Black Dahlia fact or fiction?

this new film called the black dahlia's tagline is "inspired by the most notorious unsolved murder in californian history", but if you look it up, it says its an adaptation of James Ellroys novel! So is it fact or fiction?

Black Dahlia fact or fiction?
It is fiction. The Black Dahlia murder really happened but most of the characters and events in the novel are fictional. The novel was based on the actual case but it is a fictional account. I'm a forensic science graduate student so I have read both the James Ellroy novel and several other books about the case and there are some elements of truth (for example some of the suspects in the novel were real people) but for the most part it is fictional.
Reply:I'm pretty sure its just based on the real story. I know its not supposed to be a biopic of her real life, so I'm sure they took a lot of liberties for dramatic effect.
Reply:The murder case is a fact. The woman who was murdered was Elizabeth Short. I'm sure the movie will take liberties with the truth.
Reply:It is fact
Reply:fact
Reply:James Ellroy's novel is a highly fictionalized work in the noir style written in the context of the Black Dahlia case. Someone I know said, "Ellroy uses the real-life incident as a touch point for the fictional story he wants to tell. I suspect the reason he chose that incident is because he wants to parallel the media frenzy/obsession the case caused at the time with the downward spiral of obsession and self-destruction the two main characters face." I think that explains it pretty well.





The case is real; it is one of the most notorious unsolved murder cases, unlikely to ever be solved, especially now. I suggest you look up Elizabeth Short on Wikipedia and CrimeLibrary.com if you don't know much about it and want to find out more. A lot of details about her are confused now (such as whether she was nicknamed the "Black Dahlia" before or after her death, whether she had a genital defect or not, etc.), but the basic story is always the same.
Reply:The Black Dahlia is an actual murder case from California history. I am guessing that the screenplay is an adaptation of James Ellroys novel. So the movie in inspired by the actual Black Dahlia, who was Elizabeth Smart, but is fictionalized by Hollywood to fill in the pieces that are still a mystery.
Reply:its a fact, 1940,s murder quoted in micheal connelly books
Reply:Well history can be written as a novel, im also not so sure so im sorry for not answering your question.
Reply:well , it's fiction based on facts ... ;)
Reply:both???
Reply:It is a real murder. Learned about it in forensics class but you can always assume movies will embellish what really happened to make it more interesting so it is possible that this James Elroy's book did just that so they made it into a movie.
Reply:I believe it is a true fact.
Reply:It was a true murder case. A really gruesome one. I don't know but I'm guessing James Ellroy wrote a story around it and the film has been adapted from that.
Reply:its supposed to be true. look it up. not the movie website.
Reply:Its based on a real person, here is some information about the real thing. There have been various books including Ellroys based on the infamous case.





Elizabeth Short (July 29, 1924 – January 15, 1947), better known as the Black Dahlia, was the victim of a murder in 1947.





Born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, Short was raised in Medford, Massachusetts, by her mother, Phoebe Mae. Her father, Cleo, abandoned her and her four sisters in October, 1930.





Troubled by asthma, she spent summers in Medford, Massachusetts and winters in Florida. At the age of 19, she went to Vallejo, California, to live with her father, and they moved to Los Angeles in early 1943. She left almost immediately because of an argument with her father and got a job in one of the post exchanges at Camp Cooke, which is now Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc. She moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested September 23, 1943, for underage drinking and was sent back to Medford by juvenile authorities.





For the next few years she resided in various cities in Florida, with occasional trips back to Massachusetts, earning money mostly as a waitress.





In Florida she met Major Matthew M. Gordon Jr., who was part of the 2nd Air Commandos and training for deployment in the China Burma India theater of operations. Short told friends that Gordon—who, according to his obituary in the Pueblo, Colorado, newspaper, was awarded a Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, the Air Medal with 15 oak leaf clusters, and Purple Heart—wrote a letter from India proposing marriage while recovering from an airplane crash he suffered while trying to rescue a downed flier. She accepted his proposal, but he died in a crash on August 10, 1945, before he could return to the U.S. to marry her. Short later embellished this story to say that they were married and had a child who had died. Although Gordon's friends in the air commandos confirm Gordon and Short were engaged, his family subsequently denied any connection after Short's murder.





