‘I honestly did believe that I would be well here in the West,’ Elizabeth Short wrote on December 13, 1946, in an unmailed letter to one of her many love interests.
‘Time has proved differently to me.’
Attracted to the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, the 22-year-old from suburban Boston had big dreams of becoming a movie star and of meeting the love of her life.
Instead, she was broke, hungry, dejected, often homeless and spent most days trying to make ends meet, and rooming with her latest acquaintance or date.
Little did Short know that she would soon have the fame and stardom so desperately longed for, that her name and face would still be the focus of headlines 80 years later – but for all the wrong reasons.
Hers was a story that would wind up more shocking and notorious than any script to come out of Tinseltown.
On January 15, 1947, a month after writing that letter, Short was found murdered in Los Angeles’s Leimert Park neighborhood, her body mutilated in a way not even the darkest of horror films could envision.
The killer had severed her body clean in two above the waist and posed her torso on the grass with arms raised above her head, her lower body staged beneath, with legs spread. Chunks of flesh had been gouged from her left thigh and breasts, a four-inch gash sliced from her naval to lower abdomen where a criss-cross pattern had been slashed into her skin, and a grotesque smile carved from the corners of her mouth upwards into her cheeks.
Elizabeth Short, 22, is pictured outside John Marshall High School in Los Angeles. She had moved from Massachusetts to Hollywood in search of stardom
On January 15, 1947, Short was found murdered in Los Angeles’s Leimert Park neighborhood. Investigators are seen on the scene
Due to its horror and brutality, Short’s murder captivated the public’s attention, mystified law enforcement, became fodder for the press and shone a spotlight on the dark side of Hollywood.
She became known as the Black Dahlia – a nickname friends had given because of her startling raven hair and affinity for sheer black dresses.
The killer was never caught, making the crime one of the most infamous cold cases in American history.
A new investigation, exclusively revealed by the Daily Mail, has now concluded that she was slain by a violent, possessive lover who went on to carry out a string of other murders – many targeting young couples like he and Short once were.
In a bombshell theory, military veteran Marvin Margolis, who was cited as a suspect in the LA grand jury investigation into Short’s murder and changed his name to Marvin Merrill soon after her death, has been identified by investigative consultant and founder of Cold Case Consultants of America Alex Baber as the perpetrator of both the Black Dahlia killing and the infamous Zodiac slayings.
The Zodiac terrorized California around two decades after Short’s murder, killing at least five confirmed victims and wounding two others across four known attacks in 1968 and 1969. He taunted police and the media, sending twisted letters that boasted about his depraved acts along with complex ciphers masking even more warped messages.
Short, Baber’s investigation concludes, might not have been the suspect’s last victim but she may have been his first.
It was a tragic end to the life of a young woman who had moved to the West Coast seeking fortune and attention only to die a brutal and lonely death.
Short’s body had been sliced cleanly in two above the waist, chunks of flesh cut out of her body and a grotesque smile carved from the corners of her mouth into her cheeks
A film adaptation of the short story The Most Dangerous Game was screening at The Marcal Theater the week of the Black Dahlia murder, an advert shows. It is believed that Elizabeth Short went to see it
As Margorie Graham, a friend and former roommate, described Short: ‘Betty had an inferiority complex and wanted to become a movie star to prove to her family that she could make good.’
Her brief life was a state of constant flux, with no support or steady home, moving from place to place.
And Short’s final days were spent in terror – seemingly aware of the impending danger but helpless to save herself from her haunting fate.
Father’s fake suicide plot
It was the desire to connect with her absent father that first brought Short to the West Coast.
Born July 29, 1924, in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, Short – known to friends as Beth – was one of five daughters raised by Cleo and Phoebe Short in Medford north-west of Boston.
When she was six, the family suffered its first headline-grabbing tragedy.
Cleo walked out of the family home one day in October 1930 with $200 in cash and vanished. His car was later found abandoned in a parking lot by the Charles River, local media reports from the time said.
For more than a decade, he was assumed dead by suicide.
Then, in 1942, Short and her mother saw him alive and well around Medford, according to LA grand jury records.
After that, she sought a relationship with her father and went to live with him in Vallejo, California.
The relationship was strained and the reunion doomed.
In January 1943, Short went to the Camp Cooke military base to work as a clerk before moving back to Medford that fall.
