This is one of the most famous unsolved crimes in history. The victim's name was Elizabeth Short, but the name Black Dahlia was more common in the newspapers. She was killed in the vicinity of Los Angeles back in 1947. The brutal and mysterious death shocked the United States. The best police and FBI forces were sent to investigate. And nothing … The villain was never found.
BIG CITY LIGHTS
It is still unknown who dealt with the young beauty of lax behavior. She grew up with her four sisters in Massachusetts and moved to Los Angeles at the age of 19. From a stern and demanding mother, she was drawn to the "kind" father, who abandoned their family a long time ago. In fact, she needed freedom. She wanted adventure in the city of millionaires and movie stars!
She is pretty, why not try herself in Hollywood ?! Her father was against her dream of a beautiful life, he believed that she needed to go to work, but Elizabeth did not want to become a saleswoman or a waitress at all. From constant scandals with her father, she again ran away, moved to Santa Barbara. From the abundance of lights from luxurious clubs, my head was spinning, men in expensive cars made stunning offers to Dahlia …
Almost on the very first night she was arrested for drinking alcohol in the park. The underage beauty was sent back to Massachusetts, where beating from her mother was the easiest thing that awaited her. Then I had to work - and this is such a boredom! As soon as she waited until she was twenty, she moved to Florida, where she met a certain US Air Force Major, Matthew Gordon Jr., whom Elizabeth described a few months later as her fiancé.
Whether the gallant pilot was really thinking about getting married or was just fooling a pretty girl - we don't know, but soon Matthew Gordon died in a plane crash. And the inconsolable Elizabeth tried to get some money out of his family, claiming that she was Gordon's legal wife. And he even expects a child from him. The family was rich and well-connected, they slightly threatened the girl, and she realized that she had contacted the wrong ones.
Taking off her funeral hat, she got a new lover - handsome Lieutenant Gordon Fickling. He was crazy about Dahlia, brought her to Los Angeles, paid her rent. But soon she cheated on him with an elderly magnate from the West, and then completely stopped answering calls …
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AND A SMILE UP TO EARS
She changed one apartment after another, often lived in expensive hotels, without having a permanent job. The girl was last seen alive on January 9, 1947, in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, in central Los Angeles. She was already 22 years old, so she drank cocktails with alcohol legally. And she drank a lot … And on the morning of January 15, her mutilated body was found in a vacant lot in Leumert Park, very close to the border of the city.
It was a terrible sight: the corpse was cut in two at the waist, then dismembered, the external and internal genitals were removed from the body, and the nipples were cut off. And the most chilling detail - the victim's mouth was cut to the ears. Who could have done this ?! This was definitely not a murder out of jealousy or the revenge of an abandoned lover. These kill in a different way.
This was the work of a sophisticated sadist. Very cunning too! He did everything so that the police could not even determine the exact time of death: the body was severely bled, and this, as you know, distorts the picture.
In the end, it was decided that the murder took place about a day before the discovery of the body, that is, on the morning of January 14, 1947. A thorough examination of the crime scene allowed detectives to conclude that Elizabeth was not killed where they found. An already dismembered body was brought here. And it happened on the night of January 14-15. If the offender performed all these complex manipulations with his victim right here: tied her up, cut her into pieces, washed off the blood - everything would be in the intestines and bloody streaks.
Yes, with the injuries that the deceased received, there should have been a lot of blood. And at the place where they found Elizabeth, she was not at all. And one more thing: the killer did everything to make it difficult to identify the corpse. The disfigured face was disfigured by hematomas, the deceased did not at all look like a pretty call girl.
In addition, no things were found on the corpse - no documents, not even clothes. The detectives decided that the criminal's actions were not chaotic, but rather deliberate. In other words, it was not a spontaneous crime - everything was subordinated to the devil's plan.
DEATH AND GLORY
Journalists dubbed the high-profile murder the "Black Dahlia affair" and willingly sucked on the details of Elizabeth's short life. Avoiding a loud scandal, not wanting to be involved in the hype surrounding the murder, the family refused to bury the girl in their hometown.
The mother said that Elizabeth was so madly in love with California that she would certainly wish to stay there. And the girl was buried in the California city of Oakland. Grieving sisters hardly ever came to her grave: she was a "bad girl", and provincial families cherished their reputation.
Immediately after the victim was found, a large number of people approached the local police station, claiming that they saw Elizabeth just between her last appearance in public on January 9 and the discovery of her dismembered corpse. But each time it turned out that it was a mistake or, worse, a lie, a desire to become famous. After all, a witness to a high-profile case became a hero of the press. The media for several months put on the front pages the details of Dahlia's terrible death.
Why did she have such a nickname? She was probably dubbed by her clients, although the district attorney said there was no record of Elizabeth's work as a call girl. This was, to put it mildly, not entirely true. The police interrogated three men with whom the girl definitely had a sexual relationship, and all of them shyly admitted that they were paying the young beauty. So the press stubbornly called her a deceased prostitute.
So, the local police investigated the murder of the Black Dahlia for a long time, but sluggishly. And then the FBI got down to business. And agile agents began to suspect every person who knew Elizabeth Short in one way or another. And she had a lot of friends. Dozens of people went through interrogations, surveillance and arrests … Interestingly, during the investigation, about sixty people confessed to this murder, including several women. What does the desire to get their "fifteen minutes of fame" do to people!
The well-known author of detective novels, James Ellroy, wrote a novel called The Black Dahlia. Of course, the book became a bestseller. However, a lot of books and films based on this murder have appeared. The most famous noir was shot by Brian De Palma already in the 21st century, but even in it the authors did not put forward a single new hypothesis of the girl's death - only the juicy details of the tragedy were filmed.
CAPTURE IF YOU CAN
Interestingly, the killer Elizabeth went hunting more than once - in subsequent years, the dismembered bodies of several more women were found. The monster even sent small notes to the police, as if teasing them. In one, for example, he wrote: "Catch me if you can."
The police went berserk, shook their weapons menacingly, but … again nothing. And these murders were never solved. True, the FBI claimed that, in addition to the death of Dahlia, all the other dismembered corpses of the girls were on the conscience of a copycat killer seeking fame. But even this version did not have irrefutable evidence.
One day, a former detective turned private investigator came to the police with a statement that it was his father, George Hodel, who had committed the murder of Elizabeth Short. He even claimed that he had some kind of proof, but while the police were considering whether to believe "this drunkard", whether it was necessary to check this version, the suspect left the country, and his son mysteriously disappeared - along with the evidence.
And no one ever heard of him again. Did this Hodel kill Elizabeth Short? If so, what prompted him to do this? Was the bloody unsolved crime, as some media reported, deliberately stolen by the police because powerful people were involved? Now we will never know the truth. One thing is clear: the moth, in search of a beautiful life, contacted very bad guys.
Elena LISKOVA
