Actor Found Naked, Body Cut In Half, Belongings Mailed To Press: The 80-Year Hunt For Her Killer

At first, the woman walking through the vacant lot thought she was looking at a discarded mannequin.

It was the morning of January 15, 1947, in Los Angeles. In the grass beside South Norton Avenue lay the naked body of a young woman, pale, bloodless and cut cleanly in two at the waist.

The upper half had been placed a short distance from the lower half. Her arms were raised above her head. Her elbows were bent. Her legs had been spread apart. The corners of her mouth had been sliced towards her ears.

This was not where she had died.

There was almost no blood on the ground. The body had been washed. Then someone had transported it to the vacant lot and arranged it for discovery.

The dead woman was 22-year-old Elizabeth Short.

Within days, newspapers would give her another name: the Black Dahlia.

The name would become immortal. The woman behind it would almost disappear.

Nearly eight decades later, her killer has never been identified.

The Woman Before The Legend

Elizabeth Short was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 29, 1924. She was the third of five daughters born to Cleo Alvin Short Jr and Phoebe May Sawyer.

Her childhood was shaped by illness, financial hardship and one extraordinary family secret.

Her father lost most of his savings in the 1929 stock market crash. The family later came to believe he was dead.

He had not.

Years later, Short discovered that her father was alive and living in California. In 1942, at 18, she travelled to Vallejo to live with him.

The reunion did not last. Their relationship quickly deteriorated, and Short moved out only weeks later.

She had already spent much of her adolescence moving between climates. Severe asthma and bronchitis led to lung surgery when she was 15. Doctors advised her to spend time somewhere warmer, and she began passing winters in Florida.

In the years that followed, she moved between Massachusetts, Florida and California. She dated several men. One of them, Army Air Force officer Major Matthew Michael Gordon Jr, reportedly proposed marriage.

He died in a plane crash in 1945.

Short arrived in Los Angeles in July 1946. Later accounts repeatedly described her as an aspiring actress, but no acting credits or professional work have ever been found.

In the months before her death, she worked as a waitress and lived in a room behind the Florentine Gardens nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard.

She had no idea that the city would soon make her famous for dying.

The Last Man To See Her

On January 9, 1947, Short returned to Los Angeles after a brief trip to San Diego with Robert "Red" Manley, a 25-year-old salesman she had been dating.

Manley said he dropped her at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. She was reportedly planning to meet her sister, who was visiting from Boston, that afternoon.

Then the trail ended.

There were reported sightings over the next several days. Investigators examined them and eventually ruled them out. Witnesses had apparently mistaken other women for Short.

No confirmed account placed her anywhere after January 9.

Six days later, her body appeared in the vacant lot.

Where she went, whom she met and what happened during those missing days remain at the centre of the mystery.

The Vacant Lot

Short's body was found on South Norton Avenue, between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street, in the Leimert Park neighbourhood.

The scene appeared almost staged.

The two halves of her body were positioned close together, the lower portion roughly a foot from the upper. Her arms were above her head, her elbows fixed at right angles. Her legs were apart.

She was naked. Her clothes were gone.

The body had been drained of blood and cleaned before it was placed there. That immediately told investigators they were not standing at the murder scene. They were looking at the place the killer had chosen to display his work.

Near the body, detectives found a heel print and a cement sack containing watery blood.

Neither led them to the killer.

A Cut Made With Precision

The injuries to Short's face were among the most shocking.

Both corners of her mouth had been cut towards her ears, creating what later became known as a Glasgow smile. There were multiple cuts on her thighs and breasts. Portions of flesh had been removed.

Her body had been divided using a procedure known as a hemicorporectomy. The cut passed through the lumbar spine between the second and third vertebrae.

There was very little bruising along the incision.

That detail mattered. It suggested Short had already been dead when her body was severed.

The accuracy of the dissection raised an obvious question. Did the killer know anatomy?

Investigators began considering surgeons, doctors, medical students and anyone who might have possessed similar training.

It was one of the first theories in the case. It would never entirely disappear.

What The Autopsy Found

Los Angeles County coroner Frederick Newbarr performed the autopsy on January 16.

Short was approximately 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed about 115 pounds. There were ligature marks around her ankles, wrists and neck. Her body carried several lacerations. Her head had been struck.

Bruising was found on her scalp. There was bleeding in the subarachnoid space on the right side of her brain, consistent with blows to the head.

Newbarr concluded that Short died from haemorrhaging caused by the wounds to her face, combined with shock from blows to her head and face.

The autopsy also raised the possibility of sexual assault because of findings involving her anal canal. Samples, however, tested negative for sperm.

The report contradicted some of the most lurid stories already circulating. Newspapers claimed she had been tortured for hours. Police did not correct every false report. They deliberately kept the actual cause of death secret, hoping that details known only to investigators and the killer might help distinguish a genuine confession from a lie.

They would soon have plenty of confessions to test.

How Elizabeth Short Became The Black Dahlia

The killing became a newspaper war.

Reporters chased every detail of Short's movements, clothes, relationships and private life. Her photograph appeared beside increasingly sensational accounts of her death.

Soon, she was the "Black Dahlia".

The origin of the nickname remains disputed. Some accounts linked it to the 1946 film The Blue Dahlia. Others said customers at a Long Beach drugstore used the name for Short. The FBI has said the "Black" referred to her apparent preference for sheer black clothing.

Whatever its origin, the nickname swallowed her identity.

The press recast Short as an "adventuress" who haunted Hollywood Boulevard. Over time, unsupported stories accumulated around her. She was described as a prostitute, a call girl, pregnant, frigid or a lesbian.

Many of those claims were disputed. Some had no reliable evidence at all.

But the mythology was only beginning.

