“The Black Dahlia” was a nickname given to Elizabeth Short(July 29, 1924 – c. January 15, 1947), an American woman who was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. Short acquired the moniker posthumously by newspapers in the habit of nicknaming crimes they found particularly colorful. Short was found mutilated, her body sliced in half at the waist, on January 15, 1947, in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. Short’s unsolved murder has been the source of widespread speculation, leading to many suspects.

Early life

Elizabeth Short was born in greater Boston, Massachusetts; she grew up and lived in Medford. She was the third of five daughters of Cleo Short and Phoebe Mae Sawyer. Her father built miniature golf courses until the 1929 stock market crash, in which he lost much of the family’s assets. In 1930, he parked his car on a bridge and vanished, leading some to believe he had committed suicide. Short’s mother moved the family to a small apartment in Medford and found work as a bookkeeper. It was not until later that Short would discover her father was alive and living in California.

Arrest photo from 1943 for underage drinking

Troubled by asthma and bronchitis, Short was sent to live for the winter in Miami, Florida, at the age of 16. She spent the next three years living there during the cold months and in Medford the remainder of the year. At age 19, Short travelled to Vallejo, California, to live with her father, who was working nearby at Mare Island Naval Shipyard on San Francisco Bay. The two moved to Los Angeles in early 1943, but an altercation resulted in her leaving there and finding work in the post exchange at Camp Cooke (now Vandenberg Air Force Base), near Lompoc, California. Short next moved to Santa Barbara, where she was arrested on September 23, 1943, for underage drinking. Following her arrest, she was sent back to Medford by the juvenile authorities in Santa Barbara. Short then returned to Florida to live, with occasional visits back to Massachusetts.

In Florida, Short met Major Matthew Michael Gordon Jr., a decorated United States Army Air Forces officer who was assigned to the 2nd Air Commando Group and in training for deployment to China Burma India Theater of Operations. Short told friends that Gordon wrote her a letter from India proposing marriage while he was recovering from injuries sustained from an airplane crash. She accepted his proposal, but Gordon died in a second airplane crash on August 10, 1945, before he could return to the United States. She later exaggerated this story, saying that they were married and had a child who died. Although Gordon’s friends in the air commandos confirmed that Gordon and Short were engaged, his family denied any connection after Short’s murder.

Elizabeth Short returned to Los Angeles in July 1946 to visit Army Air Corps Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Fickling, an old boyfriend she had met in Florida during the war. At the time Short returned to Los Angeles, Fickling was stationed at NARB, Long Beach. For the six months prior to her death, Short remained in southern California, mainly in the Los Angeles area.

It was said that while she was at Los Angeles, she pursued acting and was attending high-profile clubs in the city. Elizabeth died before her 23rd birthday.

Murder and aftermath

The grave of Elizabeth Short

The body of Elizabeth Short was found in the Leimert Park district of Los Angeles on January 15, 1947. Her remains had been left on a vacant lot on the west side of South Norton Avenue midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street. (at 34.0164°N 118.333°W) The body was discovered by local resident Betty Bersinger, who was walking with her three-year-old daughter.Short’s severely mutilated body was nude, severed at the waist, and completely drained of blood.Her face had been slashed from the corners of her mouth toward her ears, creating an effect called the Glasgow smile. The body had been washed and cleaned and had been “posed” with her hands over her head and her elbows bent at right angles.

The autopsy stated that Short was 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) tall, weighed 115 pounds (52 kg), and had light blue eyes, brown hair, and badly decayed teeth. There were marks on her ankles and wrists made by rope, consistent with being either tied spreadeagled or hung upside down. Although the skull was not fractured, Short had bruising on the front and right side of her scalp with a small amount of bleeding in the subarachnoid space on the right side, consistent with blows to the head. The cause of death was blood loss from the lacerations to the face combined with shock due to a concussion of the brain.

William Randolph Hearst’s papers, the Los Angeles Herald-Express and the Los Angeles Examiner, sensationalized the case: The black tailored suit Short was last seen wearing became “a tight skirt and a sheer blouse” and Elizabeth Short became the “Black Dahlia,” an “adventuress” who “prowled Hollywood Boulevard.” As time passed, the media coverage became more outrageous, with claims that her lifestyle had “made her victim material.”

On January 23, 1947, the killer called the editor of the Los Angeles Examiner, expressing concern that news of the murder was tailing off in the newspapers and offering to mail items belonging to Short to the editor. The following day, a packet arrived at the Los Angeles newspaper containing Short’s birth certificate, business cards, photographs, names written on pieces of paper, and an address book with the name Mark Hansen embossed on the cover. Hansen, the last person known to have seen Short alive (on January 9), became the prime suspect. The killer would later write more letters to the newspaper, calling himself “the Black Dahlia Avenger,” after the name given to Short by the newspapers. On January 25, Short’s handbag and one shoe were found in a garbage bin a short distance from Norton Avenue.

Due to the notoriety of the case, more than 50 men and women have confessed to the murder, and police are swamped with tips every time a newspaper mentions the case or a book or movie about it is released. Sergeant John P. St. John, a detective who worked the case until his retirement, stated, “It is amazing how many people offer up a relative as the killer.”

Gerry Ramlow, a Los Angeles Daily News reporter, later stated,

“If the murder was never solved it was because of the reporters… They were all over, trampling evidence, withholding information.” It took several days for the police to take full control of the investigation, during which time reporters roamed freely throughout the department’s offices, sat at officers’ desks, and answered their phones. Many tips from the public were not passed on to police, as the reporters who received them rushed out to get “scoops.”

Short was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. After Short’s sisters had grown up and married, Short’s mother moved to Oakland to be near her daughter’s grave. Phoebe Short finally returned to the east coast in the 1970s and lived into her nineties.

Theories and possibly related murders

Some crime authors have speculated on a link between the Short murder and the Cleveland Torso Murders, which took place in Cleveland between 1934 and 1938.As with a large number of killings that took place before and after the Short murder, the original LAPD investigators looked into the Cleveland murders in 1947 and later discounted any relationship between the two cases. Nevertheless, new evidence implicating a former Cleveland torso murder suspect, Jack Anderson Wilson, with Short’s death was investigated by Detective John P. St. John in 1980. St. John claimed he was close to arresting Wilson for the death of Short when Wilson unexpectedly died in a fire on February 4, 1982.

Crime authors such as Steve Hodel and William Rasmussen have suggested a link between the Short murder and the 1946 murder and dismemberment of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan in Chicago.Captain Donahoe of the Los Angeles police also stated publicly that he believed the Black Dahlia and Lipstick murders were “likely connected.”Among the evidence cited is the fact that Elizabeth Short’s body was found on Norton Avenue three blocks west of Degnan Boulevard, Degnan being the last name of the girl from Chicago, and there were striking similarities between the writing of the Degnan ransom note and that of “the Black Dahlia Avenger.” For example, both used a combination of capitals and small letters (the Degnan note read in part “BuRN This FoR heR SAfTY”), and both notes contain a similar misshapen letter P and have one word matching exactly.Convicted serial killer William Heirens served life in prison for Degnan’s murder. Initially arrested at age 17 for breaking into a residence close to that of Suzanne Degnan, Heirens claimed he was tortured by police, forced to confess, and made a scapegoat in the Degnan murder.

