Past Issues :: 2006 September 1 :: Feature Story
The Black Dahlia — twice victimized
She was down on her luck, without a job, homeless. Her name was Elizabeth “Bette” Short.
She became known as an infamous victim, the Black Dahlia. Twenty-two
years old, an aspiring actress, from Medford, Mass., Elizabeth met her death
at the hands of a fiendish killer. The date was January 15, 1947. A post-war
Los Angeles trying to return to normalcy was shocked at the discovery
of her mutilated body, cut in two and placed in an empty lot near the sidewalk.
The first newspaper reports were sympathetic until it was learned that at the time of her death Short had no permanent address. The last people she had stayed with in Pacific Beach, California had to ask her to leave. She had been with them a month, and the apartment was quite small. Elizabeth caught a ride back to Los Angeles with a salesman who dropped her off at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, he said, around 7 p.m. on Jan. 9.
She stayed in the hotel lobby for about three hours. Witnesses noticed Elizabeth Short walking back and forth to the phone booths. At 10 p.m. she left the hotel and was not seen again until the discovery of her body six days later.
Within days, sensational front-page “Black Dahlia” stories transfixed Los Angeles, continuing for weeks. As details of Elizabeth’s transient and financial-troubled last months emerged, the tone of the news reports changed, and Elizabeth Short became one of the most maligned victims in the history of this country. Last seen wearing a tailored black suit, frilly white blouse and carrying a camel’s hair coat, the newspaper description was soon changed to a “tight skirt and sheer blouse.” Her every movement became scrutinized, colored in a negative light. At first portrayed as the victim of the “werewolf killer” within days Elizabeth Short became described as the “Black Dahlia who prowled Hollywood Boulevard.” Elizabeth Short was called the Black Dahlia by her Long Beach friends, the newspapers said, because of her black clothes and because of her “dark, mysterious ways.” The once beautiful and soft-spoken young woman with dark hair, blue-green eyes and a flawless complexion was being turned into a pariah.
Since arriving in Los Angeles, spring of 1946, Elizabeth Short had been floating, trying to get her bearings, living by her own ethics in a tough, post-war world. Like most women of her era she was adept at the dating game—the man inviting the woman out, usually for dinner followed by a movie or dancing. The man would try to get as far as he could sexually, while the woman gave as little as possible, maybe not even a kiss.
Elizabeth Short wrote weekly letters home to her mother, saying how well she was doing and concealing the truth of her circumstances. Elizabeth stayed a few nights here with friends, a few nights there. She was often broke and borrowed money to pay rent. A couple of male friends sometimes would bring her along on dinner dates to make sure that she ate. For a few weeks Elizabeth roomed with Ann Toth at the home of Mark Hansen, the owner of the Florentine Gardens, a popular nightclub. “She didn't drink, she didn't smoke,” Ann told the police, “because after all, living with her, I knew, and she always came in at a decent hour, eleven o'clock, or around there.”
But statements by Elizabeth’s friends who described Elizabeth as a good person, polite and soft-spoken, were ignored. Fueled by Elizabeth’s address book, the newspapers censured her lifestyle, implying sinister behavior. Ann Toth was incensed at the comments about Elizabeth Short, telling reporters “we ought to look on the good side of people.”
Elizabeth Short was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. She became a person twice victimized—first brutally murdered by a vicious killer, then trashed by a callous press. The police at the time were equally judgmental. An internal report by Frank B. Jemison, investigator for the Grand Jury stated: “This victim knew at least fifty men at the time of her death and at least twenty-five men had seen her within the sixty-day period preceding her death. She was not a prostitute. She was known as a teaser of men. She would ride with them, chisel a place to sleep, clothes and money, but she would then refuse to have sexual intercourse by telling them she was a virgin or that she was engaged or married.”
Harry Hansen, the original detective in charge of the case, commented, “There was no record of any solicitation, offerings or resorting or prostitution in any way, shape, or form. She was no pushover. She’d bait and take all she could get and give out nothing. She did not put out.”
Over fifty people confessed to the crime. As the years passed and the murder remained unsolved, the portrayal of Elizabeth Short became more outrageous. Crime anthologists cited her as the classic example of a woman who “enticed” her assailant, a woman “who wanted to be killed,” one whose lifestyle “made her ideal victim material.” People magazine referred to Elizabeth as “The perfect murder victim…the person no one would miss.”
Fiction writers saw Elizabeth Short as fair game, describing Elizabeth as a “whore,” depicting her as an actress in porno films. Elizabeth has fared no better with true crime writers, who have tended to ignore facts that conflict with their theories, and usually portrayed Elizabeth as a prostitute, or as a suspected killer’s mistress.
A movie, The Black Dahlia, being released about this time is billed as “true crime meets urban legend”—a film, the publicity states, in which “Hilary Swank’s character has an unsavory connection to the victim.”
Elizabeth’s sister once said to me, “Mama does believe that someday the truth will come out and Bette will be exonerated.” The statement took me aback. Why did her mother think that Elizabeth, a victim, needed to be exonerated? Why, to this day, is Elizabeth Short still being reviled by writers and people who did not know her? What was she guilty of? Could it be that in the eyes of those who would judge and exploit her, Elizabeth Short’s sin was being homeless and not having a job at the time of her murder.
I don’t intend to see the movie. The film has nothing to do with the real person, the real Elizabeth Short. It would be too difficult to watch a friend’s tragic death being exploited, her personality being destroyed. I am afraid of the deep anger that would be aroused. Isn’t it time to stop the trashing of Elizabeth Short and give this innocent victim the respect she is due?