The FBI and The Black Dahlia Case: The Mystery of Elizabeth Short

This research was created to serve one purpose and one purpose only: To share the truth of what happened to the Black Dahlia and the man that murdered her.

The person responsible for solving the Black Dahlia Murder/Riddle spent 30 years working for the US Government as a mathematician and garnered considerable experience in decryption. The article contains personal hypotheses and logical speculations and although justice can never be served on the man who committed this heinous crime, it is the author’s hope that the information revealed in this site will allow the Black Dahlia to finally rest in peace.

The Doomed Duo

Who is that guy? If we asked him, he might say: “Who am I? A burning question with a smoking answer! LAPD has been referring to me as ‘unID’d man’ for more than fifty years, and I’ve been here in the Great Beyond for almost as long. You’re on to me so I’ll tell you my name. And I’ll do it with a riddle. They called me a werewolf. I actually was a riddler and a mimicker during my time on earth. My darkest mimicry was a nightmare for thousands of people. Anyway, I’m not Edd ‘Kookie’ Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip, the old hit TV show. My reelingly big show was a smash hit on ‘Forty-seven Sunset Strip. And what did the fuzzies call it? LAPD called it lust murder, and most folks took LAPD’s word for it. Had LAPD dug it as I defiled it, they should have been able to decipher my trilogy and arrest me. To me, it was a Suzanne Degnan Murder Tableau in a Degnan Boulevard lovers’ lane, with Elizabeth Short as Suzanne Degnan. And where was I in this Madame Tussaud-genre artwork? That’s where my published trilogy came in: its purpose was to put me in the scene while keeping me out of range of LAPD’s case-cracking radar. I was in the secret story, in parallel with William Heirens, George Murman, Suzanne Degnan and the Black Dahlia. The cryptic trilogy was my magic carpet ride into eternity with Elizabeth Short. But you can take the trilogy as a souvenir program for the tableau…”

Black Dahlia Case Chapter 1: Orientation

Los Angeles January 15, 1947 At about 10:30 a.m., Betty B. Mono went for a stroll in the cool winter sunshine. She soon was walking along a dreary, weedy block without a house on either side. Halfway down the block, Betty Mono spotted Betty S. Duo just off the sidewalk, in dewy-wet weeds. Betty Duo was leeringly emerging from five missing days in waisted shape, much the worse for wear. Wobbly Betty Mono went to the nearest available phone and called the police. Something strange and wicked was about to haunt LAPD case-files safes… LAPD rolled hard and fast…and ran into a stony blank wall.

January 1947 was orientation time for the entire country. The Big War was over, the boys were still coming home, and America was cycling back to a peacetime economy. Urbanization and social change had begun, but Americans had seen nothing yet. At the hub of it all would be Southern California, LA in particular…

Los Angeles and its environs were in the dawning stages of growth which would culminate in a sprawling megalopolis. Scrub brush and orange groves in southern LA County were surrendering to housing tracts. Coyotes and buzzards of the spacious San Fernando Valley were relinquishing virgin brushland to “sunshine mushrooms.” The Hollywood Freeway was just around the corner. Red trolley cars of Pacific Electric would soon yield to busses. Jack Benny had quit joking about the smog in Cucamonga-it was no longer funny.

Elizabeth Short hailed from Medford, Massachusetts. She quit school at age 16 and became a drifter. During the last four years of her life, she floated from Massachusetts through California, through Florida through Indiana, and into Chicago where she boarded a train and rode to the Union Pacific station in Los Angeles. Soon after her 1946 arrival in LA, Elizabeth was tagged “the Black Dahlia.” Her moniker was earned because of her raven locks, penchant for wearing black, intriguingly obsessive behavior and the release of Raymond Chandler’s The Blue Dahlia as a motion picture.

The Black Dahlia murder has been a baffler. It is the most infamous unresolved homicide in LAPD history. But the solution to the Dahlia murder has been “there” for LAPD Homicide and the LA public for more than a half-century. This is a paradox with a simple explanation: the solution was shrouded in black symbolism, abstruse encryption, plus a plethora of reportage. Once the Dahlia murder was recognized as a monstrous mimetism, the murderer’s cryptograms were deciphered and the riddle of the murder was unraveled.

  Before we get to the murder solution, let’s get oriented via a tiny dose of the nonpareil murder . . .

On a sunny winter morning in 1947, the bisected, nude body of a once-gorgeous young woman was discovered in a big vacant lot in south-central Los Angeles. It was as blackly mind-blowing as any exhibit in a Madame Tussaud horror museum. The Black Dahlia was born to the world.

By mid-March 1947 the Dahlia Reportathon had run its course, the newsfest was dead. Bob Manley’s adios at the Biltmore Hotel was the outside world’s farewell salute to the living. It was as if the Dahlia had left the Biltmore and drifted into a mysterious vortex that swallowed her up, then spat her out six days later as an unrecognizable grotesquery. And dogged LAPD sleuthhounds were ostensibly without a solid Dahlia-case suspect or clue . . .

Black Dahlia Case Chapter 2: The Murder/Riddle Solution

lizabeth Short’s killer is dead. But justice for Betty may be possible in a “We hear you, Betty” way. An informed person might fill the public in on the whodunit, why and where of the Dahlia murder. This person might make public the whys of the bisection and other mutilations, remains-prepping and display site. These few pages contain the correct answers and accurate info necessary to enable justice for Elizabeth Short. The killer wasn’t a tall, gaunt drunkard. Smoke was billowing from that miscreant’s proximity long before his Dutch-oven demise in LA’s Holland Hotel. And Doctor Walter Bayley, whose home was almost in the display-site lot, didn’t kill Elizabeth Short. Doc Bayley wasn’t needed as a neighborhood nexus. The Dahlia was the link to the locale. She’d taken at least two of her admirers to that exact two-or-three block area during autumn of 1946. If the public had known the why of this, the Dahlia murder wouldn’t be a mystery. And Betty didn’t need a Bayley bailout. During the last two months of her life she’d repeatedly called on one particular lovesick gent for help. After leaving the Biltmore Hotel, Betty took a mile-and-a-half walk down Main to a Washington Boulevard hotel: the hotel she and her guy with the grabby smile had used three times in the recent past. That long southward stroll led to her suitcases being left in the bus depot.

That also led to the “five missing days,” and to an average Angeleno’s being stalled at square one in trying to unravel the riddle of the Black Dahlia murder. Those who wouldn’t learn of a strange obsession Betty was possessed by during most of 1946 wouldn’t leave square one. The link to square two is 2000 miles east of Los Angeles, on old Route 66 . . .

Almost exactly a year before the Black Dahlia murder, a girl was slain and dismembered in an affluent section of Chicago. The victim’s name was Suzanne Degnan; the killer was a University of Chicago undergrad named William Heirens. Details of the Degnan murder and Heirens’ weirdness were nightmare makers. Heirens was arrested in June 1946. His arrest made headlines all over the country. At about the time Betty hit Chicago, Heirens’ crime hit the pages of Life. Betty was obsessed with the Degnan murder prior to Heirens’ arrest. With the arrest and Life coverage, Betty’s fixation waxed wild. She was telling Chicago barfly pals she was a reporter from Boston, in Windy City to cover Heirens’ trial. Betty had shuddery stuff to busy her . . .

Heirens was a sexual psychopath who would split off to another self to do things William Heirens didn’t dare do. Heirens called his evil self “George Murman,” which meant “Murder Man.” He often said he had sent George to Mexico, because George was a bad boy. Heirens/Murman did three bizarre murders, Heirens was a serial signature killer.

A gamy part of his signature: he used defecation to assert dominance over his victims; Heirens defecated at his crime sites, to say, “I poop on everybody.” Another part of Heirens’ signature: he left messages at the murder sites; this wasn’t a game; it was compulsion. Heirens’ MO varied, but he used a knife and a tub in all of his murders. This begot a Heirens quirk: he put gauze on wounds of his dead victims. Suzanne Degnan was Heirens’ final murder victim. The Degnan episode was Heirens’ masterwork.

He cut Suzanne into pieces. He washed and drained Sue’s pieces free of blood. He shampooed her hair . . . carried the pieces outside, and used pre-dawn shadows as he. . . And Betty Short was a Degnan-murder/Heirens expert, a sirenic screwball who gave reiterative recitations of the horrific data to her attentive bar crowd. Betty’s Suzanne Degnan-murder obsession was going strong when her Army Air Corps beau persuaded her to rail west on a Santa Fe Chief, with Route 666 by her side, and join him . . .

And in July ’46 a dysphoric Degnan/Heirens/Murman show drifted into Long Beach in the eye of an obsession. After eleven days of beachside tedium, the demented drama made it to Hollywood . . . George was a good boy throughout Betty’s four-month Cinematown stint with “bums,” as theatre-owner Mark Hansen called them. Bad-boy George was still in hydeing when Betty met a non-bum man.

The non-bummer had USC School of Medicine credits. And the hokey guy suffered psyche-scar-school debits: a fallout of his being razzed because of rabbity facial features that fostered an eye-catching Bugs Bunnyesque grin. Grin Guy lived in the LA Harbor District; he was unlike Filmtown phonies Betty knew. He and Elizabeth Short hit it off fine at first. She was his dream girl, the prettiest woman he’d ever met. She even had him thinking he wasn’t a rabbit: she didn’t make cutting jibes about his height and his goofy grin. And “Ed,” as he’d tell us to call him, was Betty’s wheels-and-money man who’d never try to make her do things she did not want to do.

So maybe Betty didn’t want to show off unhandsome Ed to her in-crowd. Save his visibility in an Owl Drugstore in Hollywood, Ed was seemingly “the little man who wasn’t there.” Two times in November Ed and Betty rendezvoused in Hollywood, hit fun spots like the Pike and POP, and spent a night together in a hotel in south-downtown LA. Both morning-afters, Ed gave Betty food-and-rent money and drove her back to Hollywood. And Ed was Betty’s best-ever listener.

He’d feign interest as she’d relate detail after ghastly detail of the Suzanne Degnan murder. Betty drove Ed crazy with it, literally. She coaxed him to drive her out to Leimert Park. When she was expounding on the irony of Degnan Boulevard going right by her old lovers’ lane, he noticed the many big vacant lots in the area . . . Spirit world, where were you? This was the time to send Betty a sign! They spent one December night in their hotel. The next day, Ed bought Betty a bus ride to San Diego and bade her hasta luego at the depot. She did a southerly sojourn. Red Manley “returned” her to LA. She again called on Ed. Now she had no place to stay, and San Diego no longer beckoned as a “bug out” haven. And during a brink-of-eternity interlude in their hotel: Betty again balks at moving in with Ed; a portentously icy Ed wants to know why Betty would move in with that pervo Heirens she’s always talking about or with any loser listed in her address book but not with the guy who cares about her; and Betty belatedly fills Ed in on an ugly fact . . .

The prettiest and sweetest girl he’s ever met is like all other girls he has known: she thinks he’s a frumpish guy with a rabbitlike smile, and she never would move in with him. So let the danse macabre begin… In addition to edefacing a fey Dahlia so she’d wear his smile forever, riddler Ed wrought esoteric allusions nobody would dream of except in nightmares. And LAPD sleuths seemed to be clueless, like future physicians eyeballing Kaposi’s Sarcoma . . .

It was a bad one all right. But something about it wasn’t copasetic. It was lycanthropically defocused . . . Maybe LAPD didn’t scope this anomaly through the right De-Obscura Lens? For the sake of explication, let’s suppose ’47 LAPD cops had recognized the aberrant mimicry that was before them . . . Let’s assume that LAPD had closed the Dahlia case, and that Detective Finibrown was giving a case summary. Applying gallows humor to protect the squeamish, and the moniker ‘Will Cutter’ to protect the guilty, Finibrown’s illumination of Dahlia/Degnan darkness might go like this:

“. . . As a sepulchral salud to Beth’s fixation with the 1946 Suzanne Degnan murder, werewolf Will used ‘ironic psychomancy.’ He made Heirens-raising ironies escort the Dahlia into infinity. Developed Degnan Boulevard and vacant-lot-rich Norton Avenue merge into Degnan a block south of the Dahlia Show site; these streets form a Y, with a leg of Degnan Boulevard the stem . . . And the ‘why’ of the expo lot stems from Degnan Boulevard: there are windowy homes in Degnan-address areas; the ‘can-do’ Cutter commissioned a Norton Avenue lot as a safe area of just-down-the-street Degnan . . .

Besides setting up his psychotoxic spectacular in a weedy lot ‘on’ Degnan Boulevard . . . Will Cutter used knives and a tub for his Dahlia caper, as William Heirens had done for his Degnan caper.

LA Cutter cut Beth into pieces, as Heirens had done for Suzanne. LA Cutter drained and washed Beth’s pieces free of blood, as Heirens had done for Suzanne. The Cutter shampooed Beth’s locks, as evil Heirens had done for Sue. LA Cutter cut crisscross patches in Beth’s remains to mimic gauze benevolent ‘Doctor’ Heirens had put on sanguinolent stabbing victims. LA Cutter made Beth swallow feces. He was duping Heirens’ predilection for poop as a prop to demonstrate dominance over a victim.

Cutter wrote notes, as had Heirens. Cutter ended a note: ‘Dahlia Avenger.’ ‘Avenger’ conjures up the Grumman Avenger warplane. Switch R and an M in a ‘Grumman’ and out flies Heirens’ wicked alter ego: G Murman, AKA Murder Man. Cutter’s third note started with consecutive caps: ‘H’ and ‘A’. HA(?) So the cut manwas laughing at us? No . But he implied it by spinning off another allusion. Clever Cutter used a ‘give me a square deal’ phrase in this same note; this odd word set has the five start letters G, M, A, S, and D, which are the five start letters of ‘George Murman and Susan Degnan.’The cut man was rolling with his usual fare until he encrypted a mind-blowing surprise in his third note. Cutter confessed and he used his original name! I’ll get back to this third and final note later…

Cutter began two notes: ‘Here is’ and ‘Here it is.’ Did Cutter allude to ‘Heirens’ in the intros? Are this why literate Cutter had crummy grammer ‘is’ in the first note? Did Will use the exclamation point as an insertion marker to glom onto one letter which is missing in his Heirens allusion? Is this why our man’s exclamatory device hangs right above and points directly at the inordinately huge N in ‘belongings’…Four huge yeses. Cutter soaked his belongings pack in gas. And Heirens soaked his Degnan note in oil. Was Cutter gas to KO traces of Cutter? Was it to fuel another Suzanne Degnan deja vu? I think it was to do both…”

“And ‘here is’ the answer to the question some of you are mulling…Yes. Will was thorough about how he prepped and set out the Dahlia’s pieces. He corrected his ‘Suzanne doll.’ He removed her pubic hairs and cut off her rose tattoo to make her more like a pubicly hairless, untattooed, six-years-old Suzanne. Will put rose and hairs in the remains to tell us to think of Sue, not souvenirs.

And he set up his mime so she lay facing the constellations, her alabaster legs in a venturous V, buffing starshine into Orion’s helmut. Or did our LA hombre have the man from Chicago, Heirens, in mind? No doubt about it, he did. Will oriented his stunner so her split stems were pointing southward, at the visible leg of Degnan Boulevard…”

Ed sent three notes. But why use scissors to say “Dahlia’s belongings”? The birth certificate said it. Why send the note about turning in? Turning in would have said it. And we all knew Ed wasn’t on the square when he mentioned a square deal. He used inanity in all three notes to carry encryption. The Dahlia story is a bramble of obsession and allusion and encryption. What is bared in pages to follow has a karma that is off-center.

When I first “looked into it,” I was startled. It’s weirder than erroneous depictions in certain untrue “true story” books on the Dahlia murder. And it comes from Ed Burns, the real and only Black Dahlia killer.

Black Dahlia Murder Story

The derivation of decryptions shown below is in Chapter 5. These decryptions comprise a trilogy. Ed is telling a Black Dahlia murder story via his trilogy.

I/Ed or Heirens [is] Dahlia’s now. Bet on George [Murman]/Heirens murdering her. Letter to follow.

Elizabeth Short and Ed B. are in a triangle.

Ed, George [Murman], and Betty are in a triangle.

Bett was killed and bisected in The Hirsh Apts

Ed is saying that the Dahlia and Heirens had become an item. Hence the Dahlia was transmogrified into Suzanne Degnan. Ed did the makeover with his syndrome of allusions. He went bonkers when he was rejected by the Dahlia while she still was “heroizing” Heirens. And Heirens’ hero quotient in Ed’s mind was enhanced by the Dahlia’s intent to quickly depart LA for Chicago. Betty didn’t know it, but she was doomed from the instant Ed heard “Chicago” during their January 9 talkfest. Ed knew he’d lose the love of his life forever if his gypsy girl went east. And the ego-bashing zinger was that he’d have lost to we-know-whom.

Ed’s show site was his way to say: “You want to carry on with Heirens? Then do it in your old Degnan Boulevard lovers’ lane, as Suzanne.” Ed’s primary message for Betty: “You wanted to dump me for Heirens, so I helped you do it. And you got what you had coming. Heirens sent for George Murman, and it was a ditto of the Suzanne Degnan murder.” And Ed’s insane jealousy transcended Heirens. It also was a sick jealousy of address-book guys, focused on Heirens/Murder Man, Betty’s Hero Man.

Elizabeth Short and Ed B. were in a triangle.

Heirens, George Murman, and Suzanne Degnan, in parallel ‘w Ed, had Murder Man fun at police: Ed Burns murdering Suzanne Degnan [while] George Murman/Heirens murdered the Black Dahlia.

Ed is implying that losing his ladylove to Heirens and changing her to Suzanne Degnan had flipped him out. He’s saying that it had been as if he and Elizabeth Short were reliving the Degnan Murder with/as the original cast . . .

Ed, the Dahlia and [Degnan Hero] George Murman were in a triangle. Ed “won” and. to proclaim victory, displayed the Black Dahlia remains in a Degnan Boulevard lovers lane.

Have [regained] my mind, you/LAPD. [This was] not George Murman and Suzanne Degnan. Dahlia Murder I did was just, if I [am] Ed.

I/Ed killed and bisected the Dahlia in a hotel at 300 East Washington. Have changed my mind [about] why you would not give me sex. [Your] murder, which I committed, was justified.

Hi, Ed, looks like you made it back. But did you go nuts, or are you working on an insanity defense, just in case? About the sex part: ya came up Short? Take a cold shower!