Black Dahlia suspects:

Many suspects (aka persons of interest) have been proposed as the unidentified killer of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the “Black Dahlia,” who was murdered in 1947. Many theories have been advanced, but none has been found to be completely persuasive by experts, and some are not taken seriously at all.

The murder investigation by the LAPD was the largest since the murder of Marion Parker in 1927, and involved hundreds of officers borrowed from other law enforcement agencies. Sensational and sometimes inaccurate press coverage, as well as the nature of the crime, focused intense public attention on the case. As the case continues to command public attention, many more people have been proposed as Short’s killer, much like London’s Jack the Ripper murders.

Because of the complexity of the case, the original investigators treated every person who knew Elizabeth Short as a suspect who had to be eliminated. Hundreds of people were considered suspects and thousands were interviewed by police.

About 60 people confessed to the murder, mostly men but including a few women.However, 25 people were considered to be viable suspects by the Los Angeles District Attorney.

The 25 District attorney suspects

1. Carl Balsiger
2. C. Welsh
3. Sergeant “Chuck” (name unknown)
4. John D. Wade
5. Joe Scalis
6. James Nimmo
7. Maurice Clement
8. A Chicago police officer
9. Salvador Torres Vera
10. Dr George Hodel
11. Marvin Margolis
12. Glenn Wolf
13. Michael Anthony Otero
14. George Bacos
15. Francis Campbell
16. “Queer Woman Surgeon”
17. Dr. Adam Fairall
18. Strip Club Owner
19. Dr. Paul DeGaston
20. Dr. A. E. Brix
21. Dr. M. M. Schwartz
22. Dr. Artnur McGinnis Faught
23. Dr Patrick S. O’Reilly
24. Mark Hansen
25. Jacob Fisk

While some of the original 25 suspects were discounted, new ones have arisen. At present the following suspects are discussed by various authors and experts:

Walter Bayley

Dr. Walter Alonzo Bayley was a Los Angeles surgeon who lived in a house one block south of the vacant lot in which Elizabeth Short’s body was found, until he left his wife in October 1946. At the time of the murder, Bayley’s estranged wife still lived in the home. Bayley’s daughter was a friend of Elizabeth Short’s sister Virginia and brother-in-law Adrian and had been the matron of honor at their wedding. When Bayley died in January 1948, his autopsy showed that he was suffering from degenerative brain disease. After his death, Bayley’s widow alleged that his mistress knew a “terrible secret” about Bayley and claimed this was the reason the mistress was the main beneficiary upon his death. Bayley was never a suspect in the case, but many medical doctors and others with medical training were. In secret testimony, Detective Harry Hansen, one of the original investigators, told the 1949 Los Angeles County grand jury that in his opinion the killer was a “top medical man” and “a fine surgeon.” Bayley was 67 years old at the time of the murder, had no known history of violence or criminal activity of any kind, and is not known to have met Short, even though his daughter was a friend of Short’s oldest sister.

When Larry Harnisch, a copy editor and writer for the Los Angeles Times, began studying the case in 1996, he eventually concluded that Bayley could be Elizabeth Short’s killer. Although critics of Harnisch’s theory question whether Bayley’s mental and physical condition at the time of the murder would have been consistent with the commission of this type of crime, the original investigators’ theory that the body was cut in half because the killer wasn’t strong enough to move it intact partially answers this objection. Harnisch theorizes that Bayley’s neurological deterioration contributed to his alleged violence against Short. Some have suggested that the secret that Bayley’s mistress was blackmailing him with was that he had performed abortions, then a crime. However, there is no evidence that Bayley performed abortions or associated with anyone involved in performing abortions. Author James Ellroy endorsed Harnisch’s theory in the 2001 film James Ellroy’s Feast of Death.

Norman Chandler

Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, is accused of involvement in Elizabeth Short’s murder in Donald Wolfe’s The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles. In a complicated scenario involving multiple perpetrators, Wolfe claims that Chandler impregnated Short while she was working as a call girl for the notorious Hollywood “madam” Brenda Allen, which led to Short’s murder at the hands of gangster Bugsy Siegel. Wolfe’s claim that Short was a prostitute is at odds with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s files, which plainly state that she was not, as Wolfe asserted, pregnant.

Leslie Dillon

Leslie Dillon was a 27-year-old bellhop, aspiring writer and former mortician’s assistant who became a suspect in the case when he began writing to LAPD police psychiatrist Dr. J. Paul De River in October 1948. Dillon was living in Florida at the time of his correspondence with De River, but had formerly lived in Los Angeles. Dillon read a story about the case in a “true detective” magazine in which De River was quoted and wrote to De River regarding his theories on the case, and mentioning his intense interest in sadism and sexual psychopathia in hopes of authoring a book on the subject. Contrary to public perception, Dillon, unlike so many other headline chasers involved at the time, was not a Confessing Sam. He never confessed or admitted to the crime but rather offered up another man as a likely suspect, a friend of his named Jeff Connors. Over the course of their correspondence, De River began to believe that Connors was a figment of Dillon’s imagination and that Dillon had committed the murder himself. After the correspondence, in December 1948 Dillon agreed to meet with De River and was given the choice of one of three cities, Phoenix, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas. Dillon expressed reservations about Los Angeles and chose Las Vegas instead and was sent an airline ticket. De River and a few undercover LAPD officers met Dillon in Las Vegas for a couple of days and then proceeded to drive back to California. Once there, Dillon had hopes of going to San Francisco to point out his friend Jeff Connors to De River. After reaching San Francisco, they searched for Jeff Connors but failed to locate him. Only after not being able to track down Connors in San Francisco and offering up intimate details about the crime that even investigators had difficultly explaining was Dillon then handcuffed by an undercover officer and officially taken into custody for their trip back to Los Angeles. After this happened, Dillon sailed a postcard out a hotel window with a plea for help on it; it was discovered by a passerby and turned into local authorities.

After De River and the undercover officers had Dillon in Los Angeles, police soon discovered that Jeff Connors was a real person whose real name was Artie Lane. Lane had lived in Los Angeles at the time of the murder and was employed by Columbia Studios, a favorite hangout of Elizabeth Short’s, as a maintenance man. However, contrary to popular belief, Leslie Dillon could not be conclusively placed in San Francisco at the time of the murder. Police concluded that Dillon was most likely in San Francisco at the time of the murder, but not that he conclusively was. In fact, police never could account for Dillon’s whereabouts between January 9 and January 15, 1947. Dillon later filed a $100,000 claim against the City of Los Angeles but quickly dropped the lawsuit after it came to light that he was wanted by Santa Monica police for robbing the vault of a Santa Monica hotel while employed there as a bellhop a few years earlier. This “scandal” caused by the Dillon affair partially triggered a 1949 grand jury investigation of police handling of the Black Dahlia case and some other unsolved murders.In 2004, De River’s daughter, Jacque Daniel, published a book called The Curse of the Black Dahlia in which she expressed her belief that her father had been unfairly maligned for the Dillon affair.

