- This infamous murder has been the subject of intense and sometimes bizarre speculation and theorizing. At least six authors claim to have solved the murder, each offering a different solution. Two separate and unrelated people have published sensationalistic books claiming that their fathers committed the crime. Another author suggested filmmaker Orson Welles as the killer. Author and screenwriter Donald H. Wolf has written yet another book on the case, to be published in 2005, promising to implicate an as-yet-unnamed "Hollywood mogul" in the crime.
- Was last seen alive January 9, 1947, when she went to meet her sister at The Regal Biltmore Hotel (506 South Grand Avenue) in Los Angeles.
- Elizabeth Short's mother was Phoebe May Sawyer (1897-1992), a professional bookkeeper. Phoebe was 50-years-old at the time of Elizabeth's death, then survived her by 45 years.
- The Regal Biltmore Hotel added a Black Dahlia cocktail to its menu after her death.
- Buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California, Alameda County Section 66 Marker 798.
- New England monument erected in Medford, Massachusetts on July 29, 1993, by documentary filmmaker Kyle J. Wood on what would have been her 69th birthday.
- Once the body was identified, the L.A. Examiner got the phone number for Short's mother, Phoebe, and called her, telling her at first that her daughter had won a beauty contest. Jim Murray, an Examiner staffer at the time, said he watched writer Wain Sutton make the call as the paper's editor, James Richardson, sat in a swivel chair and listened. "I sat there and listened to the poor, dear mother telling [Sutton] about her school-day triumphs," Murray said. "I can still see him put his hand over the mouthpiece of the old-fashioned upright phone and say, 'Now what do I tell her?' Richardson said: 'Now tell her.' " Since the story was one of the biggest of its day, the Examiner flew Phoebe Short to Los Angeles in secret to hide her from competing media while she identified the body. She resisted doing so for over two days, saying she wanted to remember "Betty" as she was.
- The autopsy report on Eliazabeth Short's corpse found that she was 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) tall, weighed 115 pounds (52 kg), and had light blue eyes, brown hair, and badly decayed teeth. Her reportedly attractive appearance in life was rather diminished by her dental problems.
- Elizabeth Short was arrested for underage drinking in September, 1943. She was 19-years-old at the time, but the legal drinking age was 21. Her fingerprints from this arrest were used to identify her corpse in 1947.
- Her body was found at 3925 South Norton Avenue, roughly three miles from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
- After hearing a police radio dispatch of officers to a vacant lot on Norton Avenue, Los Angeles Examiner reporter Will Fowler and his photographer assistant were the first on the scene after Betty Bersinger had called police. Bersinger, who discovered the body while pushing her 3-year-old daughter Anne in a carriage down Norton, had called police to report "a drunk man lying in the weeds," which Bersinger claims she did in the hopes of not involving herself with the dead body, despite leaving her correct phone number when asked by police. Reporter Fowler claims that he closed Elizabeth Short's half-opened eyes just before police arrived. At this point, Short was not identified, so the Examiner agreed with police to send fingerprints by wire photo for quick identification in exchange for an exclusive on breaking the news of the identity of the body. The next day, Short was identified from fingerprints taken in 1943 when she was arrested in Santa Barbara as a minor who was illegally in a bar.
- Eluzabeth Short had a lung surgery in 1939, when 15-years-old. She was suffering from bronchitis and severe asthma attacks. While she reportedly recovered, she continued to take precautions for further respiratory problems.
- During World War II, Elizabeth Short became engaged to Major Matthew Michael Gordon, Jr., a decorated Army Air Force officer at the 2nd Air Commando Group. Gordon was killed in a plane crash on August 10, 1945, and the marriage never took place. Short had no steady relationships for the next 2 years, and was still single at the time of her death in 1947.
- While Elizabeth Short had lived in various California Cities for years, she did not visit Los Angeles until actually settling there in July 1946. She had lived in the city for about 6 months at the time of her murder and was still a newcomer.
- Elizabeth Short had four siblings, all of them sisters. Her sisters were named Virginia, Dorothea, Elenora, and Muriel.
- Elizabeth Short's first known job was working as a retail clerk in 1943, at the Base Exchange of Camp Cooke , near Lompoc, California. Camp Cooke still exists, but has been renamed to Vandenberg Air Force Base. It has become a Department of Defense space and missile testing base, with a mission of placing satellites into polar orbit from the West Coast, using expendable boosters.
- Elizabeth Short has been played by actresses Lucy Arnez, Mena Suvari and Mia Kirshner.
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