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Black Dahlia

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Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia, is a murder victim, born July 29, 1924 and died January 15, 1947.

File:EShort-BlackDahlia.jpg
Elizabeth Short

Biography

Born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, Short was raised in Medford by her mother, Phoebe Mae, after her father, Cleo, abandoned her and her four sisters in October 1930.

Troubled by asthma, she spent summers in Medford and wintered in Florida. At the age of 19, she went to Vallejo, California to live with her father, and they moved to Los Angeles in early 1943. She left almost immediately because of an argument with her father and got a job in one of the post exchanges at Camp Cooke, which is now Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc. She moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested September 23, 1943, for underage drinking and was sent back to Medford by juvenile authorities.

Short subsequently went to Florida, where she met Maj. Matthew M. Gordon Jr., who was part of the 2nd Air Commandos and training for deployment in the China Burma India theater of operations. Gordon, who was awarded a Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, the Air Medal with 15 oak leaf clusters, and Purple Heart, wrote a letter from India proposing marriage while recovering from an airplane crash he suffered while trying to rescue a downed flier. She accepted his proposal, but he died in a crash August 10, 1945, before he could return to the U.S. to marry her.

She returned to Southern California in July 1946 to see an old boyfriend she met in Florida during the war, Lt. Gordon Fickling, who was stationed in Long Beach. While living there for a few weeks, she received the nickname "Black Dahlia" at a corner drugstore as a play on the then-current movie The Blue Dahlia, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

In August 1946, she came to Hollywood to try her luck in the film business. She was last seen on the evening of January 9, 1947, in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel at 5th Street and Olive in downtown Los Angeles.

On January 15, 1947, her body was discovered in a vacant lot of the 3800 block of South Norton Avenue in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, cut in half at the waist and mutilated. The crime was never solved, but has remained the subject of intense speculation.

She was interred in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland rather than Medford because her oldest sister lived in Berkeley and because she loved California.

Her unsolved murder has been key to the perception of Los Angeles as a dystopia. The investigation by the LAPD was the largest since the murder of Marian Parker in 1927, and involved hundreds of officers borrowed from other law enforcement agencies. Because of the complexity of the case, the original investigators treated every person who knew Elizabeth Short as a suspect who had to be eliminated, so thousands of people were interviewed. About 60 people confessed to the murder, mostly men, as well as a few women.

Although popular myth as well as many crime books portray Short as a call girl, a report by the district attorney's office for the Los Angeles County Grand Jury states that she was not a prostitute.

Suspects

Many people have been suggested as the possible killer of Elizabeth Short, much like Jack the Ripper. The original investigators believed that the killer had advanced medical training based on the way she was cut in half, which they concluded was done to make the body lighter and easier to transport in a car. In secret testimony, Detective Harry Hansen, one of the original investigators, told the 1949 Los Angeles County Grand Jury that in his opinion, the killer was a "top medical man" and "a fine surgeon."

