“Stop, stop, you’re killing me!”—The Grisly Unsolved Murder
Aug 2, 2021 19:48:55 GMT
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Post by hi224 on Aug 2, 2021 19:48:55 GMT
Georgette Bauerdorf happened to be a junior hostess at the Canteen. A 20 year old, bubbly and apple-cheeked brunette, when she wasn’t socializing with friends or attending parties, Georgette divided her time between a part time job at The Los Angeles Times in the women’s bureau and volunteering at the Canteen. She certainly didn’t need to work—she was the daughter of billionaire oil tycoon George Bauerdorf and lived a life of wealth and privilege. But she was known for her kind heart and also had her eyes set on stardom, so serving the troops while also rubbing elbows with the Hollywood Elite at The Canteen was a no-brainer.
October 11th started on a upbeat note. Georgette spent the day having lunch with a friend, and went to the beauty shop to get her hair done. But the highlight of the day was the purchase of a plane ticket to El Paso—she was planning to visit her boyfriend Jerry, whom she had met at the Canteen several months earlier. October 11th also happened to be a Wednesday, which meant she would be working there that night.
That night at the Canteen, Georgette spent the evening entertaining and dancing with the soldiers as usual. Except for a minor incident with an overly persistent soldier who kept pestering her to dance with him, her shift at The Canteen was like any other.
At around 11:30 PM, Georgette finished her shift and as far as any of her coworkers knew, was planning on heading straight home. Little did they know, this would be the last time they’d ever see her.
Georgette lived alone in her family’s luxury apartment on Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood, in an apartment complex known as El Palacio. Her family had recently moved to New York, but Georgette wanted to remain in L.A. Many notable people in Hollywood lived or had lived at El Palacio since it was built in 1931, and it even became the residence of Marilyn Monroe for a short time a few years later. The apartment complex still exists to this day.
One of the luxurious amenities of El Palacio was its full-service, on-site housekeeping services. Tenants never had to lift a finger.
On October 12th, just a little after 11 AM, Frederick Atwood arrived at Georgette’s apartment with his wife and daughter to perform his cleaning duties. Mr. Atwood was the head custodian of El Palacio, and his wife and daughter often accompanied him to help him clean.
Upon arriving at the apartment, The Atwoods noticed that the front door was ajar. Although unusual, they didn’t seem to think much of it and went inside. Nobody seemed to be home. Mr. Atwood planned on taking out the garbage and tidying up downstairs, while his wife and daughter headed upstairs to clean the bedrooms and bathrooms. As she climbed the stairs, Mrs. Atwood could hear water running.
Trying to find the source, she finally reached the upstairs bathroom and found the door open. When she stepped inside, she gazed upon a frightening display.
In the nearly full bathtub, floating face down in bloody water was a petite brunette. She was wearing only a pink rayon pajama top but no bottoms. Her head was fully submerged under water and her hair was floating on the surface. The shower curtain was partially drawn. Mrs. Atwood immediately called down to her husband to come upstairs right away and when he reached the scene, he couldn’t process what he was looking at. It looked like there must have been some kind of accident and his first thought was to drain the water. Thinking she might still be alive, he touched her right forearm. She did still feel warm, however it was clear that rigor mortis had already set in, so the hope that she was still alive was quickly dashed.
The Atwoods immediately called police.
When the police arrived, they surveyed the scene. There was no sign of breaking and entering. No sign that there had been an altercation. Besides the evidence that they soon would find on Georgette’s body, the only physical evidence they found was a spot of blood between the bed and the bathroom door. There appeared to be an attempt to wipe the blood away, which was almost certainly done by the killer. Some accounts do say that her pajama bottoms were found badly ripped at the foot of the bed, yet others don’t mention it.
Theft could have been at least part of the motive; police determined that $100 had been taken from her purse, yet all of the expensive jewelry and watches she owned lay intact on her dresser. Her bed appeared to have someone recently laying in it, but the bedding was not disheveled or showed any signs of a struggle whatsoever. The only sign that anyone besides Georgette had actually been there were two ashtrays on the ground by the bed. Georgette always wore red lipstick and still had lipstick on when she was found in the bathtub, yet none of the cigarette butts in the ashtray had a single trace of red on them.
