THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER AND HAUNTING: Hollywood's Most Famous Unsolved True Crime Case

On January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Short's mutilated body was found severed in half in a vacant Los Angeles lot, launching Hollywood's most infamous unsolved murder case that would forever brand her as "The Black Dahlia." Nearly 80 years later, guests at the Biltmore Hotel still report encountering a desperate woman in a black dress on the sixth floor — the last place Elizabeth Short was seen alive, where her ghost may still be searching for someone to finally solve her brutal murder.

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IN THIS EPISODE: Elizabeth Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles in 1947, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. Her killer has never been found, leaving one of the most infamous deaths in Hollywood history. Who killed the Black Dahlia?
SOURCES AND RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE…
BOOK: “Bloody Hollywood” by Troy Taylor: https://amzn.to/3hkUeVL
“Who Killed the Black Dahlia” by Troy Taylor for the book, Bloody Hollywood: https://amzn.to/3hkUeVL
=====(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.=====Originally aired: July 20, 2020
EPISODE PAGE at WeirdDarkness.com (includes list of sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BlackDahlia
ABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
The lobby of Hollywood's Builtmore Hotel is crowded. On a
warm and sunny afternoon in early spring. A man crosses
the room and taps on the call key for an elevator.
As the door opens, he steps inside and presses the
number eight button for his floor. He glances down as
he does so, and he sees that the number six
is already illuminated. With a quick glance to his left,

(00:30):
he realizes he's not alone in the elevator. A dark
haired young woman stands in the corner, and as he
looks at her, she offers a faint smile. The man
smiles back at her and then looks up as the
numerals above the door light up with the passage of
each floor. He glances at the reflection of the woman
in the polished steel of the doors. Even in this

(00:50):
blurred view, she is stunning. Her dark, nearly black hair
is swept back and up in the outdated style of
the nineteen forties, although it is very becoming on her.
Her skin is pale, perhaps looking even more so against
her jet black dress. The shiny material clings to her
every curve. She makes no sound other than the soft

(01:14):
rustle of her dress. Finally, the elevator reaches the sixth floor,
and with a soft chime, the doors slide open. The
man steps aside to let her pass and notices that
she's not moving. She continues to stand in the corner,
seemingly unaware that the lift has reached her floor. He
finally speaks up, and his voice seems to startle the girl.

(01:36):
He says, this is the sixth floor. She steps forward
and moves past him off the elevator. As she does,
the man trembles involuntarily. A wave of chilled, ice cold
air seems to brush past him. As the girl departs,
Goose flesh appears on his arms as he watches the
shapely young woman walk past the doors. Then, just as

(01:58):
she steps out onto the floor, she turns back to
look at the man inside the elevator. She does not speak,
but there is no mistaking the look of urgency in
her eyes. She is begging him for help, the man realizes,
but it's almost too late. The elevator doors have started
to close, cutting off the young woman as she tries
to re enter the elevator. The man frantically pushes the

(02:21):
button that'll open the door again and just before they
close completely. They slowly start to slide open again, but
the girl in black is gone. Confused, he leans out
into the lobby of the sixth floor. He looks quickly
in both directions, but the small lobby and the hallways
in either direction are empty and deserted. Where could she

(02:42):
have gone so quickly? He calls out, but his voice echoes,
and the stillness of the corridor the young woman had vanished,
as if she had never existed at all. Two days later,
the man is browsing in a local bookshop and happens
to pick up a book about true unsought. As he
flips through it, he is startled by a face that

(03:03):
he recognizes. It's the girl from the elevator. He looks
at the photograph and is convinced it is the same
young woman in black, and that he realizes such a
thing is impossible. Scanning through the text, he sees that
the girl died years before. How could she have been
at the Biltmore Hotel just two days ago? How indeed,

(03:27):
could this young woman who was killed in nineteen forty
seven still be lingering at the last place that she
was seen alive? Is she's still looking for help from
the other side. The face that the young man and
many others just like him recognized once belonged to a
beautiful young woman named Elizabeth Short. In death, she would