She returned to Southern California in July 1946, to see an old boyfriend she met in Florida during the war, Lt. Gordon Fickling, who was stationed in Long Beach. For the six months that remained of her life, she stayed in Southern California, mainly in the Los Angeles area. During this time, she lived in at least a dozen hotels, apartment buildings, rooming houses, and private homes, never staying anywhere for more than a few weeks.





Short was last seen alive on the evening of January 9, 1947, in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel at 5th Street and Olive in downtown Los Angeles. She was 22 years old.





On January 15, 1947, her body was discovered in a vacant lot of the 3800 block of South Norton Avenue in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, cut in half at the waist and mutilated.





Elizabeth Short was laid to rest in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. She was interred there, rather than in a cemetery within Medford, because her oldest sister lived in nearby Berkeley and, reportedly, because she loved California.








Popular myths and misconceptions


According to newspaper reports shortly after the murder, Short received the nickname Black Dahlia at a Long Beach drugstore in the summer of 1946, as a play on the then-current movie The Blue Dahlia, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Los Angeles County district attorney investigators' reports state the nickname was invented by newspaper reporters covering the murder. In either case, Short was not generally known as the "Black Dahlia" in life.





A number of people, none of whom knew Short in life, contacted police and the newspapers, claiming to have seen her during her so-called "missing week" between the time of her disappearance January 9 and the time her body was found on January 15. Police and district attorney investigators ruled out each of these alleged sightings, sometimes identifying other women that witnesses had mistaken for Short.





Many crime books and other allegedly factual accounts claim that Short lived in or visited Los Angeles at various times in the mid-1940s; but these claims have never been substantiated, and are refuted by the findings of law enforcement officers who investigated the case. A document in the Los Angeles County district attorney's files titled "Movements of Elizabeth Short Prior to June 1, 1946" states that Short was in Florida and Massachusetts from September 1943 through the early months of 1946, and gives a detailed account of her living and working arrangements during this period.





Although popular myth as well as many "true crime" books portrayed Short as a call girl, a report by the district attorney's office for the Los Angeles County grand jury states that she was not a prostitute.





Another widely circulated myth holds that Short was unable to have sexual intercourse because of some genetic defect that left her with "infantile genitalia." Los Angeles County district attorney's files states the investigators had questioned three men with whom Short had sexual intercourse, including a Chicago police officer who was a suspect in the case. The FBI files on the case also contain a statement from a man with whom Short had sexual intercourse. According to the LAPD summary of the case, in the district attorney's files, the autopsy describes Short's reproductive organs as anatomically normal. The autopsy also states that Short was not and had never been pregnant, contrary to what is sometimes claimed.








Suspects


The Black Dahlia murder investigation by the LAPD was the largest since the murder of Marian Parker in 1927, and involved hundreds of officers borrowed from other law enforcement agencies. Because of the complexity of the case, the original investigators treated every person who knew Elizabeth Short as a suspect who had to be eliminated. Hundreds of people were considered suspects and thousands were interviewed by police. Sensational and sometimes inaccurate press coverage, as well as the horrible nature of the crime, focused intense public attention on the case. About 60 people confessed to the murder, mostly men, as well as a few women. As the case continues to command public attention, many people have been proposed as possible killers of Elizabeth Short, much like the Jack the Ripper case.





22 District Attorney suspects


A summary of each of 22 suspects investigated by the Los Angeles district attorney's office, transcribed from the official document, can be found at this website.