Cleo seemingly wanted nothing to do with his daughter. Four years later, when approached by police and informed of her horrific death, his response quoted in a newspaper was cold: ‘I want nothing to do with this… In 1943, I told her to go her way, I’d go mine.’
Chasing stardom and doomed romances
This troubled relationship with her father would pave the way for Short’s unlucky love life and transient way of living.
She moved around several places including Atlanta, Miami, Chicago and Long Beach, crashing in hotels, with friends, acquaintances and lovers she met along the way.
In the summer of 1946, the bright lights and promise of Hollywood beckoned.
There, she was described in newspaper articles as a movie extra, a waitress and a young woman ‘who lived to see and be seen’ around the Hollywood nightlife hotspots.
According to Graham, who lived with Short in Hollywood for six weeks, she ‘went out with a different man nearly every night’ and always had her sights set on a new one.
‘On practically every date she had, she acted like a 16-year-old on her first date,’ she told the Boston Traveler in January 1947.
‘She could never make up her mind who she was in love with. Practically every man she went out with was for the moment “the man”.’
Marvin Margolis is seen in a high school yearbook photo (left) and a photo obtained and enhanced by Baber (right). Baber’s solution to the Z13 cipher reveals the name Marvin Merrill. This was an alias for Marvin Margolis, a man who was a prime suspect in the Black Dahlia murder
The killer of the Black Dahlia began corresponding with the media – sending this package containing her belongings
Among the most damning pieces of evidence is one of the final sketches Merrill produced, depicting a naked woman named ‘ELIZABETH’
There was one particular man who had appeared to be a more serious love interest than most.
It was 1944 when Short met Major Matt Gordon, a pilot with 2nd Air Commando Group, one of the USAAF units that succeeded the Flying Tigers, in Miami and their relationship blossomed through letters while he served overseas.
The correspondence came thick and fast with Gordon telling his mother that she had once sent him 27 letters in 11 days, media reports from the time reveal. Short’s own mother later described Gordon as ‘the only man that I know she loved’ and there was speculation the couple were engaged.
But it would turn out to be a doomed wartime romance.
In August 1945, mere days before Japanese troops surrendered, Gordon died in a plane crash over India.
Short was said to be ‘grief-stricken’ on hearing the news, and lamented that she would ‘never get that wedding band on my finger now.’
At the time of her death, she also appeared to be seeking marriage to another man, Joseph Gordon Fickling, who lived in North Carolina, according to an unmailed letter.
‘I’ll never be settled unless I find my own happiness, as everyone else does, with the man they love,’ she wrote.
Meeting her ‘murderer’ and a tumultuous final months
Her many love interests and acquaintances meant that there was no shortage of potential suspects when Short was found murdered. A staggering 22 men were named as suspects by the grand jury inquest in 1949 to 1950.
But there was one mystery lover who Short lived in fear of, as she had confided to many friends and acquaintances.
That man, according to Baber, was Margolis.
A police officer looks through Elizabeth Short’s belongings which she had left at a bus station before her death
Short is believed to have first crossed paths with Margolis in August 1946 when she was briefly staying in Chicago, his home city, Baber’s investigation reveals.
Based on grand jury records and friends’ accounts, Margolis was her boyfriend and the couple even lived together with Graham and Margolis’s friend Bill Robinson at an apartment along LA’s Hollywood Boulevard from October 10, 1946.
But, just 12 days later, Short fled from the home.
The night before, she had gone on a date to a CBS broadcast with the boyfriend of her onetime roommate Lynn Martin. Based on witness accounts, Baber believes this was the catalyst for frantically leaving Margolis in fear for her safety.
She wouldn’t even return to collect her belongings, seemingly so fearful that she sent a stranger to collect them instead.
In December, the terrified 22-year-old ended up leaving LA and traveling to San Diego.
Short told several friends she feared for her life because of a jealous ex-boyfriend who had threatened her about going out with other men, though Margolis is not specifically named in grand jury records or media reports as such.
Hollywood hairdresser, Alex Constance, told investigators that Short was scared of an unnamed Marine who drove a black sedan – but that she was also too afraid to break up with him. Theater owner Mark Hansen said Short told him she left LA because of an unnamed ‘screwball.’
In San Diego, Short was alone. She was taken in by Vera French and her daughter Dorothy who let her stay with them at their home. The Frenches said she went on many dates and was popular with men but also told them about the mystery man she feared.
After staying with the Frenches for about a month, another disturbing encounter prompted her to flee once again, according to media reports.
