Biography:
Elizabeth Short was born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts USA. She was raised in Medford, Massachusetts, by her mother, Phoebe Mae, after her father, Cleo Short, abandoned her and her four sisters in October 1930.
Troubled by asthma, Elizabeth spent summers in Medford and winters in Florida. At the age of 19, she went to Vallejo, California, to live with her father. The two moved to Los Angeles in early 1943. Elizabeth left almost immediately after arriving due to an argument with her father, getting a job in the post exchange at Camp Cooke (now Vandenberg Air Force Base), near Lompoc. She moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested on September 23, 1943, for underage drinking and was sent back to Medford by juvenile authorities. In the few years following, she resided in various cities in Florida, with occasional trips back to Massachusetts, earning money mostly as a waitress.
In Florida, Short met Major Matthew M. Gordon Jr., who was part of the 2nd Air Commandos and training for deployment in the China Burma India theater of operations. Short told friends that Gordon wrote a letter from India proposing marriage while recovering from an airplane crash he suffered while trying to rescue a downed flier. (He was, according to his obituary in the Pueblo, Colorado newspaper, awarded a Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, the Air Medal with 15 oak leaf clusters, and Purple Heart). She accepted his proposal, but he died in a crash on August 10, 1945, before he could return to the U.S. to marry her. Later this story was embellished to say that they were married and had a child who had died. Although Gordon's friends in the air commandos confirm that Gordon and Short were engaged, his family subsequently denied any connection after Short's murder.
Short returned to Southern California in July 1946 to see an old boyfriend she met in Florida during the war, Lt. Gordon Fickling, who was stationed in Long Beach. For the six months prior to her death, she remained in Southern California, mainly in the Los Angeles area. During this time, she lived in at least a dozen hotels, apartment buildings, rooming houses, and private homes, never staying anywhere for more than a few weeks.
Death:
Short was last seen alive on the evening of January 9, 1947, in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel at 5th and Olive Streets in Downtown Los Angeles.
On January 15, 1947, Short's mutilated body, severed at the waist, was discovered in a vacant lot in the 3800 block of South Norton Avenue in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles by a woman who had her young child in a stroller. [1] The murder was never solved.
Elizabeth Short was laid to rest in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. She was interred there, rather than in a cemetery in Medford, because her oldest sister lived in nearby Berkeley and because she loved California, according to her mother.
Suspects:
The list of detailed suspects is entirely to long to list here. [See blog for the detailed list of suspects.]
*This page was made out of respect for Elizabeth Short. Do NOT post pictures in my comments of her in death. They will be deleted.*
Scroll Through For Pictures:
Severed:
Black Dahlia Avenger:
The Black Dahlia Files:
Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer:
The Black Dahlia:
Angel In Black:
Death In Paradise:
Childhood Shadows:
Reporters:
L.A.P.D.'s Rogue Cops:
True Confessions:
Visits From The Afterlife:
Elizabeth Short. For having suffered what I cannot even imagine.