Elizabeth Ann Short, aka "The Black Dahlia" In 1947, a brutally mutilated female corpse was found in Los Angeles. The press nicknamed the victim "The Black Dahlia." Her killer was never found. The FBI identified the victim as Elizabeth Ann Short (1924-1947), an aspiring actress. This release details the FBI's assistance to the Los Angeles Police Department, which investigated the murder, between 1947 and 1948.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
As you can see she was quite beautiful.
By the mid-1940s, Elizabeth Short was living in Los Angeles, California, working as a waitress to support herself while dreaming of catching her big break into Hollywood's acting scene.
Her chance at stardom, however, would never come. In January 1947, a horrific tragedy occurred: At the age of 22, Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. Her body was found, nude and posed, by a local female resident on January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot near Leimert Park, on the 3800 block of L.A.'s South Norton Avenue.
"It was pretty gruesome," Brian Carr, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who has long worked on the Dahlia case, later said. "I just can't imagine someone doing that to another human being." In addition to dissecting and mutilating her body, Short's killer had drained her corpse of blood and scrubbed it clean.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The last time Short was seen alive was on Jan. 9, 1947. That day, she was in the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles — and then she vanished, only to turn up dead six days later.
The tabloids decided to glam up her story by making her out to be a possible prostitute, last seen in smutty, tight-fitting clothes. She did, according to CBS, date around in the busy post-war boomtown that was 1947 Hollywood. But that active social life made it difficult to pin down her exact movements and whereabouts.
Short was found — by a woman walking her child — on the morning of Jan. 15, naked, cut in half and severely mutilated in a vacant lot near Leimert park.
"The body was just a few feet from the sidewalk and posed in the grass in such a way that the woman reportedly thought it was a mannequin at first," according to the FBI.
Short couldn't be mistaken for a mannequin for long, though — her face was slit, ear to ear, and she had cuts on her body. However, there was no blood at the scene, which lead police to believe she'd been killed elsewhere and moved.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"It was pretty gruesome," Brian Carr, one of the LAPD detectives who worked on the case, later said.. "I just can't imagine someone doing that to another human being."
Over the years, dozens of people have confessed to Short's murder.
One of the original investigators, a homicide detective named Harry Hansen, told a Los Angeles County Grand Jury in 1949 that he thought a "medical man" committed the crime, based on the precision with which the body was cut in half.
"I've seen many horrible mutilation cases, many of them, and if any of you ladies and gentlemen had ever seen a case like that, and would see the pictures of this Elizabeth Short case, you could detect the difference immediately," he said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Early on, an Army corporal was one of the primary suspects, according to . He said he'd been out drinking with Short a few days before the discovery of her body but, after imbibing too much, he blacked out and came to in a cab in New York City. His confession was discredited when it came out that he'd been on his military base the day she died.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
In 1991, a woman claimed she'd unlocked repressed memories pointing to her father as the culprit, but police never found concrete evidence tying good old dad to the crime.
One of the most-hyped accusations in recent years came from Steve Hodel, who said his late father, a doctor named George Hodel, was the killer.
In early investigations, the doc had been considered among the 22 most likely suspects, a group that also included Short's landlord and a jealous boyfriend, according to CBS.
Although others have expressed skepticism about Steve Hodel's claims — including the assertion that dad's handwriting matched a suspected sample of the killer's writing — he's still sure his dad did it.
"He wanted to be like Man Ray," he said. "He wanted to be an artist, and I think this was his masterpiece."
RESPECTS
May you rest in peace Ms. Short. Someday we shall solve your murder. I pay you many respects and hope that someday you can be brought justice for the horrible thing that had happened to you. You were a beautiful women who could've been greatly successful.
