Reel Twisty: Setting Stories Straight
Investigating the real tales that "based on true stories" are about.
Reel Twisty: Setting Stories Straight
The Black Dahlia Part 2: Elizabeth Short’s Final Days in 1940’s Reel Twisty Los Angeles
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We’re digging back into Elizabeth Short’s stay in California before her horrible death. Track her last days with us as we unravel the identities of Elizabeth Short and The Black Dahlia and compare both to their representation in the 2006 neo-noir film, The Black Dahlia.
Research Resources:
William J. Mann, Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood
“LA’s First Freeways,” PSB SoCal
“The Black Dahlia of Leimert Park,” PBS SoCal
“…Elizabeth Short’s Friend Reveals Rare Childhood Insight…,” Oxygen
“On the History of Disease-Concepts,” Adrian Wilson
“Pleurisy,” Columbia Doctors | NHS
“Outmoded Diseases,” Jennie Dusheck
“The Worst Thing About the Black Dahlia Case,” The Atlantic
“William J. Mann on Black Dahlia,” A Little History
“The Saga of the Sign,” The Hollywood Sign Trust
“The Hollywood Sign Once Had a White Dot,” The Hollywood Reporter
“Keep the White Spot White,” The Homestead Museum
A Brief History of the Black Dahlia, Novel Suspects
The Black Dahlia Murder, FBI Archives
Black Dahlia (Elizabeth Short), FBI Vault
“An LAPD Seeking Information Bulletin on Elizabeth Short,” FBI Archives
“Filmmakers Say They Cracked the Infamous Black Dahlia Case…,” People
“We Know How the Black Dahlia Died, But How Did She Live?” The Hollywood Reporter
“Filmmakers Claim They Solved Grisly Black Dahlia Murder Case…,” TV Insider
“He’s Challenging Decades of Victim-Blaming…,” LA Times
Elizabeth Short, Crime & Investigation
Short, Elizabeth (1925-1947), Encyclopedia.com
Case File: Elizabeth Short, A&E TV
“Investigative Team Says They Know Who Killed the Black Dahlia,” NewsNation
“Black Dahlia Investigators Claim They Found Blood Evidence…,” Los Angeles Magazine
Elizabeth Short has made her way across the U.S. to Los Angeles where she is waiting out New England winter. Right, Matt?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Another one. I'm totally that's totally what she's thinking when she's in California.
TashaI think that's exactly what she was thinking. I think she's also thinking, why does Matt look like he's in spring?
SPEAKER_00She's like I'm in California because it's so cold in Boston.
TashaNo, I think one of the things that we should explain to people is that like you and I and David, we are V full time.
SPEAKER_01Correct.
TashaWe do.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
TashaAnd so I kind of resonate with Beth. Like I feel for Beth that like need to go, go, go. Like, I don't want to be in one place.
SPEAKER_00The only benefit is we have a place that we can stay in.
TashaWe have a place.
SPEAKER_00But she has to find places to stay in.
TashaPoor girl.
SPEAKER_00And she's jumped around a it feels like a few dozen times, but it's probably a bit less than that.
TashaEnough times that we've had to do part two of part one.
SPEAKER_00And a very minimal of that time was with her biological dad.
TashaWho's a not a good dad?
SPEAKER_00He's a D word. He's a D word.
TashaBad dad. He's a bad dad. He's not a D word and a dad. He does not qualify for the word. Oh. Oh. Horrible. So we're here to introduce Elizabeth Short, whom we call Beth, because she didn't go by Elizabeth. She went by Beth or Betty. Um, and we're gonna call her Beth. Make things easy, simple, and identifiable. This is not the episode where you're going to get to hear about her murder. So you do not have to worry about what to skip through if you don't like Gore. But this is the episode where you get to hear about the rest of her travels through California.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
TashaAre we gonna take you through the rest of her days?
SPEAKER_00So if you haven't heard the first episode of this part, go on back because we're we're not in Massachusetts anymore. No we're in California.
TashaWe are in Cali. Uh sweet Cali. I'm Tasha.
SPEAKER_00This is Matt.
TashaAnd uh we're learning about Beth. And for 80 years, we have been confusing the hell out of her story. A made-up woman named the Black Dahlia, and it has gotten real twisty. Welcome to Real Twist Setting Story Straight. This is part two of what was supposed to be a two-part story, and it's now part one part two of part one. Part two of part one, so one B.
SPEAKER_00Because what we're trying, what we're trying to do is break break stories up into smaller increments so they don't seem as we're trying to make it not so tedious for y'all.
TashaSo we're still learning the process, but because I would say, and I would listen to this all day long. Oh, yeah, you know, because I like listening to myself talk. I think you may have just picked up my son laughing from the other room. He's not coming through my mic, but he's he thinks it's hilarious that anyone would want to listen to us because that's not what's happening in that room at all. Because he's had 18 years of listening to us, and he's like, ha ha ha ha ha. Anyone would want to listen to my parents.
unknownHa ha ha ha.
SPEAKER_00We have great conversations with him. He's lovely, he's lovely.
TashaHe is lovely, he's very logical. He is, he is. So, as we said at the end of the last episode, this is recording immediately after the first episode on Elizabeth Short.
SPEAKER_00But we did not change our dresses.
TashaThe only thing that's changed is that I have emptied my bladder. We have refilled our cups. I'm no longer drinking a blackberry ailate. I am now drinking a peach aleate. And if you don't know what an ailate is, you obviously are not a full-time RVer who's been to Kentucky. Yes, you know. Um, and I feel sad for you because Kentucky is beautiful. It is beautiful, it is beautiful. Um, you should go, you should stay at Firefly Hills, and you should stock up on aleate.
SPEAKER_00If you're not an RVer, they have an Airbnb, so you can stay there.
TashaAnd it's haunted. Yeah, and I may or may not have some experiences.
SPEAKER_00And they're supposed to be uh featured on some show, I forget the name of the show.
TashaSometime this year, this winter, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yes, coming.
TashaSo just keep your eyes peeled for Firefly Hills. If you like paranormal stuff, yes, which we just assume that you do, because if you're here for any sort of true crime, like true crime or paranormal, this is up your alley.
SPEAKER_00We did Veronica early on, so we're into paranormal.
TashaThis is this is your wheelhouse, it's our wheelhouse, you know. I know. I'm really sad because that was my last BlackBerry L8. I'm also really sad that I cannot get anybody to verify the correct way to say L8 because the label very clearly sail says that you're supposed to call it a late one. Yeah, but everybody in Kentucky says L8.
SPEAKER_00But tell them the spelling L81 is a late one.
TashaA L E, a number eight, and then there's a little like subscript one for a late one, but they have seasonal flavors. And I I just with the first episode, I finished off Blackberry, the very last blackberry in the refrigerator, and David has been like haunting going. Are you ever gonna drink that? When are you gonna drink that?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's like your chocolate you have from Kadeki as well.
TashaLike, I'm holding on to it.
SPEAKER_00We can't we can't eat or drink any of the things that are for Tasha because they're hers, they're mine, but it they could be in the fridge for like six months or a year, yeah.
TashaLike I've I've held on to them. They're my precious. I am Schmeagle, and so I've just tapped into each a late, a late one, and now I have like two left.
SPEAKER_00I have a jack-o going on right now.
TashaWe don't tell anybody our secrets, but also we would love to be sponsored by Sam.
SPEAKER_00Club or Sam's Adams, not clubs.
TashaSam Adams also.
SPEAKER_00I don't want to be sponsored by Sam's Club.
TashaAlso, while we're talking about Sam, their delicious jack o'er Sam's. We go to Boston a lot as full-time RVers because we have a dear soft spot in our hearts for Massachusetts. We're the anti-Beths. Beth is like, get me out of New England, and we're like, get us into New England.
SPEAKER_00Well, she's getting out of New England because of the cold. She is we are out of New England by the cold.
TashaWe we do, but Rick Red, come on, y'all. Yeah, like I'm a little sad.
