Was Dr. O’Reilly physically capable of murder?

Note: This article references times and events when Patrick O’Reilly was known as Patrick Trear and his Canadian military service. If you are not familiar with these connections, please see https://blackdahliamystery.com/2023/03/something-to-hide/.

In May 1939, the Black Dahlia suspect, Dr. Patrick O’Reilly, was accused of sadistically attacking his phone secretary Walene Jane McCarthy in his home. When Dr. O’Reilly was on trial for the assault in September of the same year, he dramatically defended himself by baring his chest and displaying his leg to assert that he received wounds in WWI, which would have prevented him from dragging & attacking the 21-year-old Miss McCarthy in the ways she claimed. (Papers said that Dr. O’Reilly was 41 at the time, but he was 39.)

Although Dr. O’Reilly was eventually found guilty of attacking Miss McCarthy, was he indeed crippled by the ravages of war? If he could not drag and savagely beat a woman, then it would be difficult to suggest that he was responsible for another crime involving dragging and beating.

To answer this question, we must first go back 17 years to 1922, four years after the end of WWI.

In August 1922, a “superhuman” feat hit the Los Angeles papers. The teenage daughter of a wealthy steelman, Miss May Orr, was alone in a rowboat near Balboa Beach that had drifted hundreds of yards offshore. Suddenly the rough seas tossed Miss Orr from the boat and into the waves. Not being an experienced swimmer and being weighed down by her dress, Miss Orr struggled to remain above the surface. Men on shore witnessed her frantic struggle for survival over 300 yards (over 900 feet) away. Most men hesitated, not seeing any chance to get to her through the crashing waves.

One young mystery man was not deterred and immediately stripped off his clothes and dashed into the breaking waves. The people along the beach watched in amazement as this brave man swam towards the now exhausted Miss Orr. Not to be outdone, two other young men jumped into the sea but were soon overwhelmed by the surf and had trouble not needing rescue themselves. Just as Miss Orr, having given up all of her strength, began to sink below the waves, the mystery man reached her and took hold of her limp body. Some expected both to sink to their deaths.

Amazingly, the mystery man was able to drag the dead weight of Miss Orr, clothes and all, over 900 feet back to shore. He caught his breath as people rushed to care for the stunned girl. Like something out of a novel, the mystery man was suddenly gone.

However, it wasn’t long until it became known that the individual who miraculously saved Miss Orr’s life was Patrick O’Reilly. He wasn’t just any Patrick O’Reilly, but the very same who would become a suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Short and who claimed to be too crippled to assault Miss McCarthy.

The parents of Miss Orr were, to no surprise, very grateful to Patrick for saving their daughter, gifting him an expensive platinum watch that was engraved. But being deemed a heroic swimmer wasn’t enough for the habitually lying O’Reilly. As a childish game years earlier was twisted into a brush with death, Patrick would use this event to make himself Superman. Time and time again, he loved to be the center of attention in the newspapers.

The original articles on Miss Orr’s rescue mention Patrick O’Reilly as athletic and a great swimmer. Three days later, the papers heralded O’Reilly as a War Hero. The following story presented in the Los Angeles Evening Express is so unbelievable that it shows their respect for veterans, not questioning the legitimacy of the story. But who were they to expect such grandiose lies from a war vet who just saved a girl’s life? In addition, the story was backed by O’Reilly’s sister Frances, who had no issue covering for his past lies. So we cannot wholly blame the newspaper for allowing the ensuing hilarity to reach their readers.

The following is faded in some areas and not easy to read, so I will summarize the six-part article below.

Summary: The 17-year-old O’Reilly got drunk one night while on the battlefield in France. He accidentally wandered across No-Mans-Land. I guess Patrick navigated the barbed wire by wobbling around intoxicated. Patrick then realized he had ended up at the German trenches instead of his own. According to Patrick, by using grenades, the startled & drunken youth killed a group of enemy soldiers. He, all alone, took a German machine gun and held his position for three days and three nights, killing countless enemies. Despite being seriously wounded, Patrick managed to hold off the German force until his unit arrived to rescue him.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, so let me show that this war story was another manufactured tall tale.

