YOUNG mum Betty Bersinger was pushing her three-year-old daughter in her pram when she caught sight of something strange out of the corner of her eye.
At first she thought the dismembered figure lying among weeds in an empty Los Angeles lot was a mannequin.
She was sent screaming for help when she realised the ‘dummy’ – sliced clean in half, her mouth slit from ear to ear – was real.
The murder of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, who would become known as the Black Dahlia, was so grisly that it has become part of Hollywood folklore, inspiring countless books and a movie starring Hilary Swank and Scarlett Johansson.
Unsolved for almost 80 years, Elizabeth’s murder has continued to enthrall and horrify in equal measure and true crime enthusiasts have come up with endless theories. Cops had a list of 25 suspects.
Now the author of a new book claims to have finally solved the mystery of who was behind the gruesome murder in January 1947 – and also blames the suspect for the slaughter of a prominent heiress.
Emmy-nominated producer Eli Frankel names ex-US soldier and dairy salesman Carl Balsiger, who knew Elizabeth and lied to cops when quizzed about a trip away with her.
Frankel also reveals Balsiger knew a second murder victim, Leila Welsh, who, like Elizabeth, was bludgeoned before her body was drained of blood six years before the Black Dahlia killing.
Eli told The Sun: “I’m extremely confident that this is the murderer.
“I’ve looked into all the other main suspects and carried out five years of considerable research to reach this conclusion.
“I didn’t set out to identify the killer. For me, the most interesting part of the story was Elizabeth Short herself and there was lots of information around that nobody had picked up on that paints much more of a three dimensional picture of who she really was.
“From there, I was able to put together a list of almost everyone she was in contact with in her last six months of life and that’s how I reached my main suspect.”
Brutal death and mutilation
Short suffered the worst death imaginable.
Her body was severed clean in half, every drop of blood drained, pieces of flesh had been cut from her thigh and breast and her intestines were tucked behind her buttocks.
Short’s lower body was placed around a foot away from her torso and her arms had been ‘posed’ above her head and her legs spread apart.
The sickening nature of her killing gripped Hollywood and Short’s mysterious nomadic lifestyle – which saw her wrongly labelled a prostitute – added to the fascination.
In his book, Frankel reveals that Balsiger, an Army baker, was stationed in California at Camp Cooke base around the same time Short worked there at its commissary store in 1943.
Cops identified him as a suspect when they discovered he spent three days with Short, driving her to see a bakery business he part owned in Camarillo, California, in December 1946.
He claimed to have met Short for the first time at a real estate office that morning – yet he and the victim dined with friends at a nightclub in Beverly Hills a few months earlier.
When he was first questioned, Balsiger claimed he spent just a day-and-a-half with Short before dropping her off at a motel on Yucca Street in Hollywood, signing his name on the register.
Yet cops found no record that any such hotel existed.
On the night of December 9, Short took an unexpected trip on a Greyhound to San Diego and told a friend that she was trying to escape a “screwball”.
Frankel writes: “Because Carl Balsiger was the last person she was with in Los Angeles, it’s almost certain she was referring to him.”
Frankel theorises that when Short returned to LA in the short weeks before her murder, she reached out to Balsiger for cash because she was skint.
He says: “Balsiger had helped her out with money before.
“I think she was frightened of him but when she returned to Los Angeles she was in such desperate financial circumstances she got in touch with him. Maybe she thought she could control the situation – he was her last resort.”
Frankel also reveals that when Balsiger’s business partner Walt Thatcher was questioned by police they confirmed something not known to the public which alarmed him.
Short’s body had been washed and scrubbed by someone using a brush with traces of cocoa powder on it and detectives believed it came from a pastry kitchen.
After the murder, someone sent Short’s personal belongings to cops, including her birth certificate and address book, which contained a torn out piece of paper with Balsiger’s name on.
Police records from the time show that Balsiger, 29, had a violent criminal record, and had savagely beaten two women he took out on dates.
When he was evicted from an apartment, he stalked the management and staff, leaving them terrified.
