EXCLUSIVE: Notorious cold case of the Black Dahlia where aspiring starlet was cut in half, gruesomely mutilated and had 'Joker smile' carved into her face is finally solved as killer is 'revealed' despite 'cover-up by LAPD'
By Caroline Howe
Daily Mail
October 25, 2017
The notorious Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles in 1947 is arguably the most gruesome of America's cold cases ever.
The body of aspiring starlet Elizabeth Short was found beside a sidewalk in a vacant lot in a southern Los Angeles suburb and shocked even the most hardened newspaper crime reporters.
The woman had been strung up by the wrists, her face and head severely beaten and a satanic smile cut into her face with deep cuts extending out from the corners of her mouth.
The 22-year-old had been viciously mutilated, with the trunk of her body completely severed, the anal opening had abrasions from the insertion of a foreign object and her stomach was filled with feces, among many other horrors.
Short's murder has remained unsolved for decades, although there was a break through in late 1948 when the killer was seduced out of hiding and admitted to knowing the two things about the crime that were never revealed to the public.
But the case was never solved by the LAPD because of a cover-up by the Homicide Division and lingering fears for years of reprisal by the department.
Now, 70 years later, after an exhaustive investigation author and legal sleuth Piu Eatwell exposes why the truth never out in her new book,Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder.
Short's murder captivated the nation, as her injuries 'suggested necrophilia and a fetishism with knives'.
'They were the marks of a sadistic lust murderer ...and it was speculated that the killer either had medical training or experience with handling corpses in a mortuary --- and a manifest fascination with death', writes Eatwell, a historical researcher and legal sleuth.
The young woman's body had multiple deep lacerations to the face and blows to the head that suggested they were delivered while the victim was still alive and possibly what killed her.
The trunk of her body had been completely severed by an incision cutting through the intestine exposing the organs of the abdomen and lacerating the intestines and both kidneys.
There was a gaping cut extending down from the naval to just above the pubis, multiple lacerations in the skin of the hip and an irregular piece of flesh had been removed from in front of her left thigh.
A square of tissue had been cut out from the right breast. The anal opening had multiple abrasions from the insertion of a foreign object.
Her stomach was filled with feces and the corpse completely cleaned and drained of blood.
As the case rose in prominence and no legitimate suspect on hand, detectives dived into the depths of the victim's life in order to track down her illusive killer.
Elizabeth Short, called 'Beth', was the third of five girls. She was raised by her mother, Phoebe, in Medford, Massachusetts, a working class Boston suburb. Her father feigned suicide only to resurface years later.
'She wanted to be someone famous. She had stars in her eyes, dreams rather than plans. I think of her as a very beautiful but very private person, with a sadness about her. A void, something missing', her mother, Phoebe recalled.
Short suffered from an acute bronchial condition and she moved around between Florida, Long Beach, Los Angeles and Chicago – in search of a better climate for her health.
She once worked as a clerk at the U.S. Army's Camp Cooke in Lompoc, California, a small town north of Santa Barbara and won a 'Cutie of the Week' contest.
Her former boss said 'she was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen – and the most shy'.
She suddenly left the camp after being assaulted by a sergeant at the Army base.
She had been arrested in September 1943 for underage drinking with soldiers in a Santa Barbara restaurant.
The fingerprints filed by the Santa Barbara police were what identified her body.
Her mug shot showed a girl with raven-black hair with 'a look that went straight through you. Nobody had expected her to be so sullenly beautiful', writes Eatwell.
While awaiting trial at the time, the local policewoman, Mary Unkefer, took her into her home.
'She had the blackest hair I ever saw. I noticed that she was a very nice girl and was most neat about her person and clothes'.
She had a rose tattooed on her upper left leg and Unkefer recalled that loved to sit with it showing.
Short was released on probation by juvenile court at the time and Unkefer put her on a bus back to Medford with $10 from the Santa Barbara Neighborhood House for food and cokes on the six-day ride home.
Short stayed in the East for two years and then headed down to Miami Beach where she worked as a waitress and hooked up with an Army Air Force officer. They were to be married but his plane crashed over India.
She dated other men and then headed back to Los Angeles. Although Short was no prostitute, she wasn't innocent.
'This victim knew at least 50 men at the time of her death and at least 25 men had been seen with her in the 60 days preceding her death', according to a police report.
Short teased men, got rides with them, places to sleep, clothes and money but then refused to have sexual intercourse, claiming she was either a virgin, engaged or married.
She connected with no less than four men a day.
'And so, the public image of the murder victim began to change from that of a violated beauty into a "man crazy delinquent, a temptress prowling the rain-soaked streets of an urban film noir"'.
The movie industry in Southern California promised the golden life and stimulated a wave of women to seek their fame and fortune in the movies and Tinseltown.
More revelations about the dead girl came from a pharmacist in Long Beach where she had drifted in the summer of 1946.
She came frequently and wore a two-piece outfit revealing her bare midriff – and 'black lacy things'.
'She was popular with the men who came in here and they got to calling her The Black Dahlia'.
The name was also perhaps the brainchild of a newspaper reporter at a time when homicides were given floral murder tags. Wherever the moniker came from, it sparked a national obsession.
The reality of the young girl's life was that she was in search of a husband, home and happiness.
She got involved with the wrong person when she met 55-year-old Mark Hansen from Denmark who became a wealthy and powerful Hollywood figure.
He owned more than a dozen movie theaters and was a part owner of the Florentine Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard that put on a girly shows that even attracted the aging movie star, Errol Flynn.
A secret gambling casino was hidden within the Florentine Gardens.
'Hansen worked in a shadowy hinterland between legitimate business and the fringes of the LA underworld'.
