On 15 January 1947 the body of a young woman was
discovered by the side of a road in Hollywood. Her
nude body was severed in half at the waist. Both
halves of her body had been completely drained of
blood and washed clean.
By the following morning, the
LAPD learned that she was
22 year-old Elizabeth Short,
who had come to Hollywood
from Massachusetts to be a
star. As a joking nod to the
Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake
movie The Blue Dahlia, and
because her hair and clothes
were always jet black, she
was known to some
acquaintances in L.A. as "The
Black Dahlia."
The murder rocked the city like an 8.0 earthquake,
and despite the fact that for months afterwards the
police and press battled bitterly to solve the crime,
not a shred of evidence surfaced which pointed to
anyone who might have been involved with the murder.
It was clearly a murder as the victim had not been
raped.
So, what is it?
Murders happen every
day, everywhere.
What makes Elizabeth
Short any different?
Like most aspiring actresses who
travelled to Hollywood Beth Short
needed to be seen in the right
places and by the right people.
The Hollywood Canteen was one
such place. Men couldn't keep
their eyes off her. "She was a
natural vamp," her friend said,
"one who brings out the wolf in all
men, no exceptions, and she didn't
even have to try....“ The police,
looking for motives, wondered if
Beth had fallen foul of a
boyfriend or worse!
The Dahlia didn't have much of
an income in those days. She
seemed to eat and drink when
others, usually her dates, were
buying it for her. She shared
rooms with her friends and
borrowed money from people
constantly. Some of the male
friends she had gave her money
freely, realizing that there
could be no strings attached.
There was a persistent rumour
that she occasionally
prostituted herself. Could it be
a punter who had gone too far?
Not only was the Dahlia not
physically equipped for
prostitution, she was not
Did she
leadisone
that kind of girl.
There
no too many man
who in his
reason to assume thatonthe
irritation killed her out
Dahlia ever had any
of frustration?
knowledge of the physical
limits to her sexuality.
Beautiful, extroverted,
lively, seductive, but she
was very possibly a virgin
until she met her killer.
The Black Dahlia case was about as
high-profile a crime as you could get.
The police were being hammered for
results. Because this murder was
considered a sex crime, they
rounded up all the known perverts
for questioning. Also, they located as
many of Beth’s friends as they could
and questioned them as well. They
tried to reconstruct as best they
could what occurred in the days and
hours before her death. Somebody
must have known something!
The police came across Robert
Manley - a recent acquaintance of
hers. On January 8th he picked
her up from the friends she had
Manley became the chief
suspect. Thebeen
LAPDstaying
put him with and paid for a
room
for her for that night. He
through a very
gruelling
slept
on the bed, while she,
interrogation. They
administered
polygraph tests
to him twice.of illness, slept in a
complaining
A couple of
days later
chair.
Manley may have been the
he was released.
last person to see her alive. As
far as the police could tell, she
disappeared after leaving the
motel for six days before her
body would be found on the
vacant lot.
1. Police were inundated by calls from
people who had known the Dahlia, if only
by sight.
2.It put a major strain on police personnel
to follow up on the avalanche of
information.
3.To their dismay, the detectives realized
that some of the tire tracks, heel prints
and other physical evidence from the
crime site had not been captured.
A package was sent to the "Los Angeles
Examiner and Other Papers." A note
created from newspaper lettering said,
"Here is Dahlia's Belongings," and "Letter
to Follow." Inside the package were a social
security card, birth certificate,
photographs, business cards and claim
checks for suitcases she had left at the
bus depot. Another item was an address
book. The address book had several pages
torn out. When the police tried to lift
fingerprints off the items they found that
everything had been washed in gasoline to
remove any trace of prints. It created a
staggering job for the police to trace
every one of the names in the address book
and on the business cards.
John St. John had been in charge of
the Dahlia case for about a year when
an informant came to him with a tape
recording of a suspect that
implicated him in the Black Dahlia
murder. The suspect was a very tall,
thin man with a pronounced limp who
went by the name of Arnold Smith.
Smith claimed that a character
named Al Morrison was the violent
sex pervert who actually killed the
Dahlia. St. John suspected that Al
Morrison and Arnold Smith were one
and the same person.
The tape went into vivid detail:
Morrison grabbed her arm and started to pull her back but
she hit him have it with the purse. He slugged her once and
her knees got weak. She was pulled back into the room and he
locked the door with
the
key.HE
She
stayed there as though she
WHY
DID
LEAVE?
was unsure exactly
whatto
would
then grabbed her
Apparently
get afollow.
paringHe
knife!
and pushed her down on the floor with her dress up on her
body. He said he stood over her and said something about he
was going to rape her. She started to yell so he bent down and
slugged her again. He put his hand on her neck and held her
head still while he hit her a couple of times. She didn't move.
Now he didn't know what he was going to do, except he went
out of the room, through the door he had locked and went
downstairs...
Morrison supposedly got a large butcher knife and some
clothesline and went back upstairs. He stuffed her underpants
into her mouth and tied her up. By this time he had already beaten
her up and cut her with the knife. She was naked and he'd tied
her hands up over her head, and stabbed her with a knife a lot,
not enough that would kill you, but jabbing and sticking her a lot.
He then cut her face across the mouth. After that, she was
dead."
Morrison laid some boards across the bathtub and cut her in half
with the large butcher knife, letting the blood drain out through
the tub. When the body was sectioned and washed clean of blood,
he wrapped her in an oilskin tablecloth and shower curtain and put
into the trunk of the car. From there, he drove to the vacant lot
and lay her body, piece at a time, on the ground.
Arnold Smith was one of many aliases
for Jack Wilson. Wilson was a very
tall, gaunt alcoholic with a crippled leg
and a history of sex offences and
robbery. Unfortunately, in the few
days before the meeting, Smith
passed out in his bed in a nearby hotel
and set the place on fire with his
cigarettes. He was burned to death in
the flames, which also probably
consumed any photos and personal
effects of the Dahlia's. It was unlikely
that the fire was a result of foul play
or suicide since Smith had already had
several minor fires in the hotel
because of his careless smoking.
The case can not be officially closed due
to the death of the individual considered a
suspect. While the documentation appears
to link this individual with the homicide of
Elizabeth Short, his death, does not allow
the opportunity of an interview to obtain
from him the proof. Any proof as to his
criminal involvement is circumstantial, and
unfortunately, the suspect cannot be
charged or tried, due to his demise.