(03:48):
come to be known by a more colorful nickname, the
Black Dahlia. Her tragic murder would forever leave a mark
on Tinseltown. She came in search of stardom, but only
found it death, becoming lost in another world. That is
the dark side of Hollywood. I'm Darren Marler and this

(04:08):
is Weird Darkness. Welcome weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here
you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,

(04:31):
unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness.
Elizabeth Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles in nineteen
forty seven, her body cut in half and severely mutilated.
Her killer has never been found, leaving one of the
most infamous deaths in Hollywood history. Now bult your doors,

(04:54):
lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with
me into the weird Darkness. On January fifteenth, nineteen forty seven,

(05:30):
a housewife named Betty Bursinger left her home on North
Avenue in the Leemert Park section of Los Angeles, bound
for a shoe repair shop. She took her three year
old daughter with her, and as they walked along the street,
coming up on the corner of Norton and thirty ninth,
they passed several vacant lots that were overgrown with weeds
bursing her couldn't help but feel a little depressed as

(05:51):
she looked out over the deserted area. Development had been
halted here thanks to the war, and the empty lots
had been left looking abandoned and ear. Betty felt slightly disconcerted,
but then shrugged it off, blaming her emotional state on
the gray skies and the cold, dreary morning. As she
walked a little farther along, she caught a glimpse of

(06:12):
something white over in the weeds. She was not surprised.
It wasn't uncommon for people to toss their garbage into
the vacant lot, and this time it looked as though
someone had left a broken department's door mannequin there. The
dummy had been shattered and the two halves lay separated
from one another, with the bottom half lying twisted into
a macabre pose. Who would throw such a thing into

(06:35):
an empty lot. Betty shook her head and walked on,
but then found her glance pulled back to the ghostly
white manniquin. She looked again and then realized that this
was no department store dummy at all. It was the
severed body of a woman with a sharp intake of
breath and a stifled scream. She took her daughter away

(06:56):
from a gruesome sight and ran to a nearby house.
Loving she telephoned the police. The call was answered by
officers Frank Perkins and wil Fitzgerald, who arrived within minutes.
When they found the naked body of a woman who
had been cut in half, they immediately called for assistance.
The dead woman, it was noted, seemed to have been posed.

(07:18):
She was lying on her back, with her arms raised
over her shoulders and her legs spread in an obscene
imitation of seductiveness. Cuts and abrasions covered her body, and
her mouth had been slashed so savagely that her smile
extended grotesquely from ear to ear. There were rope marks
on her wrists, ankles, and neck, and investigators later surmised

(07:40):
that she'd been tied down and tortured. For several days.
Worst of all was the fact that she had been
sliced cleanly in two just above the waist. It was
clear that she had been killed somewhere else and then
dumped in the vacant lot overnight. There was no blood
on her body and none on the ground where she
had been l left. The killer had washed her off

(08:02):
before bringing her to the dump site. The horrible nature
of the case made it a top priority for the LAPD.
Captain John Donahue assigned his senior detectives to the case,
Detective Sergeant Harry Hanson and his partner Phinnis Brown. He
also added Hermann Willis, a bright young cop from the
Metro Division, to help follow up on the leads that

(08:22):
were sure to come in. By the time the detectives
were contacted and could get to the scene, it was
swarming with reporters, photographers, and a crowd of curiosity seekers.
Hanson was furious that bystanders and even careless police personnel
were trampling the crime scene. Evidence was being destroyed. He knew,

(08:43):
and he immediately cleared the scene. Then, while he and
his partners examined the scene, the body of the woman
was taken to the Los Angeles County Morgue. Her fingerprints
were lifted, and with the help of the assistant managing
editor of the Los Angeles Examiner, the prince were sent
to the FBI in Washington using the newspaper's sound photo equipment.

