Craziest Conspiracy Theories About the Black Dahlia

Articles and stories about Elizabeth Short always point out how unremarkable she was. Talented, but not magnificent. Pretty, but not exceptionally so. Tainted, somewhat, by the rose tattoo on her thigh. Just another young woman drifting through Hollywood in 1947, seeking fame. She was twenty-two when she died. When she was surgically cut in half and drained of blood. When she was posed like a mannequin and dumped in a field. She was twenty-two when she became infamous, not famous like she wanted. She was twenty-two when she became the Black Dahlia.
 

It's one of the most famous murders in American history, partially because of how gruesome it was, and partially because it remains unsolved to this day. There was a media frenzy in the aftermath. The police got hundreds of tips, and even a few confessions, but they were never able to definitively prove any of their Black Dahlia theories. This list explores conspiracy theories about what happened to Elizabeth Short. Do you believe any of them?

Steve Hodel, who maintains that his father, George Hodel, killed Short, believes George was inspired by a surrealist artist named Man Ray. George and Man Ray were close friends and Man Ray’s work often featured nude men and women cut in half. In particular, Hodel believes his father was influenced by a specific piece called “Le Minotaure,” and draws parallels between the art and the way Short’s body was posed when it was found.

Strap in for this one, because it’s a doozy. A woman named Janice Knowlton believes that her father, George Knowlton, killed Elizabeth Short because she was pregnant with his baby. Knowlton came to this conclusion after she uncovered some repressed memories of her father in therapy. She even wrote a book about it called Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer. Seems legit.

Between 1935 and 1938, at least twelve people were killed and surgically dismembered in and around Cleveland. The manner in which they were surgically cut apart is very similar to the way the Black Dahlia was bisected and many people believe that the killer is one and the same.

Here comes Knowlton again, with another dubious theory. In Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer, she also asserts that Short was a call girl. Most experts on the case regard this as untrue.

This theory comes from Mary Pacios in her book Childhood Shadows: The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder. Pacios was a childhood friend of Short’s, and while her account sheds light on her friend’s early life, her evidence against Welles is less than credible. It boils down to her belief that Welles not only privately suffered from a mental illness, but a mental illness that doesn’t actually seem to exist. Many writers refer to serial killers as having “diphasic personalities,” but there’s no research that proves that condition even exists.

The owner of BlackDahliaSolution.org thinks that Short’s killer sent coded clues to the newspapers and the police after her death. The writing on the website can best be described as “unhinged,” but the author points towards a man named Ed Burns as the killer. For what it’s worth, Larry Harnisch, the copy editor and researcher from the LA Times, seems to think the guy is full of it.

Georgette Bauerdorf was found strangled in her bathtub in 1944, two and a half years before Short was killed. She was also violently attacked and raped. In Severed, author John Gilmore compares both crimes and believes that they carry the same signature.

Writer John Cameron’s got a thing for Ed Edwards. Cameron came into the public eye when he speculated that Edwards killed Teresa Halbach, whose murder was the subject of the Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer. Edwards is known to have been a prolific serial killer but has only been officially linked to five murders: four in Ohio and one in Wisconsin.

Halbach’s murder, which occurred in Wisconsin, at least fits in the area he was known to kill in. However, Cameron also believes Edwards is responsible for the murder of JonBenet Ramsey (which occurred in Colorado) and the Black Dahlia murder. Which he would have had to have committed when he was fifteen. And living in Akron, Ohio. Oh, and Cameron believes that Edwards is also the Zodiac Killer, because why not?

Arnold Smith was one of Gilmore’s main sources when writing Severed. Smith claimed to know who killed Short; he said it was a man named Al Morrison. However, there is no evidence that Al Morrison exists. Police believe that it was just an alias that Smith used. On top of that, Arnold Smith wasn’t even his real name. It was Jack Anderson Wilson, and he was a career criminal, though he had only ever been convicted of petty crimes. Also, psychic Marie St. Claire claims to have made a psychic connection with Short, who said that her murderer’s name was Morrison, so, um, case closed?

In Crime magazine, Stephen Karadjis claims that the letters “D” and “E” were carved into Short’s pubic area. His claims are based on testimony and photographs that are sealed and not available to the public, so they’re difficult to verify. However, he believes the “D” stands for Leslie Dillon, one of the lead suspects in the case.