SPEAKER_00This is the first season we've been up there that you could barely find it. And we say barely because we found a deer restaurant of ours that's in the same town as the Lizzie Borden house. I love it. That's at an Irish pub.
TashaI don't want to tell anybody where it is because then they will come and we will not be able to get a seat there. And I don't want them to eat all the chicken wings.
SPEAKER_00They will still have chicken wings, but they cannot be a 30-minute wait for the first year that that was the only place we could get brick red. Yeah, that was the only place we could get it. We went to Boston games that they replaced brick red with a seasonal player sponsored. And while we do love that player, yeah, like Brick Red is Brick Red is like you can only get it in Boston.
TashaYou can only get it in Boston, you can only get it on tap, and only get it at specific venues. And so when we went to those venues and they were like, Real sorry, it's been replaced with this player's pale ale specific pale ale. Yeah, I was real sad. Which is nothing wrong with pale ale, but no, I love me at pale ale, but I can get pale ale everywhere. I was there for brick red.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaNo? And now that we've just talked about our favorite beer, let's talk about Beth, who never drank.
SPEAKER_00And speaking of cold, if you see like things like shaking, it's because I'm cold right now.
TashaYou're cold? How are you cold?
SPEAKER_00So my mic might be shaking.
TashaThat is really weird. So for everyone to know, uh, what works in our relationship at the highest level of works is that Matt is always boiling hot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I am always cold, which is probably cute.
TashaAnd so when we go to bed at night, I'm like using his body heat to bring my body back up to temperature.
SPEAKER_00Like uh and I'm throwing off covers because I'm hot.
TashaI sleep with blankets on the regular and like pushing them off. Yeah. Uh he sleeps with one, sometimes a little throw on top of that one. But yeah, and one of my blankets is a blanket that you made for me before we got married.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaAnd it is a one of those fleece fleece blankets where it's two pieces of fleece that are tied together. So along the edges, yeah. Personally, I would call that four blankets, but that's just me. I'm just saying. I mean, technically, I mean, you can call it that.
SPEAKER_00That's fine with me.
TashaBut I don't know what Beth would call it. I think Beth would call it the longest intro that has nothing to do with her.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no.
TashaShe'd be like, why are we still talking about Rick Red beer and fleece blankets? Fleece blankets. Yeah. And I would say a late one. That's why I would call it. And Boston Red Sox, go socks. No, gotta bring it back home to Massachusetts.
SPEAKER_00Go Ravenclaw.
TashaSo that's our intro to uh 1B. Was not supposed to be here, but 1A was taking a really long time.
SPEAKER_00That's all good.
TashaUh and we're still learning that things make this. We talk too much. I talk too much. You don't talk at all.
SPEAKER_00We're trying to make it more palatable. Because but we didn't want to shorten the content.
TashaBecause the content is good.
SPEAKER_00It is good, but we didn't want you guys to like look at it and be like, this is two and a half hours. I don't want to do this.
TashaBecause I would lose, I would just put it in two time, which is what I do with all of my favorite podcasts. Shout out morbid. I'm morbid. I do listen to you in two time, but that's not because of you, it's because of me. That's why I'm I listen to everything in two time. I audio podcasts, Elisa. I listen to Elisa in two time. Or halftime. Or when I need to take notes and then I listen in halftime. That is true.
SPEAKER_00I would comment about that, but I don't want to do that. It's great listening to it in a halftime.
TashaHe hates it. Let's get to Beth, okay? Let's go to Beth so that we're not commenting on me. So last time we left Beth, it was like August 25th through 7th of 19. So we're within months of her passing.
SPEAKER_00She moved out of an amazing hotel. Amazing, amazing where stars and stuff stated.
TashaNBC RKO like is at the shit. And she was like, robberies, murders, let's go. I'm not seeing enough of the real stuff in LA. I don't know what she was, but she kicked Gordon to the curb.
SPEAKER_01Or Gordon kicked her to the curb.
TashaGave her some cash, and he said, You really need to be more realistic and uh more practical. And he said, Au revoir. And she went to Margie's.
SPEAKER_00Who is also from Massachusetts?
TashaWho's also from Massachusetts? She just happened upon her at a a shop in Hollywood.
SPEAKER_00Well, so they knew each other from Massachusetts. Yeah.
TashaGordon went off to his base, Long Beach, and they've split ways at 11 p.m., which I am still hot about, Gordon. Pretty sure you're dead, but I'm still very upset about this.
SPEAKER_00I mean, he's kind of like given her that whole day to move out. Maybe that's why he waited till 11 a.m. uh 11 p.m.
TashaDon't give me that look. I'm gonna give you that look.
SPEAKER_00You need to give everyone the benefit of the doubt in this story.
TashaI am giving you that look. You don't leave a 20-year-old on the streets of LA at 11 10 p.m.
SPEAKER_00But the other the last episode you talked about how she talked to Margie about moving in with her before.
TashaShe did. I will say she did, but it is 11 p.m. in LA, and I don't care what year it is, it is 11 p.m. in LA. You don't leave a 20-year-old on the street. He doesn't know where she's going. No. And she's going to the Hawthorne where girls be knifing their boyfriends. No. Okay, so we talked about how shady the Hawthorne is. Super shady. Robberies, murders, shit be going down at the Hawthorne. Okay. Life is living at the Hawthorne. I don't know. It's very, but there's Lynn at the Hawthorne.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd I don't know what Margie was thinking, but not thinking, hey, maybe I should clear this with Lynn. Definitely not something that she has. Lynn just comes home and she's got a new roommate.
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe she thought she was just being nice to her at the department store and just said that. Maybe not thinking it was gonna be a real thing in like three days.
TashaI don't know. But so, okay, so the way that they worked this, because it was a very small room, Margie and Beth funk together in one bed, and Lynn kept her bed.
SPEAKER_00Because it no small room.
TashaYeah, right. And poor Lynn, like she shouldn't get screwed. She didn't even vote for this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
TashaUm, Beth not working, just living off of the little bit of money that Gordon had given her when he exited left stage. Stage left. Stage left is what I'd like to say. And his money went fast. So Margie starts giving Beth cash for food.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaOkay. They started growing their circle of friends, and Beth continued to carry her newspaper clipping of Matt Martin and also not you, the other one, and his picture in her purse. She was like Margie talks about how very meticular it was and how she dressed. She always had a freshly laundered blouse, very crisp. She wore a red skirt. She had a doctor, her doctor's office called her the lady in red. And I just want to point that out because that really dispels like the black dog thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd she always had a flower in her hair. And that talks a like she and Marjorie both had this view in their heads from magazines of what women in California dress like, and that's what they held to, and that's what they dressed like when they got to California. And even after they got to Cali, they saw that oh, women aren't dressing like that here. They continue to dress like that here or there, because we're not in Cali.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaShe still did not have her trunk. Her trunk was still lost amongst the railway. So she borrowed clothes from Margie. Because she didn't have a job and she ran out of money fast. Margie actually took a second job to help pay for her. And she took a job at the Hamburger Drive-in to be able to pay for Beth's way, putting her bill. And then all of their circle of friends would go to the drive-in to get free food whenever Margie was working.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAfter Beth died, the beautiful news presented their group of friends as this like shifty, shady drive-in kids.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBecause they hung out at the drive-in. They were very like questionable character. But they were just a group of kids who were helping each other get by. And this was one way that they could that was going and, you know, hanging out at the drive-in and getting leftovers and free food. So in his book that we mentioned in the first episode by William J. Mann, beautiful book, so good, highly recommend. In the notes, he points out that the general newspaper readership at the time was an older demographic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd they were really stuck on this narrative of a younger generation that was immoral and unmarried, unschaperoned that sold papers. And it was also driven by this like story that the FBI was telling about how the country was falling apart because of these unwed, immoral young women.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaRight. So contrary to all of that though, Margie and Beth were using their men as shields. Because as we mentioned before, Margie had been married, and her husband, seven months of their marriage, five of those, he had been away at war.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd then he came back from war and he was like, peace out. I'm gonna go to the Navy Reserves and I'm leaving you again. And she was like, What? Yeah, like you can't just see me for two months and then be with your parents. Like that's not okay. So she left and she was very upfront with every person that she met. She told everyone that she met that she married and separated. And then Beth told everyone that she met that her fiance, Matt Martin, had died.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd then she told them all that she had a new fiance who was injured and in the hospital from a war injury. And so the two of them together using their men, they used them as like shields.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd it made them out of bounds to other men. Men would not touch them because they were spoken for.
