Elizabeth Short

Murder Victim. She was nicknamed "the Black Dahlia" by the press media for her dyed black hair, love of black evening dresses, and for wearing a Dahlia flower in her hair. On mid-morning of January 15, 1947, Betty Bersinger was walking down a weedy, vacant block in Los Angeles, when she noticed someone lying just off the sidewalk in the foot tall weeds. She discovered a woman, naked and laying on her back, dead and cut in half at the waist. The victim, Elizabeth Short, had clearly been murdered someplace else, and her body "poised" to be found. Police quickly identified her using fingerprints on file with the FBI Headquarters, in one of the first uses of facsimile machines. Although Betty Short was well-known around Hollywood circles, police were unable to identify the killer sufficiently to bring a case to court. She was born Elizabeth "Betty" Short in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, raised in Medford, and dropped out of school at age 16. Her father, Cleo Short, had abandoned the family in 1930, after losing his job in the Great Depression. In 1942, she went to Miami Beach, Florida, where she got a job as a waitress. There she met Army Air Corps pilot, Major Matt Gordon, Jr, and in early 1945, became engaged to him. When Gordon was killed in India in April 1945, she returned to Medford for a year, then moved to Hollywood, California, where she shared a room with seven other women. There, she worked the Hollywood crowd, trying to become an actress, and becoming lovers with many of the men who traveled in the fast lane of Hollywood. Her cause of death was "hemorrhage and shock from concussion of the brain and lacerations to her face, due to multiple blows using a blunt instrument." After she was killed, her body was cut in half at the waist, with a sharp instrument similar to a surgeon's scalpel, and with such precision that it was apparently the work of a professionally-trained doctor. She had been raped, although it was difficult to determine if this occurred before death or after. The killer made numerous deep gashes in her body. Despite extensive research over a year's time, the police were never able to determine her killer sufficiently to bring him to court on a charge of murder. To date, the case remains unsolved.