The Where and/is the Why of the Bisection And truly speaking the truth for Elizabeth Short

The hotel manager joked about thinking Ed was dead. Ed and I had been there before. Guests often leave their rooms. If Ed had left the room for two days or moved his car so the managers would think he’d left, there’d have been no material for the “dead” joke. What was different this time? The car was there, no answer from the room, and “Do Not Disturb” was on the door for 40 solid hours. Ed told a manager we’d just moved out of Hollywood, so he had two suitcases and one dreamy idea. Once I had clued him in about his pipedream, the trouble began. OK, I had led Ed on about moving in with him. But he’d been dishonest, too. He’d try to hug me. I’d stop him and say I cared for him, but not in that way. I’d say I didn’t want him to get hurt again. He’d say he understood, and it didn’t matter. Well, it did matter. I’d had guys get angry at me, but this guy! He got teary-eyed, his face red, and he started saying nutty things. He went psycho when I said I was going to Chicago to model hats for a man I met there. Ed glared and said I was going back to… It’s too insane to repeat. Before I knew it, I was coming to on the rug, tied up and gagged. He’d bopped me on the head. He’d had the rope and some knives in a suitcase! It was like he’d planned to do this if I got cold feet again. Ed knew my San Diego fling was my way to duck moving in with him last time. He acted weird the day I left, so I knew he was mad about it. But this? I should’ve gotten more money from Gordon and gone right to Chicago from San Diego. Anyway, Ed would murder me in the hotel room and use the bath in our room for his cutwork. He’d cut me in half at my waist. Each half of me would be a perfect suitcase fit, with my limbs folded. He’d carry me out in the suitcases—it wouldn’t look unusual; folks do carry luggage out of hotel rooms. Nobody near 300 East Washington would know that one of the most macabre murders in LA history was happening right under their noses. The managers did get antsy in the wee hours of January 14. That was why Ed would try three Harbor District motels. He’d have suitcases with him. He had more illusions to do. Ed probably gave up, went back, and finished his art at “our” hotel. It’s not far from 39th and Norton. We had been seen there. If he’d tried to sign in as “Barnes and wife” at another place, he might’ve goofed and signed his real name. It burns Ed up when that happens. I told you it was as if he’d had the murder planned. Now that I’ve had time to reflect on it, I’m sure he’d planned it. When we were together on January 9, I told him I was thinking of going to Chicago but needed money for train fare. When Ed heard me say “Chicago,” he bristled. But he cooled off and told me to think about it for a few days; if I decided I did want to go to Chicago, he’d loan me the money I needed. When we checked into our hotel room Sunday, he knew I’d want to go back to Chicago. He knew he was going to murder me. Ed trapped me . . .                  

 

The Edifying Connection . . .

LAPD is mum about steady post-Fickling Dahlia beaus. Well, she had one. His name was Ed Burns. Ed outwitted himself and told us: this is explained in “Guess Who” in Chapter 5. The “unID’d man” in the photos with Betty was Ed . . . The man checked into the hotel as “Barnes.” The managers ID’d him. Hoteliers in San Pedro and Lomita ID’d him. “UnID’d man” was LAPD code for “Red-hot Black Dahlia murder suspect.” UnID’d Man’s mug was like a rabbity caricature. Ed was razzed about his Bugs Bunny countenance. Fox-fan Betty was hanging with two rabbits? That’s as unlikely as two Dahlia murders. And about the one photo of Betty and UnID’d Man that Ed mailed with Betty’s belongings . . . Ed wanted LAPD to think he’d found it in Betty’s purse. But an identical shot was found in Betty’s luggage. These pix were taken in a session paid for by UnID’d Man; he would have cherished photos of Betty; so he had copies of the photos. Would Betty have wanted more than one of any of these pictures? Did the Matt Gordon US Army Air Corps wings she’s doming in the photos come from UnID’d Man? No, no. Bet on: UnID’d Man mailing his copy of the photo, for reverse psychology. Ed was UnID’d Man.

Mutilation Miscellany

Ed was awed by Betty Short’s profile. He remarked on her cute upturned nose and her pretty mouth, he admired her breasts. Ed contoured his leporine mouth into Betty’s. But the remains also had a 1/4″-long gouge in each side of the nose. And both breasts were marred. The symmetric damage would spoil profile beauty of any live-or-eternal Dahlia. It served that purpose. But there was more to it than that, as is explicated later in the section entitled “The Night Mare.” Burns made a gash in Betty’s abdomen. Why? Dahlia-murder buffs have speculated long and hard on this one. The brain-blowing why is bared in “The Night Mare” section. Betty’s anus was gapingly dilated. Mime-maker Ed was telling the taxed autopsist: “It’s more expansive than kinky, it’s ‘anal retentive.’ You’ll find a tuft of pubic hair in her rectum, a rose garden in her vagina. This lady wasn’t sodomized, she was Suzannized. George Murman was a bad boy.” And as is revealed in “The Night Mare” section, this lady was also “equinized”: the Blach Dahlia was transformed to a Black Beauty. Ed Burns was a bad boy.

Ed and the French Informant

On her first day in San Diego, Betty Short went into the Aztec Theatre to see The Blue Dahlia. She’d befriend the young cashier, Dorothy French, and live with her family for a month. By one day after Jane Doe #1 was ID’d, LAPD knew that Betty’s last boyfriend worked in a Long Beach hospital. LAPD had gotten the info from Dorothy’s mom, Elvera. Man’s name: “not released by authorities.” The man, Ed Burns, would be LAPD’s he-dun-it Dahlia man. Pundits have characterized ’47 LAPD cops as bunglers in blue who were bullied by the press. So why is the public still in the dark about Ed Burns? It’s time for revelation that’ll bring the Black Dahlia some justice!

The Newsprint-Confetti Smoke Screen

The massive newspaper coverage of the Dahlia case served the LAPD well in obscuring the presence of their man, Ed. However, it didn’t entirely hide him. Ed made several anonymous appearances in LA newspapers:

1. January 17 (Herald-Express): Ed was mentioned as Betty’s Long Beach-hospital boyfriend, being sought for questioning.
2. January 22 (Examiner): He appeared as the man who registered in the hotel with the Black Dahlia.
3. January 22 (Times): He was identified as the man looking for a room with a private bath and tub.
4. February 3 (Herald): Ed resurfaced as that same man seeking a room with a private bath and tub.

As Betty previously mentioned, the three hotels Ed checked on the evening of January 14 were in the Harbor District. Ed did this because the managers at their downtown-LA hotel were becoming nosy. On each hotel visit, Ed parked his black 1937 Ford sedan, nicknamed the “tow-rope-special,” at least a block away. Inside the car, Liz and Beth were “safely” tucked into separate suitcases, locked in the vehicle. However, the suitcases might have been too large to fit in the trunk, potentially visible through the windows. Ed was careful not to use the same car that would later be seen at the crime scene the next morning. Additionally, he avoided being noticed carrying two large suitcases in and out of a hotel room he planned to use for just one night. This suitcase scenario might have raised suspicions, especially for hotel managers who never saw the “wife” who supposedly needed a private tub. Despite this, Ed’s anonymous image appeared beside Betty’s in news photos. The LAPD did an exceptional job of obfuscation. The public never truly “saw” the real Dahlia murderer, even though Ed appeared in front of them more than once. A famous ex-LAPD cop and author reviewed Ed’s meticulously planned first installment of his occult murder story and dismissed it as mere sales-promotion gimmickry by an LA newspaper. Ed was the “little man who wasn’t there,” even when he was right in plain sight.

“Just the facts, ma’am.”

In 1958, Jack Webb published a book called The Badge. It has a haunting 10-page summary of the Black Dahlia case. Webb was given material and “hints” on its presentation by LAPD Ed anonymously appears in the summary. But LAPD has changed Ed’s occupation, and moved Ed’s and Betty’s hotel. Webb has a “coded” paragraph in the segment. It goes: “Two or three times, friends later remembered, Betty had hitched rides to the Sixth Street area when she was out of funds. After a day or so, she would reappear, mysteriously replenished. Where she got the money never was known.” LAPD knows full well that: the money came from Ed; Betty and Ed rendezvoused in Hollywood, Betty did not hitch rides; Betty and Ed spent the nights in their Washington Boulevard hotel. But LAPD had a case to protect and Webb had a Dahlia summary. In another paragraph, Webb says that no-name Ed signed in as “Mr. and Mrs.” Webb later asks: “Was the killer The Dahlia’s lover or husband who felt he had been betrayed?” LAPD knew Ed had used, “Barnes and wife.” And they had to say, “Howdy, Ed, we know damn well you did it!” But this “Hello, Ed” was analogous to sound of a tree toppling in Nowhereville. Dahlia-murderer Ed had long ago ceased to exist, save as a memory and an LAPD secret. It’s time for the public to know Ed Burns, and the real Black Dahlia murder.

Cat and Mouse

On January 22 the Examiner printed the item about the Dahlia and a man, Ed, being traced to the hotel on Washington. I think the public had already OD’d on Black Dahlia reportage and had no idea that the guy was the Dahlia killer. The pictures of Betty and killer Ed seemed purposely conspicuous. Was LAPD using this article to cause Betty’s killer to surface? Ed surfaced. Two days after seeing his smiling face beside Betty’s, Ed mailed his first correspondence. And he’d done unsquare dealing: he had included another photo of himself and Betty. What killer would mail cops a photo of himself with his victim? A killer who knew cops had pics of him with his victim might. Ed did. And he’d sent the packet pronto. He knew LAPD had picked up his trail and would be seeing him soon. He thought it’d look funny if they found Betty’s stuff with him. A day later, Betty’s purse and shoes showed up at an LA dump: more booty to shed before LAPD showed up. This likely was a Harry Hansen/Finis Brown stratagem that worked. And it fortified their strong suspicion that the guy in the photos with Betty was her murderer. LAPD used the press to throw other smog-and-mirrors verbiage at Ed and the public. Captain Jack Donahoe’s hokum about looking for a “shack in a thinly populated district outside the city” was part of it. I’m sure LAPD had by then deduced that the abattoir was the hotel room. And Donahoe’s telling killer BD he could “turn in” in the homicide squadroom was heavy smog. LAPD should’ve deciphered Ed’s first two messages by now.

Ed and Red and the French Connection

Elizabeth Short told the Frenches about her “green-eyed” LA beau. She often played games, like mendaciously blaming bug-bite marks on her arms on a tiff she’d had with a jealous San Diego boyfriend. But the jealous LA man and Betty’s fear of him were real. Elvera French knew it. Elvera knew that the man was an Ed who worked in a Long Beach hospital. LAPD muted Elvera about the name “Ed” and other info about Betty’s and Ed’s relationship. But Elvera saw dark danger in Ed that Betty didn’t see. When Elvera heard “mutilated girl found in LA lot” news, she “knew” the girl was Betty Short. And maybe Red Manley had heard black stuff about Ed. Finis Brown said Red knew more than he was revealing. Finis was thinking of Ed. LAPD might’ve silenced Red about Ed. Red had schizoid mental problems unrelated to his fateful flirtation with the Dahlia. But maybe Red Manley’s supersonic downward spiral was mainly due to guilt: an unwarranted guilt related to not talking Elizabeth Short out of again calling on an insanely jealous and possessive Ed Burns . . .

. . . Drifting Inexorably Toward Her Fate . . .

Betty had Manley drive her to an area near the hotel and the LA Santa Fe Depot. She again called on Ed. She thought she could sweet-talk his into loaning her train fare to Chicago. And maybe she thought that if she restricted the with-Ed setting to their hotel room, she’d be OK with managers and other guests there with them; she walked to the hotel on the 9th and the 12th, she didn’t get into Ed’s car. Red might have given Betty bring-on-the-guilt erroneous advice on this.

Strangers in the Night and Day

Ed Burns and Betty never really knew each other. Ed must have thought Betty would be happy to move in with a “stable” guy who “loved” her and would take care of her. He probably believed she eventually would see the light and would “settle down.” And Betty apparently thought Ed was like other men she’d known. Guys had become jealous and possessive around her before. Maybe that was why an Army MP she’d been living with in ’43 had given her a bad beating. That might’ve been why Joe Fickling and Betty went their separate ways. Joe was jealous of sailors who were hanging around the hotel at 53 Linden Avenue in Long Beach. And Betty might have made up that “insanely jealous, dark-haired Italian boyfriend” in San Diego. Jealousy in men was something Betty could handle. And men other than Ed had pleaded with Betty to move in with them, or to let them fix her up with a place to stay. There was a short, dark-complected fellow who’d helped her with rent at one of her residences in Hollywood. He wanted to put her up in an apartment in Beverly Hills. Betty refused his offer. He let go and rode off into the Santa Monica sunset . . . But the lovesick Ed would not and could not let go. He’d fallen for Betty way too hard. Betty probably began to grasp this fact in the early part of December of ’46. That was when she rode a Greyhound bus to San Diego. But Betty must have still believed that Ed Burns was pretty much like a normal guy: she called on him again after she had returned to Los Angeles. It was a one-for-the-books mistake

The Five Not-So-Missing Days

Red Manley had driven Betty from San Diego to LA on Thursday, 1/9/47. He’d waited as she’d checked her luggage into a bus-depot locker, then he’d driven her to the Biltmore Hotel. They’d said “goodbye” in the lobby at 6:30 p.m. Betty stayed in the vicinity of the Biltmore for three hours, then walked to the fateful hotel on Washington. Betty and Ed spent this night in their hotel. They must’ve agreed to meet at their hotel on Sunday because they met at their hotel at 11 a.m. on Sunday.

Where was Betty from Friday morning until Sunday morning? I’d say the reported sighting by Christenia Salisbury should be believed. Betty had worked for Ms. Salisbury in ’44 and ’45 in the former showgirl’s Miami, Florida restaurant. Salisbury allegedly saw Betty with two tipsy women on Friday night outside Club Tabu, on the Strip. Betty allegedly told her ex-boss that she was staying with the tight twosome at their place in the San Fernando Valley.

This makes sense. Betty’s luggage was in the depot locker; the ladies had lady-stuff Betty could use until Sunday. Betty likely stayed with the Valley girls until Sunday when they dropped her off in downtown LA. And how did Ed Burns make sure Betty would keep her date with fate? Previously, Betty told us how Ed had tricked her into thinking he’d loan her money for a train trip to Chicago. Maybe he did another devious thing.

Maybe he told Betty he’d pick up her luggage for her: she’d have her stuff with her as soon as she arrived at the hotel. That would be great! If Betty decided she did want to go to Chicago, Ed would drive her right to the Union Pacific train station. So Betty wouldn’t bug out on Ed Burns again: he had her luggage claim ticket, in other words, her suitcases, and her Chicago-trip fare. What a sicko scenario!

Ed Had It All Planned

Betty had used San Diego to avoid moving in with Ed. And Ed knew it. But she’d whapped him with it right before she’d headed south. And for a month she’d never write nor phone Ed. But she’d never be out of Ed’s brain. Ed cried the blues and replayed the way she’d done him dirty. He pondered what he’d have done had he seen Betty’s juke maneuver coming. So transmutation of the Degnan murder into the Dahlia murder probably was a brain movie during Betty’s San Diego hiatus.

And Ed plotted it out: he created unarrestability by doing the crime in a place where trace evidence would be moot; he snuck his murder kit into the hotel room in a suitcase; he snuck suitcase-friendly Liz and Beth out in two suitcases; in his 3rd message he opened the door for an insanity plea. And Ed had to cerebrate how to allude the Degnan murder into the eerie blend of Poe and Freud that would be his lover’s-lane display.

I bet Ed had prepared his 2nd and 3rd messages before cutwork began. He had a manager sign the log for him on the 12th: Ed would not show his handwriting. Why? And pre-murder originals would’ve enabled Ed to read Betty translations of the messages after he’d told her how he was going to turn her into a Suzanne doll. If Ed did the grisly lecture, he maybe concluded by telling Betty that all this was theirs alone: nobody else would fathom the messages or what truly had happened o her, so he and she would be Iinked forever . . .

Mad Obsession

Ed told us the Black Dahlia murder story in his messages. And the profound Dahlia Murder/Degnan Murder interweave tells us the Ed story: Ed was as obsessed with the Dahlia as she was with the Suzanne Degnan murder. So it was a very old story: obsession plus rejection plus perceived betrayal equals murder most foul.

They Got the Easy Part

The “No Short-slaying suspect” chant has promulgated an LAPD-masterminded myth. Agness Underwood had been one of the newshawks at the Dahlia deathsite After retiring from her job as editor of the LA Herald Examiner, Aggie told West magazine: “Detectives had very grave suspicions about one guy who was questioned in the case…The evidence at hand [in 1947] was almost conclusive against this man.” Aggie didn’t reveal the man’s name; she did say he was “not a well-known person.” The shadowy guy Aggie was talking about was Ed Burns.

Madding Rumination

LAPD cops with a need to know have known the Dahlia murderer, Ed Burns, all along. A banality like physical evidence to show the DA has been the snag. But did ’47 LAPD see that the Dahlia murder was an allusional aberration, a Degnan-murder ditto? This demonic deja vu was a reasonable-doubt-snuffing strand in unrandom-ripper Ed’s web of guilt. Maybe LAPD didn’t decipher Ed’s trilogy; maybe LAPD’s circumstantial evidence plus Ed’s name on the confessional and parallelism messages would have added up to Ed’s arrest and conviction for the Black Dahlia murder . . .

Looney Tooners

Almost from Dahlia-case day one, LAPD was bombarded by cuckoo confessors. The funny-farm fallout came by car, foot and phone, a few repeatedly, consistently at cuckoo’s own cost. The sweatfests appeared to be a time-wasting nuisance when Dahlia-case sleuths had little time to spare. And a kinkily colorful contingent of “players” in the Dahlia case kept police-beat newshawks scooping and not snooping, while LAPD cops interviewed burlesque-joint operators, porno cameraman, Hollywood Wolves’ Club members, nightclub owners, hookers, female impersonators, lesbians, transsexuals . . . Kooks and the color crowd were case-protection fodder. Prior to 3/14/47, Dahlia-case dicks were guarding this secret: Ed Burns their man. On 3/14/47, LAPD added a “Pandora’s Box” secret to their Dahlia file: Dahlia-killer Ed had reached the Great Beyond, via Neptuneville.

UnID’d Man was Ed Burns . . . Circumstantial Evidence

(1) Ed Burns was razzed about his rabbity mug; UnID’d Man had a Bugs Bunny countenance. Two bunnies at once for foxy Betty? Don’t bet on it. Bet that UnID’d Man was Ed Burns.

(2) The man checked into the downtown hotel with Betty, as “Barnes. ” The duo was ID’d by the managers. LAPD changed Barnes’ name to “unIDd man” upon hearing details of the strange couple’s last of several stays at the hotel: “Barnes” was a thinly veiled and risky occultation of “Burns.” UnID’d Man was Ed Burns

(3) A tritely anonymous “Smith” or “Jones” sign-in was OK with the normal guy.  Use of “Barnes” as an anonymity was cryptically accordant with the concealment-cipher guy: Ed Burns…

(4) UnID’d Man reacted in a zip his scent being sniffed at the hotel. Ed Burns knew he had to get with it, lest his trilogy be snuffed by an arrest. Ed was the only stokable man.

(5) The hotelier held all three photos from Betty’s luggage: UnID’d Man sent his copy of the bottom photo of the pics. UnID’d Man sent the photo for reverse-psych. UnID’d Man was Ed Burns.

(6)UnID’d never went to the police and convinced them his name was releasable to the media. Bet that he’d zeroed the Dahlia and, by spring of 1947, himself. UnID’d Man was Ed Burns.

(7) UnID’d was seen with Betty on BD Day-3: he was the prime Dahlia-case suspect. There was no APB for Barnes in January 1947. LAPD must have interviewed him. So LAPD knew his identity. But UnID’d wasn’t “ID’d.” Why? LAPD knew . . . UnID’d Man was Ed Burns.

(8)UnID’d Man never was in a “photo-story” and it would’ve been a big story. Ed Burns drove Betty from place to place, with her stuff in tow. Ed was big-photo-story material, but he never was in a photo-story. ‘Why? UnIDd and Ed Burns were the same man, and he zeroed the Dahlia, and he was an LAPD secret.

(9) UnID’d was seen with the Dahlia on BD Day-3. On BD Day-1 he searched for a room with private bath. On BD Day he returnedto the hotel to “wait for his wife,” and did not wait. Who does this uniquely match him up with? Ripper Rabbit: the guy who told us he’d murdered the Dahlia. UnID’d Man was Ed Burns.

