anthologies. Those who knew her provide the best evidence about her personality, and it's from them and from Elizabeth's own letters that people should draw their conclusions. We have heard in detail the descriptions of her by those who knew her in life. In their personal composites we find the following: 'immaculately dressed,' 'shy, and sweet,' 'always well behaved model employee, who didn't smoke or drink,' and 'good kid.'
Elizabeth herself is her own best spokesperson. Her letters abound in naivete, which I read as a belief in the essential honesty of others. For example, in her letters to her self-described fiance Major Matt Gordon, written in April and May of 1945 and published in newspapers after Elizabeth's murder, she shares her heart's secrets. In anticipation of Matt's return from overseas and her pending marriage, she wrote:
My Sweetheart:
I love you, I love you, I love you. Sweetheart of all my dreams . . .
Oh, Matt, honestly, I suppose when two people are in love as we are our letters sound out of this world to a censor .. .
Just dreaming and hoping for a letter and now you are going to be mine . ..
It is going to be wonderful darling, when this is all over. You want to slip away and be married. We'll do whatever you wish, darling. Whatever you want, I want. I love you and all I want is you . ..
Beth
Or this later letter to Matt:
My Darling Matt:
I have just received your most recent letter and clippings. And, darling, I can't begin to tell you how happy and proud I am . . .
I'm so much in love with you, Matt, that I live for your return and your beautiful letters so please write when you can and be careful, Matt for me. I'm so afraid! I love you with all my heart.
Beth
After Matt Gordon's death, Elizabeth dated another officer, Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Fickling, in the hope of finding a new love. Fickling discouraged her; in a letter from him to her found in her luggage he wrote:
Time and again I've suggested that you forget me as I've believed it's the only thing for you to do to be happy.
Discharged from the service in 1946, Fickling returned to Charlotte, North Carolina. Letters addressed to him but
. . . Frankly, darling, if everyone waited to have everything all smooth before they decided to marry, none of them ever would be together.
I'll never love any man as I do you. And, I should think that you would stop and wonder whether or not another woman will love you as much.
Another letter found in her luggage, written by a Lieutenant Stephen Wolak, speaks directly to the issue of Elizabeth's obsessive desire to marry a military man. Wolak wrote:
When you mentioned marriage in your letter, Beth, I got to wondering about myself. Seems like you have to be in love with a person before it's a safe bet. Infatuation is sometimes mistakenly accepted for true love, which can never be.
A letter from a fourth serviceman, identified only as Paul Rosie, was found bound with ribbons with the rest of the letters. He wrote, as a response to what we must assume to be another love letter from Elizabeth:
Your letter took me completely by surprise. Yes, I've always had the feeling that we had a lot in common and that we could have meant a lot to each other had we only been together more often. It's nice to receive a warm friendly letter such as yours.
These letters, addressed to four separate servicemen and published on the front pages of L.A.'s major newspapers, are all windows into her heart. They were never expected to be read by anyone except the men to whom they were addressed, but they reveal a young woman's desperate need to find love and to marry, her overwhelming joy at finding love, and her ecstatic anticipation of her fiance's triumphant return. After the tragic news of his sudden death, she goes into a tailspin at having lost the man of her dreams and returns to California in the hope of finding another man to heal her broken heart.
The Dahlia letters themselves have never been previously discussed by the press, the police, or in any of the books written about the investigation, yet to my mind they raise a serious question about Elizabeth's emotional or psychological health. We know from the conflicting stories Elizabeth told friends that she was not only extremely secretive, but prone to distort the truth. On a number of occasions she clearly fantasized or lied. For example:
She told both Dorothy and Elvera French that she had been married to Matt, had borne him a child, and the child had died.
In early letters she told her mother she had had some minor roles in films as an 'extra.' In her last letter to her mother in early January 1947, she told her she was working in San Diego at the hospital at Balboa Park.
She told Robert 'Red' Manley that she had been married to a major and was working at the Western Airlines office in San Diego.
All these fabrications relate directly to her own self-image, her attempts to cast herself in a specific light: she needed to show others she was able to function normally in the world, to form relationships, to marry, to have a child, to hold a steady job.
This raises a question: was she ever really the fiancee of Major Matt Gordon or was that too a fantasy? I believe it was. When Elizabeth was staying with the Frenches in San Diego, she showed them a newspaper clipping announcing the engagement of Matt Gordon. But Elizabeth had crossed out the fiancee's name, explaining, 'They had made an error on the name in the paper.'
When Matt Gordon's mother was interviewed after Elizabeth's murder, she never confirmed that her son was engaged to marry Elizabeth. All she said was the two had known each other in Miami in 1944 and that she had sent Elizabeth a telegram informing her of her son's death. If Matt Gordon had been engaged to Elizabeth Short, why
