Category Archives: Life & Death

WHO REALLY MURDERED AND MUTILATED THE BLACK DAHLIA?

The Black Dahlia murder mystery is one of America’s—if not the world’s—biggest unsolved homicide investigations. On January 15, 1947 (75 years ago today) a pedestrian found 22-year-old Elizabeth Short’s body in Leimert Park’s district of West Los Angeles. Short was naked, bisected at the waist, viciously disfigured, and obviously posed in public display by her killer. Her case remains open despite more than 150 suspects surfaced and cleared—except for one—a main person of interest. Did this man really murder and mutilate a lady nicknamed The Black Dahlia?

The Black Dahlia case wasn’t just a huge police investigation. It was a media frenzy as the public held a massive fascination with her body’s macabre and grotesque condition. The corpse was so shocking that I’m not going to publish photos in this post. If you’re curious, there are many Black Dahlia crime scene photos online.

Elizabeth (Betty or Beth) Short was born on July 29, 1924 near Boston Massachusetts. Her father disappeared after the October 1929 stock market crash and was believed to have committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Charles River. Beth Short’s mother raised her as a single working mother, however in 1942, the father turned up alive and living in Los Angeles.

Beth Short reacquainted with her father by moving to Los Angeles when she was 18. Their relationship turned rocky and she went o live on her own in 1945, surviving on waitress wages and with help from a few friends—mostly men. There was speculation Short was a prostitute/call girl but no evidence of that was found during her murder investigation.

She was more of a barfly/party girl and a little on the promiscuous side having numerous men-friends. One male suitor was an older gent, an Air Force pilot. He proposed marriage by letter but was accidentally killed in a plane crash before he could return to America and marry Beth Short.

The last man to see Short alive—at least the last man police could identify—was a married travelling salesman Short secretly dated. Robert “Red” Manley liaised with Short in San Diego and dropped her off back in Los Angeles at the downtown Biltmore Hotel. This was on Thursday, January 9, 1947 and Short intended to meet her sister who was visiting from Boston.

They never connected. There are some accounts Short was seen using the lobby telephone at the Biltmore as well as unverified sightings of Short at the Crown Grill Cocktail Lounge about 3/8 mile northwest of the Biltmore. Here Short’s trail went cold, and there was a week gap until her body was found.

At 10:00 am on Wednesday, January 15, Betty Bersinger was walking with her three-year-old daughter in an undeveloped area of Leimert Park midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street (GPS Coordinates 34.016 N and 118.333 W). Bersinger saw what she believed to be two parts of a department store mannequin lying just to the side of the roadway in a very exposed position. On closer inspection, Bersinger realized the ghostly-white corpse was human. She rushed to a nearby house and phoned the police.

As two detectives arrived at the crime scene, so did passerbys and reporters which soon grew to a crowd of onlookers and a throng of media. This was before the days of controlled CSI examination with yellow barrier tape and uniformed guards keeping the public and press from observing and releasing key-fact information such as the body condition.

Los Angeles pathologist and County Coroner Frederick Newbarr autopsied Elizabeth Short on January 16, 1947. His report described the body as a white female, early 20s, 5’ 5” tall, 115 lbs. with light blue eyes, dark brown hair, and badly decayed teeth. These are the highlights of Short’s autopsy report:

  • The body was completely devoid of blood.
  • There was minimal blood about the scene, amounting to a few drops.
  • The corpse had been washed with a mineral solvent, possibly gasoline.
  • The upper torso was horizontally severed from the lower abdomen and legs.
  • The anatomical point of severance was between the 2nd and 3rd lumbar vertebrae.
  • The upper torso organs were present and attached.
  • The intestines had been removed and coiled up underneath the buttocks.
  • There were injuries to the scalp and skull consistent with blunt force trauma.
  • Both corners of the mouth were incised and elongated approximately 4 inches.
  • The mouth incisions were made antemortem (before death), evident by ecchymosis or bruising to the wound edges.
  • Numerous postmortem (after death) cuts were made in random order about her torso, pelvis, and legs, evident by a lack of ecchymosis to the wound edges.
  • Antemortem ligature marks were evident on the wrists, ankles, and neck indicating she had been bound or restrained before death.
  • The anal orifice was fixed in dilated measurement of 1 and ¾ inches.
  • No semen or foreign trace evidence indicating an assailant was found.
  • General body condition indicated that death occurred approximately ten hours before body discovery making the death time somewhere over the night of January 14-15.
  • Official cause of death was shock from cerebral injuries and blood loss from the mouth.