Walter Bayley


Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley was a Los Angeles surgeon who lived in a house one block south of the vacant lot in which Elizabeth Short’s body was found, until leaving his wife in October 1946. At the time of the murder, Bayley’s estranged wife still lived in the home. Bayley's daughter was a friend of Elizabeth Short's sister Virginia and brother-in-law Adrian, and had been the matron of honor at their wedding. When Bayley died in January 1948, his autopsy showed that he was suffering from degenerative brain disease. After his death, Bayley's widow alleged that his mistress knew a "terrible secret" about Bayley and claimed this was the reason the mistress was the main beneficiary upon his death. Bayley was never a suspect in the case, but many medical doctors and others with medical training were. In secret testimony, Detective Harry Hansen, one of the original investigators, told the 1949 Los Angeles County grand jury that in his opinion, the killer was a "top medical man" and "a fine surgeon." Bayley was 67 years old at the time of the murder, had no known history of violence or criminal activity of any kind, and is not known to have met Short.


When Larry Harnisch, a copy editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times, began studying the case in 1996, he eventually concluded that Bayley could be Elizabeth Short's killer.Although critics of Harnisch's theory question whether Bayley's mental and physical condition at the time of the murder would have been consistent with the commission of this type of crime, the original investigators' theory that the body was cut in half because the killer wasn't strong enough to move it intact partially answers this objection. Harnisch theorizes that Bayley’s neurological deterioration contributed to his alleged violence against Short. Some have suggested that the secret that Bayley’s mistress was blackmailing him with was that he had performed abortions, then a crime. However, there is no evidence that Bayley performed abortions or associated with anyone involved in performing abortions. Author James Ellroy endorsed Harnisch's theory in the 2001 film James Ellroy's Feast of Death.


Norman Chandler


Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, is accused of involvement in Elizabeth Short's murder, in Donald Wolfe's The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles. In a complicated scenario involving multiple perpetrators, Wolfe claims that Chandler impregnated Short while she was working as a call girl for the notorious Hollywood "madam" Brenda Allen, which led to Short's murder at the hands of gangster Bugsy Siegel. Wolfe's claim that Short was a prostitute is at odds with the Los Angeles County district attorney's files, which plainly state that she was not.


Joseph A. Dumais


Joseph Dumais, a 29-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, confessed to the murder a few weeks after it occurred. Although this "breakthrough" was quickly dismissed by the original investigators, the Los Angeles press covered enthusiastically until it was revealed that Dumais had remained in Fort Dix at the time of the murder. Dumais was cleared of any involvement in the crime, although he continued to claim he killed Elizabeth Short each time he was arrested for various offenses, well into the 1950s.


Female suspects


Although the vast majority of suspects in the case were male, authorities did not rule out the possibility of a female killer. One theory held that, because Short had checked her baggage, including her clothing and cosmetics, a week before she died, she must have been staying with another woman (who presumably would have lent Short the essentials) during the intervening time. Another theory was that the assailant bisected Short's body because he or she was not strong enough to move it in one piece. One of the first people to confess to the murder was a WAC Sergeant stationed in San Diego. Authorities took the confession seriously enough to investigate and found it groundless. Another suspect is referred to simply as "Queer Woman Surgeon" in the Los Angeles district attorney's files on the case. Newspaper stories at the time implied that Short was homosexual or bisexual, but the district attorney files state bluntly that Short "had no use for queers."


Woody Guthrie


The folksinger was one of the many suspects in the murder, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's files and Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie written by Ed Cray and published in 2004 by W.W. Norton, Page 331. According to Cray, Guthrie drew police attention due to some sexually explicit letters and lurid tabloid clippings he sent to a northern California woman with whom he was smitten. The mailings disturbed their recipient so much that she showed them to her sister in Los Angeles, who contacted the police. Guthrie was quickly cleared of involvement in the murder, but various authorities attempted to prosecute him, with minor success, on charges related to sending prohibited materials through the mail.


