Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short killer revealed in new book/cover-up by LAPD

Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short killer revealed in new book/cover-up by LAPD



The notorious Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles in 1947 is arguably the most gruesome of America's cold cases ever.

The body of aspiring starlet Elizabeth Short was found beside a sidewalk in a vacant lot in a southern Los Angeles suburb and shocked even the most hardened newspaper crime reporters.

The woman had been strung up by the wrists, her face and head severely beaten and a satanic smile cut into her face with deep cuts extending out from the corners of her mouth.

The 22-year-old had been viciously mutilated, with the trunk of her body completely severed, the anal opening had abrasions from the insertion of a foreign object and her stomach was filled with feces, among many other horrors.

Short's murder has remained unsolved for decades, although there was a break through in late 1948 when the killer was seduced out of hiding and admitted to knowing the two things about the crime that were never revealed to the public.

But the case was never solved by the LAPD because of a cover-up by the Homicide Division and lingering fears for years of reprisal by the department.

Now, 70 years later, after an exhaustive investigation author and legal sleuth Piu Eatwell exposes why the truth never out in her new book, Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder.



Short's murder captivated the nation, as her injuries 'suggested necrophilia and a fetishism with knives'.

'They were the marks of a sadistic lust murderer ...and it was speculated that the killer either had medical training or experience with handling corpses in a mortuary --- and a manifest fascination with death', writes Eatwell, a historical researcher and legal sleuth.

The young woman's body had multiple deep lacerations to the face and blows to the head that suggested they were delivered while the victim was still alive and possibly what killed her.

The trunk of her body had been completely severed by an incision cutting through the intestine exposing the organs of the abdomen and lacerating the intestines and both kidneys.

There was a gaping cut extending down from the naval to just above the pubis, multiple lacerations in the skin of the hip and an irregular piece of flesh had been removed from in front of her left thigh.

A square of tissue had been cut out from the right breast. The anal opening had multiple abrasions from the insertion of a foreign object.

Her stomach was filled with feces and the corpse completely cleaned and drained of blood. 

As the case rose in prominence and no legitimate suspect on hand, detectives dived into the depths of the victim's life in order to track down her elusive killer.



Elizabeth Short, called 'Beth', was the third of five girls. She was raised by her mother, Phoebe, in Medford, Massachusetts, a working class Boston suburb. Her father feigned suicide only to resurface years later.

'She wanted to be someone famous. She had stars in her eyes, dreams rather than plans. I think of her as a very beautiful but very private person, with a sadness about her. A void, something missing', her mother, Phoebe recalled.

Short suffered from an acute bronchial condition and she moved around between Florida, Long Beach, Los Angeles and Chicago – in search of a better climate for her health.

She once worked as a clerk at the U.S. Army's Camp Cooke in Lompoc, California, a small town north of Santa Barbara and won a 'Cutie of the Week' contest.

Her former boss said 'she was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen – and the most shy'.

She suddenly left the camp after being assaulted by a sergeant at the Army base.

She had been arrested in September 1943 for underage drinking with soldiers in a Santa Barbara restaurant.

The fingerprints filed by the Santa Barbara police were what identified her body.

Her mug shot showed a girl with raven-black hair with 'a look that went straight through you. Nobody had expected her to be so sullenly beautiful', writes Eatwell.

While awaiting trial at the time, the local policewoman, Mary Unkefer, took her into her home.



'She had the blackest hair I ever saw. I noticed that she was a very nice girl and was most neat about her person and clothes'.

She had a rose tattooed on her upper left leg and Unkefer recalled that loved to sit with it showing.

Short was released on probation by juvenile court at the time and Unkefer put her on a bus back to Medford with $10 from the Santa Barbara Neighborhood House for food and cokes on the six-day ride home.

Short stayed in the East for two years and then headed down to Miami Beach where she worked as a waitress and hooked up with an Army Air Force officer. They were to be married but his plane crashed over India.