(09:03):
The newspaper man had, of course, asked for information in
exchange for the use of the equipment. Meanwhile, an examination
of the corpse was started at the coroner's office. It
began to detail an incredible and horrifying variety of wounds
to the young woman's body. Although the official cause of
death was hemorrhage and shock due to concussion of the

(09:23):
brain and lacerations of the face, an autopsy revealed multiple
lacerations to the face and head, along with the severing
of the victim's body. It also appeared that the woman
had been sodomized and her sexual organs abused but not penetrated.
There was no sperm present on the body, and most
of the damage appeared to have been done after she

(09:44):
was dead. The coroner also noted that her stomach contents
contained human feces. Even the hardened doctors and detectives were
shocked at the state of the girl's corpse. The doctor
also revealed to detectives Hanson Brown and willis an important
piece of evidence and one that would have a huge
bearing on the case, as more the victims passed was

(10:06):
later revealed. He told the detectives it's impossible to tell
you if she was raped because traces of spermatozoa are
negative and she did not have fully developed genitals. The
area is shallow, indicating that she did not have a
complicated vaginal canal. According to the coroner, the young woman's
vagina was almost childlike and normal sex for her would

(10:27):
have been impossible. This information would have an important impact
on what they would learn about the victim, and Hanson
immediately decided not to make this information public. In fact,
only a few detectives working the case would know about it.
Hanson's decision was the right one, and he must have
known how much newspaper coverage such a bizarre murder would get. Soon, tips, calls,

(10:51):
and false confessions would come pouring into police headquarters. More
than fifty people would eventually confess to the killing. Shortly
after receiving the fingerprints, the FBI had a match for
the Los Angeles detectives. The victim of the brutal murder
was Elizabeth Short, twenty two, who originally came from Massachusetts.

(11:12):
During World War II, she had been a clerk at
Camp Cook in California, which explained why her fingerprints were
on file. Once the detectives had this information, they went
to work finding out who knew Elizabeth Short, believing that
this would lead them to her killer. What they discovered
was a complex maze that led them into the shadow
beside the city in search of a woman called the

(11:35):
Black Dahlia. Like all the other pretty girls before and since,
Elizabeth Short, who preferred the name Beth, came to Hollywood

(11:57):
hoping to make it big in the movie business. She
was smart enough to know that looks weren't everything, and
that to break into films she had to know the
right people, so she spent most of her time trying
to make new acquaintances that she could use to her advantage,
and to make sure that she was in the right
night spots and clubs. Here, she was convinced she would

(12:18):
come to the attention of the important people in the business.
Beth's pretty face got her noticed. She had done some
modeling before coming to Hollywood, and men couldn't keep their
eyes off her. She created a character for herself, dressing
completely in black, which emphasized her pale beauty. In Hollywood,
Beth roomed with a hopeful dancer who introduced her to

(12:39):
Barbara Lee, a well connected actress for Paramount. Lee took
Beth to all of the right places, including the famous
Hollywood Canteen, where Beth always hoped she'd be discovered. Beth
loved to socialize, loved the Hollywood nightlife, and loved to
meet men. Despite the rumors, Beth was never promiscuous and

(13:00):
she did not work as a prostitute. Considering the findings
of the coroner, it isn't likely that sex with men
involved normal penetration. Beautiful, lively, and seductive, Beth was sometimes
referred to as a tease, as her boyfriends never had
any idea that romance could only go so far. One

(13:20):
of the men who befriended Beth was Mark Hanson, a
nightclub and theater owner who knew many important show business people.
He eventually moved her into his house, along with a
number of other young actresses who roomed there and who
entertained guests at Hanson's clubs. On any given day, a
visitor to Hanson's house could find a number of beautiful
actresses and models sutting themselves by the swimming pool. Beth

(13:43):
soon became a part of this group, although her prospects
for film work remained nonexistent. She didn't have much of
an income and only seemed to eat and drink when others,
usually her dates, were buying. She shared rooms with other
people and borrowed money from her friends, constantly never paying
it back. She never seemed to appreciate the hospitality given

(14:05):
to her by others, either, rarely contributing to where she
was living and staying out most of the night and
sleeping all day. She became known as a beautiful freeloader.
Around this same time, the film The Blue Dahlia starring
Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, was released. Some of Beth's
friends started calling her the Black Dahlia thanks to her

(14:27):
dark hair and black lacy clothing, and the nickname stuck.
It fit well with the mysterious and glamorous persona that
Beth had already created. Tragically, it may have also led
to her death. Although she's remembered today as the Black Dahlia,
Elizabeth Short did not start out as a sexy vamp

