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The Black Dahlia case has remained an open and unsolved investigation for about 78 years now. Elizabeth Short, also known as The Black Dahlia, was killed in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. Her body was found on January 15, 1947, by a woman walking with her young child. The police investigated the scene and found a female body completely cut in half at the waist. Police later identified the body as 22-year-old Elizabeth Short. The name The Black Dahlia came from customers at a local diner. She often wore black clothes and had black hair. A movie called “The Blue Dahlia” had just come out, and the customers gave her that nickname. The police have had many suspects, over 150 at one point, but not enough evidence to convict a suspect. The suspect high on the list includes all men with either a high ranking in society or a medical background. There are many different theories surrounding the different suspects, but no substantial evidence to catch the killer.

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These sources consist of four articles and a documentary, all from well-reputed sources; there is a lack of scholarly research on this topic. These sources were chosen for the depth, relationship to the murder case, and discussion of lifestyle and the term noir. These sources are listed in alphabetical order. The documentary and three of the articles delve into the question of what happened to Elizabeth, her lifestyle, the crime scene, and what it reveals to people. The fourth article explores the significance of the term "noir." The databases used to find sources include Academic Search Complete, Jstor, and Google Scholar; Keywords include: The Black Dahlia, Black Dahlia Murder, and Noir.

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Carl Hoffman

https://doi.org/10.1111/1542-734X.00099

Hoffman gives the readers background information about the Black Dahlia case. He then moves into discussing the two popular novels written by Max Allan Collins and James Ellroy. Hoffman dives deep into both books, comparing the differences and similarities between the two. The novels both have characters that are based on real people in the case. The author creates a personal connection between the heroes and the victims. They use the Black Dahlia as a doppelganger for the female characters. She resembles the person who the detective loves or lusts for. The murder becomes the plot of the novels, evoking guilt and loss in the detectives, forming a theme and giving the novel character.

Hoffman discusses the historical play in the novels and the play on film noir. The Black Dahlia murder happened just three years after World War II ended. People feared many things after the end of the war; this was when the film noir genre gained popularity. The films have featured a darker setting with a crime and drama style. The Black Dahlia murder was seen as something right out of the film noir genre, and hinted at the fact that the Black Dahlia was given her name after a film noir.

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Saul M. Kassin

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20183294

Kassin covers information on why a suspect will confess to the murder even though they did not commit the crime. He proceeds to discuss the three types of confessions: voluntary, compliant, and internalized. Voluntary confessions are confessions from suspects that are not prompted by the police. Kassin explains that in the Black Dahlia case, there were more than 50 voluntary confessions. Some reasons as to why innocent people confess to such gruesome crimes are feelings of guilt, need for attention, self-punishment, delusions, and the desire to protect someone else. Compliant confessions are prompted by the escape from the situation or to obtain an award. The suspect often sees the short-term benefits and not the long-term consequences. Lastly, internalized confessions are confessions that are coerced into believing they committed the crime or are intimidated enough to just confess.

Kassin proceeds to break down commonly asked questions pertaining to false confessions. The questions he covers are “Why are innocent people often misidentified for interrogation?” “What factors put innocent suspects at risk to confess?” and “How accurate are police, juries, and others at judging confession evidence?” He breaks down each question and answers the questions through research. He covers the risk factors and phenomenology of innocent suspects. Although this article is not completely related to the topic of the Black Dahlia, it gives readers and police an idea as to who falsely confessed to the crime and who could have committed the crime from the group of suspects.

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Dahlia Schweitzer

https://www.thisisdahlia.com/2022/12/22/from-glamour-to-the-grotesque-how-the-black-dahlia-became-a-sex-icon-and-changed-the-way-we-think-about-death/

Schweitzer opens with what happened to Elizabeth Short’s body and how she lost her humanity in her murder. She proceeds to tell the readers more about how significant the murder has become in the United States. Many movies and TV shows cover murder, and even a video game. She explains that the biographical information about Elizabeth is still unknown and causes people to see a corpse and not a human. Schweitzer says that there is no evidence for it, but that Short may have been in the sex business when she could not find acting jobs. Schweitzer also brings up the fact that Elizabeth Short’s appearance was similar to one in a film noir and that her death was also similar to the films. The name Black Dahlia was given to Short after a film noir called The Blue Dahlia. She explains that these references make Elizabeth Short seem more cinematic than an actual human.

Schweitzer continues to talk about how someone’s death dehumanizes them and how many murdered people are dehumanized and forgotten about. Death is not something people use for entertainment, and this is why victims are dehumanized. Schweitzer then goes into the suspects of who murdered Elizabeth Short and why they dehumanized her. She discusses how the placement of Elizabeth’s body may play into a style of art. She also states that the murderer saw Elizabeth as a doll or mannequin and that is how the world still sees her due to the lack of biographical and personal knowledge of Elizabeth Short.

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Lindsay Steenberg & Lisa Coulthard

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56444-5_4

Steenberg and Coulthard write about how the film noir genre created noir tourism. Noir tourism is when someone travels to see the site of where a death occurred. They dive into how tourism started and how people make money off a tragedy. Noir tourism is one of the oldest forms of tourism. Visiting a historic battle site or the graves of famous people is noir tourism. The authors go on to explain why her murder has now become a noir tourist attraction and some of the last places she was seen, because her murder is still an unsolved case.

