The Black Dahlia
In Long Beach -
A Long Beach druggist and his son filled a gap in time in the Short girl’s life. This was the period July 22 to August 3 last year.
“She lived at the Washington hotel, now called the Atwater, at 53 Linden Avenue,” said Arnold Landers Sr., the pharmacy owner.
“She’d come into our drug store frequently. She’d usually wear a two-piece beach costume which left her midrift bare. Or she’d wear the black lacy things.
“Her hair was jet black and she liked to wear it high. She was popular with the men who came in here and they got to calling her ‘The Black Dahlia.’”
- The Los Angeles Examiner, 1947
When the young woman’s tortured and mutilated, naked body was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles in 1947, authorities were stymied. They didn’t know her background, her age or her identity. With research, they found that the victim was 22 year old Elizabeth Short from Medford, Massachusetts. Like so many before her, she was looking for her place in the movie capital. She was a loner who walked the streets of Hollywood, relying on strangers and acquaintances for help. She was friendly, yet deceptive and mysterious about her past. As her story unfolded, those who knew her best found that she was not the young woman they thought they knew.
