“All murders count, but this one has a haunting resonance because it strikes at the wanderlust in all of us,” Connelly said. “Here was a 22-year-old woman who was just trying to see the world, and she ends up crossing paths with a psychopath who had to take great pleasure in destroying her.”
Short’s torso was severed neatly between the second and third lumbar vertebrae, a complicated procedure that would have required medical expertise. The killer gave her a “Glasgow smile,” cuts extended from the edges of her lips toward the ears.
There were other indignities, too horrific to describe. And there was the way the legend of the Black Dahlia, the cool seductress courting danger, obscured the fact that Short had been a real woman who felt real pain. “It’s Elizabeth’s last moments that are so haunting,” Connelly added. “What she endured, knowing that she was alone with a monster.”
Dozens of men were investigated, none charged. The case has long been cold, but for Connelly it’s also frozen, preserved with chilling clarity. “I have a daughter who’s just a few years older than Elizabeth Short was,” he said. “Whereas I check on my daughter’s whereabouts anytime I want, Elizabeth didn’t have a father who cared. She was really on her own.”
Some have depicted Short as a clueless ingénue blinded by the desire for fame. The crime writer James Ellroy published his novel “The Black Dahlia” in 1987, the same year that Connelly arrived in L.A. The “sad little girl and a whore,” as Ellroy calls her, isn’t central to the novel, which focuses on two male detectives, as does the subsequent Brian De Palma film.
“To me, it kind of feels like the media emerged as one of the villains in this story because of what they did to her,” Connelly said in one episode of the first season of “Killer in the Code.” The podcast takes a sensitive approach to Short’s challenging life. But the central question remains: Who was responsible for her death?
