Original subtitles

Previously on It Was Him.

Ed Edwards was a master at deception.

Why I was out there committing

the crime was for the recognition.

Maybe the whole reform was a con.

You know, I was always a schemer.

I've always been into crime.

You are the grandson.

Yep, that was my grandfather.

Unfortunately, he hurt people.

That's not you as you don't know it.

Part of my journey on this

is this one of those genetic

predispositions I got from Ed to where

I could go kill someone right now,

but I don't want to.

Hoffa knew my grandfather.

No doubt about it.

Ed killed Teresa Holbach.

You don't get it both ways.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is it's designed

to point to somebody.

Who did it?

I don't know.

Theory isn't enough.

Without the proof

the theory doesn't work.

What we're looking at here are

pictures of your grandfather

from the time he was born

until the time he was eight years old,

and it's interesting as to

what he writes about this time.

Is this from his book?

Yeah, he placed these pictures

in this book, he says,

"These pictures eloquently portray

"the making of a young criminal.

"Ed Edwards is transmuted from a joyous,"

"carefree child into a hostile,"

"psychopathic, potentially"

"dangerous criminal."

I like how he describes himself

as hostile, psychopathic.

What's really ridiculous

is these photos.

These look so close to my

dad's baby photos that I was

looking through with him.

When you read the last sentence

he says, "Edwards, now eight",

"stands stiffly armored against"

"physical and psychological assault."

That's really what happened to him

when he was six years old when he

went into Parmadale Catholic Orphanage.

He was the smallest boy.

He was physically beaten,

and came out a psychopath

at a very young age.

Born in '33 Ed's early years

were very traumatic.

His mother went to prison in 1934

for stealing money as a housekeeper.

Ed's father was never in the picture,

and he never knew him.

According to Ed, his mother

made a desperate plea for attention.

"She got a rifle,"

"and shot herself in the stomach."

When he was five years old

he watched his mother kill herself.

Ed hated his mother for that,

and he started killing women

later on in life because of it.

One of his first victims

looked just like his mother

the infamous Black Dahlia.

I believe one of his last victims

was one of the most famous

mothers-to-be, Laci Peterson.

It is with pleasure that

I come into your home today.

I think that you will find

your reward in the end.

This is Ed Edwards.

This is the Catholic orphanage

that Ed went to.

This is 1939,

'40 is when he would have showed up

here, he would have been seven.

These look like set pieces

for a horror film.

Yeah, the orphanage

shut down in the 1980's.

In his book he says

he ran away over 30 times

trying to get away from it,

but he kind of shaped the book

to make it sound like Parmadale

is what shaped him into be a criminal

because he was so defiant,

and full of rage.

Seeing the words.

Never Give Up hanging in the window

of an orphanage is so depressing.

Yeah, there it is.

There's the cabin.

He kind of described staying

in a smaller cabin here.

I kind of feel like

they don't use most of this.

"My outstanding memory

"of the Parmadale orphanage

"was the nun who took me in tow.

"She seemed tall and forbidding.

"She was to be my mother?

"How could I hope to relate to this"

"stark battle"

"I was a little boy"

"who desperately needed love."

Sister Mary Agnes would

punish him with sticks,

and humiliate him

in front of the boys for his behavior.

It was early 20th Century.

Catholicism at its worst.

Looks like the school building,

and if you look at the cross

the Catholic cross there it's actually

an adaptation of the Zodiac sign.

He was here 1939 to 1944?

Yeah, man.

Learned right away

"that if you were unfortunate enough

"to be a bed-wetter,

"you were in serious trouble.

"They made me pick up all of my"

"wet bedding in the morning,"

"put on a pair of swimming trunks,"

"and stand under a cold shower."

This is the area that

he was tied to a tree,

and the kids were given turns

to kick him in the ass.

Wow.

Maybe that's why he liked

to walk some of his victims

into the forest when you think about it.

"I must have been kicked

"some 200 times that day."

