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Timeline for The Black Dahlia

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Response to Discussion Question # 5

If you could change one thing in your life what would it be? How would this affect the circumstances of your story? 

 If I could change one thing in my life it would have been to never have included myself with Madeleine. I wish I would have never let her into my life, she made me risk losing my job by withholding information of what she knew from the Dahlia case. She betrayed me and she knew that she could get me under her spell, I would have done anything to help her live a normal life, and keep her safe. I wish that I would have noticed she was using me to save herself from getting arrested. I still can’t believe Madeleine helped her own father and mother kill Elizabeth Short when I asked Madeleine if she knew of Elizabeth, she told me that she only of her because she looked like her. But she murdered her, I can’t believe it. When I found out it was her, I asked her why and I told her I was going to tell the detectives but she said that if I said anything she would bring me down with her. Because of Madeleine, I lost my job and my best friend, Lee, she killed him too. If I never met Madeleine it would have affected my story because then I wouldn’t have known who the killer was. It was because of her that I remember certain things in her home that looked oddly similar to the murder of Elizabeth Short. I would have never been so motivated to find who the killer was if it wasn't for her worry of making sure her name was not in those files.

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Response to Discussion Question # 4

Who are the most important people in your life? Why are they so meaningful to you?

 This is the easiest question I’ve had to answer because there are only two people in the whole world that are meaningful to me. The most important people in my life right now is my partner Lee Blanchard and his girlfriend, Kay Lake. Now, believe me when I say that we weren’t meant to become this close but they are the only people who understand me and I know they care for me just as I see for them. Lee is like my brother, he’s been with me ever since we had to box each other to get a pay raise for police officers at the station. We are known as Mr. Fire and Mr. Ice, at the station, two complete opposites in our fighting styles, but similar in personality. We are one weird and oddly close family. Now, as for Kay, I have always had a crush on her, but I told myself I couldn’t jeopardize my relationship with her and Lee. They are the only family I have left, and I wouldn’t do anything to break our relationship apart.  I know Kay has a crush on me too but I told her we couldn't be together because I didn’t want to hurt Lee. You see, Lee is like an older brother to me, he’s always there for me, like when I didn’t have anywhere to stay, he let me move in with him and Kay in their apartment. These two are so meaningful to me because of everything they have done for me and everything we have been through, we still managed to get through it together.  

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Response to Discussion Question # 3

How do you define success? Do you believe you’ve achieved success? If so how do you know? If not, what has prevented you? 

 I would define success as an accomplishment of any task you might have been given or any problem you had that you conquered. Now to be more specific, I think success for myself would be to have a family of my own and make sure I am content with the person I am and have become. I believe that I have achieved success because I solved the Dahlia case and I put the criminals in prison and I finally have a family of my own. Now, I wouldn’t have achieved success if I didn’t feel the need to change my career path from a boxer to a cop. But I did it because I didn’t feel that I could fight for the rest of my life and I felt unsuccessful. At first, I didn’t want to be a cop, I just wanted to get out of boxing and I thought that by becoming a cop I would help bring people to justice. At first, I didn’t feel like I was doing much for my community, but then when the Dahlia was found murdered, I knew this could be my chance to show the other cops that I was more than a boxer, but an actual hero. My goal from the beginning of the case was to bring the killer to justice and make sure Elizabeth Short’s story was heard worldwide. I believe that I achieved this goal after going through many obstacles, that have affected my reputation and potentially hurt my credibility.

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Response to Discussion Question # 2

Do you believe human nature is essentially good or bad? What in your experience informs this belief? How does it manifest itself in your life?