Upon inspecting her body, it was obvious this was no accident. The cause of death was discovered: a large, handkerchief-sized piece of an unusual type of bandage gauze had been shoved 4 inches down her throat, cutting off her airway and choking her to death. Her body showed signs of a violent struggle. Her head had multiple bruises and abrasions, as did the rest of her body. Several of her knuckles were badly bruised and broken. Her thighs and abdomen had extensive bruising and abrasions. On her right thigh was evidence consistent with fingernails having been dug deeply into her skin. Based on the layout and size of the bruising, the papers described the assailant as having “ape sized” hands. She had also been violently raped.
As police continued their investigation, more clues were discovered. The front porch light wasn’t working; upon further investigation, they discovered that the light bulb had been unscrewed a couple turns. At nearly 8 feet high, someone would have had to have stood on something to unscrew it. The police theorized that the killer probably unscrewed it to avoid being seen, either as he was leaving, or possibly if Georgette happened to answer the door. And there were fingerprints on it, but they were too smudged to identify anyone with.
Georgette’s car was also missing. Police would later find it abandoned 10 miles away on East 25th Street, the gas tank completely empty.
In the kitchen, melon rinds and an empty green beans can were the only items found in the trash. Green beans were found in her stomach during her autopsy, but there was also food that was recently eaten that wasn’t in her apartment. She hadn’t eaten at The Canteen—did she go somewhere afterwards?
The coroner estimated her time of death as around 2-3 AM. Between 11:30 PM and then, there were about 2 1/2-3 hours of which her whereabouts and activities were unknown. It appeared that when she had came home, she ate the green beans and then headed upstairs to go to bed. Did this point to the idea that the killer was already in the house waiting for Georgette? Or did she bring someone home with her and ate the green beans with him present?
Regarding the subject of Georgette willingly allowing men into her home, there are two different stories—I’m not sure which was actually true:
The first narrative is that she would would never allow a man inside her apartment without other people being there—this was stated by a close friend.
The second narrative is that she had no problem being alone with men in her apartment and had even been known to let military guys sleep on her couch if they needed a place to stay for the night. If the latter is true, this would be a crucial piece of information for the police.
Friends and acquaintances were adamant though that Georgette was not the type of girl who would have willingly engaged in any sexual activity with these men. According to the people who knew her, she was extremely wholesome—sheltered even, and the idea that she brought these men home to sleep with them was simply out of the question. It’s not inaccurate to say that Georgette was probably very naive. She believed she was just doing all she could to help the war effort. The potential danger of a young, single 20 year old girl allowing strangers to stay in her home—even if they were heroes in her eyes—didn’t seem to occur to her.
As her friends and associates continued to be questioned, another curious detail emerged: on the day of the murder, at around 6:30 PM, Georgette’s friend and Hollywood Canteen coworker June Ziegler noticed Georgette sitting in her car knitting, waiting for her shift to start at the Canteen. June said they chatted until their shifts started, and during their conversation, Georgette had asked June if she would spend the night with her at her apartment. She claimed that Georgette did seem visibly nervous, but never explained why. And June stated that she didn’t ask because she assumed it had to do with Georgette flying down to El Paso the next day, which she already knew about. It isn’t known what June told Georgette, but she obviously didn’t spend the night with her.
Georgette’s demeanor at that time was in direct contrast to her mood earlier in the day. According to her father’s secretary Rose Gilbert, who was with her that morning and afternoon, Georgette was her usual happy, bubbly self. What happened between then and when her friend June spoke with her that evening that caused her mood to change?
Georgette’s neighbors were also questioned. Incidentally, Fred Atwood, the head custodian of El Palacio, lived in the apartment directly below Georgette’s. According to him and his wife, in the early morning hours of Oct. 12th, they were awakened by the sound of what they described as women’s heels walking quickly and heavily across the floor, followed by a loud crash that they said sounded like something metallic. Thinking someone must have just dropped a tray in the kitchen, they went back to sleep.