Mark Hansen


Mark Hansen was a Hollywood nightclub and theater owner who knew Short while she was in Los Angeles. Short lived in Hansen's home, as a paying boarder or as a guest (accounts vary), on several occasions between May 1946 and October 1946. Hansen's girlfriend Ann Toth shared a room with Short in this house, which was located near Hansen's nightclub, the Florentine Gardens. Short called Hansen in Los Angeles from San Diego on January 8 or January 9, making him one of the last people known to have seen or spoken to her. Los Angeles district attorney files indicate that Hansen made contradictory statements to authorities about the nature of this conversation. An address book embossed with Hansen's name was among Short's belongings mailed to a newspaper after Short's murder by someone claiming to be her killer. The address book belonged to Hansen, but he had never used it. Short had been using it as her own. Los Angeles district attorney files indicate that Hansen had tried to seduce Short into having sex with him, but Short rebuffed his advances. Hansen was one of the first serious suspects in the case and he was still a prime suspect as late as the 1951 DA's investigation and grand jury inquest. Hansen was linked to three other suspects in the case, each of whom was a medical doctor: Dr. Patrick S. O’Reilly, Dr. M. M. Schwartz, and Dr. Arthur McGinnis Faught.


Hansen died of natural causes in 1964. No charges were ever brought against him. He had no criminal record and no known history of violence. Popular accounts of the Black Dahlia case often portray Hansen as having connections to organized crime, but there is no evidence of this.


George Hodel


Dr. George Hodel came under police scrutiny in October 1949, when his 14-year-old daughter, Tamar, accused him of molesting her. Hodel was tried and acquitted of these charges in December 1949. The molestation case led the LAPD to include Hodel, a physician specializing in public health (not a surgeon), among its many suspects in the Dahlia case. Authorities put Hodel under surveillance from February 18 to March 27, 1950 to ascertain whether he was implicated in the murder. In the final report to the grand jury dated February 20, 1951, Lt. Frank Jemison of the Los Angeles County district attorney's office wrote:


Doctor George Hodel, M.D. 5121 Fountian [Franklin] Avenue, at the time of this murder had a clinic at East First Street near Alameda. Lillian DeNorak [Lenorak] who lived with this doctor said he spent some time around the Biltmore Hotel and identified the photo of victim Short as a photo of one of the doctor's girl friends. Tamar Hodel, fifteen year old daughter stated, that her mother, Dorothy Hodel, has told her that her father had been out all night on a party the night of the murder and said, "They’ll never be able to prove I did that murder." Two microphones were placed in this suspect's home (see the log and recordings made over approximately three weeks time which tend to prove his innocence. See statement of Dorothy Hodel, former wife). Informant Lillian DeNorak [Lenorak] has been committed to the State Mental Institution at Camarillo. Joe Barrett, a roomer at the Hodel residence cooperated as an informant. A photograph of the suspect in the nude with a nude identified colored model was secured from his personal effects. Undersigned identified this model as Mattie Comfort, 3423-1/2 South Arlington, Republic 4953. She said that she was with Doctor Hodel sometime prior to the murder and that she knew nothing about his being associated with the victim. Rudolph Walthers, known to have been acquainted with victim and also with suspect Hodel, claimed he had not seen victim in the presence of Hodel and did not believe that the doctor had ever met the victim. The following acquaintances of Hodel were questioned and none were able to connect the suspect with murder: Fred Sexton, 1020 White Knoll Drive; Nita Moladero, 1617-1/2 North Normandy [Normandie]; Ellen Taylor 5121 Fountain Avenue; Finlay Thomas, 616-1/2 South Normandy [Normandie]; Mildred B. Colby, 4029 Vista Del Monte Street, Sherman Oaks, this witness was a girl friend of Charles Smith, abortionist friend of Hodel, Turin Gilkey, 1025 North Wilcox; Irene Summerset, 1236-1/4 North Edgemont; Norman Beckett, 1025 North Wilcox; Ethel Kane, 1033 North Wilcox; Annette Chase, 1039 North Wilcox; Dorothy Royer, 1636 North Beverly Glenn. See supplemental reports, long sheets and hear recordings, all of which tend to eliminate this suspect.





This DA report, from which the above excerpt was taken, was submitted at the completion of the DA's investigation of George Hodel and at least 21 other suspects.