"She was going to break me of"

"my bed-wetting, she warned,"

"or kill me in the process."

You know, John,

if anyone can become a monster

I could definitely see it starting

in a place like this.

I'm thinking this was where

he developed his hatred for everything.

The metamorphosis of a criminal.

Well, the metamorphosis this is

certainly the cocoon right here.

This place is giving me

the serious heebie-jeebies.

What was the terms

of him leaving like what happened?

They got sick

of him running away.

About 1944

he was returned to grandma.

Sister Agnes Marie asked him

what are you gonna be when you grow up?

He said, "I'm gonna be a crook",

"and I'm gonna be a good one."

That's kind of what he did.

Laci was eight month's

pregnant with a boy when she disappeared

Christmas Eve and over the past

three months Modesto Police have

searched the same Richmond coastline

where the body is washed ashore

looking for Laci after her husband,

Scott, said he had gone fishing

from the nearby Brooklyn Marina

the day his wife disappeared.

The coroner is now

bringing in an outside expert.

The body was found

not too from where the Zodiac killed,

and the body was mutilated.

Wow, this is quite the view.

Yeah, this is.

Point Isabel Regional Shoreline Park.

Laci Peterson and Conner Peterson

were found on the shoreline.

Conner was the unborn child?

Yeah, Conner was found first

on Palm Sunday, April 13th, 2003.

His body was found just around

this corner up here.

What they assumed is that

he been in the Bay,

and then washed up on shore.

How would anyone

be able to dictate the child

washing up on Palm Sunday?

Well, it would be as simple

as pulling in here,

and planting the body

along the shoreline.

He wasn't in the Bay.

He didn't wash up.

There was some real problem

with the decomposition of Conner.

It did not appear he had been

in the Bay for the period of

you're talking five months.

Okay.

The same with Laci

because they were in the water

for the period of time that they

are saying from Christmas Eve until.

Easter the following year they

would have been much more decomposed.

If Scott Peterson dumped the bodies

like people thought he did

he would have had to hid them

from Christmas of 2002

until Easter of 2003.

It just doesn't make sense

that he would dump the bodies

in a place that would lead right to him.

I believe that Ed Edwards

framed Scott Peterson.

Laci was a brunette much like Ed's wife,

and his mother.

After Scott's arrest is when

the letters started to arrive

to The Modesto Bee.

The Zodiac sent letters

to The Modesto Bee also.

In one of those letters he claimed

to be God and he claimed

he had framed Scott.

The one letter was block lettering

like the Zodiac would do.

It arrived on May 4th, 2003.

"On the 12th day

"of the 12th month Cary Stayner

"was sentenced to death by a jury of 12

"led by Juror ♪12."

"12 days later,."

"Laci and Conner were killed."

"Both were found following"

"the storm on the 12th."

When it comes to

the correlation of the Zodiac

like what else is there because I mean?

What's clearly obvious

is the location of the bodies are found

overlooks San Francisco

the heart of the Zodiac.

You got the letters to the press.

You got the ritualistic nature

of the murder occurring

on Christmas Eve.

You got the planting

of the bodies on Palm Sunday.

It's another example of murder mimicry.

So Ed would have been 69?

He would have been 69 that year.

Where were they living?

At age 69 he had been

in Arizona, he had been in Ohio,

you know, it's hard to say

exactly where the man lived.

In order for us to be able

to attribute it to Ed

we need obviously more.

I can get behind a lot of the theories.

In fact, some of them I think

are rock solid.

Over a two-year span

26 children were murdered in Atlanta.

All the victims were

lured to their deaths

by someone wearing a uniform like

the Marietta Police uniform found

in Ed's burned down house in 1982.

I believe Ed Edwards has to be

the Atlanta Child Killer.

I also believe that Edwards

is responsible for

the Robison Family murders.

Early in Ed's book he introduces

the terrible details

the killing of the Robison family.

"He sat down at their dinner table,"

"ate dinner, and then jumped up,"

"and killed everyone of them."