He operated his own B-version of the casting couch and 'owned two rooming houses where would-be Hollywood hopefuls were groomed for semi-nude careers both on and off the dance floor'.
Back at his house behind the Gardens, he kept a harem of his favorite girls.
In October 1946, Short showed up on Hansen's doorstep with her friend Ann Toth who lived in Mark's home.
Hansen noticed her and came on to her but Short claimed she was a virgin. He finally had enough of her teasing after 10 days and ordered the two to move on.
He was also tired of Short's endless stream of boyfriends.
Hansen couldn't deny he knew the girl. His name was on the cover of Short's address book.
Short's body was discovered one morning in the wet morning grass in a vacant lot in a south LA neighborhood – and a room in the Aster Motel in downtown Los Angeles was found to be covered in blood and human feces. It was Short's death chamber.
Rumors circulated that Short was a female pervert and had indulged in 'unnatural intimacies' with other women. There were unsubstantiated sightings at gay bars.
Folksinger Woody Guthrie, once indicted by New York authorities for sending obscene letters in the mail, was considered a suspect in the ensuing hysteria and possibly capable of such a heinous crime a suspect in the ensuing hysteria until it was discovered he wasn't in LA at the time of the murder.
Over 500 crackpots came forward confessing to the murder in exchange for a free meal and a place to stay for the night.
The big break through in the case came in late 1948 when the chief police psychiatrist who was employed by the LAPD, Dr. Joseph Paul De River, seduced the killer out of hiding and he subtly revealed himself to the doctor.
The murderer came calling after Dr. De River planted a magazine article in a pulp crime magazine, True Detective, in an attempt to lure the killer out of hiding.
'It was his view that the pathology of the Dahlia killer included a deep-seated compulsion to publicize and claim recognition for his act'.
The confessors would continue to come and the police would talk to them but 'the type of mind that conceived the Elizabeth Short murder will some day have to boast about it', according to Dr. De River.
In October 1948, a letter arrived for Dr. De River with a return address of a post office box in Miami Beach.
The letter was signed 'Jack Sand' and stated he had associated with someone who fitted the 'pattern' of the 'infamous one'.
This 'Jack Sand' said he had associated with the killer for two months in San Francisco and the man had a motive for the killing and 'knew the characters involved'.
Jack Sand was also offering his help in tracking the suspect down.
Meetings were set up between Dr. De River and 'Jack Sand' in Vegas but the location was changed when they couldn't get rooms to a health resort in the San Jacinto Mountains far north of Banning, California, near Palm Springs.
Two other cops, members of the Gangster Squad, accompanied De River, one acting as the driver while Sand talked to De River.
'Jack Sand' was in fact Leslie Dillon, the true killer. He was connected to a prostitution network and a pimp and errand boy for Mark Hansen.
When Hansen got tired of Short's boyfriends and tired of her pestering him for money, he told his errand boy, Dillon to get rid of her – not realizing the man was a dangerous and murderous psychopath.
Dillon knew two things about the murder that had never been revealed to the public: a rose tattoo had been cut out of Short's thigh by the killer and inserted in her vagina. Her pubic hair had also been cut off and pushed up inside her rectum.
Dillon had worked briefly in a mortuary and knew how to make a cut in the leg of a corpse to bleed it out and how to insert a tube to drain the blood.
The man talked about this other individual 'Jeff Connors' he claimed to be the likely suspect for the murder.
Dillon suggested that Short's body had been cut in half so the killer could see how far his penis penetrated into the woman's body.
He inferred that this person named Jeff could have committed the crime in a hotel, a ground level motel, the doctor corrected him, so that he could get the body outside without carrying it downstairs.
De River asked Dillon to take off his shirt. He agreed and had a very muscular build.
The doctor then asked Dillon if he objected to dropping his trousers. Dillon hesitated briefly and then down they came, revealing a 'juvenile penis ... typical of an eight-year-old boy'.
In one of the letters to the doctor, Dillon had said that Short's killer 'had been mocked or threatened exposure by her to his friends'.
The author questions whether Short could have mocked Dillon and exposed him for having such a small penis. Dillon also stated he liked girls with 'big mouths'.
He didn't drink but he did do drugs – bennies or Benzedrine 'for pep'.
'He also told one of the gangster squad with the doctor about how he would grind up the phenobarbital and 'put it on ice cream or food' and give it to women 'as it knocks them out'.
De River knew he had his man.
'And yet, despite the compelling evidence the officers of the Gangster Squad were uncovering, they never seemed to make headway with their investigation. The path was always blocked', writes Eatwell.
Summer of 1949, 'the LAPD became embroiled in the biggest corruption scandal of its history: a scandal that was to change the police department, and the course of the Dahlia case, forever'.
It was a massive cover-up by the Homicide Division that had links to Hansen, according to Eatwell.
The LAPD was rotten to the core and 'let a dangerous psychopath on the loose'.
In an interview with homicide, Dillon told them he wouldn't say a word if they let him go. But if they arrest him, he would talk and 'he knew where the bodies were buried in terms of organized crime. And then he was gone'.
All the key protagonists of the Dahlia case are dead. Most of the documents are gone or locked away in the vaults of the LAPD.
In the aftermath of the 1949 grand jury investigation, there had clearly been a willful campaign to suppress the facts of the case and to discredit and harass key witness such as Dr. De River', writes the author.
And there was an unwillingness by more recent writers and researchers to let the facts tell the story.
'The facts – buried in newspapers reports and court documents are more compelling that any of the alternate facts'.
Dillon was the centerpiece of the Dahlia drama and evil personified in a native boy from the Southern plains. The legal sleuth and author rests her case.
EDITOR’S NOTE: To my generation, the Black Dahlia murder was a really big case.
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