Greetings, citizens of the future! Click here to enjoy the debut bi-weekly podcast from your pals from the 1947project.

Featured is a lively and sometimes tasteless recap of recent crimes covered on the blog (including the Bath Township school disaster), recommended events for the next two weeks for listeners in 1927 or 2007, A Moment with Crimebo the Crime Clown, Nathan Marsak's saucy faux adverts and a sneak announcement of a top secret Crime Bus tour not otherwise available to the public.

On the mic: Kim Cooper, Crimebo the Clown (Michael Perrick), Nathan Marsak, Mary McCoy and Joan Renner. We certainly hope you find this 40 minute podcast to your liking, and thank you for your kind attention.

Dec. 7, 1907
Los Angeles

Oct. 14, 1907
Los Angeles

The following is from our latest 1947project press release... even if you don't ride the Crime Bus, you can still enjoy these treats at Scoops at 712 N. Heliotrope Dr., just north of Melrose, on Friday 9/15 and Saturday 9/16 from 12pm-9pm.

LOS ANGELES- All Elizabeth Short wanted in life was to be someone. Now, nearly 60 years after her death, the victim of L.A.'s most notorious unsolved murder is honored with a new film, a citywide tour, and twelve unique gelato concoctions from distinguished ice cream artisan Tai Kim. Short joins the ranks of celebrated people with foods named for them, like opera star Nellie Melba (Peach Melba), chef Alfredo de Lelio (Fettucine Alfredo), Brown Derby owner Robert Cobb (Cobb Salad), Jerry Garcia (Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia) and Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon pastries).

To coincide with the September 15 release of Brian De Palma's "The Black Dahlia," the 1947project Crime Bus offers a guided luxury tour to dozens of sites that played a part in the real life and death of Elizabeth Short, as well as locations figuring in her posthumous myth.

On The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour, Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak guide their passengers to more than two dozen scenes from the real and imaginary history of the Black Dahlia case. Along the way, they'll explore the social history of postwar Los Angeles, several Black Dahlia killer theories will be debunked and a little known but likely suspect will be introduced. The tour will bring to life the real Elizabeth Short and some of the peculiar characters who knew her in life or become obsessed with her in death.

As the Crime Bus winds it way towards its downtown conclusion, the passengers will coming closer to a very special treat. The 1947project asked avant-garde gelato maker Tai Kim of Scoops in East Hollywood to create a new flavor, named after the Black Dahlia, to honor her memory and provide sustenance to the brave Crime Bus passengers. Tai responded by developing not one but twelve unique flavors, each of which reflects Elizabeth Short and her time and city: 1947 Los Angeles. These special gelatos will only be available on Friday 9/15 and Saturday 9/16, and on Sunday 9/17 for Crime Bus passengers exclusively.

So what does the Black Dahlia gelato taste like? According to Tai, like White Licorice (an anise and lemon blend), Black Tea and Rosewater, Blackberry and Orange Blossom, Pomegranate and Poppy Seed, Blood Orange Sorbet, Black Currant with Blueberry and Anise Sorbet, Dark Chocolate and Raspberry, White Chocolate and Black Sea Salt Mousse, White Chocolate and Cranberry Syrup, Vanilla and Whiskey and Jasmine Tea and Raisin. An additional offering is Chunky Apple Rum, a flavor that was popular in the 1940s and which Elizabeth Short may have enjoyed in life.

Yesterday's Pasadena Confidential Crime Bus Tour was a hoot, as we glided around the Crown City in our air conditioned murder bus with a happy coterie of grisly lookyloos. Here are a few photos snapped along the way...

Below, Crimebo honors the lucky Miss Cathy with a pre-birthday litany of all the horrors that happened on the day she was born.

Here, Crimebo and hosts Kim and Nathan take a mid-tour breather at Connal's on Washington Boulevard, conveniently loated between the sites of a hammer murder and a bathtub suicide. Plus their malts is yummy!

And another view of that scary clown Crimebo... don't you want him at your birthday party?!

