Cold Case #7, The Black Dahlia

Paige Duke, Co/ Copy Editor

22-year-old Elizabeth Short was known as the Black Dahlia. She got the nickname from a newspaper after she got murdered. It was a wordplay on the 1946 film, The Blue Dahlia, and the pendant she wore when she was found dead. She was a young actor and traveled often in her life. She returned home to Los Angeles after traveling and six days later she was found dead. 

TW: GROSS. A local resident was walking with her three-year-old daughter and happened upon someone she thought to be a mannequin. Little did she know, she found an aspiring actress who was severed into two pieces, drained of blood, tortured, and face slashed from ear to ear. She was dead for 10 hours before and had cuts on her whole body which were more than likely made post mortem. Short was split at the waist and her intestines were removed from the top and were tucked underneath her bottom half. She most likely died from repeated hits to her face from the attacker. 

For the rest of 1947, over 50 men and women went to the police claiming to be the killer, but none of them turn out. A couple of years earlier there were a few unsolved murders similar to short’s. Police called them the Cleveland torso murders, and they believe the same person killed Elizabeth Short. There were notes left, pictured above, but this still remains to be one of the most famous cold cases of all time, and it remains unsolved 75 years later.