Dahlia podcast

Maddie is the host of the podcast Let's Talk Dahlia, where she discusses the unsolved case of the Black Dahlia, also known as Elizabeth Short. The murder took place in 1947 in Los Angeles, and Short's body was found mutilated in a field. Maddie researched the case using FBI archives and found that the investigation had many suspects, but no one was ever convicted. The case had a significant impact on society, particularly on women who felt unsafe. Maddie questions why the FBI stopped investigating and how this case has influenced future cases. She gathered research from various sources and found the FBI archives to be helpful. The documents she found shed light on the investigation process and the challenges faced in solving the case. Despite many leads, including a potential suspect with medical experience, the case remains unsolved. Maddie hopes her podcast will educate listeners and inspire further research into the Black Dahlia case. Hi, my name is Maddie. I am the host of the podcast Let's Talk Dahlia by the title you may or may not know what that means, but I will be getting into that with more detail Over the past few months. I have been researching about the unsolved case of black Dahlia Formerly known as Elizabeth Short. The murders took place in January of 1947 in Los Angeles, California I found this very unique topic by just simply searching for FBI archives I knew I wanted to research this because I love learning about the FBI. I specifically wanted to learn about the processes used within an investigation I found the vault FBI archive site to be very reliable when coming across firsthand accounts and sources regarding the black Dahlia case And now getting into the details with black Dahlia Black Dahlia is a notorious cold case. This happened in the United States as I said earlier January 15th in 1947 in Los Angeles, California Elizabeth Short was only 22 years old when her life was gruesomely taken away. She was murdered Her body was found in a field just outside of a suburban neighborhood Extremely mutilated with clean cuts. Her face became known for the cut that was up her cheeks Making it look like an elongated smile Short actually gained the nickname black Dahlia before the murder even happened, which is usually a misconception The nickname stuck because of her love of black clothing and because she had black hair. This made her easily identifiable Over the course of the investigation many many suspects came to light including The last person that was seen with her Robert Red Manley, but later he was found to be not guilty of the murder Strangely enough even people were coming forward taking accountability for the murder when they didn't even do it The investigation was ongoing for many many years in the late 80s and 90s Some new evidence emerged saying that the killer had medical experience due to the types of cuts that were on the body Many years later now there's still no answer as to who committed this crime and it has impacted our society greatly. As said before the impact was tremendous Short was an aspiring actress in Los Angeles at the time this was uncommon for women This murder terrified people especially women Because it made them feel that doing their usual house jobs was safer than trying new things There were even copycat murders such as a lipstick murder that sent the community into more fear after the murder of black Dahlia My initial research left me with a few questions about the case Why did the FBI choose to stop investigating the black Dahlia case and also how has this case impacted future cases in the FBI? For my research I have been gathering information like I said from the Vol FBI archives as well as many many other sources. I found my additional sources by Looking up my research questions that I was left with from my initial studies My main focus in my additional research was on the case's impact on society Throughout many sources I found some themes one of them that I found to be very interesting And that was did the FBI really give this case their full efforts? Many lawsuits in court cases came from this murder When a murder cannot be solved it leaves a lot of room for interpretation about the evidence that they are dealing with Why couldn't they find the suspect? Was there more than one victim? As time went on the FBI continued to research including myself hoping that maybe one day we will find answers to such a devastating story So that was my take on a brief introduction to the case now I'm going to get into some more additional details that I find important to really understanding my research I found some words and phrases to be helpful when understanding the case as I said I explained who black Dahlia was Who was Elizabeth Shore? Another important term is cold case so starting off a case is a civil or criminal proceeding at law or in equity I found this from the Legal Information Institute website and then a case goes cold when all investigative leads available to investigators are Exhaustive and the case remains unsolved and open for over three years and I found this from the Houston Police Department website So clearly black Dahlia went cold it's been six decades and there's still no definite answer Another interesting concept is a copycat murder So a copycat murder is a murder that is committed in the same nature that another murder was committed So basically that killer is copying another famous killing Another interesting concept is the lipstick murder So the lipstick murder also took place in California in 1947 in Los Angeles and the victim was 45 year old Jeanne Finch And her body was found stomped to death in a neighborhood called a sack it was kind of a similar setup as Dahlia And this took place just weeks after Dahlia's death and many people thought that these two were related Again this suspect was also never found it is called the lipstick murder because there was degrading writing on her torso in red lipstick And then another important term was just the FBI in LAPD just understanding their role a little more They were the lead investigators in the case and they work to protect civil justice and rights As I discussed some before I gathered tons of my research