SPEAKER_01Right.
TashaSo this story of like these unwed, unschaperoned women running their lives and running the country was just not true for Margie and Beth.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaLynn, on the other hand, their third roommate, was kind of a different story. She told everyone that she was 23 years old, when in actuality she was 15.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow.
TashaYes, that is very young.
SPEAKER_00That's a huge difference there.
TashaThat is very young. And she had been living on the streets for a year at that point. Lynn was not even her real name. He was living under a fabricated identity, and she was doing so just strictly to survive. Lynn's mother had been committed to an insane asylum when she was two years old.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow.
TashaAnd her father was just overwhelmed. He just couldn't take care of a child. So he sent Lynn to live with her older sister and her older sister's husband. But her older sister was also dealing with her own mental health issues, and her husband was an alcoholic. So they couldn't really care for Lynn either. So Lynn got taken out of their household, and welfare sent her to live with another relative. When she was there, she then got handed over to a detention. And at the detention home, at the age of 11, she was placed with foster parents. And these foster parents, the husband was like a Navy man, and he they were very, very strict and they were like, We're gonna straighten her out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
TashaWell, listen, she's 11 years old. Nothing needs straightened out. This child has been transferred from one home to another since she.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd not because of anything that she's done, entirely because the people that she's been put in the care of have not been well enough to care for her.
SPEAKER_01Right.
TashaBut they saw her as something that needed fix, and they decided the way to fix her was to beat it out of her. Oh, wow. And their neighbors would constantly reach out to welfare because they could not only hear her having the daylights beaten out of her, they could sit. Like they were not shy about what they were doing to straighten her out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaUm, but welfare would not remove her from the home. And when she was 12, she was arrested. And she was put shortly after in a girl's home. And there was an uprising in the home. Nope, I gotta go back. Sorry, I missed a step. 12, she was arrested for theft.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaAnd then a few months after that, Lynn was arrested for having sex with a 20-year-old Marine. And she was sent to a home for girls. And at the home, she and a group of girls tried to escape from the home.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow.
TashaAnd they were captured. And when they were caught, she was taken from the home and she was sent back to the foster home that had been beating. She stole $170 from them and she ran away. She went to San Diego to marry a sailor. She gets there, she marries him. The police find out about it. They pick her up, they annul the marriage, and then they sent her back to Osterfee.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
TashaYeah. So on October 7th, 1945, he ran away for good. Like, I'm done with this. I cannot do this. I'm out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaShe was 14 years old. So she is now living on the streets of LA. She had been in Oregon, I believe, before this.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
TashaShe makes her way to LA.
SPEAKER_00The foster family was in Oregon.
TashaI believe so, yes. She gets to LA. He is living on the streets and she's making her way through by basically selling her body to get food, to occasionally get a night's sleep in a hotel.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaLike this is how she is learning. She has to survive. Survive. But she also starts applying and getting jobs, lying about her age. So she gets a job at Apollo Theater on Hollywood Boulevard as a cashier.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Wow.
TashaAnd she's supplementing that job with sex work. And while she's a cashier at the theater, she meets Marjorie and they start talking. Marjorie's like, Well, why don't you come live with me? I need a roommate. Let's do this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaMarjorie doesn't know that she's supplementing her career with sex work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaShe just knows here's this 23-year-old because that's how Lynn is presenting herself. Correct. She needs a place to live. And Marjorie now needs a place to live because she has left her husband.
SPEAKER_00Husband. Yeah, and moved out of his parents' house.
TashaExactly. So they get a place to live. She had other jobs, Lynn did, but she moonlighted, she always moonlighted with sex work. And she always hit her age, always told her Johns that she was 23. They always thought she was three. And if you see pictures of her, she does look older. And it was because she knew how to present herself in a way that made her look older.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
TashaBeth, on the other hand, never traded herself or her sex or her body for cash dinner or nights out. Um, and she was not aware that her roommate did, just like Marjorie wasn't. Aware that Lynn did. In Mann's book, he quotes one of their friends as saying that Beth was a very modest girl who never cursed and she never acted sexy. He said that she often compared Hollywood's morals unfavorably to those of Boston.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaSo she was like really bothered by the way that women were like hyper sexualized in Hollywood. And then as for this like slinky black dress, in addition to the fact that she was always wearing this red skirt, she would go to the CBS shows a lot. And the CBS usher said that when she would come for a show, she was often wearing like a blue or pink water.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaSo another usher said that she was always done up very nicely with her hair all done up, but he did comment that she wore too much makeup. So, you know, across the board, everybody's like, Yeah, she was never like all in black. She was a red skirt or she had a pink sweater on, something in her hair. She was always done very nicely. It's not walking around all in black, like this black dahlia thing was not a real thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's very contrary to what the movie portrays her as being very loose and very wearing the black, black dresses, all that stuff. That's not a thing at all.
TashaThey do mention people constantly, not constantly, but frequently make mention of the rose tattoo on her thigh. Uh-huh. And that she would sit in a way that would draw attention to the rose, and that she would use it to get attention from men in areas that she was studying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
TashaAnd William Mann says in his book, and I thought this was really on point, if you will. Um, he said, so was she modest or flashy, puritanical or flirtatious? Well had their opinions. You seem to consider that she could be both at the same time. She used one attribute to get wanted and the other to keep her outfits. And I think that that is so true. Like knew what she needed to do to get the attention of people that would help take care of her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut she also knew what walls to put up to keep herself safe. The biggest problem with Beth is it didn't fit into the mold that society had. She left Massachusetts to go to California to meet Gordon. She didn't marry Gordon.
SPEAKER_01No.
TashaAnd she had no intentions of marrying Gordon. She told him we are just good friends. And then when she left Gordon, she didn't go home to Massachusetts to her mother. She stayed in California.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd by all of society standards, they deemed her a vagrant. She was the exact model of what the FBI said was tearing society apart at that moment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaShe didn't have a male escort and she didn't want one. But if she had been a man traveling alone, it would have been a very different story. Yeah. A man traveling alone at that time would have been seen as charting his own path. He would have seen been seen as making his own way and finding himself. But for her, because she was a woman, she was lost, she was immoral, she was decayed, corrupt. And anyone who came in contact with her was soon to be the same.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaYou know, there are a lot of honking birds outside.
SPEAKER_00Sound like a bunch of geese. So the society back then wasn't about independent women or strong women or anything like that. Women had to be under a man, either be married or soon to be married, or living at their home with their family.
TashaYes.
SPEAKER_00And she was not any of that.
TashaYes.
SPEAKER_00And so she was deemed lesser in their view.
TashaIt's it's really interesting interesting to me to see like the juxtaposition of Rosie the Riveter during the war.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaTo it's now after the war, and it was like, right, we passed you to this bold, brave thing, and now we want you to just go back to what it was before. Get your ass back in the house. Yeah. Put on your apron, high heels, and your pearls, and put the roast in the dinner or in the stove. Right.
SPEAKER_00Which is what we unfortunately see back, you know, once we move forward into the 50s, that was like a big but honestly, it's not that much different today. Yeah.
TashaYou see a lot of that in the in the diatribe today. I mean, a lot of the conversation around the trad wife falls to that. And it's like, is that it's weird to see it in waves.
SPEAKER_00It's like a weird wave thing. Like there's like a half generation of like independence and and be the leaders to help the men out or whatever when they're not in the home, or be the leaders of, you know, the women's movement or whatever. But then there's like it seems to like go back to the whole be in the marriage and be the supporter of the husband and be the supporter of the children. And it's like a weird wave in the last century to see that.
