Black Dahlia

Elizabeth Short (July 29, 1924 – ca. January 15, 1947) was an American woman who was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. Nicknamed the Black Dahlia, Short was found severely mutilated, with her body severed, on January 15, 1947 in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. The murder, which remains unsolved, has been the source of widespread speculation as well as several books and film adaptations.

Biography

Elizabeth Short was born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. She grew up in Medford, by her mother, Phoebe Mae, after her father, Cleo Short, leaving her and her four sisters in October 1930.

Troubled by asthma, Short spent the summer and winter in Medford in Florida. At the age of 19, she went to Vallejo, California to live with her father. The two moved to Los Angeles early 1943, but after an argument, they abflog to get a job at a post exchange at Camp Cooke (now Vandenberg Air Force Base), near Lompoc. Zog them to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested on 23 September 1943 to underage drinking and was returned to Medford juvenile delinquency authorities. In the few years after they lived in different cities in Florida, with occasional trips back to Massachusetts to earn money mostly as a waitress.

In Florida, Short met Major Matthew M. Gordon Jr., was part of the 2nd Air Commandos and training for use in China Burma India theater of operations. Short told friends that Gordon wrote a letter from India suggested that during the marriage, by a plane crash he suffered in the attempt to rescue a downed pilots. (He was, according to his obituary in Pueblo, Colorado newspaper, with a Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, Air Medal with 15 oak leaf clusters, and Purple Heart). It accepted his proposal, but he died in a crash on 10 August 1945, before he could return that the U.S. later embellished the story and said that they were married and had a child who died. Although Gordon's friends in the air commands confirm that Gordon and Short were committed, his family later denied any connection after a short's Murder.

Short returned to Southern California in July 1946 to see an old friend she met in Florida during the war, Lt. Gordon Fick Ling, who was stationed in Long Beach. For the six months before her death, she remained in Southern California, especially in Los Angeles. During this time she lived in several hotels, apartment houses, rooming houses and private homes, never stay anywhere for more than a few weeks.

Death

The body of Elizabeth Short was found on 15 January 1947 in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, severely mutilated, halved and drained of blood. Her face was slash the corners of her mouth to their ears.

Rumors and popular misconceptions

According to newspaper reports shortly after the murder, Short received the nickname "Black Dahlia" at a Long Beach drugstore in the summer of 1946, as a play on the then-current movie The Blue Dahlia. However, Los Angeles County district attorney investigators' reports state the nickname was invented by newspaper reporters covering the murder. In either case, Short was not generally known as the "Black Dahlia" during her lifetime.

A number of people, none of whom knew Short in life, contacted police and the newspapers, claiming to have seen her during her so-called "missing week" between the time of her disappearance January 9 and the time her body was found on January 15. Police and district attorney investigators ruled out each of these alleged sightings, sometimes identifying other women that witnesses had mistaken for Short.

Many "true crime" books claim that Short lived in or visited Los Angeles at various times in the mid-1940s; these claims have never been substantiated, and are refuted by the findings of law enforcement officers who investigated the case. A document in the Los Angeles County district attorney's files titled "Movements of Elizabeth Short Prior to June 1, 1946" states that Short was in Florida and Massachusetts from September 1943 through the early months of 1946, and gives a detailed account of her living and working arrangements during this period.

Although popular belief as well as many "true" crime books portrayed Short as a call girl, a report by the district attorney's grand jury states that she was not a prostitute.

Another widely circulated rumor holds that Short was unable to have sexual intercourse because of some genetic defect that left her with "infantile genitalia." Los Angeles County district attorney's files state the investigators had questioned three men with whom Short had sex, including a Chicago police officer who was a suspect in the case. The FBI files on the case also contain a statement from one of Short's lovers. According to the Los Angeles Police Department's summary of the case, in the district attorney's files, the autopsy describes Short's reproductive organs as anatomically normal. The autopsy also states that Short was not and had never been pregnant, contrary to what is sometimes claimed.

The D.A.'s files contain the following:—

Doctor Schwartz last stated that he studied surgery and that victim was on the make for him but that she was the patient of Doctor Arthur McGinnis Faught who was treating victim for trouble with her bartholin gland and that he wanted nothing to do with her. He stated that the bartholin gland was the lubricating gland in the vagina and that Doctor Faught had lanced it on several occasions and it could account for the fact that she had not been having intercourse with men.

Suspects

The Black Dahlia murder investigation by the LAPD is the largest since the murder of Marian Parker in 1927, and involved hundreds of officers borrowed from other agencies of law enforcement. Because of the complexity of the case, the original investigators treated every person who knew that short a suspect who had to be eliminated. Hundreds of people were considered suspects and thousands of people were questioned by police. Sensational and sometimes inaccurate press coverage, and the nature of the crime, brought public attention to this matter. About 60 people have confessed to the murder, mostly men, and a few women. As the case continues to public attention, many others have been proposed as the killer court.

No theory is universally accepted, and none has been proven.

Possible related murders

Some crime writers have speculated on a link between the Short murder and the Cleveland Torso killings, also known as the Kingsbury Run murders, which took place in Cleveland from 1934 to 1938. The original LAPD investigators examined this case in 1947 and discounted any link between the two, as they did with a large number of killings, before and after, until well into the 1950s.

Other crime writers have suggested a link between the murder and short the 1945 murder of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan in Chicago; Degnan was also fragmented (and Short's body was discovered in the vicinity of Degnan Boulevard in Los Angeles). However serial killer William Heirens Degnan confessed to the murder and was in jail when Short's body was discovered. Steve Hodel, the claims of his father, George Hodel committed The Black Dahlia Murder, claims his father may have murdered as well Degnan.

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