Orson Welles: Why Some Suspected Him As The Black Dahlia Killer
Central Press/Getty ImagesOrson Welles is one of the more unusual suspects in the Black Dahlia’s murder.
Of all the Black Dahlia suspects listed here, perhaps the most surprising one is also the most famous — acclaimed director and actor Orson Welles. Mary Pacios discussed her theory about the famous filmmaker in her 1999 book Childhood Shadows: The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder.
Pacios, who grew up with Elizabeth Short in Medford, Massachusetts, started researching the case to dispel myths about Short being a sex worker and a nobody. According to Salon, her research led her to believe that Welles could be behind the Black Dahlia Murder.
“Well, see, his name came up a few times,” Pacios told Salon of how Welles kept appearing in her research. “[I]t was just his name kept cropping up.”
Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesPacios insists that it’s not that farfetched to consider that Short, an aspiring actress, might have crossed paths with the filmmaker.
Pacios believed that Welles may have had a condition called diphasic personality, a disorder often attributed to serial killers in which someone can become violently aggressive when frustrated. She also points to a magic act that Welles performed in the 1940s, in which he pretended to cut women in half and mannequins Welles designed with a mutilated face like Short’s for The Lady From Shanghai (1947).
Though the mutilated mannequins were not used in the film, Pacios pointed out that Welles designed them three months before the murder.
When Pacios was asked how her theory might damage the memory of Orson Welles, she was indignant. “Well, the whole thing is, nobody cared about [Elizabeth Short’s] memory,” Pacios told Salon. “You know? Nobody cared. And I feel, I agonized over it. I feel these are facts. Everything is factual. People can draw their own conclusions.”
In the end, the Black Dahlia suspects on this list are simply that — suspects. To date, no one has ever been charged in the murder of Elizabeth Short. And that’s what makes the Black Dahlia murder one of the most fascinating and unsettling unsolved homicides of the 20th century.
After reading about these potential Black Dahlia killers, look through this list of famous murders. Or, peruse this list of Jack the Ripper suspects.
