The Black Dahlia (1947): The Bisection Murder of Elizabeth Short.

What happened to Elizabeth Short, in a paragraph.

At approximately 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, January 15, 1947, Betty Bersinger was walking her young daughter along South Norton Avenue between 39th Street and Coliseum Street in the Leimert Park district of southwest Los Angeles when she noticed a pale shape in the weeds of a vacant residential lot at 3925 South Norton. Approaching, she recognized it as a human body and ran to a neighbor's house to telephone the police. Detective Sergeant Harry Hansen and Detective Sergeant Finis Brown of LAPD Homicide arrived shortly thereafter. The body was that of a young woman, lying supine and naked, bisected cleanly at the waist between the second and third lumbar vertebrae, with the upper and lower halves separated by approximately ten inches. The body had been washed clean of blood; no blood was present on or near the body in any quantity, and the autopsy would confirm that the killing and disarticulation had been performed elsewhere and the body transported to the lot. The mouth had been slashed from corner to corner on both sides, producing a "Glasgow smile" or "Chelsea grin" disfigurement. The body was posed: hands raised above the head, elbows bent, legs spread, the disarticulated lower half oriented in the same direction as the upper. There was no purse, no identification, no clothing on or near the body. Fingerprints taken at the scene were transmitted via the LA Times by an SoundPhoto wire to the FBI's Identification Division in Washington, which matched them within approximately one hour to records held there: Elizabeth Short, age 22, of Medford, Massachusetts, fingerprinted in 1943 in connection with a brief Santa Barbara wartime employment at Camp Cooke. Short had been seen alive by named witnesses at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on the evening of January 9, 1947, six days before the body was found. Between her departure from the Biltmore at approximately 10:00 p.m. on January 9 and the morning of January 15, her movements are not established by any witness whose statement has been independently confirmed. The Los Angeles Police Department's investigation in the first weeks of the case ran to thousands of pages, included confessions from at least 60 individuals subsequently determined to be false, and produced a list of named persons of interest that has been expanded by subsequent generations of investigators — both LAPD and private — without producing an arrest that has resulted in a charge. The case has been continuously open since January 15, 1947.

The documented record.

Elizabeth Short's biography

Elizabeth Short was born July 29, 1924 in Hyde Park, Boston, the third of five daughters of Cleo Alvin Short and Phoebe Mae Sawyer Short. Verified Her childhood was disrupted by her father's 1930 staged disappearance (he abandoned the family during the Depression and was presumed dead until 1942, when he wrote to Phoebe from California). Short suffered chronic respiratory illness through her teens; she was sent to Florida for winters and never finished high school. In 1942, at age 18, she moved to Vallejo, California to live briefly with her father, then took a civilian position at Camp Cooke (later Vandenberg AFB) near Lompoc. She was arrested in Santa Barbara in September 1943 for underage drinking, fingerprinted, and returned to her mother in Massachusetts. From 1944 onward she moved between Florida, Massachusetts, and Southern California, supporting herself through waitressing and unsteady cash arrangements [1][2].

Short arrived in Los Angeles for what would be the final period of her life in July 1946, initially staying with friends and at boarding houses in Hollywood. Her aspiration, according to friends interviewed in the first month of the investigation, was to "be in pictures," though no acting work or screen tests have been confirmed in the documentary record. In late 1946 she moved between several residences, including a five-week stay at the Chancellor Apartments at 1842 North Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood (a women's-only boarding house run by Juanita Ringo) and shorter periods elsewhere. She left the Chancellor in early December 1946 and traveled to San Diego, where she stayed with the Mark Manley family in Pacific Beach from December 8, 1946 through January 8, 1947 [2][3]. Verified

The last days

On the morning of January 9, 1947, Robert "Red" Manley, a 25-year-old hardware salesman not related to Short's Pacific Beach hosts, drove Short from San Diego to Los Angeles. Verified Manley would later become a primary suspect; he was investigated, polygraphed, cleared, and released. According to Manley's statements (his account being the only direct testimony of the final hours), the two checked into a motel briefly, then drove to downtown Los Angeles. He left Short at the Biltmore Hotel on Olive Street in the late afternoon of January 9. She told him she was meeting her sister, who was visiting from Boston. (Her sister Virginia was not in Los Angeles.) Multiple Biltmore staff — the bell captain, two clerks, and two bartenders — later identified Short as having been in the lobby and at the bar between approximately 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. on January 9. She was last definitively seen leaving the Biltmore through the Olive Street exit at approximately 10:00 p.m. [3][4].

