CA CA - Georgette Bauerdorf, 20, West Hollywood, 12 Oct 1944

gaia227

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http://georgettebauerdorf.com/
(great site maintained by Georgette's best friends daughter, includes letters photos and very detailed description of Georgette, her background, the murder and investigation)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgette_Bauerdorf

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/dahlia_profile/6.html (Bauerdorf was looked at during The Black Dahlia's investigation. The girls knew eachother, went to the same bar and looked a lot alike. Some believe they could have been killed by the same person. Short's murder being more brutal because they killer had gained experience and familiarity)

http://www.lfugett.com/Georgettell.html (article from LA Times - poster noted that her car was found close to wear Short's body was found.)

There is a lot more info about this case but it is 5:00pm and time for me to split for now.
 
gaia227, I've heard Georgette's name in connection with The Black Dahlia but never really read much about the case. What a great website her best friend's daughter put together! Georgette really did look like Elizabeth Short. Thanks for posting the info on this case.

Mary Beth
 
What I don't understand is Georgette's housekeeper told police that when he found Georgette in the bathtub the water was still running, the tub was only 3/4 full yet LE projects that Georgette had been dead 10-12 hours. I would think the tub would have overflowed. Perhaps the water was just a trickle.

She had a bruise on the back of her head which makes me wonder if she was not attacked quickly and struck to subdue her. She was only wearing the top half of her pajama suit, the bottoms were found on the bed and looked as if they had been ripped off her body. She had been brutally raped. The blanket had been folded down on the bed but the sheets had not, there was an indention on the pillow as if someone had been laying htere. It is obvious by the condition of the bed the rape must have happened on the floor. There were blood droplets found on the floor and they were wet as if someone had tried to wipe them up. She had abraisions on her knuckles suggesting she had tried to fend off her attacker. The cloth stuffed down her throat wasn't a towel but a bandage. There was not evidence of much of a struggle in her bedroom which indicates she was taken off guard and subdued very quickly.

The light on her front porch had been unscrewed by someone, most likely the killer, and there doesn't seem to be have been anything in the vicinity for someone to stand on suggesting the killer was a tall person. There was one fingerprint found on the lightbulb. Georgette's car was stolen and found a few days later 10 miles away out of gas with the keys dangling in the ignition. From what I have read I have gathered that the fingerprints in the car match the fingerprint on the bulb but LE could never match it to anyone.

Kenneth Raymond was questioned in conjunction to Georgette's murder when he was arrested for the abduction and murder of a 6yr old girl. LE could never connect him to Georgettes murder and I'm guessing his prints didn't match what was found at the scene.

The neighbor hearing a women scream "don't, don't, you are killing me' strikes something with me. That statement does not sound like something a person would say to an unknown person. That statement, to me, indicates familiarity with her attacker and even that she believed he was not aware of how rough he was being, or that she believed making it known that he was hurting her would provoke him to stop out of compassion for her.

The porchlight being unscrewed suggests that the person knew that Georgette did not like him or trust him and would not willingly let him in so he turned out the light so when he knocked she could not see who it was before she opened the door. I wonder if Georgette even locked her doors - he could have knew the door was unlocked and unscrewed the light so neighbors did not see him enter the house.

Whoever killed Georgette did so out of the motive to rape her. Had she rebuffed the wrong man? My mind actually keeps wondering back to the male housekeeper. He would have been very familiar with her routine, the layout of the house, etc.

Why did the killer take the time to put her in the bathtub? An attempt to wash evidence off the body?

Georgette was an avid diarist and she mentioned by Elizabeth Short and Arthur Lake by name in her diary. The speculations about the two murders being connected is interesting but I am not giving it much credence at this point. By the time Short was murdered the Canteen where both girls worked was closed and that kind of erases the common bond between the two women.
 
A very interesting case, do the police have any DNA on file? I know it would be degraded by now, but depending on how well it was kept, they may still be able to run it via computer files - checking service men/military records might be a good idea, although I'm not sure how well this will work considering how long ago it was.

