Black Dahlia Murder
Elizabeth Short
The victim, later gaining the press nickname Black Dahlia, was Elizabeth Short.
She was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1924, she was the third of five daughters of Cleo Short and Phoebe Mae Sawyer. Her father built miniature golf courses until the 1929 stock market crash, in which he lost much of the family’s assets. In 1930, he parked his car on a bridge and vanished, leading some to believe he had committed suicide.
Short’s mother moved the family to a small apartment in Medford and found work as a bookkeeper. It was not until later that Short would discover her father was alive and living in California. Troubled by asthma and bronchitis, Short was sent to live for the winter in Miami, Florida, at the age of 16. She spent the next three years living there during the cold months and in Medford the remainder of the year. At age 19, Short travelled to Vallejo, California, to live with her father, who was working nearby at Mare Island Naval Shipyard on San Francisco Bay. They moved to Los Angeles in early 1943, but an altercation resulted in her leaving there and finding work in the post exchange at Camp Cooke, near Lompoc, California.
Short next moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested on September 23, 1943, for underage drinking. Following her arrest, she was sent back to Medford by the juvenile authorities in Santa Barbara. Short then returned to Florida to live, with occasional visits to Massachusetts.
In Florida, Short met Major Matthew Michael Gordon, Jr. Short told friends that Gordon wrote her a letter from India proposing marriage while he was recovering from injuries sustained from an airplane crash. She accepted his proposal, but Gordon died in a second airplane crash on August 10, 1945, before he could return to the United States. She later exaggerated this story, saying that they were married and had a child who died.
Elizabeth Short returned to Los Angeles in July 1946 to visit Army Air Force Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Fickling, an old boyfriend she had met in Florida during the war. For the six months prior to her death, Short remained in southern California, mainly in the Los Angeles area. She was looking for chance to enter the show business and tried to link up with film producers.
There are many rumours surrounding her life (that she was dating several men), especially since there are no records of where she was or what she did between January 9 and January 14 (often referred as "missing week"). Police investigation led to few men that she knew, her friend in California, but no one knew what happened during that week before her body was found.
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