The Pandemonium Witches: Murders, Mystery, and Mayhem · TPW3MPodcast

S2.E7 - She Had a Name, and It Was Elizabeth Short: The Unsolved Case of The Black Dahlia

·2 hr 20 min·5 clips

Kat and Rachel kick things off with a messy catch-up before they settle on Elizabeth. The opening has the usual Pandemonium chaos: a health update, 60s music, and a very specific beef with American Airlines. Then they pivot hard into the Black Dahlia case. Even when the room gets jokey and loose, the story stays victim-first. They take their time with the evidence trail instead of rushing to the headline. A handbag and a black suede shoe show up in an alley. Those items were wiped with gasoline, which destroys any fingerprints. Later, a note is found tucked into a shoe in a pile of men's clothing near the ocean. The note gets treated as a strange, self-incriminating message about the Black Dahlia killing. The hosts stay with how weird and ugly the whole thing is. They also cover the address book that police used to start narrowing suspects. Mark Henson comes up as a wealthy nightclub and theater owner with a connection to Elizabeth. According to some sources, Elizabeth had stayed at his home with friends. The episode also notes that Elizabeth's friend and roommate told investigators she had recently rejected his sexual advances. That detail is treated as a possible motive, not a clean answer. Mark is eventually cleared, which leaves the case as unsettled as ever. The narration keeps circling the same problem: plenty of leads, no clean finish. The hosts interrupt, correct themselves, and keep the conversation moving like real people in a room. That unruly pace gives the case a lived-in feel even when the facts are grim. By the end, the episode is less about closure than about the horror of a name, a loss, and a mystery that stayed open.

As heard by us

A loose, conversational Black Dahlia account that keeps Elizabeth Short at the center.

The Black Dahlia case gets a loose, conversational pass here, with the hosts moving from a chatty opening into a darker, more grounded account of Elizabeth Short's murder, the later evidence, and the suspects that kept circling back into view.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want the Black Dahlia case with messy banter, blunt emotion, and real investigative detail.

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