(10) The photos appear to be photo-booth snapshots. The grinner and the Dahlia are not in nightclub apparel, they’re in Betty-‘n-Eddy garb. UnID’d Man was Ed Burns . . .

“UnID’d” was a Harry The Hat Hansen ploy. It was the “Now you see Ed, now you don’t” opener for a cover-up which would outlive sage Detective/magician Hansen…Via his cryptic trilogy, Ed told us he murdered the Black Dahlia. Then Burns told us he suicided. LAPD ID’d the man in the pics in January 1947 and initially called him “unID’d” to protect the case. If not, they were amateurs. Reductio ad absurdum. Case protection meant they “knew their man.” This man was Ed Burns, otherwise LAPD was amateur. Reductio ad absurdum. But Ed suicided before LAPD could arrest him. And in 2002, LAPD still calls Ed Burns “unID’d”(?) . . .

Oh, now I get it: “unIDd” means “unEd’d,” and Ed wasn’t the killer who got away, he was the little man who wasn’t there . . . A judge noted that circumstantial evidence is better than eyewitness testimony: it has good eyes and it can’t sit on the stand and lie like hell! And it can’t mislabel a photo. Hellllooo, you Black Dahlia obsessors. . . It’s time to stop following the bouncing blue ball. UnID’d Man was Ed Burns!

Now we’re Educated about the grinning man in the photographs with the Black Dahlia. He was the closet case who modeled a mimic of Suzanne Degnan and displayed her in a Degnan Boulevard lovers’-lane . . . so Elizabeth Short would be an eternal lover with rejected Ed Burns’ nemesis, William Heirens.

Black Dahlia Case Chapter 3: Ed Burns alias Maurice Clement Guess Who?

Linda Rohr was a Black Dahlia roommate. Maurice was the Dahlia’s “favorite boy friend.”  How many newshawks in the Dahlia newsmania interviewed ultra-newsworthy Maurice? Zip. Maurice was the little man who wasn’t there: Ed Burns. Look what Ed thought he’d gotten away with:

                      1.  Ed Burns began with a switcheroo:            BURNS  ED 2.  Ed made two anagrams of himself:            NBURS  DE 3.  Ed alphabetically shifted data down           v v     v  v one place.  Shift 2 alphas, skip 2 alphas: MAURR CE 4.  Ed put “I/Ed” in the slot he’d saved:           MAURRICE

“Maurrice” was “I, Ed Burns” to Ed, and “Maurice” to everybody else. Ed Burns’ Maurrice/Maurice had a last name: “Clement.” “Clement” has a decryption which jells with decryption of “Maurice.” Ed utilized “Clement” to say and prove that Ed Burns was the Black Dahlia killer. Here’s how Ed got to “Clement”:

            1.  Ed began w/ “Black Dahlia Killer” plus an apology:     BDK    SM 2.  Ed made his Maurice “maneuver.” Two anagrams:    BKD    MS 3.  Ed did his Maurice shift. This time, all up 1 alpha:     CLE     NT 4.  Ed did what we expect of him. He injected “I/me”:      CLEMENT The full decryption of “Maurice Clement” is:

“I, Ed Burns, Black Dahlia killer, [that’s] me. Sorry mare.“

Does it seem familiar? It should. It’s the same “Sorry, mare” Ed Burns would set up in The Hirsh Apts. and use in his suicide/confession message. Ed Burns was Maurice Clement! And a Maurice Clement is a hub of chicanery in Donald Wolfe’s The Black Dahlia Files . . . In the book are a photo allegedly of and text purportedly about Maurice Clement. But the LA-area man Elizabeth knew as> “Maurice” was not in settings and scenarios Wolfe puts Maurice into. And the photo is of a guy named “Salvadore Torres Vara.” Vara was not the man Elizabeth Short knew as “Maurice Clement.” How could Wolfe have made this “mistake”? Was it a mistake? Look at this: In Wolfe’s book, pg. 277: “He [Clement] was identified as the person who transported Elizabeth to Mark Hansen’s residence on Carlos Street.”      In John Gilmore’s Severed, pg. 94: “[Ed] Burns drove Beth from another hotel to a house [Hansen’s] on Carlos Avenue that was situated behind the Florentine Gardens nightclub. ‘She had a lot of luggage . . .’ “     

Wolfe and Gilmore collectively endorse the Guess Who theme: Ed Burns and Maurice Clement were one and the same man! On this, they were correct. The strangest statement in the DA suspect list is under “Maurice Clement.” It is suspiciously short. It concludes: “. . . a likely character type but has been partially eliminated by the Los Angeles Police Department. See their report.” The statement says “partially”(?) What does that mean? If Ed Burns did drown himself, and is not hiding out in the Sunbelt, he’s eliminated. Is that what it means?

The “belongings pack” telephoner had a silky-sounding voice. The Chancellor Apartments-phoning Maurice had a cultured British accent. This points directly at Ed Burns. “Silky” and “cultured British” insinuate deception: Ed’s trademark. Certain Dahlia buffs have claimed that Ed Burns isn’t in the LA DA’s 1949 Black Dahlia-murder suspect List. But Burns is in said list as his LA-area alias: “Maurice Clement.” The double-whammy function of this alias is explained below.

M ‘n M

Ed had good reasons for using “Maurice Clement” as an alias. One’s a weirdity, not a rarity. It was done by Robert Louis Stevenson in the classic: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was done by the Suzanne Degnan-dissector, William Heirens: Will was the good guy, George Murman was the bad guy. And it was done by the Black Dahlia- bisector, Ed Burns: Ed was the good guy, Maurice Clement was the bad guy. So Ed’s Degnan-murder mimetism went further than we’d thought: Ed/Maurice included the Heirens/Murman thing. And Ed Burns was more cryptically clever in manufacture of “Maurice” than we’d thought.

Do you see it, and hear it? They have similarities in look and sound: Murman/Maurice. In addition to being part of the Degnan mimetism, “Maurice Clement” would’ve been a cover: an element of Ed’s “perfect murder.” The DA list said: “. . . working at Columbia Studios at the time of the murder.” Maurice was a talent scout. He must have used a phony ID. He likely had a desk he would never use, and an LA-area apartment he’d use when he was in the area on a “one-day trip.” The FBI file noted that Ed Burns made the trips. But I’ll bet the Bureau was unaware of the apartment or “Maurice,” at the time of the interrogation. Maurice probably was out in the field scouting, full-time. The field included Sunbelt states . . . and the Shanghai Dance Hall in Hollywood, where he met the Black Dahlia. Would anybody in the LA area have known him as “Ed Burns”? If not, the link from UnID’d Man in Hirsh Apts. to Ed Burns in the Sunbelt could’ve been tenuous. LAPD called on the FBI to identify Mr. Barnes . . .

If no one in the LA area knew him as “Ed Burns,” then so what if everyone in the area deciphers his messages? Initials and names they will find are E, B, Ed and Ed Burns: not M, C and Maurice Clement. Like other elements of the Dahlia murder, Ed’s “Maurice” alias reflects long-term planning. The murder might’ve been in the works from the time Ed realized the love of his life would never be “his”: in other words, from the day Ed Burns and Elizabeth Short met. Maybe Elizabeth never heard “Ed Burns” prior to the trilogy reading. But that’s crazy. Yes! Ed Burns was a psychiatrist-certified mental case.

And the Black Dahlia murder was stranger than any “true story” Black Dahlia fiction I’ve read. Ed Burns must’ve been a fixture at the top of LAPD’s Black Dahlia-suspect list from the day the FBI ID’d him. And Ed told us most of what we would want to know about the murder. But 1947 LAPD did not close the case . . . Do not follow the bouncing blue ball!

The Fateof the Black Dahlia Murderer

Ed Burns would again confess to the murder (cryptically), then he’d de facto close the case. To the 20th century public, he would always be “the little man who wasn’t there.” That was Ed’s fate. And here is a fated equation: Justice for Elizabeth Short equals 21st-century exposure of Ed Burns and his mimetic monstrosity…

An item concerning a suicide appeared in the LA Times exactly two months after the Dahlia’s remains appeared in the lover’s lane: timely. And there are catchy things about the story such as the location of the reported event and the text of a reported note. And a piece of foolscap that hosted the note is a grabber: Ed Burns used a plain white envelope for his first message and a penny postcard for his second message.

In combo, these things give off finely tuned Ed vibes. Something was left out of the reporting: a photo of the note. Maybe LAPD had gotten in the way of news photographers? Maybe: I couldn’t find a photo of the note in any 1947 LA newspaper. But all LA dailies printed the text; that was enough. I’ll re-create what had been beelined to LAPD Black Dahlia-file safes. Here’s the LA Times version of the news item: Ed’s trilogy taught me enough about Ed’s cryptic tricks to convert the text into the cryptogram that was left on the beach.

Black Dahlia nurder: The text of the message

“To whom it may concern: I have waited for the police to capture me for the Black Dahlia killing, but have not. I am too much of a coward to turn myself in, so this is the best way out for me. I couldn’t help myself for that, or this. Sorry, Mary.”

Kinda like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, huh, Ed . . . OOPS, sorry about that. I’ve highlighted and exaggerated the darkness of “Ed Burns,” and the look of Ed’s perennial “T” pointers, two in this confessional-suicide cryptogram of his, and I’ve added some illustrative lines. Other than that, what you see is what LAPD got. And that’s Ed Burns you’re looking at. Only Ed would’ve conceived and done something like this. I’m just the conduit. . .

There’s our man in fully spelled-out clarity, sliding down the line in the middle of the cryptogram. Ed did some brainwork to put “Ed Burns” almost exactly in the widthwise middle of the row group in which it appears. For examples, counting single spaces between words as characters, letter B has 10 characters to either side, letters r and s each have nine characters to either side. Only E and B are capped, as they should be. This is why Ed has “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN” as a preface to his note, and he must’ve capped the entire phrase: he did this to get a cap E; the phrase is otherwise unnecessary. Ed put conspicuous redundancy in his cipher text. He has an “e burns” in the data to go with the “Ed Burns” going down the middle. There’s an e to the immediate left of d, a b to the left of u, a “urn” to the right of r, and an s to the right of the n. Did Ed left- or right-justify the text?

He didn’t when he hand-wrote his note on the postcard. And a smooth margin would’ve given him heavy-duty problems on his final note. His “Ed Burns” would’ve zigzagged unless he scrunched characters. Ed Burns was a straight-line, non-scrunch guy. So his foolscap note looks very much like the 54-years-younger replica. As usual, Ed cleverly used T pointers, this time to control flow, not to insert. As before, Ed left no doubt as to purposefulness: what we observe in all four cryptograms is about as happenstance as 1000 bullseyes in a row. The outline of Ed’s ultimate cryptogrammatic text is shapely, like that of a tall flower vase or a voluptuous woman. And there is this intriguing image: the curvaceous shape of a woman being bisected by “Ed Burns” … Ed was the surfer in the birthday suit. But was he trying to fox us? Did he really commit suicide? Ed was not foxing around. He did commit suicide. Thoroughly and indubitably.

  Contrary to the voiced opinion of 1947 LAPD Homicide Chief Jack Donahoe, Dahlia-killer Burns was taunting nobody with his first three messages. This wasn’t their purpose, this wasn’t the purpose of Ed’s confessional suicide message, this wasn’t in Ed Burns’ personality makeup. Moreover, Ed would not have picked a locale with great Dahliawise significance to him, to pull off a bluff stunt like faking suicide.

The same goes for Ed’s Horace Greely walkathon occurring on the two-month anniversary of the murder. Then there’s the thing about confessing. It’s almost like Ed simply wrote his name vertically down the middle of the note. Would he have done this if he wasn’t going to drown himself? And Ed wasn’t stupid. He knew that LAPD was never going to close the book on Burns unless his body showed up. And he knew they might not close the Black Dahlia case even if he did wash up; and they didn’t.

And if Ed’s remains hadn’t shown up somewhere, I’d have thought maybe a hungry shark had recycled him, or his remains had snagged something on the bottom, or some Venice beachcombers were ghouls, or (??). But I would not have thought Ed hadn’t suicided.

What does Ed’s final cryptogram say?

Let’s first deal with semantics and stuff in the surface text. At the end, Ed says, “for that, or this . . .” The “this” refers to the suicide. But does “that” refer to “too much of a coward,” or to the killing? It must refer to the killing: “coward” is in the present tense, the killing was a done-that and “couldn’t” was in the past. Ed used “killing,” as he had in his final trilogy installment: and I’m certain he used cap “Is” as he had before, to put I/Ed in the murder. Note the T pointers: t in “too” transfers control to “Ed Burns”; t in “best” transfers control to “I.” The cryptogram says:

To whom it may concern: I have waited for the police to capture me for the Black Dahlia killing which I did, but they have not. I am Ed Burns. I couldn’t help myself for that murder, or this suicide. Sorry. Mary

Seems like a simple cipher. It is, but maybe it’s a tad more complicated than the above. Look at “or this.” Drop i, contract the words, and we have “orths,” an anagram for “Short.” Plug “Short” in for “or this,” and we have “… that murder, Short,” or “the murder (of] Elizabeth Short.” And the cryptogram could have this message:

To whom it may concern: I have waited for the police to capture me for the Black Dahlia killing which I did, but they have not. I am Ed Burns. I couldn’t help myself for the murder of Elizabeth Short.                                                              Sorry,                                                              Mary

Gee whiz, puzzlers, we’re getting the message. But what’s with “Mary”? well, There’s Something About Mary, and unlike the upbeat 1998 movie, it’s grotesque… What Ed Burns did to the Dhalia was Degnan-murder mimicry:his trilogy affirms this. In Ed’s mental muddle, the Dahlia’s Degnan obsession and her rejection of Ed had interlocked: the Dahlia had heroized Heirens and intended to hurry back to Chicago. Ed Burns’ Degnan-murder mimetism was his way of twisting the Degnan dynamic into a tool of domination over th Dahlia…But Ed’s monster juggled two symbolic spheres. Ed mailed photos to the Examiner in his belongings package. One of these photos was the mother of all sleepers. It was a looking-glass for the metaphor that is bared in “The Night Mare” section. For now, trust me: with “Mary,” Ed was saying “mare,” and he was saying it to Elizabeth Short.

I’m certain Ed Burns’ sucide cryptogram says:

To whom it may concern: I have waited for the police to capture me for the Black Dahlia killing which I did, but they have not. I am Ed Burns. I couldn’t help myself for the murder of Elizabeth Short.

Sorry, mare

Speculation about “Sorry, Mary” would’ve been averted if the Dahlia had scoped the note through a Deterafutura Lens before she phoned Ed from San Diego on 1/8/47. With “Ed Burns” heading down the middle, and with no profound need for a Degnan Key, Ed’s confessional suicide note was easy to recognize as a cryptogram. And it was much easier to decrypt than any of the messages in his trilogy.

This could’ve been part of a weird double-twist. Maybe Ed’s suicide and suicide note were planned, as was the murder. Ed might’ve said “capture” in the note because he became unavailable once LAPD interrogations convinced him he’d soon be arrested. An arrest would’ve killed his plan. Ed didn’t want LAPD to decipher his trilogy before his suicide. But upon suiciding, Ed gave his readers a tutorial for deciphering his trilogy: an easy-to-decipher suicide note. I think Ed had the aware Angeleno in mind. And the note could’ve been a tutorial on closure of a Black Dahlia murder case. Aware of Taj-aware Angelenos, Ed likely figured LA papers would print photos of the note.

He might’ve hoped “Taj Macabre” viewers would decrypt the note, then realize that his first three messages were cryptograms, then decrypt his trilogy and receive the affirmation described later in this site. With closure in mind, Ed confesses once in his trilogy and once in his suicide note. LAPD should regard Ed’s suicide as closure of the Dahlia case. The main reason, the smoking pen with shining scalpel, is Degnan-murder mimicry in combination with a Degnan-theme trilogy. The autopsist found the items that had been occulted in Betty’s rectum and vagina, and the reentry entree in Betty’s stomach. Doc Newbarr noted crisscross-laceration zones in several areas of Betty’s body.

All of this data was kept secret by LAPD. Had LAPD deciphered Ed’s trilogy, possibly after having benefited from Ed’s tutorial, they should have known that their Dahlia secrets were Degnan-murder mockery: the excremental entree was a ditto of Heirens’ defecatory calling card; crisscross zones were allusions to “sympathetic-schizo” Heirens’ postmortem gauze bandages; the cache inside Betty’s privates was Suzanne-mannequin certification.  

  Ed’s name is interwoven with the trilogy theme, and the theme is the Dahlia-murder/Degnan-murder interlink. The newsfest media never picked up on any of this. With his mimetism-trilogy combo, Ed was telling LAPD he knew secrets that only the Degnan-murder-mocking Dahlia killer would know. Didn’t 1947 LAPD hear Ed? Didn’t they decipher his messages? Ed Burns’ Degnan mimetism showed he was tuned in to detail and allusion. He suicided on March 14.

I believe he had a two-month anniversary in mind and he’d killed the Dahlia on January 14, the day before Betty Bersinger spied Betty Short’s remains. So LAPD sleuthhounds had two Short months to catch Ed: bet on the hare. This played a part in 1947 LAPD Homicide’s failure to close the Black Dahlia case. But we don’t need Doctor Henry Lee to inform us that something was wrong there! And about a mysterious Ed Burns interview . . . How did the interview come about? Time was scarce, and Ed Burns was an LAPD secret. Here are two possibilities:

1. The “interview” was part of an LAPD interrogation which bootleggedly made its way to the public.
2. Ed was pathologically preoccupied with the Dahlia. He might have made a diary/journal of his time with her. He might’ve written much of it while pining away during the Dahlia’s time in San Diego. Maybe a relative of Ed’s found the journal after Ed’s suicide and passed excerpts of it to a financially appreciative publication. This is a “Here! is Ed’s belongings” scenario, with an “Ed is Neptune’s now” translation.

In a sentimentally expansive mode, Ed told of taking Elizabeth Short to an apartment by a beach. He described how beautiful her profile was, silhouetted near a wind chime. He told of motionless shadows and a lamp, outlined behind a window shade, with Betty illuminating the entire scene which included an amusement park on the beach. Ed told about the rides going on, and hearing people yelling, and the sound of the roller coaster. And on the two-month anniversary of the murder of his love, Ed returned to this same “happily ever after” pipedream locale. But an amber-ale-pale sun was at a tired pre-equinoctial angle.

Ed saw shadows . . . ghostly shadows of scudding clouds moving across a wintry seascape surrounding a silent roller coaster and gloomy amusement park. And there was no Elizabeth Short. Ed was the loneliest, most solitary being in the universe. If Ed Burns could not possess and be with Elizabeth Short via murdering her, he’d join her in death, at their happy place.

Black Dahlias: The Night Mare

…Ed Burns roped me, haltered me, branded me with the initials of his name and turned me into a horse. But I wanted to be a Black Dahlia, not a Black Beauty. PLEASE let folks know the truth: it will make me free to rest in peace… It was an Ed B. head trip. He couldn’t resist… What Ed did to the Dahlia’s forehead was pure Ed Burns. It was concealment cryptology. Now we know the why of the long stem on Ed Burns’ second message “B.” It was to mock the stem on the big “B” Mr. B would inscribe on the Dahlia’s forehead. Left: The Black Dahlia in the old Los Angeles County Morgue.(Click photo for enlargement) Below: A photocopy of Ed Burns’ busy second message. Below, we see a “B”-a composite and a gestault. Eee Bee had placed both his initials on the Dahlia’s forehead. He’d created an arty superimposition of “B” with an occult “E.” So let’s add tracer lines and check this out…

Hold your mouse cursor over a picture to see the tracer lines (1″E” and 3″Bs”)

The forehead “E” is a weird one. Ed helped us see it, with “E” in his 2nd-message “police”: notice the gap at the top ofthe stem; scope the crooked cross-beam above the gap; this crookedness precisely traces the forehead line segments which define said beam.