Also with regards to your question about the bath, there are three reasons I could think of 1. to get rid of DNA evidence, but considering DNA/Forensics were not common place in the 40s and most people did not know that much about it I doubt this was a consideration,

2. it may have been a psychological consideration of the killer? Perhaps he wanted to clean her to further initiate his control/power over her body (since rape is psychologically about controlling other people)

3. Georgette was known to have suffered fainting spells, perhaps after/during the rape she passed out and he placed her in the bath to try and bring her round, not considering the piece of towel stuffed down her throat and the possibility of suffocation.

Possible murderers could be anyone who ahd met Georgette at the Hollywood Canteen, especially since she occassionally let servicemen stay on her sofa just to help them out! Maybe one of these men got the wrong idea? Although rape is usually a very personal crime and most rape victims are attacked by someone they know, such as an ex-husband or boyfirend, an acquaintance or colleague, (were all these people who knew Georgette checked out by police?).

And are you sure that she knew Elizabeth Short? As it was never conclusively proven that Short worked at the Hollywood Canteen and they seem like very different people, the heiress and the girl who travelled around never staying anywhere for more than a few months, never had any money and relied on people's kindness to get by - hardly the types who be friends!

Also are the LAPD reports/files accessable?
 
Hi Lucy!

According to several sources Elizabeth and Georgette did both work at the Canteen and knew eachother as acquaintences. I have seen mentioned several times that there was even a common suspect - Al Morrison.

http://www.gasdetection.com/MDS/m102599.html
If you scroll down it talks about LA Crime Reporter Aggie Underwood who researched both murders.

http://www.northernexpress.com/editorial/books.asp?id=1581
Long article but it does mention their connection.

http://lfugett.com/BlackDahlialll.html
Although neither the Black Dahlia murder nor the Bauerdorf murder was ever officially
solved, a good suspect finally emerged that may have committed both murders. The suspect
first came to the attention of John St. John, one of the most highly acclaimed police officers
in the LAPD.




I will write more later. I am at work :(
 
But then you have people saying that Liz was not even in LA until after Georgette was murdered. I think the source of the rumours that the two women knew eachother was perpetuated by the book Severed that stated as fact the two did know eachother.

http://serialkillercalendar.com/Detailed-Bio-of-the-BLACK-DAHLIA.html
Many "true crime" books and other allegedly factual accounts claim that Short lived in or visited Los Angeles at various times in the mid-1940s; but these claims have never been substantiated, and are refuted by the findings of law enforcement officers who investigated the case. A document in the Los Angeles County district attorney's files titled "Movements of Elizabeth Short Prior to June 1, 1946" states that Short was in Florida and Massachusetts from September 1943 through the early months of 1946, and gives a detailed account of her living and working arrangements during this period.


That being said there is the possibility it could have been the same person. The women looked very similar and LE certainly believed that Liz's killer had killed before. I think Liz did go the Canteen - she went lots of places where she knew there were going to be service men in hopes of being taken out so it makes sense the Canteen might be on her rounds. Whether they knew eachother or not the Canteen is the one thing that links them together.

If there are any files I don't know how to find them. I have tried but to no avail.
 
I have always been fascinated by this case. I think it was the same killer and it is obvious that Elizabeth's killer had killed before. To me, Georgette telling the man to stop doesn't mean she knew him. Also, no one has mentioned it here, but several witnesses say that Georgette was acting uncharacteristically nervous the day she was killed. Does anyone know what happened to her diary?
 
I have always been fascinated by this case. I think it was the same killer and it is obvious that Elizabeth's killer had killed before. To me, Georgette telling the man to stop doesn't mean she knew him. Also, no one has mentioned it here, but several witnesses say that Georgette was acting uncharacteristically nervous the day she was killed. Does anyone know what happened to her diary?

Hi Scriptgirl! Thanks for bumping up. I do not ever reading what happened to her diary. If I had to guess i would say LE confiscated it and it was either lost long ago or is sitting in cold case storage.

I was re-reading the website maintainted by the friend and I had totally forgotten about the letter that was found.

http://georgettebauerdorf.com/

I cannot recall what was said about her behavior that day. Was she acting nervous?
 
My pleasure re bumping up thread
Several people who knew Georgette well said she acted nervous. n fact, June Zeigler, Georgette’s best friend, says Georgette had asked her to stay over on the night that she was murdered.
 
This article was published in May

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1762494/georgette_bauerdorf_the_other_black.html?cat=2

Murdered by the Dahlia's Killer?

