Black Dahlia
Elizabeth Short, posthumously known as the Black Dahlia, was an American woman found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 1947. Her case became highly publicized owing to the gruesome nature of the crime, which included the mutilation and bisection of her corpse.
A native of Boston, Short spent her early life in New England and Florida before relocating to California, where her father lived. It is commonly held that she was an aspiring actress, though she had no known acting credits or jobs during her time in Los Angeles. Short acquired the nickname of the Black Dahlia posthumously, as newspapers of the period often nicknamed particularly lurid crimes; the term may have originated from the film noir thriller The Blue Dahlia. After the discovery of her body, the Los Angeles Police Department began an extensive investigation that produced over 150 suspects but yielded no arrests.
Short's unsolved murder and the details surrounding it have had a lasting cultural impact, generating various theories and public speculation. Her life and death have been the basis of numerous books and films, and her murder is frequently cited as one of the most famous unsolved murders in U.S. history, as well as one of the oldest unsolved cases in Los Angeles County. It has likewise been credited by historians as one of the first major crimes in postwar America to capture national attention.
Life
Childhood
Elizabeth Short was born on July 29, 1924, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the third of five daughters to Cleo Alvin Short Jr. and his wife, Phoebe May Sawyer. Her sisters were Virginia May West, Dorothea Schloesser, Elnora Chalmers and Muriel Short. Short's father was a United States Navy sailor from Gloucester Courthouse, Virginia, while her mother was a native of Milbridge, Maine. The Shorts were married in Portland, Maine, in 1918. The Short family briefly relocated to Portland in 1927, before settling in Medford, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, that same year.Short's father built miniature golf courses until he lost most of his savings in the 1929 stock market crash. In 1930, his car was found abandoned on the Charlestown Bridge, and it was assumed that he had jumped into the Charles River. Believing her husband to be deceased, Short's mother began working as a bookkeeper to support the family.
Troubled by bronchitis and severe asthma attacks, Short underwent lung surgery at age 15, after which doctors suggested she periodically relocate to a milder climate to prevent further respiratory problems. Her mother sent her to spend winters with family friends in Miami, Florida, for the next three years. Short dropped out of Medford High School during 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 of that year, at age 18, Short relocated to Vallejo, California, to live with her father, whom she had not seen since age 6. At the time her father was working at the nearby Mare Island Naval Shipyard on San Francisco Bay. Arguments between Short and her father led to her moving out in January 1943.Short took a job at the Base Exchange at Camp Cooke near Lompoc, California, briefly living with a United States Army Air Force sergeant who reportedly abused her. She left Lompoc in mid-1943 and moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested on September 23 for drinking at a local bar while underage. Juvenile authorities sent her back to Massachusetts, but she returned instead to Florida, making only occasional visits to her family near Boston.
While in Florida, Short met Major Matthew Michael Gordon Jr., a decorated Army Air Force officer of the 2nd Air Commando Group, who was training for deployment to Southeast Asian theater of World War II. Short later told friends that Gordon had written to propose marriage while he was recovering from injuries from a plane crash in India. She accepted his offer, but Gordon died in a second crash on August 10, 1945. Short's sister Dorothea also served in the war and was assigned to decode Japanese messages.
In July 1946, Short relocated to Los Angeles to visit Army Air Force Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Fickling, an acquaintance from Florida, who was stationed at the Naval Reserve Air Base in Long Beach. Short spent the last six months of her life in southern California, mostly in the Los Angeles area; shortly before her death she had been working as a waitress and rented a room behind the Florentine Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard. Short has been variously described and depicted as an aspiring or "would-be" actress. According to some sources, she did in fact have aspirations to be a film star, though she had no known acting jobs or credits.
Murder
Prior activities
On January 9, 1947, Short returned 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 in downtown Los Angeles, and that Short was to meet one of her sisters, 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 away from the Biltmore.Discovery
On the morning of January 15, 1947, Short's naked body, severed into two pieces, was found in a vacant lot on the west side of South Norton Avenue, midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street in the neighborhood of Leimert Park, which was largely undeveloped at the time.Short's severely mutilated body was completely severed at the waist and drained 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 apparently been washed by the killer. Short's face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating an effect known as the "Glasgow smile". She had several cuts on 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 beneath her buttocks. The corpse had been "posed", with her hands over her head, her elbows bent at right angles, and her legs spread apart.
Los Angeles Herald-Express reporter Aggie Underwood was among the first to arrive at the crime scene, and took several photos of Short's body and its surroundings. Near the body, detectives located a heel print on the ground amid the 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 Frederick Newbarr, the Los Angeles County coroner. Newbarr's autopsy report stated that Short was tall, weighed and had light blue eyes, brown hair and badly decayed teeth. There were ligature marks on her ankles, wrists and neck, and an "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.Short's body had been cut completely in half by a technique taught in the 1930s called a hemicorporectomy. The lower half of her 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" ecchymosis along the incision line, suggesting it had been performed after death. Another "gaping laceration" measuring long 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 on the right side of the face, and on the left. The skull was not fractured, but there was bruising noted on the front and right side of her 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, suggesting that she might have been raped. Samples were taken from her body testing for the presence of sperm, but the results came back negative.
Short was identified after her fingerprints were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation ; her fingerprints were on file from her 1943 arrest. Immediately following the identification, a team of reporters from William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner contacted her mother, Phoebe Short, in Boston over the phone. Wain Sutton spoke with Short's mother while City Editor Jimmy Richardson and Jim Murray sat next to him. Sutton intentionally deceived Phoebe and told her that her daughter had won a beauty contest. It was only after prying as much personal information as they could from Phoebe that the reporters revealed that her daughter had in fact been murdered.
Jim Murray would recount the infamous phone call to journalist Larry Harnisch in an interview decades later:
Murray told Harnisch in the same interview that he was "still appalled" and that the "incident was sharply etched in his memory." Phoebe Short initially could not believe what the reporters had told her. She refused to believe that her daughter had been murdered until eventually she received confirmation from the Los Angeles Police through her local police department.
The Examiner also offered to pay Phoebe's airfare and accommodations if she would travel to Los Angeles to help with the police investigation; that was yet another ploy since the newspaper kept her away from police and other reporters to protect its scoop. The Examiner and another Hearst newspaper, the Herald-Express, later sensationalized the case, with one Examiner article describing the black tailored suit Short was last seen wearing as "a tight skirt and a sheer blouse." The media nicknamed her the "Black Dahlia", and described her as an "adventuress" who "prowled Hollywood Boulevard." Additional newspaper reports, such as one published in the Los Angeles Times on January 17, deemed the murder a "sex fiend slaying."