Martin, your experience with Harnisch notwithstanding, I think he has done the most comprehensive work on the Dahlia case....his theory of surgeon Walter Bayley as the killer is as good as any I've seen, it's been endorsed by no less an authority than James Ellroy....Betty Short was basically couch-surfing, Harnisch believes she had nowhere to go after she was dropped off at the Biltmore....there were ties between Short's sister and the Bayley family, and S. Norton Ave.....
"Harnisch found the books for the 3900 block of South Norton Avenue and he worked his way through them until he reached the 1940s. Eventually, he found the owner of the house on 3959 Norton Avenue, the woman on the deed who paid the property taxes—Ruth Bayley. Hurrying to the Times morgue, he searched the clips for Ruth Bayley and what he eventually found shifted his role—from writer to sleuth.
The marriage certificate indicated there was a link between the Short family and South Norton Avenue. From studying the microfilmed Times clips he discovered that Ruth Bayley, who owned the house, had a daughter whose married name was Barbara Lindgren. She was the matron of honor at the wedding of Elizabeth Short’s oldest sister in Inglewood. A story about Ruth Bayley’s husband revealed something even more interesting to Harnisch—Ruth had been married to Walter Bayley, a Los Angeles doctor, a surgeon with the skill to have performed the bisection of Short. And his medical office, where he specialized in performing hysterectomies and mastectomies, was only a few blocks from the Biltmore Hotel. The lead detective on the case, Harry Hansen, told the Grand Jury that he believed that Short’s killer had surgical expertise."
Harnisch believes Short, stranded at the Biltmore, looked up Walter Bayley's office address in the city directory, and walked over the few blocks from the hotel....Bayley at the time was exhibiting increasingly erratic behavior, Harnisch thinks Short may have sent him into a murderous rage....
“If she met him on the pretext of getting help, she would have pulled the sob story about having a son who died. Unlike the other pigeons she was trying to con, he would have actually asked how he died because he was a doctor. So now they both have something in common—dead sons. Maybe he figures out she’s lying, it pissed him off, and he erupts…”
Bayley's former home at 3959 S. Norton Ave. (he was going through a bitter separation from his wife) was one block from the body dump site.....Harnisch thinks Bayley chose the site as a warning to his wife.
Above excerpts are from here....
https://crimereads.com/the-black-dah...les-cold-case/
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