd seen a person that she thought was Elizabeth Short at the motel during the so-called missing week before Short's body was dumped, and she wasn't the only one. A man who lived across the street also said that he saw a woman who looked like Elizabeth Short at Esther that same week. According to him and other witnesses, this girl seemed trapped, possibly drugged, and desperate to escape. But the problem, admittedly, is that all these people described a black haired girl. As we know, Short's hair was dyeed a reddish-light brown when her body was found.

Part of the reason why they said a black haired girl is because the pictures of Elizabeth Short, they were in the newspaper, they had black hair, which shows that they probably didn't see her because they saw the old picture of her, and then now they're thinking about the old picture of her when they think about Elizabeth Short, and now they are conjecturing, they're blowing that out to think about every diminutive, bow-lipped, black haired girl that would be.

Also, escorts are known to wear wigs when they work. They are. So they don't get found out when they're out being a normal person. You're correct. She could have been wearing a wig whenever they saw her.

I don't believe Elizabeth Short was an escort. She was not. No, she was not a call girl. We'll get to the sex worker angle in a bit.

Escort? Not a sex worker. They just enjoy a good time with you.

That's what we did together in Nosferatu? Yeah. I was your escort? I was just some prostitute enjoying popcorn with you?

No, I would like to be seen with you, and I paid you for Thank you.

Honestly, just go to hendriisbrowski. Com and have me escort you to your own. I'm ready to go. I can escort a lot of us. Escort Foratu.

Let's keep it. Well, I mean, it might be that these people misremembered Short's hair color because, like you said, all the pictures they saw of her over and over again showed a young woman with black hair. Or it could be that they were remembering somebody else entirely. But either way, these people were sure that the person they saw at cast of that week was Elizabeth Short. What we do know for sure, though, is that the bloody room did exist. Yes. Clara Hoffmann's brother-in-law, who also lived at the motel at the same time, confirmed that the blankets in cabin number 3 were soaked in so much blood that it looked like someone had taken gallons of red paint and poured it over the bed. This brother-in-law had also worked at a mortuary in the past and said that the amount of blood he saw in that room was just about equivalent to the total amount fluid in a human body.

Okay.

Lest we forget, Elizabeth Shwartz's corpse was found completely drained of blood.

No one's been known to exaggerate anything. I mean, this is a shitload of blood. It's a lot of blood. There's a lot of... Well, wait.

Well, I mean, whether you think it was- Are you just going to sit and snipe this whole time with these shitty comments?

No.

When you think it's Dylan, if you do make a tip, it doesn't mean that she wasn't killed in that room by a different person.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Someone was killed in the room unless someone had a fucking hell of a period.

You know it's funny. They do believe that the blood was not as spread all over the bed, and it was period blood.

Really? Yes. Who is they? The police. Oh, the police.

We're going to get to the grand jury. We're going to get to the grand jury. But the police never saw the room. We're going to get there.

Lastly, Henry and Clora Hoffman's daughter was interviewed by author, Pew eat Well, years later, and she distinctly remembered the bloody room incident as well.

I've made a few bloody rooms myself.

Yes, because my name is Pew.

That's a pew. So unless another woman was brutally murdered and drained of her blood the same night as Elizabeth Short, just 15 minutes from Short's dump site, which is entirely possible because LA was a fucked up place at this time.

Oh, yeah, dude. We didn't talk about the werewolf murders. We didn't talk about all the stuff. There was a bunch of unsolved lady murders that happened during that.

It seems like, though, everyone's 15 minutes from here, 20 minutes from there. Traffic was great back then.

It really was, dude. What do you think about? But I I'm thinking just the coverage to Black Holly had.

We'll call it a freeway.

That's the thing.

We actually looked at… I mean, this was 1947, and we sure a tune didn't do this.

Because it's so funny because you look at how she got all around. She went from downtown to the valley, to Hollywood. I was like, How the fuck could she even get there? She didn't have a car.

Yeah, well, they had the red car.

My God, it'll be beautiful. It'll be beautiful. But I think at the end of the day, it's that this was the room where Elizabeth Short was killed. Now, motel owner, Henry Hoffman... God damn it, stop doing that shit. I did nothing. I said nothing. Drive from your grave. Now, motel owner, Henry Hoffman, said he also encountered the Black Dahlia, but it took months for him to come clean, although he had a good reason for keeping it quiet.

When I saw her, she was already in, too, but it was crazy because the top half was kissing me.

He He finally admitted to a gangster squad member after months of establishing a rapport that the woman he believed was Elizabeth Short was at the Esther Motel for two days, although she could have been there longer in another room without his knowledge. Hoffman said that Short was in cabin number 9.

Number 9? Number 9. Number 9.

That was the cabin where the clothes matching the description of Elizabeth's last outfit had been found bundled. On January ninth and 10th, Hoffman had seen her numerous times. One time, he said, he came into the room and she was naked under a bedsheet, appearing as if she had been drugged with something like, say, I don't know, pheno-barbitol pills. You sick or you flirt with me?

You sick? You seem cold. You a lady?

Well, Hoffmann had run his fingers through short's hair and tried taking advantage of her. But even in her drug state, she refused, and he left without further incident. No one will ever love me. Why do they got to sleep for me to kiss?

Why can I get I've one, except that one sick girl made me sick, gave me this lovers disease. Well, time to go pile laundry for the next year.

Well, this Hoffman knew was creep behavior. He believed that the cops would think that he was the killer if he told them about this incident, which is why it took him months to admit it. Hoffman's most valuable contribution to the case, however, concerned who else was at the Esther Motel during Elizabeth Short's so-called Missing Week. Hoffman said that a, quote, Fellow from Batavia stayed at the motel for four or five days at the same time that Elizabeth Short had stayed there. Now, there are a number of cities called Batavia, many of which are here in America.

It must be something different because he had wooden shoes.

I could tell the way he was clubbing around.

At first, I thought he was one of those live huge nut crackers. My wife told me again and again, Those are not real. But when it comes to the Esther Motel's man from Batavia, it's most likely that Henry Hoffmann was talking about the Batavia in Indonesia, which has been called Jakarta since the Indonesians won their independence from the Dutch after World War II.

The man we're talking about here would most likely be Dutch or something similar. While we don't have a Dutchman in our story, we certainly have a Dane. After Henry Hoffmann gave a physical description of the man from Batavia, it matched who else but Danish nightclub owner, Mark Hansen.

Well, he says it does. This all came out after the fact, though.

We all know that he's a shady ass, too.

Everybody's shady. Everybody in this circle is shady.

Henry Hoffmann was not shown a picture of Mark Hansen and said, Is this the guy, Henry Hoffman gave a description of the man from Batavia in the match Mark Hansen.

He had a bunch of curly soup on his head. I think it's called hair. He had a... Oh, yeah, he definitely had his shirt on.

Oh, my.

My nose is falling off. My lips.

