Who Killed Elizabeth Short?
Comparing Two Major Suspects
“On January 15, 1947, the bifurcated, exsanguinated, mutilated body of Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. There were many suspects over the intervening decades. No one was charged with her murder. It is officially considered unsolved. Short was named ‘The Black Dahlia’ posthumously. The killer referred to himself in letters to the press as ‘The Black Dahlia Avenger’.
“In 1969, a man began mailing letters to newspapers in and near San Francisco. The letters contained details of murders he had committed as well as ciphers that he asserted revealed his true identity. Amateur cryptographers quickly solved the first cipher, in which the killer asserted he would not reveal his name. Subsequent ciphers remained unsolved for decades. Authorities and researchers believe the man continued killing, at least through the rest of the year (and some think much longer). He continued to mail letters to the press until 1974 (officially—many authorities and researchers believe a 1990 Christmas card to the San Francisco Chronicle was also mailed by the killer). The case was never solved.
“Alex Baber, founder of Cold Case Consultants of America, used a combination of artificial intelligence, traditional cryptography, and reference to U.S. Census records to try to identify the Zodiac Killer. He says the same man, Marvin Merrill (née Marvin Margolis), was the Black Dahlia Avenger and Zodiac Killer.”
From my previous post “Has the Zodiac Killer Been Identified?”
In December, widely disseminated media reports announced that consultant Alex Baber believed he had solved one of the Zodiac Killer’s cryptic ciphers. The infamous “Z-13” or “My name is—“ cipher contains thirteen characters and includes the killer’s name, according to the killer. Baber, the founder of Cold Case Consultants of America, reported using a combination of artificial intelligence, old-fashioned cryptography, and Census records to discover the solution: “Marvin Merrill”. His investigation led him to the late Marvin Skipton Margolis, a.k.a. Marvin Merrill and Skip Merrill. Born Margolis, he used the name Marvin Merrill for most of his life (including at the time of the Zodiac Killer’s crimes). Before he changed his name, he briefly lived with and dated Elizabeth Short, the “Black Dahlia”, before her well-known, horrific 1947 murder in Los Angeles. He was a contemporaneous suspect before he was reportedly cleared. He left California for decades, changed his name, and returned in the 1960s, years before the Zodiac Killer started writing letters to newspapers with details of his crimes and threats to kill more. (Baber believes Margolis changed his name to distance himself from Short and the investigation of her death. Margolis/Merrill’s son believes his father changed his name due to antisemitism.) According to Baber, Merrill was the Zodiac Killer and the murderer of Elizabeth Short (“the Black Dahlia Avenger”, as the murderer called himself in his own letters to the press in Los Angeles).
Authorities are investigating Baber’s claims as well as evidence, including handwriting samples, Baber has found and that Merrill’s family has provided. So far, they have not made any announcements.
Is Merrill a viable suspect in either or both cases?
Are there likelier suspects in either or both?
The focus of this post is Short’s murder and aftermath. A future post will consider Merrill as a Zodiac suspect. I think they are two different cases. If they are in fact linked (beyond a perhaps attentive future Zodiac influenced by the “Avenger”’s writing activity), time will hopefully tell.
The best source I have found for Baber’s case(s) is this article. In my view, there is little to link Margolis (as he was known in the 1940s) to Short’s murder other than coincidence, speculation, vague eyewitness accounts of a man “matching” Margolis’s description looking for a motel room with a bathtub on the night Short was likely murdered, etc. Baber speculates that Merrill killed Short and/or bifurcated her body at a motel named the Zodiac Motel, and that the motel’s name inspired him to adopt the name Zodiac in the future. He provides no evidence for this. Reportedly, an ice bag with blood was found near the site where Short’s body was found with the letter “Z” on it, and ice delivery drivers would often abbreviate motel names on bags allocated for delivery at specific motels. This is not conclusive evidence of any kind. Unfortunately, author and retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel reported that the evidence in Short’s murder was missing and that, unless it was found, DNA comparisons, etc. would be impossible. Hodel accused his late father George Hill Hodel, Jr., MD, of being the Black Dahlia Avenger, the Zodiac Killer, and the murderer of many other women (and children) over a period of decades.
How does Hodel’s case against his father as Short’s killer compare to Baber’s case against Margolis?
I think it is a much better case.