In 2003, George Hodel's son, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, published a book claiming his father, who died in 1999, had in fact committed the Black Dahlia murder as well as a host of unsolved murders over the better part of two decades. Steve Hodel says he came up with the idea when he saw two pictures in his dead father's photo album that he claims resemble Short, although Short's family insists they are not of her and many other observers have failed to see the resemblance. Steve Hodel claims he was unaware at the time that his father had been a suspect in the case, although his sister Tamar was friends with Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer author Janice Knowlton and case documents make it clear that his parents and many of their associates knew the senior Hodel was a suspect. After reviewing the information presented in Steve Hodel's book, Head Deputy D.A. Stephen Kay (Manson Family prosecutor) proclaimed the case "solved," but others have noted that Kay, who has since retired, formed this conclusion by treating Steve Hodel's many disputed assertions as established fact. Detective Brian Carr, the LAPD officer currently in charge of the Black Dahlia case, said in a televised interview that he was baffled by Kay's response, adding that if he ever took a case as weak as Steve Hodel's to a prosecutor he would be "laughed out of the office." Author James Ellroy endorsed Steve Hodel's theory in the foreword to the paperback version of Hodel's book.


George Knowlton


Little reliable information is available on George Knowlton, except that he lived in the Los Angeles area at the time of the Black Dahlia murder and died in an automobile accident in 1962. In the early 1990s, George Knowlton's daughter, Janice Knowlton, began claiming that she had witnessed her father murdering Elizabeth Short, a claim she based largely on "recovered memories" that surfaced during psychological therapy. The Los Angeles Times said in 1991:


Los Angeles Police Detective John P. St. John, one of the investigators who had been assigned to the case, said he has talked to Knowlton and does not believe there is a connection between the Black Dahlia murder and her father. "We have a lot of people offering up their fathers and various relatives as the Black Dahlia killer," said St. John, better known as Jigsaw John. "The things that she is saying are not consistent with the facts of the case."





But the Westminster Police Department took her claims seriously enough to dig up the grounds around Ms. Knowlton's childhood home, looking for evidence. They found nothing to tie George Knowlton to the crime. In 1995, Ms. Knowlton created a sub-genre as the first person to publish a book claiming that his or her own father committed the Black Dahlia murder. The book was written with veteran crime writer Michael Newton. In the book Ms. Knowlton, a former professional singer and owner of a public relations company, alleged that her father had been having an affair with Elizabeth Short and that Short was staying in a makeshift bedroom in their garage, where she suffered a miscarriage. Ms. Knowlton said she was later forced to accompany her father when he disposed of the body. Ms. Knowlton claimed that a former member of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department told her that George Knowlton was considered a suspect in the case by that agency, but this claim is unsupported by public documents that have since been released in the case. She claimed the same source told her that future LAPD chief and California politician Ed Davis and Los Angeles County District Attorney Buron Fitts were suspects in the murder as well. Janice Knowlton died of an overdose of prescription drugs in 2004, in what was deemed a suicide by the Orange County, California, coroner's office.


In a curious side note to her accusations against her father, Ms. Knowlton, who was a frequent contributor as jgk61 to various online forums where the Black Dahlia case was discussed, posted this article to a Usenet group in August 1998, in which she names Dr. George Hodel as a suspect in the case. George Hodel was the father of Steve Hodel, who published a book in 2003 naming his father as the killer. Ms. Knowlton's sister has since stated on amazon.com's web page for her sister's book, Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer, that after publication of Ms. Knowlton's book, Tamar Hodel, daughter of George Hodel and sister of Steve Hodel, contacted Ms. Knowlton and the two women remained "email pals for several years".


Ms. Knowlton also made claims prefiguring those of Black Dahlia Files author Donald Wolfe. In 1999, she claimed in various public fora that Norman Chandler participated in a cover-up of the murder. Ms. Knowlton claimed that on Halloween 1946 she was sold as a child prostitute to a Pasadena devil-worshiping sex cult at the age of 9 (Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer, Page 128). She frequently alleged that she was sold as a child prostitute to a long list of dead movie stars and other notables, including Norman Chandler, Gene Autry (whose name she continually misspelled as Autrey), Arthur Freed and Walt Disney. Knowlton became so abusive in her Usenet posts that Pacbell canceled her account in 1999.


