BLACK DAHLIA
WHO KILLED THE
BLACK DAHLIA?
The Tragic Life & Death of Elizabeth Short
On January 15, 1947 a housewife named Betty Bersinger left her home on
As she walked a little further along, she caught a glimpse of something white over in the weeds. She was not surprised. It wasn’t uncommon for people to toss their garbage out into the vacant lot and this time, it looked as though someone had left a broken department store mannequin here. The dummy had been shattered and the two halves lay separated from one another, with the bottom half lying twisted into what was admittedly a macabre pose. Who would throw such a thing into an empty lot? Betty shook her head and walked on, but then found her glance pulled back to the ghostly, white mannequin. She looked again and then realize that this was no department store dummy at all -- it was the severed body of a woman! With a sharp intake of breath and a stifled scream, she took her daughter away from the gruesome site and ran to a nearby house. From here, she telephoned the police.
The call was answered by Officers Frank Perkins and Will Fitzgerald, who arrived within minutes. When they found the naked body of a woman who had been cut in half, they immediately called for assistance.
The dead woman, it was noted, seemed to have been posed. She was lying on her back with her arms raised over her shoulders and her legs spread in an obscene imitation of seductiveness. Cuts and abrasions covered her body and her mouth had been slashed so that her smile extended from ear to ear. There were rope marks on her wrists, ankles and neck and investigators later surmised that she had been tied down and tortured for several days. Worst of all was the fact that she had been sliced cleanly in two, just above the waist.
It was clear that she had been killed somewhere else and then dumped in the vacant lot overnight. There was no blood on her body and none of the ground where she had been left. The killer had washed her off before bringing her to the dump site.
The horrible nature of the case made it a top priority for the LAPD. Captain John Donahoe assigned his senior detectives to the case, Detective Sergeant Harry Hansen and his partner, Finis Brown.
The body was soon covered from the stares of onlookers but by this time, reporters and police officers had trampled the scene.
By the time the detectives were contacted and could get to the scene, it was swarming with reporters, photographers and a crowd of curiosity seekers. Hansen was furious that bystanders and even careless police personnel were trampling the crime scene. Evidence was being destroyed, he knew, and he immediately cleared the area. Then, while he and his partner examined the scene, the body of the woman was taken to the Los Angeles County Morgue. Her fingerprints were lifted and with the help of the assistant managing editor of the
Meanwhile, an examination of the body was started by the coroner’s office. It began to detail an incredible and horrifying variety of wounds to the young woman’s body, although the official cause of death was "hemorrhage and shock due to concussion of the brain and lacerations of the face."
An autopsy revealed multiple lacerations to the face and head, along with the severing of the victim’s body. It also appeared that the woman had been sodomized and her sexual organs abused but not penetrated. There was no sperm present on the body and most of the damage appeared to have been done after she was dead. The coroner also noted that her stomach contents contained human feces. Even the hardened doctors and detectives were shocked at the state of the girl’s corpse.
Shortly after receiving the fingerprints, the FBI had a match for the
Once the detectives had this information, they went to work finding out who knew Elizabeth Short, believing that this would lead them to her killer. What they discovered was a complex maze that led them into the shadowy side of the city.... in search of a woman called the "Black Dahlia".
(Wide World Photos)
Elizabeth Short was an aspiring actress who usually dressed entirely in black. Thanks to her nice figure and attractive face, men easily noticed her. Her hair was black and her skin pale, providing a striking contrast and a look that got her noticed, even in Hollywood, where good-looking dames were a dime a dozen.
Like all of the other pretty girls before and since, Elizabeth (who preferred the name Beth) came to
One of the men who befriended Beth was Mark Hansen, a nightclub and theater owner who knew many important show business people. He eventually moved her into his house, along with a number of other young actresses who roomed there and who entertained guests at Hansen’s clubs. On any given day, a visitor to Hansen’s house could find a number of beautiful actresses and models sunning themselves by the swimming pool.