Several people identified Hodel as Short’s suitor at the time of the murder or shortly before it. Short checked into a hotel in downtown Los Angeles with a man shortly before her murder. After Short’s demise, the man returned alone to the hotel to check out. The hotelier remarked that he was getting concerned because he hadn’t seen the man since he checked in, and the man reacted in a nervous, agitated manner. This hotelier identified Hodel as the man twice, once in the earliest days of the LAPD’s investigation and years later when a task force took over the investigation from the LAPD. The hotelier added that he identified the suspect from a photograph that showed he was “connected to a foreign government”. Hodel was an ambassador to the United Nations during the Second World War and worked as a doctor overseas, including in China. Steve Hodel published a photograph of his father with Chinese dignitaries which may be the photograph investigators showed the witness. (As an aside, many thing Sunset Strip socialite Georgette Bauerdorf was murdered by the Black Dahlia Avenger. According to Steve Hodel, the young woman, who was murdered after attending the kind of serviceman’s ball George Hodel was known to attend, was found with a distinctive ACE medical bandage in her mouth. It was not manufactured or sold in North America at the time.) Hodel was a physician and professor of surgery. He taught the hemicorporectomy. This was the procedure performed on Short’s body postmortem. At least one medical school professor who reviewed Short’s autopsy report opined that her killer had at least one year of professional experience as a surgeon (which Margolis was not—he was a naval medic and medical student). During the task force investigation in the 1950s, Dr. Hodel’s house on Franklin Avenue in Los Feliz was bugged. He was recorded making incriminating statements, including: “Supposin’ I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn’t prove it now. They can’t talk to my secretary because she’s dead.” (Emphasis mine) Short’s body was placed on empty cement bags in Leimert Park. Hodel had cement delivered to his house shortly before the murder. Steve Hodel’s mother (who had divorced the suspect) was interrogated and grilled during at least one of the investigations. She admitted that her sons were living with her at the time of the murder and that her ex-husband was alone in his house. (According to Steve Hodel, his mother, when drinking, would tell her sons their father was a terrible man who did horrible things.) During the task force investigation, shortly before authorities were about to arrest Hodel, he fled to Manila, where he lived for decades. The nephew of the head of the task force reported to Steve Hodel that he heard his uncle tell his father the case was solved and that the perpetrator was a doctor who lived on Franklin Avenue. Actor Jack Webb’s daughter reported to Hodel that her father told her LAPD Chief William Parker made similar statements to him (Parker was a close friend of the Dragnet star). When Steve Hodel graduated from the police academy, he was approached and singled out in a large class of graduates. A high-ranking cop asked him if he wanted his picture taken with Chief Parker. The two were photographed together. For many years, Hodel wondered why Parker would single him out in a huge graduating class for a photograph. (Hodel published the photograph in his book Black Dahlia Avenger.)
For those of a legal positivist bent, Hodel submitted his findings (pre-publication) to then-Head Deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles County Stephen Kay. Kay publicly stated the case was “solved” and, had George Hodel been alive, he would have filed capital murder charges for the murders of Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French and seek the death penalty. (There was no moratorium on executions in California at the time.) The only higher authority who could have overruled him was the elected District Attorney.
Perhaps there is more evidence against Margolis that has not been made public. This lengthy article is the best I have read so far detailing Baber’s case against Margolis/Merrill.
At the end of his life, Margolis/Merrill drew a woman and wrote the name Elizabeth underneath the drawing. The drawing is said to have scars or injuries where Short had similar injuries, but these have been obscured in all of the reproduced images I have seen. I do not think the woman in the drawing resembles Short, and Merrill’s son has stated his father dated a woman named Elizabeth around that time. (Baber, using image enhancement, also found the word “Zodiac” shaded in the drawing. He considers the drawing a confession to all of the crimes.) Hopefully someone with access to whatever evidence remains can determine who killed Elizabeth Short. Based on what has been shared with the public, I think Hodel is a much likelier suspect. There is a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence implicating Hodel in Short’s murder (and others’), and circumstantial evidence is evidence. Vincent Bugliosi wrote that it can be some of the most incriminating because it’s the hardest to arrange. The reasons I recounted above hardly exhaust the reasons to suspect Hodel.
Whoever killed Elizabeth Short was likely not the Zodiac Killer, and this is not primarily due to the time that passed between the crimes or the hundreds of miles that separated the crime scenes. Just about anything is possible, and killers can change just like better people can change. But, unlike the Black Dahlia Avenger, the Zodiac Killer did not commit crimes of passion, undress his victims, desecrate their bodies, or move their bodies. There was nothing sadistic about the Zodiac Killer’s known crimes, which were committed quickly against likely random, unknown targets and contained no more violence than was necessary to kill his victims (which is one reason why at least two survived). I think it is unlikely the same killer would have changed his modus operandi and criminal signature to that degree.
Whoever killed Elizabeth Short and the Zodiac Killer’s victims is likely dead, and it may seem trivial in a culture of rampant, overbearing immigration enforcement, the unquestionably real problems that led to it, or pedophile rings for the wealthy and powerful to devote too many public resources too soon to cold cases like this. Investigators properly have other priorities and more pressing, more recent cases. But the identity or identities of this killer or these killers is an important topic that should be solved if possible. There are still living victims of the Zodiac, including Bryan Hartnell, who survived the Zodiac’s attack at Lake Berryessa in Napa County on September 27, 1969. (Unfortunately, his companion Cecelia Shepard died a few days later). Elizabeth Short has living relatives. Whether or not “closure” is possible, they deserve answers. It is also important for posterity so that any similar present or future cases can be solved in a shorter amount of time and some justice can be served.
In a future post, I will consider Marvin Merrill’s viability as a Zodiac Killer suspect. He’s a better Zodiac suspect.
