I was thinking about the body - cut in half - posed in such a way as to remove all trace of modesty and even humanity - the cut across the mouth and the gouging out of the lower abdomen - the removal of bowels -the faecal matter in her stomach. He wanted to not only kill but to destroy this woman - he literally took her apart and then left her in full view of any passer-by so that she had no human dignity left at all. A savage crime. This wasn't done at the scene so he must have held her captive somewhere whilst he took his time to do all this. I don't think that this was a casual pick-up - a random one night stand that didn't turn out as he expected - I think in that instance he would have killed her on the spot and walked away - or just walked away and found another woman who could do what he wanted. It feels more personal to me - as if he had known her for some time - maybe she led him on for gifts or money with the promise of fulfilment later on which never came. I think maybe there was a straw - yet another refusal - that broke the camels back and he exploded. I think it is possible that she had come to his apartment - felt safe to do so because he wasn't a stranger - never expecting that she couldn't manipulate him any more - that he had reached his sexual and emotional limit. The crime had to have happened indoors and she must have gone there willingly - he wouldn't have dragged her kicking and screaming into the room. Once there it would have been easy for him to overpower her - she would be no match for a man. He would have all the tools he needed at hand and privacy to mutilate her to that degree. Whoever he was - he is probably dead now - and I hope it was lingering and painful.

Yes, she was killed and prepared elsewhere, then moved to that semi deserted site.

You have a good theory. The killer was someone well known to her, perhaps someone she had a relationship with of some sort. She may have been manipulating him. Or perhaps she was turning tricks on the side while dating him, and he found out. Something happened to send him over the edge, make him feel betrayed, played for a fool, or angered somehow.

She had been engaged to a pilot who was killed in the last week of the war. Tragic. If not for that she would not have moved to southern California. We might never have heard of Elizabeth Short.

The serendipity that our lives depend on is quite frightening when you think about it. I had a personal experience many years ago when my daughter was about three years old - she was standing on our gate and I was in the garden about ten feet away from her - bent down - weeding. I heard her speak and looked up immediately to see a dark complexioned man who had pulled across traffic to stop at our gate and ask her if she knew where a chicken farm was ( in a suburban street) I immediately stood up and started to walk towards her - he roared off like a bat out of hell. I still shudder to think of it - what if I had not been there? It would only have taken a few seconds and she would have been gone forever and suffered God knows what. I feel sick even typing this. I have been accused of being an over-protective mother - I don't think there is any such thing in this day and age. With regard to Elizabeth Short - I don't know why the police have not opened this as a cold case - especially with the advances in technology - perhaps it is too old and they think that the perpetrator is dead anyway. They probably have a damn good idea of who it was and just couldn't prove it with the technology available at the time.

I don't think they ever found the crime scene. There is likely very little in the way of forensic evidence for that case, the body having been washed. She had only been in Southern California for 6 months when she was killed. She may not have found a steady boyfriend in that time. If she were turning tricks, then she had contact with any number of unknown men from the area. I have not read up on the case but from what I recall the police didn't seem to have any people of interest who were not ruled out in that case, none which were spoken of publicly anyway. I wonder if our modern, high tech, police detectives and crime scene analysts would do much better if that happened today. There doesn't seem to be much to go on. But maybe the crime would be solved today.

Today there are traffic cameras in many intersections, and other cameras which can be accessed which could possibly help identify the killer. If they could determine the time frame the body was laid out there, they could check traffic cams in the area and get a list of the license plates of cars which went down that street. The body would have been dumped in the wee hours of the morning I imagine, when nobody was awake to see it happen. And there would be few cars on the streets during those hours, so it would limit the pool of suspects. And once the police get a limited number of people, and know that one of them dumped the body, they can interview them and check for signs of deceit, check alibis, and so on. Yeah, they would probably have caught him today.

As far as reopening the case today, I imagine that unless a hot lead pops up, they won't do it. There are too many current cases. As you said, the guy is probably dead by now. He would have been in his 20s perhaps in 1947, so if he was 20 then he would be 92 now. He could be alive today, but statistically the odds are he is dead. But if an investigator could find new information he would really make a name for himself. He would write a book, option it for a movie, etc. But at this point I think breaking this case would take something like the killer making a deathbed confession to clear his conscience.

