Age, Biography, and Wiki
- Full Name: Elizabeth Ann Short
- Born: July 29, 1924
- Died: Approximately January 14–15, 1947
- Age at Death: 22 years old
Elizabeth Short was an aspiring actress who moved to Los Angeles with dreams of stardom. Her life was cut short when she was found brutally murdered in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. The case remains one of the most infamous unsolved murders in American history.
| Occupation | Retail |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 29 July 1924 |
| Age | 100 Years |
| Birth Place | Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Leo |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited information available about Elizabeth Short's height and weight. However, photographs suggest she was slender and of average height for her time.
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 thigh 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.
An autopsy of Short's body was performed on January 16, 1947, by Frederick Newbarr, the Los Angeles County coroner. Newbarr's autopsy report stated that Short was 5 ft tall, weighed 115 lb and had light blue eyes, brown hair and badly decayed teeth. There were ligature marks on her ankles, wrists and neck, and an "irregular laceration with superficial tissue loss" on her right breast. Newbarr also noted superficial lacerations on the right forearm, left upper arm and the lower left side of the chest.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Elizabeth Short was not married and did not have any known long-term relationships at the time of her death. Her social life involved frequenting cafes and bars where she would meet men, but details about specific relationships are scarce.
A native of Boston, Short spent her early life in New England and Florida before relocating to California, where her father lived. It is commonly held that she was an aspiring actress, though she had no known acting credits or jobs during her time in Los Angeles. Short acquired the nickname of the Black Dahlia posthumously, as newspapers of the period often nicknamed particularly lurid crimes; the term may have originated from the film noir thriller The Blue Dahlia (1946). After the discovery of her body, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) began an extensive investigation that produced over 150 suspects but yielded no arrests.
(October 18, 1885 – January 19, 1967) and his wife, Phoebe May Sawyer (July 2, 1897 – March 1, 1992). Her sisters were Virginia May West (born 1920), Dorothea Schloesser (born 1922), Elnora Chalmers (born 1925) and Muriel Short (born 1929). Short's father was a United States Navy sailor from Gloucester Courthouse, Virginia, while her mother was a native of Milbridge, Maine. The Shorts were married in Portland, Maine, in 1918. The Short family briefly relocated to Portland in 1927, before settling in Medford, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, that same year.
Short's father built miniature golf courses until he lost most of his savings in the 1929 stock market crash. In 1930, his car was found abandoned on the Charlestown Bridge, and it was assumed that he had jumped into the Charles River. Believing her husband to be deceased, Short's mother began working as a bookkeeper to support the family. Troubled by bronchitis and severe asthma attacks, Short underwent lung surgery at age 15, after which doctors suggested she periodically relocate to a milder climate to prevent further respiratory problems. Her mother sent her to spend winters with family friends in Miami, Florida, for the next three years. Short dropped out of Medford High School during her sophomore year.
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 of that year, at age 18, Short relocated to Vallejo, California, to live with her father, whom she had not seen since age 6. At the time her father 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.
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 in downtown Los Angeles, and that Short was to meet one of her sisters, 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 3/8 mi away from the Biltmore.
Short was identified after her fingerprints were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); her fingerprints were on file from her 1943 arrest. Immediately following the identification, reporters from William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner contacted her mother, Phoebe Short, in Boston, and told her that her daughter had won a beauty contest. It was only after prying as much personal information as they could from Phoebe that the reporters revealed that her daughter had in fact been murdered. The Examiner also offered to pay Phoebe's airfare and accommodations if she would travel to Los Angeles to help with the police investigation; that was yet another ploy since the newspaper kept her away from police and other reporters to protect its scoop. The Examiner and another Hearst newspaper, the Herald-Express, later sensationalized the case, with one Examiner article describing the black tailored suit Short was last seen wearing as "a tight skirt and a sheer blouse." The media nicknamed her the "Black Dahlia", and described her as an "adventuress" who "prowled Hollywood Boulevard." Additional newspaper reports, such as one published in the Los Angeles Times on January 17, deemed the murder a "sex fiend slaying."
Police quickly deemed Mark Hansen, the owner of the address book found in the packet, a suspect. Hansen was a wealthy local nightclub and theater owner and an acquaintance at whose home Short had stayed with friends. According to some sources, Hansen also confirmed that the purse and shoe discovered in the alley were in fact Short's. Ann Toth, Short's friend and roommate, told investigators that Short had recently rejected sexual advances from Hansen, and suggested it as potential motive for him to kill her; however, Hansen was cleared of suspicion in the case. In addition to Hansen, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) interviewed over 150 men in the ensuing weeks who they believed to be potential suspects. Robert Manley, who had been one of the last people to see Short alive, was also investigated, but was cleared of suspicion after passing numerous polygraph examinations. Police also interviewed several persons found listed in Hansen's address book, including Martin Lewis, who had been an acquaintance of Short's. Lewis was able to provide an alibi for the date of Short's murder, as he was in Portland, Oregon, visiting his dying father-in-law.