Another neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, reported being awoken around 2:30 AM by a woman’s blood curdling scream, followed a few seconds later by a voice yelling, “STOP, STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME!” The neighbor reported that the screams continued briefly but got much quieter and were then abruptly gone. Thinking that it was most likely just a domestic squabble, the neighbor also put it out of their mind and went back to sleep.
So far, nothing was making sense. To the best of their knowledge, it appeared that Georgette had come home sometime between 11:30 PM and 3 AM, ate something before bed, then retired to her bedroom. At this point, they were theorizing that Georgette was attacked while she was laying in bed. But yet, The Atwoods insisted that the noise they heard was definitely after midnight in the early morning hours. If Georgette was being attacked in the kitchen downstairs as the noise would imply, how then did she go upstairs, change into her pajamas and get into bed? Unless the killer made her go upstairs and get undressed perhaps?
In the weeks following the murder, police received another tip which, if true, showed that Georgette didn’t go straight home after leaving the Canteen. Sergeant Gordon Aadland, an Army officer who was on furlough in LA at the time of the murder, wrote a letter to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. telling police that a woman fitting the description of Georgette picked him up around midnight in the vicinity near the Hollywood Canteen the night Georgette was murdered. He explained that he was hitchhiking, as he frequently did, and spent about 10-15 minutes in the car with her.
Aadland stated that during the ride, the girl told him that she was planning on flying down to El Paso to see her boyfriend Jerry the next day and needed to get home quickly because she was expecting a call from him. He said she seemed excited about the trip. With this information, police were certain that it was Georgette who had picked him up.
Aadland wrote that Georgette dropped him off on Sunset Blvd., near Laurel Canyon Blvd.
The next piece of info Aadland mentioned threw police for another loop: Aadland said that after dropping him off, the girl turned right onto Laurel Canyon Blvd., and headed towards the Hollywood Hills in the opposite direction of her apartment. Laurel Canyon Blvd. goes up through the Hollywood Hills and takes you all the way to the San Fernando Valley. If she was headed home, she certainly chose an extremely out-of-the-way route to get there. And to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Georgette didn’t know anyone who lived up there.
There continued to be significantly more questions than answers....
Going back to the murder weapon itself, there are some interesting things about it that may or may not be important to the case. The cloth that was found in her throat was made of a material called “crepe tetra”. It was a stretchy gauze like material most commonly used in athletic bandages. It was not a material commonly used in the US at the time, and police were only able to find one medical supply company in Los Angeles that carried it. However, it was not the same size as the one found inside Georgette’s mouth. Apparently, crepe tetra had to be imported from Europe and had not been manufactured in the US for over 20 years. Was Georgette’s killer someone from overseas? Or was he an American soldier who had been overseas at some point?
Also, one newspaper reported that the cloth was folded “like a diaper”. What that meant, and whether that was actually true or just made-up by the paper is unclear.
And now for the suspects.
Police decided to first focus on the place where she interacted with the most men—the Hollywood Canteen. In particular, they were looking for the man who was apparently giving her a hard time about dancing with him.
His name turned out to be Cosmo Volpe, an Army Sgt. passing through LA at the time. Police were able to conduct an interview and according to Volpe, he hadn’t been harassing Georgette at all and said that she seemed completely happy to dance with him. He stated that they danced 3-4 times and then he left with an army buddy. His alibi for the time of murder checked out, and police quickly moved on to other possibilities.
Police then set their sights on “Jerry”, the boyfriend that Georgette was planning on visiting in Texas. He told police that he had met Georgette only once, earlier in the year at the Canteen, and they had just been exchanging letters ever since. He handed the letters over to police. Police were able to determine that he had been in Texas at the time of the murder and dropped him as a suspect.