The crime scene was like something out of an old Hollywood movie. It was October of 1944. A young woman, just 20 years of age, was found submerged face down in a bathtub full of water inside her home. Her lustrous dark hair skimmed the top of the still.

warm water that engulfed her lifeless body. She wore only a pink hued pajama top, no bottoms. A cloth had been shoved in her mouth far enough to choke her, and she had been sexually assaulted. The girl was bruised over several areas of her body, particularly the back of the head, hips, pelvic region, and right thigh. The imprint of a man's hand, fingers and thumb specifically, could be seen on her thigh as well suggesting the use of extreme force during the assault. The girl was Georgette Bauerdorf.

By the time the body of Georgette Bauerdorf was discovered, rigor mortis had already set in and it was estimated that she had been dead for at least 8-10 hours already. Georgette lived alone in a posh Spanish Baroque style apartment building called El Palacio - "The Palace." The lavish building located on Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood certainly lived up to its title. The building and grounds were beautiful with a bit of old world charm. Living there would certainly make a young woman feel like a princess, especially considering at least one successful actress (Virginia Weidler) lived there as well at the time.

The expensive accommodations and well-to-do clientele living at El Palacio would certainly seem to make the place attractive to potential burglars, but a crime much worse than theft would occur on that crisp October night in 1944 when Georgette Bauerdorf was raped and strangled to death. Detectives on the scene reportedly determined the primary motive for the crime was rape, and the murder was a secondary consequence of the violent sexual assault. Nothing had been stolen from the apartment, despite expensive jewelry and other items sitting out in plain view. It seemed the perpetrator was motivated purely by sexual desire.

According to many sources, the cause of death was strangulation. However, in all of the research available (to me anyway), there is scarcely mention of strangulation marks on Georgette's neck so it is quite possible that she died of asphyxiation when her attacker shoved a cloth deep down her throat during the rape, probably to keep her quiet after she tried screaming for help (A neighbor actually reported hearing Georgette scream for her life around 2:30 in the morning, but didn't call the police). Georgette's death may have been incidental, although it is possible the perpetrator made a decision to kill her during the commission of the sexual crime. Either way, detectives on the case did not seem to feel the murder had been the primary motive for the crime.

So who was Georgette Bauerdorf and why would someone want to rape and kill her?

Georgette was born in New York City where she spent a good portion of her youth before the family moved to Los Angeles, California, for several years. There, Georgette attended the prestigious Westlake School and earned her high school diploma there. She was in good company at the school, which has boasted many notable students over the years. Among the famous names and faces to come out of the school are: actress Candace Bergen, former CA governor Gray Davis, actress Bridget Fonda, sibling actors Maggie & Jake Gyllenhaal, comedian Jon Lovitz, Bewitched actress Elizabeth Montgomery, musicians Gunnar & Matthew Nelson, Ron Reagan - son of former President Reagan, actress Tori Spelling, and beloved child actress Shirley Temple. Georgette Bauerdorf was among the elite, to say the least.

Following high school, Georgette gained employment in the Women's Service Bureau of the LA Times while also volunteering at the Hollywood Canteen, a place frequented by men from all outfits of the military. Bette Davis and John Garfield played a significant role in creating the Canteen, which first opened in 1942. Current owners of the club describe its history as follows:

"The Hollywood Canteen operated...as a club offering food, dancing and entertainment for servicemen, usually on their way overseas. Even though the majority of visitors were U.S servicemen...The serviceman's ticket for admission was his uniform and everything at the Canteen was free of charge."

For Georgette, working around all those servicemen while volunteering at the Canteen was one of the perks. By all accounts, she liked to date quite a bit and was especially fond of all the military men either deploying or returning from the war (WWII then). Georgette was certainly living the life. She had attended school in the company of some well-known actresses (Shirley Temple & Myrna Loy), she lived in a beautiful palace-esq building next to another actress, and she was surrounded by celebrities and military men through her work. What more could a girl ask for?

Unfortunately, Georgette would only enjoy that wonderful life very briefly. In August of 1944, when Georgette was twenty, her family left Los Angeles to return to New York. She remained in the beautiful El Palacio two-story apartment alone and continued to enjoy visiting the Canteen. But st a few months later, before she had a chance to meet up with a beau in El Paso, Texas, she would be savagely raped and killed in the early morning hours of October 13, 1944. No one was ever charged with the crime, and the case officially remains unsolved to this day, although it was closed years ago. Several men confessed to the crime, but none proved to be guilty.

