Used in the Exhibit: The First with the Latest! Aggie Underwood, the Los Angeles Herald, and the Sordid Crimes of a City. On the morning of January 15, 1947, Los Angeles was in the grip of a cold wave with temperatures dropping below freezing. Mrs. Betty Bersinger was walking south on Norton with her three year old daughter, Anne. Bersinger noticed something pale in weeds about a foot in from the sidewalk; it was the nude body of a young woman. At first Bersinger thought it was a mannequin or, if a real woman, perhaps she was drunk. But that was before she saw that the body had been cut in half. Bersinger said "I was terribly shocked and scared to death, I grabbed Anne and we walked as fast as we could to the first house that had a telephone." Officers and detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department arrived and so did dozens of newspaper reporters—among them was Aggie Underwood. There was nothing at the scene which could be used to identify the dead woman. They rolled her prints at the morgue but couldn’t send them to the FBI in Washington, D.C. because severe winter storms were grounding planes. Warden Woolard, Assistant Managing Editor of the Herald, had a brainstorm about Jane Doe’s fingerprints. The paper had recently purchased some fairly new technology, a Soundphoto machine, that Woolard thought might be used to transmit the victim’s prints to the FBI. Woolard spoke with LAPD Captain Jack Donahoe about the idea and both agreed that it was worth a shot. The dead girl was identified as 22 year-old Elizabeth Short. The Herald had scored a major scoop and the cops had identified the victim. Two seasoned LAPD detectives, Harry Hansen and Finis Brown, were put in charge of the investigation. During the first twenty-four hours officers pulled in over 150 men for questioning. It was the largest manhunt since the 1927 kidnapping and murder of a 12 year-old school girl, Marion Parker. Street cops knocked on hundreds of doors looking for a crime scene, but they never found the place where Elizabeth had been murdered. When Elizabeth’s Long Beach friends were questioned they mentioned that they had nicknamed her the Black Dahlia. The name came from the fact that Elizabeth usually wore black and they had seen together during the summer of 1946, the Blue Dahlia. On Friday, January 17, 1947, a photograph of Elizabeth appeared on the front page of the Herald-Express, and the caption read “The Black Dahlia.” Underwood interviewed Robert “Red” Manley, the first serious suspect in the Black Dahlia case, and she was prepared to follow the story to its conclusion when without warning, she was pulled off of it and ultimately promoted to City Editor. Decades have passed without a solution to Elizabeth’s murder. It is still the city’s most famous unsolved homicide case. Seen here is Robert "Red" Manley, who drove Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia, from San Diego to Los Angeles shortly before her death.
Short, Elizabeth,--1924-1947--Death and burial Men--California--Los Angeles Witnesses--California--Los Angeles Homicide investigation--California--Los Angeles Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express photographs Herald-Examiner Collection photographs
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