This was the Zodiac composite done

by the surviving male victim.

Practically everything matched Ed Edwards.

He was 36 years old in 1969.

He was five foot eight to five foot nine.

He was stocky.

The Zodiac said that he had

been in Deer Lodge Prison,

and Ed actually got sentenced

to 10 years in Deer Lodge Prison.

Everything that the Zodiac said

matched what Ed Edwards had done.

Ed Edwards is the Zodiac killer.

This is one of those theories

where I kind of feel like I'm the dude

walking around with the crazy person.

So we're on the way to Modesto,

and that's where Laci Peterson lives,

but kind of an interesting sidenote

is here we are at the California 132.

This is a very important Zodiac highway.

The last known Zodiac attack

was on a woman named

Kathleen Jones from Modesto.

She was a 22-year-old pregnant woman.

She had a child in the car with her.

She's driving down the highway here,

and a man pulls up in a car

kind of flags her over

trying to get her to pull over,

and the man comes up to the car,

and says, "Your back wheel is loose",

"but I'll fix it."

There was no loose wheel.

He loosened the lug nuts.

As she drives away

the wheels start wobbling.

At that point the man offers to give

her a ride to the nearest service station.

As they pass the first gas station

he starts terrorizing her to the point

where she finally bails out of the car.

With the baby.

With the baby screaming.

As she goes into the police station

to tell the police her story

there's a poster,

and she points at the poster, and says,

"That's the man right there."

That was the last known.

Zodiac attack in this area.

"This is the Zodiac speaking.

"I am rather unhappy because you people

"will not wear some nice Zodiac buttons,"

"so I now have a little list starting"

"with the woman and her baby that"

"I gave a rather interesting ride to."

He came across as a very

concerned helping person,

which is how your grandfather got

into many of his victims I believe.

That is extremely creepy.

The fact that it was a pregnant

woman from Modesto, you know, ties it

right into the Zodiac possibly being

responsible for Laci Peterson.

He targeted a woman and her baby

just like Laci Peterson,

and her unborn child.

It's good to see you.

Hi, Bill.

I think I know more about this case

then practically anybody else.

I was retained on the case

after the bodies had already surfaced.

The cops immediately basically told

Scott we know you killed her.

We're gonna get you.

They dogged him everywhere he went.

I felt that he was

absolutely being framed,

and they made a scapegoat out of him.

There was a burglary right across

the street from where Laci lived,

and a brown van was involved in it.

There's blood stains, or at least

what looks like blood stains,

and the cops just wouldn't touch it.

Can you tell me what you found

strange about anything regarding

the finding of the bodies?

She was completely decomposed.

The baby was also decomposed,

but it had some kind of funny tape

around the baby,

and this is where people started

talking about Satanic murders.

It had the plausibility.

It still has to this day.

So, Bill, everything I've heard you

talk about regarding Scott Peterson

fits a lot of the M.O. of the killer

that I've investigated

the last six years.

The M.O. of Ed Edwards was usually

to steer the evidence to the press

through anonymous letters,

and to target someone

innocent, to begin with.

You'd have to either target Laci,

or you would have to target Scott.

It's doubtful that

you would be targeting both.

He would have probably

started targeting, well,

he needed a pregnant woman for that

would be my theory.

He was kind of a ritual killer,

and now he's steering the evidence

to maybe it was the occult,

or maybe it was Satanist

when, in fact, it was probably just him

steering the evidence

to make it look

like the occult was involved.

You know, there's been six or eight

other women within the vicinity

were also missing, and presumed dead.

They haven't been discovered.

One interesting one was

there was a murder

of a pregnant woman in San Francisco.

Evelyn Hernandez.

Evelyn Hernandez, this woman was also

kidnapped and her remains were found.

This happened only like about

eight months before Laci.

Do you have any feelings about that?

She is just a pregnant female

who ends up in the Bay and what I saw

the difference there she didn't get

the recognition that Laci got.

Evelyn got killed,

but it wasn't all over the press.

