Post by Graveyardbride on Dec 21, 2017 11:08:55 GMT -5
Black Dahlia, Red Rose: New Theory in Elizabeth Short Murder
The nude corpse of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short was discovered Wednesday, January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The small-town New England girl who had made her way to the West coast with stars in her eyes had achieved fame, but not in the way she had hoped. The only reason the dark-haired beauty, dubbed the “The Black Dahlia,” made the papers was because she had been brutally murdered and horrendously mutilated, her body cut almost in half and her mouth sliced from ear-to-ear, turning her once attractive face into a macabre joker’s smile.
For 70 years, the case of the Black Dahlia has been one of the most intriguing murders in Hollywood, spawning numerous theories, dozens of books and a movie or two. But now, a British lawyer believes she may have finally solved the mystery. For her book Black Dahlia, Red Rose, Pieu Eatwell reviewed letters, news reports and legal documents, including grand jury testimony, and tracked down some of the last living individuals with knowledge of the events leading up to the tragic end of Elizabeth Short’s life. Her efforts led her to the conclusion that an ex-boyfriend who was a former mortician’s assistant did it.
“Elizabeth Short was one of five daughters [who] was brought up effectively [by] a single parent because her father ran away when she was very, very young,” Eatwell says. “She turned up in Hollywood, like so many young girls, dreaming to be a movie star and hoping to be discovered. ... Unfortunately ... she’s famous now for nothing that she did in her life.” Like many young women seeking their “big break,” Short became the prey of a rich businessman who made promises on which he did not deliver. “Mark Hansen (above) was a kind of a shady Hollywood mogul type,” Eatwell continues. “He owned a number of movie theaters in Hollywood and he was a multimillionaire. He also had a number of rooming houses and his own apartment .... He was separated from his wife, who had a house on the Hollywood Hills with their two daughters. He had a great lifestyle in his apartment ... where he would invite girls if he liked their looks ... he would invite them to stay with obviously a promise that they were going to make it big as movie stars. Sooner or later, they would probably be booted out or end up as dancers in one of his nightclubs.”
According to Eatwell, Short was one of many star-struck young women who lived in his apartment and he was possessive when it came to his girls. “He is known to be very, very jealous of her boyfriends,” adds Eatwell. “In fact, if her boyfriends came to see her, they would drop her off a block away ... because he didn’t like to see her with other men. ... She was [also] asking him for money … My theory is that he became tired of her and basically [told his entourage], ‘Look, somebody get rid of this girl.’” Eatwell claims legal documents revealed one of Short’s female confidants confirmed Short’s behavior enraged Hansen. “These girls thought [Hansen] had connections, so obviously, they felt under pressure because they thought this was their chance to make it,” Eatwell continues. “[Elizabeth] had a hand-to-mouth existence. She never really had a definite job ... She was dependent on friends, boyfriends, people she got picked up by for a meal or just a place for the night.”
And Short’s final days were anything, but glamorous. The Los Angeles Times reported the lady’s teeth were so badly decayed she plugged them with wax and in 1971, Hansen himself recalled, “She just asked for trouble. She probably went too far this time and just set some guy off into a blind, berserk rage.”
Eatwell claims Leslie Dillon, allegedly a former mortician’s assistant who worked for Hanson, killed Short, a theory initially explored by chief police psychiatrist Dr. J Paul De River. “I’m 99 percent confident on the basis of the evidence I see,” Eatwell explains. “There was definitely a coverup. Even as I was going through the documents, pages were just missing and removed. And they’re almost always connected somehow to Leslie Dillon or Mark Hansen. There are very serious questions about Leslie Dillon that can’t be answered,” she insists. “Her shoes and purse were found dumped in the trash can shortly after the murder by a local café owner. And that’s actually two blocks from where Leslie Dillon lived. ... The park where she was found is one he knew very well and in fact, used as a shortcut to get to where he lived.”
Dillon, an aspiring writer, allegedly kept newspaper clippings pertaining to violence against women and Short’s friend Ann Toth, as well as model Ardis Green, reportedly identified Dillon as one of her boyfriends. “If you look at the examples of Dillon’s so-called creative writing … [his] insecurity is reflected in those,” Eatwell adds. “[Everything] fits together into this picture of someone who has a huge inferiority complex ... a physical hatred of women. Mark Hansen was very discreet about his private life,” she continues. “[Hansen] was also known to have connections with one of the lead homicide officers on the Dahlia case. And if you go through the grand jury case, it’s obvious the grand jury is very, very suspicious and they’re not happy with the evidence [Hansen] gives at all.”
Newspaper clippings obtained by the FBI revealed Dillon was considered “suspect number one” after he contacted De River, offering “to help with a book on sadism” because of his interest in “psychopathic cases, such as the unsolved ‘Black Dahlia’ murder.” At the time, police indicated the then-27-year-old “knows minute details of the slaying of Elizabeth Short, but denies killing or even knowing her.” In another clipping, police said Leslie Dillon “was familiar with details of the unsolved slaying that never were made public.”
According to a 1949 article in the Los Angeles Times, the police released Dillon due to lack of evidence. He lived a relatively quiet life until his death in 1988 at age 67. As for Hansen, Eatwell claims he remained on the suspect list for the remainder of his life, but was never charged. He died in 1964 at the age of 74.
“There were many of these girls [like Elizabeth] in Hollywood,” Eatwell says. “Showing up in buses from all over the country, hoping to become movie stars and falling in with the wrong people.”
Sources: James Lileks, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, December 20, 2017; Stephanie Nolasco, Fox News, December 21, 2017; and Publisher’s Weekly, August 21, 2017.