Joseph A. Dumais

Joseph Dumais, a 29-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, confessed to the murder a few weeks after it occurred. Although this “breakthrough” was quickly dismissed by the original investigators, the Los Angeles press covered it enthusiastically until it was revealed that Dumais had been at Fort Dix at the time of the murder. Dumais was cleared of any involvement in the crime, although he continued to claim he killed Elizabeth Short each time he was arrested for various offenses, well into the 1950s.

Mark Hansen

Mark Hansen was a Hollywood nightclub and theater owner who knew Short while she was in Los Angeles. Short lived in Hansen’s home, as a paying boarder or as a guest (accounts vary), on several occasions between May 1946 and October 1946. Hansen’s girlfriend Ann Toth shared a room with Short in this house, which was near Hansen’s nightclub, the Florentine Gardens. Short called Hansen in Los Angeles from San Diego on January 8 or 9, making him one of the last people known to have spoken to her.Los Angeles district attorney files indicate that Hansen made contradictory statements to authorities about the nature of this conversation. An address book embossed with Hansen’s name was among Short’s belongings mailed to a newspaper after Short’s murder by someone claiming to be her killer. The address book belonged to Hansen, but he had never used it. Short had been using it as her own. Los Angeles district attorney files indicate that Hansen had tried to seduce Short but she rebuffed him. Hansen was one of the first serious suspects in the case and he was still a prime suspect as late as the 1951 DA’s investigation and grand jury inquest. Hansen was linked to three other suspects in the case, each of whom was a medical doctor: Dr. Patrick S. O’Reilly, Dr. M. M. Schwartz, and Dr. Arthur McGinnis Faught.

Hansen died of natural causes in 1964. No charges were ever brought against him. He had no criminal record and no known history of violence. Popular accounts of the Black Dahlia case often portray Hansen as having connections to organized crime, but there is no evidence of this.

George Hodel

Dr. George Hodel came under police scrutiny in October 1949, when his 14-year-old daughter, Tamar, accused him of molesting her. Three witnesses testified at his trial that they were present in the room and saw him having sex with Tamar. Another witness, who had previously admitted that she had participated in sex acts with Tamar, recanted and refused to testify. Hodel was acquitted of the charges in December 1949.The molestation case led the LAPD to include Hodel, a physician specializing in public health and sexually transmitted diseases, among its many suspects in the Dahlia case. Authorities put Hodel under surveillance from February 18 to March 27, 1950, including the installation of two microphones in his home, monitored by over 18 detectives, to ascertain whether he could be implicated in the murder. In the surviving transcripts, Dr. Hodel is heard making highly incriminating statements.

“Supposin’ I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn’t prove it now. They can’t talk to my secretary anymore because she’s dead…. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary….” - George Hodel. February 18, 1950

Ruth Spaulding died from an overdose and Hodel was investigated by the LAPD in 1945 for her suspected murder. He was present when Spaulding died and had burnt some of her papers before police were called. The case was dropped owing to lack of evidence, but documents were later found that indicated Spaulding may have been about to make public that Hodel was intentionally misdiagnosing patients and billing them for laboratory tests, medical treatment, and prescriptions not needed. Hodel’s son, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, believes Elizabeth Short may have been one of his father’s patients.

In the final report to the grand jury, dated February 20, 1951, Lt. Frank Jemison of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office wrote:

Doctor George Hodel, M.D. 5121 Fountain [Franklin] Avenue, at the time of this murder had a clinic at East First Street near Alameda. Lillian DeNorak [Lenorak] who lived with this doctor said he spent some time around the Biltmore Hotel and identified the photo of victim Short as a photo of one of the doctor’s girl friends. Tamar Hodel, fifteen year old daughter, stated that her mother, Dorothy Hodel, has told her that her father had been out all night on a party the night of the murder and said, “They’ll never be able to prove I did that murder.” Two microphones were placed in this suspect’s home (see the log and recordings made over approximately three weeks time which tend to prove his innocence. See statement of Dorothy Hodel, former wife). Informant Lillian DeNorak [Lenorak] has been committed to the State Mental Institution at Camarillo. Joe Barrett, a roomer at the Hodel residence cooperated as an informant. A photograph of the suspect in the nude with a nude identified colored model was secured from his personal effects. Undersigned identified this model as Mattie Comfort, 3423½ South Arlington, Republic 4953. She said that she was with Doctor Hodel sometime prior to the murder and that she knew nothing about his being associated with the victim. Rudolph Walthers, known to have been acquainted with victim and also with suspect Hodel, claimed he had not seen victim in the presence of Hodel and did not believe that the doctor had ever met the victim. The following acquaintances of Hodel were questioned and none were able to connect the suspect with murder: Fred Sexton, 1020 White Knoll Drive; Nita Moladero, 1617½ North Normandy [Normandie]; Ellen Taylor 5121 Fountain Avenue; Finlay Thomas, 616½ South Normandy [Normandie]; Mildred B. Colby, 4029 Vista Del Monte Street, Sherman Oaks, this witness was a girlfriend of Charles Smith, abortionist friend of Hodel, Turin Gilkey, 1025 North Wilcox; Irene Summerset, 1236¼ North Edgemont; Norman Beckett, 1025 North Wilcox; Ethel Kane, 1033 North Wilcox; Annette Chase, 1039 North Wilcox; Dorothy Royer, 1636 North Beverly Glenn. See supplemental reports, long sheets and hear recordings, all of which tend to eliminate this suspect.

The report, from which the above excerpt was taken, was submitted at the completion of the D.A.’s investigation of George Hodel and at least 21 other suspects.

In 2003 George Hodel’s son, former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, published a book claiming his father, who died in 1991, had in fact committed the Black Dahlia murder as well as a host of unsolved murders over the better part of two decades. Steve Hodel says he came up with the idea when he saw two pictures in his dead father’s photo album that he claims resemble Short, although Short’s family insists they are not of her and many other observers have failed to see the resemblance. Since beginning his investigation, Steve has located and identified one of the photographic subjects as a former friend of George Hodel. The other photograph remains unidentified.Steve Hodel claims he was unaware at the time that his father had been a suspect in the case, although his sister Tamar was friends with Janice Knowlton, author of her own book, Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer, and case documents make it clear that Steve’s parents and many of their associates knew the senior Hodel was a suspect. After reviewing the information presented in Steve Hodel’s book, Head Deputy D.A. Stephen Kay proclaimed the case solved, but others have noted that Kay, who has since retired, formed this conclusion by treating Steve Hodel’s many disputed assertions as established fact. Detective Brian Carr, the LAPD officer in charge of the Black Dahlia case at the time of Steve Hodel’s briefing, said in a televised interview that he was baffled by Kay’s response, adding that if he ever took a case as weak as Steve Hodel’s to a prosecutor he would be “laughed out of the office.” In a September 2006 television interview with Cold Case Files host Bill Kurtis, Carr added, “I don’t have the time to either prove or disprove Hodel’s investigation. I am too busy working on active cases.” In his most recent book, Steve Hodel has also claimed that George Hodel was responsible for numerous other high profile murders, including the Zodiac Killer.

Author James Ellroy endorsed Steve Hodel’s theory in the foreword to the paperback version of Hodel’s book. As of November 2006, however, Ellroy has since refused to discuss theories in the case and says he has no idea who the killer was and will never again talk about the Black Dahlia publicly.