To recap, Mark Hansen, his legitimate business was running and owning a chain of movie theaters, but he also ran a club called the Florentine Gardens, which was a known mob operation that had connections to corrupt LAPD officers. For example, LAPD Homicide Detective, Finis Brown, was said by numerous people to have worked as a bagman for Mark Hansen's operation. It was said that Finis Brown was deep debt to Mark Hansen at the time of the Black Dahlia murder. Finis Brown, if you remember, was also the Homicide Detective in charge of investigating the Black Dahlia murder. It speculated that Finis Brown drove the investigation away from Mark Hansen anytime the clues led in that direction as a way to repay his debt. As far as why the investigation pointed towards Hansen in the first place, an address book with his name printed on the cover showed up at the offices of the Los Angeles examiner, along with a trove of Short's personal documents, things that could have only come from someone who was with Elizabeth in the last hours or days of her life. Elizabeth Short also lived at Mark Hansen's house for a period of time just before her murder, and the two of them had a strained relationship, rife with jealousy, that ended in a nasty fight.

Soon after, Elizabeth fled to San Diego by bus and was found sleeping in the Aztec Theater by the kindly Dorothy French. For the short time that Elizabeth stayed with Dorothy French, a number of people came by to try and speak with Elizabeth, although we have no idea who these people were or why they wanted to speak with her. All we know is that the visits caused Elizabeth a lot of anxiety. Then, on January ninth, 1947, Elizabeth Short, returned to Los Angeles and was dropped off at the Biltmore Hotel. Over a period of hours, she made a number of calls, the last of which was to who else but Mark Hansen. Elizabeth then left, and no one knew where where she went until motel owner Henry Hoffmann came forward. But that's only if you believe Henry Hoffmann, his wife, her sister, their brother-in-law, the maid, and several other people. Okay.

This is... Until I'm in that damit.

Why do you love Mark Hanson so much?

What did he do for you? He finally gave me a shot at being the number one girl at this wonderful place. Have He minted the mayonnaise balcony? He said that I could sing any song I want. The first song I sang was, Hey, get me some beer or I'm going to shit on the floor. Then I got fired. That's a 12-minute song. It is. I got fired. I'll always thank him for giving me my shot.

Now, Henry Hoffmann wasn't the only person to put Mark Hanson at the Aster Motel that week. The man who commented that there was enough blood in cabin number three to fill a human body he also identified Hansen as being at the motel during that week.

I see buckets of blood every day. I know what buckets of blood look like. I see them every day. I have them in my home. I have them in my car.

I just have cups of blood.

That's because you're a pussy. You're a real man like me. I'm a doctor. I look at blood. I look at blood. I read blood. I know blood. Can I work for you? First of all, let's take a look at that blood.

Well, his wife also put Mark Hansen at the hotel that week. The man they identified as Mark Hansen by the way, stayed at the Esther Motel in room number 8, the room right next to the one where the clothes were found bundled and where Henry Hoffmann said that he saw Elizabeth Short naked and drugged. But Mark Hansen did not kill Elizabeth Short. The most likely suspect for that was Leslie Dylan, and he had connections to the Esther Motel as well. The registration record showed that Dylan stayed there, definitively, in April of 1947, four months after the Black Dolly murder. After. This to me makes a lot of sense that Dylan would return to the Astor to relive the memory because it's proven that process killers, the ones who were there for the brutality of the murder itself, they sometimes return to the scene of the crime for this express purpose.

Also, the room was on a discount for all the blood and shit.

That's the key. He's had to be like, I know I got one place that'll fit my budget.

Unfortunately, mysteriously, and suspiciously, though, Henry Hoffen's wife had burned all the registration records that may have shown exactly who stayed at the Esther Motel in January of 1947. No one knows why she burned him, but she burned him. Obviously, she was trying to hide something. Probably had nothing to do with this, but it was a shady fucking place.

It was already a shady place because that was the thing. It's where, to be honest, in a way, it sounds actually in a madame-style way, that Clara Hoffmann was looking after some of the sex workers that were living in there and that she was burning that, as you burn the evidence that they were there, which is because they were constantly going after. There was so many different vice things. Constantly looking up, which is still the heart of the corruption of the LAPD. I think a lot of it was getting into racketeering and sex work, human trafficking. They were actually maybe helping that way.

If that's true, then that means that the corruption of the Los Angeles Police Department once again cut off a possible end to this line of questioning. Very much so. But that's the thing. If there was those records and they could have seen them, it's like, Okay, well, no, none of these people were here during this time. None of these people use these aliases. But no, we don't I don't have that. Now, at last, we come to what may have happened to Elizabeth Short and how all of these people come together. Now, I will admit that I did get a little ahead of myself when it came to fingering Leslie Dylan as definitely the guy without questions. Stop pointing to me like you're a fucking child. That's the closest we ever got.

It's the closest we ever got.

I just can't believe Marcus fingered him.

Well, his name was Leslie.

When you were already there, by the time you get there, if you're not going to you're filled with hate.

You might as well do it because you don't want to be a homophobe. If he brings you there, I want to make sure I'm making them feel, again, creating space.

Yes. Well, in the jumble of named, dates, and places that I was swimming in during our preliminary research, I thought that I had read that Leslie Dylan had definitely worked for Mark Hanson as a pimp in Los Angeles. To me, this tied it all together in a neat little package. That claim, however, was just speculation on the part of Dr. Joseph Paul DeRiver. See, Leslie Dylan had been arrested for pimping in San Francisco, and while he did work as a bellhop and a pimp in the same territory as Mark Hansen's operation, there is no definitive link between the two men. The closest we come to a connection was through Jeff Conners. Jeff. I forgot about you.

Jeff, you did it again.

Jeff, the 40-year-old busboy, pulp fiction writer, and failed actor turned cosmetic salesman who had the misfortune of being the stand-in for Leslie Dylan when Leslie talked about the Black Dahlia murder to the Gangster Squad.

Nothing says full-grown adult like a tiny hat. It's like, these Bill Hops, man. These guys are corrupt as fuck. Oh, my God. They're a little like, I thought... I don't know why. Again, we talked about this before how Leslie Dylan is Rob Schneider from Home Alone, too, but they all are. Every one of these Bell hops are like a little... It's like a criminal syndicate.

They always linger, always taking down mental notes.

They know everything. They know where you sleep. They know where your stuff is.

They know what your bags look like.

I read an article about how Bell hops were really big in a blackmail back in the day. They were really big in it. It was blackmail and pimping. Those were the two, and theft, of course.

Ladies, don't let yourself get pimp by a Bell hop.

No. No. I don't know.

Now, Jeff Conners wasn't the Black Dolly of killer, but he was friends with Leslie Dylan. The connection here is that after Jeff divorced from his wife, she went to live with Mark Hanson, and Leslie Dylan had gone to Jeff's ex-wife's door after he was released by the LAPD to tell her that she better keep her mouth shut about what she knew.

There's no way that Leslie Dylan and Mark Hansen did not know and work together. There are two pimps that are working out of the same fucking building.

But pimp is a word that is... It is a spectrum. There's a spectrum. There are people that have taken money. There's a low-level... It's like what you're talking about human trafficking. All human trafficking is not a bunch of Indonesian women in a U-Hall being trucked across state It's like human trafficking is as simple as buying a lady that is underage, a fucking plane ticket to come to you to have sex. Pimping has also got a spectrum.

