The Unsolved Murder of Elizabeth Short aka The Black Dahlia
On January 15, 1947, housewife Betty Bersinger and her three-year-old daughter Anne were out on a morning walk. The pair were bundled from a cold snap that had settled over Southern California when they discovered the dismembered body of an unidentified woman in a weed-litter lot in Leimert Park.
At first, Bersinger thought the body was that of a mannequin that had been snapped in half. The body, drained of its blood, had been separated at the waist, her arms positioned over her head and legs spread apart. The body's intestines were tucked beneath her buttocks, and a slash from ear to ear disfigured the woman's face in a grim smile known as a "Glasgow Smile."
Scared half to death at the realization that the body was no dummy, Bersinger grabbed her daughter, dashed to the closest house, and called for the didn't.
Resistant to run the gruesome details on their front page, the Los Angeles Times relegated the murder to the second page. However, that didn't deter them from delighting in the drama of it all.
In the first 24 hours after the body's discovery, detectives Harry Hansen and Finis Brown questioned…