 I believe that human nature is essentially good. I honestly believe humans are born as inherently caring, nurturing, sharing members of a collective group. Although some people may have selfish instincts and are greedy and don’t care about anybody other than themselves, there is always good in people. Sometimes people do bad things for good reasons, even though there are other ways to achieve it. My fellow coworkers might seem selfish and seem to always look out for themselves to save their reputation, I understand that they have good intentions. In my own personal experience, people have good intentions to help others. For example, I know it sounds selfish of me to do such a thing, but I did it to protect the girl I love. My intention of withholding crucial information, in a very big case, was to keep the girl I love safe and protected so she could live a normal life. This belief that people are essentially good has manifested itself into my life by making me look at the good in people and forget the bad, even though I shouldn’t. Although sometimes it is hard to find because of the things they have done that seem undeniably greedy and selfish. This way of looking at life has both made me a better human being but it also has made me have trust issues with the people I care for. Sometimes it’s good to only see the good in people, but sometimes you just have to know that not everyone sees others the same way.

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Response to Discussion Question # 1

Are our lives controlled by fate or free will? How does this perspective affect the way you interact with the world? 

 This question really made me think about everything that has happened in my life up to this point. I guess this is a good thing because it really made me think about where I am headed for the rest of my life. Although I am already 30 years old, you would think it would be easier for me to answer this type of question, but actually, I am just getting started with the life I deserve. Which is why I believe my life is determined by free will because every choice I make affects the path my life is heading towards. I know my decisions will change my future, so I have to be conscious of every choice I decide to go with. Before I decided to become a Los Angeles Police Officer and bring the criminals off of the streets, I was a lightweight champion boxer, however when I had the chance to fight against a better boxer I backed out because I knew I was going to lose, and I didn’t want the loss to affect my reputation. So, that is when I started to think about what I was going to do for the rest of my life because I knew I couldn’t fight forever. I believe that becoming a cop was the best decision I have made because I can still be the best. The choices I decide to make, do in fact affect the way I interact with my fellow coworkers. My perspective affects the way I interact with people because I fully believe that you control your own life, no one else does it for you. However, some of the other officers don’t think that’s the case, which makes it harder for me to interact with them because I can’t agree with their perspective of the world. 

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Journal Entry # 4

  I can’t believe I did it. I am seriously going to lose my job for what I just did. How could I have been so stupid! I finally know who killed Elizabeth Short and I can’t believe it. I trusted her, I believed her, I risked my entire career for her, and she knew all along. Madeleine, Georgie, and Martha were all in this together, they killed Elizabeth Short. Madeleine had the nerve to try to stop me from telling my captain by saying she would bring me down with her. But I didn’t care at that moment. Once I figured it out, I didn’t go home right away, I waited outside the Spragues home to figure out my plan. I got it, I have to kill Georgie, and live with it for the rest of my life. I was still outside his house studying it. When I finally had the guts to do it I got out of my car and headed towards the house. I rang the buzzer, gun out, but it was dead silent. With front access blocked off, I walked to the rear of the house. A medicinal stench was issuing from a room adjoining the kitchen. I noticed the walls were lined with the shelves holding jars of organs; there was a mattress on the floor, half covered by an army blanket. A red-headed scalp and two notebooks lay on it. I took a wheezing breath and forced myself to see it all. There was brains, eyes, hearts, and intestines floating in fluid. A woman’s hand, wedding rings attached to the fingers, ovaries, and so much more. Georgie is a monster. To stop myself from seeing the rest of the body parts around the room, I decided to pick up one of the notebooks and read through it. While skimming through the writings, I saw a date that I swore to always remember January 14, 1947. The day Elizabeth was said to have been murdered. Georgie wrote down everything he did to her, and it was utterly disgusting. I couldn’t get through everything so I put it down. I looked around the room to see all of the organs floating around in jars. That’s when I saw it, a triangular piece of flesh, it was from Betty’s left thigh. After that, I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself pretending that Betty was here with me. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for reading a special part of her and how I was only trying to help her. Then something touched me, it was Georgie. I pulled out my gun and was ready to shoot him. He fought back which made me fall back, so I grabbed a piece of glass and shoved it in his eye. He fell on top of me, blood coming out from an empty eye socket. When he tried to get me again I got my .45, jammed the silencer into his eye hole and blew his brains out. I left once I knew he was dead, and I felt somewhat relieved. 