Steve Hodel maintains a website wherein he continues to update the case with additional discovered information.

George Knowlton

Little reliable information is available on George Knowlton, except that he lived in the Los Angeles area at the time of the Black Dahlia murder and died in an automobile accident in 1962. In the early 1990s, George Knowlton’s daughter Janice began claiming that she had witnessed her father murdering Elizabeth Short, a claim she based largely on “recovered memories” that surfaced during therapy. The Los Angeles Times said in 1991:

Los Angeles Police Detective John P. St. John, one of the investigators who had been assigned to the case, said he has talked to Knowlton and does not believe there is a connection between the Black Dahlia murder and her father. “We have a lot of people offering up their fathers and various relatives as the Black Dahlia killer,” said St. John, better known as Jigsaw John. “The things that she is saying are not consistent with the facts of the case.”

Nevertheless, the Westminster Police Department took her claims seriously enough to dig up the grounds around her childhood home, looking for evidence. They found nothing to tie George Knowlton to the crime. In 1995, Janice Knowlton created a sub-genre as the first person to publish a book claiming that his or her own father committed the Black Dahlia murder. The book was written with veteran crime writer Michael Newton. In the book Knowlton, a former professional singer and owner of a public relations company, alleged that her father had been having an affair with Elizabeth Short and that Short was staying in a makeshift bedroom in their garage, where she suffered a miscarriage. Knowlton said she was later forced to accompany her father when he disposed of the body. Knowlton claimed that a former member of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department told her that her father was considered a suspect in the case by that agency, but this claim is unsupported by the public documents that have been released in the case. She claimed the same source told her that future LAPD chief and California politician Ed Davis and Los Angeles County District Attorney Buron Fitts were suspects in the murder as well. Janice Knowlton died of an overdose of prescription drugs in 2004 in what was deemed a suicide by the Orange County, California, coroner’s office.

In a side note to her accusations against her father, Janice Knowlton, who was a frequent contributor as “jgk61”. to various online forums wherein the Black Dahlia case was discussed, posted an article to a Usenet group in August 1998 in which she names Dr. George Hodel (see above) as a suspect in the case. Knowlton’s sister has since stated on amazon.com’s web page for her sister’s book, Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer, that after publication of Knowlton’s book, Tamar Hodel, daughter of George Hodel and sister of Steve Hodel, contacted Knowlton and the two women remained “email pals for several years.”

Knowlton also made claims prefiguring those of Black Dahlia Files author Donald Wolfe. In 1999, she claimed in various public forums that Norman Chandler participated in a coverup of the murder. Knowlton claimed that on Halloween 1946 she was sold at the age of nine as a child prostitute to a Pasadena Satanic sex cult. She frequently alleged that she was sold as a child prostitute to a long list of dead movie stars and other notables, including Norman Chandler, Gene Autry (whose name she continually misspelled as Autrey), Arthur Freed, and Walt Disney. Knowlton became so abusive in her Usenet posts that Pacbell canceled her account in 1999.

Robert M. “Red” Manley

The last person seen with Elizabeth Short before her disappearance, Manley was the LAPD’s top suspect in the first few days after the killing. After two polygraph tests and a sworn alibi, Manley was set free. He also identified Short’s handbag purse and one of her shoes after they were discovered in a trashcan on January 25, 1947, several miles from the murder scene.Manley, who had been discharged from the army for mental disability, subsequently suffered a series of nervous breakdowns and claimed to be hearing voices. As a result, he was committed to Patton State Hospital by his wife in 1954. He died on January 9, 1986.

Patrick S. O’Reilly

According to Los Angeles district attorney files, Dr. Patrick S. O’Reilly was a medical doctor who knew Short through nightclub owner Mark Hansen. According to the files, at the time of the murder O’Reilly was a good friend of Hansen and frequented Hansen’s nightclub. Files also state that O’Reilly “attended sex parties at Malibu” with Hansen. O’Reilly had a history of sexually motivated violent crime. He had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for “taking his secretary to a motel and sadistically beating her almost to death apparently for no other reason than to satisfy his sexual desires without intercourse,” the files state. Further, the files indicate that O’Reilly’s right pectoral had been surgically removed, which investigators found similar to the mutilation of Short’s body. The files indicate that O’Reilly had once been married to the daughter of an LAPD captain.

Jack Anderson Wilson (a.k.a. Arnold Smith)

Wilson was a lifelong petty criminal and alcoholic who was interviewed by author John Gilmore while Gilmore was researching his book Severed. After Wilson’s death, Gilmore named Wilson as a suspect owing to his alleged acquaintance with Short. Prior to Wilson’s death, however, Gilmore made an entirely different claim to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in a story appearing January 17, 1982. While Severed says that homicide Detective John St. John was about to “close in” on Wilson based on the material Gilmore provided, St. John told the Herald-Examiner in the same article that he was busy with other killings and would review Gilmore’s claims when he got time. As reliable sources of information about the case, such as the FBI files and portions of the Los Angeles district attorney files, have become publicly available, statements about Short and the murder attributed to Wilson in Severed and supposedly tying him to the crime have not been borne out as accurate. Severed also claims Wilson was involved in the murder of Georgette Bauerdorf. Severed and many other sources based on Severed erroneously claim that Short and Bauerdorf knew each other in Los Angeles, supposedly because they were both hostesses at the same nightclub. In reality, by the time Short arrived in Los Angeles in 1946, Bauerdorf had been dead for two years and the nightclub had been closed for a year. Wilson was never a suspect until Gilmore brought him to the attention of authorities.

Wilson figures in Donald Wolfe’s book The Mob, The Mogul, And The Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles. Wolfe hypothesizes that Wilson was present at Short’s murder and claims a connection between Wilson and gangster Bugsy Siegel through some small-time gangsters Wilson supposedly associated with. He was also part of the military.

Female suspects

Although the vast majority of suspects in the case were male, authorities did not rule out the possibility of a female killer. One theory held that, because Short had checked her baggage, including her clothing and cosmetics, a week before she died, she must have been staying with another woman (who presumably would have loaned Short the essentials) during the intervening time. Another theory was that the assailant bisected Short’s body because he or she was not strong enough to move it in one piece. One of the first people to confess to the murder was a WAC sergeant stationed in San Diego. Authorities took the confession seriously enough to investigate and found it groundless.Another suspect is referred to simply as “Queer Woman Surgeon” in the Los Angeles district attorney’s files on the case. Newspaper stories at the time implied that Short was a lesbian or bisexual, but the district attorney files state bluntly that Short “had no use for queers.”

Famous suspects

Woody Guthrie

The folk singer was one of the many suspects in the murder, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s files and Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie written by Ed Cray and published in 2004 by W.W. Norton. According to Cray, Guthrie drew police attention because of some sexually explicit letters and tabloid clippings he sent to a Northern California woman who he was stalking. The mailings disturbed their recipient so much that she showed them to her sister in Los Angeles, who contacted the police. Guthrie was quickly cleared of involvement in the murder, but various authorities attempted to prosecute him, with minor success, on charges related to sending prohibited materials through the mail.

