The killing of Elizabeth Short

Elizabeth Short was a 22-year-old American woman whose body was found on the morning of January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles, California. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 29, 1924, she spent her early life in New England and Florida before relocating to California, where her father lived. In the months before her death she lived mostly in the Los Angeles area and worked at times as a waitress. She is commonly described as an aspiring actress, though she had no known acting credits during her time in the city.

Short was last seen on January 9, 1947, when a man she had been dating dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Her whereabouts during the following days are not established. Her body, found nude and severed at the waist, had been washed and posed; medical examiners determined she had died several hours before discovery. An autopsy conducted on January 16, 1947, by the Los Angeles County coroner attributed her death to hemorrhaging from lacerations to her face and shock from blows to the head. She was identified through fingerprint records held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from a 1943 arrest.

The press soon referred to Short as the "Black Dahlia," a nickname whose precise origin is disputed among later writers. Coverage of the case was extensive and often sensationalized. Several accounts published at the time, including claims that Short had been tortured before her death, were later contradicted by investigators, who allowed some inaccurate reports to circulate in order to withhold details of the actual cause of death from the public.

The Los Angeles Police Department mounted a large investigation, with hundreds of officers from the LAPD and other agencies involved in its initial stages. Investigators produced more than 150 suspects and received numerous confessions, most of which were judged false; several false confessors were charged with obstruction of justice. Letters and packages, some containing Short's personal belongings, were sent to Los Angeles newspapers, but none were conclusively tied to a suspect. By the spring of 1947 the case had gone cold with few new leads. In September 1949, a Los Angeles County grand jury convened to examine the police department's record of unsolved homicides, including Short's; further inquiry into her movements produced no resolution.

No one has ever been arrested, charged, or convicted in connection with the killing. In the decades since, more than 500 people are reported to have confessed, and numerous books and articles have advanced competing theories about the identity of the perpetrator, none of which has been substantiated. The case is frequently described as one of the most famous unsolved murders in United States history and one of the oldest unsolved cases in Los Angeles County. It remains open.