Place your mouse cursor over the image above

…There they are, “B” and “E.” Ed’s multiple “B” with shading looks like a single fancy-font “B.” These fifth generation photocopies of photographs conjure up tattoos which tend to shroud the “E.” But once bold cap “E” is spotted, it’s as palpable as the cap “B.”

The Date of the Coming-Out

As mocking accompaniment for his lovers-Iane-bound “E B,” Ed Burns embedded a cliche He encrypted the date he would set up his sunrise ‘stravaganza: “ J 15,” January 15. Maybe you picked up on the “5” of it Now we know the why of the skin-gap in the upper half of the “E” stem: it was to preserve concavity in the curved section of “5.” We see the “5.” Where’s “1”? It’s where it belongs, faintly, but for sure. Ed helped us see it, with “H” in his 2nd~message “Had.’ This “H” stands, out, it has a mission. Note the odd orientation of the left upright to the right upright. This orientation dittoes the orientation of the forehead “1” to the forehead “5” These partners in crime are shown below. The “1”is enhanced with a tracer. We see the “15” Where’s “J’? Its there, boldly but cryptically. Ed helped us see it, with “J” in his 2nd-message “January.’ This paper ‘J” isn’t just any old “J”: It’s a January “J.’ Now we see why Ed gave it a wildly separated cross-beam: he was saying this was a ‘J’ from CryptoLand, and he wanted us to focus on the stem/hook, which is shaped. like the forehead “J.” Those kindred characters are shown below. Here, the trilogy “J” is oriented like the defilement “J,” which is in the “cross hairs.” Four of Ed’s 2nd-message alphas interact with his Black Dahlia skin art: an “E,” a “B,” an “H,” and a “J” Ed situated each at the conspicuous beginning or ending of a line. Ed wrote each by hand: a fallout of the interaction with skin art. And now we have a clue about why Ed hand-printed his 2nd message…

Possessed

I see symbolic, nonalpha crypto-art on the Black Dahlia’s forehead skin. Some of it is blended in with noir “tattooist” Ed Burns’ two initials, The rest of Burns’ skin-art appears above and to the left of these initials. Look below:

What is the bold little circle in the large, shaded “B” lobe all about? Move your mouse cursor over the above photo to view the tracer for the sturdy circle.

Let’s scrutinize the symbolic circle. What was Ed Burns telling the autopsist and the cops? I see clues. The circle Is attached to the “E” and the medium-sized upper “B” lobe; two lines connect the circle to the big upper “B” lobe; and a very thin line connects the circle to the small upper “B” lobe. The compound “B” outline is emboldened/reinforced near the connections. So this symbolic circle is connected to the letters . . . Hmmmmm . . . Circle EB Stable . . . Did Burns “brand” the Dahlia? Yes!

Now, we have a red-hot clue about the peculiar form beside and above the macabre forehead brand. What does it represent? I’ll bet you know. Here it is;

You’re right. A branding Iron. The handle is on the right, the brand stamp is on the left. Note Ed’s lobes-to-the-right, B-Ish brand sketch. The three wispy lines adorning the top of the brand stamp allude to heat.

Check cut the squiggly vertical line appearing to the left of the iron/brand duo. I bet it’s a bracket symbol; I think Ed was doing a charade-game number on his audience. I hear Burns saying . . “Get with it, guys, THINK . . . The stuff on the Dahlia’s forehead hangs together” , . .

The Epiphany

The autopsist, Dr. Frederick Newbarr, said the Dahlia was alive while her forehead was defiled. The EB “brand” was as smoothly lined as a quality tattoo. The Dahlia was a hostile subject. Wire restrained her neck. But how was her head held still? It’s as plain as the nose on her face. And I sense an epiphanous aura . . . Let’s look at the nose the Dahlia wore into eternity. There it Is, to the right:

Those two gouge wounds, one on each side of the nose, are bizarre. Do you know what caused them? If so, you’re privy to the 2nd number to a combination unlock of a chilly part of the Black Dahlia Mystery. Here’s the story: Ed Burns commissioned extra-strong-rimmed glasses or heavy-duty goggles to use as a halter; he probably removed the lenses, then added straps or cords; he put this “halter” on the Dahlia and, utilizing the straps, securely tied her to a pipe or other plumbing fixture at her back; the Dahlia fought the halter during the branding, and two ultra-robust nose grips dug two ugly indentations into the sides of her nose.

For the sake of super-stationarity plus silence, Ed likely muted the Dahlia with a gag-bit contraption which he anchored to a sturdy fixture at her back. So Ed Burns put the Dahlia in his juryrig bridle/headstall device, and branded her with his initials . . . Hmnm, he wasn’t horsing around . . . But maybe he was.

In his 3rd message, Ed separately alluded to Hirsh Apts. and the Degnan-area death lot. To expert-data-recycler Burns, they were two distinct symbolic spheres. And he recycled symbology between the spheres while making a different, sphere-dependent allusion with each recycle. The Degnan-locale death-lot domain was Ed’s Taj Macabre for his ladylove.

He wanted a select group to see it. The Hirsh horror was Ed’s “you would not give me sex” torture-‘n-domination end game with the Dahlia. I bet he wasn’t retrospectively proud of this one. He likely was loath to even talk about it. It’s CREEPY . . .

Horse Lover

The Dahlia murder tapped two symbolic realms. The metaphoric focii: (1) The Suzanne Degnan Murder; (2) A horse. And how did the horse get into the picture? Via the Dahlia, a la the Degnan murder. The Dahlia obsessed on the Suzanne Degnan murder, and loved horses. To Ed Burns, the Degnan murder and horses likely were topics that defined the Dahlia. Black Beauty, the classic Anna Sewell horse story, hit movie-house screens in ’46. Maybe Ed and the Dahlia watched the movie together. The picture below shows the Dahlia with a horse. And what a remarkable horse it was . . If you look very closely at its forehead, you’ll see a solution to a baffling mystery.

The Night Mare in the Nightmare

In the HIRSH, Ed Burns haltered the fey Dahlia and made her over as a HoRSe: the horse which is in the photo with her. This horse had peculiar markings on its forehead. Ed mapped marks, a “branding iron” and a squiggly line w/ slash, from the horse’s forehead to the Dahlia’s forehead. Ed replaced the white patch with his EB brand. The long-stemmed B mocks the Rorschach shape of this patch . . . A patch of white horse hair was the why of the long stem.

Equine Certification from a Horse to a Horse-to-be

 

How Ed Burns Morphed the Black Dahlia into a Horse

(1) Ed haltered and bitted/gagged the Dahlia, then branded her with the initials of his name, as if she was a horse.

(2) Ed mapped marks from a horse’s forehead to the Dahlia’s forehead, to give her “she’s a horse” credentials.

(3) Ed cut the Dahlia’s mouth from ear to ear, to give her a whoppingly wide horse mouth.

(4) Ed slashed the Dahlia’s abdomen from pubis to navel, to give her a bodacious horse vagina.

(5) For good measurement, Ed eternally stretched the Dahlia’s anus to 1.25 inches in diameter. She now boasted a big ol’ horse anus.

And that wasn’t all . . .The Equintessential Morph Job, continued . . .

(6) Ed pulled out the Dahlia’s pubic hair and rolled it into a tuft, then stuffed the tuft into her tail end. She now sported a nicely tufted horse tail, “on” her tail end.

(7) Except the orifice In (5), Ed marked the “rejected” birth organs with multiple Xs. This heralded the Black Dahlia’s coming out as a horse.

Sorry, Mare

To Ed Burns, the Dahlia’s vagina was her Forbidden-Zone: the “you would not give me sex” in his 3rd message shows this. The Dahlia was proud of her pretty rose tattoo. So Ed B cut it off after he had “gifted” her his ugly EB brand. And as humiliative absurdity, Ed marked the supplanted rose with Xs, then rammed it into the Dahlia’s F-Zone.

To Ed Burns, the Dahlia appeared to heroize Suzanne Degnankiller William Heirens. Jealousy and resentment were motivators for Ed’s Degnan-murder mimicry with trilogy. What motivated the horse metaphor? I bet it was more of the same. The Dahlia would not embrace Ed. And she wouldn’t allow him to embrace her. But take another look at that horse-Dahlia newsphoto. Check out the Dahlia’s right forearm . . .

In his suicide note, Ed drew from both of his Dahlia-murder symbolic spheres. William Heirens scrawled a note on a wall at one of his snuff scenes. In red lipstick, Wild Willie wrote, “I cannot control myself.” And do you remember how Burns ended his suicide message? He wrote: “Sorry, Mary.” OK . . . Here’s what the last words of Burns’ suicide note truly said: “I couldn’t help myself for the murder of Elizabeth Short. Sorry, mare.”

So the final word of Ed Burns’ final message was a farewell salute to the love of his life, Elizabeth Short.

Black Diabolism

A Frill from the Far Side

Lets rescope the photo of the Dahlia and a horse. Hmrnm.. Did Ed zone out when he mapped forehead markings? Did he overlook the twin-arch figure above the white patch? No. Ed mapped the arty figure to the bottom of his Ed “E” stem, Far out, man! Brander Burns was a sucker for a fiendish frill. The forehead views below explain:

The date the Dahlia would appear in the lovers’ lane, January 15, was an intrinsic part of Ed’s brand. One “B,” one upper lobe and one lower lobe could’ve buried “E.” The primary purpose of the multiplicity of “B” was to camouflage “5.” Ed’s composite brand involved hyper-focused planning and clearheaded brainwork. Ed must have designed his skin art noir before he and the Dahlia did their ultimate check-in at the Hirsh Apts. Ed even told us he had… The message which interacts with Ed’s skin art was written by hand because of peculiarity of interactive alphas. Burns refused to bare his handwriting to the Hirsh operators.

Why? Because he knew about the requisite handwriting. This says he’d already designed his skin art. So Ed Burns knew when he’d display the Black Dahlia in the lover’s lane, before the actual murder process began. Diabolical! OK, Ed already knew. But why did he pick the 15th? ItI was a case of alphanumeric congruity Lets puzzle it out… Ed spent the second weekend of January 1947 plotting the Dahlia murder.

He and Black Dahlia would check-in at the Hirsh on Sunday, 1/12/47. Ed ruled out the 12th and the 13th as BD-Day contenders, at the git-go: he realized his Black undertaking would require more than one day. And he quickly eliminated the 14th: “4” did not mesh with the initials of his name. But “5” was a profoundly camouflaged fit. So why did Ed Burns pick January15, 1947 as Black Dahlia Day? Because his name was “‘Ed Burns.” Eerie.. . but it computes…

The Data Source

Data processed in sections The “Suzanne” Data and The Night Mare comes from two Black Dahlia morgue photos which appeared on the Internet. But where did said Internet morgue photos come from: the LA DA files or the LAPD files? Well, John Gilmore had a Xeroxy copy of one of the morgue shots in his 1994 Severed. John had the same Xeroxy shot and a good copy of the face/forehead morgue shot in his 1998 Severed.

Someone was acquiring copies of the morgue photos eight years before the Los Angeles District Attorney Black Dahlia-case files were opened. So the Internet morgue shots probably came from the LAPD files, not the LA DA files. The Pubic-Area “Suzanne” Data: Definitive Degnan With the help of carefully exposed, 2:1 magnified Xerox’ing, the morgue photo of concern shows that the Black Dahlia’s pubic region abounded in concealment cryptography. To set the symbolic theme, a large “Suzanne” is clearly written and cleverly hidden in the upper portion of the region. A “D” and an “N” clearly label two correctly oriented lines/streets as “Degnan” and “Norton,” respectively. Three readily recognizable symbol-pairs are clearly drawn and utilized in the encryption: a spike and a star; a diamond and a heart; a hex nut and a clothes-pressing iron. The spike/star is to the left of the diamond/heart. The diamond touches the heart, the heart touches the iron, and the hex nut is on the iron. The iron has a “+” on it. The Suzanne-steered decryption is as follows: “Spike” and “star” are S-words. The “S” is “Suzanne.” Now we are primed to perceive “diamond” as a D-word, with “D” for “Degnan.” So what gives with the heart? A heart conjures up a valentine, and/or love. A Norton-line appendage penetrates and ends up inside the heart. Here is a clue: Think “Degnan love with Norton in it.” What fits this description? “Degnan [Boulevard] love[ers’ lane]” is a perfect fit. “Suzanne” is in a Degnan Boulevard lovers’ lane. Why? Let’s decrypt some more. What’s left? A hex nut and an iron. A plus sign is on the iron. OK, let’s add “iron” to “hex.” We get “hexiron.” We will X out the “x.” Now, we have “heiron”/”Heirens.” The iron touches the heart. Now we know why the “Suzanne doll” is in the Degnan Boulevard lovers’ lane: to be an eternal lover with William Heirens. And there’s more . . . Hidden at the top of the region: a huge 5 with a small 2 to the right of it, plus another, almost ghostly, small 2 to the right of the 1st 2. The encryptor wanted thinking decryptors to perceive a 5 2 and a 5 22. The size disparity enhances the obfuscation. These numbers are to be used as alphabetic indices. We’re handed a clue to this effect, lower in the cryptography. The Norton and Degnan lines form a “V.” This darkened “V” is sectioned. In the top section is a tiny 5:2 combo that mimics the big 5:2 at the top of the area. The next section contains a “V” with an underlined “22” to the right of it. “V” is the same Victory “V” that appeared twice in the 3rd Dahlia message, paired with an “e/E.” “V” also is the 22nd letter in the alphabet. We’re clued in: use the 5 and the 2 in that order, as alphabetic indices. We come up with “E” and “B,” or “E B.” Hmmmmmm . . . Who had a name with “E B” initials? Ed Burns alias Mr. Barnes alias Maurice Clement.

Black Dahlia Case Chapter 4: A Summary of a Life and a Degnan-Ditto Death

Betty Short was born on July 29, 1924. Her place of birth was Hyde Park, Massachusetts. She was the third of Cleo and Phoebe’s five girls. Cleo abandoned the family when Betty was six. From then on, Phoebe parented solo. Betty grew up in Medford, MA. She quit school during her sophomore year of high school. Betty had asthma. In ’40 and ’41 she spent springs and summers in Medford, and falls and winters in Miami, Florida.

In Medford, Betty ushered in a theatre and dated servicemen. In Miami, Betty waited tables in a restaurant and dated servicemen. In ’42, Betty railed to Vallejo, CA to live with dad. Big clash. Bye, dad. She floated to LA and settled within strolling range of the infamy-bound Degnan Boulevard lovers’ lane. She soon learned about and landed a job at Camp Cooke, a large Army base north of LA. She once was “Camp Cooke Cutie of the Week.” In ’43, Betty moved in with a GI, got in a tiff with him, quit her job. Underage Betty then drifted to Santa Barbara, was busted for gracing a bar, and was fatefully printed.

She was counseled, put on a Medford-bound bus, and bade adieu. Be a good girl. The 1947 LAPD would give Phoebe the sobering skinny on her nipping nomad’s California toodle-oo. In ’44 and ’45, Betty endured sun seasons in and near Medford and enjoyed snow seasons in Miami. Near Medford, Betty worked in an eatery just outside the Harvard campus and repeatedly dated a Harvard student. In Miami, Betty worked in an ex-showgirl’s cafe and dated servicemen. In ’44, Betty met two Army Air Corps fliers who’d be more than one-date stands: Major Matt Gorden and Lieutenant Joe G. Fickling.

Maybe Betty was Matt’s fiancée. But the marriage was not to be—Matt was killed in a ’45 plane crash. In ’46, Betty became obsessed with the Suzanne Degnan slaying and Sue’s slayer, William Heirens. Time called the Degnan murder “the crime story of the century.” The ’46 Degnan homicide was a double event—it was the blood-red blueprint for the Black Dahlia murder. And Betty’s Degnan obsession was a latent catalyst. In April ’46, Betty left Medford and drifted through Miami and Indianapolis, and into a gaggle of bright and noisy lounges clustered around Chicago’s Loop. Patrons of a bar in the gaggle came under the mind-clouding spell of Betty’s obsession. Several of them mistook an obsessor for a newshawk. Betty was saying she was a Boston reporter covering the trial of William Heirens.

One of Betty’s captivated listeners later stated: “Elizabeth Short was one of the prettiest girls I ever met, but she was terribly preoccupied with the details of the Degnan murder.” Right. But he wouldn’t see much of the obsessive oddity. She’d be in Windy City for just 10 days. Her obsessional spell would creep in and out like the Shadow . . . And a latency timer was ticking . . . The misnomer’d “werewolf” murder was less than six moons away when Betty departed Chicago and headed west to join Joe Fickling in Long Beach, CA. By the time Betty arrived, Fickling had found and paid for a cozy hotel room for her. There Betty was, in LB’s Hotel Washington, w’ Degnan fixation. Snuff ‘n show sites on boulevards Washington and Degnan were but a few miles north. But the catalytic timer hadn’t ticked to 0. Betty would survive balmy Long Beach.

A galvanizing memento of her passage would be lifted from Raymond Chandler, but no longer blue. Because of her beachtown oglers, the world knows her as “the Black Dahlia.” But she wanted to be “Mrs. Joe Fickling.” That had fueled her ’46 iron-horse ride to LA. Joe was stationed in Long Beach. He’d asked Betty to come west and make him happy. She’d said she’d be happy to. But Betty had hopes of “ever after,” Joe had nopes of “never ever,” and they parted during the first week of August. Why might a postpart-’em Dahlia drift to Hollywood? WW II was over; her cornucopia of uniformed marriage material was drying up fast. And she was a flaky kid with a starry-eyed mindset—she wasn’t outdated in this. But would the wanderlust Dahlia remain in Hollywoodland for over four months?

Yes. Curious. And it gets curiouser and curiouser, a la Alice in Wonderland . . . The Dahlia forthwith floated to Tinseltown as the Nevermore Raven flies. She moved in with a friend and stayed put for a few days, then resided in a succession of low-rents: an old hotel, a rooming house for aspiring actresses, and an apartment. If the Dahlia wanted to be in show biz, it never showed. She never acted like she wanted to be an actor.

If she had a plan or a long-range goal, she had an odd follow through. She didn’t have a job. She spent time around radio and movie studios; she went to radio shows. But she spent more time in bars and nightclubs along the Sunset Strip. She sponged money off man pals and friends. She was too trusting of men she’d just met in dark dives. She was too willing to get into an auto with a strange man. She mingled with shady characters. The Dahlia had a date almost every night. Her norm was seven different hombres a week.

Non-achievers ran rife; a part-owner of the Florentine Gardens nightclub said most Dahlia dates he knew of were bums he wouldn’t allow in his house. In October the Dahlia met a non-bummer. He boasted USC Medical School credits. He hosted psyche-scar-school debits. His rabbity mug had been a razz magnet. His name was Ed Burns. Ed was an LA Basin gent, but a rara avis amid the barfly Dahlia’s run-of-the-watering-hole Basin men. He was a cut above Filmtown flimflammers the Dahlia had tarried with. He’d entered the Dahlia whirl as an anomaly And a Telltale latency timer ticked on . . . The Dahlia was Ed’s fairest-of-the-fair dream girl. She didn’t jape him about his goofy grin.

