coralstuffandthings: When the body of Elizabeth Short was discovered, Los Angeles seemd to freeze. S
coralstuffandthings: When the body of Elizabeth Short was discovered, Los Angeles seemd to freeze. Short was called the Black Dahlia, a mysterious woman with an unhappy past. Her murder was a celebrity cause that ripped open the dark side of Hollywood in many ways. A woman and her three year old daughter saw what they first thought were the pieces of a mannequin in the ditch. After a moment, the horrified woman realized that what she saw had been a real human body. She pulled her daughter away and ran to telephone the police. Of course by then it was too late for Short. She had been sawed in half at the waist, but the ground was completely clear of blood. This told the detectives that someone had killed her at some other location, drained her blood, and moved her. Whole pieces of her body had been cut away. Her intestines were meticulously stacked under her buttocks. Her legs were spread, and her hands were posed behind her head. More than one authority of the day uneasily noted how provocative the pose was meant to be. The autopsy revealed that she had been tied before she died, though no ropes were ever found. She had been badly beaten before she died. The case received an enormous amount of attention. Just a few weeks later, the killer called the editor of one of the newspapers. The mysterious caller offered to send in pieces of Short, verifying what he had done. Indeed, the next day, the paper received Short’s address book, photographs, and birth certificate, things that had been missing from her home and her person. Over the years, more than fifty people have confessed to the killing of Elizabeth Short. Some others have volunteered famous celebrities of the day and even close relatives. James Ellroy, a famous crime writer, believes that his own mother was killed by the same man who killed Elizabeth Short. Today, the crime goes unsolved, and if Elizabeth Short ever knew her killer, she has taken that knowledge with her to the grave. -- source link