Enjoy the Teaser and Listen to the Full Episode on Patreon >> Here or on Substack >> here!

Elizabeth Short’s life began with abandonment—and ended as a grotesque surrealist tableau, her body transformed into a nightmare that still haunts Los Angeles. But she wasn’t the only girl destroyed by the darkness of mid-century Hollywood. In this episode 2 of The Black Dahlia, we trace the fractured childhood of Elizabeth Short and the parallel story of Tamar Hodel, daughter of the wealthy, decadent physician George Hodel.

We follow Elizabeth’s vulnerable path to Los Angeles, her hopes colliding with predation. We enter the surrealist world of George Hodel’s Franklin Avenue “Jaws House”—a space where art, sadism, and sexual perversion merged, and where his daughter Tamar became both witness and victim. Her testimony would spark one of the most disturbing incest trials in California history.

Content warning: This episode contains discussions of sexual assault, incest, child abuse, and graphic violence.