Does crime affect your day to day life? Depending on where you’re from, and your personal experiences, some of us would answer ‘yes’. Whether you have a heightened sense of fear and awareness of violence, or you were lucky enough (as I am) to be from an area where you’ve been blessed with the gift of blissful ignorance about how growing up in a high crime neighborhood can affect you.

Maybe that’s why I have such a fascination with crime; it’s uncharted territory for me. Being from a small rural town, we were never scared to go outside at night. We didn’t think about carrying weapons (other than the hunting knives that most boys brought to school and the occasional rifle in a truck), and we never looked at our neighbors in fear.

This simply isn’t reality in other towns and cities in the United States, especially in large metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, as our next cold case details. For bustling California in the 40’s, crime was all too familiar.

The Black Dahlia. “The Black Dahlia: How ‘Moral Panic’ Gripped the Community in the Wake of Elizabeth Short’s Gruesome Murder,” by Laura Barcella. A&E Television Networks, 14 Jan. 2019.

1947: A mother and her child walk the streets of Los Angeles, only to stumble upon a horrific sight in a vacant lot: a young woman, who had been severed at the waist, with a crude blanket covering her blood-drained body. Her mouth had been carved into a permanent grin. Ligature marks bruised her wrists, ankles, and neck, with other signs of prolonged torture. She was naked, and not a single drop of blood stained the lot, meaning that she had only been dropped off here, and murdered elsewhere.

Using her fingerprints, the FBI and LAPD found her name to be Elizabeth Short. She was from Medford, Massachusetts, and had moved to Los Angeles in hopes of becoming a Hollywood starlet. She was known by friends as being friendly, graceful, kind, and even a bit of a spitfire. She was passionate, strong, and free.

Her romantic interest was Major Matt Gordon, a pilot, whom she told her close friends that she intended to marry once he returned from serving in India. Gordon would never return, instead killed in action, leaving Elizabeth heartbroken and alone. In her grief, she rekindled an old flame with former boyfriend Lieutenant Gordon Fickling, and began staying in several different friend’s homes until she “found her footing”. During this time, she was going out late at night, drinking, and finding herself in trouble with the law. Those closest to her believed this behavior was to cope with her loneliness and feeling of being lost in the world, with no true home or calling.

On January 9th, she had her current boyfriend Robert Manley drop her off at the Biltmore Hotel in Hollywood in order to meet up with her sister prior to visiting Massachusetts. By January 15th, she had been missing for nearly a week, until she was found butchered in a parking lot.

She was 22.

Elizabeth Short’s Mugshot, captured when she was 19 for underage drinking in Santa Barbara . [1944]. “The Black Dahlia,” by Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI: Famous Cases and Criminals.

Within hours, the crime scene was flooded with reporters. Newspapers referred to her as “The Black Dahlia”, in reference to a crime film of the previous year. The public was obsessed with the gruesomeness of her death, and her stardom. Seemingly furious with the holy treatment being given to Short, the killer sent letters to the Los Angeles Examiner, offering her personal belongings (birth certificate, photos, address book, etc.). DNA testing on the letters has wielded no results.

Letters From the Supposed Killer. [1947]. “Cold Case #5 – The Chilling Death Of The Black Dahlia,” by Maitri Patel. Odyssey, 20 Mar. 2017.

Warning: The above link contains extremely graphic images, and shouldn’t be viewed by those who may be sensitive to crimes of this nature. Caution is advised.

Since her death, over 50 men and women have confessed to the murder. Several suspects, (most notably George Hodel, her then-boyfriend Robert Manley [who would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to a mental hospital], and Mark Hansen to name a few) have been pinpointed but never charged.

Short’s promiscuous behavior near the time of her death has made it nearly impossible for investigators to determine possible suspects, sexual partners, and even friends. Having the public eye put her in such a high podium (thanks to the media and the alias given to her in order to increase recognition) made the investigation cumbersome, as well as the lack of advanced genetic testing at the time. The odds of finding The Black Dahlia killer are slim to none, doomed to be unsolved and “cold” for eternity it seems.

For further reading, BuzzFeed Unsolved has a short but fantastic video detailing the murder and further explaining several suspects and theories, and I recommend for those interested to check it out. Thank you for reading, and best of luck with creating your own theories.