Remember Elizabeth Short
by Caroline Miniscule
A girl named Elizabeth Short was born on July 29, 1924, in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Her parents, Phoebe and Cleo Short, soon moved with their little daughter to Medford.
In 1929, when Elizabeth was five years old, her father disappeared. His empty car was found near a bridge and it was speculated for a time that he had committed suicide. However, he later sent a letter to his wife, apologizing for abandoning his wife and daughter. Phoebe refused to allow him to return.
Elizabeth, called Betty as a child and Beth as she grew older, grew into a beautiful teenager. As a child, she had frequently attended movies with her mother and her goal was to work in movies. Perhaps it was only at the movie theaters that she found happiness, in those fantasy worlds where she did not come from a broken family and lived in comfort and luxury.
At age 19, Beth went to Vallejo, California to live with her father. This rapprochement was not to last. Her father complained that she was lazy, and that she stayed out too late. Beth returned home for a time, then went back to California to pursue her dream as an actress. It was not to be.
Im early January, 1947, at the age of 21, Beth Short was last seen alive at the Biltmore Hotel. After leaving the hotel in the company of an unidentified man, she was never again seen alive.
Her body was found, beaten, tortured, mutilated and cut into two halves, in a vacant lot in the Crenshaw District on January 15, 1947.
Everyone, especially everyone young, cultivates an image, a way of seeing themselves that makes them feel good. Elizabeth Short liked to dress all in black. A newspaper reporter called her ''the Black Dahlia.'' And it is as the ''Black Dahlia'' that she is remembered, more than fifty years later. It's the name, that image, that is remembered - not the fear and suffering she must have endured.
Many books have been written about the Black Dahlia, both fiction and non-fiction. Movies have been made. But don't remember 'the Black Dahlia.' Remember Elizabeth Short. Remember all the victims of all the senseless crimes that ever take place. Don't let their names ever be forgotten.
|
