Sisters in Death by Eli Frankel meticulously unravels the lives, murders, and investigations of Elizabeth Short and Leila Welsh, two women whose tragic stories intertwine in unexpected ways. Handled with care and without sensationalism, the book braids together their lives and deaths, revealing surprising connections despite their apparent differences and having never met one another. By the end, I was convinced by author Eli Frankel’s assessment that [redacted a spoiler here] is perpetrator of both murders.

Rather than focusing on the gruesome details of the murders or the killer’s perversity (though those facts are succinctly shared), Sisters in Death offers a step-by-step journey into the lives of Leila and Beth, exploring their personalities, the investigations’ missteps, and the intricate connections between their cases. Through this lens, we see a bird’s-eye view of the investigations’ flaws. Leila’s case exposes a travesty of justice in George Welsh’s prosecution and the corruption in Kansas City that fueled it, while Beth’s highlights how investigations can go awry in the muddle of excessive data and misinformation.

I’m glad I read this book as it deepened my understanding of both cases and policing in that era. However, in the last chapters, while examining the correlations between the murders, the facts and details of the cases examined early on are reiterated multiple times, becoming repetitive and leading me to skim parts of the text. As it was, while the investigation ties up neatly from an investigative perspective, the narrative conclusion feels repetitive and disjointed, and the ‘wrap-up’ of everyone else’s lives after the murders seems out of place before the final analysis. A smoother structure and a more polished ending would have elevated the book.

Despite its flaws, the book’s thorough research and respectful approach make it a compelling read. I’d rate it 3.5 stars if possible, but I’m rounding up to 4 because it deserves to be read, and Leila and Beth deserve to be remembered in the way Eli Frankel has introduced them - lovely young women and not sensationalized in any way. The investigative journalism to piece this together had to have been a monumental endeavor, with detailed sources and a clear commitment to honoring everyone involved and the author deserves recognition for his dedication. That said, less enthusiastic readers may struggle with the repetitive sections. Those invested in understanding and honoring the memories of Leila Welsh and Elizabeth Short, or highly interested in true crime and justice will find this a worthwhile read.

I want to say thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my free copy of Sisters in Death, by Eli Frankel, in exchange for my honest review. This book takes us into the murders of Elizabeth Short aka the Black Dahlia and Leila Welsh aka the Prairie Heiress - one death infamous and one you've probably never heard of until now.

I have always been fascinated with the Black Dahlia murder (and any Hollywood murder really) but had no idea that a similar one had occurred years previously, and even less knowledge that the same predator could have committed both.

Sisters in Death gave me an interesting theory connecting the two murders. Some parts really made me think about what I knew in a different light , although I'm not sure I was 1o0% convinced. I did find the book a bit heavy on details and information in some places and at times it felt like an overload. I thought maybe the author could have streamlined some of these areas a little more and yet still get his thoughts across. It was also kind of graphic in some cases (this part was not a problem for me but others may not appreciate it).

Overall though I did enjoy the book and I thought this was very interesting perspective about the these two awful murders. I’d recommend it to true crime fans, especially if you like lesser known crimes.

This was a fascinating read, and taught a lot about a lesser known victim, Leila Welsh, aka The Heiress of the Prairie, when there has been so much history focused on The Black Dahlia. Thank you Eli Frankel and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advanced copy of Sisters in Death.

I was interested in Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel because of the intriguing alleged connection between two cases—one world-famous, and one that’s almost entirely unknown. Elizabeth Short, the infamous Black Dahlia, is often the entry point into the world of true crime and cold cases. I’ll admit, it's not a case I usually delve into deeply. It feels like everything that can be said about it already has been. That said, I did enjoy reading more about her background in this book. While longtime Black Dahlia enthusiasts might not find anything groundbreaking here, I appreciated the deeper context as someone who isn’t as familiar with all the details.