Orson Welles

In her 1999 book, Mary Pacios, a former neighbor of the Short family in Medford, Massachusetts, suggested filmmaker Orson Welles as a suspect.Pacios bases this theory on such factors as Welles’s volatile temperament and his creation of mannequins three months before Short’s death that supposedly featured lacerations virtually identical to those inflicted on Short. The mannequins were used in the “house of mirrors” set for The Lady From Shanghai, a film Welles was making with his ex-wife Rita Hayworth around the time of the murder. The scenes containing the set were deleted from the film by Harry Cohn. In one of Short’s last letters home, her older sister Virginia claimed she had written that a movie director was going to give her a screen test.

Pacios also cites Welles’ familiarity with the site where the body was found and the magic act he performed to entertain soldiers during World War II. She believes that the bisection of the body was part of the killer’s signature and an acting out of the perpetrator’s obsession. Welles applied for his passport on January 24, 1947, the same day the killer mailed a packet to Los Angeles newspapers. Welles left the country for an extended stay in Europe 10 months after the murder without completing the editing of Macbeth, the film he was both directing and starring in. Despite persistent attempts by Republic Pictures to get him to return to complete the film, he refused. According to Pacios, witnesses she had interviewed state that Welles and the victim both frequented Brittingham’s restaurant in Los Angeles during the same time period and waitresses believed Short was going out with someone at Columbia Pictures. Welles was never a suspect in the investigation. Pacios now maintains BlackDahlia.info, a website containing a great deal of information and official documents about the Black Dahlia case, but only a short section on Welles’ supposed involvement.

Image credit: Cascade News

Legend has it that the Loch Ness Monster was first sighted in the sixth century by an Irish monk while preaching by the lake. Now, a Scottish sailor who has spent the last 26 years of his life searching for the elusive creature, says he has the best picture yet of “Nessie.”

George Edwards takes his boat, “Nessie Hunter,” out onto Loch Ness nearly every day, often with tourists who hope to see the creature for themselves. Early one morning in November of last year, Edwards was turning his ship back to shore after spending the morning searching for an old steam engine on the lake floor, when he saw something else.

“I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and immediately grabbed my camera,” Edwards told ABC News. “I happened to get a good picture of one of them.”

The typical “media Nessie,” as Edwards calls it in his thick Scottish accent, depicts the creature with three humps sticking out of the water and a long neck with a head like a horse, but Edwards says that’s probably not what Nessie looks like.

The picture Edwards took shows what he says is the back of one of the Loch Ness monsters.

“In my opinion, it probably looks kind of like a manatee, but not a mammal,” Edwards told ABC. “When people see three humps, they’re probably just seeing three separate monsters.”

While many people think of the Loch Ness monster as a single creature, Edwards maintains that can’t be true.

“It was first seen in 565 AD,” Edwards said. “Nothing can live that long. It’s more likely that there are a number of monsters, offspring of the original.”

Image credit: Cascade News

RELATED: Canada’s Loch Ness Monster Caught on Tape?

Edwards has a lot of theories about the Loch Ness monster, which he first became fascinated with when he was a 13-year-old boy and his father would take him fishing at the massive lake. He says he was a skeptic at first, but decades on Loch Ness have turned him into an ardent believer.

“I grew up with the legend, like the boogeyman, or Big Foot in your part of the world, and most people start out thinking it’s a myth,” Edwards said. “But Loch Ness is so deep and dark and mysterious, when you start hearing more and more stories, you start believing more.”

He says his wife, who has been with him since before he started searching for Nessie full time, was initially a skeptic too, but after years of hearing stories from her husband and others, “she came around, and she’s a believer now.”

There are other monster “hunters” in the area, but Edwards says it’s something a lot of people don’t want to talk about.

“Many people loathe to talk openly about believing in Nessie for fear of ridicule,” Edwards told ABC News. “Of course I’ve faced the ridicule, but I can’t bury my face in the sand, when I know what’s out there.”

The main argument Edwards says he hears from skeptics is that the lake has been searched, and nothing has ever been found proving the existence of a Loch Ness monster.

“That’s a silly reason to not believe though, because those expeditions can’t prove anything one way or the other,” Edwards told ABC News. “It’s a massive body of water, deep and dark, and we simply don’t have the technology to really do that kind of search.”

He likens the sonar searches he’s seen in the past to trying to do an ultrasound on a pregnant woman while she’s running down a hallway.

“If you can’t see the baby on the scan, will you say she isn’t pregnant?” Edwards said.

Edwards has “every bit of electrical equipment available,” to aid in his search. He used to take it all out onto the lake seven days a week, but he says he’s going out a bit less these days. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see the elusive creature again, but he plans to sail onto the lake as much as possible.

“I’m 60 years old now, I can’t go out every day,” Edwards told ABC. “But I won’t stop going out onto Loch Ness until they put me in a box six feet under.”

He wakes up very early nearly every morning to get on the lake, regardless of the weather

Capturing the picture at the end of last year “felt good,” Edwards said, “because it reinforced my beliefs, and might help convince other people.”

Edwards told ABC News that because of personal matters that arose shortly after he took the picture — including the death of both his mother and sister – he did not immediately circulate the image. He said that he just recently started showing people the picture and it is now just picking up some steam.

This picture, he contends, clearly shows something that could only be the monster. He says the other monster hunters he’s shown it to have called it the best they’ve ever seen.

“Lots of people have come up to me since the picture started getting attention, and telling me they’ve seen something similar,” Edwards said. And there’s no smoke without fire, so there must be something in that lake.”

Edwards has a few tips for monster hunters who want to see Nessie for themselves.

“You have to be on the lake every day, with a camera and binoculars, and you have to be in the right place at the right time.”

He usually appears around the time of UFO sightings

The Grinning Man is a name given to a mysterious creature that has been reported in various areas over the last century.

He is believed to either be an alien or some other type of unknown creature.  If nothing else, he is very creepy and all the witness accounts describe him as being very strange.  Everyone who has seen him will never forget him or what he looks like.  Nobody knows if there is just one Grinning Man or many, or if the whole thing is just an urban legend.

One account of the Grinning Man happened in October 1966.  Two boys in NJ were walking along Fourth Street, and when they reached a corner parallel to the NJ Turnpike, one of the boys, James Yanchitis, could see a strange figure standing on the other side of a fence.  He nudged his friend, Marvin Munoz, who then noticed the man too.  They both describe the man as being “a really big man with a big old grin”.  Allegedly, another resident in the neighborhood claimed to have been “chased by a tall green man” down that very same street. 

John A. Keel, a well-known paranormal investigator and author of “The Mothman Prophecies”, visited the boys a few days later to speak to them about their incident.  He interviewed each boy separately and they both gave the same exact story.  The man, they claimed was more than six feet tall and was dressed in a green coverall costume.  The costume even appeared to be shimmering in the street lights.  There was a black belt around his waist.  Neither boy noticed any hair, nose, or ears on the man, just two, beady eyes and a really big grin.