TashaAnd I don't think I fall in a weird camp where I think that there are some people who are born to be stay-at-home parents.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaLike that is their gift. That is what they were born to be. And they are great at it. And there is a place for them, and there's a place for that. And I I think that there are people who are born to be kick-ass CEOs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaAnd I don't think that one negates the other.
SPEAKER_00No, we should not subscribe to a mold. There's not there's not one mold for everyone.
TashaAnd I think that there should be rights equal in both. And each should be respected equally and should be appreciated equally. There is a perfect balance. There is a perfect place for each person. And only the person can know what their place is in society and in their family and in their own life. And it is so wrong to assume that one person's role is the way that it should be every other person like them. And so I think with Beth, the thing that strikes me with her, and I think the thing that always pulls me back to her and to her story, the thing that always strikes me, like I wish there was more out there about her. And not that there's not, because the black dahlia is like oversaturated sometimes. There's a lot out there about her. But also there's not. There's a lot about the black, a lot about the black dahlia.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
TashaBut there's not a lot about Beth. And I tend to resonate with Beth. I tend to amongst all of the true crime, amongst all of the the stories of these are the the people who have had movies told about them or you know, made about them or stories told about them. I think Beth Short resonates with me so much because like her, I had this wonder look. I had this like, I know that I'm not supposed to be in this place where I was born and raised. I know that I have this earnest to go out and cover and roam and be. But also she has this or had this naive kind of hope that every person she met was good and honest and true and could be trusted.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd I had that too. And for whatever reason, her discovery that that was not correct ended in a horrific murder.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd mine did not. And I think that's what strikes me about her story is that it very easily could have been there's so many moments in her story where it's like I would have done the exact same thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaI know of a moment in my own story where I did do the exact same thing. My story would have turned out. How did my story turn out different for me?
SPEAKER_00Well, and that's a that resonates probably with a lot of people out there, women, other identities that are trying to just get out on their own and just learn about themselves and learn about the people around them. And I mean, it's I think just a generational thing that every generation's just gotta find themselves, especially those that are like kind of the minority or uh aren't as protected. It's it's hard to find that, but you know, it it just takes a lot of bravery to get out there and and learn that stuff about yourself and all about the people. It's a risk, you know, it's easier for some people than others. And then back then it's like killers and stuff like that. That that wasn't like a huge thing back then.
TashaBut that's the scariest part, right? Is that in Beth's Day, there are no serial killers.
SPEAKER_00Correct, yeah, right?
TashaOr known, right? Or that wasn't a thing that was really publicized, but in our time, we know about serial killers. Yeah, my timeline lines up pretty well with hers. I'm I'm out living on my own by the time that Beth is living out on her own.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaHow is it that I'm out living on my own and I make it and Beth is out living on her own and she does not? And it's supposed to be a safer world in 1946 and 47 than it is in 1990.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaYou know, I don't understand that. I don't understand how I made it and Beth did not. And that's the thing that baffles me about her story is that there's nothing that says she should have ended up where she ended up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, correct.
TashaLet's digress. I yes. September 20th, 1946 is where we are, and she's not found in you know, in a lot until January 15th. So we've got a few more months to go. I gotta talk fast. September 20th, 1946. Here we go. So Beth and Marjorie are like peace out Hawthorn. Yeah, we're tired of the sketchy murders. They leave and they say goodbye to Lynn. We are no longer with Lynn. They move out of the Hawthorn and they move into a hotel that I cannot pronounce called the Figreroa that we're just gonna call the fig.
SPEAKER_00The fig.
TashaThe fig. The fig is much more respectable. Okay, it is a hotel that houses meetings for the young Republicans and the USO and ladies' auxiliary of the VFW.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it is like you know, very sounds respectable.
TashaVery respectable. Margie begins babysitting children of a wealthy couple to make ends meet, but Beth is still not working. But she has some boyfriends who take her out for dinner and and take her around town, including a man named Michael. He's a 29-year-old doctoral student in history at USC, and he works as a shoe salesman. And Michael is very, he's very concerned about Beth's well-being. He starts kind of driving her wherever she needs to go, starts paying whatever she needs to be, including her bills and her rent whenever she can pay for it. Soon after moving into the FIG, Margie tells a friend, she's like, Look, this is not going great with Beth. Beth has not held a job, she's not paying for anything. Like, I've gotta pet ties. Like, this has gotta, we gotta part ways. Beth can kind of sense that this is coming. So Beth starts now with this older, very wealthy lady thinking, okay, I've gotta, you know, find someone that I can hang out with and kind of make friends with.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut she had to stop hanging out with her because this woman made quote unquote improper advances towards Beth.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaAnd this is just, I tell this story just to show that like Beth again is not willing to trade her body money or livelihood. Like so at this point, she's been in California again for two months, and she's been separated from Gordon for one month. So most people, like we talked about, describe Beth as a totaler. He never drank to excess. Uh, there was only one man during her entire time in California who claimed that during this time Beth and Margie got drunk with him. He said that they went to lunch with him and his friend. This was about three months before her death. And they went out lunch, they got drunk. He said that they played a prank on her crush back in Medford.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaHe said that they dropped a couple of postcards in the mail. He apparently had like some ties to him through the Air Force or through the Army or something. And they dropped some postcards saying, Hey, look at us, we're married. We live in Hollywood now. And I mention this only because in the investigation later after her death, it does cause some confusion. Like, who is this man that she's married to? She is not married.
SPEAKER_00So they did they did send these postcards for real.
TashaShe's not married. No, it was just a joke that she thought was gonna be hilarious. It was great, uh, but it caused some confusion for the investigators later. But other than this one man, everybody else said Beth did not dream.
SPEAKER_00He's very conservative and very conservative.
TashaShe really stuck to her mom's Southern Baptist raising. Okay. Margie and Beth, while they were at the fig, they started hanging out with this guy named Sid. And Sid was this up-and-coming musician who had like just some really good ties and society. When they couldn't afford to pay at the fig anymore, he invited them to come stay with him at this bungalow that he was living at with his parents.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd at first it was okay, but his parents were like, Look, these girls have got to go. They cannot stay in our house. So he knew he had to find another place for them to go. So at the beginning of October 1946, Sid took them to the Florentine Gardens with like this big fancy, and he took them specifically to meet Mark Hansen. Mark Hansen was 54. He had grown up in Denmark, he moved to America and he had kind of made like a name for himself. He owned a lot of theaters, carlots, restaurants. He really made like a fortune in America. His wife and his kids lived kind of a separate life in this Laurel Canyon mansion. But he would go home every night and have dinner with his wife and kids. And then he would go to his own house in Hollywood on Carlos Avenue. And he would often house like young, down on their luck women at this Hollywood home. So Sid knew about this. So he was like, Hey, girls, I know where you can go. So he takes them, introduces them to Mark, and Mark's like, right, you can totally come stay at my house, rent free. Only deal is you have to help keep house.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd no boys are allowed in the house. Those are my two rules. Yeah. And the girls agree. At Mark's house house, he has another woman who's living there. Her name is Ann Toth. He has been living in like the apartment out in the backyard for about five months.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaHe's dating Mark's friend. Oh, and Leo is also married. Handle Scandal.
SPEAKER_01Gosh.
TashaOkay. And so that's why she has to live there because Leo needs to put her up somewhere where his wife can't find her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaSo she's been living in the rear apartment on the property since the previous May. She's 24. She's an actress, a dancer. She has like a pretty steady career of being a movie extra and having like small bits.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaHe told the police later in interviews that Mark had a lot of women who would come during this time period. They would come, he would make a pass at them, they would turn him down, kick them out of the house.
SPEAKER_00He wanted to play Bachelor. Yeah.