Next, Georgette’s friend June has mentioned an unknown man who Georgette had briefly went out with, but had broken it off because she didn’t like him that much. But because police had no information to go on, this went nowhere.
Running out of leads, police decided to try and find clues from Georgette’s personal effects. One of the items recovered from the crime scene was Georgette’s date book. A rather curious entry was written for Oct. 12th. It simply said “Mr. Wade”. Police wondered, was this the guy they were looking for? Did Mr. Wade decide to pay Georgette a visit a day early? Friends and acquaintances had never heard of anyone with that name, so police were met with another dead end.
In a last ditch effort, police started looking into known killers in Los Angeles. They even discovered one who had murdered someone in a similar manner—stuffing fabric down someone’s throat, but none of these leads panned out either.
There were even several fake confessions by attention-seekers, all of which went nowhere.
Police had finally exhausted all of their leads and sadly the case went cold.
Nearly a year later, in September 1945, a new development emerged; 14 year Marelyn Silk, a high school girl who lived at 1211 N. La Cienega Blvd. found a typed letter in the street near her house. It read:
To the Los Angeles Police—
Almost a year ago Georgette Bauerdorf, age 20, Hollywood Canteen hostess, was murdered in her apartment in West Hollywood.
Between now and Oct. 11th—a year after her death—the one who murdered her will appear at the Hollywood Canteen. The murderer will be in uniform. He has since he committed the murder been in action at Okinawa. The murder of Georgette Bauerdorf was Divine Retribution—let the police arrest the murderer if they can.
The note had what appeared to be dried blood on it, but investigators later determined it was iodine.
Back then, police dismissed it as being nothing more than the work of a prankster. But since then, many armchair sleuths now suspect the letter may have been legit. What do you think?
Unfortunately, the letter was to be the last development to emerge in the case.
It has remained unsolved for the last 77 years.
www.georgettebauerdorf.com/
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgette_Bauerdorf
www.unsolvedcasebook.com/georgette-bauerdorf/
ladailymirror.com/2014/09/30/georgette-bauerdorf-an-unsolved-murder-part-1/
Please note: During the 1940s, sensationalistic tabloids were one of America’s main forms of entertainment and reporters thought nothing of embellishing facts or completely making stuff up in an effort to suck people in, and so some of what is known about this case came from those very tabloids. If you start reading more in depth about it, you might find things that are different from what I have written here, but I have tried to give the most generally agreed upon account.
October 11th started on a upbeat note. Georgette spent the day having lunch with a friend, and went to the beauty shop to get her hair done. But the highlight of the day was the purchase of a plane ticket to El Paso—she was planning to visit her boyfriend Jerry, whom she had met at the Canteen several months earlier. October 11th also happened to be a Wednesday, which meant she would be working there that night.
That night at the Canteen, Georgette spent the evening entertaining and dancing with the soldiers as usual. Except for a minor incident with an overly persistent soldier who kept pestering her to dance with him, her shift at The Canteen was like any other.
At around 11:30 PM, Georgette finished her shift and as far as any of her coworkers knew, was planning on heading straight home. Little did they know, this would be the last time they’d ever see her.
Georgette lived alone in her family’s luxury apartment on Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood, in an apartment complex known as El Palacio. Her family had recently moved to New York, but Georgette wanted to remain in L.A. Many notable people in Hollywood lived or had lived at El Palacio since it was built in 1931, and it even became the residence of Marilyn Monroe for a short time a few years later. The apartment complex still exists to this day.
One of the luxurious amenities of El Palacio was its full-service, on-site housekeeping services. Tenants never had to lift a finger.
On October 12th, just a little after 11 AM, Frederick Atwood arrived at Georgette’s apartment with his wife and daughter to perform his cleaning duties. Mr. Atwood was the head custodian of El Palacio, and his wife and daughter often accompanied him to help him clean.
Upon arriving at the apartment, The Atwoods noticed that the front door was ajar. Although unusual, they didn’t seem to think much of it and went inside. Nobody seemed to be home. Mr. Atwood planned on taking out the garbage and tidying up downstairs, while his wife and daughter headed upstairs to clean the bedrooms and bathrooms. As she climbed the stairs, Mrs. Atwood could hear water running.