There were other, similar reports of such a strange man in other parts of the country, including on in Parkersburg, WV, which is about 40 miles away from where the mothman sightings took place.  In Nov. 1966, Woodrow Derenberger was driving home in his truck when he heard a crash.  Out of nowhere, a vehicle came zooming up behind him and quickly passed him up.  After passing him up, the vehicle slowed down and stopped, blocking the road.  The witness noticed that it was the strangest vehicle he had ever seen, and described it as looking like a “kerosene lamp chimney”.  It apparently was flaring at each end, and the ends were narrow.  The vehicle had a large bulge in the center.

All of a sudden, a strange, tall man stepped out.  He was described as being “really tall and tanned”.  Derenberger claimed that the man had a “gleaming green” outfit on, similar to what the boys in NJ noted.  The Grinning Man alleged communicated with Derenberger telepathically and asked him strange questions about UFO sightings in the area.  The entity then, telepathically, revealed his name to be “Indrid Cold”. 

There have been other reports of a strange, grinning man, including on in Point Pleasant, WV, where the mothman sightings took place.  Nobody knows for sure who—-or what—-this strange man was, or why he was here.  Of course, he could just be an urban legend.  Or, he could’ve just been an ordinary, albeit strange man.  There haven’t been any more reported sightings of him as of late.  Whenever he had been around in the past, there were usually UFO sightings or crypto sightings such as Mothman.  He couldn’t be associated with the Men in Black, since he supposedly wears a shimmering green outfit.

STONEFIELD BEACH, Oregon – Vance Buehler was always afraid of what people would think when he told them about spotting UFO’s at Stonefield Beach and other Oregon coastal locations. “I’ve always sensed them (aliens) at a far distance, but never daring to speak of what I know inside.” Today marks the start of UFO “watcher” season along the central Oregon coast, with Buehler pointing to recent sightings of UFO’s “as time to look towards the heavens.”

November 19 is the unofficial start of Oregon’s UFO coastal watch season

Vance Buehler and other UFO “watchers” gathered at Stonefield Friday morning for what they’ve dubbed as “the start of UFO season along coastal Oregon.”

For the past nine years this annual event – that runs from Nov. 19 until after the Geminids meteor showers in early December – is “prime time” for the self-proclaimed “watchers” to just hang out and see what they can see. And, with the recent spotting of UFO’s down the coast in California and more recent encounters up the coast in Alaska, the group is most pleased with themselves and their quest to prove UFO’s are real.

When asked about the “watchers” most recent sighting, Buehler pulls out a silver, hard-bound log book and reads the following: “It was just before dawn Wednesday when we spotted a formation of low flying lights that buzzed by the coast. It’s the usual, dozens of lights. And, then afterwards we all felt a warm breeze off the ocean. It was sort of comforting on a cold and windy morning,” the UFO watcher explained.

Having a “close-encounter” is real for many

Buehler said he remembers feeling numb, as if his feelings were paralyzed when he had his first close encounter at the age of 24. Now, at age 78, Buehler thinks “it’s time.”

“It’s time for sure. This is not a nightmare beyond anything I’ve ever encountered. It’s a coming home of sorts. They (aliens) are coming home, and this is where we are right now in history,” says Buehler while peering out across the Pacific Ocean from his favorite vantage point at Stonefield.

Researchers from nearby Oregon State University in Corvallis have noted something very strange happening recently along the beaches here at Stonefield.

For the past few weeks this region of the central Oregon coast has been dubbed “death on the beach,” as tens of thousands of starfish washed-up dead. Then, sea lions started dying in massive numbers and they too washed up on the beaches. And, today, Nov. 19, there’s thousands of beached and dead jellyfish here at Stonefield and up and down the coast.

Buehler and his band of a dozen or more UFO “watchers” are not surprised.

“Look over at my grandson James who’s sitting right near a massive grouping of dead sea life. You never see such large groups like that. And, note the display along Stonefield, as if the aliens are saying ‘take notice,’ for something new is dawning in their relationship to humans,” added Buehler.

Heinlein predicted “first contact” in the early 21st century

In fact, the late great science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein is famous for saying “Earth is too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in.”
Robert Heinlein has rock star status in the world of science fiction. In fact, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were once known as the “Big Three” of science fiction writing and predictions. All three of these top world authors said UFO’s “are real.”

Heinlein said “alien life has been here since the beginning of man’s existence on Earth, and that a visit to cyberspace “is like a visit to the collective consciousness of not only our world, but the aliens who made this cyberspace possible.”

Prior to his death on May 8, 1988, Heinlein was dubbed “the dean of all science fiction writers” because he was not only the most popular, influential and controversial authors of his genre – because he believed UFO’s and aliens were here walking the Earth – but because he set such a high standard for “science and engineering plausibility.”

Because Heinlein was so well respected, the U.S. House and Senate asked him to appear before a special “Joint Committee” investigating both UFO sightings and the author’s theory that aliens were living among Earthlings and doing both good and bad things for mankind.

However, just prior to this special session of Congress to hear what’s what from the world’s leading authority on extraterrestrial life, Heinlein was suddenly stricken in his sleep from reported “emphysema and heart failure.”

After his death, his wife Virginia Heinlein tried to jump start her late husband’s call to the world about UFO’s and alien life both happening now and real on the planet Earth, but with the experts death, so did the same interest that is today capturing the world’s attention when it comes to this recent rash of credible UFO sightings around the world.

At the same time, the mathematician and physicist Story Musgrave noted during his Space Shuttle flight at the age of 61 that looking down on the Earth from space it’s more than highly possible that other life exists out there.

Musgrave spent more than 1,281 hours in space and speaks about alien life not just as a leading scientist but someone who’s had that unique perspective to view our Earth and it’s place in the Galaxy from the Space Shuttle.

Stonefield and other UFO sites call out to those who want to believe

While this remote state park that’s simply called “Stonefield” by UFO fans is one place in Oregon that UFO’s are spotted as common as local seagulls, there’s hundreds of other locations throughout the state and the Pacific Northwest for UFO watchers to check out.

Stonefield sits along the Pacific Ocean and near the coastal rainforest is where, say local UFO experts, “aliens will show themselves.”

Over the years, and especially during the Fall season of late November, Stonefield is the place to “hang out” for college students from nearby Eugene and Corvallis who attend the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.

“We believe, sure. But we want to confirm all this UFO stuff, so we stop at Stonefield for a laugh and hopefully something more,” said one student.

At the same time, the Geminids is one of the best meteor showers of the year in early December.

Buehler said “it never seems to disappoint observers who like to camp out at Stonefield with their telescopes to watch both the Geminids and various UFO’s that seem to streak by on a regular basis.”

In fact, the best time to have a “close encounter” with known UFO visitors is “when the Geminids arrives,” explains a local UFO hunter who asked not to be identified. “They are not usually seen with the naked eye. Yet, when one really looks, they’re there as clear as day.”

The “Geminids” reference by Oregon coast UFO experts is the annual meteor shower that seems to arrive each fall and winter season with bright colored lights in the sky that this UFO hunter dubs as the “alien’s rainbow.”

At the same time, more and more visitors to the central Oregon coast – from Eugene and surrounding areas – are querying locals on the coast about UFO sightings.

