A certain girl is going to get same as E.S. got if she squeals on us.
We're going to Mexico City — catch us if you can.
2K's
On the reverse of the mailed envelope someone, presumably the sender, wrote:
E. Short got it. Caral Marshall is next.
The Examiner engaged questioned-document expert Clark Sellers, considered by most to be one of the nation's leading forensic handwriting experts of the day, to review and analyze the handprinting on the postcards it had received from the purported suspect. Sellers had gained public notoriety as one of the chief forensic experts who testified for the prosecution in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping trial, in which he connected handwriting samples from the suspect, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, to the ransom note and helped the state win a conviction.
In his expert analysis, Sellers told the Examiner, "It was evident the writer took great pains to disguise his or her personality by printing instead of writing the message and by endeavoring to appear illiterate. But the style and formation of the printed letters betrayed the writer as an educated person." The Examiner also revealed that Sellers had conducted "microscopic tests" on the Black Dahlia message and made "several important discoveries the nature of which is being withheld."
A second questioned-document expert, Henry Silver, was also contacted to analyze the original note the killer had sent with the victim's belongings, as well as some of the later postcards received by the press. Silver said:
The sender is an egomaniac and possibly a musician. The fluctuating base line of the writing reveals the writer to be affected by extreme fluctuations of mood, dropping to melancholy. The writer suffers from mental conflict growing out of resentment or hatred due to frustration of sex urge. Because the last letters of many words are larger, it reveals extreme frankness. The writer is telling the truth. Furthermore, he can't keep his secret and feeds his ego by telling. There is a fine sense of rhythm present, showing the penman to be either a musician or possibly a dancer. He is calculating and methodical.
Thursday, January 30, 1947
A day after he had promised to surrender, the killer sent a new pasted note addressed to Captain Donahoe that read:
Exhibit 22
Have changed my mind.
You would not give me a
square deal. Dahlia killing
was justified.
That same day, Daniel S. Voorhees, a thirty-three-year-old restaurant porter, called police to ask them to meet him at 4th and Hill Streets, downtown, where he confessed to killing Elizabeth Short. Voorhees was quickly eliminated when his handwriting was compared to that in the killer's note. Mentally and emotionally unstable, Voorhees was one of the first of a long list of what the police would term "confessing Sams," people seeking five minutes of "fame" by attempting to link themselves to the sensational murder.
Friday, January 31, 1947
The Herald Express published photographic copies of six additional messages, all purported to have been by the Dahlia killer. The first, in letters pasted from a newspaper, read:
Exhibit 23
'Go Slow'
Man Killer Says
Black Dahlia Case
The next read:
I have decided not to
surrender Too much
fun fooling police
Black Dahlia Avenger
Another note, also pasted together from cut-out newspaper type, was sent in. This contained a photograph of a young male with a stocking mask drawn in covering his face to conceal his identity. Pasted words glued to the note read:
Here is the photo of the werewolf killer's
I saw him kill her
a friend
The Herald Express also published photographic copies of three additional "crudely" hand-printed notes, each written and mailed to them on a separate postcard. The first two apparently referred to the surrender and confession of Daniel Voorhees:
Exhibits 26 & 27
26) The person sending those other notes ought to be arrested for
forgery. Ha Ha!
B.D.A.
27) If he confesses you won't need me
B.D.A.
The third read:
Exhibit 28
Ask news man at 5 + Hill for clue.
Why not let that nut go
I spoke to said man
B.D.A.
Exhibit 29
Armand Robles, age 17
Accompanying their article on page one, the Herald Express also ran a photograph of a young man with the following request addressed to its readers:
A "poison pen" is using a picture of this young person in the "Dahlia" case letters. If this person will call at the
Evening Herald and Express
office, a line may be obtained on the "poison pen" author of letters which send police on "wild goose" chases.
The following day, seventeen-year-old Armand Robles and his mother, Florence Robles, contacted the newspaper and were interviewed by reporters for a story that ran the next day in which Armand explained that the photographs printed in the newspaper the previous days were of him and had been stolen about three weeks before by a strange assailant. He had been walking in the vicinity of the 4300 block of Eagle Street in Los Angeles on or about January 10, young Robles said, and "he was about to approach a footpad,"1 when he was "knocked down by a man, who then took his wallet." The photographs sent to the Examiner; which Robles had taken "about 3 months ago at a shooting gallery on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles," had been in the wallet. He described his assailant as, "well dressed, tall," and "driving a newer model car."
In a later mail, the Herald Express received a new pasted-up note, which read:
Exhibit 30
yes or no?
Saturday, February 1, 1947
In response to Armand Robles's going public with his information, another "poison pen" pasted-up note arrived at the Herald Express with a different photograph of Robles. This time the sender had hand-drawn an arrow pointing to Robles's picture, with the word "next" above his head. The pasted message itself read:
Exhibit 31
"that young! I'll do him like I did the
'Black Dahlia'
"Black Dahlia Avenger".
That same day, in a statement to the press about where the crime had occurred, Captain Donahoe speculated:
It appears impossible the Short girl was murdered in the city. We are forced to this conclusion by the failure of anyone to report a possible place where she was killed within the city limits. If she was slain in a house or a room or motel in the city it seems impossible that some trace has not been reported or found. This leads us to the conclusion that she was killed outside the city. The killer could not have emerged from the place in clothing worn when the murder was committed and the body drained of blood. He could have been too easily detected and stains would have attracted attention.
Donahoe also suggested, "The killer used a thick bristled brush of coconut fiber to scrub the body clean before he removed the body from the murder den."