The Black Dahlia

Childhood -

Elizabeth Short was born in the Hyde Park section of Boston, Massachusetts, the third of five daughters of Cleo and Phoebe Short. Around 1927, the Short family relocated to Portland, Maine, before settling in Medford, Massachusetts the same year. Short’s father built miniature golf courses until the 1929 stock market crash, when he lost most of his savings. In 1930, her father’s car was found abandoned on the Charlestown Bridge, and it was assumed that he had taken his own life by jumping off the bridge, into the river. Believing her husband to be deceased, Short’s mother moved with her five daughters into a small apartment in Medford and worked as a bookkeeper to support them.

Troubled by bronchitis and severe asthma attacks, Short underwent lung surgery at age 15, after which doctors suggested she relocate to a milder climate during the winter months to prevent further respiratory problems. Short’s mother then sent her to spend winters in Miami, Florida with family friends. During the next three years, Short lived in Florida during the winter months and spent the rest of the year in Medford with her mother and sisters. Short dropped out of Medford High School in her sophomore year.

Relocation to California -

In late 1942, Short’s mother received a letter of apology from her presumed deceased husband, which revealed that he was in fact alive and had started a new life in California. In December, at age 18, Short relocated to Vallejo to live with her father, whom she had not seen since she was six years old. At the time, he was working at the nearby Mare Island Naval shipyard on San Fransisco Bay. Arguments between Short and her father led to her moving out in January 1943. Shortly after, she took a job at the base exchange at Camp Cooke, near Lampoc, living with several friends, and briefly with an army Air Force sergeant who reportedly abused her. She left Lampoc in mid-1943 and moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested in September for underage drinking.

While in Florida, Short met Major Matthew Gordon, a decorated Army Air Force officer at the 2nd Air Commando group. Short told friends that Gordon had proposed and that she had accepted. However, Gordon died in a plane crash on August 10, 1945, less than a week before the end of the war.

Short spent the last six months of her life in Southern California, shortly before her death she had been working as a waitress, and rented a room behind the Florentine Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard. Short had been described as an aspiring actress.

Prior to the Murder -

On January 9, 1947, Short returns to her home in Los Angeles after a brief trip to San Diego with Robert “Red” Manley, a 25-year old married salesman she had been dating. Manley stated that he dropped Short off at the Biltmore Hotel located at 506 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, and that Short was supposed to meet her sister, who was visiting from Boston, that afternoon.

By some accounts, staff of the Biltmore recalled having seen Short using the lobby telephone. Shortly after, she was allegedly seen by patrons of the Crown Grill Cocktail Lounge at 754 South Olive Street, approximately half a mile away form the Biltmore Hotel.

Discovery -

On the morning of January 15, 1947, Short’s half-naked body was found severed in two pieces in a vacant lot on the west side of South Norton Avenue, midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street in Leiment Park, Los Angeles.

At the time, the neighborhood was largely undeveloped. Local resident Betty Bersinger discovered the body at 10am while she was walking with her three-year old daughter. Bersinger initially thought she had found a discarded store mannequin. When she realized it was a corpse, she rushed to a nearby house and called the police.

Short’s severely mutilated body was completely severed at the waist and drained entirely of blood, leaving her skin a pallid white. Medical examiners determined that she had been dead for around ten hours prior to the discovery, leaving her time of death either sometime during the evening of January 14, or the early morning hours of January 15. The body had obviously been washed by the killer.

Short’s face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating an effect know as the “Glasgow smile”. She had several cuts of her thigh and breasts, where entire portions of flesh had been sliced away. The lower half of her body was positioned a foot away from the upper, and her intestines had been tucked neatly behind her buttocks. The corpse had been posed, with her hands over her head, her elbows bent at right angles and her legs spread apart.

Near the body, detectives located a heel print on the ground amid some tire tracks, and a cement sack containing watery blood was also found nearby.

Autopsy and Identification -

An autopsy of Short’s body was performed on January 16, 1947, by Fredrick Newbarr, the Los Angeles County Coroner. Newbarr’s autopsy report stated that Short was 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 115 pounds, and had light blue eyes, brown hair and badly decade teeth. There were ligature marks on her ankles, wrists and neck, and a “irregular laceration with superficial tissue loss” on her right breast. Newbarr also noted superficial lacerations on the right forearm, left upper arm and the lower left side of the chest.

The body had been cut completely in half by a technique taught in the 1930’s called a hemicorporectomy, a surgery in which the body below the waist is amputated. The lower half of Short’s body had been removed by transecting the lumbar spine between the second and third lumbar vertebrae, thus severing the intestine at the duodenum. Newbarr’s report noted very little bruising along the incision line, suggesting it had been performed after death.