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Journal Entry # 3

 This morning I decided to send the big boys a message. I hid out in the storage room down the fall from my cubicle, I typed copies of a transfer request letter, one each for Loew, Russ Millard and Captain Jack. I wrote the letter because I wanted to detach myself from the Elizabeth Short investigation immediately and return to my duties at Central Division Warrants. I feel that the case is more than adequately staffed, and had far more experienced officers than myself, and I feel that I could more effectively serve the Department of Warrants. My partner, Lee, is still missing and I don’t feel like I could do this without his help. And most importantly I have been studying for my Sergeant’s Examination to become Senior Warrants officer. As I was signing the copies I heard a tremendous ruckus coming from the bullpen. I put the copies away and went to investigate. I saw a group of lab techs and detectives hurdled over a table, when I got closer I muttered, “Holy f***” There was an envelope that was stamped and postmarked and smelled faintly of gasoline. The front was covered with letters clipped from newspapers and magazines, glued to the plain white surface. The words spelled out: TO THE HERALD AND OTHER LA PAPERS. HERE ARE THE DAHLIA’S BELONGINGS. LETTER TO FOLLOW. Once I read the envelope, the lab man pulled out the belongings that came with it. This could really help the case in finding the killer and it made me second guess my decision of transferring out of the case. I mean if I could figure out where this letter came out, I could find the killer and I would be the hero, I could do this for Lee because I know he really wants to solve this case. By the end of the day, I decided to throw away my transfer paper and stay on the case.

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Journal Entry # 2

 This morning I showed up to the Bureau wanting to ease Lee through the ignominy of his return to Warrants. When I arrived, I saw identical memo slips from Chief Green were on both of our desks wanting us to report to his office tomorrow at 6 P.M. I wonder what he wanted to talk to us about because it seemed important. While I was waiting for Lee to show up I heard Loew barking and pleading on the phone to the city editors of the Mirror and Daily News. The gist of his talk was that he would help them cutthroat the Times and Herald with inside Dahlia information and portray her as a sweet but misguided young girl. I could tell the newsmen were buying Loew's line that the more sympathy we attract for the girl, the more juice we get when he prosecutes the killer, based on the self-satisfied farewells from Loew. When I noticed that Lee didn’t show up by 10:00 I decided to read through the Dahlia files, wanting to make sure Madeleine’s name wasn’t in it. Madeleine is my “girlfriend” and I met her while I was asking questions about Elizabeth Short, aka the Black Dahlia, she told me all she knew and later that day we got together and had intercourse. It kind of shocked me how much she looks like Elizabeth but when I asked her what she knew she told me not much. But since we’re together I promised her I would make sure her name didn’t show up on the case because her father’s reputation would be ruined. After work, I decided to see Madeleine again and ask her if she knows anything else that could help with the Dahlia case. I told her that her name didn’t show up in the case files, and she told something else about Elizabeth. According to Madeleine, she and Elizabeth made love once and I couldn’t believe it. I felt somewhat betrayed and t made me wonder if there was anything else she was hiding from me. She told me to stay but I couldn’t so I got dressed and left her without saying a word.

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Journal Entry # 1

  Today felt like a blur, I couldn’t believe what I witnessed today, it was horrific how can somebody manage to do such a thing. Now, this is how my day started off, my partner Lee Blanchard woke me up AT 6 A.M  by calling my phone and asked if I wanted to some police work but I didn’t say anything since I wanted to see what type of police work he was talking about. He told me about Junior Nash, and how he’s got a fuck pad on Coliseum and Norton, and how we could finally catch the crook, so I told him I would be right over. When I got to Nash’s pad, Lee and I drew out our .38’s and we started to walk through the courtyard to the shack. We looked through all of the rooms but I noticed there were only cobwebs in most of the rooms. When we finally got to the second floor, Lee broke down the door and when I entered the room it reeked of rotgut wine. While I was walking around the quite empty room, the horrible stench got to me, so I decided to open the window. Looking out, I saw a group of uniformed cops and men in civilian clothes standing on the sidewalk on Norton, about halfway down the block to 39th Street. I noticed that all of them were staring at something in the weeds of a vacant lot. I told Lee to come to the window so he could see what was going on, and when he did he noticed Millard and Sears by the scene. I decided to rush down the steps and around the corner to Norton, Lee at my heels.