From 10:00 p.m. on January 9 to 10:00 a.m. on January 15, no movement of Short has been independently confirmed. Numerous witnesses have placed her at various Hollywood and downtown locations in this six-day window, but none of the sightings has survived investigative scrutiny, and the LAPD's working assumption from approximately three weeks into the investigation has been that Short was held captive somewhere during some portion of this period [4].

The body and the autopsy

The autopsy was performed at 10:00 a.m. on January 16, 1947 by Los Angeles County Chief Autopsy Surgeon Dr. Frederick Newbarr, with the formal report dated January 17, 1947. Verified Newbarr's findings:

• The body had been bisected between the second and third lumbar vertebrae through what Newbarr characterized as a "very precise" hemicorporectomy — a surgical procedure performed in trauma medicine and morticians' practice on intact cadavers. The bisection was clean and lacked the hesitation marks consistent with an inexperienced operator.
• The body had been completely drained of blood and washed.
• Cause of death: hemorrhagic shock and concussion of the brain, secondary to extensive blunt-force trauma to the face and head; multiple lacerations including the bilateral mouth-corner extensions (the "Glasgow smile"); ligature marks at the wrists, ankles, and neck consistent with restraint; and severe lacerations and contusions throughout. Newbarr's professional opinion was that Short had been alive for at least some portion of the torture, and that the bisection had been performed post-mortem.
• Stomach contents: feces, indicating Short had been forced to consume them. No alcohol detected in the blood. No drug residues identified by the limited toxicology available in 1947.

Newbarr's overall assessment, recorded in the report's narrative section, was that the bisection had been performed by someone with anatomical training or experience — not necessarily a physician, but at minimum a person familiar with the procedure of hemicorporectomy. This single observation has been central to almost every subsequent suspect theory in the case [5][6].

The "Black Dahlia" name

The nickname "Black Dahlia" appears in print in the Los Angeles Examiner and the Herald-Express in the days following the body's identification. Verified Multiple competing accounts of the name's origin have been offered. The most consistent: in the summer of 1946 Short and several friends had reportedly visited a Long Beach drugstore that nicknamed her "the Black Dahlia" in punning reference to the 1946 film The Blue Dahlia (with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake) and her habit of dressing in black. A drugstore proprietor named Arnold Landers later confirmed this story to the LAPD. Whether the nickname was in general use before the murder or was applied principally by newspaper writers after the fact remains disputed; what is not disputed is that it had stuck in print within 48 hours of the body's identification and has remained the case's standard name [7].

The "killer" communications

On January 21, 1947 — six days after the body's discovery — the Los Angeles Examiner received a package by mail. Verified It contained Elizabeth Short's birth certificate, her social security card, a Greyhound baggage check, an address book belonging to local nightclub owner Mark Hansen (with several pages removed), and several other personal effects. The package and its contents had been washed in gasoline (apparently to remove fingerprints). The enclosed note, composed of pasted newsprint letters in the manner of a ransom note, read: "Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers. Here is Dahlia's belongings. Letter to follow." A subsequent letter, mailed a few days later, promised the killer would turn himself in but did not follow through. A third communication arrived several weeks later. The communications were investigated for handwriting (in the cases where original writing was used) and fingerprints (no clean prints recovered). Whether the communications were genuine, hoaxed, or some mix has remained contested; the inclusion of Short's actual identification documents argues strongly for genuine origin [8][9].

The early LAPD investigation

The LAPD's initial investigation, under Captain Jack Donahoe of Homicide with Sergeants Hansen and Brown as principal investigators, ran with extraordinary resources for the period. Verified Approximately 750 investigators (including LAPD, sheriff's deputies, and FBI personnel) were involved at the peak; the case file accumulated approximately 2,000 pages of statements in the first two months. Approximately 60 individuals confessed and were eliminated. The investigation pursued multiple major suspect threads, including Robert "Red" Manley (cleared by polygraph and alibi), Mark Hansen (the nightclub owner whose address book was in the mailed package; cleared), and a series of medical and dental students at USC, UCLA, and the College of Medical Evangelists at Loma Linda. By summer 1947 the case had cooled without producing a sustainable charge [10].

The principal suspects.

The Black Dahlia case has accumulated a list of named suspects across the past 79 years that has grown to several dozen. The following are the figures most frequently named in serious historiographic discussion. None has been formally charged.

George Hill Hodel, M.D.

