Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast · Blue Ewe Media

418: The Black Dahlia & the Prairie Heiress Murders: One Killer? w/ Eli Frankel

·1 hr 30 min·5 clips

The same horseshoe-shaped flesh removal appears in Elizabeth Short and Layla Welsh.

1. Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast episode 418 centers on the Black Dahlia case and the Prairie Heiress murders through Eli Frankel's book Sisters in Death. 2. Host Eric Rivenes interviews Eli Frankel, an Emmy-nominated executive producer, author, and researcher whose work on Helter Skelter and Sisters in Death frames the discussion. 3. The episode asks whether Elizabeth Short and Layla Welsh were killed by the same man, and whether the familiar Black Dahlia narrative needs to be rewritten. 4. Frankel says his interest in the Black Dahlia began in the late 1990s when he saw the name scribbled on an old VHS tape at E! Entertainment Television. 5. He describes a five- to six-year research process that shifted from reading published books to pursuing private documents and interviews. 6. Frankel argues that many Black Dahlia researchers start with a suspect first and then force the evidence to fit that person. 7. He says his own method was to begin with the facts, follow each clue, and avoid a preselected answer. 8. Frankel revisits the discovery of Elizabeth Short's body on January 15, 1947, and says the accepted account of her placement has been repeated incorrectly for years. 9. He cites Betty Bersinger's daughter Ann and says the body parts were actually about 14 feet from the sidewalk in tall weeds, not inches away. 10. Frankel says officers Perkins and Fitzgerald arrived at 11:09 a.m., called back to University Station at 11:14 a.m., and spent nine minutes alone at the scene. 11. He argues that those minutes mattered because the officers moved the body while trying to understand what they were seeing. 12. Frankel says Elizabeth Short was miscast as an aspiring actress, when she never auditioned or tried to work her way into Hollywood. 13. He describes her as a 22-year-old woman seeking love, family, and stability, with letters and life choices that show a more ordinary and private path. 14. Frankel says she worked from age 16, moved from Boston to Miami because of tuberculosis and asthma, and traveled across the country on her own. 15. The interview then moves to Layla Welsh, the Kansas City heiress murdered in 1941, whom Frankel places at the center of the book's second case. 16. He names Carl Balsiger, a college acquaintance of Welsh and a later suspect in the Black Dahlia case, as the man linking the two murders. 17. Frankel details a horseshoe-shaped piece of flesh carved from Elizabeth Short's thigh and compares it with the one-pound piece removed from Layla Welsh. 18. He says both cases involved a smooth arc cut with a butcher knife and straight razor, plus bloodless wounds and discarded body parts. 19. The interview has a methodical, forensic tone, with Rivenes asking direct questions and Frankel answering at length with scene-specific detail. 20. Listeners who follow true-crime history, unsolved murders, and case reconstruction will get the most from it, while listeners avoiding graphic forensic discussion may skip it.

As heard by us

A grim, unsentimental look at two murders and the research around them.

Most Notorious frames Eli Frankel's Sisters in Death around the Black Dahlia and Prairie Heiress murders, and Eric Rivenes gives Frankel enough room to lay the story out without fuss.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For a serious Black Dahlia conversation with a blunt listener-discretion warning.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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