Brutal murder of heiress
It was not the first time the ex-squaddie was linked to a brutal murder.
Frankel says he moved in the same circles as beauty queen and heiress Leila Welsh, 24, who was slayed as she lay sleeping at home in Kansas City in 1941.
Leila, due to inherit a real estate fortune, was hit on the head with a hammer before her throat was slashed with a butcher knife and a piece of flesh was cut from her thigh and placed on a windowsill.
Balsiger, described as “awkward, clumsy and plain looking”, attended the same college as Leila in Kansas and both their families spent summers at the Lake of the Forest holiday camp in the midwestern state.
Eerily, when Leila moved to Illinois for a short time in 1939, Balsiger also left Kansas to live just 200 miles away. He returned around the same time Leila did.
Leila’s brother George Welsh was arrested and charged with her murder but was later acquitted – and Frankel believes Carl was the real culprit.
He writes: “Leila’s murder was not the work of a mad slayer ripping at flesh in an uncontrolled rage.
“It was the work of someone experienced with a butcher who knew their way around flesh and bone, intent on severing the body.
“Carl spent his youth working in his dad’s grocery store, cutting and processing large sections of meat. He had stalked, killed and field-dressed deer in the Lake of the Forest.”
Hundreds of suspects
Elizabeth Short’s murder kicked off one of the biggest manhunts of the time.
During the initial investigation, 60 men made fake confessions and a staggering 500 have gone on to claim they killed the Black Dahlia – some of whom weren’t even born when she was killed.
Police were able to identify 25 men while internet sleuths have come up with their own theories.
Here we look at the main suspects over the decades.
George Hodel – a doctor who was also suspected of killing his secretary Ruth Spaulding, who died of an overdose in 1945. Police were suspicious when they found out the pair were having an affair. George was cleared in court of raping his teenage daughter.
Hodel’s son Steve, a former LAPD homicide detective, believes his dad killed Short and has written several books on the subject.
In 2003, it was revealed that police had tapped George Hodel’s home and recorded a conversation in which he said: “Supposin’ I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn’t prove it now.”
George Knowlton – was accused of the murder by his own daughter Janice Knowlton who, in 1991, claimed she witnessed her dad beat Short to death with a clawhammer in the garage of the family home in Westminster, California. She wrote a book which was called “trash” by her stepsister Jolane Emerson who said: “She believed it, but it wasn’t reality.”
Leslie Dillon – a bellhop and former mortician’s assistant who had the finger pointed at him by author Piu Eatwell in the 2017 book Black Dahlia, Red Rose. She argues that Dillon and pal Jeff Connors murdered Short on the request of a nightclub boss called Mark Hansen. They supposedly feared the victim was about to spill the beans on plans for a series of robberies.
Eatwell claims they got help with a cover-up from police sergeant Finis Brown, who was corrupt.
Frankel, a TV producer, says he has been obsessed with the Black Dahlia killing since he was in his 20s.
He said: “I first heard about this case in 1999 in my 20s and I just got drawn into it, as have a lot of people in LA – it’s the quintessential murder mystery.
“My grandparents used to tell me what Hollywood was like in the 40s and 50s and I was so entranced by the amazing characters they’d tell me about and the way the city used to be.
“It planted a seed so when I heard about this case, it came with the grimness of the murder but also the kind of magical environment of LA in those days.
“I read every book, every article and everything that was online, then in 2018 I was able to get my hands on the district attorney files for the case.
“I was fascinated by Elizabeth and the press coverage at the time made out she was reckless and irresponsible because of her lifestyle and had somehow put herself in that position.
“She was described as a prostitute at the time and so many myths around her were repeated, that she was trying to become an actress and looking for fame which she only found in death.
“I found that wasn’t the case. She had gone to LA looking for what many young people want – love. She wanted a stable home and someone to love. She was no different from any other 22-year-old at the time and not some exotic creature that she was painted as.”
- Eli Frankel’s book Sisters in Death, the Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress and their Hunter, published by Citadel Press / Kensington Books, is due out today.