They then discuss how gender politics come into play with the Balck Dahlia murder and noir tourism. The tourism is popular due to the places and food/drinks that tourists can purchase. The author's state, “Drinking a cocktail named after a viciously murdered woman in the last place she was seen alive is a form of dark tourism that brings gender politics to the foreground.” They see this problem and shine a light on the fact that noir tourism is not what people think. They highlight the fact that a woman’s murder is more cinematically entertaining, linking the murder to film noir and noir tourism.

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The Black Dahlia (Season 4, Episode 24)

https://play.history.com/shows/historys-greatest-mysteries/season-4/episode-24

The documentary opens with the theories of what happened to Elizabeth Short. They bring in the fact that back in 1947, if you had fame and money, you could get away with murder. The guest in the documentary covers the site and what was seen on the body at the presumed dump site. They tell us that she had died from a concussion and that she was dead before her body was dismembered. The investigators believed that the murderer was someone with a medical background. They discuss her background of leaving her home to follow her dreams in LA. A guest in the documentary tells us why/ how she was given the name The Black Dahlia.

The documentary continues with the suspects in the murder: Mark Hansen, the Cleveland Torso Killer, Dr. Walter Bayley, Bugsy Siegel, Norman Chandler, George Hodel, Jack Sands (aka Leslie Dillon), and Jeff Connors. Mark Hansen was a rich club owner who was in love with Elizabeth and let her live with him at his club. Mark lies to the police after her death.

The Cleaveland Torso Kill dismembered the bodies of many people, and the torture of the bodies matches Elizabeth Short’s torture. The killer sent a letter to the police saying they had moved to California. Dr. Walter Bayley was a surgeon at the University of California, had an office not far from the last place Elizabeth was seen, and he had had the traumatic loss of his child. He also lived just a block away from where Elizabeth’s body was found. Bugsy Siegel was a mafia member in Los Angeles and associated with Norman Chandler, who was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. There were rumors that Chandler got Short pregnant, and he had Bugsy Siegel murder her to avoid any marital and job issues associated with her. Steve Hodel, a former LAPD officer, believes his own father, George Hodel, had murdered Elizabeth. He searched his father's things and found some evidence that he might be related to the case. Steve continues to try to find evidence that his father did not commit the crime, but instead the evidence points right towards George as the murderer. Jack Sands contacts the police and says he has information on the murder. The police track him down and discover that his actual name is Leslie Dillon. They believe that Dillon had murdered Short because she mocked his manhood. Dillon knew where the rose tattoo was on Elizabeth. Jeff Connors was believed to be an alter ego for Leslie Dillon, but it turned out that he is a real person. Mark Hansen, Jeff Connors, and Leslie Dillon, all knew each other and may have all teamed up to kill Elizabeth Short. Detectives believe that Mark may have hired Jeff and Leslie to kill her.

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Similarities:

-Articles 1, 3, and 4 all discuss the topic of film noir.

-Article 3 and the documentary discuss the crime scene and what happened to Elizabeth Short.

-All of the articles and documentary discuss the horrible crime that happened to Elizabeth Short.

All the articles and the documentary were different in their own ways. Many of them all link together, but there is still an outlier in article 2. All of these sources give good information on the crime, police investigation, and the discussion on the term noir.

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Article 2 was my major outlier. The article discusses more of the false confessions than the actual Black Dahlia Case. It gives me a limited amount of information on the case, but it opened up my view as to why people falsely confess. Using the information from this article will help me write about the possible reasons why it happened and who didn't commit the crime. All of my other articles and documentary connect in some way to each other. This article is the only one that does not connect other than the fact that the Black Dahlia case is used as an example for a crime that had many false confessions.

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Hoffman, C. (2003). Return to the primal noir: Two modern authors on the Black Dahlia. Journal of American Culture, 26(3), 385–394 https://doi.org/10.1111/1542-734X.00099

Kassin, S. M. (2008). False Confessions: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Reform. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(4), 249–253. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20183294

Schweitzer, D (2022). From glamour to the grotesque: How the Black Dahlia became a sex icon and changed the way we think about death. Dahlia Schweitzer https://www.thisisdahlia.com/2022/12/22/from-glamour-to-the-grotesque-how-the-black-dahlia-became-a-sex-icon-and-changed-the-way-we-think-about-death/

Steenberg, L., Coulthard, L. (2021). Noir Tourism and the Black Dahlia Murder. In: Ewen, N., Grattan, A., Leaning, M., Manning, P. (eds) Capitalism, Crime and Media in the 21st Century. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56444-5_4

The Black Dahlia (Season 4, Episode 24) [TV series episode] (2023, August 7). Stiller, M. (Executive Producer) & Fishburne, L. (Host). History’s greatest mysteries. Blumhouse Television; The Content Group; eOne Television. https://play.history.com/shows/historys-greatest-mysteries/season-4/episode-24