But in an interesting twist, when the now infamous Black Dahlia was killed within a year or so of Georgette's murder, a person of interest came to light. A man, who identified himself as Arnold Smith, came forward with details about the Black Dahlia case. He named the killer as Al Morrison, and described the grotesque manner in which Morrison slapped a board across a bathtub and then laid the Black Dahlia's body across it while he proceed to saw her in half and drain all her body fluids into the tub before first washing and then dumping her body. He also commented on "that other one who was found in a bathtub," possibly referring to Georgette Bauerdorf. Details of the two murders quickly overlapped. A bathtub had been utilized in the two cases, and both women had had something stuffed in their mouth (The Dahlia's panties were shoved in hers, according to Smith). Additionally, they were both around the same age with dark hair and similar features. They both seemed to enjoy the Hollywood crowd and the two women knew each other.

An important clue further linking the two cases was the fact that Georgette's car had originally been discovered abandoned not far from the spot where the Dahlia's body was eventually found following her murder. In the case of the Black Dahlia, it was as if the killer had previously scouted the site when he left Georgette's car there. The man Arnold Smith identified as the Dahlia's killer, as it turns out, never existed! There was no such person. Police suspected Smith and Morrison were one in the same, but they would never be able to charge him. He accidentally burned to death after falling asleep with a lit cigarette. Crime reporter Aggie Underwood was one of the first individuals to push this theory that the murders of Georgette Bauerdorf and Elizabeth Short, aka: The Black Dahlia, were related. He urged police to actively pursue this possibility. In his book, The Cases That Haunt Us, now retired long time FBI profiler John Douglas concurs with Underwood and believes the two murders could very well have been committed by the same individual. In fact, he suggests that the perpetrator was likely a serial killer and may have been responsible for other unsolved murders at the time.
 
From the 1947 project:

Youth Queried
in Girl’s Death

Sheriff’s detectives yesterday said they were questioning a youth in the unsolved murder of Georgette Bauerdorf, 20-year-old oil heiress who was strangled in her studio apartment here Oct. 11, 1944.

The youth, Robert George Pollock White, 20, was arrested in San Diego County yesterday on suspicion of attacking a 65-year-old woman after quieting her by forcing a towel down her throat.

Miss Bauerdorf was strangled by a cloth jammed down her throat. She was believed to have been attacked.

White admitted to San Diego police that he was in Los Angeles at the time of the girl’s murder.

+ + +

The last words her neighbors heard were “Stop, stop, you’re killing me!” as she fought hard for her life. The housekeeper found the body in the bathtub the next day, when she heard water dripping in the upstairs bathroom.

Because the apartment at 8493 Fountain Ave. is in West Hollywood, rather than the city of Los Angeles, the murder was handled by the Sheriff’s Department rather than the LAPD.

The victim was Georgette Bauerdorf, a Hollywood Canteen hostess who normally shared the apartment with her older sister, Connie, who was in New York, along with their father, George, and stepmother. Two days before she was killed, she wrote in her diary: “Call to Jerry [Pvt. Jerry Brown, a boyfriend] at 6:30 a.m. came thru—Jerry’s a lamb. Letter from Dud and Jerry—wrote Jerry.”

Family friends say that Georgette, a graduate of exclusive girls’ schools, was well mannered and never entertained men at the apartment. “Perhaps, on occasion, one of her gentlemen friends might stop in for a moment or two, but she never asked them to remain,” her father’s secretary said. “She was schooled in a convent in New York, on Long Island, graduated from a girls’ school here and had very definite ideas of propriety.”

With no signs of forced entry, sheriff’s detectives believed that the killer might have used a passkey to get into the apartment, but the two former employees who had passkeys proved that they had turned them in. Cosmo Volpe, the GI who aggressively cut in with Georgette’s other dance partners on the night she was killed, contacted detectives and proved that he had checked into his barracks at the Lockheed Air Terminal at 11 p.m. Another potential suspect, an unidentified man who was 6 feet, 4 inches tall, was also cleared by investigators, according to a 1950 story in The Mirror.