TashaOr they would say, okay, yes, you know, let's get at it. And then that would run its course. And then he would kick them out of the house. The girls told Mark their usual, like, I have a sick boyfriend in the hospital. I'm married, but we're separated. But Anne was like, Yeah, that's not gonna deter Mark any. He has like a, you know, he has an MO. But despite all of that, she really liked Beth because she said that Beth was like, I'm not putting out for any man. I have my standard. And Anne really respected that about her. So they hit it off immediately. Anne knew that Beth wanted to be a model, so she tried to encourage that in her. But she said that Beth really lacked follow-through and she didn't really have initiative or confidence. Marjorie called it inferiority complex. And later she said that she didn't believe that she wanted to be a model at all, that she thought it was a ruse, that she was really lazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut Anne thought she was too scared to try because she trade that she failed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaShe said that if you put Beth in a room of successful, ambitious people, that Beth would like shrink so much that she would disappear.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaShe compared her to a child listening to that kind of like a middle child type complex. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Because you got like a Marsha Marshall.
SPEAKER_00I just now thought about that. Yeah, because well, Marsha was the oldest, right?
TashaYou tell me.
SPEAKER_00Well, so as a middle, I mean, out of four boys, I was I was the lowest middle child. I was just an adaptable person. I mean, I just went with the flow. I didn't really speak out. But I was I was the one that like my brothers were likable, but I was I seemed to be the one that like was always friendly with everyone. Like I didn't I was the naive one that thought good of everyone. But I also didn't speak out. I was very shy. I was very reserved. And I don't think it was necessarily because of I don't know if it was necessarily because of my brothers or whatever. I just I mean in in the groups that I were was in, you know, if I got to know people, I was very outgoing, but in a crowd, like I did not speak out. I I was not public speaking, I was not doing any of that. I think that's the middle child type thing, because usually like the what the older child children are the more outspoken ones, they're the ones that kind of lead the pack. They're the ones that get into trouble the most, maybe.
TashaBecause they're trying new stuff out. I didn't get into trouble. Well, maybe I'm wrong. I was also scared to death of getting in trouble.
SPEAKER_00But then like the youngest ones are usually the ones that get away with stuff or whatever.
TashaUh I mean, I don't know if Tony would agree with you, but I think my brother got into a lot of trouble and got a lot got away with a lot of grace. But I don't think that he would agree with me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I think yeah, younger children wouldn't think that as well.
TashaI think siblings all have different opinions of their siblings.
SPEAKER_00But like the middle children are like the smashed ones. So like there's the ones that are the older children, you know, that seem to be ahead, or they're the ones that are the pioneers of the siblings.
TashaYeah.
SPEAKER_00They're trying new things, they're trying, you know, and the parents are trying to do the right things with them or whatever.
TashaYeah.
SPEAKER_00For I guess most families, maybe how do you feel about that now?
TashaI mean, we only have two, but how do you feel about that looking at it as a parent? Like we've got an oldest and a youngest. Yeah, see, I don't you're like, I would like to not touch that with a 20-foot person.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if that's like the I don't know if that's relevant though, with that generality of it, because they each have their own things.
TashaIt's weird, right? Like when you're the kid, you have a feeling about how it goes, but when you're the parent, you get different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I don't know. It's really weird. I love both my kids, but they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
TashaYes.
SPEAKER_00And they don't fit the mold that I thought they would have had.
TashaI would agree with that.
SPEAKER_00Which is not a bad thing. So I think we just grew up thinking there was a mold. Or maybe somehow we were pinho pigeonholed.
TashaBut I think too, there's been like a or a stipulation, uh, change in the world. Not that there've not been a number of changes throughout time that have, you know, that would justify this. I mean, I would I was going to say I think that COVID changed a lot of things, but you could say that 9-11 changed a lot of things. You could say that, you know, I mean, you could just go back through time and say this changed things, this changed things. But I really do think that 9-11 or 9-11, COVID changed a lot of things because the kids were all inside. Like our kids were stuck inside.
SPEAKER_00Well, and that was like with their ages. That was like that was like the time that social interaction was supposed to be a big thing, and then they were closed off from that.
TashaWhen when we learned how to drive, when we learned how to take care of ourselves, when we, you know, I mean, like that was that was the age where like I was living on my own for the first time. I got my license. I was living on my own.
SPEAKER_00Had our first jobs and all that stuff.
TashaAnd I shouldn't have been living on my own for the first time, should have been living at home.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaBut that was the time that I was living or living on my own at the first time or the first time. At that point, my kids weren't even driving because were they gonna drive?
SPEAKER_00They're still not driving.
TashaThey're still not driving. They're like, where's the public transportation? And I don't think that I feel bad about that because you know.
SPEAKER_00Well, now we have like a big old truck, and it's like I'm scared to let them learn how to drive that truck.
TashaI know, but uh well, so okay, so we're talking about our kids and like are they can and cannot like these things that they've missed. So Beth is at Mark's house, it's her first night, and she's calling Gordon in Texas, no longer in Long Beach, he Texas. Now he's been transferred, he's like making a long distance call from Mark's house, yeah, house without telling Mark without permission.
SPEAKER_00Long distance costs something nowadays. Cell phones you don't have long distance charges.
TashaYeah, this isn't the land of WhatsApp where I can call my friend Lucy in England, England, and it's not gonna cost any different than if I call my dad in Missouri. This is this is a day where it's gonna cost a pretty penny to call Texas from LA. She is calling Gordon in Texas saying, I need money. Yeah, her trunk is still missing. Yeah, it's been three months that she's been in LA. She still does not have her trunk from coming in from Chicago. And Anne's boyfriend Leo is like WTF. What do you mean you do not?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd she's like, I don't know. What am I supposed to do? And he's like, Girl, but girl.
SPEAKER_00Did you did you talk to the train people?
TashaNo, no, what am I supposed to do? And Anne says. That she, when she gets possessed with like, but did you call the train people? She like breaks down. Like it's like the biggest anxiety thing or something. It's like an anxiety attack for her. How is she supposed to know how to take care of?
SPEAKER_00But it's also like not it's not her first time traveling anywhere. She's been on the Florida, she's been to California before.
TashaI'm like, girl, why do you not know how to call the train station and say, hey, my luggage got lost? Can I please fill out a report?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. Yeah. Unless she didn't think that that was a thing. Like if it's lost, it's lost, and you're you don't know.
TashaBut she is hardcore frazzled.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaLike, like yellow school bus, jump on the magic school bus, Miss Frizzle frazzled. Kind of like she she's like, I don't know if that's the right thing.
SPEAKER_00I think it's more of Deer and Headlights thing. I don't know about I would love the magic school bus, Miss Frizzle frazzled.
TashaSo Leo's like, look, I got this. So Leo steps in and he's like, I'm going to call. He calls, he says, Look, I've got this friend, but she's doing her luggage is lost.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaCan you please have it reach on to Mark's address? They're like, Yes, thank you for filing this report. It's just very odd to me because Phoebe was so careful about raising five girls who could take care of themselves. And then you've got this girl who's like, Oh no, my trunk is lost for three months.
SPEAKER_00I mean, we we go to the airport, we've missed our luggage for like 15 minutes. It wasn't on the belt. We're in the line to get our luggage.
TashaMy luggage got lost from Heathrow coming back from England. And I was like, listen, bitches, I've got goods in my suitcase for my kids from a from a castle in England. And I want that wooden shield and sword and the puppet queen for my kids. I need my luggage. Like I tracked that down. She had in her luggage, she had like well, she had personal items in there. She had personal items, but she had things that like keeps from her sisters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaThings that Dot had made her, things that like they talk about it, the things that she had brought with her, memory books that her sisters had made for her, things that she brought with her because she obviously had no intentions of going back Massachusetts. Like face it down. I don't know. It's crazy. An again is another person who's like, she's clean, her laundry was other was always clean, her clothes were always pressed, um, which is just one more reason to believe that Cleo was a dick. Marjorie said that everywhere we went, people noticed Beth and often mistook her for one of the movie stars.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow.