Trying to find the source, she finally reached the upstairs bathroom and found the door open. When she stepped inside, she gazed upon a frightening display.
In the nearly full bathtub, floating face down in bloody water was a petite brunette. She was wearing only a pink rayon pajama top but no bottoms. Her head was fully submerged under water and her hair was floating on the surface. The shower curtain was partially drawn. Mrs. Atwood immediately called down to her husband to come upstairs right away and when he reached the scene, he couldn’t process what he was looking at. It looked like there must have been some kind of accident and his first thought was to drain the water. Thinking she might still be alive, he touched her right forearm. She did still feel warm, however it was clear that rigor mortis had already set in, so the hope that she was still alive was quickly dashed.
The Atwoods immediately called police.
When the police arrived, they surveyed the scene. There was no sign of breaking and entering. No sign that there had been an altercation. Besides the evidence that they soon would find on Georgette’s body, the only physical evidence they found was a spot of blood between the bed and the bathroom door. There appeared to be an attempt to wipe the blood away, which was almost certainly done by the killer. Some accounts do say that her pajama bottoms were found badly ripped at the foot of the bed, yet others don’t mention it.
Theft could have been at least part of the motive; police determined that $100 had been taken from her purse, yet all of the expensive jewelry and watches she owned lay intact on her dresser. Her bed appeared to have someone recently laying in it, but the bedding was not disheveled or showed any signs of a struggle whatsoever. The only sign that anyone besides Georgette had actually been there were two ashtrays on the ground by the bed. Georgette always wore red lipstick and still had lipstick on when she was found in the bathtub, yet none of the cigarette butts in the ashtray had a single trace of red on them.
Upon inspecting her body, it was obvious this was no accident. The cause of death was discovered: a large, handkerchief-sized piece of an unusual type of bandage gauze had been shoved 4 inches down her throat, cutting off her airway and choking her to death. Her body showed signs of a violent struggle. Her head had multiple bruises and abrasions, as did the rest of her body. Several of her knuckles were badly bruised and broken. Her thighs and abdomen had extensive bruising and abrasions. On her right thigh was evidence consistent with fingernails having been dug deeply into her skin. Based on the layout and size of the bruising, the papers described the assailant as having “ape sized” hands. She had also been violently raped.
As police continued their investigation, more clues were discovered. The front porch light wasn’t working; upon further investigation, they discovered that the light bulb had been unscrewed a couple turns. At nearly 8 feet high, someone would have had to have stood on something to unscrew it. The police theorized that the killer probably unscrewed it to avoid being seen, either as he was leaving, or possibly if Georgette happened to answer the door. And there were fingerprints on it, but they were too smudged to identify anyone with.
Georgette’s car was also missing. Police would later find it abandoned 10 miles away on East 25th Street, the gas tank completely empty.
In the kitchen, melon rinds and an empty green beans can were the only items found in the trash. Green beans were found in her stomach during her autopsy, but there was also food that was recently eaten that wasn’t in her apartment. She hadn’t eaten at The Canteen—did she go somewhere afterwards?
The coroner estimated her time of death as around 2-3 AM. Between 11:30 PM and then, there were about 2 1/2-3 hours of which her whereabouts and activities were unknown. It appeared that when she had came home, she ate the green beans and then headed upstairs to go to bed. Did this point to the idea that the killer was already in the house waiting for Georgette? Or did she bring someone home with her and ate the green beans with him present?
Regarding the subject of Georgette willingly allowing men into her home, there are two different stories—I’m not sure which was actually true:
The first narrative is that she would would never allow a man inside her apartment without other people being there—this was stated by a close friend.
The second narrative is that she had no problem being alone with men in her apartment and had even been known to let military guys sleep on her couch if they needed a place to stay for the night. If the latter is true, this would be a crucial piece of information for the police.
