The Black Dahlia, Pt. 2 (No Pun Intended)
There was something about Elizabeth Short's murder that set it apart from other unsolved LA murders. It was supernaturally savage. Unholy.
Mystery stories are called whodunits. Real life, unsolved murders are the most captivating whodunits in the world. The unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, AKA The Black Dahlia, is the whodunit to end all whodunits.
There have been so many books written about the case you could fill the vacant lot at 39th and Norton with them. Some are well-researched, reasoned explorations with plausible theories. Others are downright bonkers. Even the best the theories have holes in them, but there are a handful that are too compelling to readily dismiss.
Before Elizabeth Short sold books, she sold newspapers. There had been fascinating murders in Los Angeles before the Dahlia. According to crimereads.com, 1940’s Los Angeles had already played host to The White Orchid Murder, The White Flame Murder, The White Carnation Murder, but there was something drastically different about the Black Dahlia case. There was something supernaturally savage, unholy, about what had been done to Elizabeth Short. So much so that, to use a modern phrase, the story when instantly viral.
At the time, Los Angeles had several major newspapers, the Examiner, the Herald Express and the Daily News, the Times. On Wed., Jan 15th, 1947, the Daily News ran with the headline, “Young L.A. Girl Slain, Body Slashed In Two.” In the Times it was, “Sex Fiend Slaying Victim.” Reporters, satisfying the dailies’ bottomless appetite for information, plumbed the case for details. Short’s penchant for wearing all black led to her being dubbed The Black Dahlia, a spin on a recent Alan Ladd film, The Blue Dahlia.
One grisly detail about the case had nothing to do with the Elizabeth and her killer but with a reporter and Elizabeth’s mother. According to an article in allthatisinteresting.com, once Elizabeth’s identity was discovered, but before the public had been notified, a reporter from The Los Angeles Examiner called her mother Phoebe in Massachusetts. In an effort to get information about Short, he told her mother that she had won and beauty contest and they needed some biographical information. It was only after the newspaper had gotten the information it needed did Phoebe Short learn the horrible truth about her daughter.
The case went nowhere for a solid week until, on January 24th, the Herald Examiner received a package containing Elizabeth Short’s address book, ID cards, etc. They had been wiped down with gasoline, eliminating the possibility of fingerprints. A note was included composed of cut-out newspaper print reading, “Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers here is Dahlia’s belonging’s letter to follow.”
The letter arrived two days later. In it, the killer promised to turn himself in the following week, on Wed., Jan. 29th, 1947. It was signed “The Black Dahlia Avenger.” The day came and went, as did Jan 29th, 1948, Jan. 29th, 1949, etc., etc. The case went cold. The killer was never found. The Black Dahlia faded into legend.
In 1958 the case got a jolt of renewed publicity when Dragnet’s Jack Webb wrote The Badge, a compendium of the LAPD’s most famous cases. The book galvanized a ten-year-old boy whose own mother had just been brutally murdered. Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, recently divorced from the boy’s father, had gone out on date. She did not come home. The following morning, her body was discovered just outside Arroyo High School in El Monte, CA. Her son James was now living in Hancock Park with his widowed father. He would grow up to become one of America’s great crime novelists. His 1987 novel The Black Dahlia, would introduce the story to an entirely new generation, re-igniting the flame of obsession for the killer’s true identity.
Two of those readers, Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD detective, and Larry Harnisch, a retired Los Angeles Times feature writer, would spend years delving into the case, exhuming facts, interviewing those who were there (that were still here), and developing strong, if very different, theories on the case.
Next.
NOTE ON THE CINEMORPH
The Cinemorph is moving to a once-a-week format. This has nothing to do with my enjoyment of writing and researching these pieces and everything to do with simple time management. To quote Bartles and Jaymes, thank you for your support!