On the night of January 7, 1947, two mystery men and a woman showed up at the French home. It was an incident that left Short ‘terribly frightened’ but which she refused to talk about, the Frenches told police.
The motel formerly known as the Zodiac Motel where Baber believes that Elizabeth Short was mutilated by her killer
A photo in a newspaper shows police officers looking at a canvas iceman’s bag marked with a letter ‘Z’ found close to where Short’s body was found. Baber believes this supports his theory about the Zodiac Motel
The next day, Short headed back to LA and, unknowingly, into the clutches of her killer.
Final days of fear
According to the Frenches, Short was picked up by a man – later identified as Army veteran Robert Red Manley – on January 8, 1947.
With Manley, who has long been eyed as a potential suspect in her murder, she appeared to be in an upbeat mood and did not seem afraid.
He told investigators that they drove to LA, stopping at a bus station to check Short’s baggage. He then dropped her at the Biltmore Hotel on January 9.
Along the journey, Manley recalled that she was watching all the cars they passed to see who was inside.
It appeared that Short’s fears about her mystery boyfriend were escalating.
They would reach a peak on January 14, 1947, mere hours before her mutilated body was dumped in a vacant lot.
The night of the murder
Based on various witness accounts, Short’s final hours were filled with terror.
On January 14, police officer Myrl McBride said a woman she later identified as Short approached her at a bus station in downtown LA.
The woman was sobbing hysterically and said she had just bumped into her ‘insanely jealous’, ‘schizophrenic’ ex-Marine boyfriend who had once threatened to kill her if she went out with another man.
McBride said she accompanied the woman to retrieve her purse from the bar where she had seen the boyfriend. They then parted ways, with the woman saying she was waiting for someone to arrive by bus from San Diego that night.
At some point after that, Short is believed to have encountered her killer.
Police believed at the time that she was taken to some sort of ‘torture room’ where her body was mutilated and washed in a bathtub.
Police look at Short’s body, found bisected above the waist and carefully posed in a vacant lot in the Leimert Park area in the early hours of January 15, 1947
An autopsy found her cause of death was hemorrhage and shock due to concussion of the brain and lacerations of the face. The dismemberment came post-mortem.
Based on his investigation – which is the focus of an upcoming website and podcast, Killer in the Code – Baber theorizes that she was probably bundled into a car and driven to a motel where she was murdered and dismembered.
That night, witnesses reported hearing screams and seeing a woman being pinned down in the back of a black sedan as it drove past a bus stop in North Long Beach. Another woman and man were in the front of the car.
A man driving a black sedan had also been seen approaching at least three motels around San Pedro seeking a room with a bathtub.
It is not clear where the man ended up but around 10 miles from those motels was a place called the Zodiac Motel.
After the killer had carried out his horrific dissection of Short’s remains, her body was dumped by a sidewalk, waiting to be discovered by a mother walking with her child the next morning.
Fame after death but a lonely funeral
In death, Short finally received the stardom and attention she so desperately craved, with her murder dominating headlines across the country.
Yet, for all the friends, dates and acquaintances she crossed paths with during her brief adult life, Short’s funeral was a lonely affair.
Only her family turned out to mourn as what was left of the 22-year-old’s body was lowered into a grave at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland on January 25, 1947.
In death, Short finally received the stardom and attention she so desperately craved, with her murder dominating headlines across the country
Short’s family gathered at her funeral in Oakland in January 1947. Family members of victims are still searching for the truth about both cases
Short’s parents and siblings all went to their graves without learning the truth about her final moments – or the identity of her killer.
When Baber recently spoke to a surviving family member just before she passed away, he found she ‘had given up on ever getting answers.’
‘She was grieving so deeply she had come to terms with the fact she would never know what happened to her,’ Baber told the Daily Mail.
‘That’s hard to swallow… to go almost eight decades and not know who did it or why they did it. That’s just overwhelming.’
To the family, she was a daughter, sister, friend and loved one, taken far too young in an unspeakable way.
To the public who couldn’t draw their eyes away from the headlines about the raven-haired victim, she was a cautionary tale.
As her onetime roommate Martin put it: ‘There are a lot of girls in Hollywood who could end up like Beth Short…’
The investigation is also being developed as a premium documentary series by Emmy Award winning producers Melanie Capacia Johnson and Jonathan Reynaga, in collaboration with Baber, through TH Studios