“It’s strange but one would expect a tourist to ask about the best seafood place, or where to walk the beach without paying a park fee. But, lately with the rash of UFO sightings in Oregon and just about everywhere else, they want to know where such and such is because of these UFO’s,” says Yachats local Derek Leonard while shaking his head in almost disbelief.

Leonard and other Yachats residents have even thought about marketing coastal “UFO sightings.”

“Well they do a bang-up business over in Roswell, don’t they,” quipped Leonard. “I’m sure we can get our chamber of commerce to gin something up.”

UFO sightings increasing worldwide but still no proof

There have been tens of thousands of various systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) over the years. For example, the Air Force “Project Blue Book” studies began in 1952 and ended in 1969 with nearly 13,000 UFO reports collected and analyzed.

The conclusion is there’s “no evidence” of “unidentified” extraterrestrial vehicles. Instead, the Air Force report pointed to “natural phenomena,” such as clouds and weather balloons as the cause for these UFO sightings.

Moreover, NASA’s “Spaceguard” program has an annual funding in the billions to spot and catalog threatening asteroids that may hit the planet and to check out possible UFO’s. The European Space Agency also spends billions searching the skies for dangers from outer space.

Oregon is a state of UFO believers because sightings are a common occurrence

Here in Oregon, there’s such people as Paul Slovic who’s considered a pioneer in something called “risk-perception research.” Slovic is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon.

One of Slavic’s is “catastrophic potential” that could come from killer asteroids or aliens from outer space. Since the 1970’s, Slovic and his research team have queried people about what risks there are in life. Not surprising, the risk of being hit by space debris or being taken up in a flying saucer is on people’s minds.

In addition, the Oregon coast has long been associated with UFO encounters due to such things as the geologic oddity of rock formations along the coast that some say are makers for UFO visits.

Also, reports from numerous UFO watch groups say “UFO sightings are increasing in the U.S. and worldwide. In addition, close encounter reports “are now as common as local weather reports.”

Various UFO surveys in both the U.S. and Europe this year, point to more than half the people polled as believing in them. “With record numbers of unexplained objects being spotted in the skies over Britain this past Saturday night. There’s a huge majority of us reckon alien life exists somewhere in the universe, even if it has yet to touch down on Earth,” states recent media reports out of England.

While local Oregon coast parks service volunteer Peter Kinney thinks such talk is “poppy-cock,” the senior citizen also notes “there’s always been something strange about Stonefield.”

In fact, Stonefield is perhaps the most secluded and exclusive of the central Oregon coast parks.

There are formally declassified documents at a nearby Newport historic museum points to a period during World War II and then in the late 1950’s when “the U.S. government installed numerous secret look out facilities in the area around Cape Perpetua.”

What’s interesting to local UFO hunters is that one of these “stone” lookout bunkers still sits near the top of Cape Perpetua that looks right down on Stonefield Beach.

When describing Stonefield Beach, locals have lots to say.

“It’s sort of prehistoric. There’s remains of whales, sea lions and the only place that I know of along the coast where you see dozens of wild rabbits that are huge in size,” says Kinney. “And, there are these people who camp out and burn fires amongst the Stonefield rock formations that’s creepy.”

At Stonefield, there are no popular beach spots or shops or restaurants.

“There’s just death on the beach and the place reeks to high heaven. It’s as if someone or something doesn’t want the locals or tourists to visit there,” says coastal resident Mackenzie Ryan.

Moreover, Ryan notes “these strange lights and an eerie glow that seems to light up everything around. You see the light on the drift wood that litters the Stonefield beach, and you see it in the sky over the mountains that sit right behind this beach spot. There’s no place like it.”

Along a grassy hill there sits — in the sea of rocks – what can only be described as mounds of formed and hardened sand. “We can’t explain it. It’s these small mounds and the crazy glow on everything at Stonefield that spooks us at this time of the year.”

Oregon coast served as story location for first X-Files episode

At the same time, there are more and more urban myths about the Oregon coast and UFO sightings. And, the popular TV show and movie series the “X-Files” hasn’t helped to squelch such rumors.

In fact, the X-Files is based on fact along with fiction. The X-Files pointed to crop circles as being commonly cited as “evidence of alien visits.” The program also noted that the discovery of life-supporting water in the form of ice on Mars is proof that alien life exists in our universe.

Moreover, in the pilot for the highly successful X-Files series, Dana Scully is assigned to work with Fox Mulder, who’s an FBI agent that specializes in the paranormal. Together, they travel to the central Oregon coast and Stonefield where Mulder believes several teenagers have been abducted by aliens.

While this sounds farfetched, locals say it actually happened, and will continue to happen now that Nov. 19 has arrived – via the official start of UFO watch season along the Oregon coast.

BRAY’S POINT, Ore. – They can’t be moved; even when yanked by a four-wheel drive truck pulling on heavy chains tied around these humming metal boxes that are still appearing as of Feb. 8 up and down West Coast beaches.

As of late afternoon Feb. 8, Bill Hanshumaker, a public marine specialist and (Ph.D) doctor of marine science at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in nearby Newport, told Huliq in an interview that, “I don’t know what they are.” In turn, Doctor Hanshumaker said he’s advised “surf monitoring” about these strange metal boxes that suddenly appeared along local beaches Feb. 6, and now seem to be multiplying like Star Trek “Tribbles.” The photograph that accompanies this report – taken during the afternoon of Feb. 8 near Bray’s Point — of yet another strange metal box stuck in the surf up is one of a possible group of a dozen or more that have been sited up and down West Coast beaches. Meanwhile, the British government also photographed similar huge metal boxes on beaches in Sri Lanka in the late 1990’s and in early 2004 and 2005. The discovery of the boxes is detailed in updated previously classified reports from the British government that document sightings of unidentified flying objects by both the military and the general public dating back to the 1950s.

UFO history filled with “mystery boxes”

Thus, within these British government UFO files, available via the Internet, are the Sri Lanka beach boxes that are similar in both size, coloring and shape; with locals all along Sri Lanka’s beaches – located in the blue waters of the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal – stating in the recently released British UFO documents that “the strange metal boxes appeared suddenly, and after numerous reported UFO sightings.”

In turn, the metal boxes along Oregon, Washington State and Northern California beaches are now being photographed, documented and examined by local experts.

Also, due to recent storms out in the Pacific Ocean, the “boxes” are being more or less ignored; with passing comments in local coastal newspaper,” state Errol, a Bray’s Point local and a member of the Oregon UFO “watchers” group that gathers both here and at nearby Stonefield Beach to scan the sky for flying objects in much the same way bird lovers use binoculars for birth watching.

Science is slow in reacting to UFO related objects

Errol notes that it’s always a sort of “communication breakdown” that always seems to go the same way; be it a UFO sighting or even something like “these humming metal boxes.”

However, Errol said it’s a good thing “when something like this becomes interesting to the Oregon State University Research Agenda.” For instance, Doctor Hanshumaker works for this OSU research enterprise at the nearby Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon. Whenever there’s some dead sea life – such as a beach whale or other something along the lines of massive dead sea birds – the experts at the Hatfield are called in to investigate.

When asked if he’s ever heard of anything like these huge metal boxes, with no opening or seam, Doctor Hanshumaker would not comment or speculate on the record. Instead, this marine science expert has for photos of the boxes and size and coloring details.