First & foremost, there is no mention of this incident in any military documents relating to Patrick O’Reilly. The closest thing is an army nurse telling his sister in a letter that he has been telling the nurses many amazing stories from his time on the front.

The paper claims Patrick received the “British Cross” for this one-man-army event. The British Cross would be the “Victoria Cross,” awarded to 627 people for their service in the First World War. It was awarded to people serving in the British military as well as those in the Canadian, Australian, and other previous commonwealth territories of the British Crown. Patrick O’Reilly served in the Canadian armed forces in France during WWI. However, not a single “O’Reilly” was a recipient, let alone Patrick O’Reilly. Also, among all of Patrick’s Canadian military documents, there’s no mention of being awarded any medal.

It also claims that he was wounded a total of “seven times” on at least three different occasions. Shall we revisit his military records? Okay, there is no mention of him having been wounded in battle. While the papers say he was gassed and suffering from shell shock, only the latter has any hint of validation in the dozens of documents. The only wounds Patrick O’Reilly seems to have received during his time with the Canadian military were a head injury from a wooden beam back in Canada and a cut ear from falling down some stairs in a hospital; not the first time Patrick turned stupid little injuries into tales of heroic feats.

Quite amazingly this supposedly mangled human being could swim almost 2,000 feet in rough waters while dragging another person for half of it.

Now, let’s return to what O’Reilly drew attention to in the courtroom concerning the assault of Miss McCarthy. He made a note of his “crippled right leg.” As I’ve seen swimmers with one leg or even no legs, let us momentarily say that his war wounds didn’t affect his swimming capability.

Thankfully for us, Patrick made the papers quite often. I will now turn your attention to the following newspaper clipping from 1921, a year before the rescue of Miss Orr.

The above Pat O’Reilly is the same one who swam the 600+ yards and the same one who would later go to trial for allegedly attacking Miss McCarthy. How could someone with a crippled leg win first place in the 100-yard dash? Not only that, but another article says that his time was close to beating the world record at the time!

As I am out for the truth, I will note that a supposed leg issue for O’Reilly did exist, but even that will prove highly questionable.

When Patrick O’Reilly was known in Kansas as Patrick Trear, newspaper articles cited that an ankle issue kept the minor Patrick out of the US Army. However, we must look at the evidence because of the numerous fabrications by Patrick that somehow landed in the newspapers.

When Patrick joined the Kansas National Guard after his supposed rejection by the US Army, it was reported that he was in peak physical condition and was a prime specimen. When Patrick was later accepted into the Canadian Expeditionary Force, his documented physical examination did not mention any physical defect in his leg, but it did mention the mole on his back.

I would say that the evidence shows that Patrick O’Reilly was neither a cripple nor a war hero. And because he didn’t have a disability, his defense at the trial concerning Miss McCarthy was just his way of trying to sway the jury. Nothing physically stopped Dr. O’Reilly from doing everything he was accused of to Miss McCarthy in 1939.

Photos presented at the trial showed that Dr. O’Reilly beat her face so severely that the swelling made her virtually unrecognizable. The physician who examined Miss McCarthy testified that she had two black eyes, her mouth swollen from “bruises and abrasions,” and that she also had “50 bruises on her body.”

As previously said, Dr. O’Reilly was found guilty of the attack, and Miss McCarthy was awarded damages. But the oddities that surround Patrick O’Reilly never seem to cease. He was not given prison time for this savage attack which the Black Dahlia investigator Frank Jemison later noted as being “for no other reason than to satisfy his sexual desires without intercourse“. Instead, the punishment Dr. O’Reilly received was unheard of by the papers reporting it. He was ordered to have a chaperone for ten years whenever he was around a single woman. How such a sentence might be enforced is unknown. But it wasn’t effective as Dr. O’Reilly would meet a single lady and marry her just five years into his sentence. I highly doubt they didn’t have private times before tying the knot. In addition, Lt. Jemison notes that O’Reilly was known to attend sex parties before 1947. It seems the sentence was merely for show and a slap on the wrist for the well-respected & well-known doctor.