Chapter 4 ~ Ann Toth
In Hollywood, Beth Short knew many men during her last months. She also knew women, but none of the friendships appeared to be close. She knew Connie Starr, an actress, and Marjorie Graham, from Massachusetts and Lynn Martin, a teenage runaway.
One who was closer than others was actress and model Ann Toth, described by newspapers as 24 years old. She met Beth in Mark Hansen’s home after she returned from a trip to San Diego. Hansen owned the Florentine Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard and the Marcal Theatre next door. He owned other properties around town, including his home on Carlos Avenue, behind his club. He allowed showgirls and young women, who were down on their luck, to stay at his home. His own estranged wife and daughters lived in Beverly Hills.
When Ann came home one day, Beth and Mark were there. That was the first time the two girls met, Ann said.
It was Ann that lent her the coat that she was last seen wearing at the Biltmore on the evening of January 9, 1947. It was Ann that found her a place to stay at the Chancellor when Mark Hansen threw her out of his home. It was Ann that helped her move, and Ann that took her mail to her and it was Ann who said kind things about her.
In the first place, she didn’t drink, she didn’t smoke, because after all, living with her, I knew, and she always came in at a decent hour, 11 o’clock, or around there. She never came in later than that, and naturally if she was supposed to be sexy and do other stuff, there is a lot more that goes to it, rather than if a decent girl – there is drinking, smoking, wining and dining, and a few other things that go with it. I don’t think she was trying to be sexy – in a very innocent way.
According to Ann, Mark Hansen and Elizabeth Short were going together. Investigators asked Ann, “-did she want him to think he was going steady with her?” Ann replied, “Yes.” She agreed with investigators that asked if Hansen “was kind of carrying the torch for her at that time.” But the two fought with each other, too, she said.
Well, she cleaned up his bathroom for him and threw out a number of things, you know, set them out, empty bottles and things that he didn’t have any use for, but then he got awful damn mad about that. So I told him he should be thankful somebody wanted to clean it up for him. He said “I would rather leave the damn things alone and she leave my things alone.” For a week he carried on about it.
When Ann was asked if Hansen ever hit Beth, she replied, “Well, I don’t know if he did or not.” She went on to say, “Of course, maybe she was afraid to say anything because she had a feeling I was on Mark’s side, I would probably tell him. Actually, I was just living there, I was just an innocent standbyer. My friend and Mark were very good friends, they used to – he used to visit with Mark. They were pretty good buddies, so he was always around there, so he couldn’t get too rough with me. I don’t think he would of if he could, because we are both of the same nationality, I can be just as mean as he can get, so -”
Ann, who is often portrayed as Hansen’s girl friend, had her own boy friend, Leo Hymes. Authorities described him as a, “heavy set fellow [with a] birthmark on his nose.” Ann said she wasn’t always privy to all the goings-on at the Carlos Avenue house, because she was spending time with Leo. She also said she was not a friend of Beth’s socially. They didn’t go out together or frequent the same spots at the same time.
Ann talked about how Hansen had driven Beth home to the Chancellor without knowing Ann found the apartment for her.
He didn’t know that she lived at the apartment there, because I was the one that got it for her, and he was amazed, he didn’t know what had happened to her, where she had gone or what had happened. I didn’t say anything.
I borrowed a car to move her and everything and I never told him. He would have probably gotten pretty sore at me, so I didn’t tell him that I knew she was living there, because I had been there to visit her, and he drove her home.
LAPD Officer Ed Barrett asked, ” Ann do you think Beth was afraid of Mark?”
“Yes, I do,” she answered. “She never said much around him. As a matter of fact, she , she was – seemed afraid to tell me anything because I think she thought that I was in cahoots with him, I think, that I might say something to him. That is probably why I didn’t find out half as much as i should have.”
Ann Toth had moved out of Mark Hansen’s Carlos Avenue address by December 13, 1949, when Lieutenant Frank B. Jemison of the Bureau of Investigation interviewed her for the 1949 grand jury. She was now living at 1959 Wilcox Avenue, just above Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. By then, she said, “Well, I am a model, and I also work in pictures, when there is work.” When asked if she was acquainted with Mark Hansen, she replied. “Well, I was at one time.” She said she had lived at his home since May, 1946. She said she first met Elizabeth in the beginning of October 1946. She recalled that Beth had been living at Hansen’s for a few days before she returned to Hollywood. Ann said Beth stayed “about a month” at Hansen’s the first time. Marjorie Graham was also living there. Marjorie’s boy friend was Bill Robinson, a U.S.C. student who had been in the navy, and Beth “was keeping company with a supposedly cousin of hers, if I can remember his name.” When Jemison asked her if it was Marvin Margolis, Ann replied, “Um-hum.” Margolis was also a U.S.C. student, studying to be a chiropractor. Ann said, “Well, Marjorie drank up all of Mark’s liquor, so he kicked her out, so out Betty went too. I don’t blame him.” Beth and Marjorie moved in with Bill Robinson at the Guardian Arms on Hollywood Boulevard. Ann said. “I think they were gone about two or three weeks.” According to Ann, this was “The last of October.”
Ann said, “I saw her once, sitting on the steps about 6:30 or 7:00 o’clock in the morning. She and Margie were sitting on the steps of the front porch, and they went away, and I didn’t see them again until Betty moved back in again, without Margie. They came to collect their mail or something, they were sitting on the porch.”
Ann remembered Beth moved back about November 9, after collecting her mail a few times. Hansen allowed Beth to “come back in, and I think at that time, I think , she placed a long distance telephone call to Texas, to this Fickling, and I think that sort of — she charged it on his telephone bill, and I don’t think she told him about it. That is one of the things too, he wanted her to — then of course, I think she paid for it later, and then he let her come back in later and she had a place to stay, without Margie of course.”
Ann said that Beth told her that Hansen was trying to “make her” “a couple of times,” but that Beth lead him to believe that she was a virgin. After that, according to Ann, he didn’t bother her again. She continued to see other men, but they were not allowed to to visit her at the Carlos address.
Ann indicated that Beth moved out of Hansen’s home about November 13, 1946, after an argument with another of Hansen’s girls. Ann said Beth “was planning to stay for the evening and, of course, as Mark told Betty that he was going with her and she was going with him and vice versa. In the meantime, he was having other girls come over there, and I imagine he was trying to romance her or something. Well, anyway, Betty came along –.” The other girl was upset. “Well, anyway, Betty got out of bed, she was sleeping with me, and insisted that this tramp go home.”
The other girl told Beth to go home to her mother where she belonged, according to Ann. The girl continued to insist Beth leave. Ann said she “had a lot of high ideas, that Betty, believe me, with her Boston family and all that stuff, and she got up and locked her suitcase, and she said, ‘I don’t want to touch your damn suitcase, I don’t want anything in there.’ Anyway, words were flying back and forth and there was almost a beef and a fist fight, and Mark stepped in between them and he ordered Betty to move the next day. She was right though, I’ll tell you that.”
In January, 1950, Connie Starr told Frank Jemison that Ann had invited her for dinner at Mark Hansen’s home on Saturday, January 10. She said that Beth arrived with a young man around 9:00 pm that evening and said Beth was cold and that Mark Hansen seated her in front of his fireplace. He put a coat around her shoulders and a pair of his socks and slippers on her feet. Connie understood that Beth had spent the previous night at Hansen’s and was planning on staying again that night. Soon after the murder, Connie read about Elizabeth Short in the newspaper in her home and said to her mother that she had just met Beth at Mark Hansen’s a few days before.
