 Edwin F. Burns
I first encountered Ed; here, at vet friends.org, back in March, 2007. Somebody had posted our photobooth photo sans the Dahlia, and giving Happy's name as Edwin F. Burns, his affiliation as Army, Branch Immaterial, Warrant Officers. It goes on to identify the photograph as having been taken in California in 1946.
Now, the credibility of the posters at other websites is outside the scope of my investigation, so I left it at that. I can only imagine some poor soul out there who misses him and waits on that one e-mail. The next time I looked in August, the photo was down, but the listing remained. Luckly, I had just managed to scrape a copy off before they pulled it. The site is undergoing big changes now as the Iraq conquest flounders. They'll be awash to the gunwhales when the troops start coming home for real. They are pushing towards members only access for some reason...The Fatman? 
Bette & Eddy. The vet's friend seeker had used the last photo and cropped it vertically so as to redact the Dahlia entilely from the scene. And opining from her expression, she's contemplating the same thing. These are the most ubiquitous photographs in a case which hardly lacks visual representations.
It shows up everywhere from the Medford Historical Society to Frau Johnson's lap on the front page of the L. A. Examiner on January 22nd., 1947, only to turn up in the mail on the twenty-fifth, having be sent to the Examiner by the killer himself. That said, the one notable place where these photos didn't turn up was in Beth's misdirected shipping trunk which was recovered in the Railway Express Agency, after her death, where it had sat unclaimed for months as some vigoriously contend. Another of the Fatman's canards, I'm sure.
January 23, 1947 3:15pm...A teletyped confrence was issued concerning the Short murder, that's page 13 of the FOIA documents from the FBI's Files For those of you following along at home, the urgent teletype conference of the afternoon Jan. 2[redacted], between AIC's of Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, [redacted] and Hoover is so shockingly forthright in it's characterizations of a....
"SUSPECT IDENTIFIED ONLY AS [redacted], FIRST NAME, UNKNOWN...INFORMANT [redacted], IDENTIFIED [redacted] IN PICTURE AND STATES SUSPECT WAS [redacted] IN US ARMY [lenghty redaction] WIFE [redacted] KILLED THEIR CHILD AND COMMITTED SUICIDE. AFTER THIS EVEN [redacted] WENT TO PIECES [lengthy redaction] AND WAS PLACED IN PSYCHO WARD FOR TREATMENT. HIS PRESENT WHEREABOUT UNKNOWN. IT IS BELIEVED [redacted] WAS DISCHARGED FROM ARMY UNDER SECTION EIGHT, PSYCHO NEUROSIS.
ARMY, WIFE, IDENTIFIED...IN PICTURE. What has New York City to do with it? What is the location of the redacted field office? Why redact a FBI SAC on a privacy beef? An most bizarre of all, they've redacted even the three in twenty-three in the header! Why mess with the date in such a document? What's the real signifigance of the Jan. 22-25, period?
What have we learned from the Army enlistment recorded; here? That one Edwin F. Burns, age 33, married. US Army. he was drafted, and his rating? Branch Immaterial, Warrant Officer. Born in New York City, he was enlisted in Los Angeles on December 15th.,1942.
Look at the middle shot. Look hard at the whites of this creep's eyes and Joker grin and tell me this guy's no vampire killer [shudder]. Oh, yeah.
Think of it like the tide. Attention on Ed ebbs and flows, in and out, of the case as he yanks one string, and looses another, and his false leads and elegant calculations served only to baffle and annoy, yet failed to bring the cops to Breeze St. for his big finish. Poor Ed had finally outsmarted even himself. He would have to settle for a perfect crime. Neatly done. Fame would elude him during his lifetime. He's not even fishcrap now.
7:26:56 AM 
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