Trying to decipher the "Black Dahlia" case is like trying to put a puzzle together that's
missing half of it's more important pieces. We can see the greys, but not the colors.
There have been several noteworthy attempts in recent years to explain the mystery and finger
Elizabeth Short's killer. But as valiant as these efforts might have been, one must take into
account the fact that there continues to exist within
a locked file cabinet
at the Los
Angeles Police Department a multitude of unseen documents. And until those pages are made public,
it is impossible to say one way or the other (at least with any degree of certainty), who
may have been responsible for her death.
Not since the butchering of prostitute Mary Kelly in 1888 by Jack the Ripper, has the world seen such primal savagery demostrated upon another human being. With the Ripper's victims, the murders seem to have been fueled by a somewhat moralistic mentality. The women he butchered were prostitutes, indicating he may have had a problem having to do more with their "profession" than with the fact that they were female. The Dahlia murder however had all the earmarks of a lust killing--someone who hated women because they were female. In both cases the victims had been "punished" for something which they had either done or what their killer felt they represented. In both cases there had been a trigger--something that had put the wheels into motion. The Ripper was a long fuse, starting slow--murdering with minor damage done to the body in the beginning, and ending with the climax that was Mary Kelly.
In the case of Elizabeth Short, the "Black Dahlia," the beginning was also the end. Other
murders followed, but police could not link them. None of the others had involved severing.
The cutting in two of Short's body however, was more than likely done to efficiently
transport the remains to the location where it was eventually deposited...and not a part of her killer's
sadistic torture session specifically.
Kicking off this new rash of theories was a segment on the popular
Unsolved Mysteries series hosted by former television "Eliot Ness" Robert Stack. During
the December 1992 telecast, a writer alleged that the real
Eliot Ness may have known the killer of Elizabeth Short.
This stemming from Ness' involvement with a gruesome series of decapitation
murders in Ohio that took place in the 1930s--and the suggestion by a detective who had once
worked on the Cleveland case, that the Torso Slayer and Dahlia Killer may have been one and the same.
To the city of Cleveland, the Torso Slayer (also known by the monikers, "The Headhunter" and
"Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run") was the equivalent to what the "Black Dahlia" murder was going to be to Los Angeles.
Because of his reputation, Ness was assigned to direct the investigation of police corruption
in Cleveland after the disbanding of The Untouchables in Chicago. As the
youngest Director of Public Safety (a post he held for 6 years) he forced over two hundred resignations
and sent dozens of high ranking officers to state prison. When he finally ran for mayor in 1947 he lost,
rumor being that too many people remembered his failure with solving the Torso Slayer case. In all
fairness to those who consider the marginal similarities between the Torso Slayer and the "Black Dahlia"
as legitimate (albeit circumstantial) they are simply fooling themselves.
The Torso Slayer was never known
for the kind of ghastly damage that was done to Elizabeth Short.
In the case of the Cleveland killer, he did away with his victims swiftly--all decapitated (his "signature"). Body
parts would show up periodically in the lower class Kingbury Run section of town, but not one of the
recovered body parts displayed any signs that a struggle had taken place. No brusing. No scratches.
No skin under the fingernails. All leading some to speculate as to whether the murderer was somekind
of a hypnotist. The necrophilia angle was supported
by the finding that some of the parts had been "kept for a while" and showed signs of
chemical preservatives having been applied to two
of the victims, a third showing signs of having been refrigerated. Of the twelve known victims (by most accounts it goes much higher)
, only three of the group were ever identified. Officially the killings ended in late 1938. A few months later,
just before Christmas, the Cleveland police chief recieved a letter from Los Angeles from a person
claiming to be the Slayer. The letter contained nothing new to suggest that this was in fact
the butcher himself. But in it, the author alleged to have "started his experiments" again and that the
head of his victim could be found "buried off Century Boulevard, between Western and Crenshaw". Working
with the Cleveland PD, LAPD searched the gully mentioned in the letter and found nothing. Because Elizabeth
Short's body was discovered 9 years later a few miles north of that spot (one block off Crenshaw)
there was a passing consideration given to the notion that there "might be
something to it". There wasn't and isn't. Ness believed he knew who the Torso Slayer was,
but without supporting evidence to convict he opted instead to take the name of that person with him to his grave when he died
in 1957 of a heart attack at age 54.
In 1994, author John Gilmore introduced Jack Anderson Wilson--a drifter who perished in a suspicious hotel room fire in downtown Los Angeles on February 4, 1982 before LAPD could question him. The theory was intriguing on the surface. At it's underbelly however, many of the more questionable particulars could never be verified due to the fact that Wilson had died.