Another laceration measuring 4.25 inches in length ran longitudinally from the umbilicus to the suprapubic region. The lacerations on each side of the face, which extended from the corners of the lips. Were measured at 3 inches on the right side of the face, and 2.5 inches in the left. Her skull was not fractured although, there was bruising on the front and right side of the scalp, with a small amount of bleeding in the subarachnoid space on the right side, consistent with blows to the head. The cause of death was determined to be hemorrhaging from the lacerations to her face and the shock from blows to the head and face.

Newbarr noted that Short’s anal canal was dilated at 1.75 inches, suggesting that she may have been raped. Samples were taken from her body testing for the presence of sperm, however, the results came back negative.

Prior to the autopsy, police had quickly been able to identify the victim as Short after sending copies of her fingerprints to Washington, D.C., which matched those of her 1943 arrest.

Immediately following Short’s identification, reporters contacted her mother, Phoebe Short, in Boston and told her that her daughter had won a beauty contest. It was only after they had pryed as much personal information out of Phoebe as possible, that they revealed that her daughter had been murdered.

The media nicknamed Short “The Black Dahlia” and described her as an “Adveturess” who “prowled Hollywood Boulevard.”

Initial Investigation -

On January 21, 1947, a person claiming to be Short’s killer placed a phone call to the office of James Richardson, the editor of the Examiner, congratulating Richardson on the newspaper’s coverage of the case, and stated he planned for police to pursue him further. Additionally, the called told Richardson to “expect some souvenirs of Beth Short in the mail.”

On January 24, a suspicious manila envelope was discovered by a postal service worker; the envelope had been addressed to “the Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers” with individual words that had been cut and glued from newspapers; additionally, a large message on the face of the envelope read “Here is Dahlia’s belongings, letter to follow”. The envelope contained Short’s birth certificate, business cards, photographs, names written on pieces of paper, and an address book with the name Mark Hansen embossed on the cover.

The packet had been carefully cleaned with gasoline, similarly to Short’s body, which led police to suspect the packet had been sent directly by her killer. Despite the efforts to clean the packet, several partial fingerprints were lifted from the envelope and sent to the FBI for testing; however, the prints were compromised in transit and thus could not be properly analyzed. The same day the packet was received by the Examiner, a handbag and a black suede shoe were reported to have been seen on top of a trash can in an alley a short distance from where Short’s body was found. Police recovered the items, but they had also been wiped clean with gasoline, destroying fingerprints.

A total of 750 investigators form the LAPD and other departments worked on the case during its initial stages. Various locations were searched for evidence, including storm drains throughout LA, abandoned structures and various sites along the LA river, but the searches yielded no further evidence. City councilman Lloyd G. Davis posted a $10,000 reward for information leading police to Short’s killer.

Media Response -

On January 26, another letter was received by the Examiner, this time handwritten, which read: “Here it is. Turning in Wed., Jan 29, 10am. Had my fun at police. Black Dahlia avenger”. The letter also named a location at which the supposed killer would turn himself in. Police waited at the location on the morning on January 29, but the alleged killer never showed.

Grand Jury and Aftermath -

In September 1949, a grand jury convened to discuss inadequacies in the LAPD’s homicide unit based on their failure to solve numerous murders, especially those of women and children, Short’s being on of them.

The Black Dahlia Name -

The Los Angeles Times reported that customers at a drug store in Long Beach dubbed Elizabeth Short the “Black Dahlia” as a joke in reference to the film noir murder mystery, “The Blue Dahlia”, which was released nine months prior to her murder. Short had frequented that drug store when she first lived in Long Beach, and the customers knew her for her black hair, black clothes and fair complexion. Which is why her nickname was changed from “The Blue Dahlia” to the “Black Dahlia”.

Before “Black Dahlia” caught on, Elizabeth Short’s killing was dubbed the “Werewolf Murder”.

Analyzing The Killer -

The investigators in the Black Dahlia case had two main theories on Elizabeth Short’s killer. One was that Elizabeth had never met her killer before her death, and the other theory was that she knew him or her beforehand.

The police were convinced by the latter option due to the mutilations present on Elizabeth’s corpse, which were signs of a personal vendetta.

Legacy -

Elizabeth Short is interred at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. After all her daughters had grown up and married, Phoebe moved to Oakland to be near her daughters grave.

On February 2, 1947, just two weeks after Short’s murder, state assemblyman C. Don Field was prompted by the case to introduce a bill calling for the information of a sex offender registry, the state of California would become the first U.S. state to make the registration of sex offenders mandatory.