Robert M. "Red" Manley


The last person seen with Elizabeth Short before her disappearance, Manley was the LAPD's top suspect in the first few days after killing. After two polygraph tests and a sworn alibi, Manley was set free. He also identified Short's handbag purse and one of her shoes after they were discovered in a trashcan on January 25, 1947, several miles from the murder scene. Manley, who had been discharged from the army due to mental disability, subsequently suffered a series of mental breakdowns resulting in his being committed to Patton State Hospital by his wife in 1954 after claiming to be hearing voices. He died on January 9, 1986.


Patrick S. O'Reilly


According to Los Angeles district attorney files, Dr. Patrick S. O’Reilly was a medical doctor who knew Short through nightclub owner Mark Hansen. According to the files, at the time of the murder, O’Reilly was a good friend of Hansen and frequented Hansen's nightclub. Files also state that O'Reilly "attended sex parties at Malibu" with Hansen. O'Reilly had a history of serious, sexually motivated violent crime. He had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for "taking his secretary to a motel and sadistically beating her almost to death apparently for no other reason than to satisfy his sexual desires without intercourse," the files state. The files indicate that O'Reilly's right pectoral had been surgically removed, which investigators found similar to the mutilation of Short’s body. The files indicate that O'Reilly had once been married to the daughter of an LAPD captain.


Orson Welles


In her 1999 book, Mary Pacios, a former neighbor of the Short family in Medford, MA, suggested filmmaker Orson Welles as a suspect. Pacios bases this theory on such factors as Welles' volatile temperament and his obsession with cutting-in-half as indicated by the visual clues Pacios claims can be found in the crazy house set he designed for scenes that were later deleted from The Lady From Shanghai, a film Welles was making around the time of the murder. Pacios also cites the magic act Welles performed to entertain soldiers during World War II. She believes that the bi-section of the body was part of the killer's signature and an acting out of the perpetrator's obsession. Welles applied for his passport on January 24, 1947, the same date the killer mailed a packet to Los Angeles newspapers. Welles left the country for an extended stay in Europe ten months after the murder. According to Pacios, witnesses she has interviewed say that both Welles and the victim frequented Brittingham's restaurant in Los Angeles during the same time period. Welles was never a suspect in the original investigation. Pacios now maintains a web site containing a great deal of information and official documents about the Black Dahlia case, but only a short section on Welles' supposed involvement.


Jack Anderson Wilson (a.k.a. Arnold Smith)


Wilson was a life-long petty criminal and alcoholic who was interviewed by author John Gilmore while Gilmore was researching his book Severed. After Wilson's death, Gilmore named Wilson as a suspect due to his alleged acquaintance with Short. Prior to Wilson's death, however, Gilmore made an entirely different claim to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in a story appearing Jan. 17, 1982. While Severed says that homicide Detective John St. John was about to "close in" on Wilson based on the material Gilmore provided, St. John told the Herald-Examiner in the same article that he was busy with other killings and would review Gilmore's claims when he got time. As reliable sources of information about the case, such as the FBI files and portions of the Los Angeles district attorney files, have become publicly available, statements about Short and the murder attributed to Wilson in Severed and supposedly tying him to the crime have not been borne out as accurate. Severed also claims Wilson was involved in the murder of Georgette Bauerdorf. Severed, and many other sources based on Severed, erroneously claim that Short and Bauerdorf knew each other in Los Angeles, supposedly because they were both hostesses at the same nightclub. In reality, by the time Short arrived in Los Angeles in 1946, Bauerdorf had been dead for two years and the nightclub had been closed for a year. Wilson was never a suspect until Gilmore brought him to the attention of authorities.





