A Former Detective Believes His Dad Was The Black Dahlia’s Killer, So Could This Case Finally Be Solved After 78 Years?
In January 1947, a 22-year-old woman was discovered cut in half and left on the side of a Los Angeles road. Her brutal murder quickly made headlines, with reporters dubbing the victim the “Black Dahlia,” a name inspired by The Blue Dahlia, a 1946 film.
Over 78 years later, her case remains unsolved, but a former detective believes his father might’ve been her killer.
The Black Dahlia
Elizabeth Short was born in 1924 and raised outside of Boston, along with her four sisters. She faced some early childhood trauma, particularly at the age of 6, when her father disappeared after losing their family’s savings in the 1929 stock market crash.
It was thought that her father had taken his own life since his car was discovered abandoned on the Charlestown Bridge. Later, Elizabeth and her family learned that wasn’t actually the case.
But first, by the time she was 16-years-old, Elizabeth underwent surgery for a respiratory condition and began regularly visiting Florida.
Her doctors believed the milder weather would help her condition, so she spent winters in the Sunshine State with her friends and family.
Elizabeth wound up dropping out of high school, and in 1942, she found out her father was still alive. That year, her mother received a letter from her father, who apologized and revealed he’d been living in Northern California.
The news inspired Elizabeth to relocate there and live with him when she was 18. The arrangement didn’t last long, though, and she left in 1943 to go to Santa Barbara.
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While there, she was arrested for underage drinking and sent back to live with her mother. However, less than six months before she was killed, Elizabeth ultimately decided to return to Los Angeles. She wanted to be an actress and went back to Hollywood to follow her dream.
Elizabeth’s Life In L.A.
Elizabeth reportedly bounced around the city and worked different kinds of jobs to make ends meet. According to her roommates, she was quite secretive and kept her plans, like who she was going out with or what she was doing, to herself.
Still, her life did seem to follow a pattern. Elizabeth would be broke and unemployed. Then, out of nowhere, she’d have some funds to continue on.
In the weeks before she was murdered, Elizabeth quickly fled to San Diego and supposedly said she was hiding from one of her ex-boyfriends. She met a woman named Dorothy French, and she was allowed to stay with Dorothy’s family.
During her stay, Dorothy recalled how a group of three, which included two men and one woman, had shown up at her residence, looking for Elizabeth. At the time, Elizabeth was “panicky” and “very frightened.” She wouldn’t see the trio, and after their visit, she decided to move out.
Elizabeth left Dorothy’s on January 8. She drove back to Los Angeles with a traveling salesman she’d been seeing, and she had him bring her to the Biltmore Hotel. Elizabeth alleged that her sister, Virginia, would be meeting her there, but Virginia had never made any plans to meet up with her.
Instead, Elizabeth, who was 22 at the time, was seemingly alone. At the hotel, staff members watched as she stood in the lobby that same night and made various phone calls. And at 10:00 p.m., she left, marking the last time she was ever seen alive again.
Where Elizabeth went for the next few days before her murder is unknown. There were some sightings, as well as an alleged encounter with an officer named Myrl McBride. She supposedly saw Elizabeth mere hours before she was murdered.
That day, January 14, a woman who was “sobbing in terror” approached Myrl and stated someone had threatened to kill her. That woman, who’s thought to be Elizabeth, was accompanied by Myrl as she went back to a bar to get her purse.
Afterward, the man who’d threatened Elizabeth was gone, so Myrl left. The officer later saw Elizabeth leaving the bar. She was with two men and one woman, and Myrl checked to see if she was okay. Elizabeth reportedly seemed fine, but hours later, she was killed.
The Murder Of Elizabeth Short
A young mother was walking through Leimert Park in Los Angeles with her child on January 15, 1947, when she found Elizabeth’s body. The neighborhood was undeveloped, and when the mother first spotted Elizabeth’s remains, she noted the limbs were contorted and thought it was a mannequin.
Rather, it was Elizabeth. She didn’t have clothes on, and her body was mutilated. There were bruises on her face and a gash running from each side of her mouth. She’d also been severed at the waist with surgical precision, and her external organs were removed.
Given the state of Elizabeth’s remains, authorities were initially perplexed about how to identify her. Eventually, they used a Soundphoto machine to send her fingerprints to FBI headquarters. Since she’d previously been arrested and had applied for a job at a California military base, investigators were able to identify Elizabeth.
As for her cause of death, the coroner ruled it was hemorrhaging from the lacerations on her face, as well as shock from repeated blows to her head.
The “Black Dahlia” Makes Headlines
While Elizabeth was dwelling in Long Beach, California, she’d first gotten the nickname “Black Dahlia.” It stemmed from the film The Blue Dahlia because she had dark hair and a penchant for black clothes.
Once journalists discovered this nickname, the media ran wild with it. Her case was heavily covered as the Los Angeles Police Department tried to find her killer.
Authorities followed up on numerous leads and false confessions, all of which proved fruitless. They also ruled out suspects, but by 1949, the LAPD’s abilities were called into question. That year, a grand jury was convened to discuss how the LAPD homicide unit was unable to solve murders.
At the time, Detective Harry Hansen testified to believing a “medical man” had murdered her due to how her body was severed. Nonetheless, even after conducting more interviews with suspects and Elizabeth’s loved ones, the investigation ended in 1950.
A Former Detective’s Hunch
The high coverage of Elizabeth’s case has led to the spawn of various theories over the years. Yet, a Los Angeles-based doctor, George Hodel, has become one of the most suspected.
He had a reputation for hosting parties with Hollywood’s affluent crowd. Plus, he was rumored to have been dating Elizabeth prior to her death.
Hodel also allegedly assaulted his teenage daughter, and even though he was acquitted, this made him a suspect in Elizabeth’s murder. Investigators even wire-tapped his house and caught him making strange remarks about the case, as well as apparently confessing to the death of his secretary, Ruth Spaulding.
“Supposin’ I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn’t prove it now. They can’t talk to my secretary anymore because she’s dead. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary,” Hodel stated in the recordings.
He wound up moving to the Philippines and living there for 40 years. Most of the details surrounding his suspect status weren’t known by the public, either, until his own son, Steve, started investigating.
Steve, a former LAPD detective, found a suspicious picture among his father’s belongings after his father died in 1999. The photo looked to be of Elizabeth. This has never been confirmed, but it launched Steve’s quest to find her killer.
He spent years investigating and found evidence linking his father to the slaying. First, his father had undergone surgeon training at the University of California, San Francisco. Secondly, Steve reportedly found “five witnesses in newspapers” who said his father was Elizabeth’s boyfriend.
Additionally, Steve uncovered receipts showing his father had bought bags of cement shortly before Elizabeth died. An empty bag of the same brand of cement was located near her remains.
Finally, in 2018, Steve reportedly found a letter that had been penned by a former police informant. In the correspondence, the informant claimed a man named “GH” had murdered Elizabeth.
Steve’s investigative efforts were looked into by the LAPD, but the agency ultimately decided not to pursue the lead. He thinks it’s because his father had close relationships with the police. Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steve Kay, however, voiced otherwise.
“I told Steve that if his father was still alive, I would have filed murder charges against him. His evidence was very persuasive.”
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