She made him remember he was a guy and forget he was a rabbit. Ed was her cash-and-car man. He made her forget she was a fly and remember she was a fox. Two times in November, they went to places like Ocean Park and the Long Beach Pike, and spent a night together in a cheap hotel on Washington Boulevard in LA. Both moming-afters, Burns gave the Dahlia cash for necessities and chauffeured her back to Cinemaville.

Ed faked “all ears” for her black Degnan obsession. He’d be a rapt audience as she’d reiterate Degnan-murder horrifics. She got Ed to wheel her to a Leimert Park haunt where Degnan forks into Degnan and Norton. She spotlighted a dark irony. Degnan Boulevard went right by her old lover’s lane. But the dreary vacant lots in the area did not go right by her lovesick bunny.

Mysterious “Maurice” was the Dahlia’s main man when she lived in Chancellor Apartments, her final Hollywood abode. The Dahlia was the only one at the place who was hip to Maurice. The others knew him only by phone calls he’d made to the Dahlia. Maurice was Ed Burns. Ed would motor the Dahlia away from the apartments on her adios-to-Oscartown departure.

December 5, late-evening.

The eve before the Dahlia would leave the Chancellor, Burns gave her cash to pay overdue rent. The next morning, he put her up in their hotel on Washington. She had no other place to stay, and no money. She had led Ed to believe she would move in with him. But . . .

Ed was giving her the creeps. He was too lovey-dovey. He made a big deal of those photo-booth shots. He was too infatuated with her. She was torn between losing Ed and using Ed. He phoned every day. She always needed help. A sticky wicket. But one long day in the hotel room settled it. She had to lose Ed Burns. She couldn’t move in with him. OK. How to get out of it this time? She decided to sleep on it.

She hit him with it early the next morning. She was going to San Diego. She could get a job in the Balboa Naval Hospital.

The rabbit had been sucker punched. His fair lady was bugging out on him. She’d made him feel like a he-man. Now he felt like a golem. What could lovelorn Ed do? He helped Jilter get her stuff together, took her to the downtown-LA Greyhound Bus Depot, bought her a ticket and put her on a San Diego-bound bus. See ya . . .

The Dahlia usually got cash after a stay in the hotel, but she hadn’t had the gall to ask for it this time. She bused southward on old Hwy 101, as broke and discombobulated as she’d been on her Cherokee Avenue “vamoose.”

December 8, mid-afternoon.

The Dahlia checked her luggage into a locker at the San Diego Greyhound depot, then left the depot and drifted to the Aztec, an all-night theatre. She’d intended to see The Blue Dahlia and use the Aztec as a one-night flop. But she and the cashier conversed, and the cashier took her home with her that night. The plan was for the Dahlia to stay for a day or two.

The arena had moved. The action was the same. The Dahlia dated and partied almost every night. Her first date was the manager of the Aztec Theatre. She slept ’til noon on most days. Her daytime Hollywood hangout had been an Owl drugstore. In San Diego it was Sheldon’s Cafe. After a month of this, her hosts told her it was time for her to drift on. And serendipity rolled in. One of her repeat dates was a traveling hardware-supplies salesman. He just happened to be going to LA the day she’d drift on.

January 8, 1947, 6:00 p.m.

The Dahlia made a telephone call to LA. She told Ed Burns she was returning to LA and was in need of his help. She did not tell Ed that she’d recently wired old-beau Joe Fickling for money, and that Joe Beau had sent one-hundred dollars and she’d spent almost every penny of it.

Ed was surprised by this call. He hadn’t heard from the Dahlia since they’d bade sayonaras, at the depot. He’d pined, he’d rerun the she-dun-me-dirty drama, and he might’ve run a brain-movie of a murder-to-be . . . And a ticking Telltale timer was nearing 0.

The itinerant two should’ve rolled north on Jan. 8, but they rolled late. They danced early night away, then slept the late of it in a motel. The manly man sold hardware, but couldn’t sell his hard ware on the Dahlia this night.

The lady and the salesman wheeled into downtown LA late in the afternoon of the 9th. She navigated to the Main Street area, then to the Greyhound Bus Depot. He waited as she checked her luggage into a locker . . . Why’s the Dahlia leaving her suitcases in the depot? She knows she’ll likely be walking a mile-and-a-half south to that hotel on Washington. And she thinks the luggage will soon be on a train bound for Chicago, and the Greyhound depot is near the Union Pacific railroad station . . . The Dahlia now was shaky about “where next,” but steady about “what next”: she had to shed a chauffeur in a big hurry. Ed Burns thought she’d be arriving by bus. Her timeline had been rubbed out by a first-night motel stop and salesman stops on the trip up 101. She did not want Ed to be in the depot area and see her with a tall, handsome escort. Any reasonable ruse to shake her chauff’ or flee the area would have been cool. It didn’t have to be, “I’m meeting my sister at the Biltmore Hotel.”

Minutes later they were in the Biltmore lobby, and she quickly lost her luckless lover man . . . Good-bye, my interim-last link to the outside world . . .

January 9, 6:30 p.m.

So there she was in the Biltmore lobby, with a problem. Where was her contact, Ed Burns? And he must have been wondering where she was. Cell-phone commonality was 50 years in the future. They hadn’t spoken to each other since yesterday. Their timeline had been fouled up every which way and up.

The Dahlia tried to reach Ed by phone. No success. Should she walk back to the Greyhound depot to see if Ed is looking for her there? . . . No. She’d wait awhile. If necessary, she’d use the “backup”: meet him at their hotel after he gets off work.

The Dahlia exited the Biltmore and went to the Gay Way Bar at 514 Main. She sat in the Gay from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m. Biltmore info came from a salesman, sit info came from a Gay partier. The Biltmore was the Dahlia’s ruse, the Gay was her style. Maybe she walked south on Main. Maybe she hitched a car ride down Main. The maybes are moot. There’s no maybe about it.

The Dahlia and Ed checked into the hotel on Washington on the night of the 9th: the operators would snitch on them. The Dahlia murder became a certainty that wintery night. Ed was angry about the San Diego juke, which had been heralded in their hotel. When the Dahlia tried to sweet-talk Burns for Chicago train-trip fare, she was a goner-to-be. Sick-puppy Burns saw her Degnan obsession as heroization of William Heirens. And now she would jilt him and at the same time sponge off him to return to his nemesis’ base of dismemberment operations? Over her dead body.

Planning of her murder began that night. First part of plan: make sure she wouldn’t bug out again. Ed said that going halfway across the USA was a big move. She should think it over. If after two days she still wanted to go to Chicago, he’d “loan” her the money. And maybe he had her give him her claim stub. He’d pick up her luggage for her. He’d have luggage plus train fare ready for her on Sunday morning. What a guy. He relieved her of her gnawing bug-out temptation.

After setting the Dahlia murder in motion, they dozed the rest of Thursday night away in the hotel room. The next morning, they agreed to meet at the hotel on Sunday, then bade adieus.

The Dahlia would want to rail to Chicago. She probably killed Friday and Saturday with girl pals from the San Fernando Valley. They likely dropped her off in downtown LA on Sunday morning.

Ed knew the Dahlia would want to drift to Chicago. He’d spend Friday and Saturday plotting the Black Dahlia murder. He’d twist the Dahlia’s Degnan obsession into a perpetuation of something that never existed: a coupling of Ed Burns and the Dahlia. He’d mock the Degnan murder by converting the Dahlia into a Suzanne Degnan doll. He’d display the doll in a Degnan Boulevard lovers’ lane. He’d document the Burns-Dahlia “itemization” with encrypted messages he’d send to newspapers and maybe the LAPD.

The messages would be part of the Degnan-murder mimicry: William Heirens left messages. And they’d be a trilogy: the intro, body, and ending to a murder story. The third entry in Ed’s trilogy would reveal the where of the killing: the hotel on Washington Boulevard. Ed would use arcane encryption to ensure publication of his Black Dahlia Story. And he’d make sure that local Grand Guignol fans could view a live(?) performance of his story on BD Day: he’d slip a murder kit into the hotel in one suitcase and sneak a halved Dahlia out in two suitcases…

Sunday, January 12, 10:00 a.m.

Ed showed up at the hotel and went to the office. The manager asked him to sign in. Burns told the manager to put down, “Barnes and wife.” The manager glanced at two big suitcases Ed had with him. Ed explained them away: “We just moved out of Hollywood.”

The Dahlia arrived at 11:00 a.m. She joined Ed in the room and in no time at all told him she was sorry, but . . .

Fate was put on wait. Ed had left himself an escape route, to ease into the horror, or to opt out. And he used it . . . “Gosh, I ran out of checks yesterday, and it’s Sunday. I don’t have cash for train fare, so I didn’t get your luggage. Let’s spend another night in the hotel . . . When banks open tomorrow, I’ll get cash for train fare and we’ll get your luggage and go to the railroad station and get you on your way to Chicago.”  

So they talked,  and he stalled, and   . . . He almost chickened out. But they talked about Chicago, and Burns heated up and went into a white-hot rage and whacked her on the head and “it” was underway…

Burns surely told a roped-n-gagged Dahlia how he’d carve his Suzanne doll. He likely read essentials of the cryptic trilogy to her. And, with explanatory prelusion out of the way, Ed began his mutilation-oriented mimicry. Several mocks of the ’46 Degnan murder had been scalpel’ed into a 1947 LA murder by the early-morning hours of the 14th. This is when a major glitch occurred.

The managers got antsy; they let Ed know it by rapping on his door. They’d felt black vibes coming from the Barnes’ room. The Dahlia was in a suitcase-friendly format. So diabolic Dr. Demento put Liz and Beth in two suitcases and motored south. He would search the Harbor District for a motel room with bathtub for a clear-cut cause. None would be found. Ed likely returned to 300 East Washington to complete his artwork noir.

January 15, 6:15 a.m.

Ed rolled into the vicinity of the lover’s lane with a dab of dusk to spare. The furtive Ford moved with the stealth of a night raven as it rounded the comer at Coliseum and Norton and coasted to a stop by the curbing. Ed sat for a few seconds, in a state of hyper-alert. He then raced sunrise as he got out of the car, set up his doll show, and got back in . . . And he’d been an illusory intruder. A local early bird peered into pre-dawn twilight and saw only a spooky silhouette when the death car slipped into shadows and vanished . . . So there it was, a riddle in the weeds, awaiting LAPD’s best efforts.

She was Jane Doe for a day. Her ’43 teen-tippler arrest led to an ID. Sans the FBI kickback ID, would Ed Burns have told us who she was? It was a news frenzy. The Dahlia’s Degnan obsession cast a mind-clouding spell: Angelenos mistook a murder-mocking rabbit for a sadistic werewolf. The Dahlia’s trunk was found in the LA REA. It contained many love letters and photos; it provided lead-nowhere leads. The Dahlia’s living-in-LA dad, Cleo, was questioned, but he was of no help.

The Dahlia’s luggage was found in a Greyhound-depot locker. It contained much no-help stuff. But one did-help item was found in her luggage: a strip of photos showing Ed Burns’ grinning mug beside the Dahlia’s “What am I doing here?” countenance. The Dahlia’s SD-to-LA “chauffeur” was a suspect; he was polygraphed and cleared. Ex-beau Joe Fickling was questioned; he didn’t help. Washington Boulevard hoteliers surfaced and told what they knew: Ed Burns and the Dahlia had stayed in their hotel many times. LAPD stayed mum about this info. LAPD conducted an extensive house-to-house hunt for murder clues. The Dahlia’s purse and shoes allegedly showed up in an LA dump. Burns mailed his first message. LAPD didn’t seem to “get it.” LAPD got Confessing Sams. Ed sent his second message.

Nobody seemed to get it. Kooks sent a barrage of nutty notes to LA newspapers. Ed sent his third message. LAPD didn’t seem to get it. Some crime writers offered their theories on the Black Dahlia case. They definitely didn’t get it. A loony confessor made big-print headlines; but he couldn’t make it with the inside details. Only Ed Burns could’ve done that. But Ed couldn’t make it without “her.” So, exactly two months after he’d murdered the Dahlia, Ed went to their special place and suicided. That was the clandestine conclusion of the 1900s Black Dahlia story. LAPD “knew” that Ed Burns was their Dahlia-killer man.

But LAPD would not be able to close the Dahlia case; and the public would never come close to fathoming what the Dahlia murder was all about—’til very early in the 21st century.

Black Dahlia Case Chapter 4: Deciphering the Cryptograms

A Preview Compilation of Ed Burns’ Trilogy Messages with their Decipherments If LAPD’s hush-hush Black Dahlia files do not contain all decipherment shown below, shame on 1947 LAPD!

Translations of Messages

I/Ed or Heirens [is] Dahlia’s now. Bet on George [Murman] / Heirens murdering her. Letter to follow.

Elizabeth Short and Ed B. are in a triangle.

Ed, George [Murman], and Betty are in a triangle.

Bett was killed and bisected in The Hirsh Apts. Elizabeth Short and Ed B. were in a triangle

Heirens, George Murman, and Suzanne Degnan, in parallel w’ Ed. Had Murder Man fun at police: Ed Burns murdering Suzanne Degnan [while] George Murman/Heirens murdered the Black Dahlia.

Ed, the Dahlia and [Degnan Hero] George Murman were in a triangle. Ed “won” and. to proclaim victory, displayed the Black Dahlia remains in a Degnan Boulevard lovers lane.

Have [regained] my mind, you/LAPD. [This was] not George Murman and Suzanne Degnan. Dahlia murder I did was just, if I [am] Ed.

I/Ed killed and bisected the Dahlia in a hotel at 300 East Washington.

Have changed my mind [about] why you would not give me sex. [Your] murder, which I committed, was justified.

First Stage Deciphering of First Two Messages

The 1st message contains an allusion to Heirens.

Here is Heirens

Then we have “Dahlia’s,” after we detour Ed’s dangling-left quote ploy.1 In the jumble of purposeful disparity below this, three huge letters stand out. They were cut from the same letter block. The insertion mark above the huge N is a tab marker down here. The only other big datum down here is a zero, not an O. It says, “Head this way, and use letters exactly like the big N.” So start with the large N at the tab . . . and N-O-W we have it. And now we see why Ed used the crummy-grammar “is.” It bolstered the allusion, then was a true-message word. An “are” would’ve muddled the allusion and fogged the true meaning of this message. Ed did none of this by chance. He did it so the message would make the strange declaration:

Heirens [is] Dahlia’s now.

The 1st message has more buried info than the line above. Rest of deciphering is on pages to follow.

The 2nd message ends with the vengeful word “Avenger.” During the mid-to-late-1940s, “Avenger” conjured up “Grumman” as fast as “Hickory-Dickory” conjures up “Dock” So take “Grumman,” an anagram if we ever saw one, switch the “r” and first “m” and there’s Heirens’ bad boy, George Murman.

Grumman Gmurman G Murman

The mere word “Avenger” was encryption. Ed wrote the note by hand. This message implicitly and definitely makes the crazy statement:

Black Dahlia [was murdered by] G Murman AKA Heirens. The 2nd message has more hidden info than the line above. Rest of deciphering is on pages to follow. 1Ed’s left single-quote mark was part of his encryption, and it was a cunning ploy. He wanted color-blind cops using B-and-W dupes to know he’d out “Dahlia’s” from a red Herald headline. Ed used the January 20 red print to insinuate that he’d begun his 1st message before he’d seen the January 22 Examiner. He did not want LAPD to know that the guy in the photos with Betty was now a murderer “gone postal” because the cops had picked up his scent, and had pics of him . . .

A Deeper Look into Ed’s First Message When we first scanned this message we knew we had a dummy with an embedded cipher right off the bat. If not, then why was the Degnan triumvirate palpably spookifying an up-front message? We spotted the Heirens allusion. We saw G and S. George Murman and Short/Suzanne Degnan, attached to opposite ends of the italicized “ing.” Ed chose an italicized “ing” to spotlight G and S, and for another to-be-clear reason.

After segueing from a Heirens allusion through a ready-to-use “Dahlia’s” and an assembly-is-required “now” to the sentence ending, we turned our mental radar on and rescoped the scene. We learned enough to draw lines that’ll help us peer into Ed’s cipher works. Our next unraveling spot is at “GingS.” Ed has George doing something to Short/Suzanne.

Now, what could that be? If we jump to a conclusion, we’ll be right—but let’s let Ed’s puzzle tell us. Insertion markers can point up or down. A “T” and a huge zero are directly and unrandomly below “ing.” The “T” and the flat left side of the zero point upwards at “ing.”

The vectors intersect smack dab in the middle of “ing.” It looks like “T” is winching zero up to fuse it with “ing.” The fusing is what Ed wants us to see. So, is George “zeroing” Short/Suzanne? Yes—where “zeroing” means offing, snuffing, rubbing out, or killing her. We’ve almost zeroed the cipher.

We notice the “T’s” tilt goofily in “Letter.” The first “T” points directly at the wobbly-appearing “e” in “BeloNGingS”—it says, “We belong together.” The second “T” points at the area between “L” and “0”—it says, “After you insert, skip L.” Additionally, the front edge of the “e” slab is an insertion marker aiming at the first “T.”

The slot between the “e” and “L” slabs shows where the “e” slab edge is aiming, and the “e” slant emphasizes the function of the slab edge. Thus, we derive: “Bet on George killing Short/Suzanne.” Because of previous work—and because Betty is now a Suzanne Degnan doll—we can reformulate the sentence to: “Bet on George murdering her.” Second-stage decipherment of the first message is underway.

Heirens [is] Dahlia’s now. Bet on George [Murman]/ Heirens murdering her. Letter to follow.

A Cleaner, Sharper Look into Ed’s First Message

Let’s get a cleaner, clearer copy of Ed’s 1st message. OK . . . Now we’ll see whether or not we missed anything. Let’s examine the top/address line; and we’ll deal with the suspicious shapes of  two slabs . . . Does anything jump out at us from the top/address line? Yes . . . At least three things. The word “OTHER” is strange. Why is this word conspicuously capitalized and italicized? The encryptor wanted us to notice it and mull it over. OK . . . The “O” is spaced to stand out from the other letters; and the “R” is oriented to stand out. The encryptor wanted us to perceive “OR” as separate from “THE” . . . In the “papers” we see a weird “p.” We’ll find a “p” in Ed’s 2nd message which looks just like this 1st message “p.” Pretty peculiar . . .

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Now let’s recheck the 2nd line. Look at words “Here” and “is”: note that each is intactly contained in a single newscutting slab, and that each of the two slabs has a conspicuous pointer in the upper right corner. And we see that Ed the Encryptor shaded each pointer. I’d say Ed did this to point peepers at pointers, and to more clearly show where each pointer points. Hmmmm . . .

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And where does each pointer point? OK, I see . . . there, and there. And there must be at least one more pointer directed into the address line . . . And I spy two more: that versatile, bidirectional exclamatory device, and the single left quote. So let’s draw, and find out what Ed lined up for us . . .

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Ed’s pointer targets are: “E,” “i,” “O,” and “R.” The contextual decipherment of this is: “I/Ed or . . .” You and I know “E” means “Ed.” Neither of us knew this on receipt of Ed Burns’ 1st message. But Ed’s three messages comprise a trilogy, not three unrelated messages. Several times in his next two messages, Ed will assure us that sans “S” in the blend, “E = Ed” is truth throughout his trilogy. So we aren’t forsaking rigor in using the equation in decryption of Ed’s 1st Black Dahlia trilogy installment . . .