(14:47):
who haunted the night clubs of Hollywood. She was born
on July twenty ninth, nineteen twenty four, in Hyde Park, Massachusetts.
Her parents, Cleo and Phoebe Short, moved the family to Medford,
miles outside of Boston shortly after Elizabeth was born. Cleo
Short was a man ahead of his time, making a
prosperous living designing and building miniature golf courses. Unfortunately, the

(15:11):
depression caught up with Hive in nineteen twenty nine and
he fell on hard times. Without a second thought, he
abandoned his wife and five daughters and faked his suicide.
His empty car was discovered near a bridge, and the
authorities believed that he had jumped into the river below.
Phoebe was left a file for bankruptcy and to raise
the girls by herself. She worked several jobs, including as

(15:34):
a bookkeeper and a clerk in a bakery shop, but
most of the money came from public assistance. One day,
she received a letter from Cleo, who was now living
in California. He apologized for deserting his family and asked
to come home. Phoebe refused his apology and would not
allow him to come back. Beth, known as Betty to

(15:56):
her family and friends, grew up to be a very
pretty girl, older and acting more sophisticated than she really was.
Everyone who knew her liked her, and although she had
serious problems with asthma, she was considered very bright and lively.
She was also fascinated by the movies, which were her
family's main source of affordable entertainment. She found an escape

(16:19):
at the theater that she couldn't find in the day
to day drudgery of ordinary life. While she was growing up,
Beth remained in touch with her father once she knew
he was actually alive. They wrote letters back and forth,
and when she was older, he offered to have her
come out to California and stay with him until she
was able to find a job. Beth had worked in

(16:39):
restaurants and movie houses in the past, but she knew
that if she went to California, she wanted to be
a star. She packed up and headed out west to
her father. At that time, Cleo was living in Vallejo
and working at the Mare Island Naval Base. Beth hadn't
been staying with her father long before the relationship between
them became strained. Cleo began to launch into tirades about

(17:02):
her laziness, poor housekeeping, and dating habits. Eventually he threw
her out and Beth was left defend for herself. Undaunted,
she went to Camp Cook and applied for a job
as a cashier at the post exchange. It didn't take
long for these servicemen to notice the new cashier, and
she won the title of Camp Cutie of Camp Cook

(17:23):
in a beauty contest. They didn't realize that the sweet,
romantic girl was emotionally vulnerable, though, and desperate to marry
a handsome serviceman, preferably a pilot. She made no secret
of wanting a permanent relationship with one of the men
with whom she constantly flirted. The words soon got around
that Beth was not an easy girl, and pressure for

(17:47):
more than just handholding kept Beth at home most nights.
Several encounters made her uncomfortable at Camp Cook, and she
left to stay with the girlfriend who lived near Santa Barbara.
During this time, Beth had her only run in with
the law. A group of friends that she was with
gott rowdy in a restaurant, and the owners called the police.

(18:07):
Since Beth was under age. She was booked and fingerprinted,
but never charged. A kind policewoman felt sorry for her
and arranged for a trip back to Massachusetts. After spending
some time at home, she came back to California, this
time to Hollywood. At the Hollywood Canteen, Beth met and
fell in love with a pilot named Lieutenant Gordon Fickling.

(18:29):
He was exactly what she was looking for, and she
began making plans to ensnare him in matrimony. Unfortunately, though,
her plans were cut short when Fickling was shipped out
to Europe. Beth took a few modeling jobs, but became
discouraged and went back east. She spent the holidays in
Medford and then went to Miami, where she had relatives

(18:50):
with whom she could live for a while. Beth began
dating servicemen, always with marriage as her goal. She fell
in love again on New Year's Eve nineteen forty five
with a pilot, Major Matt Gordon. A commitment was apparently
made between them after he was sent to India. Beth
wrote to him constantly and Gordon remained in touch with her.