Let's face it.

She was a Hispanic immigrant.

Right.

I don't think she got her publicity

until after Laci Peterson,

and I think we were the ones

that brought that in.

What is the deal with the targeting

of the pregnant women?

All of them are unsolved,

and that is a little bit unusual.

It's infrequent,

but it's all in the same area

for six of them.

We were kind of looking at all of them,

but we just didn't have the time.

We didn't have the resources.

Everything that we've talked about

right now fits right into the profile.

It's interesting to link

a pregnancy with Ed, I mean,

Ed was a sexual predator.

For some reason the pregnancy thing

it kind of acts like a trigger for me.

I feel like

there might be something here.

So we're, basically, at the warehouse.

He was, you know, pretty successful

in his business.

He had offices,

and expensive equipment.

There was also a 55-gallon

plastic barrel.

Yeah, I kind of remember that.

You remember that?

Some people thought that

she was dumped in the water, Laci.

And maybe she was

stored in one of those.

She was stored before pulled out.

But there was never

any evidence that Laci

was killed here or?

No.

The one thing that sticks out to me

if this man was a fertilizer salesman,

and he had access to a lot of it

you would think that that would be a way

if he was the killer, in fact,

he would utilize that to help

get rid of a body, like you know,

putting her in a huge thing

of fertilizer wouldn't that kind of

help with decomposition?

The bottom line is he didn't do it.

He was convicted on the basis of

where the body was located,

and that was it.

That he had been fishing there.

That he's been fishing there.

The whole thing is preposterous.

You know, one thing that is

coming to mind because we keep

talking about the pregnant women,

you know, talking about Great Falls

the double homicide that was there

that was in January, right, of '56?

Yep.

My dad was born in August,

and I couldn't help but think about,

you know, what state of mind

my grandfather would be in if he did,

in fact, kill that couple.

So he would have just found out

that he's gonna be a father

for the first time,

and he didn't like the idea of like

what if I'm not gonna be around

to raise this child,

or he didn't want one

in the first place,

like what if that was an extra

motivation as to why he would

target couples or pregnant women.

Exactly, and actually he was

with a pregnant woman

before he met your grandmother.

Verna, he writes about her in the book,

and she disappeared.

"Verna wasn't too

"bright to begin with.

"I told Jeannette we're going

"to leave Denver,

"but we're not going to

"take Verna with us.

"Don't let her know that

"you know what's happening.

"I only have her here

"because she is pregnant,

"and she wanted to get away.

"I lied to you; She is not my sister,"

"but I swear to God she's"

"not pregnant from me."

"I've never touched her."

Verna went out shopping,

and they left before she can come back.

I wonder how much of that's true.

Yeah, I'm a sexual assault investigator.

People freak out

when they find out their

wives and girlfriends are pregnant.

It scares the hell

out of them in some cases.

Sex is a very powerful tool

that could drive you crazy

that's just how people are.

Would the fact, too, that

I wonder if Ed had

not gone to jail when he did

if my father would have even been born

because he wasn't born yet, right?

He may have killed your

grandmother as she was pregnant,

but he got caught in Montana.

Remember one thing.

The statute of limitation

does not run on the truth,

so you got to keep digging.

In this Modesto neighborhood

a celebration has been interrupted

by a search for a missing woman.

27-year-old Laci Peterson,

8-1/2 months pregnant

disappeared on Christmas Eve.

Meantime, well wishers

have been leaving candles, flowers,

and prayers at the Peterson home.

The fact that Scott Peterson

was a wife cheater made him a suspect,

and that he went out on Christmas Eve

to go fishing rather than

stay home with his family.

Then the bodies, supposedly

wash up on shore on Easter

right where he had been fishing.

That really was the only evidence

there was that Scott Peterson

had killed Laci Peterson.

You know, Ed Edwards, in his book

he always refers to other inmates

doing these specific crimes.

One of them is killing a pregnant woman,

and stabbing her

in the belly with an ice pick.

