Esotouric, a family-owned company that specializes in touring the noir, crime-ridden underbelly of old L.A., celebrated the 63rd anniversary of The Black Dahlia murder the best way they knew how: with stacks of Krispy Kreme donuts and piping hot coffee. While that may make for a somewhat somber congregation, it also may make you feel like a gumshoe flatfooting his way around the last known whereabouts of Elizabeth Short, the girl who was kidnapped, tortured, mutilated, and bisected before being dumped on a patch of undeveloped land in what would later become a Hollywood suburb.
Within months a brand-new post-war subdivision had sprouted up upon it — picket fences around suburban homes, the best attempt of a New America understandably trying to brush the past away. Esotouric nonchalantly yanks the rug up and shows you the viscera underneath. If you regard L.A. as a sleazy city now, the Los Angeles of Short’s day was not unlike something out of L.A. Confidential or Bukowski’s Hollywood. Some believe it to be the work of a local surgeon, whose house was mere yards from the corpse — like Jack the Ripper, someone well-educated in anatomy and a penchant for murdering young girls. Either that, or his wife — who might have suspected an affair — put him up to it. According to Esotouric, the two would order take-out food, watch home movies of autopsies, and listen to loud German music. Perhaps that suspicion is reasonable. Another tourist I talked to believed it to be the work of a local L.A. butcher. Part of the fun is pouring over the theories with fellow passengers, after you’ve had a chance to listen to the hosts. A list of possible suspects flies by via slideshow on the video monitors overhead: doctors, sailors, possible jealous wives.
Esotouric ended up as more than just a tour company. Husband-and-wife team Kim and Richard are savants when it comes to the crime sprees of the time, and do their damnedest to replicate that feeling of having been there, in an L.A. that was a haze of neon, dive bars, rows of peep show theaters, and Zoot Suit Riots. You arrive at the grand, slightly Overlook-ish Biltmore Hotel–where Short was last seen– and are taken on a list of possible whereabouts and locations that point to where she may have been last taken before her death. Much of this L.A. has disappeared, turned into laundromats or tiny out-of-the-way markets.
Kim, the wife, is a veritable Brittanica of information on Short herself. This was a shy girl, from a bad home, the daughter of a tyrannical father and a timid housewife. She was cunning, willful, and clever and pretty. She was also lazy, lascivious, and self-concious owner of a set of chompers that could put Amy Winehouse to shame.
Still unsolved, Elizabeth Short’s case remains the most infamous of L.A.’s murder mysteries. From the suitcase she was supposedly carrying, with all her belongings inside, to various hypotheses on who might’ve dunnit, to the family and background of Beth Short, it’s the details of this forgotten Los Angeles on The Black Dahlia Tour that matter. It’s not only their authentic GI Generation dottie dresses, the vintage hats and seersucker suits (though those are a nice touch), it’s the wealth of information provided by the family which makes it all worth it: you’ll not only re-trace the steps Short presumably took in her last hours, but also get a vivid picture of what the L.A. of old was like. And yes, donuts. Mmmm.
Words by Jeff Nau, photos by Sidney Bensimon
