The Gruesome Murder of Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia)

This episode contained some graphic descriptions of violence that might be sensitive to some audiences. Listener discretion is advised. It was supposed to be a morning just like any other. The birds were chirping in the distance. A little girl was learning to ride her bike along the curving paths of a nearby park. It was January fifteenth, nineteen forty seven, and that morning a mother was walking with her child near Leimert Park in Los Angeles when she spotted a mannequin next to the sidewalk. It suppose seemed unnatural. As a woman stepped closer, she discovered a gruesome scene. It was a young woman sliced in half at the waist. The sides of her face were sliced from the corners of her mouth to her ears. The mother ran to a nearby home to get a phone to call the police, and they made even more discoveries. As it turns out, her body had been drained of blood and some organs, including her intestines, were removed and placed in a sheet under her. Her thighs and other parts of her body had pieces of flesh cut off, and her stomach was found to be full of feces. What was also odd is that her body had otherwise been wiped clean of blood. Followed next, where a series of suspects, some confessing to the gruesome murder, were found difficult to prove. In fact, some of the theories involved had made this story one of the most mysterious and strange cases in the country. This is the Mystery of the Black Dahlia. My name is Edwin, and here is a dark memory. It was July twenty ninth when Elizabeth was born back in nineteen twenty four to Cleo and Phoebe May Short in Massachusetts. She was a third of five daughters. Her father, Cleo, decided to move to California in nineteen forty three, and Elizabeth desperately wanted to go live with him. She asked for some money to make the trip when she was in high school, and off she went. However, Elizabeth soon discovered that Cleo was not happy having his daughter leave and not come back for the night. But still Elizabeth enjoyed going out, typical of many young people. But after getting arrested for underage drinking, Cleo kicked her out of the house and she returned to Medford, Massachusetts. That's when her life would soon begin to turn tragic. Since she had health issues, her doctor suggested that she moved to a warmer climate during the winter. When she did, she went to Florida, where she met Major Matt Gordon Junior and they fell in love. However, in nineteen forty five, Matt died in an airplane crash over India. Heartbroken, Elizabeth decided to make her way to Los Angeles once again, following her dream of becoming a Hollywood movie star. You see, Elizabeth was a very beautiful woman, with porcelain skin and deep blue eyes contrasting with her dark black hair. She loved going out and was said to be flirtatious and always have the attention of men. However, Elizabeth Short never worked in the film industry. In fact, people aren't exactly sure what she did to pay rent and eat, but as other young aspiring actresses, she may have simply stayed with many friends during her time in Los Angeles. Between May and October of nineteen forty six, she used to live in Hollywood with the owner of Florentine Gardens nightclub and his girlfriend, and was supposed to help make connections to help Elizabeth get work in the movies. However, Elizabeth was out by November of that year to another place in Los Angeles, and by December she moved once again, but this time went south to San Diego. Elizabeth seemed to make plans on the spot, and she eventually ended up at a movie theater called the Aztec, which was open all night. At that movie theater, there was a cashier named Dorothy French, who, upon seeing Elizabeth completely alone, felt sorry for her. When they got to talking, she found out that Elizabeth did not have a place to stay. Dorothy invited her to stay at her house for a few nights, but Elizabeth ended up staying there for a month. Soon the arrangement started to grow sour, as she would not help out around the house, and everyone had their doubts if in fact, she had been looking for work the whole time. Elizabeth's luck simply could not turn around. You see, Elizabeth had been dating a married man named Robert Manly, also known as Red, and Bred had actually helped Elizabeth get a job interview in Los Angeles, but she needed a ride and Red agreed to take her. It was January ninth when they arrived in Los Angeles, and he took her to a bus station to check her luggage. Bred could have driven back right there and then, but he refused to leave her in that neighborhood by herself, so they both went to the Biltmore hotel supposedly wait for her sister. However, when piecing the story together later on, it turns out that Elizabeth had lied and her sister was not staying at that hotel. Red left in the early evening, and then Elizabeth walked down Olive Street, unclear as to where she was going. She was likely on her way to meet a friend at Crown Grill. She never arrived. She was never seen alive after that, but next morning she was found still and cold next to a sidewalk in the bushes. It was then when Betty bursting her and her daughter spotted her foot and made the gruesome discovery. They ran to a nearby house and asked to use a telephone to call the police. Soon after that, the entire area was swarmed by police officers and reporters. Elizabeth had been cleaned, her hair had been washed, and she had been posed with her arms over her head. The police was able to identify her within an hour because of her fingerprint and the photo when she had been arrested for underage drinking way back in nineteen forty three, and soon the Los Angeles County Corner started