The Mysterious Cold Case Of Black Dahlia
The aspiring actress found on the side-walk, sawed in half.
Imagine walking the pavement at about 10 am with your daughter. You are enjoying the weather when you suddenly see two pieces of a mannequin strewn across the pathway. But something is not right. You take a closer look. What you see is straight out of a horror movie.
It is the lifeless body of a young woman, neatly cut in half, all the blood drained. You scream, cover your daughter’s eyes and call the police.
Welcome to the unsolved case of Black Dahlia, aka, Elizabeth Short, one of the oldest unsolved cases from Los Angeles County.
Elizabeth Short
Elizabeth Short, born on 29th July 1924, in Boston, was an aspiring actress though she did not receive any offers. She was the third daughter of Cleo and Phoebe May Short. Cleo Short abandoned the family in the year 1929 due to the stock market crash under the pretext of a suicide.
Since then, Elizabeth shuttled between Medford (where her family stayed) and Florida (where she resided with family friends). Short dropped off from Medford High School during her sophomore year to pursue a career in acting.
In late 1942, Phoebe Short received a letter from Cleo, apologizing for his behavior and that he had started a new life in California. The 18-year-old Elizabeth traveled to California to stay with her estranged father, but following a misunderstanding, she moved out.
Short took a job at Base Exchange (a type of retail store found on United States military installations worldwide) at Camp Cooke, near Lompoc, living with several friends. She left Lompoc as she was allegedly abused by her Army Airforce sergeant boyfriend and moved to Santa Barbara in mid-1943.
She was arrested for underage drinking on 23rd September 1943 (legal drinking age was 21) and was sent to Medford by the juvenile authorities.
Romantic affairs
Major Matthew Michael Gordon, Jr. — Army Air Force Officer — Proposed marriage — Short reportedly accepted the proposal — Gordon passed away on 10th August 1945 in a plane crash.
Army Air Force Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Fickling — Short relocated to Los Angeles in July 1946 — Took a job as a waitress — Rented a room behind the Florentine Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard.
Robert “Red” Manley — a 25-year-old married salesman — Short was last seen with Robert on 9th January 1947 — Robert reportedly dropped her off to meet her sister at Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles.
Discovery, identification, and autopsy
On 15th January 1947, Betty Bersinger, along with her three-year-old daughter, discovered the pallid, sawn body of Short. Initially dismissing it as a mannequin, Betty later realized that it was the corpse of a young woman and immediately contacted the police.
Autopsy
Medical Examiners concluded that the body was ten hours old, estimating the time of death between the evening of the 14th and the early hours of the 15th.
They also noted several lacerations along the right forearm, left upper arm, left under-breast, and right breast. Short’s face had been severely mutilated, leaving a “Glasgow smile” (similar to the Joker’s smile). The murderer had performed a 1930s technique of hemicorporectomy, where the cadaver is neatly cut between the second and third lumbar vertebrae.
Blood had been completely drained; the body, naked, posed with the elbows bent, the hands raised, and the legs spread apart. The reason for her death was found to be hemorrhaging from the incisions on her face and shock from the blows to her head.
Upon examining, her anal canal was found to be dilated to 1.75 inches (44mm), suggesting that she might have been sodomized. Any traces of sperm had been cleanly wiped out by the killer using gasoline.
Identification
Fingerprints had been taken from the body and had to be safely transported to the FBI for identification. But winter storms proved to be a hindrance and would have delayed the recognition for up to a week.
Warden Woolard, the assisting managing editor of the Herald-Express, was helping the LAPD with the bafflingly barbarous case. He suggested the use of “Soundphoto” equipment for sending the fingerprints to LAPD Captain Jack Donahoe, and the plan was quickly put to use.
Despite receiving the images, the FBI found it challenging to read the fingerprints. Russ Lapp, a Herald-Express photographer, proposed the use of negatives and enlarged the image to 8x10 as a better measure.
The FBI managed to identify the woman as Elizabeth Short in just 56 minutes despite about 100 million records in their database. Her fingerprints matched twice. The first, for applying for the job as a clerk at Camp Cooke, and the other, for getting arrested at Santa Barbara for underage drinking.
Once they got hold of the young woman’s identity, the media quickly began sensationalizing the news, tarnishing her name, calling her “the adventuress who prowled Hollywood Boulevard” and her case as “sex fiend murder”. Media also nicknamed her Black Dahlia.
Suspects
On 21st January 1947, a person claiming to be Short’s killer sent an envelope addressed to The Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers. The envelope contained her birth certificate, business cards, names written on pieces of paper, and an address book of a man called Mark Hansen.
The envelope was suspected to be sent by the killer as the items had been cleaned with gasoline (similar to that of Short’s body) to remove fingerprints. The partial fingerprints were also damaged during transit to the FBI for testing.
The police of Los Angeles immediately detained Mark Hansen (the owner of the address book) as a suspect. Ann Toth, Short’s roommate, told the police and investigators that Short had spurned Hansen’s sexual advances. A stripper acquaintance of Short told the police that Elizabeth “liked to get guys worked up over her, but she’d leave them hanging dry.” But Hansen was later cleared of suspicion.
Similarly, Robert Manley (Short’s married boyfriend) was also a suspect. But he successfully passed numerous polygraph tests (lie-detection tests). The police investigated nearly 150 men as potential suspects, but everyone was cleared.
About 750 investigators worked on the case, including 400 sheriff’s deputies and 250 Californian Patrol officers. A reward of $10,000 was posted, leading to several false confessions and clues.
Sergeant John P. St. John, who worked on the case until his retirement, stated,
“It is amazing how many people offer up a relative as the killer.”
The Examiner and the Herald-Express received several letters from the supposed killer that whipped the people into a frenzy. But it is still not known if the papers were cashing-in on the popularity of the case or if the letters were real.
On 1st February, the Los Angeles Daily News published that the case had “hit the stone wall” with no new suspects or clues to deduce. Though the case was cold due to insufficient suspects, many people came forward with confessions. Many were not even born at the time of the murder.
Sergeant Finis Brown, a detective on the case, blamed the media for compromising important information regarding the murder. In the meantime, a grand jury convened to investigate the inadequacy of LAPD’s to solve violence against women and children.
After 73 years, the young woman got neither the justice nor the closure that she deserved. Was she murdered by her father? Or her abusive boyfriend? Or maybe Robert’s wife in envy? We’ll never know.
The case was connected to the Cleaveland Torso Murders (active between 1934–1938) where the victims were mutilated and dismembered, but nothing substantial pointed to the claim or many other theories that arose.
The case of Black Dahlia was so notorious that multiple bands were created in her honor, and movies were made based on it.