The Prairie Heiress case, on the other hand, was completely new to me—and honestly, it left me shocked and angry. The way the victim’s only brother was accused based on flimsy evidence, then harassed for years until the authorities could manipulate circumstances enough to try him, was appalling. If Frankel’s theory is correct, and there was a link between the two murders, then the mishandling of the Prairie Heiress case might have prevented the Black Dahlia murder from ever happening. That’s a chilling thought.

Sisters in Death presents an interesting theory about a possible connection between the two killings. Some of the points raised are thought-provoking, though I’m not sure they’ll convince readers one way or the other. The book does get repetitive at times—especially when covering Elizabeth Short’s story—but it’s easy to skim through those sections to get to the more compelling parts.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in true crime, especially those curious about lesser-known cases or new perspectives on old ones.

I love true crime stories! I had never heard of the Prairie Heiress case before, though I was somewhat familiar with the Black Dahlia—just not in much detail. It was so interesting to see the similarities between the two cases and how connected they appear to be. I also learned a lot about Kansas City’s fascinating (and pretty seedy!) history. At times, it felt like I was reading about Al Capone and mob-controlled Chicago in the 1920s.

That said, I did have a couple of issues with this book. The story was very compelling, but the writing was difficult to get through at times. While I understand this is a true crime book, I wish there had been a clearer indication of how graphic some of the details would be. I’m not bothered by graphic content in general, but it would have been helpful to know in advance that the descriptions of the crimes were going to be so explicit.

Another issue was the repetition. Often, I felt like I was reading the same information twice—just slightly reworded a few paragraphs later. These weren’t helpful summaries or recaps, just unnecessary restatements that slowed the pace. This happened frequently and made the reading experience feel a bit tedious.

Lastly, there were several sections where the author included excessive and unnecessary details. For example, in Chapter 17, there’s a passage that reads:

“While most social events were held on campus, at hotels, or at clubs, the small circle of elite Greek members at KCU frequently threw parties at their parents' homes, all within blocks of each other. Carl Balsiger lived eight blocks from Leila's close friend Ann Bichler, who lived nine blocks from Kegon member Ken Spry, who lived eight blocks from Leila's best friend and fellow Cho Chin sorority sister Phyllis Wetherill, who lived five blocks from Leila's sorority sister Mary Ann Peeler, who lived twelve blocks from Kegon President Charles Myers, who lived eleven blocks from Leila Welsh, who lived thirteen blocks from Carl Balsiger, whose home lay directly northeast of the Welshes.”

We really don’t need to know exactly how many blocks apart nine loosely related people lived from each other. That passage was a low point for me—I actually had to put the book down out of frustration.

Despite these issues, I really loved the story and the theory that these cases could have been committed by the same person. There are just too many coincidences for them to be completely unrelated. Unfortunately, the writing style made it difficult to stay immersed, which is a shame considering how much research clearly went into this book.

Thank you to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A great and fascinating read i never knew that there was a similar crime across the country any true crime fan will want to read this, couldn't put it down!

Sisters in Death offers a fascinating look at two women—Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, and heiress Hazel Drew—whose tragic fates are linked by a mysterious investigator. Eli Frankel's concept is compelling, blending true crime with historical narrative, but the execution occasionally falters. The pacing is inconsistent, and some speculative elements feel overreaching. While the book sheds light on overlooked connections and intriguing historical details, it sometimes struggles to balance fact with conjecture. A solid read for true crime enthusiasts, but it may leave some readers wanting more clarity and cohesion.

Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter, by Eli Frankel, Citadel Press, 400 pages, October 28, 2025. $29.

Yet another book that treats the murder of Elizabeth Short as a game of Clue in which an author thumbs through a list of suspects and produces a half-baked “solution” using torturous leaps of logic and fraudulent claims as necessary. A zealous but amateurish project that attempts to link two murders separated by five years and 1,600 miles that have nothing in common, implicating a man who committed neither murder. Only for “true” crime fanatics who are unconcerned with reality.

