Cleo Short
The police discovered that Cleo Short, Elizabeth's fifty-three-year-old father, was living in Los Angeles, working as a refrigerator repairman. LAPD characterized him in its reports to the press as "uncooperative." Short explained that he wanted no contact with his daughter, who had traveled to California to live with him, and said he had paid for her bus fare back to her mother in Massachusetts. In 1930, according to Mrs. Short, Cleo had abandoned her and his five young daughters in Massachusetts, and simply "disappeared." Mrs. Short had raised the children on her own and had no desire to see or speak with Cleo at the time of the inquest.
Both police investigators and reporters interviewed Cleo Short at his Los Angeles apartment at 1020 South Kingsley Drive, only three miles from the vacant lot where his daughter's body had been discovered. Short told them that he couldn't provide any current information about his daughter or her activities. "I last saw my daughter Elizabeth three years ago, in Vallejo, California. I gave her two hundred dollars and she came out from Massachusetts. She came to live with me in Vallejo, but she spent all her time running around when she was supposed to be keeping house for me, so I made her leave. I didn't want anything to do with her or any of the rest of the family then. I was through with all of them." Cleo made it clear to the police that since he had no information about his daughter, he wanted nothing to do with the investigation of her death.
The interviews with Phoebe Short and her ex-husband, Cleo, revealed to police a mother who could not control her daughter's wanderlust, as innocent as that may have been, and a father who had abandoned his family and had no desire to be further involved with it. The interviews also revealed that Elizabeth was probably looking for a father figure, someone in authority, probably someone in uniform, who would stabilize her life. She thought she had found it in Matt Gordon, but his death had dashed her hopes and set her on a path to find a replacement. Whether she still lived in the fantasy of her engagement to Major Gordon during her stays in Hollywood and San Diego or was simply in denial about her own reality, she would drift from relationship to relationship until she met her killer.
When she met Arthur Curtis James in 1944, three years before her death, and agreed to model for him, she was already dancing very close to the edge.
Arthur Curtis James Jr. (aka Charles Smith)
Arthur James was a fifty-six-year-old artist and ex-convict, awaiting sentencing in a pending forgery charge, who first met Elizabeth in a Hollywood cocktail lounge in August 1944. "She showed an interest in my drawings," he told police, who interviewed him in 1947 after they discovered that James had known Elizabeth Short. James told police that he was in a bar drawing sketches and she was seated nearby. After she said she liked what James had sketched, he revealed to police, the two of them became friends. "She modeled for me, and I made several pictures of her," he explained. He corroborated his statements by giving police the names of the current owners of his artwork. "One, a large oil painting, I later turned over to a man named Frank Armand, who lived in Artesia." The second one he identified as "a sketch of Elizabeth, which I turned over to a Mrs. Hazel Milman, Star Route 1, Box 24, Rodeo Grounds, in the Santa Monica, Palisades district." James then told police that his contact with Elizabeth ended abruptly three months later in November 1944 after he was arrested in Tucson, Arizona, for violation of the Mann Act, while he was using the alias of Charles Smith. The press later established that the federal charges against him, involving the "transporting of girls across a state line for immoral purposes," did not involve and were totally unrelated to the Elizabeth Short homicide.
As a result of those charges James was convicted and served two years in Leavenworth prison. After his release in 1946, he ran into Elizabeth in Hollywood that November, when he bought her several pieces of luggage. James quickly ran afoul of the law again, because the check he wrote for the luggage bounced and he was arrested. At the time of his interview with reporters in January 1947 he was awaiting sentencing on those charges.
Mrs. Matt Gordon Sr.
The press interviewed Mrs. Gordon, fiance Matt Gordon Jr.'s mother, over the phone at her home in Pueblo, Colorado, after a telegram she'd sent to Elizabeth was found in Elizabeth's luggage stored in the downtown Los Angeles bus depot. Mrs. Gordon denied rumors that Elizabeth and her son were ever actually married, but confirmed that her son had first met Elizabeth in Miami, Florida, in 1944, where he was stationed after his return from China. She also confirmed that the two did correspond after he left the United States for India, adding that she was proud that "my son had been awarded the Air Medal with fifteen oak clusters, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the silver and bronze stars."
Upon being notified by the War Department that Matt had been killed in an airplane crash in India in August of 1945, Mrs. Gordon sent a telegram to Elizabeth: "Received word War Department Matt killed in crash. Our deepest sympathy is with you. Letter follows. Pray it isn't true. Love." In her telephone interview with reporters four days after Elizabeth's body was discovered, she said, "My heart goes out in sympathy to that girl and to her mother."
Anne Toth
Elizabeth Short's former roommate Anne Toth was a twenty-four-year-old film actress and extra who had had bit parts in several movies. She'd briefly shared lodging with Elizabeth at the private residence of Mark Hansen, part owner of the Florentine Gardens, a popular nightclub in Hollywood, which featured what newspapers called a "Girlie Revue." It was common practice for Hansen to rent rooms at his Hollywood residence at 6024 Carlos Avenue, Toth said, to "girls trying to break into the business."
Toth first met Elizabeth in July or August of 1946, when Elizabeth moved in. "She lived at the house for several months, then went away for about three weeks, then came back." Toth did not know where Elizabeth had gone during that three-week period, but indicated that "Elizabeth's girlfriend, Marjorie Graham, had left for
Boston, but that Elizabeth said she hadn't gone with her and she would rather die than bear the cold of the East."
"About three weeks before Christmas," Toth said to the press, "Elizabeth told me she was going to go to Berkeley, to visit her sister, but instead went to San Diego. I don't know why she went there." Toth received a telegram from Elizabeth during the Christmas holidays saying that she was low on funds. "She was asking me for twenty dollars," Toth said. "Three weeks later I got a second telegram saying she was coming back and a letter would follow." That was Elizabeth's last communication; Toth never received the promised letter.
"She was friendly with several men while she stayed at the house on Carlos Avenue with me," Toth said. "I remember three of the men. One was an Air Force officer from Texas, another a radio announcer named Maurice, and the third was a language teacher. He was about thirty-five years old, 5'-6", medium build, and he drove a black Ford or Chevrolet. I remember he had promised to set Betty up in an apartment in Beverly Hills if she left our place on Carlos." Toth added, "We used to think the world of that kid. She was always well behaved and sweet."
"Sergeant John Doe" (unidentified U.S. Army man)
Elizabeth Short's FBI file, obtained under a FOIA request, contains a memo dated March 27, 1947, of a lengthy interview by special agents of the FBI's Pittsburgh office with a soldier in the U.S. Army whose name, rank, and home base were blacked out, as were the names of other identified individuals. The interview, which provides important information about Elizabeth's background and movements, and insights into her overall character, describes a twenty-four-hour relationship between the soldier and Elizabeth in downtown Los Angeles on September 20-21, 1946.