- The murder of Elizabeth Short, dubbed the Black Dahlia by the press, has long captured the interest of true crime buffs.
- Now a new book, Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel, offers a possible solution to the case.
- EW shares an exclusive excerpt from a key witness, the woman who discovered Short’s body.
Few cases have haunted Los Angeles the way the Black Dahlia murder has.
The still unsolved homicide of young aspiring actress Elizabeth Short has generated scores of books, TV specials, and theories over the years. Now, a new true crime entry, Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel, seeks to solve the crime definitively.
In January 1947, Short’s body was found dissected and drained of blood in an empty lot in Los Angeles. The race to find her killer and resulting city-wide hysteria captured the world’s attention — and the murder remains unsolved nearly 70 years later despite numerous attempts to close the case.
Frankel’s book posits that Short and Leila Walsh, a Kansas City heiress who was murdered in 1941, were killed by the same man. Frankel uses newly discovered documents, law enforcement files, interviews with the last surviving participants, the victims’ own letters, trial transcripts, military records, and more to piece together this complex puzzle…