"Another fellow had been going

"with a girl and had

"gotten her pregnant.

"When they both decided they didn't

"want the child, he attempted to abort

"it by stabbing her in her

"swollen abdomen with an ice pick."

"He was successful"

"in getting rid of the baby,"

"and his girlfriend as well."

So throughout his book he kind of

highlights stories like that

putting it on others.

Yes, but leaving you with

the impression for interpretation.

Exactly.

My theory on it is that

she invited her killer in.

If Edwards had a role

in this instance that

would be his M.O. wouldn't it?

He would have to make them

not see it coming.

This was a happy home,

and how abruptly it ended

it just boggles my mind.

We're gonna meet with.

Garth Stapley at The Modesto Bee.

He covered the Scott Peterson case

right from the beginning.

He received hundreds

of emails and letters,

and I've gone through all of them.

The one that stands out is what

I call the "God Letter."

Once we get him to open up,

hopefully, we can get to asking

specifics about like can

we see this letter.

Like if you see

an opportunity to ask only ask it.

It's like he's willing.

Exactly.

This is our newsroom,

of course, what remains of it.

Yeah, I suppose it kind of

got a little smaller.

There was a day when

all of this was filled with people

before the industry collapsed.

So with the Zodiac we do know that

he liked to taunt the press.

Would any of the hundreds of

letters that you received

during this whole process

did you ever feel like you were being

taunted by any of them?

People would write in,

and pose theories and such,

but being taunted, well, no,

I don't recall feeling

that the real killer was out there,

and was trying to get us

to look into it.

I went through all the letters

on your website trying to see if

I'd find anything that would match

to what Ed Edwards would do.

Yeah.

Out of all the letters I read on there

one letter in particular,

the handwritten letter that was sent

on May 4th, 2003 that's titled.

A Message From God.

GOD, all capitalized.

I in parentheses, again, next to it.

Delivered the evidence

"to secure the arrest of Scott Peterson,"

"and the eventual conviction"

"beyond a reasonable doubt."

Then he goes onto say.

"GOD is one of us," underlining is,

I suggest that means

is he's just one of us

that the killer is a walking

human being it's him.

I know it sounds bizarre

to a lot of people,

but when you just follow the man's life,

especially, through his book,

and it was always about

the cryptic letters with him,

and it was the same way with the Zodiac.

Are there clues in there

that only the killer would know?

No.

To me it looked like it was somebody

who had studied the case very well.

That's not signed by Ed Edwards,

or anybody else,

so I don't know who that's from.

Right, what Ed did his whole life,

that I suspect he did his whole life

was to frame people, especially,

cheating husbands.

That theory suggests that someone

would know that Scott Peterson

was having an affair.

Where's the evidence that he knew

anything about Scott Peterson

before Laci went missing?

Yeah, and that's why we're here.

That's what we're trying to dig into

is the Scott Peterson case.

As opposed to,

you know, there is a murder,

and then he tries to

worm his way into it.

What do you have that

suggests that he was here?

In 2002.

Zodiac Killer.com

held a conference in Vallejo,

and there was hundreds of people

that showed up at that conference.

I do have a photo of a man

that appears to look like Ed Edwards

in the background at that conference.

His wife said they had been

in California in the 2000's.

To place him here on the day that.

Laci Peterson was killed

I can't do that.

I haven't been able to do that.

What do you think about all this, Wayne?

I figured the worse that can

happen here, especially,

if we were to try to link him

with that letter

if we could rule him out

that he did not send it then

it might at least help

to either solidify it,

or show that there was something

else going on with this investigation.

Forgive me, but it just seems

like you've got a long way to go

from a theory to evidence.

Sitting there talking to Garth

it's like going to a family gathering,

and you have that one drunk uncle

you have to sort of apologize for,

or give like the, look to.

I feel like that

shouldn't have to happen.

John certainly is a victim

of Ed Edwards.

He will have a lasting effect

on John's life.

The dots just did not connect on this,

and I think John has finally

taken us past the edge of reason.