"Sisters in Death" is evidence of the dismal state of the “true” crime genre (truly there is no bottom to this market) and further proof, if any were necessary, that unsolved murders exert a powerful magnetism on one another in the public imagination. Cold cases separated by years, hundreds of miles and completely different methods miraculously become “just like” one another, the work of a shrewd serial killer who is always one step ahead of the hopelessly incompetent police. At least for the purposes of a devious author who isn’t shy of fabricating facts – and there is something about the Black Dahlia case that fosters lying among writers.

The accused “murderer” in question is Herman Carl Balsiger, who has been linked through crackpot internet theories to the March 9, 1941, killing of Leila Adele Welsh in Kansas City and the January 15, 1947, murder in Los Angeles of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia.

According to March 10, 1941, Kansas City Times and Kansas City Star: On the night of Welsh’s murder, the killer entered her bedroom as she slept, beat her in the head with a hammer and slashed her throat with a butcher knife, which he used to cut away her pajamas and cut “a large piece of flesh from one hip.” He then jammed an old shirt into Welsh’s slashed throat and covered up the body (still in bed) with the sheets. He fled, leaving the hammer at the foot of the bed, the knife stuck in the ground outside the Welsh home, and the piece of flesh 900 feet from Welsh’s bedroom. He also discarded his cotton gloves.

In other words, a blitz attack on a sleeping victim who was found where she was killed; a bloody, disorganized mess with the murder weapons nearby. This is nothing at all like what police found in the case of Elizabeth Short, in which the killer murdered her elsewhere, drained her body of blood, bisected it with surgical skill, and washed and scrubbed it before leaving it in open view on Norton Avenue.

Balsiger’s service records, which I obtained from the National Personnel Records Center in 2017 under a Freedom of Information Act request, show that he was stationed at McChord Field, Washington, from January 7, 1941, to June 13, 1941, when he reported to Camp Pendleton, California, covering the March 9, 1941, date of Welsh’s murder. Frankel must fraudulently claim that Balsiger was assigned to McChord in February 1941 (he was already there) and invent two weeks leave in Kansas City so Balsiger can commit the murder. This is shameful work.

The link to Elizabeth Short’s murder is a bit more grounded in reality in that Balsiger at least knew her, but the extent of the relationship is different from what Frankel claims. Balsiger’s involvement with Elizabeth Short occurred in the few days before she left Hollywood for San Diego in December 1946. Balsiger told investigators he drove her to Camarillo, where he and a partner were opening a business. He brought her and his partner back to Los Angeles the next day and Balsiger put her up in a room. The next day, Balsiger took her to the bus station in Hollywood to go to San Diego. And like almost everyone who encountered Elizabeth Short, he said he never saw her again.

Frankel states with bizarre authority that Balsiger’s name was merely scrawled on a bit on paper included in the items that the killer sent to the Los Angeles newspapers, and doesn’t appear in her address book. (Yes, it does).

Elizabeth Short and Balsiger overlapped at Camp Cooke, California, from June 1, 1943, to August 25, 1943. By this time, Balsiger was a first lieutenant and company commander training with the Sixth Army while she was working at PX-1 and living in a civilian dormitory on base. The camp had a population of 36,000 people (larger than the current population of Beverly Hills) and it is a staggering leap of imagination to assume that everyone knew everybody else.

Frankel’s maneuver is to accept without skepticism an unverified rumor (published in some newspapers at the time and given credence in John Gilmore’s wretched book "Severed") that Elizabeth Short shacked up with a soldier known as “Sergeant Chuck,” who was notoriously brutal. According to this never-proved myth, Elizabeth Short reported “Sergeant Chuck” to his commanding officer and “Sergeant Chuck” was sent overseas, providing a motive for the murder, at least among armchair sleuths. It should be noted that investigators were never able to locate the mysterious “Sergeant Chuck,” though he lives on in some of the reports from Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Lt. Frank Jemison – which is why one must always be careful about old records.

