The Black Dahlia.

On January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Short’s dead body was found in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Leimert Park. The first person who reported the grisly sight was a mother out for a morning walk with her child.

According to the woman, the way Short’s body had been posed made her think that the corpse was a mannequin at first. But a closer look revealed the true horror of the Black Dahlia crime scene.

The 22-year-old Short had been sliced in two at the waist and completely drained of blood. Some of her organs — such as her intestines — had been removed and neatly placed underneath her buttocks. Pieces of flesh had been cut away from her thighs and breasts. And her stomach was full of feces, leading some to believe that she’d been forced to eat them before she was killed.

Elizabeth Short, aka the "Black Dahlia," was just 22 years old when she was brutally murdered in Los Angeles on January 15, 1947. It remains one of Hollywood's most disturbing cold cases to this day.

The most chilling mutilations, however, were the lacerations on her face. The killer had sliced each side of her face from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating what’s known as a “Glasgow smile.”

Since the body had already been washed clean, Los Angeles Police Department detectives concluded that she must have been killed elsewhere before being dumped in Leimert Park.

Near her body, detectives noted a heel print and a cement sack with traces of blood that had presumably been used to transport her body to the vacant lot. The LAPD reached out to the FBI to help identify the body by searching their fingerprint database. Short’s fingerprints turned up rather quickly because she had applied for a job as a clerk at the U.S. Army’s Camp Cooke commissary in California in 1943.

And then her prints turned up a second time since she had been arrested by the Santa Barbara Police Department for underage drinking — just seven months after she’d applied to the job.

The FBI also had her mugshot from her arrest, which they provided to the press. Before long, the media began reporting every salacious detail they could find about Short.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Short’s mother, Phoebe Short, didn’t learn of her daughter’s death until reporters from The Los Angeles Examiner telephoned her, pretending that Elizabeth had won a beauty contest.

They pumped her for all the details they could get on Elizabeth before revealing the terrible truth. Her daughter had been murdered, and her corpse had been dismembered in unspeakable ways.

As the media learned more about Elizabeth Short’s history, they began to brand her as a sexual deviant. One police report read, “This victim knew at least fifty men at the time of her death and at least twenty-five men had been seen with her in the sixty days preceding her death… She was known as a teaser of men.”

They gave Short the nickname, “The Black Dahlia,” due to her reported preference for wearing a lot of sheer black clothing. This was a reference to the movie The Blue Dahlia, which was out at the time. Some people spread the false rumor that Short was a prostitute, while others baselessly claimed that she liked to tease men because she was a lesbian.

Adding to her mystique, Short was reportedly a Hollywood hopeful. She had moved to Los Angeles just six months before her death and worked as a waitress. Sadly, she had no known acting jobs and her death became her one claim to fame.

But as famous as the case was, authorities had tremendous difficulty figuring out who was behind it. However, members of the media did receive a few clues. On January 21st, about a week after the body was found, the Examiner received a call from a person claiming to be the murderer, who said he would be sending Short’s belongings in the mail as proof of his claim.

Shortly thereafter on the 24th, the Examiner received a package with Short’s birth certificate, photos, business cards, and an address book with the name Mark Hansen on the cover. Also included was a letter pasted together from newspaper and magazine letter clippings that read, “Los Angeles Examiner and other Los Angeles papers here is Dahlia’s belongings letter to follow.”

All of these items had been wiped down with gasoline, leaving no fingerprints behind. Though a partial fingerprint was found on the envelope, it was damaged in transport and never analyzed.

On January 26th, another letter arrived. This handwritten note read, “Here it is. Turning in Wed. January 29, 10 a.m. Had my fun at police. Black Dahlia Avenger.” The letter included a location. Police waited at the appointed time and place, but the author never showed.

Afterward, the alleged killer sent a note made of letters cut and pasted from magazines to the Examiner that said, “Have changed my mind. You would not give me a square deal. Dahlia killing was justified.”

Yet again, everything sent by the person had been wiped clean with gasoline, so investigators couldn’t lift any fingerprints from the evidence.

At one point, the LAPD had 750 investigators on the case and interviewed more than 150 potential suspects linked to the Black Dahlia killing. Officers heard more than 60 confessions during the initial investigation, but none of them were considered legitimate. Since then, there have been more than 500 confessions, none of which led to anyone being charged.