I don't know how we can keep going.

Wayne was having his doubts,

but I convinced him to check out

one more lead in California

where another female murder victim

matched the physical description

of Ed's mother.

Many researchers believe that

what goes on in those early

formative years sets the stage

for the rest of your life

in terms of your personality

how you're gonna think and behave,

and feel about things,

and that attachment with mom

early, early on

is really the foundation of empathy

for the rest of your life.

If you don't have that

connection with mom

empathy becomes difficult,

if not impossible.

Can you touch on

I guess it's matricide

is that what it is

killing of mothers?

It's the killing on one's mother.

Do you have the idea that perhaps

he shot his mother with the rifle?

I really do feel that,

and then right after that shooting

he was just removed

from the entire family,

and placed in an orphanage,

so it was very strange that

after the killing of his mother

he was kind of removed from the family.

Can you think of any other

explanation for that other than

perhaps he shot his own mother?

That's really the only

explanation I can think of.

Could, for example, they removed

him from the family because

they thought it would not be

a good place for a child to be?

Yeah, definitely, I mean, basically,

mom was a single mother in 1938

fresh out of prison.

If you want to say that these victims

represented his mother in some way

that's possible, you know,

there's really no way of knowing

without having him lay on the couch

for months and figuring out

what's going on in there.

Based on Ed's psych evals do you think

it's possible that a 13-year-old kid

was capable of a homicide?

I think it's a great question, John.

Yes, I think it's possible.

He said it's possible,

and John hears probable.

You could see the wheels turning.

His tail wags, he gets really excited,

and thinks, you know what?

Ed could have killed this person at 13.

It's a weird level of encouragement

that he shouldn't get.

You know, I was able

to recover psych records from Ed when

he was 13 years and four months

like I'm showing here.

He was five foot 2-1/2 inches,

126 pounds, which is actually

pretty stocky for five foot two and 126.

This part of the evaluation shows

that he's a sadomasochist,

psychopathic in nature,

and explosive personality.

There is sexual conflict suggested

of sadomasochistic nature.

Emotional outbursts can be expected,

and Wayne is likely to show such

reactions to outside experiences.

The real issues that stood out to me,

and that is "The boy is still"

"confused about his two mothers."

His first mother at the age of five

is shot and killed in front of him,

and shortly after that

his adopted mother

Mary Ethel Edwards died of MS.

He is conflicted about these two mothers,

which I felt would represent

real mother issues.

When you look at a lot of his victims

they match what his mother looked like.

And my grandmother, too.

And your grandma, yeah,

and even some of his victims

that he confessed to.

Elizabeth Short

is probably a prime example.

Another dark haired beautiful woman.

The murder of Elizabeth Short has

haunted the Los Angeles Police Department

since the heinous crime

was committed in 1947.

She was an inspiring actress

who lived in L.A.

and she disappeared in early January.

10 days later her body was found

cut in half drained of blood,

and sexually mutilated.

She would come to be known

as the Black Dahlia,

and to this day it's still an

open cold case with no suspects.

1946 it's kind of

a transitional time for Ed.

He was thrown out of the orphanage.

He's on the run,

and he's a 13-1/2-year-old

when the Black Dahlia occurs.

I still have a major problem with that.

13, it's just, you know.

I had a problem with that

when I first started my investigation.

Yeah, that's something that

sticks in my mind a lot.

Yeah, everybody seems to have a problem

with that 13-year-old being capable

of cutting people up,

or whatever he may have done.

At the age of 13 could someone have

amassed that amount of knowledge

to do it so precisely as.

Black Dahlia was killed?

Many people questioned my investigation

at the very beginning about that,

but this evaluation

kind of describes him

as being psychopathic in nature

an explosive personality.

Wayne's negativity has been

pretty frustrating,

but I spent 10 months communicating

with Ed by letter and phone call,

and know what he was capable of.

As my investigation went forward

what constantly kept coming up

was the website.

Black Dahlia Solution.org.

