By the mid-1940s, Elizabeth Short was living in Los Angeles, California, working as a waitress to support herself while dreaming of catching her big break into Hollywood's acting scene. Her chance at stardom, however, would never come. In January 1947, a horrific tragedy occurred: At the age of 22, Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. Her body was found, nude and posed, by a local female resident on January 15, 1947, in a vacant lot near Leimert Park, on the 3800 block of L.A.'s South Norton Avenue. "It was pretty gruesome," Brian Carr, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who has long worked on the Dahlia case, later said. "I just can't imagine someone doing that to another human being." In addition to dissecting and mutilating her body, Short's killer had drained her corpse of blood and scrubbed it clean.

Elizabeth Short And Major Matthew M. Gordon Jr.: The couple met in the mid-1940s in Florida and wanted to get married. Matthew tragically died in a plane crash, after which Elizabeth decided to move back to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting.

A gruesome scene greeted investigators. Short had been completely severed in two, bisected at the waist. Her body had been entirely drained of blood. Her face had been viciously slashed from both corners of her mouth up to her ears into a grotesque parody of a smile. Her thighs and breasts had been attacked and cut up, portions of flesh sliced off. Her intestines had been tucked underneath her buttocks. The killer had posed the body so that the hands were above the head, arms bent back at right angles and the legs spread wide apart.