That is indeed a very chilling story about your daughter. I understand your "over protective" nature. It is essential, in my opinion.

If you google Ed Burns The Black Dahlia it shows that he was never a suspect in the case but he wrote a note on his suicide two months after the killing admitting that he was the one who killed her. It's interesting because most false confessors like to stay around to bask in the attention they generate.

Interesting. After all this time it must be difficult to verify his confession. Witnesses who saw them together have long since moved away or died. If they are living and can be found, can they remember what they knew about Burns and Short accurately after all this time? People sometimes reveal their sins before they die, seeking forgiveness or to make what amends they can before dying. As we spoke about, Sheeran confessed to killing Hoffa before he died. As you said, false confessors are motivated by the notoriety they achieve; they have no gain if they make a deathbed confession. So it lends credence to the Burns confession. I just wish he had written more to explain what prompted the killing, and the dismemberment and disfigurement of the body.

There was a murder of a six year old girl (Suzanne Degnan)whose body was cut up and put in the sewers around that time - Elizabeth Short was said to be obsessed with the case and the murderer William Heirens. She pretended to be a reporter and talked about the case endlessly. She and Ed Burns spent at least two nights together in a hotel and he gave her gas and rent money. It is speculated that he got teed off with listening to her idolising William Heirens and killed her in a fit of rage. I guess it is as good a theory as any other but there is the note to back it up. I am taking a break from "The making of the mob" and have moved on to "The last Czar" about Nicholas and Alexandra. It never fails to amaze me how people can be so stupid. At his coronation 800,00 peasants turned up lured by the promise of food and gifts. They had only expected 200,00 so there wasn't enough soldiers or food to go around - the people dispensing the food got scared and began throwing it into the crowd which resulted in a stampede in which 300,000 people were killed or injured. So what did Nicholas do? He drove through the field of blood in his gilded carriage and went to a party. The things he did and didn't do defy description - he comes across as a weak and somewhat stupid man - completely unfit to run a country. I didn' t know that Russia had been at war with Japan around 1905 and that the Japanese had destroyed most of the Russian fleet. He was already losing when he sent the remainder of his fleet to do battle - they were destroyed in 45 minutes. I'm only up to Episode 3 and already the die is cast and he has no idea of what is to come. Rasputin is on the scene and despite the almighty scandal Alexandra's leaked letters to him created - first he sends him home - and then he allows him to return. It's for his son of course - but why not send his son to a secret location and allow Rasputin to stay with him there? Nicholas comes across as a total idiot manipulated by his war hawk uncle and his neurotic wife and his domineering mother. You can almost feel sorry for him if you didn't know he considered himself one of God's chosen. I like watching history documentaries - I have watched most of the ancient Rome ones - and our own British history from the Plantagenets up to the current mob.

Well given that Hollywood and most media companies seem to favor communism it is no surprise to me that Nicholas is portrayed the way you describe.

Why do Hollywood and most media companies favour communism? The concept of an everybody equal society cannot possibly work - especially given human nature. If you are intelligent and driven to succeed then you will want to do better than your neighbours - work harder - achieve higher status - better pay - better housing etc. If you are not so intelligent or driven and unable to achieve or contribute to society then why should you be in the same category as those who do? That is the trouble with Britain today - the workers carry the bone idle and the government are forever cutting benefits. I watch Judge Judy and she is forever commenting on the scam artists who have disabilities yet can still have five children when in a wheelchair - who get 12 grand to take classes and drop out after attending one and don't have to repay that money etc. I have noticed in so called communist countries that the concept only seems to apply to the poor - they all have elites that do not live in poverty - do not work - yet live in grand houses. I have never seen a leader of a communist country live in a peasant village or go without food when a harvest fails. How is that communism? It's a concept designed to keep the rich rich and the poor working their butts off to keep them that way. The nearest thing I can think of which may be described as true communism is a Kibbutz but I don't know enough about it to comment further. The program I watched about Nicholas was a docudrama with historians relating and explaining the events - it seemed that it is all as documented in history books.

