Shortly before noon on October 12, 1944, 20-year-old Georgette Bauerdorf was found dead in her apartment in West Hollywood. Bauerdorf, an aspiring actress and the daughter of a wealthy oil tycoon, was discovered facedown in the bathtub with a washcloth stuffed into her mouth. At first, police thought that Bauerdorf might have drowned after slipping and becoming unconscious, but the autopsy concluded that she had been beaten, raped, and suffocated.
Although all of her valuable jewelry had been left untouched, the killer did steal $100 and a car from Bauerdorf. The car was found 20 kilometers (12 mi) away from her apartment the next day. Police also discovered that a light outside her apartment had been unscrewed and turned off. Her front door was unlocked, which suggested that the killer either had a key or forced his way in after luring Bauerdorf to open the door.
Bauerdorf was a hostess at a Hollywood club that entertained servicemen, so police speculated that the killer might have been somebody she knew there. A coworker told them that Bauerdorf had a strange ex-boyfriend whom she had gone out with the previous month. The man was a serviceman who dearly loved Bauerdorf, but she didn’t have the same feelings and broke up with him. The authorities tried in vain to find the man, but he was never located.
A year after Bauerdorf’s death, the Los Angeles police received a bizarre note claiming that her killer was a soldier who served in Okinawa. “The murderxx (sic) of Georgette Bauerdorf was Divine Retribution,” it said. “Let the Los Angeles police arrest the murderer if they can.”