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Third-stage decipherment of the 1st message:

                  I/Ed or Heirens [is] Dahlia’s now. Bet on George [Murman]/Heirens murdering her. Letter to follow.

 

The Symbolic Love Triangles in Ed’s First Message

Wow! Crypto-guy Ed Burns was resourceful with dummy data. And we are not finished with his 1st message. So let’s erase pointer lines and rescope his 1st message . . . And while rescoping, let’s cogitate these ponderables: (1) A hybrid cryptogram might mix crypto text with crypto graphics; (2) Ed’s 1st cryptogram already has Ed Burns competing with Heirens for the Dahlia’s affection . . . OK . . . we’re still eyeballing . . . And we’re searching for some rectilinear graphic which alludes to a Burns, Heirens, Black Dahlia competition/triangle. We’d expect Ed to use initials to define sides or vertices . . . And sure enough, we “see” two triangles defined by initials of the Black Dahlia-murder makers.

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Let’s draw the two triangles, then survey the geometric situation . . . Are these triangles a random fluke? Don’t bet on it. Odds against it are prohibitive, like odds against Dahlia remains having been remains of two women. Can we be sure of this? Absolutely . . . Here’s why:

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They’re two triangles in close proximity; they’re isosceles triangles; they’re similar triangles; they were born in a cryptographical neighborhood; they ditto neighborhood gossip. Burns ensured that thinking people of at least average intelligence would deduce that these triangles were not born of chance.

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The larger triangle has vertices E, S and B. This triangle lends itself to a legwise interpretation. Encryptor Ed saw the three legs of this “love” triangle as the players: rightside-leg ES equals Elizabeth Short; leftside-leg EB equals Ed B. Elizabeth and Ed share vertex E.

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Decryption of the larger triangle is:

Elizabeth Short and Ed B. are in a triangle.

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The smaller triangle has vertices E, G and B. Ed saw the three vertices of  this love triangle as the players: vertex E equals Ed;  vertex G equals George; vertex B equals Betty. Decryption of the smaller triangle is:

Ed, George [Murman], and Betty are in a triangle.

A Deeper Look into Ed’s Second Message

At first glimpse of this message we saw essential content. But more was going on than Avenger/Grumman/G Murman anagrammatism. In his 1st message, Ed sank a broken word of his true message in a sea of dissimilarity. In his 3rd message, start letters of words he truly wanted to say were start letters of “dummy” words. And he had throwaway data: the words in small, dull print. These are common encryption methods. There are many methods with countless variations. Last letters of dummy words could be start letters in a hidden message. If there’s a pattern, the data is decipherable. And a key would be helpful. In Ed’s case, the constant key/theme was “Suzanne Degnan murder.” Like Finibrown said, this message starts with an allusion to Heirens. And Ed has his “insertion marker”: a T-stem aimed at the missing N . . .

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Let’s draw a line through the middle of letters ending the first two lines. Let’s next draw a line through the letter in the middle of the 2nd line and the letter ending the 3rd line. Our two lines look to be perfectly parallel. As if Ed had planned it. He had. One line connects a G and an M, the other line connects an S and a D.

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And familiar players in Ed’s twisted show are about to show: George Murman and Suzanne Degnan. And we see that any Wed A.M. would’ve been fine w’ Ed.

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Second-stage decipherment of the 2nd message is:

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Heirens, George Murman, and Suzanne Degnan, in parallel w’ Ed, had Murder Man fun at police: George Murman/Heirens murdered the Black Dahlia.

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Why didn’t Ed tip us off about the WED to w’ Ed thing? He did. The top of W isn’t as high as the top of E, but with days of the week and with all other words in Ed’s first four lines, the first letter is the highest letter. Look at J in Jan.

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Why didn’t W in WED get the same treatment? Because cap E in “w’ Ed” didn’t want it. But the Degnan trio did want to be w’ Ed for parallelism.

Cryptography on the Address Side, Part 1

Part 1 is a primer for Part 2. It sizes up the Euclidean situation

The expert is eyeballing the Avenger side of the postcard. But did he scan the address side? Ed Burns took his cryptology to the far side of his Dahlia Murder Sphere. I think we should backstop the expert. See the Xerox of the address side of the card? Give it your best-shot perusal . . .

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Well, did you see them? The gang’s all there: Elizabeth Short and Ed Burns, and William Heirens and even the murder motive are there symbolically . . .

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You didn’t see all of them? That’s OK, we’ll puzzle out Ed’s cryptowork piece by piece. Scene-stealer Ed is in the letter column directly above the peculiar splotch mark. The bold mark is under an Examiner E and the Broadway D. This mark serves as a Burns “T function”: it’s a tricky column marker . . .

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And surely it is pure coincidence that the perfectly columnated “ED” letters are directly above the bold mark. Riiiiight! You and I know it’s pure Ed Burns. Let’s pretend we don’t know that. Let’s say the letters refer to an “Ed,” or to someone with initials “E, D” or “D, E.”

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OK, what is the wispy mark in the lower left corner all about? Measurement shows that the goofy marks plus the apex of the LA A define a perfect isosceles triangle, with the marks defining the base.

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Address-side encryption is just about triangles? No. If so, the marks would be look-alikes. This encryption is about letters E and D, and triangles . . .

Cryptography on the Address Side, Part 2

In Part 1 we found three points in need of a perfect isosceles triangle. Let’s let them define a perfect isosceles triangle. The encryptor made the triangle isosceles so that: (1) LA A and the strange marks would loom as potential vertices; (2) There would be no doubt that the triangle was “meant to be.”

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But we drew two triangles. After we drew the 1st one, two “Is” inspired us to keep drawing. The 1st “1” points at the LA A, and says: “Here’s the apex vertex of an isosceles triangle.” The 4th “1” points at cap E, and says: “Make this guy an apex vertex in an isosceles triangle.” We did.

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The “alpha” triangle has vertices E, S, and B. Letters “E” and “S” allude to Elizabeth Short. We now can resolve that ambiguity involving letters “D” and “E.” Simple logic tells us they allude to an “Ed.” And Ed has sent us a convoluted “love” triangle. The leftside leg, ES, is the Elizabeth Short leg. The rightside leg, EB, is the Ed B leg. Ed and Elizabeth share vertex E.

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But Ed and Elizabeth are a duo. How could they be a triangle? To Ed it was elementary: Elizabeth was a couple; she carried William Heirens into the geometry via her Degnan-murder obsession.

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The decryption of the address side supplements the decryption of the 1st message. It also smooths the segue to the 2nd-message decryption. The decryption of the 1st-message proclaims, “I/Ed or Heirens is Dahlia’s now.” Decryption of the address side of the Avenger postcard is:

Elizabeth Short and Ed B. were in a triangle.

So now we know . . . Ed Burns chose the LA Examiner because of its mailing address: “L. A. Examiner, 1111 S. Broadway” provided fertile fodder for his Black cryptography. OK, Black Dahlia-puzzle fans, let’s flip the postcard and deal with Ed’s 2nd/Avenger message . . .

The Deepest Gaze into Ed’s Second Message

Let’s erase those two parallel-line pairs we drew above, and give this message another perusal. It looks like Burns used a ball-point pen, a 1947 novelty. And he used boldness to make several letters conspicuous. Stuff that stands out: 2nd “E” in “HERE”; “d” in “Had”; “B” in “Black”; “S” in “iS”; “u” in “Fun”; “D’ in “Dahlia.” And “ing” in “Turning,” and the “10” stand out. Ed probably inked stand-out characters a different color from the others: maybe black instead of blue.

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Let’s draw a new pair of parallel lines. Ed was a consistent parallelism freak in this message. And Ed showed inter-message consistency, too. We see a zero under an “ing,” just like in his 1st message. This time the pointer is a “1,” not a “T.” But the zero-ing function is the same. We’ll draw our “winch lines.”

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And we have something with exactly the same form as “GingS” in the 1st message. The difference is in detail. The operands in the 1st message, G and S, are simple. The operands in the 2nd message are compound and are located within, or are bracketed by, the two parallel lines.

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Let’s grab the data found in corresponding message-line locs within the parallel lines. We get “Su D” from the right parallel, and “Ed B” from the left parallel. We’ll next take data from the “Turning” line. From the parallel to the operator “ing,” we find “urn.” Concatenating it with “Ed B.” we have “Ed Burn.”

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Now we see why Ed put the “10” to the right of center, under “ing.” He wanted us to extend the vector defined by “1” to the “s.” He was telling us to fuse “s” with “Burn” to form his last name. Now we know his full name. It was: “Ed Burns.” And Ed Burns is zeroing/murdering Suzanne Degnan in this fun-at-police message.

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Third-stage decipherment of the 2nd message is:

Heirens, George Murman, and Suzanne Degnan, in parallel w’ Ed, had Murder Man fun at police: Ed Burns murdering Suzanne Degnan [while] George Murman/Heirens murdered the Black Dahlia.

A Down-to-Earth Look at Ed Burns’ Second Message

Let’s erase those lines we drew previously and rescope Burns’ 2nd message. hmmmmm . . . I think there’s more encryption in this material. That’s cool, not a problem. Let’s locate and number the data points of interest. Is this fascinating stuff or what? Maybe it’s a manifestation of cryptophrenetic psychosis. No. This is sane and simple. Let’s ponder numbered data.

Points of Interest

• • Number 1: Goofy crossbar on A, like a terminus at the right. Suspicious, locus-defining(?) dot to the left.

• • Number 2: Locus-defining(?) dot.

• • Number 3: Locus-deflnlng(?) dot.

• • Number 4: Goofy crossbar on A; looks like a terminus or an “X” at the right. Odd, backward-leaning L to the left.

• • Number 5: Bold, peculiar P. Mysterious diagonal through P-stem; conjures up an X. Overly bold T to the left.

• • Number 6: Super-suspicious, locus-deflnlng(?) dot. Note the wispy line segment passing through the dot. I think Ed Burns was handing us a heavy hint.

• • Number 7: Same as #6.

• • Number 8: Same as #6.

• • Number 9: Same as #6, plus ultra-bold R to low-left.

The Street Scene in Ed Burns’ Second Message

Up above, we numbered, then pondered points of intrigue. Now we know what Ed was up to. Let’s erase numbers and draw lines.

Hokus pokus . . . A street map of the Black Dahlia exposition-site locale! Ed was a closet-case cryptological cartographer.

Ed’s Street-Smart Map Legend

• • • Norton Avenue: “N” In “JAN.”

• • • Dahlia’s remains: Dot of “I” in “TURNING.”

• • • Grayburn Avenue: “G” in “TURNING.”

• • • Edgehill Drive: “E” In “WED.”

• • • Degnan Boulevard: “D” in “HAD.”

• • • Thirty-Ninth Street: “29” with modifiable “2.”

• • • Coliseum Street: Reading bottom-up along line, “L,” “I,” and “S” as in “Col. ISeum.”

• • • Big Red Car tracks: Blotto-bold “T.”

• • • Exposition Boulevard: Reading bottom-up along line, we get X from rightside of “A” in “DAHLIA” or from diagonal through “P.” Then, we have an expositional “Xpo.” Ed likely used the locus-defining dot to the right to tell us to use the lower dot after “o” as a period.
    • Rodeo Road: Bodaciously bold “R.”

Ed ingeniously labeled eight streets and one railway. He even marked where he placed the Dahlia remains! Notice how the Norton line intersects the “N” uprights. See how the Grayburn line skims tops of “1” and “N.” Note how the Edgehill line grazes the bottom of “10,” the top of “A” and the bottom of “W.” Note that the 39th Street line goes through deliberate gaps between “U” and “R,” and “2” and “9.” Why was Ed Burns so meticulous? So we puzzlers would have no doubt: this map was meant to be . . .

The Outdoor Crime Scene in Ed’s Second Message

Ed Burns’ Custom street map of the Dahlia Expo locale: It’s 1947; this locale is “new”; maps differ in location of Rodeo Road, Burns’ map suggests he had examined the 1/16/47 Examiner. This is one of five clues that Ed monitored voluminous Dahlia reportage in the LA Ex’ from BD Day+1…

A Final Dose of Ed Burns’ Second Message

Ed’s 2nd Message points to both Black Dahlia crime scenes …

Let’s resurrect Burns’ original 2nd message, then draw three lines. OK. Now we’ll complete our analysis and decryption of the Avenger message . . .

  Previously, we numbered points of interest. We didn’t number the dot under the zero of “10.” And we didn’t use this dot when we drew streets and trolley tracks. Why? We didn’t need it; we’d used it. Look at our earlier message. The dot and the gap at the top of the zero defined the rightmost winch line . . . Now look at the Xerox above. Note the two “pencil swipes”: one just above the “W,” the other 3/8″ away and at 11 o’clock from the “W.” We did not number these marks. They’re clues from Ed. The mark near “W” conjures up an apostrophe. It clues us that “w’ Ed” is the correct decryption for “Wed.” And the larger mark suggests a compass–pencil arc, and a basic way to draw parallel lines. It does suggestively tickle a parallel . . .

Dial H for Abattoir

  Earlier, we saw how cipher-tongue’d Ed told of a murder. He used compound operands to represent players, and a zero w/ suffix to represent the murder/zeroing. Ed could’ve arranged the primary elements in many ways. He set them up to pattern the symbolic “H” we drew in the above Xerox. Huge “H” alludes to the Black Dahlia bisection sanctum; and that “A” touching the right side of “H” is allusive. This will be clarified upon decryption of Ed Burns’ 3rd message. Put this in your bank: “H” and “A” hang together.

Ed’s Third Message/DahliaMurder Confession

Words “changed,” “would,” “Deal,” and “was” are in smallish, dull print. This tells us that: the 3rd Dahlia message is a dummy message; more than one true message is enciphered in it; the data is recycled between true messages. OK, we have a hybrid-variety cipher. Depending on the message being deciphered, we ignore one or more of the flagged words and maybe data to their left, or use the words as punctuation.

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Note that “Deal” is capped. A killer is giving a hint: “Deal” deciphers to a proper word. But he didn’t want it to be too unambiguous for us. He didn’t want it to beget an unambiguous gassing for himself.

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And remember: give/G/George, me/M/Murman, a/a/and, square/S/Suzanne, Deal/D/Degnan. The killer educated us with previous Degnan allusions. And he cut “I”s, not “L”s, for “kiIIing.” He was saying I/he was in the killing. He did not say “murder”: no way to cut I/himself Into it.

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And he didn’t explicitly say he’d done in the Dahlia. He wanted to survive this bombshell: “justified” = “just if i ed” = “just, if I Ed.” The cuttings note had a sneaky space between “t” and “i,” so Ed gave a hint.

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Ed gave another hint when he put “I” in the killing. “I” in “kiIIing” sans “if I Ed” equals so what, and vice versa. And the ghostly question mark above “ied” in “justified” is one more hot clue from Ed. He’s saying there’s cryptic stuff in this area, we’d better have our thinking caps on . . .

Deciphered confession

Have [regained] my mind, you/LAPD. [This was] not George Murman and Suzanne Degnan. Dahlia murder I did was just, if I [am] Ed.

A Second Hidden Message

A “.” ends the 2nd line in the dummy message. Syntax mode in the message is quasi-double space, save the “a.” combo. Ed wants us to think “next message” and read his 2nd line as: “you would not give me a/ass/sex.” He hopes we now will perceive the gap in ” y o,” decrypt “y ou” to “why you” and elaborate our sexual line to: “why you would not give me sex.” In this, we have cause, and ready Eddy would assert the murder was justified. Libidinous Ed must’ve meant this message for the Dahlia only:

Have changed my mind [about] why you would not give me sex. [Your] murder, which I committed, was justified.

A Ground-level Look at Ed’s Third Message

Why are punctuation symbols distanced from words? Did Ed give us a connect-the-dots puzzle? Let’s let his spacey punctuation and the not-superfluous dot above “was” define three lines . . .

“Abracadabra, a map of the Dahlia Expo area!” Ed used “no” in “not” to label Norton Avenue; he used “De” in “Deal” to label Degnan Boulevard. And the precisely located Norton line bisects a dot. As a stab at geometry noir, Ed used the dot of “i” in “give” to accurately show where he’d placed the Black Dahlia remains! He used a comma after “mind” to avoid a two-dot dilemma in the Dahlia-dot line.

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Ed the Scrabbler painstakingly plotted the 39th Street line to sever “changed” in a way that gives us an “Ed” for “Ed.”

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And nonpareil-cartographer Ed “formally” affixed his name on his mapwork. The dot ending the last line is twice as big as the other dots. It’s the correct size for a Morse-code dot. It’s at the bottom, where a map maker’s name might be. A Morse-code one dot equals “e” or “E,” and it means “Ed” on this diabolic map.

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Ed telephoned LAPD once. Part of his half of the phone duel maybe went about like this: “. . . I am the real killer. Are you for real? Did you find the maps of Degnanland I sent you? . . . Silence. Cooool. But if you are a real dick, you might wonder about the ‘ve’ word partials I glued on one map. Here’s a clue: my ‘ve’ does not mean ‘Victory in Europe…'”

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WE know, Ed. Your “ve” means “Victory for Ed.” And you used it two times: once for each Black Dahlia crime scene.

The Indoor Crime Scene in Ed’s Third Message, Part 1

Let’s erase those lines we drew previously and rescope Ed’s 3rd message . . .

“Ed’s two victory flags do stand out.” In post-WW II America, victory slogans were common. By “ve,” Ed actually might have had a succinct “Victorious Ed” in mind . . .

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Note that the four small, dull-print words seem to cordon off the three big, bold-print words to their left. It’s as if they’re cordoning off a crime scene. They are! Words “HAve,” “you,” and “square” hold a symbolic Black Dahlia crime scene.

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So why is “square” so big and bold? Was Ed telling us to draw a square or something squarish? Yes. Let’s eyeball the crime-site area for clues . . . OK, we see it.

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Ed wanted us to draw four straight lines:

• Line 1 starts at “H” and rides the “A” cross-beam, grazes the “v” point, and stops at “e.”
• Line 2 starts at “e” and skims the right side of the “r” stem, stopping at the bottom of “r.”
• Line 3 starts at the bottom of “r,” grazes “qua” cavern bottoms, and stops at “s.”
• Line 4 starts at “s” and brushes the left side of “H,” stopping where line 1 began.

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Ed Burns was precise as usual. He gave us the cryptic locus of the perfect rectangle.

The Indoor Crime Scene in Ed’s Third Message, Part 2

Just a page ago, Ed Burns provided a pattern for a perfect rectangle. Let’s draw . . .

“We have a rectangle. Is it perfect? Let’s draw diagonals and find out . . . They intersect in the dead-center. Perfection: not an accident. And a “u” is in the middle of the intersection. No accident. Let’s extract data . . .”

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Clockwise from rectangle corners, we get “H,” “e,” “r,” “s,” and “H,” or “Hersh.” From the center, we get “u.”

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In the vowels, I see two individuals we know. And this is the indoor Black Dahlia crime scene via Ed Burns’ rectangle. Let’s do what Ed wanted: illuminate the Dahlia and hide Ed; refine vowels “u” and “e” to their contextual equivalents . . .

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Vowel “u” is the self-sufficient part of “you” in “you would not give me a/ass/sex.” She’s the Dahlia. Let’s spotlight her as herself . . . OK. Now we have the Dahlia in the rectangle.