(19:11):
As a pre engagement gift, he gave Beth a gold
wristwatch that was set with diamonds, and spoke about her
and their engagement to family and friends. Best of all,
as far as Beth was concerned, he respected her wishes
about waiting until their honeymoon to consummate their love. They
get married and have a proper honeymoon, he promised her
after he returned from overseas. One has to wonder how

(19:34):
Beth planned to deal with the physical problems that they
would encounter once the relationship turned sexual, but perhaps she
was too caught up in the moment to worry about
it at that time. Beth went back home to Massachusetts
and got a job, dreaming of her October wedding. Her
friends often commented on how happy she was, and after
the war ended in Europe, she became ecstatic about Gordon

(19:58):
returning home. Short time later, she received a telegram from
Gordon's mother. As soon as it arrived, Beth tore the
message open, believing it was about plans for the upcoming wedding. Instead,
Missus Gordon had written received word War Department. Matt killed
in plane crash on way home from India. Our deepest

(20:18):
sympathy is with you. Pray it isn't true. Tragically, it
was true, and Gordon's death left Beth a little unbalanced.
After a period of mourning, during which Beth had told
people that she and Matt had been married and that
their baby had died at birth, she began to pick
up the pieces of her old life and started contacting

(20:38):
her Hollywood friends. One of those friends was former boyfriend
Gordon Fickling, whom Beth saw as a possible replacement for
her dead fiance. They began to write to one another
and then got together briefly in Chicago when Fickling was
in town for a couple of days. Soon Beth was
in love with him again. She agreed to come to
Long Beach and be with him, being excited once again.

(21:02):
A short time later, Beth was back in California. Her
excitement over the new relationship didn't last long. She had
to stay in a hotel that was miles from the
base where Fickling was stationed, and he constantly pressured Beth
for sex. She had no intention of giving herself to
a man except in marriage, she told a friend, and
Fickling had no intention of making such a commitment. She

(21:24):
began dating other men, and when Fickling found out he
ended their relationship. In December nineteen forty six, Beth took
up temporary residence in San Diego with a young woman
named Dorothy French. She was a counter girl at the
Aztec Theater, which stayed open all night, and after an
evening show, she found Beth asleep in one of the seats.

(21:46):
Beth told her that she'd left Hollywood because work was
hard to find due to the actors' strikes that were
going on. Dorothy felt sorry for her and offered her
a place to stay at her mother's home. The invitation
was intended to last for only a five days, but
Beth ended up sleeping on the French's couch for more
than a month. As usual, she did nothing to contribute

(22:08):
to the household, and she continued her late night partying
and dating. One of the men she dated was Robert
red Manly, a salesman from Los Angeles with a pregnant
young wife at home. He admitted being attracted to Beth,
but later claimed that he never slept with her. They
saw each other on and off for a few weeks,
and then Beth asked him for a ride back to Hollywood.

(22:31):
He agreed, and on January eighth picked her up from
the French House and paid for a motel room for her.
That night, they went out together to a couple of
different night spots and returned back to the hotel. He
slept on the bed, while Beth, complaining that she didn't
feel well, slept in a chair. Red had a morning appointment,
but came back to pick her up around noon. She

(22:53):
told him that she was going back home to Boston,
but first she was going to meet her married sister
at the Biltmore Hotel in Hollyad. Manley drove her back
to Los Angeles. He had an appointment at the home
of his employer that evening, so he didn't wait around
for Beth's sister to arrive. Manley said Beth was making
phone calls in the hotel lobby when he saw her last, becoming,

(23:15):
along with the hotel employees, the last person to see
her alive. As far as the police could discover, only
her killer ever saw her. After that. She vanished for
six days from the Biltmore before her body was found
in the empty lot. The investigation into the Black Dahlia's

(23:50):
murder was the highest profile crime in Hollywood of the
nineteen forties. The police were constantly harassed by the newspapers
and the public for results. Hundreds of inspects were questioned
because it was considered a sex crime. The usual suspects
and perverts were rounded up and interrogated. Beth's friends and
acquaintances were questioned as the detectives tried to reconstruct her

(24:12):
final days and hours. Every lead that seemed hopeful ended
up leading nowhere, and the cops were further hampered by
the lunatics whose crazed confessions were still pouring in. As
the investigators traced Beth's activities, they discovered their strongest suspect,
Robert Many. He became the chief target of the investigation.