June 9, 1907 - Los Angeles

Olga Miller was a comely young thing who worked at the Hotel Rosslyn and was considered quite attractive despite the scar on her temple from shooting herself in the head. One day she fell ill and was taken to County Hospital, where she went into convulsions and died after a visit from Richard Hardy, who forced his way into her room and made her drink a glass of milk that police suspected was poisoned. But her death was only the beginning of the complicated story, a morbidly Victorian tale that includes murder, insanity, false identities, suicides and fears of body snatching. Shortly after Miller died, officials learned that she was actually Bertha Beilstein, the daughter of John Frederick Beilstein, a wealthy Allegheny, Pa., businessman and politician. Before his mysterious death in 1897 (some people suspected Bertha of poisoning him in a fit of insanity), he wrote a will putting all his money in a trust for his heirs as long as she was alive. Then "on the night of Oct. 2, 1898, she shot her mother three times and took a hatchet and hacked the body almost to pieces," The Times said.

"Afterward she walked the floor for hours, when a cloud seemed to leave her mind and she saw what she had wrought. She seized the same revolver and sent a bullet crashing into her skull just to the left of the temple. She fell to the floor and struck her head on the point of a piece of furniture.

"She lay there for hours--her murdered mother on the bed and the daughter unconscious on the floor. Then she regained consciousness and, raising herself, saw the bloody body of her parent on the bed. She seized the revolver again and sent a bullet into her breast over her heart."

But still, she did not die and the neighbors found her the next day. She said: "I was tired of life. It had no pleasure for me. I wanted to die and did not want my mother to live and fret over my death. For that reason I killed her."

At the trial for her mother's murder, Bertha was declared utterly mad and imprisoned at the Dixon Asylum for the Criminally Insane outside Pittsburgh, where she became a model prisoner and was given free reign.

In the meantime, her brother Edward, apparently unable to live with the family scandal, killed himself by drinking prussic acid at the Voegtly Cemetery, where his body laid undiscovered for days. Shamed by the scandal, her uncle David Reich "threw himself in front of an express train and was ground to death," The Times said.

Then in 1906, Bertha escaped from Dixon, and here is where the story becomes almost impenetrably complex. It may have been that her lover in Los Angeles, Richard L. Hardin (or Hardy or Harding), was also an attendant at Dixon and disappeared when Bertha escaped from the asylum. Or it may have been, as he said, that he only met her in California. Or maybe her brother Frederick Beilstein of Chicago sent her to Los Angeles under the name Olga Miller.

Whatever the cause, Bertha arrived in Los Angeles and moved into the Royal Hotel on South Main Street. Hardin said he met her at the hotel three weeks before her death. He said that they quickly became friends because they were both Easterners and when she got sick, he brought meals up to her room and had a doctor prescribe medicine for her.

Hardin said that although he helped get her admitted to County Hospital, he was distressed by her treatment there. "It wrung my nerves to see her tied down and her hands tied, so that is why I asked the doctor to unloosen her hands and the waist bandages," said Hardin, who was freed when it was determined that Bertha died of brain tumors rather than poisoning.

Then the various factions of her family began fighting over the body. Some, to preserve the trust set up by her father, claimed that Bertha had gone to England and that the deceased was merely some unfortunate woman.

 

Her brother Frederick, however, insisted that the body was hers and warned officials of Evergreen Cemetery to protect her remains as some members of the family might try to steal it. As a result, police officers were stationed outside her crypt, allowing access only to the series of people sent to identify the body.

Trying to view Bertha's remains became a popular pastime in Los Angeles as cemetery officials noted that more than 40 women had attempted to get a look by claiming to be a friend or relative. Cemetery superintendent Olneyman told The Times  "that all are simply morbidly curious and always depart when their names and addresses are asked."

After six weeks, Bertha's body was conclusively identified and sent to Pittsburgh. Later that year, her brother Charles died when he fell from a ladder at his hotel in Vandergrift, Pa.

The Times said: "Charles was a firm believer in Bertha Beilstein's declaration years ago that an avenging hand followed every member of the family. Less than a month ago the hotel keeper declared to a friend that he fully expected to die a violent death."

Lmharnisch.com

Lmharnisch.blogspot.com

Elijah Washington died because he didn

Oh, you delightful sickniks! After tabulating the votes for the next Crime Bus date, I saw that the majority of respondents asked for the tour to roll on Easter Sunday, 4/16.

And so it did, to the queasy glee of all. Stay tuned for photos from the tour.

Want to hear what some of the passengers said about the last Crime Bus tour? Check out the latest podcast.

The next scheduled Nightmares of Bunker Hill tour is Saturday June 10. Please email if you are interested in an alternate date.

best regards,
Kim
1947project