In December 1944, John Lehman Sumter, 22, who had been discharged from the Navy and court-martialed by the Army, confessed to the murder. Confronted with contradictions in his story, Sumter admitted that he had lied: “I wanted to die in the chair because I had nothing to live for.”

Although The Times never followed up on White, it did report further inquiries focusing on Ray Dempsey Gardner (1949) and Cpl. Chester Vukas (1950).

In later years, the Bauerdorf case has been lumped with half a dozen unsolved killings, including the Black Dahlia, and some writers have gone so far as to create a fictitious friendship between Elizabeth Short and Georgette and to turn the 6-foot-4 soldier into Jack Wilson of “Severed” fame. The truth is that Georgette was killed in 1944, the Hollywood Canteen closed Nov. 22, 1945, and Elizabeth Short didn’t arrive in Los Angeles until the middle of 1946.
 
Bumping. Georgette's sister is still alive, but is getting older. I would love for this case to be able to be solved before she passes on
 
Yes, I agree with your opinion although the quote confuses me in one way.

The Wikipedia quote is as follows: "Stop, stop, you're killing me!"

That really does sound like something you would say to someone you knew, someone who you thought cared about you.

My question then is this: if she is an oil heiress then shouldn't there be a motive for a family member or acquaintance to kill her? Someone who thinks they will benefit financially if she dies?

The part about the quote that I find odd however is that she was strangled. How does she get those words out while losing the use of her windpipe?

She must have yelled this during the struggle prior to the strangulation.

It's possible that she didn't know her attacker however. Maybe she just said the phrase hoping it could hit a human conscience.

The neighbor hearing a woman scream "don't, don't, you are killing me' strikes something with me. That statement does not sound like something a person would say to an unknown person. That statement, to me, indicates familiarity with her attacker and even that she believed he was not aware of how rough he was being, or that she believed making it known that he was hurting her would provoke him to stop out of compassion for her.
 
Yes, I agree with your opinion although the quote confuses me in one way.

The Wikipedia quote is as follows: "Stop, stop, you're killing me!"

That really does sound like something you would say to someone you knew, someone who you thought cared about you.

My question then is this: if she is an oil heiress then shouldn't there be a motive for a family member or acquaintance to kill her? Someone who thinks they will benefit financially if she dies?

The part about the quote that I find odd however is that she was strangled. How does she get those words out while losing the use of her windpipe?

She must have yelled this during the struggle prior to the strangulation.

It's possible that she didn't know her attacker however. Maybe she just said the phrase hoping it could hit a human conscience.

The fact that she was brutally raped kind of rules out a family member commiting the crime, in my opinion. If it was a family member it is very weird and not the normal MO to rape her. A family member could have hired someone to kill her.
She was attacked and raped before she was strangled so she certainly could have had the opportunity to scream. We don't know when the bandage was stuffed down her throat.

As I have mentioned before, I wish we had more info about the male housekeeper. The fact the lightbulb outside the door is an interesting clue. If it was the housekeeper why would he unscrew the lightbulb?
I haven't decided if I think the lightbulb being unscrewed indicates her attacker knew her and didn't want her to recognize him when she looked out out of fear she would not open the door or if it indicates she didn't know him and he was trying to conceal his idenity for obvious reasons and also out of hope she would open the door if she couldn't see who it was.

Unfortunately, we can speculate on all of the many aspects of her murder for days yet I fear after all this time we will probably never know what happened and who her killer was.
 
She KNEW her killer. Numerous people said she was scared of a serviceman at the canteen. This was a crime of passion and opportunity.
 
I think the police work done on this case was faulty and that the murderer got away with it, cause no one wanted to implicate a soldier.
 
The NEW CASTLE, PA; NEWS, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1944 states:

"Miss Bauerdorf's diary and an airplane ticket found in her purse disclosed that she had been preparing secretly to fly to El Paso, Texas for "the graduation at Port Bliss on October 16 of a man identified only as "Lou." An entry in the diary read: "Lou is supposed to graduate at Bliss Field." The oil man's secretary, Mrs. Rose L. Gilbert, said Miss Bauerdorf had told her nothing of the projected trip to Texas."

Why would she keep it a secret from her family? Was he ever identified?
 
Because maybe her family didn't approve? Maybe he had no money?
 

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