(24:33):
The LAPD put him through grueling interrogations and even administered
two different polygraph tests, both of which he passed. He
was released a couple of days later, but the strain
on him was so great that he later suffered a
nervous breakdown. While the police worked frantically, Beth's mother made
the trip to Los Angeles to claim her daughter's body.

(24:55):
Her father, who had not seen her since nineteen forty three,
refused to identify her. Sadly, Phoebe Short had learned of
her daughter's death from a newspaper reporter who had called
her using the pretext that Beth would won a beauty
contest and the paper wanted some background information about her.
Once he had gleaned as much information as he could,
he informed her that Beth had actually been murdered. A

(25:19):
few days after Beth's body was found, a mysterious package
appeared at the offices of the Los Angeles Examiner. An
envelope contained a note that had been cut and pasted
from newspaper letters. It read, here is the Dahlia's Belongings
letter to follow. Inside the small package was Beth's Social
Security card, birth certificate, photographs of Beth with various servicemen,

(25:44):
business cards, and claim checks for suitcases that she'd left
the bus depot. Another item was an address book that
belonged to club owner Mark Hanson. The address book had
several pages torn out. The police attempted to lift fingerprints
off the items, but found that all of them had
been washed in gasoline to remove any trace of evidence.

(26:05):
The detectives then began the overwhelming task of tracking down
everyone in the address book, and while Mark Hanson and
a few others were singled out for interrogation, nothing ever
came of it. In addition, the promised letter to follow
never arrived. All of the leads in the Black Dahlia
case came to dead ends, and the investigation fizzled and

(26:26):
then came to a halt. The murder remains unsolved today,
although it's possible that the killer may have actually been
identified by one investigator in the case. The possible killer
first came to the attention of John Saint John, a
respected investigator for the LAPD who eventually took over the
Dahlia case. Saint John had worked many of the city's

(26:49):
most notorious murders and was the basis of the book
in television series Jigsaw John. He'd been in charge of
the Dahlia case for about a year when a confidential
informant came to him with a tape recording that implicated
a suspect in the murder. The suspect had also shown
the informants some photos and personal items that he'd claimed
had belonged to the Black Dahlia. The suspect turned out

(27:13):
to be a tall, thin man with a pronounced limp
who went by the name of Arnold Smith. On the recording,
Smith claimed that a character named Al Morrison was the
violent sexual deviant who had killed and mutilated Beth Short.
Saint John suspected that Arnold Smith and Al Morrison were
actually the same person. The tape was a chilling and

(27:35):
detailed account of how Beth had come to Al Morrison's
Hollywood hotel room because she didn't have anywhere else to stay.
According to Smith, Beth refused both liquor and sex with
Morrison and became upset when he drove her to a
house on East thirty first Street near San Pedro and
Trinity Streets. Here, he assaulted her and prevented her from

(27:55):
escaping by beating her into submission. Even though Beth fought back,
he was able to overwhelm her with his superior strength.
While she was on the floor, Morrison stated that he
planned to sodomize her, and Beth began struggling once again.
This time he hit her so hard that she passed out.
The tape then went on to describe how Morrison had

(28:17):
gotten a Perry knife, a large butcher knife, and some rope,
and had returned to the room to find Beth conscious again.
She tried to scream, but he stuffed her underpants into
her mouth and tied her up. While she was naked
and bound, he began jabbing her over and over again
with the knives, cutting and slashing her. One of the
lacerations even extended from both sides of her mouth and

(28:39):
across her face. By this time, the girl was dead.
Morrison then laid boards across the bathtub and cut Beth
in half with a butcher knife, letting the blood drain
into the tub. He wrapped the two pieces of the
body in a tablecloth and shower curtains and put it
into the trunk of his car. From there, he drove
to the vacant lot and left the body to be found.

