Tales of the Bizarre: 78 Years Later, We Still Don’t Know Who Killed the Black Dahlia

Will we ever know who killed Elizabeth Short — a.k.a. the Black Dahlia? Since the case went cold 78 years ago, it seems… pretty unlikely. But here’s what we do know about this bizarre case.
Who is the Black Dahlia, and why is Elizabeth Short called the Black Dahlia?
A 22-year-old woman named Elizabeth Short was murdered on Jan. 15, 1947. Her naked body was found severed into pieces, drained of blood and abandoned in a vacant lot in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Leimert Park, where she was discovered by a young mother on a walk with her child.
Due to the gruesome nature of the murder, the case was all over newspaper headlines immediately. (The day after Short was found, the Examiner sold the most copies it had since World War II ended.) Inspired by the 1946 Veronica Lake film The Blue Dahlia and Short’s rumored penchant for black clothing, the media dubbed Short “the Black Dahlia.” The gruesome murder inspired a huge media frenzy, made even more frenzied by the lack of justice. Though hundreds of suspects were considered during the initial investigation into the murder and several people falsely confessed to the crime, no one was ever charged. It remains an unsolved mystery to this day.
What happened with the investigation?

Wikipedia/Public Domain
After Short’s body was discovered, the Los Angeles Police Department launched an investigation that remained open until 1950, when it was finally shut down. There were several leads that didn’t pan out. On January 21, a person claiming to be Short’s killer called the editor of the Examiner, stating he planned on eventually turning himself in and for them to “expect some souvenirs of Beth Short in the mail.”
Three days later, a suspicious envelope was discovered, addressed to The Los Angeles Examiner with words that had been cut-and-pasted from newspaper clippings; the envelope contained Short’s birth certificate, business cards, photographs, names written on pieces of paper and an address book with the name “Mark Hansen” embossed on the cover. Several partial fingerprints were lifted from the envelope and sent to the FBI, but the prints were compromised in transit. The same day, a handbag and a black suede shoe were reported to have been seen on top of a garbage can in an alley two miles from the crime scene. The items were recovered by police but they too, like the letter, had been wiped clean with gasoline, destroying any fingerprints that may have been found.
Short’s friend and roommate told investigators that Short had recently rejected sexual advances from Hansen, the man whose name was on the address book, and suggested it as potential motive; however, Hansen was cleared of all suspicion. Over 150 other men were interviewed in the weeks following the murder. They even offered a reward for anyone who had information on it. Various people came forward with confessions, most of which police dismissed as false.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS PHOTO/Getty Images
Based on the precise cuts and dissection of Short’s body, the LAPD looked into the possibility that the murderer had been someone in the medical field. In mid-February 1947, the LAPD served a warrant to the University of Southern California Medical School, which was located near the site where the body had been found, requesting a complete list of the program’s students. This, too, did not yield any results.
There was also a suicide note left by someone claiming to have killed Short.
In a strange twist, LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel accused his own father of the murder, citing his father’s training as a surgeon. Prior to the Dahlia case, George Hodel was suspected in the death of his secretary, Ruth Spaulding, and was accused of raping his own daughter, Tamar, but was never charged for either crime. In 2003, it was revealed that investigators had wiretapped George Hodel’s house and had a recorded conversation of him saying: “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.”
Black Dahlia Movie & TV Adaptations

Universal/courtesy Everett Collection
In 2019, there was a TV series called I Am the Night, starring Chris Pine, that explored this angle. Set in 1965, it centers around an adopted teenager who uncovers a connection to her maternal grandfather George Hodel, a renowned physician. It is loosely based on Fauna Hodel’s memoir, One Day She’ll Darken.
Several other films have explored this bizarre case as well, including a 1975 made-for-TV movie starring Lucie Arnaz and Donna Mills called Who Is the Black Dahlia? and the 2006 film The Black Dahlia, starring Scarlett Johansson and Joshua Hartnett, along with True Confessions and L.A. Confidential, which were both loosely based on events surrounding the murder. Countless books have been written about it as well.
There were many, many other theories, but almost 80 years later, every lead has gone cold.

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