Case File: Elizabeth Short

Elizabeth Short was born into an unstable family of five children in Boston on July 29, 1924. Her father, Cleo Alvin Short, lost the family’s savings in the stock market crash of 1929. The following year, his car was found abandoned on a bridge; investigators assumed he had jumped off and died. 

In 1942, her father suddenly reemerged; after his disappearance, he had moved to Northern California to start a new life. Elizabeth—now 18 years old—soon left the Boston area to reunite with Cleo, whom she hadn’t seen since age 6. Disagreements between father and daughter, however, caused her to move out shortly after.

During World War II, Short told people she was engaged to an Air Force major who later died in a plane crash. She moved several times over the next few years, wandering around California, returning to the Boston area, then traveling south to Florida. By 1946, she had returned to California and settled in Los Angeles. 

During her time in Los Angeles, Short worked briefly as a waitress and, according to some reports, was an aspiring actress. However, Short didn’t have much success in Hollywood and had no known screen credits or stage appearances. 

“Miss Short’s life in Hollywood seemed to follow a pattern. She didn’t have any visible signs of employment, she’d be broke, and then suddenly [she’d] have some money," Vince Carter, a former officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, said according to The Black Dahlia: Shattered Dreams. "Her roommates, the bartenders, and the hotel clerks all came up with the same story. She was secretive—never one to confide. She never said what she was really doing, or who she was really going out with, or where she was really going."

She also dated several men during that time, though she didn’t seem to form any long-term attachments. One of these men, a married salesman named Robert “Red” Manley, dropped Short off at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where she was supposed to meet her sister, Virginia, on January 9, 1947. (Her sister later said they had no such plans.)

Biltmore Hotel staff told investigators Short made several frantic phone calls from the lobby before leaving the hotel. On January 14, 1947, Short reportedly was questioned by a Los Angeles policewoman who claimed Short was sobbing because “an ex-suitor had just threatened to kill her,” according to Steve Hodel, a former LAPD homicide detective and author of Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story.

The next morning, a woman walking through the Leimert Park neighborhood saw what she thought was a mannequin lying on the grass in a vacant lot. As she approached, however, she saw Short’s naked body, which had been cleanly sliced in half at the waist. 

Police reports describe a gruesome scene: Short’s face had been sliced open from one cheek to the other, giving her what some criminologists call a Glasgow smile. A rose tattoo on her thigh had been sliced off and placed inside her vagina. Her intestines were neatly arranged under her buttocks, and her body—entirely drained of blood—was carefully arranged with her hands above her head and her legs spread apart.

The horrific details of Short’s murder electrified the public, and newspapers nationwide wasted no time exploiting the story, adding rumor, innuendo and salacious details when facts were unavailable or uninteresting. Short was described as a prostitute, a lesbian, sexually frigid or pregnant. 

It’s unclear who was the first to give Short the nickname Black Dahlia, but the moniker stuck because Short had raven-black hair and was fond of wearing the color. The name alluded to the 1946 movie The Blue Dahlia starring Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd. 

The LAPD responded with an enormous investigative force that included officers from the FBI, the California State Patrol and other agencies. Manley—one of the last people to see Short alive—was arrested on January 19 but was soon released for lack of evidence. 

An important clue arrived at the offices of the Los Angeles Examiner on January 24. Editor Jimmy Richardson received a package containing Short's birth certificate, Social Security card, personal photographs and an address book belonging to Mark Hansen. Hansen was a local nightclub owner who reportedly was obsessed with Short, but she had rebuffed the older man’s advances. Hansen was released after questioning, but some experts believe he may have had some involvement with Short’s death. 

In addition to a number of letters and packages sent to local news agencies, tips from the general public continued to flood in, but investigators believed most of these were phony. Despite weeks of exhaustive police work involving hundreds of officials and cops interviewing almost 200 suspects and chasing down countless clues, by the summer of 1947, the case had gone cold, with no credible new clues and a long list of eliminated suspects. 

The Black Dahlia murder remains an open and unsolved case, and over the years the mystery of Short’s death has only grown deeper and more complex, with amateur sleuths and police investigators continuing to uncover new information. 

A few individuals continue to draw attention as suspects. Some investigators point to Leslie Dillon, a hotel bellhop and former mortician’s assistant, as Short’s murderer. Dillon was questioned as a colleague of Hansen’s, but he was released thanks to the efforts of LAPD Sergeant Finis Brown, an allegedly corrupt cop with ties to Hansen. The trio was allegedly suspected by investigators of scheming to rob hotels, and Short’s knowledge of their plan may have led Dillon and/or Hansen to silence Short by killing her. 

Hodel claims his father, surgeon George Hodel, killed Short, his secretary Ruth Spaulding and several other people. He was a police suspect, and a wiretap of his phone captured a conversation during which the senior Hodel said, “Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary because she's dead. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary."

A more recent investigation suggests that Short’s murderer was also the infamous Zodiac Killer who terrorized California with a series of murders beginning in the 1960s. Alex Baber, a self-taught codebreaker, believes he has evidence that one man–a troubled World War II veteran named Marvin Margolis who briefly lived with Short in 1946—is both the Black Dahlia’s murderer and the Zodiac Killer, and some experts in both cases agree with him.

The failure of the police to find Short’s murderer—and other unsolved cases—raised alarms among city officials and the general public. A Los Angeles County grand jury was convened in September 1949 to review the police investigations into the murders of Short and other victims, most of whom were women. 

The foreman of the grand jury, Harry Lawson, said, "There is every possibility that we will summon officers involved in the investigation of these murders. We find it odd that there are on the books of the Los Angeles police department so many unsolved crimes of this type.” Ultimately, the grand jury found that a lack of credible evidence—not police misconduct—was responsible for the crimes remaining unsolved.

The public’s fascination with the unsolved Black Dahlia murder hasn’t faded, even decades after Short’s death. The mystery has spawned numerous books, podcasts, magazine articles, television shows and movies. Among these are William J. Mann's Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood and James Ellroy’s novel The Black Dahlia, which was made into a 2006 movie by director Brian De Palma.