Pimping has territories as well.

But you can't really cross them. But you're talking about, Eddie, you're talking about high level. Again, this is high level. These are not professional pimps. These are people that have taken money very casually from sex workers at the time that they have set up, they've brokered little things for them, but these are nowhere near professional pimps. Let's Dylan and Mark Hansen, he's an LA pimp, which is a casting director. That's what he was. He was a...

But so was Dylan. Even though he was in San Francisco, he was also in LA.

He was a light pimp. He was more so a across the spectrum small-time criminal.

If you're at a 10-room hotel and there are two pimps, they know each other.

Well, that's the reason why it's probable that Mark Hansen wasn't there, and it's probable that Leslie Dylan isn't as big of a as they made him out to be.

Now, what Jeff Connor's ex-wife knew, we have no idea. But I do still believe that there is a compelling story to be told when it comes to these two men and Elizabeth Short. See, Mark Hansen had become obsessive and possessive over Elizabeth Short in the time she'd lived in his home, and they had parted on acrimonious terms. The people who came to visit Elizabeth in San Diego may have been other girls who lived at Mark Hansen's house who were trying to convince her to come on Mark's behalf. But it's possible that Elizabeth was scared of Hanson, either because of something he said or did or because of his connections to the criminal underworld.

Well, they were definitely on the outs. Because, and it really, honestly, I can't believe that because the conflict wasn't with Mark Hansen in the house.

It was with the other ladies. I know that's why she got kicked out of the house. Yes. But there was also much acrimony between Hansen and Elizabeth Short as well because of the jealousy and all the danger was going on.

I don't think the The ladies are trying to bring her back.

But then who were those people?

I think that they were the other people she pissed off. The ladies could have killed her. I think we're slightly minimizing how many people Elizabeth can piss off in a very short period of time. That is true. I do think that she was, as she got more desperate, and this is not victim blaming, her behavior got worse. That as she got more desperate, she was calling more and more people that did not want her around and Eventually, what she was doing, which to me, which would lead to her eventual death, is burn so many bridges with her lies because it was the lies. It was telling one people she's going someplace and then not going there and then stealing money and Being very... She was a homeless woman.

Despiration will put you in some really fucking awful situations.

Then you have to make awful decisions in order to survive. I think that's what she was doing and it did lead to her death.

I think desperation is exactly what led to it because Elizabeth Short was also in the habit of pestering Hanson for money. It was clear that Short was dead broke when she arrived back in Los Angeles on January ninth. No matter how afraid she might have been, it's possible that Mark Hanson was a last resort. As she already called everyone she could think of for help before calling him. Spent three hours on the phone trying to find somebody who would wire her money, help her out. Nothing doing.

If that's true, there's a whole story about that also. There's so many- But we can't say if that's true to every single thing that happens.

But don't they have phone records? No. If we do that, though, then there's no story. We just have a fucking bowl of fucking crime pudding. That's what it is. That we're trying to shove in a people's mouth. That's what this whole story is. I'm trying to serve a fucking meal here, and you're trying to serve oatmeal.

I were good pudding. This is fucking... But literally, it's not oatmeal. It's just understanding that this is the one theory.

Sure. Oatmeal is a great breakfast. It is.

In oatmeal's defense. You get the yogurt. You're doing yogurt.

I know, but I'll do oatmeal, too, because of Wilford Brembly.

We know that Elizabeth Short left the Biltmore just after talking to Hanson on the phone. And possibly by Hanson's direction, she may have ended up at the Esther Motel because Hoffman said that Short showed up on January ninth. See, Mark Hanson did tell the DA's office that he had two rooms in Los Angeles that he used for prostitution, although he did not say exactly where. While the Esther wasn't used specifically for sex work, it was where sex workers lived. It's possible that Mark Hansen knew about this place through the grapevine. As far as why he didn't just bring her home, as you said, Elizabeth had gotten to a fight with one of the other girls at Hansen's house just before she left, so he probably wasn't too keen on bringing her back. But Hansen had an obsession with Elizabeth, so the Esther was as good as place as any to keep her until he could figure out what to do with her. Now, once Elizabeth arrived at the Esther, she was given room number nine. But after a couple of days there, she could have moved to Mark Hansen's room next door when he showed up as the man from Batavia, which is what Hoffman might have been talking about when he said she could have stayed there without his knowledge.

Or he just dumped her there and left.

Yeah, it's It's possible that some argument between Elizabeth and Mark could have erupted in the few days that Hanson was in and out of the Esther. It's possible that Hanson was simply tired of dealing with this situation altogether. Could also be that Elizabeth Short knew something she shouldn't have and threatened Hanson with exposure during the argument. Reportedly, in regards to Elizabeth Short, Hanson told an associate, Someone get rid of that girl. This could be where Leslie Dylan comes into the picture. According to motel owner Henry Hoffman and three other witnesses, Leslie Dylan was also at the Esther Motel during Elizabeth Short's so-called Lost Week. If Leslie Dylan was given the task of getting rid of Elizabeth Short, it's possible that after moving her to room number three, he decided to have his way with her before getting rid of her. Remember, Leslie Dylan was an admitted rapist, and it's possible that he may have tried drugging and raping Elizabeth Short before killing her. That's when the micropenus came out.

Always. Even just the lead up, I could tell a micropenus was coming. Just from the guy's attitude.

We know he had a micropenus.

He definitely had a micropenus. Absolutely. Wow. Yeah. Going off the fact that- Never a wow.

But we said this last time, and it is, remember, when you do see a micropenis, always say wow.

Put it in a crescent roll.

If you see a micropenis, you go nice. Yeah.

I always wanted to fuck one of these.

That's what you say. That's what you say. That's what you say. That's what you say.

Wow.

Or just be nice. Be nice.

Never. You know what you don't do?

Oh.

Yeah.

More of a, if you feel go, Yam, Yam, Yam.

You can't even get that in me. Always be nice. Well, going off the fact that Dylan- I didn't know you had a clitoris.

You know what I mean? That's how you become the Black Dollar.

Well, going off the fact that Dylan was obsessed with vengeance murders, it could be that Elizabeth Short laughed at the sight of Dylan's eight-year-old boy penis. I mean, that's the girl that Elizabeth Short was. I could see her, from what I know about her, laughing at the side of it. He ever knew it. And he knocked her cold as a result. He then bound her wrist and suspended her from the ceiling somehow using the oversize leather dog leash that was found in his luggage after his arrest. At least that, by the way, was found to have a blood thought when it was examined by somebody outside of the LAPD. Because I know what you're going to get to. Everything we're going to hear about the Aster Motel is all stuff that the LAPD is saying. Yeah.

And all of my leashes are covered in blood.

It's different. Your dogs openly bleed. That's what they like to do. And you're supporting them.

Now, once Elizabeth was tied up, it's possible that Leslie Dylan decided to take out all the rage he felt about his small penis on Elizabeth short, beating her mercilessly, forcing her to eat feces and carving that gouish smile on her face. If you remember, Dylan told the driver that he liked girls with, quote, big mouths. After Elizabeth finally succumbed to her injuries, Dylan may have cut the body in two. I'm He was not coming around to this idea so he could more easily transport it.