TashaAnd I think that's where the story of like she wanted to be a movie star got started because there's no records of her on any sort of like I have tried out for a movie role, I have done any like nothing on the movie sets. She's done nothing on the movie sets. Here's what we've got. People have said that she looked like a movie star, and she did write her mother a postcard that said, I am going to get screen tested.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut I think that a lot of her notes back home, her mother was trying to like convince her that she was still fine.
SPEAKER_00And yeah.
TashaI think she was constantly trying to set mind at ease. I'm taken care of. You don't have to worry about me. Please don't send money to me. Like, keep the money at home in Massachusetts. I'm okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaMarjorie said she always wore clothes that made her appear more sophisticated than she was. She fixed her hair to make her look more mature. She liked to go with older people. She also said that on practically every date she had, she acted like a 16-year-old on her first date. Practically every man she went out with for the moment the one. Um, Anne also said about Beth that she seemed to have confidence in a lot of people. So I think the biggest fault, if you will, in Beth was that literally just had so much hope in other people's goodness.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she felt like everyone was good and saw the good in everyone.
TashaI think it's that she was such a pure spirit that she expected other people to have that same purity about them. October ninth, 1946. The temps in LA are drastically unseasonably. Yes, lower than normal. The highs are in the 40s. That's low. In the evening, yeah, it's low. And she's got the sensitivity to cold with her pleurisy. Within days of moving in to Mark, Mark's house, Beth and Margie meet Bill and Marvin. They're both students at USC. They share an apartment. Bill is 25, pairs up with Margie. Marvin's 21, and he pairs up with Beth. And Marvin has served in the Navy and he enrolled at USC, hoping to become a chiropractor. So this, like kind of medical line ties him in to be a spec later on. Against Mark's rules, the girls are constantly bringing Bill and Marvin into the house. They lie and say that they're like cousins, and you know, but Mark's not stupid. On October 12th, so less than two weeks after the girls have moved in, the girls push the rules a little too far.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaThey invite the boys over. Mark by this point had made his move on Beth. And Beth had said, No, no, no. Not only do I have this fiance who's in a hospital and injured, but also a virgin.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd then after saying that she could have these boys coming around, picking her up, taking her out. And then she kept having Bill and Marvin over to the house.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBill and Marvin came over one day, and Margie drank all of Mark's liquor house. Wow. And so Mark's had to top it all off.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Yeah.
TashaSo Mark was a little butthurt and he kicked Margie out, but he also kicked Beth out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaSo the girls were like, we have nowhere to go. I guess we're going with Bill and Marvin. So they go to the house or to their apartment. They've got a seventh-floor Guardian arms apartment. While it did have maid-and laundry service, it was only a studio apartment. And so Bill, Marvin, and Margie fare to bed, and then Beth slept on the couch.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaThings with the boys were not great though. One day Beth showed up at Mark's crying to Anne after being slapped across the face.
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh.
TashaEither one of the boys had tried to take advantage of her in the car. She refused, slapped her, and then he kicked her out of the car and she went to Anne. Another morning, Anne found both girls setting on Mark's stoop at 6:30 in the morning. The mail did not arrive until afternoon.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
TashaAnd it was a 30-minute walk from the apartment to Mark's house. But they told Ann that they had walked there to get their mail.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd so Anne believed that they had come there because they felt safer setting on the stoop than waiting in the apartment all day. Oh, wow. So on October 22nd, which was a Tuesday, this was 10 days after moving in with Bill and Marvin.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaThings had gotten so bad that the girls had decided together they were going to go home to Massachusetts.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
TashaThey arrive at Mark's house. They're there to tell Ann this is what they're going to do. But Marvin brought them, and Ann said that Marvin basically did all the talking. Oh, really? He didn't let the girls do any talking, which is really weird. That's weird. He told Ann that Beth wanted to leave her suitcases at Mark's house until the next day when they were going to be leaving. When it was time to go, though, Margie went home to Massachusetts and Beth stayed behind. Margie gave Beth a hundred dollars to get by for a while. But Beth with nowhere to go, she just started kind of wandering the streets. And she met a 35-year-old gas station mechanic and photographer named Glenn. Glenn asked if he would pose for her because she told him, I want to be a model. So she agreed and she got into his car. Something I would not advise anyone to do. Yeah. They went to Glenn's alma mater, which was on Marshall High School in Los Files, and he photographed her. And these are the last known photographs of Beth while she was alive. Beth asked Glenn afterwards to drive her to a hotel in the valley. They got there, but she never got the room. And then they ended up just driving around until the sun came up asking to make her to Marks.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaSo she just keeps going back to Marks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaWhen they got to Marks, Beth told Ann I'd rather die than go back to the gold.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaSo Mark said, You can stay here as long as you repay me the cost of the phone bill by cleaning and doing chores. And you have to promise me we'll follow the rules.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaNo boys. Like, I'm in. I'm here for it. Like they become a couple. Beth and Mark are Beth and Mark.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaNo, like they've got a couple name. I don't know what it would be. Bark.
SPEAKER_00No. Betty.
TashaBarth. Barth. Barth. Beth. Nope. These are all getting worse. I think Bark is the best one. Bark. So Bark is still looking for the trunk because it's still not returned.
SPEAKER_00They did not do this naming thing back then, probably.
TashaWell, the trunk has still not been returned. So Mark's like, let's get you fitted for some new dresses. Wow. Right. So he's getting her fitted for dresses, trying to get her bad teeth fixed. He's making sure she has money for whatever she needs. He, you know, he has like all of these restaurants and theaters and clubs, and he's just like, give her whatever she wants. Whatever she when she comes in, like whatever she orders is hers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut he's also not pressuring her for sex.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBecause she's remember, is a virgin, according to what she's told him. So he's like hands off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnne said that she always thought that Mark had like really sincere feelings for Beth, but Beth was really just, she always just saw it as like Beth using him to have a roof over her head. Yeah. So through the worst, from that point until the first week of November, Beth had access to all of Mark's business. Like come spend as you want.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's a huge difference.
TashaThat is a huge difference. But Mark had to Mark said that she had to get a job. So she had to get a job. So she got up every morning. She went to work. They didn't know where she went to work. And then she came home every evening after her job, but she never told Ann where she worked.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, wow.
TashaAnd then about November 12th, like Beth and Mark had been fighting. The fighting had gotten more like heated. And then on November 12th, Mark, who again has been like, Let me fit you for these dresses. Let me pay your way. Let me not get any nookie, comes home with another woman. Oh, yeah. Beth is not happy. And she's screaming at the top of her lungs that the tramp has to go home.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
TashaAnd Beth's going on and on about how this would never happen in Boston.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd she gets all of her clothes out of her closet and she puts them all in her suitcase and locks it up and yells at this girl to not touch her things. And Ann's like, there's gonna be a fight.
SPEAKER_00There's cat fight going on.
TashaRight. But she said it was not just like a slap fight. She told the cops that it was like straight up fisticuffs. Like they were gonna fist fight each other. Nice. Which I mean, you know, Beth's from Boston. Boston. Like, yeah, it's going down. Yeah. Mark had to physically break it up. He had to get in between them. And he told Betty, told Beth, sorry. It's simple. He told Beth you're out. Told her tomorrow morning, get your stuff and get out. You can stay tonight, but tomorrow you're out. And then took the girl to his room.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. He's it.
TashaAfter he told Beth, all those dresses you were fitted for, don't get them. No dresses. And he took the other girl to bed. The next morning.
SPEAKER_00Oh he's still married. He's still married.
TashaHe is still married with kids at his at his mansion. So the next morning, Anne sat with Beth. She went through every name in her black book. Um, in her black book, which by the way has Mark's name embossed on it. Because he stole it from Mark's house.
SPEAKER_00Oh, he didn't give it to her? I don't think so. She's like, uh, he's not using this.
TashaLater, the investigators were like, Why is your name on this? And he was like, Because she took it from me?
unknownI don't know.
TashaSo he goes through all the names in her no one will take no one will pay for her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd so Leo and Anne, it's storming outside. Leo's like, please get in this car that yes, Mark bought for me.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow.