Although he was never formally charged in the crime, George Hodel came to wider attention after his death when he was accused by his son, LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, of killing Short and committing several additional murders. Prior to the Dahlia case, George Hodel was suspected, but not charged, in the death of his secretary, Ruth Spaulding; and was accused of raping his own daughter, Tamar, but acquitted. Hodel fled the country several times and lived in the Philippines between 1950 and 1990. Additionally, Steve Hodel has cited his father's training as a surgeon as circumstantial evidence. In 2003, it was revealed in notes from the 1949 grand jury report that investigators had wiretapped George Hodel's home and obtained recorded conversation of him with an unidentified visitor, 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."
In 1991, Janice Knowlton, who was aged 10 at the time of Short's murder, claimed that she witnessed her father, George Knowlton, beat Short to death with a claw hammer in the detached garage of her family's home in Westminster. She also published a book titled Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer in 1995, in which she made additional claims that her father sexually abused her. The book was condemned as "trash" by Knowlton's stepsister, Jolane Emerson, who stated: "She believed it, but it wasn't reality. I know, because I lived with her father for sixteen years." Additionally, St. John told the Times that Knowlton's claims were "not consistent with the facts of the case."
In 2000, Buz Williams, a retired detective with the Long Beach Police Department, wrote an article for the LBPD newsletter The Rap Sheet on Short's murder. His father, Richard F. Williams, was a member of the LAPD's Gangster Squad investigating the case. Williams' father reportedly believed that Dillon was the killer, and that when Dillon returned to his home state of Oklahoma he was able to avoid extradition to California because his ex-wife Georgia Stevenson was second cousins with Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II, who contacted the governor of Oklahoma on Dillon's behalf. Williams' article claimed that Dillon sued the LAPD for $3 million, but that the suit was dropped. Harnisch disputes this, stating that Dillon was cleared by police after an exhaustive investigation and that the district attorney's files positively placed him in San Francisco when Short was killed. Harnisch claims that there was no LAPD coverup, and that Dillon did in fact receive a financial settlement from the City of Los Angeles, but has not produced concrete evidence to prove this.
* On May 12, 1947, the body of 39-year-old Laura Eliza Trelstad was discovered by an oil company patrolman in an oil field on Long Beach Boulevard. Trelstad had been sexually assaulted, strangled with a belt and then thrown from a moving vehicle. According to her husband, they had both been playing cards the night prior at their home in 2211 Locust Avenue, Long Beach, with friends in the late afternoon. Trelstad's husband wanted to continue; but she had become bored and left to go to the Crystal Ballroom. She stated: "If the boys can play poker, we girls can go dance." She was not seen alive again.
* On July 8, 1947, the naked body of Rosenda Josephine Mondragon, aged 21, was discovered by a postal clerk in a gutter near Los Angeles City Hall. Mondragon had been strangled by a silk stocking. She was last seen by her estranged husband that morning, at 1 a.m., when he had been served by her with divorce papers at his residence. She then left entering a stranger's car.
* Cosmetologist Louise Margaret Springer, aged 35, was found murdered on June 13, 1949, in the backseat of her husband's convertible sedan alongside a street in South Central Los Angeles. She had been garroted with a length of clothesline that had been knotted and a stick had been inserted into her anus. Springer's husband notified law enforcement of her disappearance that evening when he returned from an errand inside her shop to find both Springer and his vehicle missing.
* On the evening of October 7, 1949, 26-year-old Jean Spangler left her home in Los Angeles, telling her sister-in-law that she was going to meet with her ex-husband before going to work as an extra on a film set. She was last seen alive at a grocery store several blocks from her home at approximately 6:00 p.m. Two days later, Spangler's tattered purse was discovered in a remote area of Griffith Park, approximately 5.5 mi from her home; inside was a letter addressed to a "Kirk," which mentioned seeing a doctor.
Numerous details regarding Short's personal life and death have been points of public dispute. The eager involvement of both the public and press in solving her murder have been credited as factors that complicated the investigation significantly, resulting in a complex, sometimes inconsistent narrative of events. According to Anne Marie DiStefano of the Portland Tribune, many "unsubstantiated stories" have circulated about Short over the years: "She was a prostitute, she was frigid, she was pregnant, she was a lesbian. And somehow, instead of fading away over time, the legend of the Black Dahlia just keeps getting more convoluted." Harnisch has refuted several supposed rumors and popular conceptions about Short and also disputed the validity of Gilmore's book Severed, claiming the book is "25% mistakes, and 50% fiction." Harnisch had examined the district attorney's files (he claimed that Steve Hodel has examined some of them pertaining to his father, along with Times columnist Steve Lopez) and contrary to Eatwell's claims, the files showed that Dillon was thoroughly investigated and was determined to have been in San Francisco when Short was killed. Harnisch speculated that Eatwell either did not find these files or she chose to ignore them.