Beth soon became a part of this group, although her prospects for film work remained non-existent. She didn’t have much of an income and only seemed to eat and drink when others, usually her dates, were buying. She shared rooms with other people and borrowed money from her friends constantly, never paying it back. She never seemed to appreciate the hospitality given to her by others either, rarely contributing anything to where she was living and staying out most of the night and sleeping all day. She became known as a beautiful freeloader.
Around this same time, the film THE BLUE DAHLIA, starring
Although she is remembered today as the "Black Dahlia", Elizabeth Short did not start out as a sexy vamp that "haunted" the nightclubs of
Phoebe was left to deal with the bankruptcy and to raise the girls by herself. She worked several jobs, including as a bookkeeper and a clerk in a bakery shop, but most of the money came from public assistance. One day, she received a letter from Cleo, who was now living in
Beth (known as Betty to her family and friends) grew up to be a very pretty girl, always looking older and acting more sophisticated then she really was. Everyone who knew her liked her and although she had serious problems with asthma, she was considered very bright and lively. She was also fascinated by the movies, which was her family’s main source of affordable entertainment. She found an escape at the theater that she couldn’t find in the day to day drudgery of ordinary life.
While she was growing up, Betty remained in touch with her father (once she knew that he was actually alive). They wrote letters back and forth and when she was older, he offered to have her come out to
Undaunted, she went to
During this time, Beth had her only run-in with the law. A group of friends that she was out with got rowdy in a restaurant and the owners called the police. Since Beth was underage, she was booked and fingerprinted, but never charged. A kind policewoman felt sorry for her and arranged for a trip back to
At the Hollywood Canteen, Beth met a pilot named Lieutenant Gordon Fickling and fell in love. He was exactly what she was looking for and she began making plans to ensnare him in matrimony. Unfortunately though, her plans were cut short when Fickling was shipped out to
Beth then took a few modeling jobs but discouraged, she went back east. She spent the holidays in
Beth wrote to him constantly and Gordon remained in touch with her. As a pre-engagement gift, he gave Beth a gold wristwatch that was set with diamonds and he spoke about her (and their engagement) to family and friends. Best of all, as far as Beth was concerned, he respected her wishes about waiting until their honeymoon to consummate their love. They would get married and have a proper honeymoon, he promised her, after he returned from overseas. One has to wonder how Beth planned to deal with the physical problems they would encounter once the relationship turned sexual, but perhaps she was too caught up in the moment to worry about it at that time. Beth went back home to
As soon as it arrived, Beth tore the message open, believing that it was about plans for the upcoming wedding. Instead, Mrs. Gordon had written: "Received word War Department. Matt killed in plane crash on way home from
Sadly, it was true and we are only left to imagine what Beth’s life might have been like if Matt Gordon had returned home alive. The so-called "Black Dahlia" would have never come to be....
Gordon’s death left Beth a little unbalanced. After a period of mourning in which she spent telling people that she and Matt had been married and that their baby had died in childbirth, she began to pick up the pieces of her old life and started contacting her
Her excitement over the new relationship didn’t last long. She had to stay in a hotel that was miles from the base where Fickling was stationed and he constantly pressured Beth for sex. She had no intention of giving herself to a man except in marriage, she told a friend, and Fickling had no intention of making such a commitment. She began dating other men and when Fickling found out, he ended their relationship.
In December 1946, Beth took up "temporary" residence in
As usual, she did nothing to contribute to the household and she continued her late-night partying and dating. One of the men she dated was Robert "Red" Manley, a salesman from
Red had a morning appointment but came back to pick her up around noon. She told him that she was going back home to
As far as the police could discover, only the killer ever saw her after that. She vanished for six days from the Biltmore before her body was found in the empty lot.
The investigation into the Black Dahlia’s murder was the highest profile crime in
As the investigators traced Beth’s activities, they discovered their strongest suspect, Red Manley. He became the chief target of the investigation. The LAPD put him through grueling interrogations and even administered two different polygraph tests, both of which he passed. He was released a couple of days later but the strain on him was so great that he later suffered a nervous breakdown.
