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Podcast: Once Upon A Crime | True Crime
Episode:

Bonus: Love Letters from The Black Dahlia
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:10:56
Publish Date: 2025-10-27 23:00:00
Description:

Before Elizabeth Short became known to the world as The Black Dahlia, she was a young woman searching for love and belonging in a world still recovering from war.

In this bonus episode, Esther reads excerpts from Elizabeth’s personal correspondence with Lt. Joseph Gordon Fickling and Major Matthew “Matt” Gordon — two men who loved her deeply, and who reveal, through their letters, the hopes and heartbreaks of a woman who has too often been reduced to myth.

These intimate writings offer a rare glimpse into Elizabeth’s voice — tender, romantic, and filled with dreams. Through her words, listeners will discover the woman behind the legend: hopeful, vulnerable, and forever chasing beauty in a world that often failed to show her kindness.

Sources and References

William F. Mann, Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

John Gilmore, Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder (Ameteur Press, 1994)

Archival letters and family correspondence cited in:

  • FBI Case File 62-00060: “Elizabeth Short Murder (Black Dahlia)”
  • Los Angeles Examiner and Los Angeles Times historical archives (1947)

Testimonies and recollections from:

  • Phoebe Short (Elizabeth’s mother), in interviews compiled in the FBI case file


Next in the Series:

In the next episode of Broken: The Black Dahlia Murders – Part Three, listeners will hear a detailed timeline of Elizabeth Short’s final months in Los Angeles, leading up to her infamous “lost week.”

We’ll follow her movements across the city — the hotels, the friends, and the mysterious encounters that made up her last days — and begin to uncover the tangled web of people who crossed her path before her death.

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https://www.truecrimepodcast.com/sponsors/


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