The Black Dahlia (Case of Elizabeth Short)

The morning of January 15th, 1947, was a crucial one. A mother was taking her three year-old child for a walk in a Los Angles neighborhood, It was there where she stumbled upon a gruesome sight, a body of a young naked woman who was sliced clean in half at the waist. 

The body was only a few feet away from the sidewalk and was posed in a way that the mother thought the body was a mannequin at a first glance. Despite the many cuts on the body, there was not one drop of blood at or even near the scene.

The investigation into the young woman mysterious death, was led by the Los Angles Police Department. The FBI was asked to help with the investigation and identified the body, rather quickly, just 56 minutes, in fact, after getting fingerprints via "Sound-photo" 

The young woman was identified as 22-year-old Hollywood, upcoming actress whose name was Elizabeth   Short, but is rather known as the "Black Dahlia" by the news and press for her sheer black clothing. 

Short's prints had appeared twice already in the FBI's massive collection of finger prints. First, because she applied for a job as a clerk at the commissary of the Amy's Camp Cooke in California in January 1943; second, because she had been arrested by the Santa Barbara police for underage drinking seven months later. 

In support of the Los Angles police, the FBI ran records. check on potential suspects in the murder and conceited interviews across the nation. Based on suspicions by the police and the public, that the murderer may have had skills in dissection because the body was so cleanly cut, with no blood. 

The Bureau also searched for a match to fingerprints on an anonymous letter that may have been sent to the police by the killer, however, the prints were not in the FBI files. 

75 years later, we still ask the question, what happened to the Black Dahlia and why.