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Vowel “e” is the I of the encryptor: Victorious Ed. He’s the “I” in “Dahlia kiIIing” and the “i” in “just if i ed.” We’ll hide him as “i,” his equivalent . . . OK, Ed’s hidden. Now we extract the word “Hirsh” from the corners of the rectangle. Now we have what Ed had in mind for us . . .

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How’d we read Ed’s mind? We trailed the ghostly question mark to Ed’s 3rd meaning of “just if i ed.” Ed was trying to tell us that kiIIing was [done] only when i [was] Ed. In other words, Ed wanted us to use “i” for “e” in his killing-site rectangle.

The Indoor Crime Scene in Ed’s Third Message, Part 3

“Now we have a symbolic hotel with a symbolic Dahlia inside it. We have a victory flag labeling the hotel a crime scene, with Ed the victor. And we have the word “Hirsh.” We got “Hirsh” from the corners of the hotel. Is that a hot clue about the “A” to the right of “H”? Yes. “H” and “A” go together. And with “A,” Ed was alluding to “Apts.,” trust me on this.”

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OK . . . Then what’s the scoop on “Hirsh Apts.”? The scoop is that “Hirsh Apts.” is a word-combo the Black Dahlia and Ed Burns saw many times. They saw the combo every time they went to their secret place . . .

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The Dahlia and Ed saw the striking Hirsh Apts. lettering on the front of the hotel at 300 East Washington. And they saw it on the westerly side of the old building. They couldn’t miss the Hirsh Apts. lettering. It was as conspicuous as a marquee, but it was not garish: it exuded somber vibes, a la lettering on a mausoleum.

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Two things about the hotel on Washington stood out: the moody lettering on the front and side; the squarish shape. Ed alluded to these impressional features to inform us that the building at 300 East Washington was the Black Dahlia slaying site. The floor print of the place was a long, narrow rectangle, just like the “square” Ed plotted for us.

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Ed led us to his Black Dahlia death chamber! And he did more than that: he told us why he killed the Dahlia. Ed’s “ve” crimescene victory flags come with a where and a why. The why of this one is on the line with “u,” the Dahlia. This why was stated above in an isolated, personalized decryption. I’m certain Ed did recite much, if not all, of his trilogy to a roped-and-gagged Dahlia in the “Hirsh.”

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Isolated decipherment of Ed’s indoor Black Dahlia crime-scene cryptography: I/Ed killed the Dahlia in a hotel at 300 East Washington.

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Ed Burns’ Hirsh crime scene power-snuffs all doubt about the identity of UnID’d Man. Here’s why . . . LAPD showed the famous photos to Hirsh managers. The managers ID’d the man in the pix as the hombre who registered in the Hirsh with the Dahlia on BD Day-3. LAPD called the hombre “unID’d,” and UnID’d Man was born. But by BD Day-1, one Hirsh manager was ready to call the man “dead”: man’s auto was there, door was locked, no answer from room. And Ed would inform us that the Hirsh had been the abattoir. UnID’d Man was Ed Burns. Positively!

The Why Beneath Ed’s Cryptic Outdoor Crime’ Scene

We know the’ why of Ed Burns’ outdoor crime scene. But did he tell us the why? Ed was a master data-recycler. Let’s eye the picture. Maybe Ed recycled up heavy stuff about this one…

The Big Picture

“We see familiar geometry. The second-message ‘love’ triangle is defined. Let’s draw. The Dahlia’s remains define the apex. The sides are ‘g,’ ‘ve,’ and ‘Dahlia’: George Murman, Victorious Ed, and the Dahlia, respectively.”

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This full definition of the obsessional-love triangle confirms two assertions made or implied previously:

1. The third actor in the triangle is George Murman/William Heirens, a madding dynamic of the Dahlia’s Degnan-murder obsession.
2. The Degnan Boulevard-locality of the Black Dahlia expo site was an allusion to the Suzanne Degnan murder.

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The “ve” near the vertex declares Ed Burns the victor in the triangle: Ed dictated where and how Heirens and the Dahlia would be eternal lovers.

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Decryption of the display-site triangle is: Ed, the Dahlia and [Degnan Hero] George Murman were in a triangle. Ed “won” and, to proclaim victory, displayed the Black Dahlia remains in a Degnan Boulevard lovers’ lane.

The “What” of Ed’s and Others’ Cryptograms

Ed was a clever cipherer, but not an innovator. All techniques embodied in his hybrid cryptograms/ciphers have been around for at least 400 years. Cryptology is an old science. There are two main types of cryptosystems: transposition and substitution. There are countless variations of each type. In a transposition system, elements of the original data, plaintext, are rearranged to form ciphertext. A transformation used in the US Civil War is the “Rail-fence,” in which the original text is rearranged, two lines at a time, such that: the 1st, 3rd . . . elements go into one line; the 2nd, 4th . . . elements go into the following line. An example:

Plaintext——————————————— Ciphertext WHEREIS——————————————- WEESHDT THEDATA———————————————–HRITEAA

The substitution systems involve substitution of ciphertext for plaintext. The ciphertext can be obtained in many ways. One way involves shifting the alphabet, with “wraparound.” An example, where the cipher alphabet equals the plain alphabet shifted six places to the right:

Plain alphabet ….ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Cipher alphabet .UVWXYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST

Plaintext: WHEREISTHEDATA —Ciphertext: QBYLYCMNBYXUNU

The “ZODIAC killer” of the late 1960s used this type of cipher in some messages he mailed to San Francisco-area newspapers. And the 1947 Black Dahlia killer used another type of cipher in cryptograms he sent to LAPD and the LA Examiner. His cerebral ciphers fall under the category of “concealment systems.” These systems include the various ways of disguising a secret text or meaning. A message or code might be hidden in the 1st letters of words in an otherwise innocuous text such as: “Give me a square deal.” Secret text might be concealed within the last letters of words in cover text, or within the 2nd or 3rd letters, or cryptic text might be indicated by pin pricks above significant letters or by shaded letters: we saw this in Ed’s 2nd message. And secret text might be hidden in last letters of lines, or along “routes”, through cover text: we saw this in Ed’s 2nd message. Grilles have been used in placement of elements of a secret text, after which the rest of the innocent cover/dummy text was filled in: Ed might have utilized a grille . . . And sage Sir Francis Bacon was doing concealment systeming 350 years before Ed Burns. One of the most famous concealment ciphers was invented by Bacon. He devised a 5-place-binary-counter/alphabet table where 00000 corresponds to A, 00001 corresponds to B, 00010 corresponds to C, 00011 corresponds to D, 00100 corresponds to E, and so on . . . And with upper-case letters to represent “0”s, and lower-case letters to represent “1”s, and a conceptual lumping of dummy-message letters into groups of five, Sir Francis was into concealment. An example:

Baconian dummy text …………………….. Baconian secret message EVeryTHiNG HeRe iS fine …………………………………….HELP

Crypto-man Ed’s Bag of Tricks

Ed used two allusions and one anagram in his cryptograms; and S, D, G, and M could be taken as code or more allusions. These were related to the Degnan key. Where did Ed get the idea about burying the “N-0-W” in the flummoxingly disparate setting? Maybe from magazine puzzles or color-blindness tests most of us scoped when we were in grade school. And where did Ed get the idea for “0s” that are conjoining with “ings”? Maybe from the same puzzle series I saw in LA newspapers in the late 1930s and 1940s. One puzzle had a sketch of a cat and a lemon with a “+” sign between them. The answer: “Sourpuss.” Another puzzle showed a sketch of a rolling truck and roadside Burma Shave-type signs. On the signs: +ing _ _ _ _the _ _ _ _ _ _The correct answer: “Trucking down the avenue.”

The “Why” of Ed’s and Others’ Messages/Cryptograms

William Heirens scrawled a plain-language message on a wall, as a call for help. And Heirens sent a ransom note, evidently in a fog of confusion. Zodiac sent cryptograms and plain-language messages to three San Francisco-area newspapers. The ciphers were of the substitution type: an amateur cryptographer’s delight. The wily Zodiac issued murderous threats to prod newspapers to print his ego tonic. I think the Zodiac got off by scaring the public, jibing and frustrating the police, and luring Bay-Area amateurs into a code-breaking frenzy. His cryptograms gave him a feeling of empowerment and control. But a rejection-zapped Ed Burns sent a different variety of cryptogram. His thing with Betty began as symbiosis. It became sick, unrequited love. I think Ed’s arcane trilogy was to snuff all doubt about the five-sided triangle in Ed’s one-sided-love finale with Elizabeth Short.

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It’s now obvious that almost everything in Ed’s messages was put there with purposefulness and precision. But virtually no one knew that all they were seeing was dummy text. Ed’s concealment ciphers concealed. But why expend brain juice to construct this type of cipher: why didn’t Ed do a no-brainer stunt, like making substitution ciphers? Ed did not make his serial brainchild for the general public. Why did he make it? The answer is buried near the Dahlia death lot, in a tour-bus-magnet LA oddity. Few people ever realized that this Angeles landmark’s sky-duster columns represent masts in an allusion to an old sailing ship. But this didn’t matter to Simon Rodia. Simon wasn’t playing to an audience of Los Angelenos. He built the structures as a monument to his love.

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And Simon Rodia and his ladylove, Italy, knew the why of the fabulous formations. They were her Taj Mahal. Most people would call them the Watts Towers… Ed Burns’ trilogy was an intrinsic part of the Suzanne Degnan-murder mimicry. And this mimicry was Ed’s Taj Mahal for Elizabeth Short. Like Simon Rodia’s towers, it was meant for a select audience.

Ed’s trilogy was an affirmation for the few who would be privy to his occult monument to his love. Ed knew that some of us who would “see” his Taj Macabre might have lingering doubts, and wonder: “Can this be? Did the Black Dahlia murderer actually do this outre thing?”

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Ed Burns’ inside story gives us the answer: “YES!”  

Mumbo Jumbo and Common Sense

A “Down the Rabbit Hole” and “Through the Looking?Glass” cryptanalysis of Ed Burns ‘ “Malice in Howlywoodland” drama.

  Some people wonder whether the messages are cryptograms having decryption that is derived in this book. My wonderment zapper is an elixir containing a paradox, a saw, and a vouty of zonk talk. The cull: Did any of the trilogy messages come from a kook? Very unlikely. Ed Burns ensured that a thinking Dahlia-case sleuth would deduce that all of these messages likely came from the Dahlia killer. With his first message, Ed mailed the Dahlia’s birth record. The word “papers” in this message contains an oddball “p,” with a diagonal bisecting the stem: Ed was prevalidating his second-to-be message. In Ed’s second message, “police” “p” is a lookalike of his first-message “papers” “p,” and “police” “p” has a diagonal through the stem. Burns’ second-message long-stem “B” mocks the Burns “B” he’d branded on the Dahlia’s forehead.

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Burns mailed his third message to LAPD: a clue in itself. Would a “publicity”-hound kook send a publicity solicitation to the destination most apt to swallow it up and keep it a secret? No. In his third message, Ed plotted a map with Dahlia-remains i-dot: echoes of a map he had plotted in his second message. And Burns’ suicide-note signoff, “Sorry mare,” was his sayonara to the metaphoric horse he had modeled: an allusion to an LAPD secret; ding, dong, the wicked werewolf was dead. So we were given a killer culler, from the killer!

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The paradox: LAvi Eja is a cryptogram carper because “Dahlia case is closed” sounds strange to her; the strange case remains open in 2003 because Vesti Dosazules didn’t decrypt Dahlia-case cryptograms. A shrilly saw says: “You don’t get it? Do I have to draw you pictures?” Hey. How about those triangles on the address side of the Avenger postcard… And that rad rectangle and triumphal triangle in the 3rd message were picturesque. And how do you like Gnarly Knifeman’s maps of the display area? Those are pictures Ed dotted for us. I bet he capped “Deal” but not “not” to steer us to Degnan Boulevard, not Norton Avenue. And why did Ed mount the “ve” word partials high on word poles? I say Burns had his Victory-for-Ed flags flying.

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Remember the comics who’d mix moony mumbo jumbo and spoonerism with their spiel? The first time they’d wap us with linguileptic rebop we’d almost understand what they might have uttered, and we’d wonder . . . Are my ears freaking out? Did he atter thut in the Linguige Anguish? . . . The next time they’d do it we’d wax wiser, and soon we’d be hip to their shtick. Their being on stage was a clue . . . So Ed Burns got on stage by displaying a Suzanne Degnan doll in a Degnan Boulevard lovers’ lane.

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Then he sent us a Degnan-theme cryptogram. Then he hit us with another Degnan-theme cryptogram. Then he sent a 3rd Degnan-theme cryptogram, and felt bad vibes. The Suzanne Degnan homicide had made headline news in 1946 LA, but no one in 1947 LA fathomed the obvious Degnan-murder symbology: a scalpelture of Suzanne Degnan in a Degnan Boulevard locale. Ed was thinkin’ weird stuff, but he wasn’t a lycanthrope so he bopped us with another cryptogram. This one bared his full name in plain English.

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Now Ed figured we’d tune in his show. Some folks may ponder . . . How do we know the decryptions are correct? My response: “I’ll ask the decryptor . . .OK. Here’s a cryptologic axiom: decryption validity and volume of same-likely-source input data are directly proportional. The decryptions you are judging evolved from a lot of input data. And the decryptions “self-check.” They are linked by story, theme, player set, and a sequence as sure as left-to-right order of N, O, and W in the 1st decryption. The 1st decryption advises: ‘Bet on George murdering her.’ And George offs her in the 2nd-decryption murder fun. This victim-swapping snuff stuff cuts George Murman and Suzanne Degnan into the diablo dance.

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In the 3rd decryption, Ed says George and Suzanne weren’t there at all: he’d lost his marbles but he’s OK now. The composite decryption scripts a monothematic story which jells with hushy-hushy data. No part of the above is by chance, no part of the decryption is mumbo jumbo. Common sense says the decryptions are undoubtedly correct.

Analysis of the Dahlia “Show”

In the Black Dahlia’s time there was a radio show called Let’s Pretend. A few years later, there was a TV program known as You Be The Judge. Let’s examine a Dahlia topic by a combo of these themes. We’ll pretend for circa-Black Dahlia time and judge in 21st-century time. Our topic: “Abattoir Beeline”

  Abattoir Beeline Let’s pretend that bloody sheets and bloodstained women’s clothes were found in a structure suspected to be the Dahlia death place. Let’s pretend the clothes were the Dahlia’s style and size. Let’s pretend the structure was on a busy street and less than a 15 minutes’ drive from the Dahlia death lot. Let’s pretend that the structure was on a “beeline” from the lot. What’s a “beeline”? In Cartesian Coordinates and in Euclidean space, a straight line can link any two points. Let’s consult a dictionary.

My word book says: “beeline, a direct route traveled quickly.” And about “direct,” my book says: “. . . proceeding in a straight line or by the shortest route; undeviating…” The Abattoir on the Beeline The “pretend” above talked of driving in a car, not traveling via a brain movie following map grid lines where streets may not exist. And it follows ’47 LA streets. Let’s pretend we drive to the lot from say, 31st and San Pedro. We’ll have to jog north to Adams or south to Jefferson before we can even begin our westward route to the lot. And then we’ll be paralleling Washington which would be faster and less than a mile to the north.

Pretend you use Jefferson from 31st and San Pedro, and I use Washington from 300 East Washington. It’ll seem like a song: you use the low road and I’ll use the high road, and I’ll get to Shortland before you. The San Pedro Street-area start would be frustrating. Exposition overlays a map grid line but it doesn’t start to beeline westward ’til the USC area. But you want to go by Exposition while I go by Washington? It’ll be like an old tune again: you go the low road and I go the high road and I get to Lotland before you. The Metro Blue Line would wheel on Washington for good reason . . . Ed’s likely route from the hotel to the show site: Washington west to Crenshaw.

Crenshaw south to Coliseum, Coliseum east to Norton . . . lights off, roll south a half-block . .. The structure on East Washington was on a busy street and less than a 15 minutes’ drive to the Degnan-locale lot. The hotel-lot route was as close to a “beeline” as you could get. LAPD sleuths had to suspect that the hotel on Washington was the Dahlia death chamber: they knew that Betty and Ed had checked into the hotel three days before BD Day; they also knew that the doomed duo had used the hotel several times in late-’46. So you be the judge . . . Does the Washington Boulevard hotel match the “let’s pretend” structure? The Bundle in the Abattoir About those bloody sheets and bloodstained clothes . . . Does that sound like the Ed Burns we know? Didn’t he have the Dahlia murder planned? Yes, he did. But think about what the Dahlia told us previously: she thought Ed checked out three Harbor-area hotels because managers of “their” hotel sensed spooky vibes emanating from the “Barnes'” room, and got nervous.

So let me run a let’s pretend scenario by you, and you be the judge . . . Everything’s jake until late in the second day of the murder process when Ed hears knocking on the door. He first ignores it, as he’d ignored the ringing of the phone a while ago. But the knocking continues and Ed hears, “Mr. and Mrs. Barnes . . . Did you hear the phone? Can you hear me? . . . Is everything OK?”

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Ed starts to freak, but the knocking stops and the knocker goes away. Ed returns to “the process” and has just begun to settle back into things when the manager comes back and knocks, and hollers his inquiries through the door. And Ed hears something about getting a key.

Ed hasn’t completed his black task and he momentarily panics. But he calms down. The Dahlia is Liz and Beth by now. He can put her in the suitcases and flee the scene. But the scene’s a bloody mess. Ed commandeers sheets and frantically cleans and wipes, then places Tweedle Duo in her two suitcases and realizes he has no suitcase space for Betty’s clothes or the bloody sheets.

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And the manager might soon return with a key . . . What can Ed do? Ed looks for and finds an attic access in a tiny closet space. Ed stands on a chair and moves the access door aside, then gets down and bundles all the bloody stuff in a ball, then gets himself and the bloody cotton ball onto the chair and pushes a ball of blood and sheets and clothes into the attic, and clear of the access area.

Ed then slides the attic-access door back into place and gets down from the chair. Ed does frenetic final cleanup, then peers through the organdy curtain… No manager cometh. Ed opens the front door, lifts his ladylove and goes out the door, sets the luggage down, shuts and locks the door, grabs the ponderously heavy suitcases and walks to the car and loads it, and is on his way to the Inglewood area.

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But Ed Burns doesn’t forget about the grotesque bundle in the attic on East Washington. And as the Art Bisecto to the west spawns nightmares, Ed motors back to the abattoir.

Let’s pretend he gets into the room out of eyeshot of the managers and puts suspicion-snuffing sheets he’s scrounged into place. Right now Ed wants to get that stuff out of the attic and into the car. But he decides to check on activity of the managers, to avoid any “embarrassing” interruptions. Ed goes to the office and informs a manager he’s back and is waiting for his wife.

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The manager scares jumpy Ed by saying, “We thought you were dead.” Shaky-with-good reason, Ed jackrabbits out of the area, leaving the bundle in the attic of the cheap hotel. The manager will be a gremlin, and Ed realizes it . . . Wrong with Eversharp, Mr. J, you didn’t say which “you.”

OK, call the police. So they shake down the room, go into the attic, find the stuff, and can’t prove it’s her blood or her clothes, and can’t lift prints. They can’t prove a thing. You be the judge . . . Did the stashed-sheet scenario fit the Black Dahlia Story in combo with the “beeline” topic? The Baring of the Abattoir Let’s pretend that 1947 LAPD Homicide had the Abattoir Beeline data from week two of the Dahlia case. Let’s pretend LAPD disclosed the info to a 1949 Grand Jury. LAPD scorecard on six Ripperesque murders of LA women, from ’44 to ’49: Blader Jacks, 6; Friday Joes, 0. Why would LAPD have revealed the abattoir data? To show some progress on the Dahlia case?

