The Discovery
It was January 15, 1947, and the morning was cold in the city of angels, known to most as Los Angeles. A lady and her young daughter were on their way to visit the shoemaker. The lady glanced to her right, which she might have regretted till her last breath, and saw something like a human figure. At first, she thought it was a mannequin because of the paleness of the figure, and to her horror, she realized she was looking at the dead body of a naked girl. The body was drained of all blood, her waist was sliced clean in half, and her face was carved from her mouth to her ears, creating a perpetual menacing smile on her face. She was the “Black Dahlia”, the LAPD and FBI were informed about the mutilated body by the lady. Within 58 minutes, it was found that the incapacitated body was of the beautiful actress Elizabeth Short.
Elizabeth Short was a 22-year-old actress. Her fingerprints appeared twice in the FBI database, when she had applied as a clerk at the commissary of the Army’s camp Cookie In California in January 1943 and when she had been arrested for underage drinking by the Santa Barbora police. After the autopsy, some gruesome facts were revealed by the FBI. She wasn’t dead when her face was slit from her mouth to her ears, which means she was tortured and utmost expertise was required in slithering with such precision. Medical students and practitioners were investigated but to no avail. After nine days, an envelope was received in a cut-out fashion from movie ad. It stated,
“Los Angeles Examiner and Other Los Angeles paper here are Dahlia’s belongings.”
This Letter came with all the belongings of Elizabeth Short.
The Suspects
According to eyewitnesses, Elizabeth was dropped off at Biltmore Hotel by Robert Manley. From there, she went to a nearby Crown Grill bar where she was last seen. Now, there were three suspects in the case.
Robert Manley was the first suspect since he was the one who dropped off Short at the hotel. He was clean since he passed a polygraph test. The interesting thing to note is that he was admitted to a mental hospital for hearing voices in the year 1954.
Joseph Dumais was the second suspect. He was an army corporal, and in a bizarre turn of events, he falsely confessed to killing Elizabeth. But, his statement was contradicting because there was evidence which showed that he was in a military camp.
George Hodel was the final suspect. He was a highly intelligent individual who studied surgery at a medical university. He also ran the LA Country Verceral Disease Clinic. It had been confirmed that George and Elizabeth knew each other by a female witness. George fathered 11 children with five different women. Dramatically, Steve Hodel, George’s son, who became a police investigator for 17 years, was convinced that George was the killer of Black Dahlia. He made a strong case for the same. Steve found pictures of a woman who looked like Elizabeth Short in his dad’s photo album. During the first examination of the picture, it was revealed that the pictures didn’t match, but in 2014, with the help of the facial recognition technique, a 95 percent match was achieved. Since George practiced surgery, it would have been easy for him to slit the skin of Elizabeth Short with utmost precision. According to eyewitnesses, a black car was spotted near the dead body at dawn. George had a similar black car. He idolized Man Ray, and the position of Elizabeth Short’s arm was posed above her body like one of Man Ray’s work pieces.
George was accused by his daughter Tamar of teaching her oral sex, and offering her to his friends when she was just 14. George himself slept with his daughter. His daughter gave birth to a child at the age of 15. Even the police suspected George and planted hearing devices in his house. One of the two statements that were found intriguing was,
“Supposing I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn’t prove it now. They can’t talk to my secretary anymore because she’s dead”, and “This is the best payoff I have seen between law enforcement agencies. And I’d like to get a connection made in the DA’s office.”
George fled to the Philippines in 1950 and another body like the Black Dahlia appeared in the Philippines, that too in the area where George lived. He was a powerful and rich man who had many connections. All the physical evidence of the Black Dahlia case mysteriously disappeared. An important thing to note is that the law enforcement agencies were notoriously corrupt during that time. He lived a long life and died in 1999 at the age of 92.
The Black Dahlia case remains unsolved officially. Many angles of the case are now lost to time, and many things will never be known to anyone. Sadly, Justice couldn’t be delivered to Elizabeth Short. I hope you are at peace, wherever you are.