District Attorney suspects: A summary of each of 22 suspects investigated by the Los Angeles district attorney's office can be found at this site, which claims this is a transcription of the official document.
Walter Bayley: Larry Harnisch, a copy editor for the Los Angeles Times, argues that Bayley, a Los Angeles surgeon who died in 1948, could be Elizabeth Short's killer. Bayley's daughter was friends with Elizabeth Short's sister Virginia and brother-in-law Adrian, and lived a block from the crime scene on South Norton Avenue. Also, Bayley's widow alleged that his mistress knew a "terrible secret" about Bayley, which is the reason she was the main beneficiary upon his death.[1] Critics of Harnisch's theory question whether Bayley's mental and physical condition at the time of the murder would have been consistent with the commission of this type of crime. The original investigators' theory that the body was cut in half because the killer wasn't strong enough to move it intact partially answers this objection. Author James Ellroy endorsed Harnisch's theory in the film "James Ellroy's Feast of Death".[2]
Joseph A. Dumais: Joseph Dumais, a 29-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, confessed to the murder a few weeks after it occurred. This "breakthrough" in the case was covered enthusiastically by the Los Angeles press, until it was revealed that Dumais had remained in Fort Dix at the time of the murder. Dumais was cleared of any involvement in the crime.
Woody Guthrie: The folksinger was indeed one of the many suspects in the murder, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's files and Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie written by Ed Cray and published in 2004 by W.W. Norton, Page 331. According to Cray, Guthrie drew police attention due to some sexually explicit letters and lurid tabloid clippings he sent to northern California woman he was smitten with. The mailings disturbed their recipient so much she showed them to her sister in Los Angeles, who contacted the police. Guthrie was quickly cleared of involvement in the murder, but various authorities attempted to prosecute him, with minor success, on charges related to sending prohibited materials through the mails.
George Hodel : Dr. George Hodel came under police scrutiny in October 1949, when his 14-year-old daughter, Tamar, accused him of molesting her. Hodel was tried and aquitted of these charges in December 1949. The molestation case led the LAPD to included Hodel, a physician specializing in public health (not a surgeon), among its many suspects in the Dahlia case. Authorities put Hodel under surveillance from Feb. 18 to March 27, 1950 to ascertain whether he was implicated in the murder. In the final report to the grand jury dated Feb. 20, 1951, Lt. Frank Jemison of the Los Angeles County district attorney's office wrote:
Doctor George Hodel, M.D., 5121 Fountain Ave., at the time of this murder had a clinic at East 1st Street near Alameda. Lillian Lenorak (note: a mental patient later confined to the state hospital at Camarillo) who lived with this doctor said he spent some time around the Biltmore Hotel and identified the photo of victim Short as a photo of one of the doctor's girlfriends. Tamara Hodel, 15-year-old daughter, stated that her mother, Dorothy Hodel, had told her that her father had been out all night on a party the night of this murder and said: "They'll never be able to prove I did that murder." Two microphones were placed in this suspect's home[3] (see the logs and recordings made over approximately three weeks' time which tend to prove his innocence. See statement of Dorothy Hodel, former wife[4]). Informant Lillian Lenorak has been committed to the State Mental Institution at Camarillo. Joe Barrett, a roomer at the Hodel residence cooperated as an informant. A photograph of the suspect in the nude with a nude identified colored model was secured from his personal effects. Undersigned identified this model as Mattie Comfort 3423 1/2 S. Arlington, RE public 4953. She said that she was with Doctor Hodel sometime prior to the murder and that she knew nothing about his being associated with victim. Rudolph Walters, known to have been acquainted with victim and also with suspect Hodel claimed that he had not seen victim in the presence of Hodel and did not believe that the doctor had ever met the victim. The following acquaintances of Hodel were questioned and none were able to connect this suspect with this murder--Fred Sexton, 1020 White Knoll Drive; Nita Moladoro, 1617 1/2 N. Normandie; Ellen Taylor, 5121 Fountain Ave.; Finley Thomas, 616 1/2 S. Normandie; Mildred B. Colby, 4629 Vista Del Monte St., Sherman Oaks, this witness was a girlfriend of Charles Smith, abortionist friend of Hodel; Tarin Gilkey, 1025 N. Wilcox; Irene Summerset, 1236 1/4 N. Edgmont; Norman Beckett, 1025 N. Wilcox; Ethel Kane, 1033 N. Wilcox; Annette Chase, 1039 N. Wkilcox; Dorothy Royer, 1636 N. Beverly Glenn. See supplemental reports, long sheets and hear recordings, all of which tend to eliminate this suspect.
In 2003, George Hodel's son, former LAPD Homicide Detective Steve Hodel, published a book claiming his father, who died in 1999, had in fact commited the Black Dahlia murder as well as a host of unsolved murders over the better part of two decades. Steve Hodel says he came up with the idea when he saw two pictures in his dead father's photo album that he claims resemble Short, although Short's family insists they are not of her and many other observers have failed to see the resemblance.[5]. Steve Hodel claims he was unaware at the time that his father had been a suspect in the case. After reviewing the information presented in Steve Hodel's book, Head Deputy D.A. Stephen Kay (Manson Family prosecutor) publicly proclaimed the case "solved," but others have noted that Kay, who has since retired, formed this conclusion by treating Steve Hodel's many disputed assertions as established fact. Detective Brian Carr, the LAPD officer currently in charge of the Black Dahlia case, said in a televised interview that he was baffled by Kay's response, adding that if he ever took a case as weak as Steve Hodel's to a prosecutor he would be "laughed out of the office." Author James Ellroy endorsed Steve Hodel's theory in the foreword to the paperback version of Hodel's book.[6]
George Knowlton: The late Janice Knowlton, in her 1995 book "Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer," (written with Michael Newton) alleges that her father, George Knowlton, was the killer of Elizabeth Short. The onetime singer and former Disneyland employee alleged that he had been having an affair with Elizabeth Short and that Short was staying in a makeshift bedroom in their garage, where she suffered a miscarriage. Knowlton said she was later forced to accompany her father when he disposed of the body.[7] Knowlton's allegations, based on "recovered memories," remain unproved, and she was known to have a history of mental problems. Janice Knowlton died of a overdose of prescription drugs in 2004, in what was deemed a suicide by the Orange County, CA, coroner's office. Janice Knowlton created a sub-genre as the first person to publish a book claiming that his or her own father committed the Black Dahlia murder.
Robert M. "Red" Manley: The last person seen with Elizabeth Short before her disappearance, Manley was the LAPD's top suspect in the first few days after killing. After two polygraph tests and a sworn alibi, Manley was set free.[8]
Orson Welles: In her 1999 book, Mary Pacios, a former neighbor of the Short family in Medford, MA, suggested filmmaker Orson Welles as the killer.[9] Pacios bases this theory on such factors as Welles' volatile temperament, visual clues Pacios claims can be found in the set design of scenes deleted from a film Welles was making around the time of the murder, and the fact that Welles left the country for an extended stay in Europe about a year after the murder. Many people dismiss Pacios' claims as unfounded, as there are no concrete links between Welles and the murder, and he was never a suspect in the original investigation. Pacios now maintains a web site containing a great deal of information about the Black Dahlia case, but little about Welles' supposed involvement.[10],
Jack Anderson Wilson (also known as Arnold Smith): After Wilson's death, Severed author John Gilmore named him as a suspect due to his alleged acquaintance with Short. Prior to Wilson's death, however, Gilmore made an entirely different claim to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in a story appearing Jan. 17, 1982. While Severed says that homicide Detective John St. John was about to "close in" on Wilson based on the material Gilmore provided, St. John told the Herald-Examiner in the same article that he was busy with other killings and would review Gilmore's claims when he got time. Severed also claims Wilson was involved in the murder of Georgette Bauerdorf.[11] Severed, and many other sources based on Severed, erroneously claim that Short and Bauerdorf knew each other in Los Angeles, supposedly because they were both hostesses at the same nightclub. In reality, by the time Short arrived in Los Angeles in 1946, Bauerdorf had been dead for two years and the nightclub had been closed for a year.