That makes sense. Yes.

Then he drained it in the bathtub, which all of this would account for the ungodly amount of blood found all over that room.

I thought it was in the...

All the blood was on the bed. It was on the bed, it was in the bathroom, it was everywhere. As for the feces, there's a large amount of debate as to whether or not that's what was actually in Elizabeth's short stomach.

This is one of the most important points in this entire story is this question, because there's a lot of people, if you read Severd, That's the big book.

Well, Severed is where this comes from. Yes.

The idea that she was force-fed shit in her torture is this big thing which connects it to the Aster Motel. I'm in the John Dudlitz camp that believes what you had was that you do have someone with surgical experience that did cut somebody in half in order to transport them. But the reason why is that because the proper medical actual procedure to cut someone in half and have them live was not invented for another 20 years. That was a thing for a while. People thought maybe this doctor knew how to do that, but that was not around until the 1960s. So whatever they did, they did expertly cut through the spine, but they did not expertly cut through the gastrointestinal system. So what that then led was to a backload of shit from her de Wadnam up into her upper half.

You know the saying, you want to make an omelet, you break some eggs. She could be the first person on this surgery.

If you want to make a shit-filled woman, you cut her in half. Great advice, Andy. I'm so glad you said that. I'm so glad Ed said that.

Well, some say it's entirely a myth, the whole feces thing. But the coroner did intimate in private conversations that he thought that she was fed human feces, and room number three was covered with the stuff along with all the blood. It was brown. But even if we wanted to definitively test for feces or say phenobarbitol, which was the drug Dylan would have likely used to drug Elizabeth short, they wouldn't be able to because the contents of Short's stomach were lost along with so much else. But really, the big question mark with the Leslie Dylan theory concerns why he would dump the body in that particular vacant lot on that particular street in Lameert Park.

I still believe it's the single most important point in the entire case.

Of course, where they found the body. Yes. Yeah.

Well, the reason I could come up with is that after driving around the vicinity of the motel to find a dump site, Dylan came across a neighborhood that was empty enough where he could dispose of the body in two trips without being seen, but still had enough people where his display would quickly be found. See, I think Dylan, if he is the killer, he was proud of what he'd done, evidenced by the D for Dylan carved into Elizabeth's skin. That's my name. He was proud enough to write to Dr. Dériver under the name Jack Sand, and proud enough to talk details just so long as he could say Jeff Conners did it. Dylan was not, however, proud enough to go to jail for the rest of his life for this crime. If you ask why he played the game of talking about it but had an about face after he was arrested, you might as well ask why Dennis Rater came out of hiding to restart communication with the media as the BTK killer after he'd all but gotten away with killing 10 people. Dennis Rater wanted to cultivate the notoriety and fear surrounding the legend of the BTK killer by sending missives to the press and police.

But I'd imagine if you asked Dennis, he would have far preferred to have spent the rest of his life catching dogs in Wichita as opposed to dying in prison.

You know what's funny? I think this proves the opposite. I do.

How?

I think it proves the opposite.

How?

Tell me how.

You can't just do that thing where you say, I think it's the opposite, and then you don't say anything.

I can, though. But what if I did? Well, just because BTK In the very, very end, his action said, I did want everybody to know about it. Then if I did want to go and live independently as a dog catcher, I absolutely could have, and I could have laughed my way all over the bank and no one would have known. I I think that that's the reason why if Leslie Dylan did this as an extra overkill for a mob boss and then made it one of the most famous crime scenes in the face of the planet, I think that he would then get whacked himself. I don't think that someone... How does that... I just think those things just don't mesh together for me.

I think it is the same thing where these guys do want to up the notoriety of the killing. They want to play with the police. They like this idea of, I'm smarter than the police. I can pull one over on them and I can still get some notoriety for it, but I'm not going to go to jail for it.

Exactly. But Leslie Dylan, because all he wanted was notoriety, BTK was an actual serial killer.

How did they find anyone else with the letter D carved in them?

Well, then we'll get into the world if you want to, which I don't want to, which is the Werewolf Kills, which is a whole other fucking setup. Because what's her name? Jean. What's her name? Next. There was a crime that eclipsed the Black Dolly right after this. What do you believe is Jean Street?

Yeah, we talked about it in the first episode.

Yes, and that had a Another initial carved in that was a whole other copycat thing they tried to put together, but we don't know. That's one of those we just don't fucking know.

Are we positive it was a D and not a sloppy O?

That's also a question. That is absolutely a question. But the thing is that Dennis Rader slipped and fell flat on his face during his dance with Destiny, and he only copped everything because the evidence against him, from the communications to the trophies he kept from all his victims, was overwhelming. Leslie Dylan, on the other hand, was able to skate the charges completely. Setting aside the question of his innocence or guilt, what we can say is that for some reason, the LAPD had a vested interest in making sure Leslie Dylan never even went to trial. That, I think, is the biggest point here. Not necessarily that this man, they had somebody in custody that was definitively the killer, and it was definitely solved. At the very least, the LAPD wanted to make sure that this man never the light of day and that the spotlight never came on Leslie Dylan in any meaningful way.

Because they had him on the Santa Monica vault robbery, right? Yeah. Then they had him on rape.

Yeah. They had him on rape?

Well, they didn't have him on rape. He just had a bunch of phenobarbital pills.

How did we know he was a rapist? He admitted it?

He said, I drug and rape women, but that was not something that they could prove.

That was considered, yeah. It was also at the time, one of those fun things where it wasn't necessarily the hugest crime necessary. It was a whole like, he was considered a romance guy. He was an extreme romance man.

Make America Great Again.

Finally. We're finally going to get the chance.

See, on the same day that a Gangster Squad member was supposed to take an official statement from Aster Motel owner, Henry Hoffman, so they could start building their case in that direction, the officer was transferred out of the gangster squad without explanation. What's more, when another officer tried picking up at the Aster Motel where the Gangster Squad left off, his request for the files was denied. Without any explanation either. Things only got worse when a corruption scandal in the LAPD turned into a full-scale investigation that went all the way to the mayor.

Dude, they cocked it up to the fucking stratosphere. That's the main point of this entire theory is that I think not even just they didn't want Leslie Dylan to see the light of day, they didn't want anything to see the light of day because as soon as you lift that lid, you're going to see they just let some fake doctor go with their They're uncontrollable police squad, the gangster squad. These guys that are allowed to do whatever they want. They're not checking in with the police chief. They are a gang unto themselves, and they're letting them run wild, and no one wants anything to come out because they're like, Oh, my God, everyone's going to see that we're a bunch of criminals.

Well, no, because that's the thing. What I'm talking about here is I don't think they gave a shit about everybody knowing about all the unconstitutional stuff they did because they did it all the time.

Once you got to the grand jury, it didn't matter.

