Crime Corner #4 Elizabeth Short, The Black Dahlia

[b]Disclaimer: I am trying a different style of writing these and my personal opinions might be injected in, I will try keeping them as footnotes or in italics or something. This topic received the most votes second to the Snowtown Murders Make sure to join https://www.bungie.net/en/Clan/Detail/1984407 to vote on the next report, I will make a discord later [/b] It was a Wednesday morning, January 15th of 1947, kids were making their way to school in Las Angeles when Betty Bersinger took a detour during a walk. She found herself in a area of L.A still being developed, she was walking down the footpath beside an empty poorly maintained lot. It was overgrown, fragmented and full of weeds. While walking something caught her attention among the grass, the top half of a mannequin. She brushed this off, unwilling to investigate. It is important to note that she was walking with her daughter who seemed a bit upset by the mannequin. This led Bersinger to call someone to remove the mannequin. As she was walking to a nearby home to get access to a phone she started thinking of something more sinister and decided to call the police to check out the mannequin. When the police arrived at the scene they found the body of Elizabeth Short, drained of blood, a pale white and chopped in half. [i]After looking at the crime scene photos myself I can understand where Bersinger was coming from, the body did look like a mannequin. Up until you see the face. Now I don't know if she saw the face or was in a state of shock but I would've at least called the police sooner and been more alarmed. For those doing their own research I do not recommend looking at the photos, I only stumbled on them after looking for newspapers of the time. [/i] Police arriving at the scene were horrified but quickly got to work, among other mutilations she had cuts from her mouth to her ears, forcing a smile like shape. She also had flesh removed and inserted into her body. The body appeared posed. Around the scene detectives found a bag filled with 'watery blood' and tire tracks. This and the lack of blood around the body led detectives to believing the murder and mutilation was done elsewhere. Aside from the obvious questions detectives were puzzled with why she was dumped beside a footpath, not hidden away. [i]Now to me this seemed a bit obvious, you don't mutilate a body after death to the degree her's was unless you feel like you need to make a point, probably revenge related. The revenge could be directed at all women in general like we saw with [url=https://www.bungie.net/en-US/Forums/Post/226955243]Ted Bundy[/url]. Going off the lack of blood and the method of how the body was drained leads me to think the killer had experience and this was an escalation, explaining the dumping and laziness with hiding the body. The murder happened shortly after world war 2, the killer could've been a vet. This would explain certain experience, it is important to note that nearby medical schools were targeted by detectives following this trail. [/i] When news of the murder hit a friend of Short, Robert Manley came forward claiming that Short seemed distressed 6 days before her murder and shortly before she went missing [i]this doesn't mean she was abducted at that point nobody had the level of connectivity we have now during the 1940's. She was also considered rebellious [/i] Manley was brought in for questioning as a suspect but he passed a lie detector test. [i]This however means nothing, lie detectors have been proven wrong so many times and should not be used in investigations especially when discounting suspects [/i] It was alleged that after her death police received taunting notes, I however can't find anything to back this up. The murder is still unsolved, for further reading go through the sources (all safe for work), there is a police report and police correspondence in a pdf in one of the FBI sites, I can't make out all of it because of how old it was when it was scanned onto a pdf but it is still an interesting read, I apologies for the sudden ending I don't really know how to finish this and can't find much else about the suspects. [b]SOURCES:[/b] [spoiler]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dahlia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KE9MQ9DDC4 http://www.iamnotastalker.com/2013/10/15/the-spot-where-the-black-dahlias-body-was-found/ https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2006/october/dahlia_102006 https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2006/october/lapd-seeking-information-poster-on-elizabeth-short https://vault.fbi.gov/Black%20Dahlia%20%28E%20Short%29%20/Black%20Dahlia%20%28E%20Short%29%20Part%2001%20of%2002/view[/spoiler]