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Elizabeth Short, better known as '''the Black Dahlia''', was the victim of an infamous Murder in 1947. She was born July 29 , 1924 and died January 15 , 1947 . 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 winters 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. For the next few years she resided in various cities in Florida, with occasional trips back to Massachusetts, earning money mostly as a waitress. In Florida 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. Short told friends that Gordon, who according to his obituary in the Pueblo, Colo., newspaper, 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 on August 10 , 1945 , before he could return to the U.S. to marry her. Short later embellished this story to say that they were married and had a child had died. Although Gordon's friends in the air commandos confirm that Gordon and Short were engaged, his family subsequently denied any connection once Short was murdered. 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 . For the six months that remained of her life, she stayed in Southern California, mainly in the Los Angeles area. During this time, she lived in at least a dozen hotels, apartment buildings, rooming houses, and private homes, never staying anywhere for more than a few weeks. Short 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. She was 22 years old. 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 . She was interred in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland rather than Medford because her oldest sister lived in Berkeley and because she loved California. The murder was never solved, but has remained the subject of intense speculation. A number of people, none of whom knew Short in life, contacted police and the newspapers, claiming to have seen her during her so-called "missing week," between the time of her disappearance Januaray 9 and the time her body as found on January 15. Police and district attorney investigators ruled out each of these alleged sightings, sometimes identifying other women that witnesses had mistaken for Short. {Link without Title} According to newspaper reports shortly after the murder, Short received the nickname Black Dahlia at a Long Beach drugstore in the summer of 1946, as a play on the then-current movie '' The Blue Dahlia ,'' starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake . Los Angeles County district attorney investigators' reports states the nickname was invented by newspaper reporters covering the murder. In either case, Short was not generally known as "the Black Dahlia" in life, although she may have been called that at a Long Beach drugstore that she frequented for a few weeks. Many Crime books and other allegedly factual accounts of the case, including a few newspaper stories appearing shortly after the murder, claim that Short lived in or visited Los Angeles at various times in the mid-1940s, but these claims have never been substantiated and are refuted by the findings of the law enforcement officers who investigated the case. A document in the Los Angeles County district attorney's files titled "Movements of Elizabeth Short Prior to June 1, 1946" states that Short was in Florida and Massachusetts from September 1943 through the early months of 1946 and gives a detailed account of her living and working arrangements during this period. 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. This unsolved Murder has been viewed as emblematic of the perception of Los Angeles as a Dystopia . SUSPECTS The Black Dahlia murder 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. Hundreds of people were considered suspects and thousands were interviewed by police. Sensational and sometimes inaccurate press coverage, as well as the horrible nature of the crime, focused intense public attention on the case. About 60 people confessed to the murder, mostly men, as well as a few women. As the case continues to command public attention, many people are suggested as the possible killer of Elizabeth Short, much like the Jack The Ripper case.
:When Larry Harnisch, a copy editor and writer for the '' endorsed Harnisch's theory in the film "James Ellroy's Feast of Death". {Link without Title}
::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 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 (see the logs and recordings made over approximately three weeks' time which tend to prove his innocence. See statement of Dorothy Hodel, former wife[http://www.lmharnisch.com/recordings/dhodel001.html ). 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. :This DA report was submitted at the completion of the DA's investigation of George Hodel and at least 21 other other suspects. :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 committed 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. Steve Hodel claims he was unaware at the time that his father had been a suspect in the case, although his sister Tamar was friends with ''Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer'' author Janice Knowlton and case documents make it clear that his parents and many of their associates knew the senior Hodel was a suspect. After reviewing the information presented in Steve Hodel's book, Head Deputy D.A. Stephen Kay ( Manson Family prosecutor) 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.[http://www.blackdahliaavenger.com/Forewordfnl.doc
::Los Angeles Police Detective John P. St. John, one of the investigators who had been assigned to the case, said he has talked to Knowlton and does not believe there is a connection between the Black Dahlia murder and her father. "We have a lot of people offering up their fathers and various relatives as the Black Dahlia killer," said St. John, better known as Jigsaw John. "The things that she is saying are not consistent with the facts of the case." :But the Westminster Police Department took her claims seriously enough to dig up the grounds around Ms. Knowlton's childhood home, looking for evidence. They found nothing to tie George Knowlton to the crime. In 1995, Ms. 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. The book was written with veteran crime writer and Los Angeles County District Attorney Buron Fitts were suspects in the murder as well. Janice Knowlton died of an overdose of prescription drugs in 2004, in what was deemed a suicide by the Orange County , CA, coroner's office. :In a curious side note to her accusations against her father, Ms. Knowlton, who was a frequent contributor as jgk61 to various online forums where the Black Dahlia case was discussed, posted this article to a Usenet group in August 1998, in which she names Dr. George Hodel as a suspect in the case. George Hodel was the father of Steve Hodel, who published a book in 2003 naming his father as the killer. Ms. Knowlton's sister has since stated on amazon.com's web page for her sister's book, ''Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer'', that after publication of Ms. Knowlton's book, Tamar Hodel, daughter of George Hodel and sister of Steve Hodel, contacted Ms. Knowlton and the two women remained "email pals for several years". :Ms. Knowlton also made claims prefiguring those of ''Black Dahlia Files'' author Donald Wolfe. In 1999, she claimed in various public fora that Norman Chandler participated in a cover-up of the murder. Ms. Knowlton claimed that on Halloween 1946 she was sold as a child prostitute to a Pasadena devil-worshiping sex cult at the age of 9 (''Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer'', Page 128). She frequently alleged that she was sold as a child prostitute to a long list of dead movie stars and other notables, including Norman Chandler , Gene Autry (whose name she continually misspelled as Autrey), Arthur Freed and Walt Disney . Knowlton became so abusive in her Usenet posts that Pacbell canceled her account in 1999.
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 . {Link without Title} . 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. Other crime authors have suggested a linkage between the Short murder and the 1945 murder of 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan in Chicago , who was also dismembered (and Short's body was discovered near Degnan Boulevard in Los Angeles). However, the so-called "Lipstick Killer" William Heirens confessed to the Degnan murder and was in jail when Short's body was discovered, although some have contended that Heirens was innocent of the Degnan murder. {Link without Title} Author James Ellroy , who wrote a fictionalized account of the murder, has publicly 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. He now says the case is unsolved. BOOKS, FILMS AND OTHER MEDIA A 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. 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 ''. Musician Lisa Marr also mentions the Black Dahlia in her song "In California" from the album ''4 AM''. This song was later covered by her former Cub bandmate Neko Case. The Death Metal band The Black Dahlia Murder takes its name from this infamous murder. The lead singer of The Dwarves uses the stage name "Blag Dahlia," likely named for The Black Dahlia. William Randolph Fowler , a reporter at the scene of the crime, included the Black Dahlia case in his 1991 autobiography, "Reporters: Memoirs of a Young Newspaperman." A blog, 1947project , explores this and other crimes occurring in Los Angeles during the calendar year 1947. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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Note that the FBI incorrectly gives Elizabeth Short's middle name as Ann. She had no middle name. |