January 15: On This Day in World History … briefly

1947:  The Black Dahlia murder: dismembered corpse discovered

Elizabeth Short, known posthumously as the ‘Black Dahlia’, was an American woman who was found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Her case became highly publicised due to the graphic nature of the crime, which included her corpse having been mutilated and bisected at the waist. A native of Boston, Short spent her early life in Medford, Massachusetts and Florida before relocating to California, where her father lived. It is commonly held that Short was an aspiring actress, though she had no known acting credits or jobs during her time in Los Angeles. She would acquire the nickname of the Black Dahlia posthumously (after the owner of a drugstore in Long Beach, California, told reporters that male customers had that name for her), as newspapers of the period often nicknamed particularly lurid crimes; the term may have originated from a film noir murder mystery, ‘The Blue Dahlia’, released in April 1946. After the discovery of her body on January 15, 1947, the Los Angeles Police Department began an extensive investigation that produced over 150 suspects, but yielded no arrests.

In late 1942, Short’s mother received a letter of apology from her presumed-deceased husband, which revealed that he was in fact alive and had started a new life in California. In December, at age 18, Short relocated to Vallejo to live with her father, whom she had not seen since she was six years old. At the time, he was working at the nearby Mare Island Naval Shipyard on San Francisco Bay. Arguments between Short and her father led to her moving out in January 1943. Shortly after, she took a job at the Base Exchange at Camp Cooke (now Vandenberg Air Force Base), near Lompoc, living with several friends, and briefly with an Army Air Force sergeant who reportedly abused her. Short left Lompoc in mid-1943 and moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested on September 23, 1943 for underage drinking at a local bar. The juvenile authorities sent her back to Medford, but she returned instead to Florida, making only occasional visits to Massachusetts.

While in Florida, Short met Major Matthew Michael Gordon, Jr., a decorated Army Air Force officer at the 2nd Air Commando Group. He was training for deployment to the China Burma India Theater of Operations of World War II. Short told friends that Gordon had written to propose marriage while he was recovering from injuries from a plane crash in India. She accepted his offer, but Gordon died in a second crash on August 10, 1945, less than a week before the Surrender of Japan ended the war. She relocated to Los Angeles in July 1946 to visit Army Air Force Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Fickling, whom she had known from Florida. Fickling was stationed at the Naval Reserve Air Base in Long Beach. Short spent the last six months of her life in Southern California, mostly in the Los Angeles area; shortly before her death, she had been working as a waitress, and rented a room behind the Florentine Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard. Short has been variously described and depicted as an aspiring or ‘would-be’ actress. According to some sources, she did in fact have aspirations to be a film star, though she had no known acting jobs or credits.

On January 9, 1947, Short returned to her home in Los Angeles after a brief trip to San Diego with Robert ‘Red’ Manley, a 25-year-old married salesman she had been dating. Manley stated that he dropped Short off at the Biltmore Hotel located at 506 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, and that Short was to meet her sister, who was visiting from Boston, that afternoon. By some accounts, staff of the Biltmore recalled having seen Short using the lobby telephone. Shortly after, she was allegedly seen by patrons of the Crown Grill Cocktail Lounge at 754 South Olive Street, approximately one-half mile (0.80 km) away from the Biltmore Hotel.

On the morning of January 15, 1947, Short’s naked body was found severed into two pieces on a vacant lot on the west side of South Norton Avenue, midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. At the time, the neighbourhood was largely undeveloped. Local resident Betty Bersinger discovered the body at approximately 10am while walking with her three-year-old daughter. Bersinger initially thought she had found a discarded store mannequin. When she realised it was a corpse, she rushed to a nearby house and telephoned the police. Short’s severely mutilated body was completely severed at the waist and drained of blood, leaving her skin a pallid white. Medical examiners determined that she had been dead for around ten hours prior to the discovery, leaving her time of death either sometime during the evening of January 14, or the early morning hours of January 15. The body had apparently been washed by the killer. Short’s face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating an effect known as the ‘Glasgow smile’. She had several cuts on her thighs and breasts, where entire portions of flesh had been sliced away. The lower half of her body was positioned a foot away from the upper, and her intestines had been tucked neatly beneath her buttocks. The corpse had been ‘posed’, with her hands over her head, her elbows bent at right angles and her legs spread apart.

Upon the discovery, a crowd of both passersby and reporters began to gather – Los Angeles Herald-Express reporter Aggie Underwood was among the first to arrive at the scene, and took several photos of the corpse and crime scene. Near the body, detectives located a heel print on the ground amid the tire tracks and a cement sack containing watery blood was also found nearby. Short’s unsolved murder and the details surrounding it have had a lasting cultural intrigue, generating various theories and public speculation. Her life and death have been the basis of numerous books and films, and her murder is frequently cited as one of the most famous unsolved murders in American history, as well as one of the oldest unsolved cases in Los Angeles County. It has likewise been credited by historians as one of the first major crimes in post-World War II America to capture national attention.

Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.

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