The coroner, with the help of the FBI, identified Short’s body through fingerprints. Short had been previously arrested and processed in Santa Barbara for underage drinking (Yes, back in the 40s a minor in alcohol possession was a big deal). This opened the investigative trail to track Short’s whereabouts and develop leads.

In one of the lowest and most disgusting points in the entire history of journalism, reporters from William Randolph Hearst’s Los Angeles Examiner intercepted the identification information—thought to be through a police source—and telephoned Short’s mother in Boston before the police could make an in-person notification of death. The reporters roused the mother under the guise that Beth had won a beauty to which they wanted to run a feature story. Through this, they gained a lot of personal information which they fed to the drooling public.

The killer was watching this all. On January 21, an unknown male phoned the Examiner’s editor congratulating them on their coverage, including publishing the crime scene photos of Short’s nude and butchered body. The caller told the editor to, “Expect some souvenirs from Beth Short in the mail”.

On January 24, the Examiner editor received a package with Short’s birth certificate, personal papers, and address book. A cut and pasted note gave clues to where Short’s shoes and purse were hidden. These were found and verifies as legitimate.

The Examiner got a hand-written note on January 26, dated January 24. This time the writer who claimed to be the Black Dahlia Avenger stated he would turn himself in, arranging a time and a place for coverage. It didn’t happen. The last contact with the killer was another cut and pasted letter on January 29 which read, “Have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing was justified.”

In 12 days, from the body discovery to the killer’s last contact, the Black Dahlia story went from unknown to front-page headlines that lasted months. Where did the Black Dahlia name come from to immortalize a poor and innocent victim like Elizabeth Short? No one really knows, but there are two schools of thought.

One is that the news media simply made it up to further sensationalize an already over-the-top story. The other is possibly from drug store staff where Short shopped. Allegedly, Short always dressed in black and wore a flower in her hair. Combined with her striking white skin, she made a spectacle which the staff called The Black Dahlia, possibly a word-play on a 1946 movie titled The Blue Dahlia. It’s possible intrepid reporters picked up the nickname and used it to sell more papers.

LAPD detectives focused on Beth Short’s trail and her male acquaintances, especially those having recent contact with her before her death. Red Manley was eliminated after two polygraphs and an air-tight, sworn alibi. Others took a lot of effort by a lot of officers to satisfy them the person they were interested in was not responsible.

And the LAPD detectives focused on two absolutely unique aspects of the Black Dahlia crime scene and autopsy findings which, in this day and age, would have been critical hold-back evidence known only to the investigators and the killer—nor publically splattered and speculated on throughout every western media outlet.

First was the method Beth Short had been cut in half with. The pathologist/coroner, Dr. Frederick Newbarr, later testified at Short’s inquest that the severance was a surgical procedure that only could have been done by a highly-trained surgeon with the proper surgical equipment. Dr. Newbarr stated—under oath and on the record—the severance was a medical procedure developed in the 1930s and termed a hemicorporectomy.

A hemicorporectomy was a last-ditch effort to save a person’s life when the entire pelvic system was failing. To not remove the pelvis, buttock, and leg assembly (including the lower GI tract) would have meant certain death so surgeons would resort to, literally, cutting a person in half and discarding the lower region.

This radical surgical procedure left the patient alive and confined to a walker-like device for mobility and a colostomy bag for capturing waste exiting the stomach at the duodenum. The only place in the spine a hemicorporectomy could be achieved was between the 2nd and 3rd lumbar vertebrae.

In Dr. Newbarr’s words, “Whoever did this surgical procedure (to Elizabeth Short’s body) was a very fine surgeon.”

The second unique aspect of the crime scene findings was Short’s body positioning. From the onset, both press and police emphasized the body wasn’t just dumped at the discovery point—it was carefully and craftily posed for some definite purpose. There was no attempt to hide the corpse. No, it was the opposite. The killer wanted it found and publically published.

If you’re strong-stomached enough to view the crime scene photos, you’ll see Short’s remains lying supine (on her back) with her arms extended straight out from her shoulders with her elbows bent 90-degrees upward to make a football goalpost-like frame over her head. You’ll see Short’s lower segment offset to the right of her torso and her right hip in line with her left side. Also, you’ll see the torso/hip offset distance to be the same as the gap between her upper and lower segments. Then, you’ll note Short’s legs are positioned wide open in a 90-degree separation or a 45-degree split from the midline of her vagina.