Some crime authors have speculated on a link between the Short murder and the Cleveland Torso Murders, also known as the Kingsbury Run Murders, which took place in Cleveland between 1934 and 1938.[12]. The original LAPD investigators examined this case in 1947 and discounted any relationship between the two, as they did with a large number of killings that occurred before and afterward, well into the 1950s.

Author James Ellroy, who wrote a fictionalized account of the murder, has publiclly endorsed at least two mutually exclusive solutions to the crime. Whenever confronted with this seeming contradiction at public appearances or by TV interviewers, Ellroy now refuses to discuss theories about the case.

Books, films and other media

A 1975 TV movie about the case, Who Is the Black Dahlia by Robert Lenski and starring Lucie Arnaz is a highly fictionalized version of the murder. Many details were changed because several people, including Short's mother and Red Manley, who brought Short from San Diego to Los Angeles, refused to sign releases for the studio.

John Gregory Dunne used the murder as a point of departure in his 1977 novel True Confessions, which was made into the 1981 film True Confessions starring Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro with a screenplay by Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion.

Neo-noir author James Ellroy based his 1987 book, The Black Dahlia on the crime. A film by Brian De Palma, based on the Ellroy novel, began production in Bulgaria in May 2005. Also titled The Black Dahlia, the movie will star Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, and Mia Kirshner as Elizabeth Short, and is planned for release in 2006.

A 1988 episode of the TV detective thriller Hunter depicts Rick Hunter and Dee Dee McCall discovering a case similar to the Black Dahlia murder when a skeleton that has been cut in half is found during demolition of a building constructed in 1947. Hunter and McCall are joined by a retired detective who worked on the Elizabeth Short case.

Take 2 Interactive published the computer game, Black Dahlia, in 1998. The puzzle-based adventure game tied Elizabeth Short's murders to Nazis and occult rituals which the player had to investigate. The game features Dennis Hopper, whose son-in-law was one of the company's owners, and Teri Garr.

Max Allan Collins combined The Black Dahlia and Cleveland Torso Murder in his Shamus Award-winning 2002 novel, Angel in Black, featuring his character, private investigator Nathan Heller.

In 2002, rock star and artist Marilyn Manson created a series of water color paintings based upon the murder.

Bob Belden's 2001 CD Black Dahlia draws inspiration from the case for a moody, noir score divided into 12 sections depicting her life, on a par with Jerry Goldsmith's score for Chinatown and David Shire's music for the film Farewell, My Lovely.

Country/punk musician Neko Case also mentions the Black Dahlia in her song "In California" from the album Canadian Amp.

The band The Black Dahlia Murder takes its name from this infamous murder.

See also

References

  • Will Fowler; Reporters: Memoirs of a Young Newspaperman; Roundtable Publishing; ISBN 0-915677-61-X (hardback, 1991)
  • John Gilmore; Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder; Zanja Press; ISBN 0-938331-03-5 (paperback, 1994)
  • Steve Hodel; Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder; Arcade Publishing; ISBN 1-55970-664-3 (hardback, 2003)
  • Janice Knowlton, with Michael Newton; Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer : The Identity of America's Most Notorious Serial Murderer--Revealed at Last; Pocket Books; ISBN 0671880845 (paperback, reissue 1995)
  • Mary Pacios; Childhood Shadows: The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder; 1st Books Library; ISBN 1-58500-484-7 (paperback, 1999)
  • William T. Rasmussen; Corroborating Evidence, Sunstone Press; ISBN 0-86534-440-X (hardback, 2004)
  • James Richardson; For the Life of Me: Memoirs of a City Editor ; G.P. Putnam's Sons; (hardback, 1954)
  • Jack Smith; Jack Smith's L.A. ; Pinnacle Books; ISBN 0-523-41493-5 (hardback, 1981)
  • Agness Underwood: Newspaperwoman ; Harper and Brothers; (hardback, 1949)
  • Jack Webb: The Badge: The Inside Story of One of America's Great Police Departments ; Prentice-Hall; (hardback, 1958)
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