Scrambling for any piece of the puzzle that would allow the winner of the who-is-Jane-Doe-Number-1 contest to emblazon the victim's name in a full-page headline, the city editor of the
A memo to J. Edgar Hoover, dated June 24, 1947, and now available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act, identifying Jane Doe Number 1, speaks for itself:
FBI MEMO
1.1 #590
June 24, 1947
SOUND-PHOTO TRANSMISSION OF FINGERPRINTS
LEADS TO IDENTITY OF ELIZABETH SHORT
During January, 1947, the police in a Southern California city were not only confronted with the problem of solving mad butcher murders of women, but in the first instance were many times unable to determine the identity of the victims.
When the body of a young woman, severed at the waist and mutilated in other ways, was found in a vacant lot in Southwestern Los Angeles on the morning of January 15, 1947, they were again confronted with this problem. It appeared she had been dead about ten hours and the body had been placed in full view only a few feet from the sidewalk. The authorities were practically at a standstill in their investigation until the deceased victim could be identified.
The fingerprints of the body were taken by the police, who then sought the cooperation of the Los
newspaper to transmit the fingerprints by wire photo to the FBI Identification Division in Washington, D.C. Eliciting the aid of the International News Service, the newspaper transmitted the prints to its Washington headquarters. At 11 a.m. on January 16 the pictures were received by the Identification Division. Within 56 minutes an identification was established with two fingerprint cards previously on file bearing the name of Elizabeth Short.
Despite the fact that two of the impressions were missing entirely and three others were badly blurred, FBI fingerprint technicians were able to make an identification by searching all possible fingerprint combinations. At this time there were approximately 104,000,000 fingerprint cards on file.
One of the fingerprint cards submitted and identified as that of Elizabeth Short indicated that Miss Short was an applicant for a position as a clerk in the Post Exchange of Camp Cooke, California, on January 30, 1943. The other set was submitted by the Santa Barbara, California, Police Department reflecting her arrest on September 23, 1943, on charges of violating juvenile court laws, after which she was released to the probation department.
The successful use of scientific communications equipment in this case was referred to by the Director of the FBI as follows: 'The action of the Los
in transmitting to the FBI the fingerprints of the unidentified murder victim is an excellent illustration of the cooperation of the press with law enforcement, and it is such cooperation that aids law enforcement in curbing the increase in crime.'
As the FBI memo indicates, within hours of the transmission the victim's prints were connected to an arrest in Santa Barbara, a coastal community some ninety miles north of Los Angeles, where three years earlier in September 1943 the victim had been detained as a minor for being present with adults where alcohol was being served. That arrest report provided Los Angeles police with the necessary information about her identity and background.
Her name was Elizabeth Short. The Santa Barbara police report from 1943 described her as a female, Caucasian, born July 29, 1924. Her mother, Mrs. Phoebe Short, resided in Medford, Massachusetts. As a result of the records the LAPD assembled, detectives were able to establish a background and history on the victim prior to her arrival in California.
They learned that Elizabeth was born in Hyde Park, a suburb of Boston, and grew up in nearby Medford. Her mother was the sole provider for Elizabeth and her four sisters after their father, Cleo Short, abandoned the family in 1930 and eventually wound up working and living in Southern California. Elizabeth was exceptionally attractive and well liked at Medford High School, but she dropped out in her sophomore year and in 1942 moved to Miami Beach, Florida, where she got a job as a waitress.
It was in Miami, on her own for probably the first time, that she met a Flying Tigers pilot named Major Matt Gordon Jr., who was stationed there. He was shortly sent overseas, and Elizabeth began to correspond with him, reportedly sending him twenty-seven letters in eleven days.
In January 1943, Elizabeth traveled to Santa Barbara, California, where she applied for and was hired at the post exchange at the Camp Cooke military base. Her employment there was brief, after which she left to seek her father, who, she discovered, was living close by, in Vallejo, California. She stayed with her father briefly, but both were uncomfortable with the living arrangements, and she returned to Santa Barbara in September 1943.
Elizabeth liked servicemen and wanted to be around them. Her attraction to men in uniform was clear both from her relationship with Major Gordon and her desire to attend nightspots and clubs frequented by military personnel. It was in such a nightspot that she was arrested on September 23, 1943, because alcohol was being served there and she was only nineteen, in violation of California's liquor law. When she agreed to return home rather than face charges in California, Santa Barbara County probation authorities provided her with a ticket to return home to Medford.
During the rest of the war years, Elizabeth continued to write Major Matt Gordon, and in April 1945 he reportedly proposed marriage. Elizabeth accepted, but before Gordon could return home he was killed in a plane crash in India. Elizabeth Short's marriage plans, and hopes for any future she might have had as an officer's wife, went down in flames with Major Gordon's plane.
During the winter of 1945, Elizabeth remained on the East Coast, and again traveled to Florida, where she took a job as a waitress in Miami Beach. In February 1946, she returned home to Medford and worked as a cashier at a