There isn’t an experienced cop, coroner, or criminologist who wouldn’t see meaning in this crime scene. It’s painfully obvious the killer positioned Short’s body to send a message. But what bizarre message by what bizarre surgeon-killer could that be?

It seems the LAPD detectives had a person of interest in their sights early in the Black Dahlia murder investigation. The LAPD file is still open and ongoing, although cold, so they control information as they should. What’s known about their interest in Dr. George Hill Hodel Jr. is officially confidential but quite well-known in the internet, book, and movie world.

Dr. George Hodel was surgically trained in the 1930s. He was familiar with the hemicorporectomy procedure, and he was familiar with sexual deviancy. Hodel was charged with incest on his 14-year-old daughter who, by the way, knew Elizabeth Short’s sister. There was one degree of separation between Surgeon Hodel and Victim Short including the several-block distance from the Biltmore Hotel and the Crown Gate Cocktail Lounge to where Hodel’s clinic operated.

Although George Hodel was a trained surgeon, he made money though his clinic specializing in treating venereal disease. At the time, the forties, VD was rampant through sexually-promiscuous people and it was something held in shame and confidence. Was Elizabeth Short a VD patient of Dr. Hodel’s as well as being a through-family acquaintance?

The detectives thought so. They thoroughly investigated Hotel including bugging his home where they heard this:

“Supposin’ I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn’t prove it now. They can’t talk to my secretary anymore because she’s dead. They though there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary.”

Those statements were suspicious enough to make detectives look into the death of Ruth Spalding. She was Dr. Hodel’s clinic assistant who died of a mysterious drug overdose shortly after the Dahlia case happened. Speculation by detectives is Spalding recognized Elizabeth Short as a patient, knew Hodel’s surgical experience, and put 2&2 together.

The detectives, and possibly Ruth Spalding, weren’t the only ones who suspected Dr. George Hodel was the Black Dahlia’s killer. In 1950, when the heat was on George Hodel and the Dahlia recording was intercepted, Hodel moved to the Philippines where died in 1999. Hodel remains an LAPD person of interest in the Dahlia case.

Someone else also considers Dr. George Hill Hodel as the Dahlia killer. That’s his son. Steve Hodel who, coincidentally, is a retired LAPD homicide detective. It wasn’t until he retired that Steve Hodel put 2&2 together when he reviewed property from his father’s estate and found highly-suspicious material linking his father as the Dahlia killer.

One was photographs of a young woman similar to Elizabeth Short. Two was handwriting samples similar to the Examiner hand-written note. Then, the fact his father worked so close to the scene where Short was last seen and, in all probability knew and possibly treated Short. And then there was the coincidence Short’s body was posed close—very close—to Hodel’s estranged wife’s house.

Certainly Dr. George Hodel had the means and opportunity to be the Balck Dahlia killer. Motive isn’t an included element in any murder trial. There’s no burden for the prosecution to prove motive in any case—corporal or capital—but proving motive tips the scale in persuading a jury to convict beyond all reasonable doubt.

Assuming George Hodel—who had the surgical means to perform a hemicorporectomy and was lurking in the vicinity when Beth Short disappeared along with his history of sexual deviance and a hint of homicide—was the Black Dahlia killer, the question is why?

His son, Steve Hodel, supplies it. Art work. George Hodel had a close friend named Man Ray who was a 1930s-1940s surrealist artist—a prominent who worked with greats like Salvador Dali.

Steve Hodel identifies two hard-to-ignore similarities between Man Ray’s art and the Black Dahlia’s posing. Ray’s 1936 piece Les Amoureux shows an elongated woman’s mouth with slit-like extensions and a corpse-like figure below and admiring it. Ray’s 1934 Minotaur shows a naked woman’s torso with the goalpost-like arm-posing.

Something I can’t ignore is the mathematical connection between Man Ray’s surrealist art and the Black Dahlia’s pose. Elizabeth Short’s arms were 90-degrees from her shoulders to her forearms, and her forearms were 90-degrees upward from them. Her torso was 90-degree offset, equidistant from the separation of her lower section. And her legs were a 45/90-degree posing from her pubis.

This posing was no accident. It was no coincidence. It was a purposeful display of artistic impression.

In my death investigation experience, I’ve never seen anything close to the Black Dahlia case. I’ve never seen intentional grotesque mutilation like this, and that’s why I haven’t posted pictures. But, I do see hard-to-deny facts.

