Black Dahlia suspects
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Many Black Dahlia suspects, or persons of interest, have been proposed as the unidentified killer of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", who was murdered in 1947. Many conspiracy theories have been advanced, but none have been found to be completely persuasive by experts, and some are not taken seriously at all.
The murder investigation by the
Male suspects
Norman Chandler
Donald Wolfe's 2005 book The Black Dahlia Files: The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles names Norman Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1945 to 1960, as a suspect in the murder.[1] In a complicated scenario involving multiple perpetrators, Wolfe claims that Chandler impregnated Short while she was working as a call girl for the notorious Hollywood "madam" Brenda Allen, which led to her murder at the hands of gangster Bugsy Siegel.[1]
George Hodel
Dr.
Author James Ellroy endorsed Steve Hodel's theory in 2004.[3]
George Knowlton
Little reliable information is available on George Knowlton, except that he lived in the Los Angeles area at the time of the Black Dahlia murder and died in an automobile accident in 1962.
In the early 1990s, George Knowlton's daughter Janice began claiming that she had witnessed her father murdering Elizabeth Short, a claim she based largely on "
Los Angeles Police Detective John P. St. John, one of the investigators who had been assigned to the case, said he has talked to Knowlton and does not believe there is a connection between the Black Dahlia murder and her father. "We have a lot of people offering up their fathers and various relatives as the Black Dahlia killer," said St. John, better known as
Jigsaw John. "The things that she is saying are not consistent with the facts of the case.
Nevertheless, Westminster, California police took her claims seriously enough to dig up the grounds around her childhood home there, looking for evidence.[5] They found nothing to tie George Knowlton to any crime.[5]
On March 5, 2004, Janice Knowlton died of an overdose of prescription drugs in what was deemed a suicide by the Orange County, California, coroner's office.[6]
Jack Anderson Wilson (a.k.a. Arnold Smith)
Wilson was a lifelong petty criminal and
Celebrity suspects
Orson Welles
In her 2000 book, Mary Pacios, a former neighbor of the Short family in Medford, Massachusetts, suggested filmmaker Orson Welles as a suspect.[8]
Bugsy Siegel
References
- ^ ISBN 9780060582500.
- ISBN 0-8212-5819-2
- ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 2017-11-15.
- ^ Note that Short's autopsy by Dr. Frederick Newbarr found no evidence of pregnancy: "The uterus is small, and no pregnancy is apparent." As quoted in Newton, 2009, p. 46
- ^ ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 2017-11-16.
- ^ McLellen, Dennis (14 December 2004). "Janice Knowlton, 67; Believed That Her Father Killed The Black Dahlia". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
- ^ Larry Harnisch. "Heaven Is HERE! Author claims to have found 1947 murderer". Retrieved 20 December 2015.
- ^ Jeff Chorney (16 August 2000). "Citizen Killer?". Retrieved 20 December 2015.
- ^ "Adding to mystery of the Black Dahlia". Los Angeles Times. 17 January 2006. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
- ISBN 9780060582500.