All this week, we’ve been shining a flashlight on some hair-raising histories and Southland haunts for our Spooky LA series.

For our final installment of Hallow’s Eve, we take a look at one of LA’s most notorious cold cases, the brutal murder of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia murder.

Kim Cooper of Esotouric LA leads crime tours around town, and one of them takes thrill-seekers to the same block where Short’s body was found in 1947. She tells us the story of the Black Dahlia.

Who was the Black Dahlia?

Short was 20 years old when he came to Southern California. Cooper likens it to a transient, which bounced from place to place before finally landing in Long Beach.

Cooper said one of her friends nicknamed her Black Dahlia after she called a movie Blue dahlia which was launched in 1946.

“Just like a funny lark, her friend said, ‘Oh, Beth, you’re like the Black Dahlia, with your curly hair, flowers behind your ears, and those dark clothes you always wear,'” Cooper said.

A murder mystery

Nearly 80 years later, Elizabeth Short’s murder remains unsolved. Short was found by Betty Bersinger while out for a walk with her child in Leimert Park on January 15, 1947. Instead of taking a main street, the two walked down a quiet, smaller street when Bersinger spotted something in the weeds in front. As she got closer, she realized that what she was seeing was a corpse and quickly took her child and ran away.

Part of what keeps people intrigued is how Short’s body was found.

“She was cut in half, and not just cut in half, she posed with her body a little bit apart,” Cooper said.

The condition of her body led puzzled investigators to believe that perhaps someone with medical knowledge – or a butcher – could have been responsible. Police investigated several people, but, Cooper said, they overlooked a surgeon who lived a block away from Short.

When Cooper takes guests on the Black Dahlia tour, they start at 39th Street and Norton Avenue and walk the long block to the crime scene. They stop at a fire hydrant, just 50 yards from where Short’s body was found.

“Standing there, looking up, on a clear day, you can actually see the Hollywood sign. And Hollywood is where this person in life, Elizabeth Short, has spent so much time struggling. He was never near there except at that moment of death. It’s a tough place,” Cooper said.

Cooper said he was stopping right there for a moment with the tour group.

“She was one of us,” Cooper said. “She almost had a chance to grow up and live and be happy here. The least we can do is respect her and show some love.”

Why the Black Dahlia case is so compelling

We asked Cooper why the case is still so compelling after all these years.

“Her story gives us a window into what life was like for these kind of transient butterfly characters who were just hovering on the fringes of the wartime world,” Cooper said.

Of the few things known about Black Dahlia, one is that she lost someone she loved during the war.

But another reason her story resonates with us now is that her situation is not unlike what Angelenos continue to experience — a lack of housing.

“There was an incredible housing crisis that was a big part of Beth’s short story,” Cooper said. “And I think the empathy and the familiarity and the sense of what if is something that people have when they hear about this case.”

Cooper added that without journalists, we wouldn’t know who Black Dahlia is. They investigated her as did the police and told her the story. The tragic irony is, however, that we wouldn’t know who she is if it weren’t for her death.

With that in mind, we hope you enjoyed this mini-series of Spooky LA history. Let us know if you’d like us to continue this series next Halloween. Be safe and happy Halloween!