Paegel began documenting the crime scene itself, taking a shot of the body in the barren field and another of Fowler, all alone, stooping beside the body. The photos, which would be published later that same day in the Los Angeles Examiner, were retouched by the photo artist, because the editors wanted to spare their readers the shock of the grisly brutality of the victim's condition. The photo artist covered up the lower part of the woman's body with an airbrushed blanket. He also concealed the gruesome facial wounds the victim displayed by removing the deep slashes on either side of her mouth.
While Paegel was shooting his photographs, the first black-and-white arrived at the scene. The two uniformed officers approached Fowler, not knowing at first who he was, until he showed them his police ID. One of the cops had already pulled out his gun. As more units arrived, Fowler left the scene for a phone booth to call in the story to his city editor, James Richardson. When Richardson heard the victim had been cut in half, he ordered Fowler back to the office right away with the negatives. The photo was quickly processed, and Richardson made the decision to beat the other afternoon papers with an "extra" that he got out onto the street even as Fowler returned to the crime scene for a follow-up.
By now the scene was alive with other reporters, more police units, and detectives who had positioned the uniformed cops and some of the reporters into a human strip of crime-scene tape. Word had spread over the police radios that a woman had been murdered, cut in half, and dumped. That brought an onslaught of reporters, elbowing their way past one another for a closer look at the body. By the time the two crack homicide detectives Harry Hansen and Finis Brown, who had been assigned to the case by Captain Jack Donahoe, arrived at the scene, not only did they have to contend with the groups of reporters and photographers, but also with uniformed officers from the divisions adjacent to the University Division in whose jurisdiction the responsibility for the case belonged.
The crime scene remained open to the press, with photographers free to roam at will for the best shots. Today a crime-scene investigator would never permit the press to trample on what might be evidence and photograph a murder victim lying in the open. But conditions were very different in 1947 Los Angeles. Police and press were interdependent, and in a sense were very real partners. Most reporters carried police badges and often impersonated detectives to get the real stories any way they could. The press needed the power and the doors that were opened by carrying a badge, and the police needed the press to make them look and sound good, even when they screwed up. Before the days of access journalism and a hostile media, reporters and the police in 1947 Los Angeles formed a mutual admiration society.
Whenever investigating detectives asked the press to hold back certain information they didn't want made public, editors and reporters would almost always comply. When a well-connected reporter asked for certain confidential information from the police on a person for a story he or she was working on, the reporter would usually get it. In such a quid pro quo world you broke the rules at your own peril. In this case, the crime-scene photographs of the butchered body would be held back from the public by the press for almost four decades until, it seemed, nobody cared anymore, and the graphic untouched images of the victim's body finally found their way into print. The first public display of these photographs of which I'm aware was in Kenneth Anger's book Babylon II, published in 1985. More followed, six years later, in Will Fowler's Reporters, showing the body at different angles and with longer perspectives.
The photographs from both these books verified for the first time that the body was lying supine, cleanly bisected at the waist. Carefully examining the photographs: the two separated halves lie in close proximity, although the upper torso appears to have been placed asymmetrically, approximately twelve inches above the lower portion and offset to the left by approximately six inches. Both of the victim's arms are raised above the head, the right arm at a forty-five-degree angle away from the body, then bent at the elbow to form a ninety-degree angle. The left arm extends at a similar angle away from the body, and then bends again to form a second ninety-degree angle that parallels the body. This was no normal "dumping" of a victim to get rid of a corpse quickly. In fact, the body had been carefully posed, just six inches from the sidewalk, at a location where the victim was certain to be discovered, to create a shocking scene.
This kind of cold and conscious act was exceptionally rare in 1947. According to criminal researchers, it occurs in less than one percent of all homicides even today. Most veteran homicide investigators, even those who've been involved with hundreds of murder cases, never see an instance where the body is posed the way the victim was that January morning.
As reporters arrived and left and more police units reported in, detectives and forensic crews continued to collect whatever physical evidence they could find. Among the pieces of evidence they retrieved was a paper cement bag with small traces of what appeared to be water-diluted blood on it. This bag, clearly visible in the photographs, was lying just six inches above the victim's outstretched right hand, and one detective speculated that it had been used to carry the two sections of the body from a parked car at sidewalk's edge to the grassy lot.
Police noted a vehicle's tire prints at the curb's edge, close to the body. There was also a bloody heel print from what was believed to be a man's shoe. Later newspaper reports revealed that these two important pieces of evidence were not secured or photographed by the on-scene detectives.
Detectives Hansen and Brown quickly determined that, due to the absence of any blood at the scene, the killer had committed the crime elsewhere, then transported both halves of the body to the empty lot on Norton. No identification was found at the location and the victim was initially listed as "Jane Doe Number 1."
The Los Angeles newspapers were already running wild with the story when, the following morning, Dr. Frederic Newbarr, then chief autopsy surgeon for the County of Los Angeles, performed the autopsy. His findings showed the cause of death to be "hemorrhage and shock from a concussion of the brain and lacerations of her face." He determined further that "the trauma to the head and face were the result of multiple blows using a blunt instrument."
It was clear to the medical examiner that not only had her body been neatly and cleanly bisected, but that a sharp, thin-bladed instrument, consistent with a surgeon's scalpel, had been used to perform the operation. The incision was performed through the abdomen, and then through the intervertebral disk between the second and third lumbar vertebrae. The bisection had been carried out with such precision that it was apparent it was the work of a professional, someone trained in surgical procedures. Police criminologist Ray Pinker confirmed the medical examiner's opinion, and later his findings were confirmed after a study he made with Dr. LeMoyne Snyder of the Michigan State Police.
Dr. Newbarr's preliminary estimate set the time of death within a twenty-four-hour period prior to the discovery of the body, thus establishing the time of the murder as sometime after 10:00 a.m. on January 14.
But who was the victim?
On January 16, 1947, the Los Angeles Examiner offered this questionnaire:
Description of Dead Girl Given
Do you know a missing girl who chewed her fingernails?
If so she may be the victim of yesterday's mutilation slaying.
The dead girl's description:
Age — Between 15 and 16 years.
Weight — 118 pounds.
Eyes — Gray-blue or gray-green.
Nose —Small turned up.
Ears — Small lobes.
Eyelashes — Virtually colorless.
Hair — Hennaed, but original dark brown growing out.
Foot size —6-1/2.
Toenails — Enameled pink.
Scars — 3-1/2 inch operational scar on right side of back: 1-1/2 inch scar on right abdomen, possible appendectomy; vaccination scar, left thigh; small scar on left knee and another above the knee.
Moles — Six small moles on back of neck below collar line; another in small of back.
General description — Rather well developed, small bones with trim legs.
Scrambling for any piece of the puzzle that would allow the winner of the who-is-Jane-Doe-Number-1 contest to emblazon the victim's name in a full-page headline, the city editor of the Los Angeles Examiner suddenly had an idea. In a meeting with LAPD detectives, he made an offer that was immediately accepted — to transmit the fingerprints of Jane Doe NumberIvia an early photo facsimile machine called a "Soundex" through their proprietary communications network to their Washington, D.C., bureau. Reporters in the D.C. office had FBI agents standing by to transport the fingerprints immediately to their records section for identification. That the city editor's motive was to be the first one on the street to carry her identity didn't matter, for the detectives were as hungry for information as the press.
A memo to J. Edgar Hoover, dated June 24, 1947, and now available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act, identifying Jane Doe Number 1, speaks for itself:
FBI MEMO
1.1 #590
June 24, 1947
SOUND-PHOTO TRANSMISSION OF FINGERPRINTS