Dr. George Hodel (1907–1999) was a Los Angeles physician who ran a VD clinic at 7661 Melrose Avenue in the 1940s and lived at the John Sowden House (the Lloyd Wright-designed Mayan-revival residence at 5121 Franklin Avenue). Claimed He was a person of interest in the LAPD's original 1949–1950 reinvestigation of the case; LAPD installed listening devices in the Sowden House from February to March 1950, recording conversations subsequently transcribed in 113 pages now held in the LADA case file. The transcripts include a statement attributed to Hodel that has been variously read as either a confession or a sarcastic remark, depending on context: "Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead." A separate transcribed statement: "Realize there was nothing I could do, put a pillow over her head and cover her with a blanket. Get a taxi. Expired 12:59. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary." (The secretary Hodel referred to had died in 1945 under circumstances that were not subsequently re-opened.) Hodel left for the Philippines in 1950 and lived abroad for the remainder of his life. The 1950 LAPD case never developed into a charge [11][12].

Hodel's son Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD homicide detective himself, has since 1999 conducted a sustained investigation into his father's possible role in the case. Steve Hodel's three books (Black Dahlia Avenger, 2003; Most Evil, 2009; Black Dahlia Avenger II, 2014) argue that his father was the killer of Elizabeth Short and a number of other Los Angeles-area women between approximately 1945 and 1949. Steve Hodel's case rests on the 1950 LAPD transcripts, on handwriting comparison between his father and the killer's mailed communications, on a photograph found among his father's effects after his 1999 death that Steve Hodel has identified as Short (the identification disputed by others), and on a circumstantial map of his father's medical training (Hodel had medical training and surgical skill, including in postmortem procedures). LAPD has neither confirmed nor refuted Steve Hodel's identification; the LAPD's current position is that George Hodel remains a person of interest but is one of approximately twenty-five whose identification cannot be confirmed [11][12][13].

Dr. Walter Bayley

Dr. Walter Bayley (1880–1948) was a Los Angeles surgeon who lived one block from the Norton Avenue lot where the body was found. Claimed The historian and journalist Larry Harnisch, writing principally in the Los Angeles Times from 1997 onward, has developed a circumstantial case for Bayley. The case rests on (1) Bayley's surgical training and capability for a precise hemicorporectomy, (2) his residence one block from the body deposition site, (3) his medical relationship with Short's older sister Virginia, whose husband had been Bayley's friend, (4) Bayley's reportedly deteriorating mental state in late 1946 (he was diagnosed with the encephalopathy that would kill him in early 1948), and (5) the suggestion that the deposition site was selected because it was within walking distance of Bayley's residence and was vacant land Bayley would have known. The case is circumstantial and no documentary evidence places Bayley in contact with Short. Bayley died of natural causes in January 1948, one year after the murder [14].

Leslie Dillon

Leslie Dillon (1922–?) was a former bellboy and aspiring writer who in late 1948 wrote to LAPD psychiatrist Dr. J. Paul De River from Florida claiming to know details of the murder. Claimed De River, working independently of the main investigation, conducted an extended correspondence and then an in-person interview that he interpreted as a confession. Dillon was arrested in January 1949 and held for six days before LAPD ultimately released him for lack of evidence and cleared him formally. De River's handling of the matter became professionally controversial and contributed to his departure from LAPD employment. Whether Dillon was a person with actual knowledge of the case (and what knowledge) or a fantasist remains disputed in the literature [4][15].

Mark Hansen

Mark Hansen was a Los Angeles nightclub owner (Florentine Gardens) and theatrical agent whose address book was one of the items mailed to the Examiner on January 21, 1947. Claimed Short had been one of Hansen's casual acquaintances in late 1946 and had stayed briefly at his house with several other young women. He was investigated, gave statements, and was cleared by alibi. The inclusion of his address book in the mailed package remains unexplained; the LAPD's working interpretation was that the killer had taken the book from Short's possession and mailed it as a taunt [4].

Norman Chandler

Norman Chandler (1899–1973), publisher of the Los Angeles Times, has been named in some later accounts as a person Short associated with in the months before her death. Disputed The naming of Chandler is contested on the documentary record: the principal source is a series of accounts in the late 1990s by Janice Knowlton, whose claims to be a witness to the murder have not been independently corroborated and which are now generally considered unreliable. Chandler's role in the case, if any, does not survive scrutiny of the primary record [16].