I don't think they cared at all. What they were most concerned about was this type of investigation. The vice squad in particular, they were the gang unto themselves. They would beat up nightclub owners who didn't sell out to their organized crime friends. They'd raid gambling houses that didn't pay protection. This is all while they let million dollar Bingo parlors operate with impunity just so long as the cops got their share. Can you imagine playing Bingo for millions of dollars? It's fun.

I like it.

The whole thing, this entire Their scandal culminated in the resignation of the police chief, and the guy who replaced him reshuffled the whole department to avoid further scandal. That reshuffle, unfortunately, included the gangster squad and its leadership. The man put in charge of the squad after the reshuffle was who else but Finnis Brown's brother, Thadius Brown, who, if you'll remember, had come to Mark Hansen's side after Hansen was shot by the dancer Lola Titis. Every gangster squad still left on the Black Dahlia murder were given new assignments after Thadias Brown took over, and the investigation into the Esther Motel was handed to new officers who dropped the ball completely.

It makes sense, though, in a weird way because they should have solved the fucking murder by now. You haven't done it. I'm going to give the case to someone else.

But they were right in the middle of a new line of investigation. They had leads. I mean, with all the problems of the Esther Motel, say what you will, it's leads. It is. For the first time in two years, they've got leads. Then all of a sudden, this guy comes in whose brother is directly connected to not only this brother, he himself, Thadias Brown, is directly connected to one of the men that they're investigating. He's like, Get out of here. Get off it. Forget about it. You're on something else. I take it back.

But also, I actually, Eddie, I don't think you're necessarily wrong. I also think that the concept of Dr. Dériver fucking shit up really fucked things up for them. I think that they allowed it all. The corruption was just... It goes past just active corruption into laziness, where you're watching them all like this whole thing becomes this big crime oatmeal bowl because of this.

Because you got some cops that are just straight up taking bribes. You got the Hat Squad, the Gangster Squad. They're just beating people up for no fucking reason.

Yeah, you got the Bell Hops. You can't just the goddamn Bell Hop. The nightclub owners are finger-a-new in the butt hole. Everybody is a fucking suspect, and nobody is a fucking suspect. No one's nice. Yeah.

Well, as far as the press went during all this, Maggie Underwood, the reporter from the Los Angeles Herald Express, who'd done so much work on the case, she heavily suspected that the investigation was intentionally killed because of its connections to Mark Hanson. And the LAPD. She even ran two articles about the Astor Motel in September of 1949, respectively titled, Black Dahlia murder Room, Located, and Link LA Motel murder with Dahlia murder. She did all this to try to keep the investigative line alive.

She's a hero. Aggie Underwood is like something else. She is the coolest person in this whole story.

And Aggie Underwood believed wholeheartedly that the heart of this case was Leslie Dillon, Mark Hanson, and the LAPD. Jimmy Richardson, however, the last of the terrible men, he decided to stay cozy with the cops and reported that the new clues regarding the Black Dolly murder, all the stuff about the Astor Motel, had been investigated and disregarded by, you guessed it, Thadius Brown. Now, even Even though most everyone else had given up on the Black Dahlia murder, fucking Dr. Dériver could not let it go. Working with a private investigator, Dériver was able to get a grand jury investigation started to see if they could indict Leslie Dylan for the murder of Elizabeth Short. Now, Dr. Dériver's private investigator had discovered that the Bellhop, who claimed that Dylan was in San Francisco on the day of Elizabeth Short's murder, had only said so after he had been approached by an officer from the LAPD. See, apparently Bellhop was a bit of a roaming profession in those days because both Leslie Dylan and his Bellhop friend ping-pong between jobs in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Quick, did you get this hat to Los Angeles?

You got it. Absolutely. I'll ride my suitcase. I don't understand here is this is like, how many syndicates are we looking at? We got the regular Mafia. We've got show business. We've got the police, the LOPD. We have got Bellups. I'm trying to think all the other various criminal organizations that are Prohibition. You got the people coming in the... We're not in time. No, it was Prohibition. It was after. But in terms of just gangsters, you got Mubsy Siegel, just straight up the normal, the big time. You got the Jewish Mafia.

Yeah, you got multiple branches of the Mafia, Italian and Jewish.

This is a lot. Everybody's scheme in something. It's like Los Angeles is a sea of various syndicates all competing to be the biggest criminal organizations.

Well, because no one was running this town back then.

No, man. True freedom.

It's just scams upon scams, and everybody's got something to hide. When everybody's got something to hide, nobody wants to talk, and everybody's going to try to protect their guy.

Because the key is, too, if you got three scams going on, and then you have something as atomic as the Black Dahlia murder, land into this, into everybody's world. It becomes this thing. I like to... Someone put this. I want to say James Elroy talked about how Elizabeth Short is one of the most influential people in Los Angeles, and she was only there for six months, which is one of the most... That's It's so LA as it is. But it's fascinating.

Well, I mean, the Bellhop had originally said that he'd seen Dylan in Los Angeles during the time of the Black Dahlia murder. Yeah, we were working Bellhops at a hotel together. But after the police officer convinced him maybe he wasn't remembering things correctly, the Bellhop changed his story to say, Actually, no, Dylan was definitely in San Francisco when the murder occurred. Regarding cabin number 3 at the Aster, the supposed kill room, the LAPD had supposedly tested it for blood and came up with nothing. But DeRivers PI sent in his own chemist, and their test came back positive for blood. The LAPD, however, dismissed the PI's findings because, certain other substances were also found to be there.

Let me just... Okay. Let me know Doudou is one of them. We know it could be. Fertilizer, maybe. But have we thought about jelly? No one's talked about jelly. No one's talked about it.

No one's talked about it. You're right.

They didn't run any test. You're right. They didn't. They run no test. We have no idea of an elf exploded.

Did somebody lick it?

Guess what? This is after Christmas. Yeah. Santa is in LA hanging out. This is where he ends his run. He's off the bit. Man from Davia, shows up, drops off.

We all know the Dutch have sweet tooth.

They do. They do. I could just see- They do love their jellies. I could see Santa, maybe getting a little too crazy. That's the Mr. Mortell?

Yeah, he's like, Matt, he's like, Where are my cookies? Why'd you leave out these Danish's?

Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I could also say it could be raspberry.

It could be raspberry. Poisonberry. Fly from your grave. Now, as the grand jury prepared, the new Crooked Head of a Gangster Squad, Thadias Brown, had sent one of his officers to secretly meet with Leslie Dylan, who'd since moved back to Oklahoma. The purpose of this meeting was to make sure that Dylan knew that he was supposed to say that he was definitely in San Francisco during the Black Dahlia murder, which is not really something that cops usually do with a murder suspect under investigation by a grand jury. It's very fishy. Admittedly, there was one detail that came out when the investigation began that discredits Leslie Dylan in one respect. Dylan did get it right that part of Shorts pubic hair had been cut off and that a piece of flesh where she had a tattoo had been gouged out. But in the Palm Springs' recordings with Dr. Driver, Dylan got what the killer did with those parts wrong. He said that the would have probably thrown those pieces down the toilet and flushed them. Whereas in reality, those pieces were shoved up Elizabeth Shorts' most private orifices. What are those? Her anus and vagina. Oh, yes.