Two principles guide homicide investigations. First—the more bizarre the case, the closer the answer is to home. Second—Occam’s razor. The Principle of Parsimony. When faced with multiple explanations, the simplest answer is usually the right answer.

On the balance of probabilities—with no better solution—I believe Dr. George Hill Hodel really murdered and mutilated the Black Dahlia.

THE BIZARRE DEATH OF THE TOXIC LADY — GLORIA RAMIREZ

At 8:15 pm on February 9, 1994 paramedics wheeled 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez—semi-conscious—into the Emergency Room at Riverside General Hospital in Moreno Valley, California. Forty-five minutes later, Ramirez was dead and 23 out of the 37 ER staff were ill after being exposed to toxic fumes radiating from Ramirez’s body. Some medical professionals were so sick they required hospitalization. Now, 27 years later, and despite one of the largest forensic investigations in history, no conclusive cause of her toxicity has been identified. Or has there?

The Toxic Lady case drew worldwide attention. No one in medical science had experienced this, nor had anyone heard of it. How could a dying woman radiate enough toxin to poison so many people yet leave no pathological trace?

The medical cause of Ramirez’s death was clear, though. She was in Stage 4 cervical cancer, had gone into renal failure, which led to cardiac arrest. Anatomically, the fumes had nothing to do with Gloria Ramirez’s death. But what caused the fumes?

“If the toxic emittance was not a death factor, then what in the world’s going on here?” was the question going on in so many minds—medico, legal, and layperson. To answer that, as best as is possible, it’s necessary to look at the Ramirez case facts both from what the eyewitnesses (and the overcome) said and what forensic science can tell us.

Gloria Ramirez, a wife and mother of two, was in terrible health when she arrived at Riverside Hospital. She’d rapidly deteriorated after being in palliative, home-based care with a diagnosed case of terminal cervical cancer. In the evening of February 9th, Ramirez developed Cheyne-Stokes breathing and went into cardiac arrhythmia or heart palpitations. Both are well-known signs of imminent death. Her home caregivers called an ambulance and had her rushed to the hospital as a last life-saving resort.

A terminal cancer patient, like Gloria Ramirez, was nothing new to the Riverside ER team. She was immediately triaged, and time-proven techniques were quickly applied. First, an IV of Ringer’s lactate solution was employed—a standard procedure for stabilizing possible blood and electrolyte deficiencies. Next, the trauma team sedated Ramirez with injections of diazepam, midazolam, and lorazepam. Thirdly, they began applying oxygen with an Amb-bag which forced purified air directly into Ramirez’s lungs rather than hooking up a regular, on-demand oxygen supply.

So far, Ramirez’s case was typical. It wasn’t until an RN, Susan Kane, installed a catheter in Ramirez’s arm to withdraw a syringe of blood that circumstances went from controlled to completely uncontrollable. Kane, a highly experienced RN, immediately noted an ammonia-like odor emanating from the syringe tip when she removed it from the catheter. Kane handed the syringe to Maureen Welch, a respiratory therapist, and then Kane leaned closer to Ramirez to try and trace the unusual odor source.

Welch also sniffed the syringe and later agreed with the ammonia-like smell. “It was like how rancid blood smells when people take chemotherapy treatment,” Welch would say. Welch turned the syringe over to Julie Gorchynski, a medical resident, who noticed manila-colored particles floating in the blood as well as confirming the ammonia odor. Dr. Humberto Ochoa, the ER in-charge, also observed the peculiar particles and gave a fourth opinion that the syringe smelled of ammonia.

Susan Kane stood up from Ramirez (who was still alive) and felt faint. Kane moved toward the door and promptly passed out—being caught in the nick of time before bouncing her head off the floor. Julie Gorchynski also succumbed. She was put on a gurney and removed just as Maureen Welch presented the same symptoms of being overcome by a noxious substance.

By now, everyone near the dying Gloria Ramirez was feeling the effects. Ochoa, himself now ill, ordered the ER evacuation and for everyone—staff and patients—to muster in the open parking lot where they stripped down to their underclothes and stuffed their outer garments into hazmat bags.

Ramirez remained on an ER stretcher. A secondary trauma team quickly donned hazmat PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) and went back to give Ramirez what little help was left. They did CPR until 8:50 pm when the supervising doctor declared Gloria Ramirez to be dead.