and I found that the FBI is a very important organization I gathered tons of my research from many different scholarly sites including the FBI vault and many others that explain the murder in more detail And those helped me gather all my research From the FBI vault archive site I found many intriguing objects of real first hand documents that the FBI had during the case The first documents I found were from the beginning of the investigation on January 19th and January 20th And it includes a description of potential suspect red hair ex-marine 165 pounds Irish or English 5 foot 6 inches And this description was key in potentially getting a name for suspects The second document gave a name as Robert Red Manley again the last man that was seen with Elizabeth Schwartz And these documents are really important they help kick start the investigation in a positive direction to start getting some clearer answers Another intriguing object was a newspaper clipping talking about the man Daniel S. Voorhees age 33 that falsely confessed to the murder Voorhees called saying I can't stand it any longer I want to confess to the murder of Black Dahlia He was later brought in for further questioning and claimed he had a previous relationship with Schwartz which was a false claim and was later found to not be true They further interrogated him but it was clear that he was not the killer and that he just falsely claimed to be I found this extremely intriguing why would someone confess to something they did not do At this time the newspaper was also especially important because this is how the police were able to communicate with the citizens of Los Angeles So seeing something like this was extremely concerning to the public Later it also seemed that the investigators actually came in contact with the murder at some point On January 31st 1947 an anonymous letter came in saying I will give up if I get 10 years don't fine me And he kept referring to himself as the other slayer The police tried to get fingerprints from the document but no results came up Once again the investigation was put back to square one trying to find a suspect making a list of what the suspect could possibly look like This document seemed to be very important to me because it shows the true process of an investigation which is what I wanted to learn more about It shows both the failures and successes that happen when trying to solve a case It is very interesting that they came so so so close to the perpetrator but yet still so far from solving the case It had to become very frustrating at some point Even more suspects came to light in my next object John Shippey was another name but yet another false lead And then 5 years after the murder in 1952 there was another potential lead on the killer New evidence emerged proving that the killer had some surgical experience due to the precision of the cuts on the body And this was very good information, you know this could lead to something completely new They came up with a name as Jermara and he was a committed military man And he had some previous medical experience You know of course with the circumstances he was questioned about his whereabouts and about the murder But there was proof that he was actually still in the military awaiting disposition at the time and it could not have been him Now that it had been over 5 years and there was still no consistent lead to get them anywhere It was clear that the case was starting to go cold And you know this sparked me to question, will the suspect ever really even be found? Why do investigations go cold? What stops the police from investigating these? Personally I cannot imagine the strain that a cold case has on someone, especially the family of a victim You know you never get that real closure Later I found some more unique objects from the FBI archives that were just kind of smaller details But in 1975, like 30 years later, a series came out, a little docu-series, the Black Dahlia Trials But still at this time no murder had been found So people, it just brought back the old memories of the case because still, it was unsolved And then November 2nd, 1992, her death certificate officially comes out Which was very unique to look at And in 1993, and many years after, many movies, many directors, you know still hitting on this case It just kept saddening society, even many years later So these FBI archives were only released a few years ago to the public to look through You know each document referred to in my objects came from this site And you can actually look at exactly what I'm talking about, first-hand real reliable sources Highlighting the process of the case And these archives really educated me and had me wanting to research more and that is exactly what I did There were actually over 162 documents to look through with this case Because it was ongoing for so long and such a huge deal It kept going on and so many documents accumulated And then I found some more further readings just about different aspects of the case And then some also murders that could have been copycat murders Many copycat murders emerged from this as I talked about earlier As well as I found some fun FAQs that talk about more unique details to the case Not exactly all FBI related As I was researching, a lot of the authors to these articles They spent a lot of time researching true crime and history And even some of them are particularly invested in Black Dahlia And it was cool to see someone who has been going at this Learning about this for so long to see their perspective I learned that there are so many people out there that are still trying to solve this And obviously many theories have arised Was it a woman killer? Even people came out with books saying that their own parents did it But again, there is still no exact answer and no closure to be had from the situation I hope my podcast was educating about the Black Dahlia case And intrigues you to want to learn more This was just an introduction to my research community on the topic I want to keep researching more and see if there is details that can get us closer to an answer Thank you for listening Again, I'm your host Maddie Barnes And this was Let's Talk Dahlia