In Frankel’s “solution,” 1st Lt. Carl Balsiger becomes “Sergeant Chuck.” And although Balsiger’s service records and news accounts establish clearly that he was a baker, Frankel goes off on a claim that Balsiger was a butcher (no, he wasn’t) and that whoever killed Elizabeth Short was most likely a butcher rather than a “very fine surgeon,” as stated by lead Detective Harry Hansen in testimony to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury.

There’s more, but really, this is a book that isn’t worth my eyesight or anyone else’s. I stopped reading when Frankel claimed that the responding officers moved Elizabeth Short’s body, an assertion that has no basis in fact and is demonstrated by the crime scene photos, which are all over the internet.

Otherwise it’s an example of how a zealous author can have some reliable information and interpret it in terrible ways, forcing it to conform to his “solution.”

Oh and in case you’re wondering, Frankel never mentions George Hodel or Steve Hodel, though I get few mentions for my 1997 Los Angeles Times article for the fiftieth anniversary. And it’s clear that Frankel is “quite familiar” with my research, shall we say.

To anyone who knows anything about the Black Dahlia case, there are staggering mistakes on virtually every page. Almost unimaginably bad.

4,5 ⭐

i remember when i first got into reading true crime - the black dahlia case was one of the first ones i came across. it stayed with me for a long time because of how gruesome it was. my mind simply cannot comprehend how a human being is capable of doing something like that to another person. it's truly sad and terrifying, but also intriguing at the same time.

the story in 'sisters in death' by eli frankel explores the death of elizabeth short - the infamous black dahlia - and a similar case that occured a few years earlier - the murder of leila welsh. it was incredibly intriguing how these two stories were connected.

i truly appreciate all the hard work and research that went into writing this book. i learned so many new facts about the elizabeth short's case that i hadn't known before. the history of both women was so detailed - their lives, murders and investigations.

it was interesting how investigations were conducted in the past. it's honestly crazy how much was missed and not done properly. i guess we can blame that on the fact that it happened so long ago, and crimes like that were uncommon back then.

i guess it's better to be murdered nowadays, since we have all this advanced technology. (just kidding - stay safe out there)

the author provides us with shocking details so i'm warning - this book is definitely not for sensitive readers. it's very graphic and straight-up disturbing, so proceed with caution.
the writing was chilling at times and i couldn't put the book down.
i can only imagine how shocking it must've been for the police officers to see the mutilated body in person.

if you're a true crime lover, this is a must read. deeply researched, shocking and thought-provoking - this book will definitely take you on an unforgettable journey.



*thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

The Dahlia murders may be some of the most well known murder in US but this book does the incredible job of making it more important than ever. This case has been one that has never fully been closed and continues intrigue true crime fans to this day and Eli Frankel taps right into that need. I believe this book is a must read for anyone who has ever been struck by the darkness of this case.

I received a free copy of, Sisters in Death, by Eli Frankel, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The murders of Elizabeth Short and Leila Welsh are explored in this book, one famous and one not so famous until now. Did the same man. kill these women? This book is pretty graphic, so beware if you dont like that. A good read.

on the 80th anniversary of the cold cases of Elizabeth Short and Leila Welsh (10 yrs prior to elizabeth) Eli Frankel takes us back to the crime scenes with lost/hidden facts and unknown testimonies to find the who the suspects were and find their murder
with documentations of their own discoveries, law enforcement statements, updated witness reports and the vicitms own letters
going through trial transcripts, military records and so much more (all sited with resources)
this was a horrifying and disturbing read

This one started out very interesting, but started to feel repetitive and drawn out after a while (particularly in tracing the minutiae of Elizabeth Short's life and last weeks) and I confess that I lost interest long before the book ended...

I'm not sure exactly why that is - there's nothing I can point to that is wrong, but all the investigative and legal work just started to blend together in my mind and felt like it was being rehashed in minute detail. I'm not true crime or cold case obsessed, but have read a fair number of books that addressed both topics and have generally found them interesting, even when they were very detailed, but something about this one just didn't hold my attention the way I expected. Maybe I simply didn't know enough about either case to feel the magnitude of the revelations?