Taking utter precaution, the backup trauma team sealed Gloria Ramirez’s body in multi-layers of body shrouds, sealed it in an aluminum casket, and placed it in an isolated section of the morgue. Then they activated a specially-trained hazmat team to comb the ER for traces of whatever substance had been released and caused such baffling effects to so many people. They found nothing.

Meanwhile, Riverside hospital staff had to treat their own. Five workers were hospitalized including Susan Kane, Julie Gorchynski, and Maureen Welch. Gorchynski suffered the worst and spent two weeks detoxifying in the intensive care unit.

The Riverside pathologists faced a daunting and dangerous task—autopsying the body which they considered a canister of nerve gas harboring a fugitive pathogen or toxic chemical. In airtight moon suits, three pathologists performed what might have been the world’s fastest autopsy. Ninety minutes later, they exited a sealed and air-tight examining room with samples of Gloria Ramirez’s blood and tissues along with air from within the shrouds and the sealed aluminum casket.

The autopsy and subsequent toxicology testing found nothing—nothing remotely abnormal that would explain how a routine cancer patient could be so incredibly hostile. The cause of death, the pathologists agreed, was cardiac arrest antecedent (brought on by) to renal (kidney) failure antecedent to Stage 4 cervical cancer. The Riverside coroner concurred, and his mandate was fulfilled with no doubt left about why and how Gloria Ramirez died.

For the coroner, that should have been it. There was no evidence linking the mysterious fumes to the cause of death, and whatever by-product was in the ER air was not a contributor to the decedent’s demise. That problem should have been one for the hospital to figure out on their own. However, the Riverside coroner was under immense public pressure to identify the noxious substance for no other reason than preventing it from happening again.

The coroner worked with the hospital, the health department, the toxicology lab, and Gloria Ramirez’s family to come to some sort of reasonable conclusion. The Ramirez family had no clue—no suspicions whatsoever—of any foreign substance Ramirez had ingested or been exposed to that could trigger such a toxic effect. The toxicology lab was at a wit’s end. They’d never seen a case like this, let alone heard of one. And the health department went off on a tangent.

The county’s health department appointed a two-person team—a team of medical research professionals—to interview every person exposed to the ER and surrounding area on February 9, 1994. They profiled those people so closely that the two-expert team even cross-compared what everyone did, or didn’t, have for dinner that night. When that preeminent probe was over, and no closer to a smoking gun than the struck-out hazmat team failed to find on the night of the fright, the interviewers came to a conclusion—mass hysteria.

The team of two medical doctors, both research scientists, concluded there was no poisonous gas. In their view, in the absence of evidence, there was only one explanation and that was that 23 people simply imagined they were sick. Some, they concluded, had such vivid imaginations that they placed themselves into the intensive care unit.

This was the report the health department delivered to the coroner. While the coroner was now scrambling for damage control, some of the “imaginary” health care workers who could have died during exposure, launched a defamation lawsuit against the hospital, the health department, and the two investigators who concocted the mass hysteria conclusion.

Frustrated with futility, the coroner (who was way outside his jurisdictional boundaries) turned to outside help. He found it at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) near San Francisco.

Lawrence Livermore initially wasn’t in the medical or toxicological business. They were nuclear weapons makers with a busy mandate back in the cold war era. Now, by the 90s, their usefulness was waning, and so was their funding, so they decided to broaden their horizons by creating the Forensic Science Center at LLNL.

Brian Andresen, the center’s director, took on the Toxic Lady case. The coroner gave Andresen all the biological samples from Ramirez’s autopsy as well as the air-trapping containers. Andresen set about using gas-chromatograph-mass spectrometer (CG-MS) analysis which would have been the same process the Riverside County toxicologist would have used to come up with a “nothing to see here, folks” result.

But Andresen did find something new to see. He found traces dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) in Ramirez’s system. Not a lot—just traces—but clearly it was there. Andresen felt he was on to something.

Dimethyl sulfoxide, on its own, is stable and harmless. It’s an organic sulfur compound with the chemical formula (CH3)2S0, and is readily available as a degreasing agent used in automotive cleaning. It’s also commonly ingested and topically applied by a cult-like, self-medicating culture of cancer patients. At one time, there was a clinical trial approved by the FDA to use DMSO as a medicine for pain treatment, and it was dearly adopted by the athletic world as a miracle drug for sports injuries. The FDA abruptly dropped the DMSO program when they realized prolonged use could make people go blind.

