On the early morning of January 15, 1947, a mother taking her child for a walk in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, stumbled upon a deeply disturbing sight: the body of a young, naked woman, cut cleanly in half at the waist.
The badly mutilated body was lying just a few feet from the sidewalk and was posed in such a way that passersby reportedly thought it was a mannequin.
Despite the extensive mutilation and injuries on the body, there wasn’t a drop of blood at the scene, indicating that the woman had been killed elsewhere.
The reporters from the LA Examiner who were present at the scene offered the LAPD to transmit fingerprints taken from the scene to the FBI via the primitive “Soundphoto” service in exchange for an exclusive reveal of the woman’s identity.
The victim turned out to be a 22-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, dubbed by the media as the Black Dahlia for her rumored penchant for sheer black clothes.
During the initial investigation, police received sixty confessions, most made by men. Since then, over 500 people have confessed to the crime, some of whom had not even been born at the time of Short’s death.
Sergeant John P. St. John, a detective who worked on the case until his retirement, said, “It is amazing how many people offer up a relative as the killer.”
In his book The Cases That Haunt Us, legendary FBI profiler John Douglas theorized that Short’s murder would have been solved if it were committed today. In Douglas’ words, “the killer would have given himself in by his behavior after the murder.”
Douglas believed that the killer must have known Short well enough to have some emotional attachment to her.
According to the profiler, the killer chose extensive mutilation to make a personal statement about the rage he felt towards the young woman.
The public display indicates that the killer wanted the world to see Elizabeth Short and the wrongdoings that he believed she had done to him.
Will the Black Dahlia’s murder ever be solved?
Unlikely.
Theories and false confessions abound, and physical evidence is non-existent.