Robert "Red" Manley

Manley was the hardware salesman who drove Short from San Diego to the Biltmore on January 9 and was the last person to see her alive (publicly). Unverified Manley submitted to a polygraph examination, was cleared, and was released. He suffered a mental breakdown in subsequent years, was institutionalized at Patton State Hospital in 1954, and died in 1986. Whether the breakdown was related to the case or to other personal factors has been debated; the LAPD's position has been that Manley was cleared by his polygraph and alibi and has been excluded as a suspect since early 1947 [4][10].

The unanswered questions.

The six-day gap

The period from approximately 10:00 p.m. on January 9 to approximately 10:00 a.m. on January 15 — the 132 hours during which Short was either held captive, dead, or being moved — is not established by any confirmed witness. Unverified Numerous sightings have been claimed across the years, including reports of Short at the Crown Grill (downtown LA), at various Hollywood bars, and at a private residence with a man matching no specific description; none of these has been investigatively confirmed. The location at which Short was held, tortured, killed, and disarticulated is the case's most consequential unknown. It would have required a private, plumbed, drainable space large enough for the post-mortem procedure and for cleaning of the body afterward. Several candidate locations have been proposed over the decades, including the Sowden House (per Steve Hodel) and various downtown medical offices; none has been confirmed by physical evidence [13].

The exact medical training of the killer

Newbarr's autopsy report characterizes the bisection as "very precise" and notes the lack of hesitation marks. Disputed Whether this implies physician-level training, mortician-level training, butcher or anatomy-student experience, or simply careful preparation by an intelligent layperson with anatomical reference texts has been argued by subsequent forensic reviewers across the spectrum. The post-1970s consensus has narrowed to: the bisection was performed by someone with some training. The "physician" framing of much of the popular literature is an extrapolation, not the autopsy's actual finding [5][6].

The chain of suspect investigations

The LAPD case file has been examined by independent researchers across the decades and there are persistent reports of gaps in the document trail: missing pages, suspect interviews that are referenced in summary but not in transcript, and physical evidence (notably the cement bag in which the body was reportedly transported) that has not been preserved. Disputed Whether the gaps reflect ordinary archival decay across 79 years or selective destruction has been alleged at various points (including by Steve Hodel) but has not been formally established [13].

Connection to other LA-area unsolved murders

Several other Los Angeles-area unsolved murders of young women from approximately 1943–1949 have been linked to the Black Dahlia case in various accounts. Disputed The most-discussed connections are to the murders of Georgette Bauerdorf (1944), Jeanne French ("the Red Lipstick Murder," February 1947, one month after Short), and Gladys Kern (February 1948). The pattern that links them is the violence and the disposal of the bodies in public locations; the LAPD has officially never connected the cases as a series, though the original 1947 investigation considered the possibility. Comparison to the contemporaneous Cleveland Torso Murders (1934–1938 in Ohio) has been made in true-crime literature on the strength of the bisection technique; the comparison remains a literary observation rather than an evidentiary connection [17].

The case's administrative status

The LAPD's current position is that the case is "open and active" — meaning that homicide detectives have continuing authority to investigate and pursue leads, but no investigator is assigned exclusively. Verified The case file is maintained in the LADA Cold Case Unit's archive; portions of it have been released under California Public Records Act requests across the decades. As of 2026, the case has been administratively open for 79 years and is among the oldest unresolved active files in the LAPD's records [10].

Primary material.

• The LAPD Homicide case file (Short, Elizabeth), held at the LAPD Records Division and partially at the Los Angeles District Attorney's Cold Case Unit. The file remains administratively open and a portion of it is restricted; substantial portions have been released through CPRA requests.
• The Los Angeles County Coroner's autopsy file, including Newbarr's January 17, 1947 report and the photographic record of the deposition scene and the autopsy.
• The FBI Identification Division retained the fingerprint match record (which produced the identification within hours of the body's discovery); the FBI's case file on Short is in the National Archives and has been partially released under FOIA.
• The Los Angeles Examiner and Herald-Express newspaper morgues (now in part at the Hearst Newspaper archives at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley) hold the original photographic and reportorial record of the case as it broke.
• The LADA 1950 surveillance transcripts of the Sowden House (George Hodel's residence) — 113 pages, declassified in 2003 by petition of Steve Hodel.
• The Los Angeles Public Library Black Dahlia clipping file holds approximately 4,000 articles spanning the case from 1947 to the present.

Key individual documents include: Newbarr's January 17, 1947 autopsy report; the Bersinger discovery statement; Red Manley's January 19, 1947 polygraph examination record; the January 21, 1947 Examiner package contents inventory; the 1950 Sowden House transcripts (selected pages); and the LADA's 2003 acknowledgment that the Hodel transcripts were genuine.