As time went on and the case went cold, many people assumed that the Black Dahlia murder was a date gone wrong, or that Short had run into a sinister stranger late at night while walking alone. After over 70 years, the Black Dahlia murder case remains open. But in recent years, a couple of intriguing — and chilling — theories have emerged.

A police bulletin seeking information on Elizabeth Short’s activities prior to the murder describes her as “very attractive” with “bad lower teeth” and “fingernails chewed to quick.”

Shortly after his father’s death in 1999, now-retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel was going through his dad’s belongings when he noticed two photos of a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Elizabeth Short.

After discovering these haunting images, Hodel began using the skills he had gained as a policeman to investigate his own deceased father. Hodel went through newspaper archives and witness interviews from the case, and even filed a Freedom of Information Act to obtain FBI files on the Black Dahlia murder.

He also had a handwriting expert compare samples of his father’s writing to the writing on some of the notes sent to the press from the alleged killer. The analysis found a strong possibility that his father’s handwriting matched, but the results were not conclusive.

On the grislier side, the Black Dahlia crime scene photos showed that Short’s body had been cut in a manner consistent with a hemicorporectomy, a medical procedure that slices the body beneath the lumbar spine. Hodel’s father had been a doctor — who attended medical school when this procedure was being taught in the 1930s.

Additionally, Hodel searched his father’s archives at UCLA, finding a folder full of receipts for contracting work on his childhood home. In that folder, there was a receipt dated a few days before the murder for a large bag of concrete, the same size, and brand as a concrete bag found near Elizabeth Short’s body.

By the time Hodel began his investigation, many of the police officers who originally worked on the case were already dead. However, he carefully reconstructed conversations these officers had about the case.

Eventually, Hodel compiled all of his evidence into a 2003 bestseller called Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story.

7 Myths About the “Wild West”

Few periods in American history have been more romanticized than the era of the “Wild West.” The period began with the first European colonial settlements in North America during the early 17th century, but what can be regarded as the classic era of the Old West — with its cowboys, gunslingers, prospectors and outlaws — stretched from around the 1850s to the early 1900s. Dime novels and Western movies created a frontier myth in which rugged men rode out to conquer a barren landscape and fight “bad guys,” and the image became a popular and enduring part of American culture, despite the many historical inaccuracies involved. 

As a testament to the power of this mythmaking, many ideas and iconic images associated with the Old West are still widely accepted today, despite being factually incorrect. Here are seven of the most common misconceptions, debunked. 

Myth: Wild West Cowboys Wore Cowboy Hats 

Nothing says “cowboy” more than a classic cowboy hat. But the Stetson didn’t come onto the market until 1865, and the original hat didn’t look like the iconic Stetsons we know today (it had a high top and was missing the crease in the crown typical of cowboy hats). A more common choice among Old West cowboys was the derby hat, also known as the bowler hat, partly because it didn’t blow off easily in strong winds or while riding a horse. Many famous cowboys and outlaws, including Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Black Bart, and Billy the Kid, wore bowler hats. 

Myth: Quick-Draw Gun Duels Were Common

Quick-draw gun duels are a staple of Western dime novels and movies, typically with two steely-eyed gunfighters facing off in a dusty street while nervous locals watch from behind saloon doors and dirty windows. These kinds of duels, however, almost never happened. Typical shootouts were normally chaotic and impulsive events, often involving more than two men and with bullets flying in all directions — not the slow and calculated high-noon face-offs depicted in popular culture. One of the very few examples of a one-on-one quick-draw duel in a public place is the famous encounter between “Wild Bill” Hickok and the gambler Davis Tutt. Hickok killed Tutt, becoming a folk hero in the process. 

Myth: Banks Were Easy Pickings

If Westerns are to be believed, robbing banks was a common pastime for any self-respecting outlaw. The criminals would ride into town in broad daylight, hold up a bank, ride off with their saddlebags full of money, and disappear into the wilderness. But this is very much a Hollywood creation. According to historian Larry Schweikart, there were fewer than 10 confirmed bank robberies between 1859 and 1900 across 15 frontier states. Other sources suggest the number was higher than 10, but still fewer than you would suspect. As Schweikart wrote, “There are more bank robberies in modern-day Dayton, Ohio, in a year than there were in the entire Old West in a decade, perhaps in the entire frontier period!” Myth: Cowboys Frequently Fought With “Indians”

Myth: Cowboys Frequently Fought With “Indians”