I really know nothing about Nicholas. It would not be surprising if he believed himself one of God's chosen. After all, didn't Kings believe themselves God's chosen leaders? Paul said something, obey your King because God has put them in charge of you, or words to that effect. I don't recall the quote presently. Royalty in Europe were related in many cases I believe, distant cousins or something. I can't remember that history, but that idea sticks in my mind. Anyway, it would not surprise me if he also believed he was somehow chosen to lead his people, if that were a common belief at the time. I just know how leftist Hollywood is, and they never seem to miss an opportunity to tear down the well to do, the successful, etc. So where there is room for interpretation, they always swing to the left, put down those in the ruling class, unless they are leftists of course.

And yes, no form of collectivism ever works. Leftists frequently point to Sweden and Denmark as successful socialist countries. But they are wrong. They are either ignorant or intentionally deceptive. Those countries have market economies. They do have large welfare systems, but capitalist economies. And Sweden keeps the taxes on the wealthy low so they won't leave the country. The poor and middle class pay increased taxes to pay for the welfare system. Plus, it is privatized. If the economy dips, so do the benefits. That is smart. It means politicians don't have the ability to deficit spend, to pander to the poor, to buy votes. That is what has nearly ruined America. When the people discover they can vote themselves money instead of working for it, they elect politicians willing to pay them not to work. We have politicians now who encourage young leftists to violent behavior. It is PC to attack anyone promoting responsible, moral behavior. One rookie Congresslady put forward suggested legislation calling for massive spending, free college for everyone, and support for people who don't want to work! That was in her plan. There was such an outcry over that. She backpedaled, saying that it wasn't supposed to be in the bill, it was just something they had discussed. But she was obviously lying. She just didn't think the public would react as we did. And it doesn't make it any better if they were merely considering it.

And as you pointed out, leftist politicians are always in the elite. There are so many American politicians who came to office with meager holdings, and have become multi millionaires since taking office. Bill and Hillary Clinton have hundreds of millions now, and it didn't come only from insider trading. I am convinced Hillary used her unsecured email system as a way to pass on classified information to parties willing to pay big money for it. She knew her email system could be hacked, and the purchaser could easily hack her emails containing the classifed information. Then donations were made to The Clinton Foundation, their slush fund dressed up as a charity. There are a great many instances where Hillary adopted policies as Sec of State, policies which benefited certain countries or individuals, and subsequently those parties made large contributions to the Clinton Foundation.
I don't think even 10% of donations are ever distributed according to the books. And that is probably a high figure. In one case they distributed expired vaccines (which Bill probaby arranged to get for free or next to nothing). So I don't count that as distributed funds.
And there are so many more of them. Joe Biden, former VP and current Presidential candidate, is being investigated for selling influence to countries which gave money to his son. There are so many more examples.

Contrast them to Donald Trump, a self made billionaire. He has spent a lot of his own money, about a billion dollars, and he donates his salary. He is a lot less wealthy now than when he ran for office. And rest assured, if he were profiting from insider trading like Congressmen routinely do, it would be international news. He is on the level, and they hate him for it.

I don't know much (if anything) about American politics - but what you said in an earlier post about using ridicule as a weapon certainly applies to Donald Trump and yet a lot of people voted for him - so maybe people are getting wiser and seeing the likes of the Clintons for what they are. To change the subject to a British news report I read recently which stated that the public's acceptance of gays is lessening for the first time in twenty years and there is a rise in homophobic attacks on the streets. They seem surprised by this trend. I'm not - I think that gay sex on television and in film has reached saturation point and people are sick to death of it. There is virtually no program in Britain that doesn't contain a gay element and it's making people turn from being merely irritated to being angry. We have recently had the annual gay pride parade and as usual it's a bunch of people who are obsessed with being noticed - they are like cats - they believe that everybody is interested in them and they are the centre of their own universe. I don't understand the term gay pride - I am straight - I am neither proud nor ashamed of it - it is simply a fact - like blue eyes or red hair. Pride should be about achievement not sexual orientation. I wonder if the media will realise that they are in fact the driving force behind this trend.