While the police worked frantically, Beth’s mother made the trip to
A few days after Beth’s body was found, a mysterious package appeared at the offices of the
The police attempted to lift fingerprints off the items but found that all of it had been washed in gasoline to remove any trace of evidence. The detectives then began the overwhelming task of tracking down everyone in the address book and while Mark Hansen and a few others were singled out for interrogation, nothing ever came of it. In addition, the promised "letters to follow" arrived but contained no solid clues
The investigation stalled once again although Aggie Underwood, an aggressive crime reporter for the "Herald-Express", urged the detectives to follow-up on the murder of a young socialite named Georgette Bauerdorf, which had occurred a few years before. Aggie believed the murder was connected to that of Beth Short. The two women had known one another from the Hollywood Canteen and Georgette had been strangled and raped before being dumped into a bathtub face down. Investigators surmised that Beth had been killed and then washed and severed in half over a bathtub.
The Bauerdorf case had never been solved and was under the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department. The investigation had died when deputies were unable to locate a "tall soldier" who had dated Georgette. She had reportedly been frightened by him and had stopped seeing him. Investigators suspected that he was involved in her death but the links were never made between her death and that of Beth Short. Jurisdictional problems kept the two departments from working together and Aggie Underwood was ordered off the story by William Randolph Hearst, the publisher of the newspaper. As a friend of the wealthy Bauerdorf family, he didn’t want the sordid details of the girl’s murder stirred up again. This may have been a tragic misstep, as Georgette's car had been found abandoned not far from where Beth's body was eventually discovered.
Not surprisingly, the leads in the Black Dahlia case came to dead ends and the investigation fizzled, then came to a halt. The Short murder and the murder of Georgette Bauerdorf remain unsolved today, although it’s possible that a suspect did finally emerge. The possible killer first came to the attention of John St. John, a respected investigator for the LAPD who eventually took over the Dahlia case.
The suspect turned out to be a tall, thin man with a pronounced limp who went by the name of Arnold Smith. On the recording, Smith claimed that a character named "Al Morrison" was the violent sexual deviant who had killed and mutilated Beth Short.
The tape was a chilling and detailed account of how Beth had come to Al Morrison’s
Morrison then laid boards across the bathtub and cut Beth in half with the butcher knife, letting the blood drain into the tub. He wrapped the two pieces of the body in a tablecloth and a shower curtain and put it into the trunk of his car. From there, he drove to the vacant lot and left the body to be found later that morning.
After hearing the record of events on the tape recordings,
In the midst of the investigation, word came that the press had gotten wind of the fact that a new suspect had emerged in the Dahlia case. Even after all of the years (at this point the mid-1980’s) that had passed, interest in the case was still strong. At this point,
Unfortunately, just before the meeting took place, Smith passed out while smoking in his bed at the Holland Hotel, where he was staying. He was burned to death in the flames, destroying the photos and belongings that supposedly belonged to Beth Short -- along with all hope that her murder would ever be solved.
A short time after
Over the years, other suspects for the murder have surfaced as well, along with a number of false confessions and ridiculous stories and theories. Because of the lurid and mysterious nature of the crime, it seems to be one of those sorts of cases that everyone has an opinion about. In addition, the initial investigation of the case revealed a number of suspects that all eventually played out over time. Aside from the Wilson / Smith suspect, no other really strong suspects have emerged. There have been some interesting theories within the police department to the possibility that the killer was the same culprit in the Cleveland Torso Murders a few years before.