Brian Andresen developed a theory—a theory adopted by many scientists who desperately wanted some sort of scientific straw to grasp in explaining the bizarre death of the Toxic Lady—Gloria Ramirez. Andresen’s theory went like this:

Gloria Ramirez had been self-medicating with DMSO. When she went into distress at home, the paramedics placed her in an ambulance and immediately applied oxygen. Ramirez received more oxygen at the ER which started a chemical reaction with the DMSO already in her body systems.

Note: Chemically, DMSO is (CH3)2SO which is one atom of carbon, three atoms of hydrogen, two atoms of sulfur, and one atom of oxygen—a stable and harmless mix.

However, according to the Andresen theory, when medical staff applied intense oxygen to Ramirez, the DMSO chemically changed by adding another oxygen atom to the formula—becoming (CH3)2SO2—dimethyl sulfone (DMSF).  DMSF, also, is harmless and it’s commonly found in plants and marketed as a dietary supplement. So far, so good.

It’s when four oxygen atoms are present that the stuff turns nasty. The compound (CH3)2SO4 is called dimethyl sulfate, and it emits terribly toxic gas-offs. This is what Andresen suspected was the smoking gun. The amplified oxygenation turned the self-medicating dimethyl sulfoxide Ramirez was taking into dimethyl sulfone which morphed into the noxious emission, dimethyl sulfate.

The coroner liked it. So did many leading scientists. The coroner released Andresen’s report as an addendum to his final report, even though all agreed that if dimethyl sulfate was gassed-off by Ramirez in the ER that made so many people sick, it had absolutely nothing to do with the Toxic Lady’s death. The coroner closed his file, and the finding went on to be published in the peer-reviewed publication Forensic Science International.

There were two problems with Andresen’s conclusion. One was more scientists were disagreeing with it than agreeing. Some of the dissenters were world-class toxicologists who said it was chemically impossible for hospital-administered oxygen to set off this reaction. Two was Ramirez’s family adamantly denied she was self-medicating with DMSO.

The Toxic Lady case interest was far from over. Many people knew DSMO would be present in minute amounts in most people’s bodies and called bullshit. It’s a common ingredient in processed food and metabolizes well with a quick pass-through rate in the urinary tract. In Ramirez’s case, she had a urinary tract blockage which triggered the renal failure which triggered the heart attack. If it wasn’t for the blockage, the DSMO probably wouldn’t have been detected.

On the sidelines, there were people—knowledgeable people—strongly saying another chemical would give the same ammonia-like, gassing-off toxins that ticked all the 23-person symptom boxes.

Methylamine.

Methylamine isn’t rare. It’s produced in huge quantities as a cleaning agent, often shipped in pressurized railroad cars, but it’s tightly controlled by the government. That’s because methylamine can be used for biological terrorism and for cooking meth.

Yes, methylamine is a highly sought-after precursor used in manufacturing methamphetamines. Remember Breaking Bad and the lengths Walt and Jesse go to steal methylamine? Remember the precautions they take in handling methylamine?

Well, back before Breaking Bad broke out, the New Times LA  ran a story giving an alternative theory of what happened to make the Toxic Lady toxic. Whether the Times got a tip, or some inside information, they didn’t say. What they did say was that Riverside County was one of the largest methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution points in America, and that Riverside hospital workers had been smuggling out methylamine to sell to the meth cookers. (Hospitals routinely use methylamine as a disinfectant in cleaning agents, including sterilizing surgical instruments.)

The Times report said Riverside hospital workers used IV bags to capture and store methylamine as the IV bags were sealed, safe to handle, and entirely inconspicuous. The story theorized that an IV bag loaded with about-to-be smuggled methylamine accidentally found its way into the ER and got plugged into Gloria Ramirez’s arm. Because methylamine turns to gas so quickly when exposed to oxygen, this would explain why no traces were found in the toxicology testing—it all went into the air and into the lungs of 23 people.

———

As a former coroner, I’d be skeptical of this methylamine theory except for personal knowledge of a similar case. My cross-shift attended a death where a meth cooker had methylamine get away from him in a clandestine lab. The victim made it outside yelling for help but shortly succumbed. The civilians, hearing his cries, rushed over and were immediately overpowered with the exact symptoms as the Riverside medical people experienced.

The first responders also succumbed to toxic fumes and had to back off. By the time my cross-shift arrived to view the body, many contaminated people were already at the hospital. My colleague made a wise decision. He signed-off the death as an accident, declined to autopsy, and sent the body straight to the crematorium—accompanied by guys in hazmat suits with the body sealed in a metal container and strapped to a flat deck truck.