Short is interred at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. After her younger sister, Elnora, had grown up and married, their mother Phoebe moved to Oakland to be near her daughter's grave. She finally returned to the East Coast in the 1970s, where she lived into her nineties and died in 1992. On February 2, 1947, just two weeks after Short's murder, Republican state assemblyman C. Don Field was prompted by the case to introduce a bill calling for the formation of a sex offender registry; the state of California would become the first U.S. state to make the registration of sex offenders mandatory.
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Net Worth and Salary
Elizabeth Short did not accumulate significant wealth during her lifetime. Her main source of income was from working various temporary jobs, and she often relied on friends for financial support. Given her untimely death, there was no opportunity for her to build a substantial net worth.
Career, Business, and Investments
- Career: Elizabeth Short pursued a career in acting but had not achieved significant success at the time of her death. Her aspirations were largely unrealized.
- Business and Investments: There is no evidence of any business ventures or investments. Her financial situation remained precarious throughout her life.
Short took a job at the Base Exchange at Camp Cooke (now Vandenberg Space Force Base) near Lompoc, California, briefly living with a United States Army Air Force sergeant who reportedly abused her. She left Lompoc in mid-1943 and moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested on September 23 for drinking at a local bar while underage. Juvenile authorities sent her back to Massachusetts, but she returned instead to Florida, making only occasional visits to her family near Boston.
Three days later, a suspicious manila envelope was discovered, addressed to "The Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers", with individual words that had been cut-and-pasted from newspaper clippings; additionally, a large message on the face of the envelope read: "Here is Dahlia's belongings[,] letter to follow." 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. The packet had been carefully cleaned with gasoline, similarly to Short's body, which led police to suspect the packet had been sent directly by her killer. Despite efforts to clean the packet, several partial fingerprints were lifted from the envelope and sent to the FBI for testing; however, the prints were compromised in transit and thus could not be properly analyzed. The same day the packet was received by the Examiner, a handbag and a black suede shoe were reported to have been seen on top of a garbage can in an alley a short distance from Norton Avenue, 2 mi from the crime scene. The items were recovered by police but had also been wiped clean with gasoline, destroying any fingerprints.
* On the evening of October 2, 1947, Lillian Dominguez, aged 15, was walking home with her sister and a friend in Santa Monica, when a man approached them and proceeded to stab Dominguez in the heart with a stiletto blade, between her second and third ribs. One week later, on October 9, a note on the back of a business card was left under the door of a furniture store. The message was written in pencil and read: "I killed the Santa Monica Girl, I will kill others."
* On February 14, 1948, 42-year-old Gladys Eugenia Kern, a Los Angeles real estate agent, was found stabbed in the back with a hunting knife in a vacant house that she was showing in the Los Feliz district at 4217 Cromwell Avenue. That afternoon Kern was last seen with an unidentified man at the counter of a nearby drugstore. The murderer had stolen her appointment book and had cleaned the murder weapon before he left.
Social Network
Elizabeth Short was known to be outgoing and maintained a social network of acquaintances in Los Angeles. However, her life was not extensively documented, and detailed information about her social connections is limited.
The graphic nature of the murder and the subsequent letters received by the Examiner had resulted in a media circus surrounding Short's murder. Both local and national publications heavily covered the story, many of which reprinted sensationalistic reports suggesting that Short had been tortured for hours prior to her death; the information, however, was false, yet police allowed the reports to circulate so as to conceal Short's true cause of death—cerebral hemorrhage—from the public. Further reports about Short's personal life were publicized, including details about her alleged declining of Hansen's sexual advances; additionally, a stripper who was an acquaintance of Short's told police that she "liked to get guys worked up over her, but she'd leave them hanging dry." This led some reporters (namely the Herald-Express's Bevo Means) and detectives to look into the possibility that Short was a lesbian, and begin questioning employees and patrons of gay bars in Los Angeles; this claim, however, remained unsubstantiated. The Herald-Express also received several letters from the purported killer, again made with cut-and-pasted clippings, one of which read: "I will give up on Dahlia killing if I get 10 years. Don't try to find me."
