CA CA - Elizabeth Short 'Black Dahlia', 22, Los Angeles, 15 Jan 1947

jokar

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A beautiful dark-haired woman, Elizabeth Short was brutally murdered in the 1940's, I think LA or Hollywood area, but not sure. The cops had a list of suspects but no arrests were ever made. The suspects were like a list right out of a murder mystery screenplay - all weird guys with motives.

Recently, I read that the son of a doctor who lived near the murder scene names his father as the killer - but some of the cops who worked the scene that are still living doubt it.

Any thoughts on this anyone? This murder was specially brutal - I really hate injustice and I feel badly that this poor woman's killer was never brought to justice.
 
I saw the show too. It really did seem possible that the doctor/father commited the murder. The man didn't seem like a very nice person. He molested his daughter.
 
I remember the first time I heard the story of Elizabeth Short. I was around 10 years old. It was on a tv show that I can't remember but her story just stayed with me. I really think his dad did it, too.
 
I have read the book three times from Steve Hodel. According to the further information NOT supplied in his book, he has since uncovered various detailed information, transcripts, audio tapes interviews of his dad, fbi files and such regarding his father being the PRIME suspect.

It's worthy noting that his father LEFT the country for 20+ years very soon after the heat was on.

I'm very certain on this one, his father DID commit the crime. His book (albeit very wordy, very "factual" like a detective would be) IS worth the read.
 
I don't consider the book "wordy." It was suspenseful and analytical. Of course, the worst part of it is when he reveals how the Black Dahlia was tortured before being killed.

I believe Steve Hodel. It's unjust that the father didn't get caught, but nothing done to him could ever equal what he did to that woman. He or his accomplice was also the likely killer of crime writer, James Ellroy's, mother when Ellroy was 10, I believe. I think these mysteries have been solved.

What gives me the creeps is that Dr. Hodel liked to hang around with director John Huston and photographer Man Ray. These men were sadistic towards women. It's just Marilyn Monroe was only a starlet when Huston cast her in a movie, The Asphalt Jungle (and later, The Misfits). I'm glad she didn't get drawn in by those men.

Kathy C
 
Just a tidbit of info, John Huston is Angelica Huston's father. I bet she has some tragic & dark secrets. :(
 
Kathy C said:
What gives me the creeps is that Dr. Hodel liked to hang around with director John Huston and photographer Man Ray. These men were sadistic towards women. It's just Marilyn Monroe was only a starlet when Huston cast her in a movie, The Asphalt Jungle (and later, The Misfits). I'm glad she didn't get drawn in by those men.

Kathy C
Yeah, but Marilyn got drawn in by other men who were bad for her. The timing and circumstances (barbituates found in her rectum) of her death were too suspicious to be suicide. Men with mafia connections like Frank Sinatra, and even the Kennedys wanted her out of the way. She was going to be trouble... JMO:twocents:
 
tennessee said:
I remember the first time I heard the story of Elizabeth Short. I was around 10 years old. It was on a tv show that I can't remember but her story just stayed with me. I really think his dad did it, too.


What was the story on her being in san diego the night before and last seen going into a movie or something with a guy, possibly a sailor. Wasnt he the last known person to see her alive?
 
I suppose I've got to gamble along with old John Gilmore (who actually met the Black Dahlia as a child) ...I believe that Jack Wilson killed not only Beth Short, but the Bauerdorf woman.

We have some links to good Black Dahlia info on the email group "High Profile Cases". Come by and check us out please...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HighProfileCases

I'd love to get a conversation going about this case again....have been a fan of it since 1974.

Best wishes to all...
 
For more than six months, I was immersed in the details of the most famous unsolved murder in Los Angeles: the 59-year-old case of Elizabeth Short. Short was a beautiful 22- year-old wanna-be starlet who moved to Hollywood, only to be brutally murdered on January 15, 1947. In post-war America, the brutality of the case was so shocking that the case made national headlines for weeks. Even my own mother, also 22-years-old at the time and living in Miami, Florida, remembers the frightening details. Yet, despite a massive manhunt, the killer was never officially identified or found until perhaps now.

On Saturday night, we take a new look at the case and at a man who says he has solved it. Steve Hodel, a former Los Angeles Police detective, began looking at the cold case when he retired from the force. He became interested in it in because of two photos his own father had in an album. What Steve Hodel discovered about the Elizabeth Short case and about the mysteries in his own family will remind viewers, as it did me, that life sometimes operates in incredibly strange ways. At the end of the show, you will be able to judge for yourself whether the most famous unsolved murder case in Los Angeles can finally be closed.

- Erin Moriarty
Correspondent, 48 Hours Mystery

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/10/04/broadcasts/main64925.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories
 
They have had Hodel on before, isn't this just a rerun? I haven't heard any new details on this case in quite sometime. The photos Hodel has in his posession I believe were disproved by a facial recognition artist. They said it wasn't Short in the photos. I'll have to check it out to see if it indeed is simply a repeat.
 
miles_draken said:
They have had Hodel on before, isn't this just a rerun? I haven't heard any new details on this case in quite sometime. The photos Hodel has in his posession I believe were disproved by a facial recognition artist. They said it wasn't Short in the photos. I'll have to check it out to see if it indeed is simply a repeat.
Since it's Christmas Eve, I imagine everything on that night will be a repeat.
 
The Black Dahlia case has always fascinated me and I saw the episode of 48 hours that focused on her. But I'm just a bit wary of Hodel's claims. They may be true. But I'm always a little suspicious. It is clear to me that Hodel has an axe to grind. And unlike Hodel, I can't dismiss the fact that experts disproved the photograph as Short and the handwriting as belonging to George Hodel. And to be fair, Hodel's father isn't around to contradict his statements. Still he does seem like a good suspect.
 
If y'all can stand a little cursing now and then, check out James Ellroy's Feast of Death on showtime airing this month and next month. There is a detective on there that has an awsome theory about who murdered Elizabeth. Has anyone seen it???
 
I found this new article on the Black Dahlia, it's a haunting mystery and one I'd love to see solved!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-2223129,00.html

The Black Dahlia case (“a cold, cold case”, says the author) is one of the most notorious unsolved murders of modern times. Apart from her pulp-fiction moniker, it was the B-movie star looks of the victim and the state of her corpse that caught the popular imagination. She had been killed by blows to the head, probably from a pistol-whipping, and by deep incisions from her mouth up to each ear. If that had been all, even her nickname would not have been enough to guarantee her posthumous fame. But it was not all. Her body had been severed in two, drained of blood and washed, before being dumped, with half of the torso placed above and alongside the other half.

Immediately, the unknown culprit was dubbed a “werewolf fiend”, a vicious, depraved individual who might well strike again. Yet this was no ordinary rage killing and the victim had not been sexually assaulted. Because the spinal cord had been severed at the optimum point for the sake of ease, between the second and third vertebrae, it was suspected that the murderer was medically trained. Though it was never disclosed at the time, illegal abortionists were among those investigated.

The police had to deal with numerous “confessing Sams” and anonymous hoaxers. But there was a “control question” they could ask, something about the corpse which could help them eliminate attention-seeking would-be suspects. I shan’t spoil the unfolding pleasure of the book by revealing this secret, knowledge of which emerged only when some Los Angeles Police Department files were made public after 50 years.

More at link.
Old Broad
 
I need to get a book on this case. I am really interested in it but do not know too much about it. I watched a show on it, maybe 48 hours or something once.
 
Be warned about which Black Dahlia book you read. One of them has the autopsy photos in it. Freaked me out so bad, I slept with the lights on for three weeks!
 

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