The Killer Calls A Newspaper

Six days after Short's body was found, the case took a darker turn.

On January 21, a man claiming to be her killer telephoned the office of Los Angeles Examiner editor James Richardson.

The caller congratulated the paper on its coverage. He said he would eventually surrender, but wanted police to keep searching for him first.

Then he promised to send "souvenirs" belonging to Short.

Three days later, an envelope arrived at the newspaper.

Inside were Short's birth certificate, photographs, business cards, pieces of paper bearing names and an address book embossed with the name Mark Hansen.

The envelope had been cleaned with gasoline.

So had Short's body.

Investigators believed the package might genuinely have come from the killer. Partial fingerprints were recovered from the envelope, but they were compromised before they could be properly analysed.

Short's handbag and a black suede shoe were also reportedly discovered in an alley near the crime scene. Those items had likewise been wiped with gasoline.

Someone appeared to know exactly what evidence to remove.

A Promise To Surrender

The letters continued.

On January 26, another message arrived at the Examiner. The writer said he would surrender on January 29 at a specified location.

Police waited. Nobody came.

Later that afternoon, another letter reached the newspaper. The writer claimed he had changed his mind. He also said the killing had been justified.

The messages fed the public frenzy and tightened the pressure on police. Tips flooded in. Witnesses reported sightings. People began confessing.

At one point, a $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to the killer's capture.

It produced more claims, more suspects and more noise.

No arrest followed.

The Name Inside The Envelope

Mark Hansen quickly became one of the investigation's major suspects.

He was a wealthy nightclub and theatre owner who knew Short. She had reportedly stayed at his home with friends. More importantly, his name was on the address book sent to the Examiner.

Short's friend and roommate Ann Toth told investigators that Short had rejected Hansen's sexual advances. Police considered whether that rejection could have provided a motive.

Hansen was eventually cleared.

Robert Manley, the salesman who said he had left Short at the Biltmore Hotel, was also investigated. He underwent several polygraph examinations before police cleared him.

During the early stages of the case, investigators interviewed more than 150 potential suspects.

The person they wanted was not among them, or had managed to give them nothing they could prove.

Did The Killer Study Medicine?

The precision of the dissection continued to trouble detectives.

In February 1947, investigators obtained a warrant for records from the University of Southern California Medical School, located near the area where Short's body was found.

The school supplied a list of students under privacy restrictions. Investigators ran background checks.

Nothing useful emerged.

The search widened. Police examined doctors, surgeons and others who might have understood how to divide a body with such accuracy.

It remained a compelling theory, but never became a case.

The Investigation Begins To Die

By the spring of 1947, the inquiry was losing momentum.

The LAPD and other agencies searched storm drains, abandoned buildings, stretches of the Los Angeles River and other possible dumping grounds. Detectives retraced Short's movements through Massachusetts, Florida and California.

They found no murder site, no decisive physical evidence and no reliable account of the six missing days.

The press attention had also become a problem. Investigators later accused reporters of compromising parts of the inquiry through aggressive questioning and the publication of unverified claims.

In September 1949, a grand jury examined failures within the LAPD homicide unit, including its inability to solve several murders of women and children. The killing of Elizabeth Short was among the cases considered.

The scrutiny did not reveal her killer.

Hundreds Said They Did It

During the original investigation, police received about 60 confessions.

Over the decades, that number grew beyond 500.

Most were false. Some were absurd. People confessed despite not having been born when Short was killed.

Others accused fathers, husbands, acquaintances and dead relatives. A retired LAPD detective who worked on the case later remarked on how often people tried to nominate someone in their own family as the murderer.

Each claim had to be examined against facts the police had kept secret.

The flood of confessions did not solve the case. It buried it under new layers of fiction.

The Suspects Who Came Later

The decades produced an expanding cast of possible killers: doctors, nightclub owners, mortuary workers, acquaintances and men who may never have met Short at all.

One of the most prominent theories centred on physician George Hodel.

His son, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, accused him of killing Short. George Hodel had been investigated over other allegations, but he was never charged with the Black Dahlia murder.

Another theory focused on Leslie Dillon, a former mortician's assistant with links to Mark Hansen and others connected to the inquiry.

Author Piu Eatwell later argued that Short was killed as part of a scheme involving hotel robberies. She suggested the murder took place at the Aster Motel before the body was moved to South Norton Avenue.

That theory remains disputed.

Many other names have surfaced in books, documentaries and private investigations. None has been conclusively tied to the crime.

The Murder And The Myth

As the case aged, the story of Elizabeth Short became harder to separate from what had been invented about her.

Some accounts claimed she had been forced to consume faeces. Others described cigarette burns or prolonged torture.

The official autopsy does not support several of those allegations.

Yet the rumours endured because they fitted the monster the public had created. A beautiful young woman. Hollywood. A mutilated body. A taunting killer. An investigation that went nowhere.

The murder became legend. Short became its supporting character.

Six Days Without An Answer

Investigators established some things with certainty.

Elizabeth Short was alive when Robert Manley left her at the Biltmore Hotel on January 9, 1947.

Six days later, she was found dead in a Los Angeles vacant lot.

She had suffered fatal injuries to her head and face. Her body had been drained of blood, washed and severed after death. It had then been transported and carefully posed.

Someone later sent her possessions to a newspaper. Someone wrote letters, promised to surrender and then withdrew the promise. Someone may have wanted the killing to be seen.

Police never proved who that person was.

Nearly 80 years later, the Black Dahlia remains one of Los Angeles' most haunting cold cases. Books have named suspects. Families have accused relatives. Hundreds have confessed. Generations of detectives, journalists and amateur investigators have tried to fill the six missing days.

None has managed it.

The killer took Elizabeth Short's life, then watched as the world replaced her name with his crime.