The silent majority, the more conservative people who are generally good people, have been put upon more and more for about long enough now and we are getting fed up, as you noted. Back when gay people were simply seeking tolerance, when they were not pushing their sexuality openly in public, but when they were discreet and congenial, the majority of people really didn't care. Children were not exposed to the subject of sex before a certain age.

As gays began to make an issue of various issues they felt were unfair, most people were inclined to make concessions, to feel some empathy and so on.

But they were not content with tolerance. I am talking about the radical activists, and the leftist leaders who pledged help in return for votes. They didn't want equal treatment. They wanted revenge against those who disapprove of their lifestyle, and disapprove of their public displays of it.

Now young children see mostly naked men in makeup and high heels strutting down the street in gay parades. And parents are forced to speak about homosexuality to young children who don't know what sex even is. Their innocence is gone. Why? Because these radical activists want to ram their sexuality in our faces. People are facing persecution for imagined slights against gays, for not supporting unhealthy lifestyles. The radical activists are now intent upon social engineering, upon shaping the education of other people's children, conditioning students to experiment with gender transition, etc.

The silent majority sees the cultural current of victim Olympics, banal gay tropes in TV and movie media, and PC thought policing. We see the radical left in government censoring our speech, criminalizing our thoughts and opinions in increasingly totalitarian fashion. It shouldn't surprise anyone with common sense that we are fed up with it all.

which is to say I agree with you.

I wondered if you had heard of Doctor Harold Shipman? He is thought to be Britains most prolific serial kller - murdering at least 215 and probably many more elderly people by overdosing them with morphine. He was arrested in 1998. He was addicted to Pethidine in 1974 but after going into rehab was allowed to practice again and ended up as he did. It's an interesting case and well documented. There is also the matter of Jane Barton - another doctor in Gosport hospital - thought to be responsible for the unnecessary deaths of 854 people by overdosing them with opiates - she was allowed to retire WITH NO CHARGES BROUGHT. Which brings me to my own personal experience. My own father was admitted to a hospice with no life threatening diseases - the doctor asked me when I was going to take him home - he had bone cancer which at that time was painful - but treatable with painkillers - not life threatening. I took him home but he was in so much pain I had to return him to the hospice - within one day of his return he was doubly incontinent and unconscious and died the day after. I am in no doubt that he was "made comfortable" the medical code for overdose on opiates. Just look up "The Brompton Cocktail" and you will see what they regularly employ on the elderly. I believe that there are government guidelines in place that actively encourage doctors to end "unproductive" elderly lives. That is why the likes of Shipman and Barton got away with their crimes for so long and why they thought it was ok to kill people. Oddly this melds with the recent episode of "The Blacklist" that I am watching where the right to live or die was governed by a mathematical formula.

I recall hearing of Dr. Shipman but not Dr. Barton. There was a great uproar about the proposed Obamacare legislation when it was being developed and voted on here in America because some Republicans warned that the bill contained what they termed "death panels" which would decide when an elderly or sick patient should have life saving treatment withheld, or perhaps have treatments which may hasten death. The Democrats loudly and vociferously objected to these claims. But as with most cases of this type, the so-called "conspiracy theorists" were either disregarded or laughed at until the reality hit the docile public square in the mouth. When the government assumes control of the health care system, it apparently feels entitled to make such 'cost saving decisions' since it is footing the bill. Why save the life of someone who is no longer working, and may not live much longer anyway? Very cold and callous calculation. And in one of the most numerously confirmed examples of political lying on record, Obama famously promised time after time after time that people would not be forced to change their insurance plan to one approved by the government. "If you like your health plan, you can keep it" Obama promised over and over again. BIG lie.

