Black Dahlia
American murder victim (1924-1947)
Elizabeth Short (July 29, 1924 – c. January 14–15, 1947), posthumously known as the Black Dahlia, was an American woman found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 1947. Her case became highly publicized owing to the gruesome nature of the crime, which included the mutilation and bisection of her corpse.
A native of Boston, Short spent her early life in New England and Florida before relocating to California, where her father lived. It is commonly held that she was an aspiring actress, though she had no known acting credits or jobs during her time in Los Angeles. Short acquired the nickname of the Black Dahlia posthumously, as newspapers of the period often nicknamed particularly lurid crimes; the term may have originated from the film noir thriller The Blue Dahlia (1946). After the discovery of her body, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) began an extensive investigation that produced over 150 suspects but yielded no arrests.
Short's unsolved murder and the details surrounding it have had a lasting cultural impact, generating various theories and public speculation. Her life and death have been the basis of numerous books and films, and her murder is frequently cited as one of the most famous unsolved murders in U.S. history, as well as one of the oldest unsolved cases in Los Angeles County. It has likewise been credited by historians as one of the first major crimes in postwar America to capture national attention.
Life
Childhood
Elizabeth Short was born on July 29, 1924, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the third of five daughters to Cleo Alvin Short Jr.
The public source identifies “Black Dahlia” as american murder victim (1924-1947). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Black, Dahlia and American.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q233693. VIAF identifies the subject as 36502123. The Library of Congress control number is no95034852. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 1947 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Black Dahlia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.