FIRST ON FOX: Cold case detectives in Los Angeles are looking at newly discovered fingerprints from 1943 in connection with the mysterious Black Dahlia murder — the unsolved slaying and dismemberment of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short in 1947.
The 22-year-old Massachusetts native’s mutilated remains were discovered in a vacant lot in Los Angeles nearly 80 years ago. She had been cut in half, drained of blood, scrubbed clean and posed in a way that the young mother who found her initially thought she was a mannequin, according to the FBI.
“This is probably one of the most difficult cases, realistically, because of the time that’s passed,” said Detective Marty Mojarro, one of two LAPD cold case investigators who have inherited the case.
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Most recently, independent forensic examiner Alex Baber, co-founder of the Cold Case Consultants of America, said he found evidence that could link Short’s ex-boyfriend Marvin Margolis to her murder and to the Zodiac Killer, another infamous, unsolved case in California.
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Mojarro said the claim still needs vetting but warrants further investigation, and he has received what Baber says is Margolis’ government fingerprint card from 1943, which had not previously been obtained by police.
“As an investigator, if it potentially could help, I would absolutely not turn it down,” Mojarro told Fox News Digital.
Margolis served in the Pacific in the Navy in World War II. He lived in Los Angeles after the war with a roommate named Bill Robinson, who was a Navy cryptologist, and he dated Short.
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Margolis was among 22 persons of interest in her death identified in 1951, according to police records Baber shared with Fox News Digital previously. Later, he changed his name to Marvin Merrill, then again to Marty Merrill, and settled in the Midwest.
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Mojarro said he could not comment on what other evidence the LAPD may or may not have in the case file to compare the exemplars to.
The FBI has revealed previously that there was a letter that may have been sent to authorities by Short’s killer. Fingerprints on the packaging were not a match for anything in the FBI’s database in the past.
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According to Baber, his team at Cold Case Consultants was unable to exclude a print on the package, which was sent to the Los Angeles Herald Express on Jan. 24, 1947.
“It contained 23 pieces of Elizabeth’s personal belongings that would’ve been in her purse the night she was abducted and murdered on Jan. 14,” Baber said.
For the LAPD’s cold case investigators, all leads with potential are worth vetting.
“We don’t have live witnesses to interview,” Mojarro said. “All the physical evidence that was ever collected — it is what it is.”
