 Something anomalous
The scene on S. Norton Av. the morning January 15, 1947 blew their socks off. But from Harry the Hat's point of view you have two and only two clues. The location of the body and it's condition when they found it. Harry and the cops assured their own defeat by following their noses and focusing on the corpse, and what the forensic evidence revealed, as have all LAPD sources since. Case closed...er?
No such luck. The severed body was represented en tableau for the consideration of the boys in homicide as well as the boys and girl from the L.A. Examiner and other Los Angeles papers by a man so skilled with cameras himself that it got him drafted into the Army at the very advanced age of thirty-three, and so knowledgable about the city itself he was able to create such a complex crime, easily escape the dragnet, and then stay one step ahead of them for sixty years. The massive shock value of the heavily damaged nude corpse, of the young and previously unfettered white girl. The relative poses they found the two haves were merely a further insult done to her body by the killer. An X.
The LAPD had their early attention focused entirely on the body itself. The vacant lot? A vacant lot. How could they know? The entire soultion to the crime was in the premeditated nature of the drop site, and how it mapped the whole mysterious murder suicide in four lines (4). That's the other clue. The one I have investigated to my own satisfaction that the fellow was real and he really killed the Black Dalhia. He figured that the longer they looked at her, the more time he would have to make good his escape from L.A. the Bluejay way. He figured right.
Ed knew how to give 'em what they wanted. All he wanted was to make Bette sorry he couldn't have her so he beat her and tortured her for three days, after having hanged her over the bathtub, andfinally giving her only death to ease her pain, and then he further savaged his carrion, severing it neatly to drain any remaining fluids and then fit perfectly into two large suitcases, which he lugged to his Ford and drove them to the place where they must depart, but not forever, because he would join her soon, either at the hand of the state, or by his own, if they don't catch onto his mathematical regressions in time. They don't.
Fifty years pass. And they're still not within a city block of their murderer's real identity. But the Times reporter Larry Harnish will soon put the newspaper's finger on some poor old dead M.D. with no living realtives to sue them, and a nasty divorce to regurg, the Times went with a Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley, who owned a house in Leimert Park at the time. Fair enough, a family connection too, via her sister, but I wasn't even that far along yet. Just in time for the big celebration of a half decade since the famous and still unsolved murder. Swell, but something still troubled me about that vacant lot. Too much, too, too, too much something and too little of everything else. No parades were given in her honor. The city sleeps.
Ten more years pass and the Black Dahlia is still a viable marketing image in some peoples minds. So it was time for the full Hollywood treatment for Elizabeth Short, a major motion picture based on best selling author James Ellroy's novel treatment of the murder, The Black Dahlia. The break she never sought in life was finally given to her in memory of her stunning graphic capabilities. Stardom. Hooray for Hollywood! And how all the city school children sang the old school rhyme at the L.A. premier; "We love you Elizabeth Short. Oh, yes we do! We're so sorry you got cut in two. We made a porno loop of you. Because, Elizabeth Short, we love you! What a scene? But I digress.
The Black Dahlia (2006)
7:51:03 AM 
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