Police obtained photographs of the handwriting on the body and plaster castings of the clearly defined footprints found at the scene. Handwriting experts were called to the crime scene to study the macabre note on her torso before her body was taken to the morgue. Other letters were observed on the nude body below the "B.D." that were difficult to decipher but possibly read "Tex" and "O" or "D" or possibly "Andy D," leading to police speculation that possibly two men might have been involved in the murder.
The police criminalists recovered important physical evidence in the form of black hair follicles found under the victim's fingernails, which indicated that she had put up a violent struggle before being slain. In their reconstruction of the crime, homicide detectives speculated to the press that the victim "was stripped naked in the parked car and then beaten."
Detectives also concluded that because a large pool of blood was found in the highway near the crime scene, the killer must have dragged the victim from the highway to the lot, where he wrote the message on her body, then draped the clothing over her. As a last act, he had carefully arranged her shoes on either side of her head at an equal distance of approximately ten feet, then fled.
The coroner's physician, Dr. Newbarr, conducted the autopsy and found the cause of death to be "ribs shattered by heavy blows, one of the broken ribs having pierced the heart creating hemorrhage and death." Dr. Newbarr stated that the victim had "dined on chop suey within an hour of her death." Newbarr determined that the victim was murdered the same day her body was found, sometime between midnight and 4:00 A.M. Results of a blood alcohol examination by the chemist returned a level of .30, twice what was then considered legally drunk, and more than three times the level by today's standards in California.
Police described the Lipstick crime scene as a "sort of lovers lane area" — the same phrase that had been used to characterize the vacant lot where Elizabeth Short was found. They also put out an all points bulletin to law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, notifying them that "the killer would have blood on his shoes and pants, and possibly in his vehicle."
In tracing Jeanne French's movements in the hours before her death, the police and witness statements established that at 7:30 P.M. Sunday, February 9, 1947, she had gone into the Plantation Cafe, 10984 Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles, in the company of two men, one of whom was described by waitress Christine Studnicka as having "dark hair and a small mustache." In its coverage, the Los Angeles Examiner also reported that the description matched that of a dark-haired man the victim had had dinner with five hours later. Studnicka also observed that "the two men entered a booth and ordered food, while the victim went to a pay telephone in the restaurant." The victim's phone call to the unknown person lasted approximately ten minutes.
During the phone call, Studnicka said people nearby could hear French bark into the receiver in a very loud voice, "Don't bring a bottle, the landlady doesn't allow it." While still on the phone, the victim yelled to the two men in her booth, "Don't put any liquor in the car" and "Don't take any liquor." Studnicka observed that the two men appeared "to be arguing between themselves," and it was her impression that they were "arguing over which one was going to accompany the victim."
After they had eaten, the two men left the restaurant, followed shortly by Jeanne French. Studnicka did not know whether the three met up outside the restaurant, nor could she provide a further description of the second man who accompanied the "dark-haired man."
Later that Sunday evening, at 9:30 P.M., witnesses saw Jeanne French driving away from her home at the wheel of her 1928 Ford Roadster. Half an hour later, restaurant owner Ray Fecher saw her inside his Turkey Bowl restaurant at 11925 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, where, he told police, "She was intoxicated, making loud remarks, while drinking a cup of coffee."
At 10:30 P.M., French was identified as the person inside a bar at 10421 Venice Boulevard on the west side of Los Angeles, where she told bartender Earl Holmes she was going to "commit her husband to a psycho ward at the Sawtelle Veteran's Hospital the following morning." Police later verified the accuracy of this statement, because Jeanne French's husband, whom she was planning to divorce, had slapped her a week before, and as a result she had forced him to move out.
At 10:45 P.M., Santa Monica PD officers Chapman and Aikens received a radio call in their patrol car reporting "a drunk driver, driving an automobile described as a 1928 Ford Roadster." They searched the vicinity and located an empty car of that description parked curb-side at Stanford and Colorado Boulevards. But because they were unable to locate the driver, they left.
What the officers did not know was that French was in an upstairs apartment at 1547 Stanford Avenue visiting her estranged husband, Frank. She told him to "meet her at her attorney's office the next day at 11:00 A.M., as she was filing for divorce and wanted to commit him to the hospital as a psycho." The drunken woman argued with her husband for approximately the next thirty minutes, then drove away, arriving at the Piccadilly drive-in restaurant, at 3932 Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles, shortly after midnight.
Between 12:10 and 1:00 A.M. Monday, February 10, Toni Manalatos, a carhop at the Piccadilly, served the victim what would turn out to be her last meal. She told police she saw Jeanne French in the company of a "dark-haired man with a small mustache."
French's Ford Roadster was later found, still parked in the Piccadilly's parking lot, at 2:00 A.M. by Mr. Anzione, a cleanup man coming to work at the restaurant. Doubtless she had left her car at the Picadilly and driven away with the dark-haired man. Her body was found only fifteen blocks away, and, given the medical examiner's estimated time of her death, that man was probably the last person to have seen her alive. Based on time of death and the murder's proximity to the restaurant, he was also probably the killer.
After detectives identified the victim and learned that she had filed for divorce, the initial thrust of their investigation focused on Jeanne's husband, Frank, as the likeliest suspect. Within several days of the murder, Captain Donahoe ruled him out: Frank French could not and did not drive a car, his shoe size was different from those found at the crime scene, and handwriting samples compared to those found on the body did not match. The police didn't report it, but it is assumed that the other physical evidence — hair samples and possible fingerprints found at the scene — also helped to eliminate Frank as the suspect.
After they had initially linked the Lipstick murder to the Dahlia murder, police detectives theorized that whoever killed Elizabeth Short may have been infuriated by Corporal Joseph Dumais's "confession" and murdered Jeanne French to disprove his claim. This, police told the press, would also account for the "taunting obscene phrase written on her chest." One police official was quoted as saying, "For two days before Mrs. French was kicked to death, the newspapers had been full of Dumais' confessions that it was he who had killed Beth Short. We know that the killer is egotistical, and it's possible that the real killer resented the claims of Dumais and wanted to show that the real killer was still here." Thus, in a tragic and unintended way, Steve Fisher's strategy of smoking out the Black Dahlia Avenger with a false confession had proved to be chillingly effective.
On February 12, 1947, the Herald Express ran a story under the headline, "Quiz Mystery Man Sharing P.O. Box of 'Lipstick' Victim," in which the reporter said that an unidentified male had shared a secret post office box with Jeanne French and was being questioned by detectives. No further details about his identity or his relationship to Jeanne French were ever released, nor have I found any information that would indicate that LAPD said anything more to the press about him in the weeks or months that followed.