Oh, okay. I thought it was something I thought it was like in a room. I thought it was like a drawer of them in a room. Oh, wow. Yeah, wow. That's different.

Well, maybe he said something like that to prove his innocence in a weird way.

To throw him off. I don't know. A lot of people point to that as like, Leslie Dylan didn't know what he was talking about.

Or someone else cleaned up the body after he had killed them and done that. Then when they were cleaning up the body, they were like, We can't leave this flesh around. Now he's getting it.

They stuck it up in their head. Now he's getting it. It gets complicated. As soon as you start looking into the quantum facts. If you get on a quantum level, it begins to fall apart.

I mean, there's definitely more than one person involved.

Oh, yeah. Well, I don't know. I've been thinking this. This whole time, it was more than one person. But I do think that John Douglas makes a point, two people can keep a secret if one of them's dead. So maybe whoever did it killed the other one. There's no way. I feel like the same way about the JFK assassination. There's no fucking way. That secret it's too juicy for someone did not give in, someone would give in.

There could be people we've never even heard of that were killed the same day as Elizabeth Short, ditched in a different place, and when we have no fucking idea.

I made a joke about Deborah Tall, but yes, she was there. Honestly, one of the craziest things I've ever seen, split down the middle.

That's insane. But vertical.

Yes, vertical. That's fucking crazy. Slayed inside. Crazy. Like a fucking beautiful piece of Branzino.

God, I love a Branzino.

Me, too.

But when it came time for the original Gangster Squad investigators to testify for the grand jury, they said that they believed that Leslie Dylan and Mark Hansen were involved on at least least some level. But every time they were on the verge of a breakthrough, they were taken off the case without explanation. But the Gangster Squad weren't the only cops who testified, and they weren't the only ones to talk about Mark Hansen. In particular, Finnis Brown muddied the waters as badly as he could and went to bat specifically for Mark Hansen one more time by telling a story that absolutely no one believed. Finnis Brown testified that his connection to Mark Hansen was only through local Lola Titis, the dancer who'd shot Hansen in the back. If you remember, Hansen had said, Get me Brown from his hospital bed after Lola had shot him.

Now, unfortunately, Brown is a different context after this episode. So he was like, Get me brown.

You mean like paint him Brown, get him a bowl of Brown?

Yeah, get me a bowl of brown.

Yeah, give me a bowl of brown. Well, the reason behind that request, Finis Brown was now saying, was because Hanson was a snitch. Finis went on to say that Lola Titis was actually at the center of an underground pornography ring, and Finnis had actually flipped Hanson to help take this pornography ring down. None of this was true, and fucking nobody believed it.

No, because she was so young, right?

Yeah, she was in her early 20s. She was a very erratic human being. She was sexy.

She was a vibe about her. But I think that... No, not this theory. Not this theory. No, I don't believe it.

Well, that's the thing is that this It's not a theory, and that's what... This is a grand jury testimony. Yeah, but then you have to just say stuff. Yeah, but that's part of the fishiness here is how far Finnis Brown goes to try to make Mark Hanson a hero, to try to take Mark Hansen as far away from this case as humanly possible at every turn.

It's also good just straight up because he really did believe he was innocent and that he felt that Mark Hansen was getting pulled in, and maybe it's because he does other shit. It's all the side gigs.

It's all the fucking side gigs. Oh, no, he did do side gigs. He was a bagman. He worked specifically for Mark Hanson. He was in debt to Mark Hansen. What do you say? I think it's a part of paying back the debt.

Absolutely. But what if he just did all these other crimes? This is the problem. If you do every other crime but the Black Dahlia murder, they can still cover up for you, but it doesn't necessarily have to be for the Black Dahlia murder. It's because you're fucking fully in bed with a bunch of other criminals, and now you're all trying to save your ass.

Yeah, because maybe if Mark Hanson didn't do it, if they looked into Mark Hanson deep enough that all of them would go down for other shit.

Of course. That might be a bit of my point later on.

That is my big thing.

But to really drive home his loyalty, Fina said that Hanson had actually been very helpful to the police during the Black Dolly investigation. He gave him money.

He was super helpful. I love this guy. It's like him sitting on a jet ski. This jet ski is so important to my investigative process.

But they said the reason why he was helpful is because he photos of Elizabeth Short. Now, of course, the center of this grand jury investigation was supposed to be the Esther Motel. It was hoped that Mark Hansen could be linked to the case through the testimony of motel owner Henry Hoffmann, who had been quite sure prior to the grand jury about the identity of the man from Batavia. But when it came time to testify, Henry Hoffmann and his wife changed their tune. See, in the Black Dahlia case, statements had a habit of becoming confusing and contradictory after witnesses spoke with Finnis Brown in particular. By the time of the grand jury, Henry and Clora Hoffmann were now saying that there was no man from Batavia at the motel when Elizabeth Short was supposedly there. Now, obviously, the Esther Motel was a shady operation run by shady people. There's no telling what all the Hoffmans were involved with while they were running the motel or what they did after they sold it. There's no telling what, if anything, the cops had over them.

Do you have any idea how hard is to run an establishment while you're actively melting I live in an Alice in Wonderland reality. Syphilis has occupied most of my brain. I don't know what's happening. I'm a floating grin. I look in the mirror, I I wish I knew who I was.

Mr. Hoffman, there's blood in cabin 3 again.

No, I went and looked at it. It was jelly. Santa. I'm coming after him. Did he leave his credit card? Is that why the blood was delicious? Yes, I I know, right? How about that brown? I like a dark brown for certain.

But it is telling that Clora Hoffman's sister and her brother-in-law, the, Oh, my God, there's enough blood in here to fill a human body guy, They both stuck to their original story about the man from Batavia in totality.

I say that every time I go in a room.

Oh, my God. There's a bump in here to fill a human body. In mine.

See you soon, right? Hopefully, But in the end, this wasn't anywhere near enough. Now, when the grand jury issued its report, they did declare that the investigation into the Black Dahlia murder was a part of a systematic corruption of the justice system that ultimately led to an increasing number of unsolved homicides in Los Angeles.

Absolutely. Yes. I feel like that's the main note because I do think you have a grand jury looking at this mess.

Well, that's the thing. They also noted in their report that the police officers who were supposed to be solving Black Dahlia murder were evasive, corrupt, and prone to misconduct. Yes. So everything was a fucking mess.

Yes.

And there was lots of murder in Los Angeles at this point.

And high-profile murders. You remember right before this, it was the three little girls and that fucking rape murder series that was horrible. There was a series, again, the Werewolf Murders.

This was a- All the gangland murders, like Bugsy Siegel was killed five months.

It's going to be almost impossible to solve a murder in Los Angeles in this time, even if you're not corrupt.

But that's the issue. I'm waiting to my point. I got to get to my point. I got to wait for the act.

