Harry Hansen remained on the investigation from January 15, 1947, until his retirement twenty-three years later. In March 1971 Hansen granted an interview, which was published in the Los Angeles Times, entitled "Farewell, My Black Dahlia," in which he confided that over the decades he eliminated hundreds of potential suspects and false confessors by asking a "key question." Hansen was convinced the suspect might be a male with medical training.
It was a clean, definitely professional job. You have to know exactly how and where or you just can't do it. When I asked medical authorities what kind of person could have performed that bisection, they said "someone with medical finesse."
The killing seemed to be based on unbelievable anger. I suppose sex was the motive, or at least the fact that the killer was denied sex.
Insofar as the victim was concerned, Hansen made these surprising and professionally uncharacteristic observations:
She didn't seem to have any goals or standards . . . she never had a job all the time she lived in Los Angeles. She had an obviously low IQ, lived hand to mouth, day to day. She was a man-crazy tramp, but she wasn't a prostitute. There were all kinds of men in her life, but we were only able to find three that had any sexual experience with her. She was a tease. She gave a bad time to quite a few guys. There wasn't very much to like about her.
Regarding his failure to solve the crime he admitted the Black Dahlia case was his biggest disappointment:
Being objective didn't mean that we didn't want that killer. I never wanted anything more. Every now and then there'd be some new development, a lead would pop out of nowhere and we'd think, here it is, this is it! But it never really was. Looking at it in perspective right now, the killer did his thing and got away with it. Most homicides, I think the figure is 97 percent, are solved. A very few aren't. This is the biggest one I ever knew of. You really can't win them all.
Asked why this crime had such a tremendous impact on the public and whether that impact might have been attributed to its savagery or to the youth and beauty of the victim, Hansen said:
There were crimes that same year that were at least as heinous and victims at least as pretty and none of them got anywhere near the same attention. It was that name "Black Dahlia" that set this one off. .. just those words strung together in that order turned Elizabeth Short's murder into a coast-to-coast sensation. Black is night, mysterious, forbidding even; the dahlia is an exotic and mysterious flower. There could not have been a more intriguing title. Any other name wouldn't have been anywhere near the same.
After Hansen's retirement, the case was inherited by a chain of senior homicide detectives in Robbery-Homicide Division, each one passing the baton upon his retirement to the next senior detective in line. Initially Chief Thad Brown assigned the case to detective Danny Galindo, who had assisted with the case in 1947. Then it went to Pierce Brooks, who was the lead detective assigned to the "Onion Field" case, later immortalized by Joseph Wambaugh, after which John "Jigsaw John" St. John and his partner Kirk Mellecker took over. Mellecker had been my partner more than a decade earlier at Hollywood Homicide.
The truth is, the case only remained active because of its legendary status. By the 1980s there was no real investigation being conducted, with the exception of an occasional writer wanting to sell his or her book as a whodunit based on some pet theory. Detectives would provide information that might, for a few weeks, speculatively stir the pot, but these were only theories. The writer could then go to the newspapers with the speculations, hoping to generate publicity for a book or article. Often, particularly around the anniversary of the murder, the press itself would initiate its own articles on the case. Every five or ten years, again around the anniversary of Elizabeth's death, the press would run a feature story, reviewing the case and interviewing the currently assigned detective for some new information.
Despite the case's open status, little if anything has been done in the way of active investigation for the past fifty-plus years. What is done is solely reactive in nature, in response to a letter that may have been mailed to the department by someone who had a dream or experienced recovered memories of being present while the murder was committed.
The case has also become something of a joke, particularly when the on-call detective at Robbery-Homicide receives a phone call from a would-be informant with a tip. The detective taking the call will put his hand over the mouthpiece as he bellows to his partner, "Hey, Charlie, I've got a witness on the line who says he can solve the Black Dahlia murder for us." His partner will usually respond, "Okay, let's roll!" at which point the detectives in the squad room roar with laughter.
Today, most of the detectives in LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division hadn't even been born when the crime occurred. Just the mention of the name "Black Dahlia" makes detectives grimace. It serves as an irritating reminder that the department's biggest murder investigation, assigned to LAPD's best detectives, remains unsolved.
Three days after my return from San Francisco, I opened my briefcase and pulled out the notes June had asked me to help her analyze. I readily recognized Father's unique handwriting, block print instead of script, even when signing his name. His handwritten notes appeared a bit more frail and spidery than usual; he had written this just a few days after his ninety-first birthday. June had attached the following typed note to my copy:
I was looking through his pending papers and found the attached. His notes for an intended talk with me, which never occurred. I understand most of them but some are like riddles.
Over the years I was able to sense what he was thinking, when he would speak, and what he needed even before he opened his mouth. So I knew that he was preparing for the worst by collecting various kinds of sleeping pills. But from that October day he gained back energy and strength.
He was working on a proposal and artwork marketing plan this year, through April. He never initiated this "intended conversation" with me. He was not supposed to go that night.
He did talk about the patients with congestive heart failure he saw as an intern at Laguna Honda. Maybe you can help me by figuring out some items in the list?
June
Here is a facsimile of the note my father wrote to June on October 15, 1998:
Exbibit 8
I began deciphering the note and most of the message was clear to me. He was planning to take his own life, using the sleeping pills he had saved from prescriptions he had written for his wife. He had also decided that he "must act quickly, lightning may strike, act swiftly before it's too late." He indicated he had "absolutely no regrets." He had lived "91 long years," and had had a "wonderful life and wonderful love."
Most of his wording appeared to be a justification for his intended suicide. But also included were two rather curious notations, the first of which was capitalized as if to emphasize its importance and underscored further by his dramatic use of the shorthand words. He wrote to June, "As your last act of love for me you must dispose of all my effects." Then he scribbled an even stranger message in a bolder hand: "L = conc. on excreta." He had used the letter "L" earlier in his notes to refer to "life," so by inference I assumed he meant, "Life= conc. on excreta." Could he have meant, "Life is a concentration of excrement," or, in plain talk, "Life is nothing but shit"? But this hardly seems in line or character or tone with the rest of what he said.