Friends and acquaintances were adamant though that Georgette was not the type of girl who would have willingly engaged in any sexual activity with these men. According to the people who knew her, she was extremely wholesome—sheltered even, and the idea that she brought these men home to sleep with them was simply out of the question. It’s not inaccurate to say that Georgette was probably very naive. She believed she was just doing all she could to help the war effort. The potential danger of a young, single 20 year old girl allowing strangers to stay in her home—even if they were heroes in her eyes—didn’t seem to occur to her.
As her friends and associates continued to be questioned, another curious detail emerged: on the day of the murder, at around 6:30 PM, Georgette’s friend and Hollywood Canteen coworker June Ziegler noticed Georgette sitting in her car knitting, waiting for her shift to start at the Canteen. June said they chatted until their shifts started, and during their conversation, Georgette had asked June if she would spend the night with her at her apartment. She claimed that Georgette did seem visibly nervous, but never explained why. And June stated that she didn’t ask because she assumed it had to do with Georgette flying down to El Paso the next day, which she already knew about. It isn’t known what June told Georgette, but she obviously didn’t spend the night with her.
Georgette’s demeanor at that time was in direct contrast to her mood earlier in the day. According to her father’s secretary Rose Gilbert, who was with her that morning and afternoon, Georgette was her usual happy, bubbly self. What happened between then and when her friend June spoke with her that evening that caused her mood to change?
Georgette’s neighbors were also questioned. Incidentally, Fred Atwood, the head custodian of El Palacio, lived in the apartment directly below Georgette’s. According to him and his wife, in the early morning hours of Oct. 12th, they were awakened by the sound of what they described as women’s heels walking quickly and heavily across the floor, followed by a loud crash that they said sounded like something metallic. Thinking someone must have just dropped a tray in the kitchen, they went back to sleep.
Another neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, reported being awoken around 2:30 AM by a woman’s blood curdling scream, followed a few seconds later by a voice yelling, “STOP, STOP, YOU’RE KILLING ME!” The neighbor reported that the screams continued briefly but got much quieter and were then abruptly gone. Thinking that it was most likely just a domestic squabble, the neighbor also put it out of their mind and went back to sleep.
So far, nothing was making sense. To the best of their knowledge, it appeared that Georgette had come home sometime between 11:30 PM and 3 AM, ate something before bed, then retired to her bedroom. At this point, they were theorizing that Georgette was attacked while she was laying in bed. But yet, The Atwoods insisted that the noise they heard was definitely after midnight in the early morning hours. If Georgette was being attacked in the kitchen downstairs as the noise would imply, how then did she go upstairs, change into her pajamas and get into bed? Unless the killer made her go upstairs and get undressed perhaps?
In the weeks following the murder, police received another tip which, if true, showed that Georgette didn’t go straight home after leaving the Canteen. Sergeant Gordon Aadland, an Army officer who was on furlough in LA at the time of the murder, wrote a letter to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. telling police that a woman fitting the description of Georgette picked him up around midnight in the vicinity near the Hollywood Canteen the night Georgette was murdered. He explained that he was hitchhiking, as he frequently did, and spent about 10-15 minutes in the car with her.
Aadland stated that during the ride, the girl told him that she was planning on flying down to El Paso to see her boyfriend Jerry the next day and needed to get home quickly because she was expecting a call from him. He said she seemed excited about the trip. With this information, police were certain that it was Georgette who had picked him up.
Aadland wrote that Georgette dropped him off on Sunset Blvd., near Laurel Canyon Blvd.
The next piece of info Aadland mentioned threw police for another loop: Aadland said that after dropping him off, the girl turned right onto Laurel Canyon Blvd., and headed towards the Hollywood Hills in the opposite direction of her apartment. Laurel Canyon Blvd. goes up through the Hollywood Hills and takes you all the way to the San Fernando Valley. If she was headed home, she certainly chose an extremely out-of-the-way route to get there. And to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Georgette didn’t know anyone who lived up there.
There continued to be significantly more questions than answers....