The year 1995 introduced another theory. A former Massachusetts woman surfaced in Southern California, claiming that her mind contained "repressed memories" of her own father having been the infamous "Black Dahlia Killer." The Knowlton Theory--as it would come to be known, presented conjecture and speculation based primarily on information obtained from unproved sources. Knowlton's father--George Knowlton, was likewise unavailable for questioning, as he had also died prematurely--in a 1962 car accident. Knowlton's mother was deceased by the time she began her research and could not be questioned either as to what she may or may not have known at the time.
In 1999, former Gilmore writing partner Mary Pacios published her own account in which she claimed famed Hollywood director Orson Welles was responsible. Pacios, a childhood friend of Elizabeth Short, had originally looked towards Jack Anderson Wilson as the likely suspect. She had helped Gilmore uncover many of the key specifics related to Wilson, but changed her views after she and Gilmore parted company in the early 1990s.
One of the more interesting theories popped up around 2001 in the form of a self-published booklet and website which claimed Short's killer was the same man whose clothes were found at Venice Beach in March 1947 --along with a suicide note confessing to the murder (read article) . This theory claimed that the various postcards Los Angeles police had recieved in the mail were actually "encrypted messages" (cryptograms) secretly pointing to the killer's identity (similar to the coded messages San Francisco's Zodiac Killer taunted authorities with in the late 60s). Believing this theory however, paints a portrait of an individual who would have to be regarded as second only to Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis "Professor Moriarty".
Most recently comes Steve Hodel. A former Hollywood homicide detective who has introduced yet
another possible killer--his own father, Dr. George Hodel. Sounding much like a composite of
previously alledged suspects George Knowlton and Dr. Walter Bayley, Steve Hodel claims that the
still-unidentified Short boyfriend "George" (mentioned in various L.A. newspaper accounts of the
time) is actually Dr. George Hodel . Janice Knowlton (in 1995) also claimed that this "George" was
a reference to her father as well...George Knowlton.
Word by Hodel that his father's name appears on an "official Dahlia suspect list" at LAPD sounds
promising, but no photocopy of that document appears in Black Dahlia Avenger to support
that claim. What about his father? Let's question him--OOPS! Sorry. He died in 1999.
Hodel was on the force for some twenty odd years, but never once sought out any information
regarding Short until only after he retired, and access to the files was no longer
allowed--that is, if the ones who have been in charge of the files over the years
would have
ever allowed Hodel to see them in the first place.
Though Hodel claims that he only became aware of his father's possible involvement after
his death in 1999, one wonders how a 23 year veteran of the LAPD--a homicide detective no less,
could be kept "in the dark" over such an extended period of time by an organization of law
enforcement friends without gaining knowledge of any of it?
Was it cluelessness on the part of the
LAPD? A "conspiracy of silence" left over from the department's dark days of the 40s? Was it "coincidence"?
What exactly are we being asked to believe?
While the book is glossy, fancy and thick, it is also
littered with a vast array of inaccurate information, the most obvious being
two "telltale" photographs that
Hodel found in his father's photo album--which he claims are both of Elizabeth Short.
They are NOT. What about Hodel's suggestion that his father was also responsible for the
disappearance of showgirl
Jean Spangler in 1949? Highly unlikely. And if he is wrong about her (without doubt, in my opinion), what of
the other women he claims are likely "Hodel victims" as well?
Boomhower, French, Kern, etc.
Personally, I would say Black Dahlia Avenger has a "few too many holes" to be taken seriously.
If Hodel was hoping to do for the Dahlia case what
Mark Furman's book did for Martha Moxley, he failed. In my opinion, Hodel has come no
closer to solving the Short murder than crime novelist
Patricia Cornwell has with "Case Closed"--her recent non-fiction attempt at solving the
Jack the Ripper murders. Or Arnold R. Brown's
overly embellished 1991 farce, "Lizzie Borden: The Final Chapter." In the end, theories
are just a lot of fancy talk. Until the day LAPD sees fit to release what it knows, the mystery
of the "Black Dahlia" murder will continue.
Falling short of her dream to be famous, it can at least be said Elizabeth is now remembered. On what
would have been her 69th birthday on July 29, 1993, her hometown of Medford, Massachusetts
honored her memory by erecting a monument marker opposite the site where her last Medford home
once stood. Donated by Kyle J. Wood from profits recieved from his 1993 documentary,
Medford Girl: The Black Dahlia Murder, and through the efforts of Medford Historical Society
President, the late Dr. Joseph Valeriani, the monument drew immediate controversy from factions within
the community who felt Short was "not of proper character" to be recognized. Blaming her in effect for
the actions brought on her by her killer. But as quickly as it began, the controversy subsided. For
those few who wanted it taken down, it sits there yet...a symbol to that special but
lonely lady in black.
