The image is burned into the consciousness of every wannabe true crime solver: the pale, severed body of Elizabeth Short in a field of weeds in Los Angeles in January, 1947. And on the cusp of the 80th anniversary of her murder, documentarian Eli Frankel has released a book naming who he believes is the killer.
Who did it? You'll have to listen to the podcast above.
Frankel's newly released book "Sisters in Death" ties Short's horrific murder to another case, a similarly grisly murder that happened six years earlier and 1,600 miles away.
"Leila Welsh was an ambitious, educated, popular, and socially connected beauty. Though raised modestly on a prairie farm, she was heiress to her Kansas City family’s status and wealth. On a winter morning in 1941, Leila’s butchered body was found in her bedroom bearing the marks of unspeakable trauma."
Emmy-award winning producer Frankel spent five years researching the case to discover never revealed evidence of lies, parallels, investigative missteps and more. “There was one crucial suspect who has been overlooked by researchers and writers," Frankel told PEOPLE. He appeared early in the investigation and continued to be vigorously pursued by Los Angeles detectives until the case went cold in the early 1950’s.
"I decided to dive in and find out everything I could about this mysterious man,” Frankel says. “What I uncovered was nothing less than shocking — a pattern of violence, stalking and various criminal acts including other possible murders.”