But in the end, the LAPD had introduced enough doubt to make the grand jury declare that there was insufficient evidence to investigate Leslie Dylan or Mark Hansen any further. Afterward, the new LAPD chief fired Dr. Dériver and abolished the position of police psychiatrist. In retaliation for going against the LAPD, cops harassed Dr. Dériver for years. They followed him, they broke into his house, they would shoot at him, just in his general direction, just bang, bang. Every once in a while, they'd lead dead fish on his doorstep. This isn't just Dr. Dériver being paranoid. His daughter came on and said, Yes, for years, we were harassed by the LAP.

Back in the day, you could shoot at somebody and it was funny.

That guy's crazy. I don't owe him $5.

America, all gracious, guys. But Dr..

Dériver, I remember reading an article, one of the last things I had read about him was that they'd found him right before his death. This reporter wanted to hear about all this. Dr. Dériver, he answered, it's just like a fucking film noir. It was in the late '80s. Then he went to this Hollywood mansion, and he went up there and he knocked on the door, and the door and the door opens and Dr. Dériver's in his ascot and his robe and he has a gun and he comes out and he's just like, Are you the man that I'm supposed to see? He's just like, Yeah, buddy. He's just been like, I never know who's coming to kill me. I never know who's on the other side of the storm. It was crazy. Jesus fucking Christ, buddy. All right, guys. I think maybe we should switch Zekath.

Repro reporter, Agi Underwood, also got harassed by the cops for continually insisting on more investigation into Leslie Dylan and Mark Hanson. She got harassed enough where she started carrying a gun everywhere she went, just in case. Eventually, she back down. But author, Pew eatwell, discovered something interesting in the California State University Journalism Archives. This is about the most Black dolly of fucking thing that could possibly happen. It was an interview with Auggie Underwood from 1974, but just as it appears as if she's about to talk about the Black Dahlia case, the film mysteriously cuts. We have no idea what she may have said.

I think her waist just did that.

I think he's a fucking suspect, Dylan? Well, no. Pooh eat well. Q eat well? Yes, Q. He's right in the name. He's right in the name.

Finally, the Who Well will receive my Pooh. World of information.

Well, as far as what Leslie Dylan did with the rest of his life, he remarried quite a few times. Eventually, this is weird, even if he didn't do it, he had a daughter named Elizabeth.

That is fucked up.

It's real fucked up.

Someone should just beat the shit out of him for that.

Yeah, well, he's dead. He died in San Francisco in 1988. Still, accusually. Even if you're 25 in 1947, there's not a good chance that you're still around in 2025. Now, there are certainly holes in the Leslie Dylan case. There was no firm connection established between him and Mark Hanson. No. It was never incontrovertably proven that he was in LA during the time of the murders.

Why would the Bell hops cover for him when they got other crimes going on? They would gladly give up the Black Dolly of murder so that they could be absorbed of other things. Because all the Bell hops work together, and Dylan's got information on the other Bell hops.

So if he takes him down, he's going to take him down to some mother shit.

But if that's still in half, still Black Dahlia murder. But I think that one Bell hop, I think the cop did have something on him. Yeah, definitely. It was like, either say that he was in San Francisco at the time of the murder or you're going to jail.

Yeah, or you don't get to keep that diamond necklace you stole from that lady. Yeah.

But it fits me. So, wow, wasn't it?

And Leslie Dylan also got some of the mutilation details wrong in one of his interviews. And even the Aster Motel has its problems. I mean, witnesses got the color of Elizabeth's hair wrong. The shuffling of the rooms from 9:00 to 8:00 to 3:00 doesn't make a lot of sense. The interviews were all done two years later, and it's possible that the gangster squad, just like all the rest of the fucking cops, just simply leaned on these people until they told a story that the squad wanted to hear.

Now, I also say our next hero, a man by one of the most grumpy men to ever live. No, you seem very sweet, actually. I think the actor is very nice. I think it was a character he played.

Well, No, he was big on the track. He would always lose all his money at the track. He was gambled away millions.

I'd actually put Jack Lemon as the grumpy old man.

I've heard he was, and that just makes me like a more. Wow. I like somebody who loses all their money.

Everyone loves Meredith Burgess, though.

I think it's cute. One of the grumpiest men that we're ever going to meet, honestly, Larry Harnish, he's going to come in, spoiler, next episode, is that he says, One of the most poignant statements I have heard about this whole case, which is that you'll find that the people with some of the least to do with this are so excited to get themselves involved in this case, and that they show up and they are excited. I think that when you first go to the Esther Motel and you ask all these questions about Elizabeth Short, I think that you're first You want to give the cop a good answer. You do. You want to get them out of there.

But no, the problem with that is that it actually took the cops quite a long time to get the information out of these people.

Probably because you're also showing up and leaning on them until they do give you But I think that it's very exciting at very first blush to be a part of this story. But then what Larry Hurnish says, But you notice when I talk to the family members, anyone that this case has actually touched, it destroyed their lives so thoroughly that they never want to have anything to do with this ever again. They don't want to talk about it.

But that's family members.

But it's not just family members. It's the people that actually knew her, the people that were around these people. This story, you These are looky-loos. That's how I view it. They are looky-loos that at first were super excited about being involved in the case. But the problem with dumb, impulsive people is they don't understand the consequences of their actions. Then once they finally are like, Oh, wow, it's a big deal. You go down to the courthouse, you got the cops everywhere, the judge is staring you. Now it's real. Now this isn't just me standing on the street telling you what I thought happened. Now it's like, Oh, I got to say something. Maybe that's where the truth comes. I don't know. I have no idea.

Yeah, I mean, you could technically say that about any witness in any crime ever.

No, because I find that they're brave witnesses, but that's why their difference between there are brave witnesses. This is somebody that wanted to tell this version of the story instead.

Maybe. But there's also the question as to why the LAPD or Mark Hanson's Underworld Connections didn't just disappear Leslie Dylan. But I think Dylan might have had a dead man switch set up that could have exposed everyone should something suspicious happened to him. It's a stretch, but it's certainly a possibility.

Also, he went to Oklahoma. Get out of this town. I don't want to ever see you again. Yeah, he did.

He did. Yeah. Having said all that, though, I do think that out of all the suspects I've looked into so far, the story of Leslie Dylan and Mark Hanson makes the most sense. That Dylan was supposed to simply kill and dispose of Elizabeth Short but got carried away. In my view, there are just too many coincidences to let this story go unexamined.

Definitely. This is a pillar of the Black Dahlia story because this is also So this whole storyline is the natural timeline that happened at the time. Everything else now is going to be after the grand jury.

Admittedly, though, I can also absolutely see Leslie Dylan being just some guy who liked to be creepy, a manipulator who just wanted to see how far he could take a story. But I do wholeheartedly believe that the LAPD had an interest in keeping this case unsolved, either because they were connected or somebody paying them was connected. Really, what this story shows is just how much damage police corruption and coverups can do to an investigation. Even if Mark Hansen had nothing to do with it, the meddling that took place to protect him at all costs, stymied the investigation again and again. Instead of searching for the killer, Finnis Brown was often more concerned with derailing any line of investigation that led to Mark Hansen, Organized Crime, or the LAPD, and in the end, was left with only a vague theory that killer might have been an illegal abortion doctor. Mark Hansen may have even just been a rung on the ladder, someone tangentially related to the murders who had to take a small amount of heat on behalf of someone more powerful. But if that's the case, we'll never know because the police made sure we'll never know.

