The Gangster And The Newspaper Publisher Who May Have Killed Elizabeth Short
Bureau of Prisons/Getty ImagesGangster Bugsy Siegel’s February 12, 1928, mugshot.
While George Hodel, Mark Hansen, Leslie Dillon, and Jeff Connors are compelling candidates for the Black Dahlia killer, one author claims that there’s another duo who may have killed the young actress. Donald H. Wolfe wrote in his 2006 book The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles, that Elizabeth Short was murdered by the gangster Bugsy Siegel, at the request of newspaper publisher Norman Chandler.
Why? As Wolfe tells it, Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times had a brief sexual relationship with Elizabeth Short. And when the aspiring actress got pregnant, he enlisted Siegel to kill her.
Like Steve Hodel, however, Wolfe came up with his theory based more on a hunch than hard evidence. As he explained to The Guardian, Wolfe grew up knowing a man named “Uncle Vern” who worked for the gangster. And Vern seems to have suggested, over the years, that Siegel could have had something to do with the infamous Black Dahlia murder.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesNorman Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, who Wolfe believes orchestrated the Black Dahlia murder.
Until Wolfe’s work, Bugsy Siegel hadn’t been considered a Black Dahlia suspect. The gangster had risen to power in New York City, before moving to Los Angeles in the 1930s. He infamously poured millions into the Flamingo hotel in Los Vegas, helping to jumpstart the city’s growth, before being mysteriously murdered himself on June 20, 1947.
But Wolfe says that it’s Siegel’s implausibility that makes him such a good Black Dahlia suspect. Siegel and Chandler were so powerful, he said, that the LAPD helped them to cover up the murder.
“I found that if you understand the times and you understand the players, it was very plausible,” Wolfe told The Guardian. “The public thought that the [LAPD] gangster squad’s job was to arrest the criminals in Los Angeles. But their real function was to protect the criminals who were making the pay-offs and arrest those who weren’t.”