The popular “cowboys and Indians” narrative has both parties constantly at each other’s throats. (The use of the word “Indian” originated with Christopher Columbus, who mistakenly believed he had reached the shores of South Asia when he arrived in America, and referred to the native population as “Indios.”) But cowboys rarely fought with Indigenous peoples, and certainly not to the extent shown in Western movies. Tension did exist between ranchers and Native Americans, but cowboys normally avoided potentially hostile encounters (they were more inclined to let soldiers deal with that). Native Americans, meanwhile, didn’t ambush pioneer wagon trains nearly as much as we are led to believe — they mainly tolerated wagon trains and were more likely to trade than attack. Between 1840 and 1860, Native Americans killed 362 emigrants (and even more were killed by emigrants), making them far less dangerous than many other threats in the Wild West, including river crossings, hunting accidents, and falling off your own horse. 

Myth: All Cowboys Were White

John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Clint Eastwood — think of nearly any actor known for starring in classic Westerns and they have one thing in common: They’re all white. The popular narrative, however, doesn’t tell the full story. Historians estimate that as many as one in four American cowboys were Black, as many formerly enslaved African Americans found work on the ranches out West in the wake of the Civil War. What’s more, the cowboy culture didn’t even originate in the United States; it came from a style of ranching introduced by Spanish colonists in the 16th century and adopted originally in Mexico, where cattle ranchers and herders were known as “vaqueros.” By the late 19th century, as many as one in three cowboys were Mexican.

Myth: The Typical Frontiersman Was a Romantic Figure 

Cowboys and Wild West lawmen are often portrayed as romantic types — either the strong, silent type or the gallant hero who rides to the rescue, looking quite dapper in his clean shirt and shiny boots. But these frontiersmen were nowhere near as neat and tidy as we see on our screens, and, to put it bluntly, they stank. Author and historian Harry E. Chrisman wrote that cowboys “smelled of cow and horse dung, and seldom bathed. They wore beards that easily became nests for lice, fleas, or other vermin and provided secure foci of infection for barber’s itch.” 

Myth: Everyone Was Packing a Six-Shooter

In the movies, it seems like every cowboy, cowhand, and dubious wandering stranger carries a revolver or a rifle. In reality, guns were heavily regulated in many towns and cities on the frontier. Most people did own guns in the West, but when it came to entering a town, you either had to leave your weapon at home or hand it over to local authorities. Dodge City, a famously wild frontier town in Kansas, had a large sign in the middle of town reading: “The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited.” Indeed, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona — the most famous shootout in the history of the Old West — reached a head when lawman Wyatt Earp ordered a group of cowboys to drop their weapons in accordance with local laws. According to Adam Winkler, a specialist in U.S. constitutional law, “Tombstone had much more restrictive laws on carrying guns in public in the 1880s than it has today.

Kim Kardashian is an idiot!

Kim Kardashian claims people ‘didn’t know’ who Marilyn Monroe was before she wore her dress. 
The dress was first worn first in 1962.

Kim Kardashian has claimed that a lot of people only found out about Marilyn Monroe after she wore her dress to the Met Gala back in 2022.

Kardashian reportedly lost 16lbs to fit into Monroe’s famous “Happy Birthday Mr President” dress, which later sparked a debate about whether she had damaged it. The reality TV star denies this.

While appearing on NBC’s Today Show, the 43-year-old said she was shocked at how many people knew nothing about the actress.

“We were just talking. You said you were shocked on TikTok. Some people don’t even know who Marilyn Monroe was,” said host Savannah Guthrie.

In response, the mother of four said: “That was the most shocking thing to me, and that’s why I was so happy to at least have that opportunity and that Ripley’s allowed me to share this moment so that it could live on.”

The famous dress was worn by Monroe in Madison Square Garden in 1962, just three months before her death. While President John F. Kennedy branded her rendition of Happy Birthday as “wholesome,” a large number of people thought it was inappropriate and innately sexual.

Kardashian has been slammed for choosing to wear the one-of-a-kind dress, with many suggesting she was only doing it for the clout. But as she told Guthrie, she understands “how much this dress means to American history.”

People have known about Marilyn Monore since she became famous and still know of her today before Kardashian wore that dress. I was disgusted that she was allowed to wear it, and I don't like any of the Kardashians. They only became famous because their father helped someone get away with murder!