The Black Dahlia: The Murder That Haunted Los Angeles and Was Never Solved
On a cold January morning in 1947, a woman walking with her small child along a quiet residential street on the edge of Los Angeles saw what she first took to be a discarded store mannequin lying in a vacant lot. It was not a mannequin. It was the body of a young woman, and the manner of her death was so deliberate, so theatrical, and so cruel that it seared itself into the memory of the city and the nation, and it has never faded. The victim was a twenty-two-year-old named Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress newly come to the great city of dreams. The press, seizing upon her dark hair and dark clothing and a nickname she had reportedly been given, christened her the Black Dahlia, and that name has become synonymous with one of the most famous unsolved murders in American history. Despite one of the largest investigations the city had ever mounted, despite decades of theories and confessions and accusations, the killer of the Black Dahlia was never found. The case remains open to thi...