From a professional standpoint, I would point out that there exist many misconceptions about serial killers and their M.O.s. Often these misconceptions come from in house, from experienced homicide detectives, who are simply wrong! Fixed attitudes, quick judgments, mixed with egos — a dangerous combination. Here are a few examples: "Can't be the same killer, all his victims were white girls." "Nope, he only liked dark-haired girls in their twenties. "Definitely not, he only used a white sash cord to strangle, not a stocking." "He stabbed them in the back, not the front." "He never struck on Saturdays." " That crime is too far away, our guy never went south of 5th Street." Endless reasons for detectives to say, "Not our guy." However, as we have seen so dramatically in the previous cases, one should not disregard or eliminate a suspect based on differences. Look at our proven cases and their obvious inconsistencies, yet the suspects were the same! Some completed rapes, some not. Ages varied from twenties to fifties. Inside residences and street abductions. Strangulation, bludgeoning, and stabbing. Acquaintances and complete strangers. Sending notes and not. Posing bodies and not. George Hodel and Fred Sexton were all over the radar screen. They were consistently inconsistent! The point being, a murder investigation must remain objective and inclusionary and consider all the facts, all the possibilities.
Here then, in this chapter and the next, are summaries of an additional nine murders and one attempted murder that I believe need to be examined by law enforcement as attributable to the same two men.
For various reasons, these ten are a rung or two down the evidentiary ladder from the victims cited earlier. Therefore, lacking additional information and documentation, I am classifying them as "probables."
These crimes span the years 1947 to 1959. The victims include: Evelyn Winters, Laura Trelstad, Rosenda Mondragon, Marian Newton, Viola Norton, Louise Springer, Geneva Ellroy, Bobbie Long, Helene Jerome, and a "Jane Doe."
With very few exceptions, these crimes followed similar patterns: abduction; savage, sadistic beatings; occasional mutilation and laceration of the victim's bodies; generally followed by ligature strangulation and dumping of the nude or partially clad bodies in public places, with no attempt at concealment. In many of the crimes, the suspect(s) ceremoniously wrapped or draped the victim's dress, coat, or cape over her body, and in at least one inserted a large tree branch inside the victim's vagina. I interpret all of these actions as a variation of posing, as Father and or Sexton had done in the White Gardenia, Dahlia, and Red Lipstick murders.
Evelyn Winters (March 12, 1947)
On the morning of March 12, 1947, just fifty-eight days after Elizabeth Short's murder, and thirty-two days after that of Mrs. Jeanne French, another woman's body was found in downtown Los Angeles.
She was quickly identified as Evelyn Winters. Her crime bore strong similarities to both the Jeanne French and Elizabeth Short killings.
Evelyn Winter's nude and severely bludgeoned body was found dumped on a vacant lot at 830 Ducommun Street, near some railroad tracks, just two miles from downtown Los Angeles. The victim's shoes and undergarments were found at Commercial and Center Streets, one block from where the body lay. The victim, who was forty-two, had been struck repeatedly with a club or pipe about the head and face.
Before he — or they — left the scene, the killer wrapped the victims dress around her neck. Police believed she had been slain elsewhere, then the body dragged from an automobile to the dirt lot. Footprints and tire tracks were visible nearby. The cause of death was due to "blunt force trauma causing a concussion and hemorrhage to the brain."
A check of the victim's background revealed that Evelyn's life had taken a downward spiral, most likely because of alcoholism. From 1929 to 1942 she had been a secretary at Paramount Studios. In 1932 she met and married the head of Paramount's legal department, attorney Sidney Justin. Divorced five years later, Evelyn married a soldier during the war, but they too were divorced within a few years.
The victim's arrest record in recent years showed that she had been booked by police for a number of alcohol-related offenses, all in downtown Los Angeles.
The victim was known to frequent the downtown bars on Hill Street and was last seen on Monday night, March 10, by James Tiernen, a friend, when she left his apartment at 912 West 6th Street.* Tiernen, a thirty-three-year-old bowling-pin setter, was detained and arrested by police but considered "not a good suspect" and promptly released. Tiernen told police he had known Winters for two years and "had run into her in the public library" on Sunday, March 9, where Winters had told him "she had no place to sleep."
He offered to share his hotel room with her and she accepted, staying Sunday night. Tiernen told police, "She was gone all day Monday, then came back about 8:00 p.m. very drunk," imploring him, "Talk to me. I want to talk to someone." Tiernen told her she was "too drunk to talk," at which point she left. That was the last time he had seen her. Her body was found the following morning.
An article in the Los Angeles Examiner of March 14, 1947, headlined "Dahlia Case Similarities Checked in Fourth Brutal Death Mystery," offered an eleven-point list of similarities provided by LAPD that detectives believed strongly supported the theory that the murders of Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French, and Evelyn Winters were all related. This was published in the early months of the Dahlia investigation, before the need was fully recognized by LAPD to disconnect and isolate the murders. The article notes:
Checking similarities between the death of Miss Winters and the
Short and French killings, police listed the following:
1) All three girls frequented cocktail bars and sometimes picked up men in them.
2) All three were slugged on the head (although Mrs. French was trampled to death and Miss Short tortured and cut in two.)
3) Ail three were killed elsewhere and taken in cars to the spots where the bodies were found.
4) All three were displayed nude or nearly so.
5) In no case was an attempt made to conceal the body. On the contrary bodies were left where they were sure to be found.
6) Each had been dragged a short distance.
7) Each killing was a pathological case, apparently motiveless.
8) In each case the killer appears to have taken care not to be seen in company with the victim.
9) All three women had good family backgrounds.
10) Each was identified by her fingerprints, other evidence of identity having been removed.
11) Miss Short and Miss Winters were last seen in the same Hill Street area.
The murder of Evelyn Winters, like the other murders, was never solved. It remains in today's LAPD files as another "whodunit" — with one major distinction. Today's detectives no longer are treating it as possibly, or as we see from the above article, probably, connected to the other crimes. Knowing now that George Hodel did commit the Short and French murders, we must concur with LAPD's original speculations that he was doubtless also guilty of the brutal murder of Evelyn Winters, either alone, or with the help of Fred Sexton.
Laura Elizabeth Trelstad (May 11, 1947)
On May 11, 1947, the body of Laura Elizabeth Trelstad, age thirtyseven, was found in the 3400 block of Locust Avenue near the Signal Hill oil fields of Long Beach. The newspaper reported, "An oil field pumper discovered the body at 5:00 a.m. while coming to work." She had been strangled with "a piece of flowered cotton cloth, believed torn from a man's pajamas or shorts."
Signs of a struggle were visible, and the police found both tire marks and footprints near the body. Detectives told reporters, "Their best evidence and only clue was a plaster casting they obtained of a footprint found close to the victim's body at the crime scene."