  When I arrived I noticed half a dozen officers and photo men taking pictures of what looked to be the ground. I elbowed my way past a pair of patrolmen and saw what it was all about. It was the nude, mutilated body of a young woman, cut in half at the waist. The bottom half lay in the weeds a few feet away from the top, with her legs wide open. I noticed that a large triangle had been gouged out from her left thigh, and there was a long, wide cut running from the bisection point down to the top of the pubic hair. The flaps of the skin beside the gash were pulled back, and there no organs inside. Her top half was worse: the breasts were dotted with cigarette burns, the right one hanging loose, the left one slashed around the nipple. The cuts went all the way down to the bone, but the worst of the worst was her face. It was one huge purple bruise, her nose was crushed deep into the facial cavity, the mouth was cut ear to ear into a smile that leered up at you, somehow mocking the rest of the brutality inflicted. I knew I would carry that smile with me to my grave. Looking up, I felt cold all over and I could feel my breath come in spurts. I heard jumbles of voices saying things like,”There was not one drop of blood-” “This is the worst crime I’ve seen on a woman-” He tied her up, you can see rope burns-”. Then I heard Russ Millard say that he doesn’t want this to get out of hand, meaning he doesn't want publicity until he knows exactly what happened. He then gave us each assigned roles to make sure no reporters and citizens knew what happened. I was assigned to walk around and ask questions to neighboring houses to see if anyone heard a woman yelling for help. My day went by so fast after I saw her body, all I knew was that I had to make sure I found whoever did this to her because this is inhumane.

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Quote #4

“ I closed my eyes and shook head to toe; I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to tell Betty I was sorry I’d seen that special part of her, that I didn’t mean to pry so far, that I was just trying to help.” 

 This quote shows how Bucky has really gotten close to Elizabeth, aka Betty, and how he feels so close to her even though she never knew him in life. The fact that he feels sorry for her and acts like he knew her in life shows that he really cared for her. Bucky had just read the notebook that had the description of how Betty was brutally murdered. It explained what she was doing right before the killer started to leave cigarette burns around her breasts, how she was gagged, how her teeth fell out from biting so hard, how she tried to scream for help but the gag slipped deeper into her throat, and how she was being sliced in two. This horrific scene is very sensitive and Bucky felt like he had seen a special part of Betty. He couldn’t even get into the rest of the killing because he knew he couldn’t handle it. 

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Quote #3

“ I felt like I was sinking; like the bed was dropping out from under me.” 

 This quote explains how Bucky felt when he realized his “girlfriend” didn’t tell him the whole truth about what she knew from the Dahlia case. Madeleine, his girlfriend knew the Dahlia more than she led Bucky to believe, so Bucky felt betrayed. He was feeling betrayed by Madeleine because he was already withholding evidence for her, and since she lied to him, he felt like he couldn’t trust her. 

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Quote # 2

“ It was one huge purpled bruise, the nose crushed deep into the facial cavity, mouth cut ear to ear into a smile that leered up at you, somehow mocking the rest of the brutality inflicted. I knew I would carry that smile with me to my grave.” 

 This quote is describing how Bucky found Elizabeth Short when she was left dumped, in two pieces. He starts to describe what she looked like and what he saw left of her. The one thing that stuck out to him was the Dahlia’s carved smile that would stand out more than her body let in two. The significance of the horrific smile is that Bucky will be scarred with this image until he dies, but it’s also going to help Bucky find who the killer is at the end of the story. 

