THE BLACK DAHLIA Hollywood’s biggest unsolved mystery revisited
Hollywood’s biggest unsolved mystery. Who killed Elizabeth Short?
In a town dedicated to telling tall tales, the case of the Black proved that, even in Hollywood, the truth is stranger than fiction. In 1947, with the hangover of the Second World War slowly starting to retreat, the American public was beginning to feel optimistic once more. However, the discovery of a butchered body in a Los Angeles ditch on January 15, 1947, reminded people that the fight between good and evil is never over. The Black Dahlia case simultaneously captured the attention of America while titillating the media – it was the crime that people could not, and would not, forget.
The story of Elizabeth Short – Bette to friends – is not unfamiliar. Having moved around as a young girl, the result of an errant father and a hard-working mother, she arrived in Los Angeles in 1946. The bright lights of Hollywood have wooed many young dreamers and Elizabeth was no different.
“There were many of these girls [like Elizabeth] in Hollywood,” said author Piu Eatwell in her book Black
Dahlia: Red Rose. “[They were] showing up in buses from all over the country, hoping to become movie stars and falling in with the wrong people.”
“She lived in Hollywood [and] had aspirations to be an actress,” echoes Glynn Martin, a former Los Angeles police sergeant and historian. “Her story became a sad cliché, the ultimate warning tale.” And while Elizabeth may not have been a movie star at that point, she had moviestar good looks and was a classic bombshell beauty. Like most of Hollywood, Elizabeth had dreamed of being a star. Ironically, she was on the very brink of becoming Hollywood’s most infamous unsolved murder.
It was early evening on January 9, 1947, when Elizabeth Short strolled through the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel. She had spent the previous few days with her on-again-off-again lover, Robert “Red” Manley, a married man who would later be questioned by police. Manley dropped Elizabeth off; she had told him that she was meeting her sister-in-law for a drink, before heading back to Massachusetts.
It was to be the beginning of the end. Fast-forward six days, to the morning of January 15, 1947, when Betty Bersinger was strolling past Leimert Park with her 3-year-old daughter. She noticed something unusual – a mannequin that appeared to be split in half and left discarded in the ditch.
It was the body of Elizabeth Short. Mutilated, facially disfigured and essentially cut in half, Elizabeth was barely recognisable. There were cuts across her body, and her mouth had been sliced to
“Her story [was] a sad cliché – and a warning” —Glynn Martin
“Bette was a porcelain China doll with beautiful eyes,” says former classmate Anna Dougherty.
extend her smile from ear to ear. The corpse also showed indications that Elizabeth had been tortured for an extended period. Most strangely, her body had been drained of all its blood.
The gruesome discovery of the body kickstarted a domino effect that would contribute to the Black Dahlia folklore. Initially, Elizabeth’s body was whisked away to the coroner but news reporters, photographers and the public had already been exposed to the crime.
This Hollywood homicide was about to hit the headlines and stay there for an extended period of time. The tabloids seized upon the morbid curiosity people had with the case and ran with it. The day after Elizabeth’s body was found, the Los Angeles Examiner sold more copies than it had any other day in its history. Meanwhile, the Herald-Express capitalised on its close relationship with the LAPD to print the juiciest details of the case.
The violent, sexual and very public nature of the Black Dahlia murder seemed to light a fire under the media as if all bets were off and anything was fair game. The tabloids didn’t hesitate to paint the victim in a highly sexualised manner, often referring to Elizabeth as a raven-haired “bombshell,” while the Los Angeles Times consistently referred to the abhorrent crime as a “sex-fiend slaying”.
So intense was the media coverage that the Los Angeles Record ran the Black Dahlia case on its front page for 31 consecutive days. Ultimately, the focus on the Black Dahlia would only intensify as the case grew colder and the LAPD drifted further away from making any arrests.