TashaHe is everyone's sugar daddy. Okay.
SPEAKER_00You like Leo, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the great Gatsby. No, maybe he's got all the money and do a lot of things.
TashaThey all get in this car. Leo, Beth, Ann, they get in this car. They take off for downtown. They drop Leo at 8th Street at like one of his pubs or something. And then Anne drove Beth to the Chancellor where she rented an apartment for Beth. She paid the first month or the first week's rent for Beth. The room that she got for her was made for two to four people. There were already seven people, seven girls renting this room. Beth was the eighth girl. Okay. Very crowded. Beth immediately took up with Marvin and Bill again.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaSo, you know, meetings be damned. She was gonna hang out with them. And her roommates said that a ton of other guys were also like constantly calling for her. But on November 26th, Marvin married another woman from his hometown.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaSo for all intents and purposes, but I mean if you look at Leo and Mark, I don't know how well those intents and purposes were. But for all intents, intents and purposes, as of November 26th, Marvin was off the market.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaOkay. So Beth just spent like all of her time wandering LA.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBefore Thanksgiving, she told Anne that she was looking for work because rent was due and she didn't know how she was going to pay it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut her old pal Michael, who like was hanging around and driving her all over when she was living with Marjorie, like way back in the Hawthorne and Fig, he showed up and he had been hanging out with her and he paid for her rent. So she no longer needed a job. So she stopped looking.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh.
TashaBut she like caught on to the fact that her wells were running dry. Yeah in LA, right? So she reaches out to Gordon, as of course she would.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaThen Texas, and she's like, Hey, what if I came to see you in Texas?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaAnd he's like, Look, no.
SPEAKER_00No dice.
TashaI we don't know what she did in for Thanksgiving, but she did not go, Gordon, because he told her, I will not be here when you get here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaLike, do not come here. And so only thing we know is that sometime between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, she had a friend named Alex did hair, and he dyed her hair with henna. So her black hair was now red. Yeah. Okay. Important for when she found meets her demise. December 5th, we are now a little over a month from the end of her life. Her rent is due again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd no one's coming through with money. The apartment manager said that Beth came to her and she looked really tired and worn out. And she asked for a few extra days to come up with rent. And the manager was like, Look, if you give me some of your luggage as collateral, I can give you a couple of days to find your part of the rent. So Beth gives her some of her luggage, calls Ann on December 6th, and she's like super anxious. Like, I've got to get out of the chamber. Anne says, I can't do anything for you, but if you come here for dinner, maybe you can talk to Mark.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaSo Ann goes over for dinner. She asks Mark. Yes. Beth goes over for dinner with Ann. She asks Mark, can I move back in? And he's like, Hell no. Yeah. So Beth is eating with Ann and she says, I'm just gonna go see my sister Jenny for the holidays. She's in Berkeley.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd Ann's like, hey, I'm going to go see my mother 13 miles outside of Berkeley. I'd love to come see you for the holidays. Let me come see you for Christmas.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
TashaAnd Mark's like, I'll drive you back. And Beth says, I don't have the address on me, but I'll send it back with Mark. Ann says, You're freezing. It's cold outside. Never have a coat. Take my coat. Also slips Beth some money.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
TashaAnd she sends her out the door with Mark. Mark takes her back to the Chancellor. She does not send Mark back with an address. The next day, Ann calls the chandler to try and get an address from Beth. They tell Anne that Beth did not stay the night, that she didn't have the money to pay the rent. So she took all of her things and she left. And no one knows where she's gone. The temperatures in LA are just above freaking. And Beth had nowhere to sleep. We don't know where she went, but we know that Ann never sees Beth again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaThe next two nights, in fact, we don't know where Beth went. But on December 8th, she took the 7:30 PM bus to San Diego.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaShe now has her trunk. She's retrieved her trunk, got two suitcases and a hat box and her purse on top of that. She gets on the bus, she goes to San Diego from LA, and she arrives in San Diego about 10 p.m. She checks her trunk in at the Railway Express office for later retrieval.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaAnd then she goes to the Aztec theater carrying her two suitcases and a hat box. On December 9th, Dorothy French, who was 21, she was an usher and a cashier at the Aztec theater. She noticed that Beth had slipped into a theater just before midnight.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
TashaAnd that she was still in the same theater six hours later. That theater was showing the blue doll. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's crazy.
TashaOr tink.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaSo Dorothy approaches her, and Beth enters and she says, My name is Betty. And she says, Come here. I, you know, I'm I have nowhere to go. Dorothy's shift ends, and Beth asks her, Can you give me a ride to the telegraph office? She says, I'm hungry, I'm out of money, I just need to send a wire to try and get some money from a friend. Dorothy, who felt really sorry for her, agrees to help.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaSo she takes her to Western Union. Beth goes in, and when she comes back out, Dorothy says, Look, why don't you come stay the night at my house with my mom and my brother?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaSo she lives, Dorothy lives with her mom Elvira and her brother Carrie. And Elvira and her husband had separated years earlier when he had begun drinking heavily. And just like Phoebe, when people asked, Elvira said that her husband had died.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaHe said she was a widow. And she and Dorothy both worked to help pay for rent for the family. Originally, Beth was only going to stay that one night, but she, as the days went on, had nowhere to go, and Elvira kept allowing her to stay another night. And so she ended up staying with the family in total for a month.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
TashaYes. Elvira said in an interview that Beth seemed depressed about not being able to find work. But she also told them that she'd been married to Matt Gordon.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
TashaAnd she told them he had been killed in a plane crash. She showed them the newspaper clipping that she carried in her purse about Matthew.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut it crossed out not married and told them that the newspaper men got the story wrong and that they had been married. She also told them that they had a baby boy and that he had died.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow.
TashaMm-hmm. So I and then she told them that she had been like a huge model in LA and that she was friends with like a big movie star. Elvira thought that the movie star's name was El was Ann Todd instead of Ann Off. And Todd was a movie star at the time. So there was just like this whole confusion that happened after Beth died when they were trying to like track down where had she been in LA. And Todd was like, I don't know this girl. Yeah. Who are you bothering me about?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaAnd then Elvira and Dorothy said that while she was there, he had received a cable from someone and had received money, but they didn't know from whom or for how much. Yeah. So that was always kind of a mystery. But Beth started wandering San Diego like she was known to do in other cities. Yeah. Yeah. On December 18th, she told Dorothy that she had ran into a friend, someone that she had once worked with named Red. Red. Never heard of Red before.
SPEAKER_01No.
TashaBut Red. Oh, Red. He was very handsome. He was a marine flyer. And now he worked for Western Airlines. And he was staying at a motel nearby.
SPEAKER_01Oh.
TashaAnd he was going to take her dinner. So for the next few days, pretty scandalous. And I don't quite understand why Beth thought that it was her job to get up and give him a wake up call at the motel every morning to make sure that he made it to work on time. I don't get it. While she was still staying with Dorothy and Dorothy and Elvira, yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaThey went out dancing every night. And then two days before Christmas, he left town. And Dorothy said that before Red arrived, Beth. Never went out with men. They would like go out wandering and then she would and then as soon as Red, like the whole, like, let's go out dancing, let's go out and do this thing. After Red, she had lots of dates with lots of men's men, but she always told Dorothy and Elvira that she had to be very careful because she had a very jealous boyfriend that she was hiding from in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow. Interesting.
TashaSo I don't know. I don't know if this was a real thing.
SPEAKER_00Or if it's just a story like with the news clipping and all that stuff.
TashaYeah, I don't know. But what we do know is that it wasn't Gordon because before Christmas, Gordon did send her money. He sent her a hundred dollars and she told Dorothy Elvira that he was a distant cousin.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut then after Christmas, she could tell that like her time with the French is kind of running thin.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaShe knew she was getting to the end of her time there.
SPEAKER_00She was there about 30 times longer than what she should have been.