During the original investigation, investigators ran across a number of leads and questioned many suspects, including nightclub owner Mark Hansen and Red Manley, who were later cleared. Red simply had the bad luck to get involved with a woman who turned out to be as complex as Beth -- and who ended up dead. Manley was given the "third degree" at police headquarters and only released after a polygraph test. He was exonerated but the case never really ended for him. Suspicion and mental problems plagued him for the rest of his life and in 1954, his wife had him committed to the
There were also many anonymous calls that turned up, including one that stated that Beth's killers had been two police officers and many false confessions. In at least three cases, landlords reported "suspicious behavior" on the part of tenants they were trying to evict and a woman in
One, more promising, lead involved an Army corporal and combat veteran named Joseph Dumais. He was reported to the military police by another soldier, who had argued with Dumais over money. After a 42-day furlough, the corporal was found with blood all over his clothing and a stack of newspaper clippings about the murder. He had little memory of what he may have done during his furlough. He told investigators: "It is possible that I could have committed the murder. When I get drunk I get rough with women." Dumais was sent to a psychiatrist but was cleared of killing Beth.
Interest in the case continued for years and it has appeared in many books and periodicals over time. However, it was really not until 1987 (the 40th anniversary of the murder) and the release of James Ellroy's excellent novel about the murder, The Black Dahlia, that interest in the case was revived and the quest for the killer of Beth Short was renewed. Since that time, many theories have been created and new books have appeared on the market -- each, of course, claiming to have the case solved. Much of the research that has been done, notably by writers like John Gilmore and Larry Harnisch, has been thorough and compelling, but others fall far short in making a convincing case for a solution.
So, who killed the Black Dahlia? Author and former head of the FBI's behavioral sciences unit, John Douglas, had his own theories, based on his own past experiences profiling serial and dangerous killers. After reviewing the coroner's inquest, autopsy files and cases records,
But why no other killings?
And while
The story has also appeared in countless books on unsolved mysteries and true crimes and there are entire websites devoted to Beth and her murder, including Pamela Hazelton's documentation of the crime.
Two relatively recent entries to try and solve the Black Dahlia murder include Black Dahlia Avenger and Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer, in which both writers blame their deceased fathers for the crime. The 1995 book by Janice Knowlton and respected crime author Michael Newton, Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer, was written after repressed memories surfaced for Knowlton. As an alleged victim of incest and child abuse, he kept her memories of her life with father -- and the murder of "Aunt Betty" -- below the surface for years. The book presents several well-known facts about the case but there is nothing to substantiate the story that her father was the killer other than the author's claims. Black Dahlia Avenger is unfortunately just as flawed. This book had many excited when it learned that the author, Steve Hodel, was a veteran police detective but his initial evidence in the case turned out to be some photographs that he found in his late father's estate that he believed were of Elizabeth Short. I wish that I could say that I thought the photos were genuine but I can't. The book is a well-written and well-researched investigation into the past of Hodel's father -- and his likely crimes -- but I don't think it a presents a great case that his father killed Beth Short.
Two of the best bodies of research that I have found into the case have been done by authors John Gilmore and Larry Harnisch. Gilmore is the author of the bo0k Severed, which I have always found to be one of the best and most complete investigations of the murder. Gilmore was the first to write about several aspects of the case that have since been taken for granted, including that Beth's sexual organs were undeveloped and that the Wilson / Smith scenario was the most likely solution for the crime. And while this book remains very readable (and recommended) it has, since it's release, been criticized for many errors. To be honest, I haven't really found them but then I have never claimed to be an expert on the case, as so many others claim to be. To this date, I continue to find Severed to be the most comprehensive and credible book on the case so far.
As mentioned though, some pretty compelling research has also been done by reporter Larry Harnisch into this case. Using John Douglas' profile of the killer, Harnisch has managed to track down not only a suspect who fits it but a doctor who lived in the neighborhood where Beth's body was found but who also had a connection to Beth's sister and by extension, to Beth herself. To this date, Harnisch has not published a book on the case (although I hope that he does) but you can read more about his theories and information on his website.
But no matter the number of theories, books and documentaries on the case, to this date it remains unsolved. No matter who considers themselves an expert on the case and who does not, the truth is that no one was ever charged for the murder of Elizabeth Short and, as far as we know, her death has never been avenged. She remains an elusive mystery from the dark side of
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