Sorry to hear about your father. I am aware that bone cancer is one of the most difficult to treat for pain. In pharmacy school I recall learning that our most potent narcotics often could not control the pain from this cancer. I don't know if it is any comfort to you or not, but the decision to increase his pain medication may have been made in his best interest. At some point the heart may give out from excessive pain, which raises the heart rate and blood pressure. I don't know your father's case of course. But if he was terminal, which he must have been to qualify for Hospice, and there was no conceivable treatment plan which could have reversed the cancer and put it into remission, then palliative care would be the primary treatment goal: i.e. keeping him comfortable. If the patient is certainly going to die, the best one can hope to do for him is to prevent him suffering in his last days or hours. Both of my parents died from cancer and were on Hospice care at the end. I recall how emotionally painful it was. I was devastated both times. The best thing I can say is that at least I won't have to suffer the death of my parents again.

I never saw a prescription for, or heard of one for Brompton's Cocktail. I learned about it in school though. I recall that it was given to an ailing King in the UK, I think during the second world war. After the treating physician passed away, a newspaper article reported that a decision had been made which he followed, but which haunted him afterward. He wrote of it in a diary or something. Apparently some people in government and I suppose also in conjunction with the Royal Family decided that it would be better if his death occurred on a weekend rather than during the week. More people would be able to receive the news at the same time, have time to mourn, and it was thought it would rally the country. I don't know who would have been in the decision loop. I imagine the number of people who knew of this would have been very small to prevent it leaking. The doctor was obviously one of the people who knew about it, though he was sort of following the suggestion/order given to him. The King at some point realized he had been given an overdose and his last words to the doctor were something like "Goddamn you". That would be something you could never forget, and I don't think he really ever got over it, according to the article. He was given Brompton's cocktail.
There are apparently different formulations for it. They all use either morphine or heroin, some of them use cocaine (I suppose for its eupohric or 'sociability' factor), chlorpromazine to counteract the nausea often associated with narcotic use, and alcohol. I suppose there could be substitutions for some of the agents, but they would all cause a lot of drowsiness, perhaps offset somewhat if cocaine were included.

It does seem that it would be a very effective pain killer, and ought to provide a pleasant, euphoric feeling. If I were to be given an overdose, I suppose that cocktail might at least give me a peaceful, nice feeling.

Sorry. I know this is probably painful to you even now to think about.

@strangebedfellows said:

There is virtually no program in Britain that doesn't contain a gay element and it's making people turn from being merely irritated to being angry. We have recently had the annual gay pride parade and as usual it's a bunch of people who are obsessed with being noticed

It is part of a cultural civil war which is intent on the destruction of western culture. I previously mentioned a lesbian radical activist speaking to a crowd and telling them that the push for legalizing gay marriage was really a red herring. She said the real goal was to abolish marriage altogether. The goal was a new legal system in which everyone was free to have sexual relations with anyone else, and there were no legal protections or benefits for 'married couples'. That seems like an extreme, fringe, position, but it is mainstream as far as the leftist culture war is concerned.
Why do politicians seem intent upon allowing immigration of people who hate the host country, and in ever increasing numbers? It is a planned attack upon our culture and upon national sovereignty.

"If conservatism is actually going to be capable of being an effective movement going forward, its adherents need to realize that its foes aren't primarily driven by a political ideology. No, they are devout knee-benders to a spirit of the age cult, whose iconoclastic goal is the dismantling of Western Civilization, or Judeo-Christendom, for the purposes of installing a totally different culture."

The 1% among the world's rich and powerful and influential includes a high percentage of pedophiles and others who object to western civilization's legal system which criminalizes their conduct. These people are driving the push to change our countries. They own the media companies and entertainment industries. They have their people salted in our intelligence agencies. I may be labeled a conspiracy nut by some, but people who reveal the truth about the powerful are often disregarded, laughed at, etc. until reality hits the public squarely in the mouth.

It is pretty depressing at times to see how easily the public is manipulated, and how readily they adopt ideas simply because they have heard them repeated on various media outlets. But I think the public is becoming a bit more aware and is waking up now.

The downside to that is illustrated by a quote from Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former intelligence official. Brzezinski said that “in earlier times, it was easier to control a million people, literally, than physically to kill a million people” while “today it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people.”

The sorts of people who think nothing of abusing and even killing their victims would have no qualms about genocide of populations they cannot control.