The writings in this are so Ed like,

and so Zodiac like.

He actually talks

about the Zodiac in here.

I believe this site was authored

by your grandfather.

I found this silhouette

picture on there,

and next to the silhouette picture

in detail that this was the killer

of the Black Dahlia,

and it certainly looks like a mug shot

I have of Ed Edwards.

That mug shot is from 1955,

so Ed would have been 22 years old.

The similarity between those pictures

is pretty incredible,

so that's kind of

what led me to think that Ed may have

authored this site.

Yeah, there are similarities,

but John is avoiding the fact that.

Ed was only 13 years old in 1947, 13.

Down the rabbit hole

with the Black Dahlia theory,

but it did happen in my backyard,

so I keep an open mind.

This is where I think Ed began

his killing career back when he was

just 12, 13 years old is this area.

So how would Ed have even

gotten himself involved with

Elizabeth Short in the first place?

Well, it's my belief that his

first killings were the Lipstick killings,

which were one year before

the Black Dahlia was displayed.

But when he was 12?

Yes, that's exactly

what I believe.

The Lipstick Killings he killed

a little six-year-old girl

named Suzanne Degnan

who is also dismembered

on the streets of Chicago in 1946.

Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia

was in Chicago July of 1946

portraying herself as a reporter

getting information

on the Suzanne Degnan murder,

and she's obsessed like the country was.

Is that something that is verifiable?

Yes, yeah.

She's being pumped with the details

by the killer himself.

Ed has been known to give out

details of his own crimes to people.

On the website.

Black Dahlia Solution that details

that there's where he met

Elizabeth Short was in Chicago

in July of 1946,

and what he details on the site

is that she dissed him,

and he went looking for her

knowing she was in L.A.

He actually details exactly how

he killed Elizabeth Short,

what he did to her,

why he cut a big smile

on her face like his smile,

why he displayed her on Degnan Boulevard

and Norton Avenue all to tie it to his.

You mean Degnan Boulevard

like Suzanne Degnan?

Yes, the six-year-old

girl from Chicago,

so the display site for the Black Dahlia

is where Degnan Boulevard

meets Norton Avenue.

It's a pretty big coincidence.

Yeah, it's huge.

All right, so who

are we hanging out with today?

Larry Harnisch.

He's a retired LA Times reporter.

Larry actually became pretty

obsessed with the Black Dahlia case,

and did a lot of research.

How did you get involved

in the Black Dahlia case?

Pure luck.

What was the scope

of this crime back then?

It was sensational

not just in Los Angeles,

but across the country.

I mean, she was young.

It was incredibly gruesome,

and it's unsolved.

What do we know about her?

You know, that's a five cent question

with a $50 answer.

No, really, what I always tell people is

Elizabeth Short was a young lady

who was 22 years old

when she was killed.

She had come out from Massachusetts.

In the summer of 1946 she decided

to come out to Los Angeles

to kind of rekindle the romance.

Her fiancé had been

killed in a plane crash

on the last day of the war,

so she was really devastated from that.

Are you familiar with her being

in Chicago prior to coming to L.A.?

Yeah, she stopped in Chicago

for a couple of weeks.

It's not clear why.

I'm not really sure anybody knows why.

The website Black Dahlia Solution.org

I'm sure you might be familiar with that.

He's crazy.

That website is really

what led me to you.

The guy who does that I do have

some knowledge of him.

Have you done any research on like

who owns the website,

or any of that kind of thing?

The man that owns it now refuses to

divulge who the author was.

Interesting.

But the author actually places himself

as being 13 years old in L.A.

at the time of the Black Dahlia killing,

and that is the age that Edwards.

To me his solution seems so

arbitrary and subjective that it's like,

you know, to me it didn't hold water.

So Larry tells John his source,

the website is garbage, basically.

John needs some kind of redemption here.

I'm curious what it's gonna be.

We're coming up

on the Biltmore Hotel,

which was built in the 1920's.