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Quote #1

“ I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them. ” 

 This quote shows that Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert, the protagonist in the story, never knew Elizabeth Short, “The Black Dahlia”, in life, but he began to know her past through her files and her horrific murder. He reconstructed her so he can understand what she was like when she was alive and realized that although the facts of her murder were brutal, Bucky knew Elizabeth would have wanted the whole world to know what happened. Lastly, Bucky is the only one who knows exactly what happened to her and why it happened so he owes her to tell the whole story. 

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Personal Narrative

The Black Dahlia is a historical crime fiction novel written by American author James Ellroy. This novel takes place during the 1940s and World War II. The story’s subject is the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles, California which received so much attention because her corpse was horrifically mutilated and discarded in an empty residential lot. The overall investigation led to a broad police corruption scandal. The novel is written in first person point of view by LAPD officer, Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert, who is a tough, but sensible former boxer. The novel begins in November of 1946 when Bleichert and his soon to be partner, Lee Blanchard are coerced into squaring off in the boxing ring to gain public approval for a bond measure to provide a bigger budget to the police and an eight percent pay raise for everyone on the force. Throughout the novel, Bucky refers to himself as “Mr. Ice” and Lee as “Mr. Fire”, which is a reference to their boxing styles. Although Bucky loses to Lee, he still gets the job at Warrants because his performance impresses Ellis Loew the District Attorney. He gets partnered with Blanchard and the two quickly become friends and work well together, until an arrest goes wrong and they kill four men in a gunfight. Meanwhile, Kay Lake, Blanchard’s girlfriend becomes attracted to Bucky, telling him she doesn't sleep with Blanchard. Bleichert rebuffs her, despite a powerful attraction, because he sees Lee and her as a sort of family. On January 15, 1947, the body of a woman is found in an abandoned lot, severely mutilated and cut in two. The woman would then be identified as Elizabeth Short, who is nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" by the press. The public was horrified, and the case overwhelmed the LAPD. Lee is especially disturbed by the case and Bucky learns that years earlier, his beloved sister Laurie vanished and was never found. The Dahlia's tortured corpse embodies Lee's worst fears about his sister's fate. For his part, Bleichert develops a strange obsession with the Dahlia and identifies with her troubled, nomadic, and marginal life. Digging into the seedy world of aspiring young actresses who turn to prostitution and porno films to survive, Bucky finds a film of the Dahlia. Lee, meanwhile, had disappeared, thought to have gone to the border city of Tijuana. Bucky goes to Tijuana to search for Lee, where he learns that his friend was killed by a Mexican woman. He is transferred to the Science Investigation Division and becomes a lab technician. At the end of the novel, Bucky is removed from the force. After he learns that Madeleine, his former fling, killed Lee in Tijuana. The novel ends with possible hope for Bucky's future as he and Kay reconcile and have a baby in Boston, Massachusetts. This is also where Elizabeth Short was born.

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Links to historical sites

1. http://historycollection.co/murder-in-hollywood-who-killed-the-black-dahlia/

Description: The Black Dahlia's early life, and how her case was publicized and has impacted many people

2. http://time.com/3657606/black-dahlia-murder-case/

Description: The Black Dahlia and how her case is still unsolved to this very day

3. https://la.curbed.com/maps/mapping-21-of-los-angeless-most-notorious-murder-sites-1

Description: A map of the numerous murder cases  around the 1920’s - 2000’s in Los Angeles

4.https://killerswithconscience.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/forgotten-women-victims-of-the-1940s/comment-page-1/

Description: Some facts about the forgotten women victims in the 1940’s in Los Angeles area

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Links to relevant sites

1. http://blackdahlia.web.unc.edu/who-killed-elizabeth-short/  

Description: Theories on who killed Elizabeth Short aka “The Black Dahlia”

2. http://www.illiterarty.com/authors/james_ellroy 

Description: The biography and bibliography of James Ellroy who was the author of The Black Dahlia

3. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-the-black-dahlia-by-james-ellroy-2289429.html

Description: A review on The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy, and how they found out about the book

4. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/movies/15dahl.html

Description: A review of a movie based off of the Black Dahlia book by James Ellroy from the New York Times.