The sequence.

1. July 29, 1924 Elizabeth Short born in Hyde Park, Boston.
2. September 1943 Short arrested in Santa Barbara for underage drinking; fingerprinted by Santa Barbara PD; record forwarded to FBI Identification Division.
3. July 1946 Short arrives in Los Angeles for what would be the final period of her life.
4. November–December 1946 Short resides at the Chancellor Apartments, Hollywood, then in Pacific Beach, San Diego with the Mark Manley family.
5. January 9, 1947 Robert "Red" Manley drives Short from San Diego to Los Angeles; she is last definitively seen leaving the Biltmore Hotel at approximately 10:00 p.m.
6. January 15, 1947 Body discovered at 3925 South Norton Avenue, Leimert Park, by Betty Bersinger at approximately 10:00 a.m. Body identified within hours via FBI fingerprint match.
7. January 16–17, 1947 Autopsy performed by Dr. Frederick Newbarr.
8. January 21, 1947 The Los Angeles Examiner receives a package containing Short's identification documents and the Mark Hansen address book.
9. January–June 1947 Initial LAPD investigation; approximately 750 personnel involved; ~60 false confessions eliminated.
10. February 1947 Murder of Jeanne French ("Red Lipstick Murder"), one month after Short.
11. January 1949 Leslie Dillon arrested in connection with Dr. J. Paul De River's separate investigation; held six days and released.
12. February–March 1950 LADA installs listening devices at the Sowden House (5121 Franklin Avenue, residence of Dr. George Hodel). 113 pages of transcripts produced.
13. 1950 George Hodel leaves the United States for the Philippines.
14. January 1948 Dr. Walter Bayley dies of encephalopathy.
15. 1999 George Hodel dies; his son Steve Hodel begins re-investigation.
16. 2003 Steve Hodel publishes Black Dahlia Avenger; LADA acknowledges the 1950 Sowden House transcripts.
17. 2017—2024 Continued private and journalistic investigation; case remains administratively open.

Cases on this archive that connect.

The Zodiac Killer (File) — the other most-studied unsolved American serial-killer case. Both are administratively open, both have been investigated by multiple jurisdictions across decades, and both have produced suspect lists in the thousands without a confirmed identification.

Planned: the Cleveland Torso Murders (1934–1938); the Lipstick Murders (Chicago, 1945–1946); the Bauerdorf, French, and Kern Los Angeles cases as a possible series; the JonBenét Ramsey case.

Full bibliography.

1. Short, Phoebe Mae Sawyer, statements and family correspondence regarding Elizabeth Short, 1947–1948. Held in LAPD file copies.
2. Gilmore, John, Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder, Amok Books, 1994 (revised editions 2001, 2006). The first detailed historical synthesis after the 1947 newspaper accounts.
3. Manley, Robert "Red," statement to LAPD, January 19, 1947, included in the principal case file.
4. Wolfe, Donald H., The Black Dahlia Files: The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles, Regan, 2005.
5. Newbarr, Frederick D., M.D., autopsy report on Elizabeth Short, Los Angeles County Coroner, January 17, 1947.
6. Los Angeles County Coroner's case file (Short), original photographic record, partial release.
7. Landers, Arnold, statement on the "Black Dahlia" nickname to LAPD investigators, February 1947.
8. The January 21, 1947 Los Angeles Examiner package contents inventory, retained in the LAPD case file.
9. Los Angeles Examiner and Herald-Express, contemporary news coverage, January–June 1947. Hearst Newspaper archives, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.
10. Hansen, Harry, LAPD Homicide Division, retrospective interview given to the Los Angeles Times, 1971.
11. Los Angeles District Attorney, Sowden House surveillance transcripts (Hodel), February–March 1950. Released 2003 following Steve Hodel petition.
12. Hodel, Steve, Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder, Arcade, 2003.
13. Hodel, Steve, Most Evil: Avenger, Zodiac, and the Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hill Hodel, Dutton, 2009.
14. Harnisch, Larry, "A Slaying Cloaked in Mystery and Myths," Los Angeles Times, January 6, 1997 (and subsequent columns).
15. De River, J. Paul, M.D., correspondence with Leslie Dillon and related case notes, 1948–1949. Partial release through LAPD file.
16. Knowlton, Janice, and Newton, Michael, Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer, Pocket Books, 1995. Of historiographic interest only; the Knowlton claims have not been independently corroborated.
17. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Identification Division, file on Elizabeth Short. National Archives, partial release under FOIA.