In turn, Doctor Hanshumaker would not speculate about various rumors regarding the boxes; but said that an alert has gone out and the boxes are being investigated. Of course, Huliq will continue to monitor this breaking story that has local coastal residents and visitors scratching their heads about the boxes.

Bray’s Point monitored by the Hatfield

An hour’s drive from Corvallis, the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport is OSU’s coastal campus for research and investigation of marine biological and geochemical aspects of tidal, estuarine, and near shore ocean environments. According to it’s fact sheet, “research programs at HMSC advance scientific understanding of marine and coastal ecosystems, with an emphasis on collaboration across disciplinary and institutional affiliations of the more than 300 personnel onsite.”

In turn, marine science experts are tasked by both the state and federal government to monitor the Oregon coastal beaches even more so today after the Japan earthquake last March that sent Tsunami waves racing across the Pacific Ocean that slammed into the West Coast causing destruction and creating a massive amount of debris that seems to be growing daily as beach trekkers find “all sorts of things” along the coast.

While these strange metal boxes have been examined for any lettering or symbols that they may be from last year’s earthquake in Japan, Errol and other Bray’s Point locals say “all we know is there’s been a lot of action in the sky as of late with UFO sightings that seem to be increasing. The boxes were found the day after several sightings and bright lights over Bray’s Point. The boxes have no identification at all.”

Monitoring the coast comes under OSU

Earning $261.7 million in external research funding in FY 2011, Oregon State’s fact online fact sheet that describes its operations notes “it is one of only two land, sea, space and sun grant institutions in the U.S., and holds a top tier research designation from the Carnegie Foundation. Also, Nine of OSU’s academic programs have ranked among the top 10 nationally in the past three years. Faculty include 29 NSF Early Career Award recipients since 2000, two MacArthur Foundation Fellows and scientists who lead federal programs at NSF, NASA and NOAA. More than 35 present and past faculty have been elected as Fellows of AAAS, and five as members of NAS.”

In turn, the Hatfield Marine Science Center is home base for the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station (COMES), the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies (CIMRS), and the Marine Mammal Institute, along with various other OSU and state/federal agency units

This handout image from NASA, one of the first images from the Curiosity rover which landed on Mars the evening …

A mysterious blotch that appeared along the horizon in a photo from the surface of Mars stirred speculation about what it might be, as two hours later it was gone.

One image from the Curiosity rover as it landed on the fourth planet from the sun showed a “faint but distinctive” image on the horizon, the Los Angeles Times reported. However, a subsequent batch of images sent from the unmanned rover two hours later showed no trace of the blotch.

One theory put forth by space enthusiasts in the L.A. Times story is that Curiosity had somehow snapped a photo of part of the spacecraft that escorted the rover through the Martian atmosphere crash-landing a distance away.

But to capture that image “would be an insane coincidence,” one engineer told the newspaper.

Others say more feasible possibilities would be simply dirt on the lens, or maybe a dust devil twisting far in the distance.

But as more images start to pour into NASA, more is being learned about the rover’s pinpoint landing.

In what some are dubbing the “crime scene” photo of the landing zone taken by another satellite, Curiosity is seen on the ground along with pieces of the spacecraft that broke apart as planned on the way to the surface. The photo reveals the heat shield that protected the rover as it entered the atmosphere and the parachute that helped ease the vehicle onto Mars. Also seen are parts of the “sky crane,” the spacecraft that carried the rover to the planet, the article noted.

Could the sky crane crashing be the blotch? From another L.A. Times story:

The crime scene photo showed that the sky crane had crash-landed, as designed, about 2,000 feet away—and in the same direction that Curiosity’s camera was pointed when it snapped the first photo showing the blotch. The new satellite photo also showed that the sky crane, when it crash-landed, kicked up a violent wave of dirt that had scarred the surface of Mars.

Curiosity mission manager Michael Watkins told the Times if it were the case, “it would be incredibly cool. … A crazy, serendipitous thing.”

Images from Mars have always fueled curiosity.

Remember what folks thought was a huge face on Mars? An image from Viking 1 in 1976 that appeared to show a rock formation with eyes, a nose and a mouth? Later high-resolution imaging and side-by-side analysis proved the “face” to be a mesa, like the flat-topped natural formations found in the southwestern U.S.

As the Curiosity rover readies to begin the scientific discovery part of the mission, maybe more interesting things will be revealed.

A suspected UFO recorded on video over Lebanon, Mo., was uploaded to YouTube last month and stirred up the UFO community. The shaky night-vision video was captured about 4:50 a.m. on May 26.

According to the videographer, Jim Barnhill, the craft flew three or four miles above Lebanon, and featured four very bright lights, three of which appeared to strobe. This is what seemed strange, according to him: “I have never seen an aircraft lights look like this so I stayed with the object. Typically aircraft lights flash/strobe on then turn off and back on, then off again doing this in a pattern,” Barnhill can be heard saying on video.

Believing he’d recorded an unknown — possibly extraterrestrial — craft, Barnhill analyzed still frames and announced, “Once you blow this video up you can see that the object is connected by some sort of dense frame structure connecting to the four light corners. It also appears to connect through the middle of the craft from the front light to the back light.”

But is this really that mysterious? Here’s what we know from examining the video: the ‘UFO’ has blinking strobe lights that are characteristic of known aircraft; seems to be flying at an altitude used by known aircraft (and not, for example, 100 feet off the ground); was flying at a speed characteristic of known aircraft (and didn’t, for example, suddenly zoom away at an impossible speed); and was in a flight pattern characteristic of known aircraft (and didn’t, for example, suddenly stop or move vertically in the sky).

Barnhill rejects the most logical explanation — that it’s an airplane — because of what he says is an unusual light pattern. To his credit, he made an effort to record the lights of other commercial aircraft for comparison, and found them different. He uploaded three videos to YouTube (username RaleighUFO) with the captions, “This clip is an example of what a commercial plane looks like….”

The problem is that there are more than 80,000 flights per day over the United States, and hundreds of different types of aircraft, including private jets, passenger planes, military aircraft and cargo jets. Just because the flashing light pattern he spotted does not match any of the three specific planes he compared his unknown craft against does not prove that it is not a known plane; it merely means he didn’t videotape the same type of plane.

If Barnhill wants to pursue this line of investigation, he will need to log dozens more airplane light patterns for comparison. However, there may be an easier way to do it: if it was indeed a plane, then it was probably a regularly scheduled flight and, given the time of morning, perhaps a red-eye. He should record the same part of the sky at approximately the same time every morning for a week to see if the craft reappears. If the same type of plane with an identical light pattern shows up, then it’s almost certainly a commercial flight. (Of course it also could have been a one-time military flyover that won’t return, but at least it’s a start.)

Night-vision cameras are notorious for creating poor and misleading images — especially when the cameraman doesn’t stabilize the image with a tripod for a clear view. There’s also the fact that Barnhill was outside, looking at the sky through night-vision goggles at nearly 5 o’clock in the morning. Most often, when someone is stargazing at that hour with that gear, they’re searching for UFOs. And sometimes if you look hard enough for something you’ll find it — even if it’s not there.

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