* John Gilmore's 1994 book Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder, suggests a possible connection between Short's murder and that of 20-year-old Georgette Bauerdorf. At 11 a.m. on October 12, 1944, Bauerdorf's maid and a janitor arrived to clean her apartment in West Hollywood where they found her body face down in her bathtub. It is believed that Bauerdorf was attacked by a man who was waiting inside the apartment for her. Gilmore suggests that Short's employment at the Hollywood Canteen, where Bauerdorf also worked as a hostess, could be a potential connection between the two women. However, the claim that Short ever worked at the Hollywood Canteen has been disputed by other sources, such as the retired Times copy-editor Larry Harnisch. Regardless, Steve Hodel has still suggested that both women were killed by the same individual since in both cases the media received notes supposedly from the killer taunting the police and boasting of his skills.
* The murder of 44-year-old Jeanne "Nettie" French on February 10, 1947, was also considered by the media and detectives as possibly being related to Short's killing. French's body was discovered in West Los Angeles on Grand View Boulevard, nude and badly beaten. Written on her stomach in lipstick was what appeared to say "Fuck You B.D." and the letters "TEX" below. The Herald-Express covered the story heavily and drew comparisons to the Short murder less than a month prior, surmising the initials "B.D." stood for "Black Dahlia". According to historian Jon Lewis, however, the scrawling actually read "P.D.", ostensibly standing for "police department."
Short's life and death have been the basis of numerous books, television shows and films, both fictionalized and non-fiction. Among the most famous fictional accounts of Short's death is James Ellroy's 1987 novel The Black Dahlia, which, in addition to the murder, explored "the larger fields of politics, crime, corruption, and paranoia in post-war Los Angeles," according to cultural critic David M. Fine. Ellroy's novel was adapted into a 2006 film of the same name by director Brian De Palma: Short was played by actress Mia Kirshner. Both Ellroy's novel and its film adaptation bear little relation to the facts of the case. Michael Connelly's 2024 novel The Waiting has a major subplot involving the Black Dahlia case.
Short was also portrayed in heavily fictionalized accounts by Lucie Arnaz in the 1975 television film Who Is the Black Dahlia?, by Jessica Nelson in Season Four, Episode 13 of Hunter, and by Mena Suvari in the series American Horror Story in 2011, featuring Short in the plot line of the episode "Spooky Little Girl", and again in 2018 with "Return to Murder House".
Education
Elizabeth Short attended Medford High School in Massachusetts before moving to California. There is no record of her pursuing higher education or formal training in acting.
When interviewed, lead investigator Captain Jack Donahue told the press that he believed Short's murder had taken place in a remote building or shack on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and that her body was transported to the location where it was disposed of. Based on the precise cuts and dissection of Short's body, the LAPD looked into the possibility that the murderer had been a surgeon, doctor or someone with medical knowledge. 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 discovered, requesting a complete list of the program's students. The university agreed so long as the students' identities remained private. Background checks were conducted but yielded no results.
Crime authors such as Steve Hodel and William Rasmussen have suggested a link between the Short murder and the 1946 murder and dismemberment of 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan in Chicago, Illinois. Captain Donahoe of the LAPD stated publicly that he believed the Black Dahlia and the "Lipstick Murders" in Chicago were "likely connected." Among the evidence cited is the fact that Short's body was found on Norton Avenue, three blocks west of Degnan Boulevard, Degnan being the last name of the girl from Chicago. There were also striking similarities between the handwriting on the Degnan ransom note and that of the "Black Dahlia Avenger." Both texts used a combination of capitals and small letters (the Degnan note read in part "BuRN This FoR heR SAfTY" [sic]), and both notes contain a similar misshapen letter P and have one word that matches exactly. Convicted serial killer William Heirens served life in prison for Degnan's murder. Initially arrested at age 17 for breaking into a residence close to that of Degnan, Heirens claimed he was tortured by police, forced to confess and made a scapegoat for the murder. After being taken from the medical infirmary at the Dixon Correctional Center on February 26, 2012, for health problems, Heirens died at the University of Illinois Medical Center on March 5, 2012, at age 83.
* On July 27, 1943, the son of a greenskeeper discovered the nude body of 41-year-old Ora Elizabeth Murray lying on the ground near the parking lot of the Fox Hills Golf Course. Murray had been severely beaten about her face and body, and the autopsy determined that her cause of death was due to "constriction of the larynx by strangulation". Murray was last seen on July 26, 1943, attending a dance at the Zenda Ballroom in downtown Los Angeles with her sister before leaving with an unidentified man. Her murder remains unsolved.
Conclusion
While Elizabeth Short's life was tragically cut short, her legacy as the Black Dahlia has endured, inspiring countless works of fiction and true crime investigations. Her story serves as a haunting reminder of the darker aspects of human nature and the enduring fascination with unsolved mysteries.