Do I buy the Times methylamine theory? Well, I’m a big believer in Occam’s razor. You know, when you have two conflicting hypotheses for the same puzzle, the simpler answer is usually correct. Some one-in-a-billion, complex chemical reaction that world-leading toxicologists say can’t be done? Or some low-life, crooked hospital drone letting an IV bag full of stolen methylamine get away on them?

You know which one I’m going with to explain the bizarre death of the Toxic Lady — Gloria Ramirez.

LIKE ME, YOU’RE PROBABLY A BIT LAZY TOO

Yes, I’m the first to admit. I’ve got a bit of a lazy streak in me. You probably do, too. That’s okay, though, because we humans are naturally programmed to be lazy. It served the biological survival of our species well which is exactly what Mother Nature intended. So blame her for you and me having a natural inclination to sack on the couch, swill beer, (wine in my case) and sleepily abuse the remote.

Laziness has roots in our survival instincts. A long, long time ago, our ancestors didn’t have to think long term. They had to remain focused on the here and now so they could react and survive in case they were attacked by enemies, animals and, well, by nature herself. Conserving energy was paramount to ensuring survival when attacked.

Now, in the modern age, when survival isn’t a top priority, this instinct prevents some of us (me and probably you) from engaging in, or get going on, things—projects—that don’t bring immediate results. We won’t delay our gratification and we subconsciously justify it through procrastination. The reason for human laziness is carved deep into our brain structures. We’re hard-wired to sit on our behind and do nothing unless we really have to.

Another reason for people’s laziness is they haven’t found their own true path. They haven’t developed a dream—a big dream—of what they want to achieve in their life. They haven’t found the soul—the true passion or the fire within—that’s paramount to pursuing that dream, taking massive action, and making that dream a success.

What is success? I just Googled Merriam-Webster that said this: The accomplishment of an aim or purpose. I found another good quote that puts “success” into clear perspective: Accomplishing something you really want to accomplish in the world and getting others to support it and agree that it’s of value.

I’ll share something with you. I have a dream that started in April. A big dream. A huge dream. A monster dream. (Yeah… I know… dreaming big in the middle of a big pandemic…) And I’ve found a passion in my soul that I’ve never felt before.

Yet, I’ve also found a bit of a lazy streak I didn’t want to admit existed. I feel like a push-me-pull-you. In one sense, I have a burning desire to create this dream into a success. In another, I have a reluctance to get my ass in the chair, my fingers on the keys, and do the work.

I’ll tell you what my enormous dream is but, first, let me explain how I got onto this lazy human topic.

———

Bill O’Hanlon says he’s the laziest successful person he knows. And Bill knows a lot of lazy people who’ve become successes. Who’s Bill O’Hanlon? Bill is a success guru who wrote A Lazy Man’s Guide to Success. It’s a short and free pdf of 59 pages, and I loved it.

Bill, by the way, is a psychotherapist, author of over thirty books, and a highly sought-after motivational speaker. He’s been on Oprah, spoken internationally many, many times, and is an all-around genuine guy. He runs a website called the Possibility Land, and I found him quite by chance when I was looking for a DyingWords topic.

I’ll sum up Bill O’Hanlon’s Lazyman’s Guide to Success real quick by stealing right from the man himself:

If you are really impatient and don’t have the time or the self-discipline to read my entire guide, here are the Cliff’s Notes formula for success:

  1. Find your soul: the aliveness, energy, passion, and uniqueness that the world has tried to squeeze and shame out of you since you came out of your momma.
  2. Get a dream, a vision, or a direction by following what turns you on or what pisses you off (or both). It’s best to choose one that makes a contribution to the world and is not just about meeting your personal needs.
  3. Take action towards realizing that vision.
  4. Notice whether the actions you have taken have produced results that are moving you towards your goals or dreams. If so, do more of them until you get there. If not, do something different.
  5. Take massive actions, make adjustments based on your observations of the results, vary your actions, and do not stop until you arrive at your destination. I don’t mean that each action you take must be big or bold. You may start with a small step, but start.
  6. Do not be distracted or dissuaded from action by your feelings. Do not attend to or go with your feelings unless they are feelings that help you move forward. Have faith in yourself and the universe, especially when things look bad.
  7. Create more and more evidence in the world that your dream is real so that others will believe in it too.
  8. Keep moving toward your dream – no matter what. Persistence can be powerful.