Possible related murders


Some crime authors have speculated on a link between the Short murder and the Cleveland Torso Murders, also known as the Kingsbury Run Murders, which took place in Cleveland between 1934 and 1938.The original LAPD investigators examined this case in 1947 and discounted any relationship between the two, as they did with a large number of killings that occurred before and afterward, well into the 1950s.





Other crime authors have suggested a linkage between the Short murder and the 1945 murder of 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan in Chicago, who was also dismembered (and Short's body was discovered near Degnan Boulevard in Los Angeles). However, the so-called "Lipstick Killer" William Heirens confessed to the Degnan murder and was in jail when Short's body was discovered, although some have contended that Heirens was innocent of the Degnan murder.








Books, films and other media


A 1975 TV movie about the case, Who Is the Black Dahlia by Robert Lenski and starring Lucie Arnaz is a highly fictionalized version of the murder. Many details were changed because several people, including Short's mother and Red Manley, who brought Short from San Diego to Los Angeles, refused to sign releases for the studio.


John Gregory Dunne used the murder as a point of departure in his 1977 novel True Confessions, which was made into the 1981 film True Confessions starring Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro with a screenplay by Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion.


Neo-noir author James Ellroy based his 1987 book, The Black Dahlia on the crime. A film by Brian De Palma, The Black Dahlia, based on the Ellroy novel, stars Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, and Mia Kirshner as Elizabeth Short, and was released in September 2006.


A 1988 episode of the TV detective thriller Hunter depicts Rick Hunter and Dee Dee McCall discovering a case similar to the Black Dahlia murder when a skeleton that has been cut in half is found during demolition of a building constructed in 1947. Hunter and McCall are joined by a retired detective who worked on the Elizabeth Short case. The murderer in the recent case turns out to be Short's murderer as well. (A disclaimer at the end of the episode explains that the Black Dahlia case remains open and unsolved on the books of the Los Angeles Police Department.)


Take 2 Interactive published the computer game, Black Dahlia, in 1998. The puzzle-based adventure game tied Elizabeth Short's murder to Nazis and occult rituals which the player had to investigate. The game features Dennis Hopper, whose son-in-law was one of the company's owners, and Teri Garr. It also ties the murder to the infamous Cleveland Torso Murderer, though the torso murders' case was altered to fit into the storyline.


Max Allan Collins combined the Black Dahlia and Cleveland Torso Murder in his Shamus Award-winning 2002 novel, Angel in Black, featuring his character, private investigator Nathan Heller.


In 2002, rock star and artist Marilyn Manson created a series of water color paintings based upon the murder.


Bob Belden's 2001 CD Black Dahlia draws inspiration from the case for a moody, noir score divided into 12 sections depicting her life, on a par with Jerry Goldsmith's score for Chinatown and David Shire's music for the film Farewell, My Lovely.


Musician Lisa Marr also mentions the Black Dahlia in her song "In California" from the album 4 AM. This song was later covered by her former Cub bandmate Neko Case.


The band The Black Dahlia Murder take their name from this infamous murder.


Lamb of God has a song entitled "The Black Dahlia" on their album New American Gospel.


The lead singer of The Dwarves uses the stage name "Blag Dahlia," likely named for The Black Dahlia.


William Randolph Fowler, a reporter at the scene of the crime, included the Black Dahlia case in his 1991 autobiography, "Reporters: Memoirs of a Young Newspaperman."


A blog, 1947project, explores this and other crimes occurring in Los Angeles during the calendar years 1947 and 1907; the bloggers also lead monthly Crime Bus tours, including one focusing on the Black Dahlia case.


The case inspired the 1953 noir film The Blue Gardenia, including a title song sung by Nat King Cole.


The band Hollywood Undead has a song called, "My Black Dahlia."


American Thrash metal band Anthrax has a song entitled "Black Dahlia" on their album We've Come for You All.
Reply:fiction me thinks
Reply:The movie is based upon the book, that's based upon real facts.
Reply:There was an unsolved murder in England at the turn of the last century nicknamed "the black dahlia" but I dont know if the film is based on this or not.