Going back to the murder weapon itself, there are some interesting things about it that may or may not be important to the case. The cloth that was found in her throat was made of a material called “crepe tetra”. It was a stretchy gauze like material most commonly used in athletic bandages. It was not a material commonly used in the US at the time, and police were only able to find one medical supply company in Los Angeles that carried it. However, it was not the same size as the one found inside Georgette’s mouth. Apparently, crepe tetra had to be imported from Europe and had not been manufactured in the US for over 20 years. Was Georgette’s killer someone from overseas? Or was he an American soldier who had been overseas at some point?
Also, one newspaper reported that the cloth was folded “like a diaper”. What that meant, and whether that was actually true or just made-up by the paper is unclear.
And now for the suspects.
Police decided to first focus on the place where she interacted with the most men—the Hollywood Canteen. In particular, they were looking for the man who was apparently giving her a hard time about dancing with him.
His name turned out to be Cosmo Volpe, an Army Sgt. passing through LA at the time. Police were able to conduct an interview and according to Volpe, he hadn’t been harassing Georgette at all and said that she seemed completely happy to dance with him. He stated that they danced 3-4 times and then he left with an army buddy. His alibi for the time of murder checked out, and police quickly moved on to other possibilities.
Police then set their sights on “Jerry”, the boyfriend that Georgette was planning on visiting in Texas. He told police that he had met Georgette only once, earlier in the year at the Canteen, and they had just been exchanging letters ever since. He handed the letters over to police. Police were able to determine that he had been in Texas at the time of the murder and dropped him as a suspect.
Next, Georgette’s friend June has mentioned an unknown man who Georgette had briefly went out with, but had broken it off because she didn’t like him that much. But because police had no information to go on, this went nowhere.
Running out of leads, police decided to try and find clues from Georgette’s personal effects. One of the items recovered from the crime scene was Georgette’s date book. A rather curious entry was written for Oct. 12th. It simply said “Mr. Wade”. Police wondered, was this the guy they were looking for? Did Mr. Wade decide to pay Georgette a visit a day early? Friends and acquaintances had never heard of anyone with that name, so police were met with another dead end.
In a last ditch effort, police started looking into known killers in Los Angeles. They even discovered one who had murdered someone in a similar manner—stuffing fabric down someone’s throat, but none of these leads panned out either.
There were even several fake confessions by attention-seekers, all of which went nowhere.
Police had finally exhausted all of their leads and sadly the case went cold.
Nearly a year later, in September 1945, a new development emerged; 14 year Marelyn Silk, a high school girl who lived at 1211 N. La Cienega Blvd. found a typed letter in the street near her house. It read:
To the Los Angeles Police—
Almost a year ago Georgette Bauerdorf, age 20, Hollywood Canteen hostess, was murdered in her apartment in West Hollywood.
Between now and Oct. 11th—a year after her death—the one who murdered her will appear at the Hollywood Canteen. The murderer will be in uniform. He has since he committed the murder been in action at Okinawa. The murder of Georgette Bauerdorf was Divine Retribution—let the police arrest the murderer if they can.
The note had what appeared to be dried blood on it, but investigators later determined it was iodine.
Back then, police dismissed it as being nothing more than the work of a prankster. But since then, many armchair sleuths now suspect the letter may have been legit. What do you think?
Unfortunately, the letter was to be the last development to emerge in the case.
It has remained unsolved for the last 77 years.
www.georgettebauerdorf.com/
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgette_Bauerdorf
www.unsolvedcasebook.com/georgette-bauerdorf/
ladailymirror.com/2014/09/30/georgette-bauerdorf-an-unsolved-murder-part-1/
Please note: During the 1940s, sensationalistic tabloids were one of America’s main forms of entertainment and reporters thought nothing of embellishing facts or completely making stuff up in an effort to suck people in, and so some of what is known about this case came from those very tabloids. If you start reading more in depth about it, you might find things that are different from what I have written here, but I have tried to give the most generally agreed upon account.