(29:01):
Later that morning, Saint John discovered that this same suspect,
al Morrison, had also come to the attention of Detective
Joel Lesnick of the Sheriff's Department for another brutal murder.
Leslick had learned that both al Morrison and Arnold Smith
were aliases of a man named Jack Anderson Wilson, a
tall and lanky alcoholic with a crippled leg and a

(29:23):
record for sex offenses and robbery. Lesnet guessed that as
the years went on, Smith's ego drew him closer, not
to confessing, but wanting to tell someone in a roundabout
way what he got away with, primarily through luck. After
hearing the record of events on the tape recordings, Saint
John became determined to track down Arnold Smith. He checked

(29:45):
into the story of Al Morrison, the alleged violent pervert,
and could find no proof that he existed, thus confirming
the idea that Smith Jack Wilson was actually the killer.
Saint John began to leave no stone unturned in his
pursuit to link Jack Wilson to Elizabeth Short. In the
midst of the investigation, word came that the press had

(30:06):
gotten wind of the fact that a new suspect had
emerged in the Dahlia case. Even after all of the
years at this point the mid nineteen eighties that had passed,
interest in the case was still strong. At this point,
Saint John realized that it was imperative that he moved
quickly before Wilson Smith became spooked. The informant did not
know where Smith lived, but he left messages for him

(30:28):
in a cafe. Several messages were left, but Smith never
returned them, possibly because he found out about the police
surveillance of the restaurant. Finally, the informant received a reply
and a meeting was set with Smith. The police made
plans to pick him up for questioning. Unfortunately, just before
the meeting took place, Smith passed out while smoking in

(30:51):
bed at the Holland Hotel where he was staying. He
was burned to death, and the flames destroyed the photos
and belongings that supposedly belonged to Beth Short and possibly
all hope that her murder would ever be solved. A
short time after Wilson's body was released to the county
for cremation, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office was present

(31:11):
with a file on the matter. The prosecutor's office summed
up the case by saying the case cannot be officially
closed due to the death of the individual considered a suspect.
While the documentation appears to link this individual with the
homicide of Elizabeth Short, his death, however, precludes the opportunity
of an interview to obtain from him the corroboration. Therefore,

(31:32):
any conclusion as to his criminal involvement is circumstantial, and unfortunately,
the suspect cannot be charged or tried due to his demise. However,
despite this inconclusiveness, the circumstantial evidence is of such a
nature that, were this suspect alive, an intense inquiry would
be recommended, and depending upon the outcome of such an inquiry,
it's conceivable that Jack Wilson might have been charged as

(31:54):
a suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Short, also known
as the Black Dahlia. Since the time of her death
in nineteen forty seven, many books have been written and
many theories have been expressed about who killed Elizabeth Short,
But no matter the number of theories, books, and documentaries
on the case, to this date, it remains unsolved. No

(32:16):
one has ever been charged with her murder, and as
far as we know, her death has never been avenged.
She remains an elusive mystery from the dark side of
Hollywood and the even darker side of the American landscape.
Perhaps this is why her ghost still walks at the
Biltmore Hotel and her specter still looms over the shadowy

(32:36):
streets of Hollywood even today. An occasional man who stays
at the Biltmore encounters the spectral image of a woman
in a black dress, sometimes in the lobby, waiting in
the corridors or even riding to the sixth floor on
the elevator. What is she trying to tell us? Are
there still clues to the identity of her killer that

(32:56):
have never been found? Or does the Black Dahlia simply
wish to continue the mystery that was created more than
sixty years ago. For sadly, Beth found the fame and
death that she never managed to achieve in life. Thanks

(33:18):
for listening. If you like the podcast, please share a
link to this episode and recommend Weird Darkness to your friends, family,
and co workers who love the paranormal, horror stories or
true crime like you do. Who Killed the Black Dahlia
was written by Troy Taylor from his book Bloody Hollywood,
which I have linked to in the show notes if
you'd like to see the rest of the book. Weird

(33:39):
Darkness theme by Alibi Music. Weird Darkness as a registered trademark.
And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll
leave you with a little light. First, John, forour verses
eighteen and nineteen, there is no fear in love, but
perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do
with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect

(34:00):
in love. We love because he first loved us. And
a final thought, I began learning long ago that those
who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
Booker T. Washington. I'm Daryn Marler. Thanks for joining me
in the weird darkness.