Reminder: Boxie and I will be doing the next session of the Black Dahlia Book Club on Tuesday, June 16, at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube. In this installment, I will discuss the FBI files on the Black Dahlia case.
FBI files on the Black Dahlia case Part 1 | Part 2
David Oranchak’s videos on the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases.
For Monday, we have mysterious characters at a cafe. Continue reading
In this video, I discussed my work in progress, Heaven Is Here! and Part 3, Decoding the “Detective,” in David Oranchak’s series on Alex Baber. It is a masterpiece of debunking a “true” crime fraudster.
The next Black Dahlia Book Club session is June 16. The next Ask Me Anything is July 7.
David Oranchak’s three-part video on Alex Baber’s claims that he “solved” the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XARYxQVGziU
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqB-fUuMUxs
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQoKddXI75E
I also discussed:
An EBay vendor has listed what is presented as an autographed letter by Elizabeth Short. The undated document is typed with a brief message and what is claimed to be her signature. But is it authentic?
One has to wonder because ElizAbeth is misspelled as ElizEbeth.
Continue reading
Crowd gathering to march in the Los Angeles Christopher Street West pride parade. June 28, 1970.
Note: This is an encore post from 2023.
On June 28, 1970, Hollywood hosted the nation’s first legally permitted LGBT Parade, helping spark gay pride and the right for equality in California. Tired of prejudice and bigotry, homosexuals fought back against illegal violence by police in East Hollywood’s Black Cat Cafe in 1967 and the more well known Stonewall Riots in New York City’s Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. A movement was born, demanding equality, rights, and to live proudly as themselves.
Morris Kight, leader of the Gay Liberation Front, Rev. Bob Humphries, founder of the United States Mission, and Rev. Troy Perry, founder of Metropolitan Community Church, developed the idea for a legitimate parade to celebrate the one year anniversary of gays standing up for their rights rather than marching or holding a rally. Perry himself on behalf of the Metropolitan Community Church filed for a parade permit on Hollywood Blvd., long the site of famed Christmas parades for decades. 34 groups from across the state, both straight and gay, banded together under the name Christopher Street West to sponsor the parade. Continue reading
lbert and Alfred… Before and after… Lost and found… Found but still missing … still haunted by something and still walking in a dream.
I pulled the photos of Albert and Alfred from their old-fashioned paper envelope, slightly tattered and crumbling–the kind The Times used before the library switched to manila folders.
Albert is just another middle-aged man in a coat and tie. He’s losing his hair and has a thin mustache, with a pleasant half-smile that looks like he was being coached by some portrait photographer. Albert Clark Reed, 45, looks like any other husband and father from the 1950s. His wife called him a “cool, levelheaded scientist and test pilot.”
He graduated from Caltech in 1929 and returned for more studies in 1932. During World War II, he was a flier and worked on classified military projects, The Times says. Continue reading
The headline and map by Charles Owens from The Times.
Note: This is an encore post from 2014. Reposting to fix some broken links.
June 6, 1944: Complete radio coverage of the D-Day Invasion. This was pool coverage using correspondents from various news organizations. By 10 a.m., CBS had resumed regular programming with news bulletins, so I’ll only post up to noon. The full day is at archive.org.
It’s worth noting that German radio was the source for most of the information in the early hours of the invasion. The eyewitness accounts are vivid and it’s worth listening to Quentin Reynolds’ analysis on how the Allies learned from disastrous surprise invasion at Dieppe in 1942.
June 5, 1947: USC film student James C. Johnson, a member of the Delta Kappa Alpha cinema fraternity, said he would not play a role in a student’s radio play because it depicted “the Negro as stereotype,” the Sentinel said.
According to the Sentinel, Johnson said the story was degrading and had no moral value. Johnson said that many writers are unable to accurately portray African Americans “because they are not exposed to the proper environment of the Negro in order to characterize his stories.”
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Those curious metal arrays being installed with great ceremony on the city’s rooftops are antennas, for this is the year of the one-eyed wonder: Television.
In 1947, merely watching TV was newsworthy, as when the convalescing Babe Ruth tuned in for a double-header between the Giants and the Dodgers, and Pius XII made history as the first pope to have a television.
June 4, 1941: I’ll admit I’m a sucker for stories about death rays. Evidently The Times’ editors were too since they put this item on Page 1. Promoter Kurt Van Zuyle credited L.E. Riley of Burbank as the inventor. It was a fake (surprise!) but before being caught, Van Zuyle got $10,000 from a government agent who was investigating the scheme.