It also felt surprisingly gruesome. Again, I've read similar investigative pieces before and was generally aware of the horrors visited on the Black Dahlia, but something about the way the book laid out all the violence she sustained really hit me. Kudos to the author for capturing that element so thoroughly, but it was tough to read.

I went into Sisters in Death thinking I knew everything there was to know about the Black Dahlia murder—but this book completely changed that. The author brings a fresh, deeply human perspective to a case that’s often sensationalized, offering rare insight into Elizabeth Short’s life and the broader cultural forces at play.

What truly impressed me was how the book debunks one of the most sensational aspects of the Black Dahlia case—the very thing that made it so infamous. It also introduces readers to the lesser-known but equally tragic case of Leila Welsh, which is both shocking and heartbreaking. The parallels drawn between the two cases are eye-opening.

Yes, the book includes some extremely graphic descriptions of the victims, but that level of detail feels appropriate for a serious true crime work. What really stood out to me was the depth of research—not just into the murders, but into the lives of the women involved, the media frenzy, and the investigative missteps. There’s also a compelling argument for a suspect who, shockingly, was never fully investigated.

If you’re a true crime fan looking for something that goes beyond the usual headlines and dives deep into the human stories and overlooked facts, this is a must-read. It’s thoughtful, disturbing, and ultimately unforgettable.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. As someone who is starting to get into true crime more, this did not disappoint, Its creepy and insightful.

I was really excited for this book; I find anything Black Dahlia related really interesting, and would love to see this case solved. The beginning of the book caught my attention, as it debunks a very well known aspect of the Dahlia case that has influenced the suspects that were looked at by police and other investigators. However, by the end of the book, I felt a little disappointed. This book was very repetitive. It repeated information over and over again, to the point that I was skimming pages because I had already read the information. I also found the writing style to be a little dry. I do feel like I learned a lot about this case, but I also felt a little bored by this one.

For whatever reason, the true crime people just crave more and more. The Black Dahlia story holds a particular macabre fascination. For that reason alone, I'd buy this book. However, I also appreciated the depth in which Elizabeth Short's story was explored. This is the first Black Dahlia account that game a sympathetic and nuanced portrait of the victim.

I’ve long followed the Black Dahlia case and nearly passed this book by. I’m glad I didn’t, as it makes some very good arguments on these two cases being connected. It also had much I had never read before about the Elizabeth Short case, which was good to learn. Good true crime, well written.

Really interesting read and full of many facts that did make me see these crimes in a different way from what I’ve seen on tv or on podcasts.

Easy read and someone who enjoys true crime will really enjoy this book

Although the Black Dahlia murder apparently was a famous one, I had never heard of it, had read nothing about it, and saw no movies on it. Thus, I was not a reader anxiously awaiting a new theory about the case. Nevertheless, I was impressed by author Eli Frankel's research and conclusions about the killing of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles, as well as the murder of Leila Welsh in Kansas City.

Both happened in the 1940s, the bodies of both women were horribly mutilated, and both knew the man Mr. Frankel named as the killer. The accused had lived near Leila Welsh and went to school with her in Missouri, and he was one of the last persons seen with Elizabeth Short in California, before her chopped up body was found in a vacant lot. In addition, he not only knew how to dress a deer, but had worked in a slaughterhouse.

The book was a fast, interesting read, but did bog down at times with too many details, such as when describing the trial of Leila Welsh's brother. Moreover, the last 30% was really nothing more than a recap of the facts presented in the story. Plus, since other reviewers warned the descriptions of the two mutilated bodies were extremely graphic, I read none of those descriptions.

Yet I am glad I read this true crime story, and am looking forward to reading the reactions to it by those who are highly familiar with the Black Dahlia case, as well as the Leila Welsh case. Will they believe what I believe? Believe that Eli Frankel has indeed solved both unsolved murders?