She was born on 29 July, 1924, to Cleo and Phoebe Short. They lived in Massachusetts, in the Boston area, until the stock market crash of 1929, which resulted in Cleo's disappearance. He had built miniature golf courses, but in 1929, lost his job. He abandoned his car on a bridge in 1930, and was believed to have committed suicide. Later, Betty would catch up with him.
In 1930, Betty's mother, Phoebe, relocated her five daughters to an apartment in Medford, Massachusetts, where Phoebe worked as a bookkeeper.
Due to Betty's asthma and a bout of bronchitis, she went to stay with relatives in Florida for the winter of 1940. She continued to spend the colder months there and the warmer ones at home in Medford for three years, until she was nineteen. Then, she moved to Vallejo, California to live with her dad, who was alive and well, working at the Mare Island Shipyard in the San Francisco Bay.
In later 1943, the two moved to Los Angeles, but fighting resulted in Betty's move to Camp Cooke (present-day Vandenberg Air Force Base), near Lompoc California, where she worked at the post exchange. She was arrested 23 September 1943 for underage drinking and the juvenile authorities sent her back to Medford, Massachusetts. She didn't stay in Medford, however, but went back to Florida and visited Medford occasionally.
In Florida, she met Major Matthew Michael Gordon, Jr., a decorated U.S. Army Air Corps officer who was assigned to 2nd Air Commando Group and was training for deployment to China Burma India Theatre of Operations. She told her friends that Gordon had proposed marriage via a letter while he was recovering from airplane crash injuries in India. She accepted his proposal, but unfortunately, he perished in an airplane crash on 10 August, 1943, before he could come home.
In July of 1946, Betty returned to Los Angeles to visit Army Air Corps Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Fickling, an old boyfriend she had met in Florida during the war. Fickling was stationed at NARB, Long Beach.
For six months prior to her death, Betty remained in southern California, mostly in the Los Angeles area. She lived in temporary homes, like hotels, apartments, and rooming houses, never staying more than two weeks.
Her body was found in the Leimant Park area of LA on 15 January, 1947, by local resident Betty Bersinger, who was taking her child for a walk. It was in a vacant lot on the west side of South Norton Avenue, between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street. Her body was severely mutilated, severed at the waist and drained of blood. Her face was slashed in a Glasgow grin, cut from the corners of her mouth toward her ears. Her body had been washed, cleaned, and "posed."
The autopsy stated that she was 5'5" tall and 115 pounds (In life she probably weighed more, the lower weight is likely due to her body being drained of blood.), had light blue eyes, brown hair, and badly decayed teeth. There were marks on her ankles and wrists from rope, suggesting that she was either tied up, spread-eagled or hung upside down. Evidence shows she could have been forced to eat feces.
Her skull had not been fractured, but there was bruising on the front and right side of her scalp with a small amount of bleeding, which points to blows to the head. She had a concussion.
The cause of death was blood loss from the lacerations on her face and from shock due to concussion of the brain.
On 23 January, 1947, the killer called the editor of the Los Angeles Examiner, worried that the newspaper coverage of the murder was tapering off. He offered to mail personal belongings of Betty's to the Examiner editor. The next day, a packet arrived at the newspaper office, containing Betty's birth certificate, business cards, photographs, names written on pieces of paper, and an address book with the name Mark Hansen on the cover. Hansen, who was the last person to see Betty alive on 9 January, became the prime suspect.
The killer wrote more letters to the Examiner, calling himself "The Black Dahlia Avenger."
On 25 January Betty's purse and one shoe were found in a trash bin near Norton Avenue.
More than 50 men and women have confessed to the murder. There were originally around 200 suspects, but it has been narrowed down. Every time an article, television program, movie, or book about Betty Short comes out, the LAPD gets more "tips" and confessions to the murder. None have showed promising.
Elizabeth Short was buried in Mountain View Cemetery, in Oakland, California. Her murder remains unsolved.
NOTE: This was written because I am very disturbed by Betty Short's story, and I thought that writing it out might help to get some of the horrible images this case conjures up out of my head. In consideration of the reader, I decided not to post any of the various gory pictures of her body on this blog. If you wish to see those, then just go to any search engine, type in her name, click "images" and they will likely be the first to appear. But, as a forewarning, once you see this images, they may not easily get out of your mind. They aren't very gentle to the eyes, or the spirit.
I am not trying to be mushy or anything, but this is just a crime that truly chills me. The thought of someone being tortured as this girl was is very upsetting. Haunting. To think that things like this happen every day, all over the world is just.... troubling, for lack of a better word. Deeply troubling.
References: Wikipedia, E! channel 20 Most Horrifying Celebrity Murders
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