The Paper Dahlia
"Only a brutally determined man of immense strength could have done it." --Raymond Chandler, 'The Bronze Door'. Unknown Magazine, November 1939.
I really admire a good bad pun. The medium is the newspapers, but the message is for the cops. This story was really getting inky. The perfect crime. Textbook. E=MC². Both in planning and execution, this one's a real thing beauty. Witnesses thought she looked like a mannequin, lying there in the dallis grass. A department store dummy, a papier-mache' doll from an old window dressing for the after X-mas sales. Examine her closely or you'll miss the dotted deadline. Maintain your detachment as we press on further outside the envelope where the killer has put his own indelible stamps.
This envelope was found in the mail drop of the Biltmore Hotel. The mailer had affixed two three cent postage stamps perhaps thinking his letter was overweight. The stamps were Thomas Jefferson heads from the Presidential or "Prexies" series first published in 1938. [Scott #807]. They're by no means rare or expensive stamps, even today. Two of them won't bring two dollars on E-Bay. Though, if you think about it, it's a three thousand percent return on investment. So it was apparently enough postage to get it where it was going, and was dutifully cancelled by L.A. postal inspectors, who hand delivered it to the first addressee, the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper, and open same, while the cops and reporters gawked and speculated.
"In it were: a black address book, with "1937" stamped on it's cover and several missing pages; Elizabeth Short's birth certificate and Social Security card; Greyhound Bus Line luggage claim checks from the suitcases she checked at the 6th street terminal; and several photos of the Dahlia with friends and servicemen...All the contents of the package had been soaked in gasoline, removing any fingerprints. It was as close as police got to the killer, and it lead them nowhere". --Dave Hogan, Unsolved' The Murder of the Black Dahlia, The L.A. Grim Society (1999).
Not so fast, Mr. Buckaroo. Let's look at that address line once more, so we don't make a mistake. The first line reads:
Los Angeles Examiner and O THER Los Angeles PAPER(S) 
Aside from the obvious abrogation of the standard address form, the first thing you notice reading left to right is the repeater. He uses "Los Angeles" twice. Eastside, Westside, all around the town. That's our boy, allright. L.A. bisectual seeks short term relationship. From right to left. The word "other" has been badly hacked, I can't see where he's going with this, except something like an; or/the sort of thing. There's L.A. again in a slightly different typeset, and then "PAPER(S)" set in all caps, with that odd second "P". Notice also that the "S" reverses the type face scheme from black-on-white to white on a black cutout. The positioning of the stamps is unrevealing except for the slight offset to the right of stamp #1, while stamp #2 looks perfectly straight and level.
Acme paper cutter
Okey-dokie class. Let's get out our rulers and find our point of reference, remember to allow for scale. Your lines should intersect to form point close to the dead center of the "D" in "'Dahlia's'". You can now label the quadrants using Roman numerals, I,II, III,IV, with I, in the upper left, II in the upper right, III is the lower left, and IV, the lower right. You don't have to, but you can. The lines themselves are the important thing. This guy likes straight lines bisected with hard perpendiculars. Occam's razor? Poor Betty got it right through the anatomical midsection. Zeno's race course, but he cut her off short. Look at your envelope again. Reducto ad absurdum. That's our poor severed Betty laid out on a white slab.
The ""Dahlia's"" forms the upper torso. "HERE!" and "IS" for her right leg, "Belongings" is her left. Rotate your envelope 90° counter-clockwise and there she is. A cut-out doll for you to play with. Line two reads;
HERE! IS
'Dahlia's
BELONGingS
Line three reads:
LETTER TO F0LLOW
But it probably wont. Maybe a postcard if there's time? We'll see. Is this our map freak? Undoubtably. This is his big stick, you see? He's handy with a ruler, it already looms large in his legend. But then the cops never did catch up with his charting and navigation skills. It seems to have played no part in the investigations, otherwise somebody might have checked the local aerodromes to see if anybody was logging heavy miles in and out on the fifteenth of January, 1947.
My over arching impression of this letter is that it was intented for two distinct audiences. Not, as the draftsman implies the Examiner and the other papers, but rather the Examiner and the cops. The left side contains a reply to the police's asking him to turn himself in. Using "IS" instead of the grammatically correct; "ARE" is the signal to homicide that he got their message and will turn himself in, and a letter will follow. Did it? I don't know. Did he turn himself in? It would seem not.
The right side has been reserved the killers big joke, he's been playing with his little scraps again.
PAPER(S)
'Dahlia's
This is a man of many talents, but he's not playing with a full deck of cards. He's a comedian whose jokes all fall down flat. He's a hack writer, and a right hacker. He's the kind of guy who would build his own house, but the lights are left on, and nobody's home. I'm guessing married, but habitually separated, a real two-timer. Punctual to a fault, he's the kind of guy who never once forgets her birthday until one night she wakes up to find Prince Charming tattooing his initials in her forehead with a hammer and some cold dies. Kismet, I never said it wasn't.
10:18:51 AM 
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