Georgette Bauerdorf arm in arm with two servicemen, published in the Daily News, Oct. 16, 1944. 

Georgette Bauerdorf, 20, had been living alone in an apartment at El Palacio, 8493 Fountain Ave., since Aug. 28, 1944, when her sister, father and stepmother left to go back East.

News accounts say that while Georgette was by herself in the apartment, she was extremely generous with visiting servicemen.

Georgette Bauerdorf, an Unsolved Murder:
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The newspapers say that she often picked up hitchhiking servicemen and gave them a ride. She also took servicemen to nightclubs and picked up the tab. Georgette let servicemen spend the night in the living room of the apartment if they had nowhere to stay and apparently had several extra keys that she loaned to them. Investigators found bundles of letters in the apartment from men in all branches of the service thanking her for her hospitality.

Oct. 9, 1944: One of Georgette Bauerdorf’s final diary entries, noting a phone call from Pvt. Jerome “Jerry” Brown,  from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner collection, courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.

One of the men Georgette met while volunteering as a junior hostess at the Hollywood Canteen was Pvt. Jerome M. “Jerry” Brown, identified in news accounts as an artillery trainee from Chicago stationed at Ft. Bliss Texas, who was previously at Camp Callan, Calif., on Torrey Pines Mesa north of San Diego.

Brown told investigators that he met Georgette on June 14, 1944, and had not seen her again, although they corresponded and talked by phone. According to news accounts, on the day before she was killed, Georgette bought a plane ticket to El Paso to visit Brown. A serviceman whom Georgette picked up after leaving the Hollywood Canteen on the night she was killed told police that she was in a hurry to get home because she was expecting a call from Jerry.

To be continued.