performing an autopsy on her body. Elizabeth had been bound, beat and possibly raped and tortured. The strange part about this was that not just anybody could do what had been done to Elizabeth, and I mean the way that her body was bisected. That specific technique was known as Hemi corporoectomy, which involves extreme precision, was taught in the nineteen thirties in medical schools. The killer must have been some type of doctor or a very experienced butcher of some sort. At the time, there was a popular film called The Blue Dahlia, and since Elizabeth was known to like wearing black, the nickname stuck as the newspaper started to spread her story all across the country. At the media outlet Examiner, on January twenty first, the strange phone call was received. There was someone claiming to be the murderer of Elizabeth Short. This could have been just anybody calling, but to prove this, Versen claimed that he would send her belongings in the mail. Three days later, on January twenty fourth, they received a package. It was her birth certificate, some photos, business cards, in a book with Mark Hanson on the cover. Everything had been wiped clean with gasoline and no fingerprints could be identified. Then on January twenty sixth, they received another letter in the mail saying that the killing was justified. However, the issue was not pursued anymore, and actually hundreds of confessions started coming in after that, and over one hundred and fifty suspects were questioned, and yet the Black Dahlia murderer is not considered a cold case today. Some of the theories and suspects. The next Leslie Dylon was labeled as a prime suspect by the police was a bellhop at the time of the murder. He had said that he knew who the killer was, and he mentioned the name of Jeff Conners during a session with a psychiatrist from the Los Angeles Police Department. However, it took a couple of sessions for the psychiatrists to determine that Leslie had split personality, that there was no Jeff Conners. The idea was that the other personality was a killer. Supposedly, Leslie had mentioned a few details that had not been made public so he would not have any way of knowing unless he had been there w when it happened or when she was discovered. However, several witnesses confirmed that he had been out of town the night of the murder, and he was let go. One of the more interesting theories out there is the one of a man who suspects that his father was indeed the murderer. Steve Hodle was going through his father's belongings, a man named doctor George Hordle, who had died back in nineteen ninety nine. Steve was a former Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective, so he found it odd to find two photographs of a woman among his father's belongings. He was able to identify her as Elizabeth Short. Steve had reasons to suspect of his father, and as it turns out, his father had already gotten in serious trouble with the police. A little over eighteen months after Elizabeth's murder, he had been arrested on suspicion of molesting his daughter. According to his son, he was also a suspect of being involved with the suspicious death of his secretary, Ruth Spalding in nineteen forty five. But get this, his father actually had a medical background. The police had their suspicions as well, since they bugged his home and were able to retrieve the following from the transcripts while he was talking on the phone with an unknown German Man supposing ed did kill the Black Dahlia. They could improve it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead. There was not much else to base it on, and who knows if this was ever true. Police were known to be very corrupt, but still a few other details began to surface that showed that perhaps this wasn't who they were looking for. For one, they found a link between Steve Hodele and someone else who had also accused her father of being the Black Dolio murderer. The more convincing reasons to not believe this is that the photographs that were found were eventually shown to the family members of Elizabeth Short, and they determined that the woman in the photos was definitely not her. However, doctor George Hortel's son also claimed that his father was a Zodiac killer. Then he also said he was the same person behind the lipstick murders in Chicago and the list goes on and on, all these accusations completely discredited his theories. The case of the Black Dahlia is similar to an unsolved murder of an elderly couple famously known as the Icebox murderers, or like the story of the murder of Room ten forty six, a young man who was murdered and the case was never solved. If you want to hear one of those stories on here, be sure to let us know. Despite the many theories and ideas, who may have been the Black Dahlia's murderer, the cruel way in which she was murdered, and those images for ever ingrained in the minds of those who discovered her never go away. Perhaps one of the many books or reports of the accusations that keep surfacing about who the real killer of Elizabeth Short may have the truth in it. But with so many out there, all of them with holes in the stories, you will never know for sure, leaving this case to become just another dark memory. This episode of a Dark Memory was researched by Medel Inguera and produced by me Edwin Cooarrubias. Do you have an idea for an episode? Email me at Hello at a Dark memory dot com. Of next, be sure to check out my other show where I tell scary stories and it's called Scary Story Podcast. And if you want to join the community and join scary fm Premium and get ad free episodes, visit scaryplus dot com or check out the link in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening, See you soon.