The Los Angeles Times (January 19, 1947)
‘Black Dahlia’ and Red-Haired Youth Traced to San Diego Cafe Day Before Her Murder
Festive Couple Stopped in for Glass of Beer
ON THE BEACH: This snapshot from the album of Elizabeth Short, left, was taken as she enjoyed the sun with a girl friend identified on the photo as Marge Dyer.
Only a few hours before her mutilated body was found near busy Crenshaw Blvd., the “Black Dahlia,” 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, and a red-haired escort visited a San Diego drive-in cafe, police there were told yesterday.
A waitress at a Pacific Highway-Balboa St. restaurant in Pacific Beach said the girl and her companion stopped there at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 14, the day before the body was found, according to San Diego police.
Knew girl as ‘Beth’
The girl definitely was one whom she knew as “Beth” and who had frequently stopped for coffee while living in the Bayview Terrace housing project across Pacific Highway from the restaurant, the waitress, Jadell Gray, was reported to have told police.
She was not mistaken about the day, the waitress insisted, as it was the afternoon before her last two days off – last Wednesday and Thursday – San Diego police said.
Elizabeth Short and her red-haired companion ordered beer and seemed very friendly, laughing and talking, Jadell Gray added. She described the youth as about 6 feet tall, weighing 170 pounds and having red hair and freckles. Police identified him as the young man known as “Red” who stayed at a Pacific Beach auto court not far from the cafe.
“He also appeared rather vain,” police quoted the waitress as saying. “He looked repeatedly at himself in a cigarette machine mirror, apparently to see if his hair was combed. It was combed, very neatly.”
Girl seen here Tuesday
The tip was one of many that continued to pour into Los Angeles yesterday as a South Hoover St. grocery clerk placed the girl in Los Angeles as recently as last Tuesday.
Police said it was possible the girl could have been here at 10 a.m., when the clerk reported seeing her, and have returned to San Diego in the afternoon. The clerk also reported seeing a red-haired youth near the market after the girl had made several telephone calls from a phone booth.
The consistent indication that the red-haired youth figured in the dead girl’s last hours led police yesterday to issue a bulletin over the State teletype system asking for his apprehension for questioning.
Pair seen by neighbor
A neighbor of Mrs. Elvera French, with whom Elizabeth Short lived in Bayview Terrace, Pacific Beach, said the two left late Tuesday, Jan. 7, in a 1940 cream or light-tan coupe with a “Huntington Beach” or “Huntington Park” sticker on the rear window.
Dorothy French, Mrs. French’s daughter, told detectives that Miss Short had identified “Red” as an airlines employee whose home was in Huntington Park and who worked in San Diego, living at a motel there not far from the French home at 2750 Camino Pradero, Pacific Beach.
She recalled the contents of a telegram Betty received prior to leaving:
“Be there tomorrow afternoon late. Would like to see you. Red.”
Employees of the telegraph office in Huntington Park, reportedly the source of the message, withheld any statement about it. They did not deny, however, that the office had handled the telegram, referring all questions to police.
Couple in jolly mood
Miss French said that Miss Short left the French home afoot, carrying her pecked suitcases. Neighbors among them Forest Faith who lives next door, said they saw the girl enter a coupe with a 25-year-old man with red hair and a light complexion.
Both Miss Short and her companion were “in a jolly mood,” joking as the companion loaded the valises into the automobile.
Miss Short, who went to the French home to live after meeting Miss French at a San Diego theater Dec. 8, met “Red” Dec. 16, according to Miss French. They were together frequently until “Red” left on Dec. 23 for Los Angeles,
Grocery clerk’s clue
One clue to the murder victim’s attire the day before her body was found was furnished by the grocery clerk, Jack Fleming of 1253 E. 64th St.
Fleming said that last Tuesday at about 10 a.m. a “pretty, tall and slender girl” whom he recalls as exactly answering the murder victim’s description came into the Daniel J. Regan market at 5833 S. Hoover St., clad in a gray pin-striped suit with short jacket, and made several telephone calls.
“I changed a quarter for her,” Fleming recalled, “and recall very well that she did not seem at all excited or nervous. She was very pleasant.”
Fleming said she went into one of several booths facing the street and remained near them for about 20 minutes, occasionally waiting outside the booth as if waiting for a busy line to clear. Later, according to Fleming, she came out of the market, adjacent to a corner service station, and crossed Hoover at 58th St. slowly “with an air as if she were waiting for someone.” Then she walked southward on Hoover, Fleming said.
Noticed man nearby
About 8 or 10 minutes later, the clerk recalled , he noticed a young man, “military-looking fellow,” walking past the market, making a sweeping visual survey of its occupants.
“When he saw me observing him, he turned in what seemed to be an effort to shield his face,” Fleming said. “Then he looked up and down the street and, with his face still turned away, hurried in the opposite direction from the way the girl went.”
A Los Angeles police detail last night had been dispatched to San Francisco to seek two men from Los Angeles suburbs for questioning on what they may know about the girl’s recent activities and her acquaintances.
Ex-convict hunted
Capt. Jack Donahoe of the homicide detail said that an ex-convict named “Bob,” a red-haired man with a record that extends back into the juvenile file, is being sought for questioning. A parolee, the suspect is understood to have served with the Marine Corps during the war.
Two men questioned yesterday, one at Merced, Cal., and the other at Parker, Ariz., last night were cleared of any connection with the “Black Dahlia” case. Edward Glen Thorpe, 32, formerly of Laramie, Wyo., whose sleepy mumblings led a fellow bus passenger to believe he knew something about the murder, was allowed to resume his Bakersfield-San Francisco journey, Merced police said. George Piette of Redondo Beach, who, authorities at Parker said, admitted having stolen a car in Los Angeles, was questioned about his reported departure from California Jan. 9, then was scheduled to be held only on an auto theft charge.
