Black Dahlia‎

The 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, is one of the most notorious unsolved murders in the history of Los Angeles, and it's getting some renewed attention. In last night's airing of "American Horror Story," a young actress dies in the basement of a haunted house, and the story reveals that she was the famous Black Dahlia.


After the show, the Internet exploded with searches for more facts about the Black Dahlia murder mystery. Theories abound about Short's death more than 60 years ago, but the vicious murder has never been solved.


The body of Elizabeth Short was found on January 15, 1947 in Leimert Park district of Los Angeles. The rest of her had been left on a vacant lot on the west side of South Norton Avenue midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street. The black dahlia’s body was discovered by Betty Bersinger, a local resident who was walking with her daughter. Black dahlia’s brutally mutilated body was found nude and damaged at the waist, completely drained of blood. Her face was slashed from the corner of the mouth toward the ears and formed the Glasgow smile. The body had been washed and cleaned and the murderer made her in a pose with her hands over her head and elbows bent at right angles.


The autopsy stated that the black dahlia was 5 feet 5 inches tall, 115 pounds in weight, and had light blue eyes, brown hair, and badly decayed teeth. On her ankles and wrists, there were marks made by rope that indicated she had been tied either spreadeagled or hanged upside down. Black dahlia had got bruised on the front and right side of her scalp with a small amount of bleeding in the subarachnoid space on the right side. Even though the skull was not cracked, but the bruises are proof that she experienced being beaten on his head. The cause of her death was blood loss from the lacerations to the face combined with shock due to a concussion of the brain.


The reporter of Los Angeles Daily News, Gerry Ramlow, later stated that the unsolved murder of the black dahlia was caused by reporters. The reporters tried to get access to all information related to the black dahlia, and they often disturbed the police. Many tips from the public were not passed on to police because the reporters who got them only used the information for the sake of the news.


The black dahlia was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. After her older sister had grown up and married, her mother moved to Oaklandin order to get close to her daughter’s cemetery. However, in the 1970s Phoebe Short finally returned to the East Coast and lived to into her 90s.


Rumors and misconceptions about the black dahlia
According to newspaper reports shortly after the murder, Elizabeth Short got the nickname black dahlia at a Long Beach, California drugstore in mid-1946, as a word play on the then-current movie The Blue Dahlia. In fact, Los Angeles County district attorney investigators’ reports state that the nickname was given by newspaper reporters covering the murder. Bevo Means, the reporter of Los Angeles Herald Express was the first person who used the black dahlia nickname for Elizabeth Short.


Many crime books claim that the black dahlia lived or visited Los Angeles at various times in the mid-1940s. These claims are refuted by the findings of law enforcement officers who investigated the case. Crime books also describe the black dahlia as a call girl, but Los Angeles County district attorneys proved that there was no evidence that the black dahliawas really a prostitute. That’s all about black dahlia.