TashaOne day, 30 days, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaSo she cabled Gordon, said, My dear, what if I came and joined you? Yeah. And she was like, if I can't join you, I'm gonna have to move to Chicago. I don't I don't know if that was like She said she had to move to Chicago. Yeah. She was like, If I don't come, if I don't come to you, I'm going to Chicago.
SPEAKER_00Wow, that's a weird.
TashaI love Chicago. I don't know why that would have been like a like, what was me? I have to go to one or the other.
SPEAKER_00But was it like an empty threat? Because it's like Chicago gets cold. I figured she would know that. So maybe she's I wonder who she knew in Chicago.
TashaI have to go to this cold place. Maybe that's what she was saying.
SPEAKER_00Like I know you said that she stayed there two weeks on her way out to California, but like I wonder if she knew someone there.
TashaShe stayed at a hotel, but she stayed at a hotel everywhere. Yeah. So I don't know. But he wrote her back on January 3rd. Matt killed a spider, and now we're back to Beth. Gordon wrote Beth back on January 3rd.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
TashaHe was in Charlotte, North Carolina, so not Texas.
SPEAKER_00So he's still in the military, right? Over and around. Not anymore. Okay.
TashaUh he had been honorably discharged from the army. Okay. And um he was living back at home with his family.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so that's where they're from.
TashaAnd he suggested that she forget all about him. That's what he said in his fire. His family said that he was tired of footing the bill for her.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaShe wasn't sure where she was gonna go. So she received a cable from Red on January 7th, just a few days later. And he said he was coming to get her.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
TashaOkay. So she called Mark and she told him she was in San Diego because there was a quote unquote crew ball who had scared her.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaOkay. And that she was laying low for a while in San Diego, but she was on her way back to LA. So she asked if she could come stay with him for a few days in LA when she got there. And Mark agreed. So on January 8th, day after she got her choir from Red, she packed her two suitcases, but she left her trunk that she just got at the Railway Express because she could not pay the storage costs.
SPEAKER_00You're so used to not having it.
TashaI know, it doesn't matter anymore. And then she set out down the street Red. Now Elvira told investigators that Betty left alone with her two in a hat box on foot. But Red had actually pulled up to the wrong house and a neighbor saw them load her things into his car. Okay. Her get in. They laughed. They drove away at 6 p.m. on January 8th. So she did actually get into Red's car and leave. This is January 8th, six days before her death. It is the last record anyone has of Hive getting into Red's car. Anne told investigators that Mark had told Beth when she called that she could come directly to his house when she left San Diego. So he was expecting her on the 8th.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaMark told investigators, he had said he could come when Ann got back from her trip on the 10th. Okay. Regardless, he did not show up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaOkay. On January 12th, two nights after Anne got back to Mark's. They had a really weird phone call situation.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
TashaStarted at about midnight on January 12th. Mark's phone started ringing. Now it's midnight. It's January 12th. Mark's number is unlisted.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow.
TashaThis is not the day of cell phones. This is not the day of yellow and white pages. Right. And this isn't like, well, it is yellow pages, but it's not like his number is unlisted. And this isn't like I have paid to get your phone number from someone else. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so no one should have his number unless they have his number.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaHe starts getting phone calls about midnight. He answers the phone. He says, hello, hello, hello. They hang up. Phone rings again. Hello, hello, hello. They hang up. Hello, hello, hello. They hang up. This keeps going on.
SPEAKER_00That's Mark saying hello. It's not this is Mark. Mark and then the other guy saying hello back and forth.
TashaSilent on the other end of the call. Okay. Okay. Anne, who is in the house out the back. She's in the apartment out the back. The phone is ringing. She can hear it from the apartment. And she's like, WTF, I'm never sleeping. So she gets up, she comes in the house, and she's like, Maybe they just don't want to talk to you. Okay. So she takes the phone and she starts answering it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaLike, hello. They're not even talking to Anne. Talk to anybody. Anne is the most pleasant. Yeah. Nobody wants to talk to Anne. So finally she says, Look, I'm gonna have the I'm having the call traced. So she hangs up.
SPEAKER_00Oh, she tells the person on the phone that okay.
TashaYes. She takes the phone off the hook, phone off the hook for minutes to make them think I've called the phone company and I'm having them trace the call. Then she puts the phone back on the hook. No one calls back. Gotcha. So this has been going on for a while, right? Mark had all these calls, has all these calls.
SPEAKER_00Now it's nothing.
TashaNothing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaSo the calls didn't resume when she puts the phone back on the hook.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaFor all of y'all who have never worked with like a rotary phone, when you actually hang the phone up, this is not like a cell phone where you just push a button. You have to hang the phone up. It's all attached to look up rotary phone, okay?
SPEAKER_00Um phones before cell phones, even the phones we had growing up, you had to physically hang up.
TashaYou had to physically hang it up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaUm, she puts the phone on the hook, it does not ring again. Now at this point, no one knows where Beth is. Yeah, no one has seen her, heard from her for four days.
SPEAKER_00They were at least expecting her at least two days ago. Yes, right? Yes. At the minimum.
TashaAt the minimum. Um, and it will later be determined that her life ended approximately 48 hours after the calls.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow.
TashaSo the question is, was this Beth calling them? Was it the murderer calling them? Does the murderer already have Beth? Because if Beth that is a possibility.
SPEAKER_00Because I mean Beth probably has Mark's phone number in her black book.
TashaHe absolutely does.
SPEAKER_00She probably keeps that book on her all the time.
TashaSo still today, we don't know who made these calls. Yeah. We don't know if these calls are linked to Beth's murder. But Anne remembered the calls and she brought them up to investigators later. So when she found out about her friend's death, one of the first things that brought up two officers. We don't know how long Beth would have lived if she hadn't crossed paths with her care. Yeah. But if she had lived a while longer, penicillin would have been made available and that could have helped her pleurisy. And I don't know if it could have done anything to cure her wander less, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
TashaBut let's pretend it was a perfect world. And Beth could trust the people that she met to be good people and the kind of people that she believed and wanted people to be. If so, Beth would have turned 102 this last July 31st. Oh wow. And that's not unheard of. Like we we have people that turn 102K. She did all of that walking, she didn't smoke, she didn't drink like you know, with penicillin.
SPEAKER_00She could have lived that drank responsibly if she did drink, right? She didn't get drunk.
TashaShe could have lived a long good life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
TashaBut met somewhere along the line, the wrong person. She at some point had to have trusted the wrong person, and her life was taken too early. And what did she wrong? The papers will make her out to be this scandalous ruined woman. Yeah, that deserved it, or but I hope that we can remember young woman that we met in these last two episodes. Woman that we talked about today, as we go into the next episode. Did she mooch off of people maybe a little too much? Okay, yes.
SPEAKER_00But she was kind, she was empathetic.
TashaShe must have been a sweet girl. Yeah. Because despite knowing that she was a bit of a mooch, both Anne and Marjorie stayed true friends to her till the they both gave her money the last time that they saw her. They both were worried about her and wanted her to be safe. They both seemed to think that she was naive and needed looking out for. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00And I'm sure Gordon thought the same thing too. I mean, why else would he send her money, even when they're far apart and they didn't have really a relationship with each other? I mean, all these people in her lives, like there's reasons to believe that they believed in her and that she was a good person.
TashaYeah. Mary, the girl who grew up in the neighborhood in Boston's or in Beth's Massachusetts neighborhood, she said in an interview just this last year, it's been hard because for years she has not been portrayed accurately. She's been badly smeared. I can tell you that I didn't care what they said because all I knew how good she was to me. He added, as my aunt dot said, they put words in your mouth. They're just looking for dirt. Yeah. Talking about the newspapers and orders. So this was Elizabeth Short, who went by Beth, Betty. And next time we will meet the Black Dahlia and we'll learn just how different she was from the real Beth. Till then, like and subscribe and follow and share, comment, and from our Matthew Martin. Give us some reviews from from the real Matthew Martin. Uh, not Beth, but my Matthew Martin and David. And thank you for checking out Real Twisted. And we will see you next time.
SPEAKER_00Next time.
TashaGoodbye. Goodbye.