There’s a picture of the infernal device on the jump!
Jimmie Fidler says: Wotziz about Patti McCarty being very foolish because of frustrated love for Glenn Ford?
Continue reading
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 that originally appeared on the 1947project.
It was a tough problem for the armed services. In March, an Air Forces lieutenant at Tachikawa Air Base and “a beautiful Japanese girl” killed themselves in a former geisha house at Hinomachi, and the week before, another couple committed suicide at a Shinto shrine because they were going to be separated.
Also in June, a former soldier who renounced his U.S. citizenship to marry a Japanese woman was sentenced to six months in prison for illegally buying merchandise using his American ration card.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
June 3, 1907
Los Angeles
It was to be one of the grandest society weddings of the season: An orchestra was hired, a caterer had been selected after lengthy interviews, gowns for the bride and bridesmaids had been sewn and the Hotel Lankershim had been hired for the occasion.
In preparation for the grand event, Dr. Harris C. Garcelon and his fiancee, Genevieve Smith, attended the wedding rehearsal at Christ Episcopal Church performed by the Rev. Baker P. Lee.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1945 MGM film Bewitched, with Phyllis Thaxter, Edmund Gwenn, Henry H. Daniels Jr., Horace McNally, Minor Watson, Addison Richards, Kathleen Lockhart, Francis Pierlot, Sharon McManus, Gladys Blake, Will Wright, Oscar O’Shea and Virginia Brissac.
The Times runs a 12-part series titled “Crisis in Morals.” The author, Howard Whitman, is identified as a “noted writer and commentator.” After filing stories from wartime London in 1944 and the D-day invasion, Whitman returned to such fare as “Smoldering Youth” (1946), “Sex Education Grows Up” (1948) and “What Makes Good Girls Bad?” (1949).
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
May 30, 1907
Los Angeles
Hop Chung is in trouble again.
Chung, it seems, is no stranger to the legal system, with a police record going back to 1883. Ten years later, he and customer D.E. Dorsey were arrested at Chung’s laundry at 1st and San Pedro for fighting over a bill.
Peje Storck via EBay.
Peje Storck performs with the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra.
We will have to trust the Los Angeles Times when it says Peje Storck was a famous pianist of his day. According to The Times, the pianist arrived in town in 1903 with English violinist Herbert Ritchie, who studied with violin virtuoso Eugene Ysaye. (The Times refers to Storck as Norweigian in some articles in and Swedish in others).
The duo performed many concerts in Los Angeles and received glowing reviews in The Times. “Mr. Storck’s art is finished, his tone limpid, lucent, pure, his intellectual force unusual, his execution flawless and his mental attitude that of a poet and idealist,” The Times said Nov. 21, 1903.
But we will have to trust the Los Angeles Police Department that Storck was gay–of course even as late as the 1940s, newspapers didn’t dare use words like “homosexual.”
What appears to be a questionable letter relating to Marilyn Monroe has been sold on EBay by the same vendor who listed the “ElizEbeth” Short letter (it’s been removed). I was going to ignore the Marilyn Monroe letter, but with the sale price of $879.99, I thought I should comment, especially because the vendor, VintagePhotosForFans, does not offer a certificate of authenticity.
Let us count the red flags: An item supposedly found at an estate sale, listed on EBay, and sold with no certificate of authenticity. But there’s more!
Reminder: Boxie and I will be doing a live Ask Me Anything on the Black Dahlia case next Tuesday, June 2, 2026, at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube.
I will discuss my work in progress, and talk about Part 3 of David Oranchak’s video on the claims of Alex Baber. Baber says that he has solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases, as promoted by Michael Connelly and his team, Christopher Goffard of the Los Angeles Times, and the Daily Mail. The first two parts the video are out and they are excellent. I’ll also talk about recent news of a project by Talestorm, previously known as Aspen Entertainment and my experiences with them.
Can’t make the live session? Email me your questions and I’ll answer them! I’ll also get to the backlog of questions from previous sessions.
Part 1 of David Oranchak’s video | Part 2 of David Oranchak’s video
Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.
Memorial Day, 1947, was a spectacle marked with a parade from Westwood to the veterans cemetery, services for Spanish-American veterans in Pershing Square and even a tribute at Hollywood Memorial Park to 21 Times employees killed in the 1910 bombing, as well as those who died in World War II (Tommy Treanor, RIP).
The largest gathering was at the Coliseum, where the multitudes sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” recited the Pledge of Allegiance and listened to Ronald Reagan read the Gettysburg Address.
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