———

Not a bad formula at all, Bill. Not bad at all. “Find your passion. Build a dream. Take massive actions. Have faith. Keep moving toward your dream – no matter what.” You gotta like that advice. One problem, though. Humans are naturally lazy.

Okay. This big dream I have that I’m slowly acting upon? It started in April 2021 and was hidden behind a mask. Literally.

I had the idea of creating a new crime fiction series based on the old hardboiled/noir detective stories of a hundred years ago that were so, so popular. What’s old is new again, right? I see a resurgence of hardboiled headed right at us and almost nobody’s doing it.

That got my soul energized, and I planned out a series while out on long, soul-soothing walks. The concept, characters, and storylines came from here, there, and everywhere within my imagination. Soon, I had an imaginary city built in my mind—a dangerous city filled with heroes and villains and corruption unbound.

I was on a Zoom call with a film industry acquaintance regarding a non-scripted project on a historical multi-murder case I worked on. We wrapped that up for the day, and he asked what filmmakers should ask content producers (aka writers), “So, what else ya got goin’?”

I told him, “I have this dream for a hardboiled detective crime fiction series. The logline is a modern city in crisis enlists two private detectives from its 1920s past to dispense street justice and restore social order. A leading lady and leading man team involving time travel. It’s called City Of Danger.”

There was a long pause till he said, “Reeeally… This is exactly what we’re lookin’ for.”

To make a long story short, City Of Danger is well underway. The video/film rights are verbally optioned to a major netstreaming company—call me stupid for not taking cash up front but, on some forceful advice from an entertainment-specialist lawyer, I’ve left my mean streets and perilous avenues open until I fully understand my product’s potential and its optimum value.

Creatively, my soul was lit like the Rockefeller Christmas tree mixed with the Times Square New Years Eve Ball and my passion gushed like an open Bronx hydrant on a blistering day. I began taking action—massive action— in making this dream a reality. What I didn’t foresee was how much work this project will take, how much energy it’s bound to sap, and the laziness wildcard.

To begin with, I wrote a business plan. It’s comprehensive, and it’s put me in a much better position to go forward with how the City Of Danger business will be built and run. Yes, a business. A money-making business selling products in the entertainment industry. This is an entirely new, stand-alone venture that’s outside of DyingWords and my other commercial publication works.

I began with the end in mind. I had artwork produced showing the two main characters against the backdrop of a dark cityscape. I began a dedicated website for City Of Danger that’s a work-in-progress and always will be. And I renovated my writing studio with part of it recreating a 1920s private detective office.

All this was about getting in the zone—the headspace—so I could think like the characters think, talk with the characters, and let the characters tell me their hardboiled stories so I can write them out. Call it method writing, if you will. Or, you can call it plain escapism fun.

The hard work started immediately when I committed—in writing—to creating City Of Danger and making it a success. I realized I knew almost nothing of the hardboiled genre. Why were the greats like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, and Elmore Leonard so great? I went back to school and studied them.

Along this past seven month’s journey, I questioned my ability to successfully pull off something so big that I knew so little about. I took a page from Tiger Wood’s playbook where he described his comeback to win the 2019 Masters. Woods completely took apart his game and rebuilt his swing, his putting, his chipping, his mental attitude, and he looked back at everything the historic Masters champions did to win a green jacket.

I did much the same—rebuilt. I rebuilt myself as a writer. I read a lot on writing craft. A lot on the business of writing. A lot on mental attitude. And a lot on who the writing masters of hardboiled detective fiction really were, as well as how their great stories were structurally built and emotionally told for massive audience reception.

I read about screenwriting, and I took screenwriting courses. I studied what hardboiled genre films, like Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, made it big and what similar-themed TV shows were a success.

Success. There’s that word again. Success. I have my focus on success with City Of Danger, but there’s one huge obstacle to overcome daily. That’s my tendency to be a bit lazy at times and not do the work. The real work. The writing work that makes a dream like this a success.

Yes, I’m the first to admit. I have a bit of a lazy streak in me. You probably do, too. That’s okay, though, because we humans are naturally programmed to be lazy.

———

Footnote: The pilot episode of City Of Danger is set for release in June 2022. It’ll start as an ebook series, released one episode each month, with intentions to follow with print and audio versions. The netstreaming side is an entirely different venture—currently in the hush-hushed shadows. I’ll keep you posted. 😉