Nicknamed “the Black Dahlia,” Elizabeth Short was the victim of a brutal murder in Los Angeles in 1947. To this day her killer has never been found.
Who was Elizabeth Short?
Elizabeth Short was born in 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts. At a young age she set her sights on being an actress and by the mid 1940s she was living in LA working as a waitress to support herself while trying to catch her big break of being a Hollywood actress. Short was nicknamed “the Black Dahlia” by the press for her rumored penchant for sheer black clothes and for the Blue Dahlia movie out at the time.
The Black Dahlia Murder
On January 15th, 1947, Short was brutally murdered at just 22 years old; her body was discovered in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. Found early in the morning by a mother taking her child for a walk in a Los Angeles neighborhood, Short’s body was found nude, cut in half, and severely mutilated. At the first discovery, it seemed as if the killer had posed her body. The upper half of her body was placed a foot away from the lower half: the hands were placed over her head, elbows bent, and legs spread. All of her blood was drained from her body and she had seemingly been washed. To top it all off, her face had been slashed from mouth to ear. Since there was no blood at the area, it was assumed that she was killed somewhere else. The scene was so surreal that the woman who found her, Betty Bersinger, initially thought it was a severed mannequin.
After the Murder
Six days after the murder on January 21st, the editor of the Los Angeles Examiner James Richardson received an anonymous call. The caller claimed he was the murderer and told Richardson to expect some “souvenirs.” Then on January 24th, an envelop addressed to LA Examiner was discovered by a U.S. Postal Service worker. Inside the letter was Short’s birth certificate, phots of her, and other personal belongings. Nothing else came from the killer after this phone call and letter. An in depth investigation by the L.A.P.D ensued, leading to a number of false reports and ultimately leaving detectives with nothing. With the combination of faulty witnesses and lack of hard evidence surround the case, the murderer of Elizabeth Short was never found. To this day, the Black Dahlia murder remains one of oldest cold case files in Los Angeles.
Photo Links:
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/the-black-dahlia
https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/4449991/black-dahlia-murder-leslie-dillon-elizabeth-short-suspect/