This is where Elizabeth Short

was last seen as far as anybody knows.

In the 1940's Pershing Square

it would have been very busy.

There would have been a lot of people

on the sidewalk, typically,

that kind of thing.

[John Was she staying here,

or was she just here?

No, what happened was

she was dropped off here

about six or 6:30.

The doorman tips his hat,

opens the door,

and she goes off down Olive.

Nobody that she knew ever saw her again.

Do a know what date that was

that she was last seen?

January 9th.

So 9th and then she wasn't

found until the 15th, is that right?

I think that's the most

important thing about her is that

was somebody who could disappear

for almost a week and nobody noticed.

When it comes to her stopping

in a few places before she got to L.A.

no one really knows anything about

what she did in those places,

there's no?

Not really,

there's as lot of theories,

but we don't really know.

Earlier I was asking about why

she was in Chicago,

and what she was doing,

and you were saying that she was

obsessed with Degman and all that.

That's not true.

There's no reports

that say why she was there.

You were telling me that

it's verified 100%,

but it's coming from that portion of it

that she was portraying herself

as a reporter is coming from.

Black Dahlia Solution.

We don't even know Ed even

wrote this in the first place.

This could be 100% fictionalized.

I have a really hard time with that.

I can see his frustration

because he hasn't followed the evidence.

He's looking for that magical piece

that's gonna say, boom! It's him,

and that's just not how

a murder investigation works.

We're walking south

on Norton Avenue.

This was all just sort of

like a vacant land,

slightly grown up with some grass.

Were there any houses in here,

or was this all just completely vacant?

This was vacant.

So just right here?

The body was found here.

Can you describe what

happened to her how she was I mean,

besides being laid out,

washed, and very pale.

She had been grotesquely mutilated.

Her mouth had been slashed.

There was mutilation to her breasts.

There was a chunk out of her thigh.

A lot of violence directed

at her personally.

There wasn't just I'm not just

violating a woman it's like

I'm violating Elizabeth Short.

Somebody she knew.

Mutilation is not consistent with

the murders that Ed was convicted for,

and I'm not seeing the connection here.

You know,

I feel it probably was

personal when you think about

if Ed Edwards is the man.

Honestly, I don't see how any

teenager is gonna have

the sophistication

to do the Black Dahlia case.

According to the autopsy surgeon

it was a fine piece of surgery,

and I just don't see

any teenager doing that.

I know, it's hard to

imagine a 13-1/2-year-old

committing crimes like this.

Maybe that's why it's not solved.

Well, that's one reason.

Larry Harnisch has never seen.

Ed Edwards's psych evaluations,

and he would see by reading them

that Ed had propensity for violence

when he was 13 years old.

We can agree to disagree.

He was fully capable of murdering

Elizabeth Short.

We got our asses handed to us.

Hello, ass delivery service.

Here's your ass, thanks John.

It's official, I need a break from John.

Just take a break from crime scenes,

and theories, and all of that stuff.

Dad.

Not much.

Shit, I haven't seen you in a month.

I know.

How you doing, dad?

I'm doing pretty good.

I would say that it was pretty tough

putting up with Wayne the first week.

He's a lot like his grandfather.

That isn't nice, but it's true,

I mean, just control wise.

You always like

being in control.

You know, I love you.

I love you, too.

I miss you.

I miss you, too.

Just have to get beat up on

all the time.

I'm a hated man, I'm a hated man.

No, you're not.

I know.

Are you gonna be all right, dad?

Yeah, I think I'm gonna be okay.

When I get back

I'll call you.

Don't be stupid out there.

I won't, I'll be safe.

I ain't gonna do anything dumb.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

The further I dive

into the investigation

of Ed the more obsessed I get,

and the more I isolate

myself from society.

How does it feel to point

a shotgun at somebody,

and pull the trigger?

What were your thoughts at that time?

It was dark.

She did not recognize me.

I know she didn't.

She started to run,

and then I shot her in the head

had been separated from the body.

There was no pleading.

Now turn left.