That, however, does not mean that we're at the end of our series just yet. Yeah, you fucking idiots.

I saw you all, you pieces of shit. How many people were like, Oh, they're willing to do three episodes? Oh, definitely not. I knew that. I had an idea of that, that that was the things we're going to change as soon as we got into it, dude, because, man, I think everybody's guilty.

Next week, we're going to return with two more suspects, the one you've all been waiting for and another lesser known suspect that just so happens to be Henry's top pick as the likely perpetrator of the Black Dahlia murder. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Where was he? Where was he? The war was over. Was he done with killing? I don't think so.

He wasn't President yet.

As we know now, presidents are immune of all crimes. Yeah. Actually, good for him.

Was it Dewey?

Marcus, I'm so excited that we're doing this because obviously, we're going to go into a little bit of the... I'm going to say the man who should not be named because everybody fucking has covered this guy, but we're going to cover exactly why it's stupid that people think that this guy is the guy, I think, personally.

I mean, at the very least, this man is a fantastic Los Angeles character. He's just a fascinating person in and of himself.

Los Angeles character means pedophile. Then we're going to get in the other one is Walter. Well, the other one's my favorite. The other one's my favorite, which is, again, but I will say, Marcus, I'm agnostic.

You're agnostic?

You don't seem agnostic.

You seem very passionate. You seem very passionate and very sure.

The whole episode, you'd seem the last thing I would say is agnostic.

You know what I know? Because you know what I've known now? You know what I know now? What? It's how little I know. That Dylan No, it's how little I know. That's what I know now. Now I'm aware of how little I actually know.

I like how heated it gets during a mystery. We got to do more mysteries.

I hate mysteries.

Because he doesn't like it when I come from behind. No, I just thought he works, and then I go down in the shadows, and I come up with new things that surprise and delight him and make him angry.

That's why I love doing the SeaWorld. Telecom did it.

Absolutely. We have it on camera.

I like stories where you tell me what happens and then we find out what happens and then the whole thing's over and done with.

It doesn't work like that, does it, Marcus?

No, it doesn't work like that. But this has still been a fascinating series. The thing is about the Black dolly of murder is that, yeah, that's one of the drawbacks of the show What we know is that we have a limited amount of time to spend on all of these. Everything that we do, we have a limited amount of time because we always have to get to the next thing, and we're always finishing up with the last thing. But the more you look into the Black dolly of murder, and the more you look into any single subject concerning the Black dolly of murder, all you have is more questions. Because there were things that even while I was writing this, I came up with more questions about Mark Hanson as I was writing. I'd be like, Well, yeah, actually, shit. Well, she did have brown hair, and all these people said that she had black hair. It's just like these holes start showing up and you start asking all these questions. This case drives people insane. It drives people absolutely insane.

It has ruined Larry Harnish's life. We'll talk about this. I love you, Larry. I'm going to say this right now. This is a message directly to Larry Harnish. I know you don't like true crime podcasts. I know you don't like them, but I'm going to let you know. We're going to tell your side of the story. We're going to tell your side of the story, and you're going to be mad about it. You're going to be, You're going to be angry.

I'm probably going to get a thing or two incorrect.

We might even be slightly flippant, you're going to be angry. But I want you to know. I'm hearing you.

I'm hearing you. I think the reason why this story drives people insane is because it's just out of reach from modern day. It's just that you can go to the locations, you can see all the pictures, you can feel it, but fucking everybody's dead. You're just out of reach. Everybody's dead. Everything's already been muddled up and fucked up.

Or burned, and the evidence has been destroyed. Because back in the day, it was so much easier to get away with murder than it is today.

This story is what gets people into true crime ever since. This is one of those introductory stories that brings people in, which is also shows here. I feel like I like to show a little bit of our dynamic. You can see that this is how people yell about mysteries. You can see us physically do it on our Patreon. Com/lastpodcast on the left. You can see us flap. Let me see my tits go back and forth. Twitch. Tv/lpntv. We are back. It is the year 2025.

Isn't it the future? Oh, isn't it now? Yeah, 2025.

It is the year 2025.

What did you think you were going to be doing in 2025? Say when you were 15.

Do you know, I was one of those who was like, I'm going to die early. Because I was into Chris Farley and John Balushi and stuff like that. So I thought I was going to die.

I imagine I thought I was going to coach football or something.

I thought you wanted to be governor. No.

I never wanted to be governor.

Why would I want to be governor?

Anyone can be governor of fucking Florida.

That's great because it's sinking. You have less states to deal with. You know what?

You know where we should be talking about is this Saturday? Yeah. We're going to be in Atlanta. A week from Saturday.

A week from Saturday. Next week, we are in Atlanta at the Coca-Cola Roxy. I can't fucking wait to be back in town. Yeah, it's going to be great. Huge. Yeah. Then we're doing SideSource Live at That's Garage, but that's sold out.

But that's already sold out, so you got to go see the last podcast on a left show at the Coca-Cola Roxy on January 11th. You can't make that? Fly to Dallas.

Fly to Dallas.

Fucking get in a cabin, get in a covered wagon to fucking Nashville.

Take a moped to Detroit. Don't take a moped to Detroit. It's going to be cold.

Fly a pterodactyl to Toronto. That's on May third. February, March, April, May. That's Dallas, Nashville, Detroit, Toronto, and of course, Atlanta, a week from tomorrow on January 11th. Go to lastpodcastontheleft. Com to find ticket links for all of those shows, and make sure to follow us on all of these socials at LP on the Left on TikTok and Instagram.

Thank you, Mike.

It's good work. Thank you. Great work. I'm sure everyone's yelling about how wrong I am about everything. Good. I love it.

Yeah, no. That's cool.

You are presenting all of the information.

I presented all the information. It works at all.

The information exists and you were presenting it. If you didn't do that, then you wouldn't be doing your fucking job. You're right.

That's right. But guess what? It's not going to stop here. We already have our next couple series lined up. We know what we're doing. I'm very, very excited for 2025.

Yeah, super excited about the shit that we got coming up. Some history, some new shit. We've got some current shit coming up. We got some old conspiracies we've been waiting to get to for a very long time. By conspiracies, I mean the dumbest shit in the world. It's my favorite.

We're finally going to find out who killed Nicole Brown-Simson. Yes.

Honestly, that is my main goal. What happened to the waiter? Yeah, what happened to the waiter. He's LA history. What happened to that waiter?

I mean, talk about fucking... He wasn't even delivery back then. That's service. He's right. He's gone and taking it all the way to the house.

Crazy. That's crazy. It's a great waiter. Apparently, the only tip he got was a knife tip. All right, guys, let's go. Hey, hail Satan, August season.

Oh, how game.

Heil Black Delia murder, the band.

Sure? Yeah, they're friends.

Hey, Black Delia murder, how are you doing? Hey, good work, guys. Is there a responsible responsible the name of your band?

Maybe they're fucking different.

See you, fuckers.