LAPD is reluctant to bare info on the case to this day. Is LAPD still in case-protection mode? I say: no; LAPD lawmen who need to know do know that the Dahlia killer suicided in March 1947. The abattoir data was real. It was but one strand in the web of circumstantial evidence LAPD had on Ed Burns. Even had LAPD not decrypted any of Ed’s messages, I’m certain 1947 LAPD knew that Ed was their man in the Dahlia case. Poignantly Ironic Finality Maybe Ed’s hotel-room lecture covered the whole Black Dahlia Story. Maybe the saga didn’t end quite like Ed’s surfside litter implied. Maybe Ed Burns and Elizabeth Short took this secret to their graves: Ed sets up his Degnan Murder Tableau, drives a safe distance from the scene lot and parks. He cleans the exteriors of the Liz and Beth suitcases, then rolls to the downtown-LA Greyhound Bus terminal.

He checks the two suitcases into a locker near the one that contains Betty’s suitcases. Ed’s evidentiary murder kit is EdBlematically occulted… In the dawning hours of suicide day, a disguised Ed reclaims his suitcases from the depot locker. He motors to a secluded spot and parks. He opens the suitcases and takes out the stained rope that bound Betty’s ankles and legs. He cuts two 4′ lengths from this rope. He puts a noose on one end of each piece, and ties 30 pounds of iron-pumper discs on the other end. Ed puts a weighted rope segment and a 10-pound “sinker” disc in each suitcase, and closes his luggage. He then drills holes in the luggage: he wants it to sink like a human with a 60-pound payload. The saw-it-all suitcases now holding the murder kit plus weighty cargo are ready for their final mission. . .

Later in the suicide morning, Ed Burns strolls onto the Venice beach, carrying his litter-to-be in a shopping bag. He places the clothes on the sand, with his suicide note in a shoe. He lays low ’til the evening Herald-Express hits the stands. He doesn’t want the final ploy of his plan to be waylaid by a curious canine or a scavenger seagull . . . All went well. The newspaper covered his effort with an item that began: “Claiming that he was the Black Dahlia killer, an unidentified man left a note stating…” At witching hour of suicide day, Ed wheels to his and Betty’s happy-place amusement park, and parks. He sits for a minute, ears “on” and eyes peeled, to get a feel for locale activity. It’s as dead as a corpse. He is the activity in the locality.

He gets out of the car, removes the luggage from the back seat, takes a deep breath, grips a memory-joggingly heavy suitcase in each hand and heads for the pier. Burns walks onto the creaking Ocean Park pier and gazes to the South. Something’s percolating a quarter-mile down the beach. Ed thinks . . . They’re looking for a suicide floater. Sorry, sports fans, you false-started . . . and I won’t float. Ed proceeds to the breezy spot on the pier where he and Betty saw a blood-red sun sink into the blue Pacific. He ruminates how they talked of shoes, and ships . . . “The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things: Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax. Of cabbages, and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot, ‘” . . . and why a rabbit cannot have wings . . . Ed opens the suitcases, takes out his weighted rope segments, and closes and locks the Liz and Beth caskets. He slips the Liz noose around his left ankle, and the Beth noose around his right ankle.

Rope that held Elizabeth Short when she died will do the same for Ed Burns. He moves caskets and discs to the edge of the pier, maneuvers to the outside of the railing, grips the coffins, then splashes into murky brine. Ed clutches the eerily bubbling murder paraphernalia as rope at his ankles tugs him inexorably downward into the gloom . . . Ed’s surreal Black Dahlia odyssey is dead. A Pandora’s Box in a Cloud of Blue Smoke LAPD is haunted by the Dahlia case. I’m sure the reason would surprise Dahlia buffs.

The truth: LAPD cops knew their man was Ed Burns; they had him, they grilled him, but they did not hold him, and suddenly he “wasn’t there” and by the time LAPD learned where he was, he’d juked justice with a salty suicide. Eddy Rabbit had given LAPD cops the slip! In a garden-variety case, a preventable truth like this is soon forgotten. But in a dahlia case that made front-page news all over the world, it left career-marring burns scars on very good cops. Has the “Burns-Scars Truth” been the case secret? Yes! What if LAPD never found physical evidence needed to make a DA happy, and never deciphered Ed’s trilogy, and King Neptune never regurgitated Burns Bunny? We would see a Dahlia case in open-case limboland, with LAPD referring to Ed Burns as “unID’d man.” We’ve seen a half-century of that.

For 54 years, LAPD has prevented the Burns-Scars Truth from leaking to the public. How would LAPD have done this? LAPD would have allowed only a select coterie of non-leakers to know the Truth. LAPD Homicide didn’t dare curtail the Dahlia investigation: LA newshawks would’ve been all over this one like petals on a dahlia blossom. So LAPD would have reined in a given non-select sleuth once non-select sleuth had gotten close to the Burns-Scars Truth. And we’re close to something … There are Los Angeles newspersons who assert that 1947 LAPD purposely subverted the Dahlia-murder investigation.

LA newsman Bill Welsh remembers persistent rumors that the Dahlia case was fixed. LA Times reporter Niesen Himmel emphatically insists that the Dahlia-homicide investigation was a “cover-up by the police department of that day.” In the decades since 1947, six different homicide detectives separately blew the whistle on a Dahlia-case cover-up. But their reports were squelched through the LAPD policy of secrecy with regard to the Dahlia case. Harry The Hat Hansen Did His Invisible-Rabbit Trick Detective William Harmon was a plainclothesman investigating the Dahlia murder. The case was two weeks old when he told his family the case was “virtually solved.” By spring he was almost ready to take his evidence to the DA. But the DA didn’t see his data. Harmon was abruptly taken off the case, ordered to turn in his notes and “never discuss the case again.”

In 1949, a grand jury heard about a Dahlia-case cover-up. LAPD detective L. Waggoner was working the “Long Beach angle” in the case. He told the grand jury that he and his partner were making “remarkable progress.” But they were abruptly reassigned to other duties without explanation. Under oath, he said: “The case could have been solved . . . [But] I was suddenly taken off the case, and I never did learn the reason why.” The detectives detected a cover-up, but never learned the why of the cover-up.

It’s a no-brainer: the why of the cover-up was the Burns-Scars Truth. Why did LAPD cover up the Truth? Solely to hide a goof? Just because of chagrin? No on both: 1947 LAPD wasn’t amateurish. The cover-up “benefited” the public, but it was done mainly in the interest of good police work. Detectives Harry Hansen and Finis Brown were topnotch professionals. By Truth time, Hansen had almost given up on finding physical evidence to warrant an arrest of Ed Burns.

But an adamant Hansen knew Burns was his man, and he had airy hopes of taking the evidence to court and closing the case. Ed was gone: sleuthhounds scenting his karma could’ve worked a data field and dug up a stiff: a liplubing sleuth-squander. So Harry pulled dead-rabbit trackers. By covering up the Truth, Harry forced Dahlia-case sleuths to sleuth in unBurns’d areas. Harry was covering all bases. This is why his card-filing and Finis’ lead-chasing went on for years after Ed’s suicide.

Had the Dahlia case reached court, sage Harry could have said: “LAPD went to the 5th dimension in a hunt for another good suspect. Ed Burns wasn’t just our ultra-likely suspect. Burns is a shoo-in for the Dahlia killer!” Harry Hansen Told Us He Knew Harry repeatedly said he “knew” who killed the Dahlia, but he made it seem like he was saying the opposite. In ’71, he told a journalist: “I know for certain that I never met the killer face to face.”

In ’79, Harry flatly told an LA Times newsman that the killer was dead. Had Harry not known the killer, then he would’ve been telling us good stuff like: “I know for certain that I never met I don’t know who face to face. And I’m sure I know not who is dead.” Reductio ad absurdum. In ’82, sly Harry said: “It was the killer’s first and last killing.” To know the kill window, Harry had to know the killer in the window. Clean Harry never said, “I don’t ‘know’ who killed the Black Dahlia.” He would have been lying. The Abortionist was Harry’s Man Via 1990s LA TV, a very-old former cohort of Harry’s gave us some intriguing info.

Harry’s Black Dahlia-case suspect was an abortionist. Harry found the man’s phone number in the Dahlia’s address book, but “the digits were slightly rearranged.” Shades of the Crypto Man, Ed Burns, AKA Maurice from “Guess Who”! Given quack credentials Ducktor Burns had earned when he’d aborted his medical training at USC, the following scenario is pregnant with probability:

LAPD ID’d the grinner in the photo-booth pics. His birth certificate name: “Ed Burns.” LAPD showed the photos to the ladies at Chancellor Apartments. Some of them recognized the man; they told LAPD he did abortions; but they didn’t know him as “Ed Burns.” Hansen’s hot hunch: Maurice, the Dahlia’s ” favorite boy friend, ” was Ed Burns. LAPD sleuthed up Burns phone number. Hansen scanned the Dahlia’s address book. “Ed Burns” was not there. “Maurice” was.

Hansen recognized the number to the right of “Maurice” as a permutation of Burns’ phone number. And how had Ed Burns made “Maurrice”? His main maneuver was to morph “Burns Ed” into “nBurs de” . . . Don’t look now, Hansen, but the rearrangement of Ed’s seven-digit phone number dittoes the rearrangement of Ed’s seven-letter name.

Please do glance back now, Black Dahlia puzzle-fans, at Ed’s suicide cryptography. The first T pointer aims at the cap E in “CONCERN.” Notice that the pointer could be extended to point at cap M in “WHOM,” as well as cap E. Note the slashy I in “IT.” If Ed’s original had a similar I in “IT,” I bet that Ed wanted us to use it as an “IT” I, then recycle it as a clue: the vertical line of “name” letters begins with cap M in the 1st line, not with cap E in the second line; cap M means “Maurice”; and Burns said: “I am Maurice/Ed Burns”

Career Closure

The LA Times reported that Harry Hansen got drunk and teary at his retirement party because the Dahlia case was the “one case he wanted to solve, the one killer he wanted to find.” Well, it was more than that. Harry found the killer, but he couldn’t close the case, and he had to keep it hush hush. It was the ’47 Truth.

Case Closure

The ’47 Truth was de facto case closure. But the custodians of Pandora’s Box keep mum about it. Decryption in this document is post-’47 truth. It heralds de facto Black Dahlia-case closure for the public.

NOW’s the Time

The purpose of this document is to provide all necessary info for bringing Elizabeth Short some justice.

The Black Dahlia Death Chamber

The year was 1947, but the Dahlia-slaying site was of another time. It was an old three-story, long, narrow wooden building on the southeasterly corner of East Washington Boulevard and Santee Street, in Los Angeles.

The westerly wall was just off the Santee sidewalk; the seven wooden steps that climbed to the large front porch began just off the Washington sidewalk. This was typical of pre-auto-era buildings: no engine roar to deal with. I’d say the structure was built in about 1900. It was fittingly classifiable as a hotel, a rooming house, or apartment flats. The front entrance, three hallways and rear-wall fire-escape exits were on a centerline: the place was lengthwise symmetric. In the Black Dahlia’s time, the squarish building wore “The Hirsh Apts.” as a part of its original decor.

The Hirsh was “safely” remote from downtown LA, Long Beach and Hollywood. But: the LA Biltmore Hotel was an easy-walk away; via Washington, Alameda, and Atlantic, Long Beach was a 30-minute car ride away; via Washington and Western, Hollywood was a 20-minute drive away… And 39th and Norton was a relaxed 15-minute roll away . . .

Santee dead-ended just beyond the three fire-escape ladders on the back wall. So there was virtually no pedestrian nor vehicular traffic near the Santee side. There was seclusion to the west.

There was open space directly to the rear of the Hirsh. There was seclusion to the south.

The rearmost Hirsh units were about 65 feet from the sidewalk on Washington. There was seclusion from the “outside north.”

The normal access of a given Hirsh apartment was via the front entrance plus one of three inside halls. There was no “courtyard exposure” of comings and goings or other activities of guests.

The Hirsh managers’ office was in a front apartment; the fire-escapes were 75 feet away. A sneaky guest could’ve migrated from floor to floor, or departed the premises, out of eyeshot of the managers.

The old building boasted attic area and a spacious cellar: the Hirsh had stash space for bloody clothing and sheets which might result from a messy “surgical” procedure . . .

It wasn’t just by chance that Ed Burns used the Hirsh for the Dahlia-slaying site. I think it was serendipity. Serendipity? But Bladester Burns chose the “Hearse” because of stuff noted above, correct? Correcto!

I say the Hirsh had been Ed’s secret abortion site before he and the Dahlia joined paths. And it served Ed well as a secluded sanctum on sexless one-nighters with the Dahlia. So once Ed opted to slay the Dahlia, he had a serendipitously preselected slaying site: an old Los Angeles hotel at 300 East Washington Boulevard, The HIRSH Apts…

The Hirsh Apts. Revisited

Ed Burns alluded to the Black Dahlia abattoir, The Hirsh Apts., in his 2nd and 3rd messages. We didn’t find an allusion to the Hirsh in his 1st message: we didn’t look for one. Let’s look for said allusion in the 1st message. We’ll examine the area corresponding to where Ed plotted the Hirsh rectangle in his 3rd message. We will focus on: “HERE!”; “BeloNGingS”; and “LETTER.”   Well, Black Dahlia riddlers, do you see a locus of a “Hirsh” rectangle? If not, it’s OK. We’ll puzzle it out, clue by clue . . . Ed Burns positioned a capital “H” right “HERE,” where Hirsh Apts. likes it: in the upper left corner. Ed “topped” the exclamation point. He might’ve done this to make an “i” or an “I” out of it. Let’s take it for an “I.” The “R” in “LETTER” is a weirdity: the left leg sports a horizontal serif; the right leg flaunts a conspicuously vertical “Ed Burns custom” serif.

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The long vertical serif defines a vertical. The short horizontal serif implies a horizontal; with help from its line mates, it defines a horizontal: this is illustrated below. So . . . We have the “H” from “HERE,” an exclamatory “I,” and an “R” from “LETTER.” But instead of an “S” in the lower left corner, we have an “L.” This “L” is elevated relative to the “R”: Ed did this for a to-be-explained reason. For now, fantasize this: the “L” is an “S”; this “S” was transplanted from beside-the-postage-stamps “PApERS” . . .

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OK. We’re anxious to draw. And we know where to put every segment save the upper horizontal. Hmmmm . . . Oh, I see it. Ed used the rightside environs to tell us precisely where to draw this segment. See how he did this? Clever!

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Just above, we puzzled out Ed Burns’ plot for his 1st-message Hirsh Apts. rectangle. Let’s draw . . . It’s a parallelogram. Let’s draw diagonals and check out the intersection. The parallelogram looks to be a perfect rectangle. The diagonals intersect inside the slot between “e” and “L.” The symbolic significance of this will be illuminated. Ed Burns utilized outside-of-rectangle guides in the definition of both horizontals in his 1st-message Hirsh rectangle. Guides are circled in the Xerox above. Scanning right to left, guides for the upper horizontal are: the bottoms of the apostrophe and the left quote mark; the end of the “s” cusp.

These three guides are aligned with the bottom of the “I.” It’s profoundly unlikely that this happened by chance. Ed was saying, “The upper horizontal exists, and it goes here!” Reading right to left, guides for the lower horizontal are: the “cavern bottom” in the “o”; the bottom of the “T.” These two guides are aligned with the horizontal serif on the “R.” Not an accident. Ed was saying, “The lower horizontal is, and it goes here. Believe it!” The right vertical is defined by the spectacular vertical serif on the “r.” The left vertical grazes the outer edges of the “H” and the “L.”

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So we have a “HirLH = HirLh” rectangle? No. We have a “Hir H = Hir h” rectangle. The “L” isn’t in the corner! It misses by a smidgen. Burns did this for a reason. He was saying that “L” doesn’t belong in the corner: it simply saves space for a letter that belongs. What letter does belong in this corner? Look diagonally across the character field, at the “s” that conspicuously clashes with every other character in its “host” line . . . And proceed to the next paragraph.

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Previously, we noted that the “PApERS” white-on-dark “S” seems out of place. Well, Ed Burns agreed. He used “Ap” to point out where “S” belongs. Keep in mind that Ed was ultra-purposeful with every character and/or mark he put into his messages, and . . . Note that a thready line ties the “S” slab to the “p”-stem slash. This slash is a peculiar one. Scan the slash from right to left: observe that it severs the “p”-stem, curves upward, then runs along the base of the “A” and stops at the bottom of the left “A” leg. The leftward part of the slash and the left “A” leg create an arrowhead form that’s symmetric about the left “A”-leg serif. The arrowhead points diagonally across the character field.

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Ed used an ostensibly innocuous symbol, an “i” dot, to show us precisely where his character-position-transfer contrivance points. And it points directly at the “L.” So Ed Burns was telling us that the “S” was to supplant same-character-type “L” in the lower left corner? Yes, but if that had been all he was telling us, the pointer most likely would’ve been the lower left corner of the “S” slab . . .

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Ed also was telling us that the “Ap” was to be a part of the Hirsh-rectangle decryption.

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So far, we’ve decrypted a rectangle and “Hirsh Ap,” from “PApERS,” “HERE!” “BeloNGingS,” and “LETTER,” in Ed Burns’ 1st message . . . The Decryption Goes On Diagonals intersect in the slot between “e” and “L.” Word-partials “Be” and “TT” are separated by the intersection/slot. It’s as if “Bett” was cut in half by this intersection/slot. The partials “Be” and “TT” are kindred alpha couples: white letters of the same size and font. They “match.”

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Letter type was an important expedient to Ed Burns. It played a big part in transferring “s” to “Hirsh.” “Bett” is a nickname for “Betty,” not as common as “Bette,” but documented and used. So why didn’t Ed make “e” after “TT” of the same ilk as “TT,” to get a “Bette”?

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Because he was a recycler. He wanted “T” and “T” to stand out for use as pointers in: “Bet on . . .” And the symbolism is palpable. Ed Burns was telling us that Bett/Betty was X’d out and bisected in The Hirsh Apts. . . .

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In other words: Bett was killed and bisected in Hirsh Ap, or Bett was killed and bisected in The Hirsh Apts. The HIRSH Apts. Revisited, in Ed Burns’ 3rd Message Ed’s 1st trilogy message told us about the bisection. His 3rd message mentioned it too, but we ignored it. A Xerox of a part of the 3rd message is at the left. Note that the rectangle is seemingly cut in two by a “Y” at the left and a “w” at the right. And this probably happened by chance(?) No! Ed did this for good reason and he told us he did.

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Eyeball the “w” . . . Ed scooted it leftward and tilted it counterclockwise. I’m confident he did this to clue us in on his bisection encryption. So the 3rd-message Hirsh Apts. decryption is:

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“I/Ed killed and bisected the Dahlia in a hotel at 300 East Washington.”

Summary of HIRSH Apts. Decryptions      From 1st Message: Bett was killed and bisected in The Hirsh Apts.      From 3rd Message: I/Ed killed and bisected the Dahlia in a hotel at 300 East Washington

Read more:

• Inside the “Elizabeth” Black Dahlia Crime Scene: Unraveling a Gruesome Mystery
• The Black Dahlia Murder FBI Files