Filmmakers Say They Cracked the Infamous Black Dahlia Case After Finding a Hidden Room in an L.A. Motel (Exclusive)

KC BakerWed, July 1, 2026 at 3:48 PM UTC

0

Elizabeth Short; Hidden room in an LA motel where filmmakers believe Short, known as the Black Dahlia, was tortured and killed in 1947Credit: Bettmann; Talestorm Productions -

The 1947 discovery of Elizabeth Short's naked, mutilated body in a vacant L.A. lot was dubbed the Black Dahlia murder, a sensational case that officially remains unsolved

Now, filmmakers say they have located a secret room inside a Los Angeles motel where they found evidence of a "bloodshed event" and believe this is where Short met her grisly end

Filmmakers and investigators obtained police files that have never been made public and point to the killer, with director Jeff Thomas saying, "We have a mountain of evidence" proving who killed her

A long-held secret that led a filmmaker and a group of investigators to uncover a decades-old blood stain hidden behind the wall of a faded, 1940s-era L.A. motel may finally provide long-awaited answers in the mysterious Black Dahlia case.

On Jan. 15, 1947, the naked, mutilated body of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short was found in the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles. Laying just feet from the sidewalk, Short’s body was sliced in half at the waist, and each side of her mouth was slashed to the ear in what is widely known as a Glasgow Smile.

Despite the severity of her wounds, there was no blood at the scene, which told investigators Short, dubbed by newspapermen as the Black Dahlia, had been murdered elsewhere, according to the FBI.

Authorities worked to find the young woman’s killer and the location of her grisly murder and dismemberment, but the case eventually went cold.

Now filmmaker Jeff Thomas and producer Kimberly Lupini of Talestorm Productions believe they may have solved the case.

“We believe we know who the killer is,” Thomas tells PEOPLE. “We believe we know where the murder was committed. We believe we know what the murder weapon was.”

The investigation, which included interviews with dozens of witnesses and files that have never been made available to the public, is chronicled in the upcoming docuseries "Deconstructing Dahlia," which does not yet have a release date.

"This is not a documentary about Elizabeth's murder,” says Thomas, its director. “It's an investigation into what happened to deconstruct it starting off with that one piece of information that we had.”

That one key piece of information came nearly five years ago from the son of one of the detectives on the infamous case. “He told me something that his father had told him about the investigation and made him promise never to repeat,” he says. “But I could tell he just sort of wanted to purge himself.”

As a filmmaker with such “a valuable piece of information from an unsolved case,” he wanted to investigate the tip and make a documentary about it “to help try to bring some type of closure for this victim and also for her family.

He also wanted to get it right. "We made a commitment from the very beginning," he says. "This is going to be evidence-based, victim-focused, and we are only going to go where the evidence leads us. Everything is backed up by fact, including the location of this motel."

While Thomas says that at this time he cannot share what the tip was, he did say that he and the group of investigators he assembled, The Deconstructing Team, “zeroed in” on a motel where the slaying may have taken place, describing it only as “an open and operational motel in Los Angeles that has been there since the 40s.”

Advertisement

In 2022, forensic expert and Deconstructing Team member Jim “Homer” Nieman asked his colleague, Leslie Thompson, also a senior criminalist with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, to come with him to the motel to check for any evidence that could still be there.

She said yes, but was doubtful. "To be able to have the actual structures and walls and things that were there during the commission of this event is...I said, 'I just don't see that happening, but I would love to look.'"

During their preliminary examination of the room, she tugged at a loose piece of baseboard underneath a heater in the wall and to her great surprise, found layers of drywall.

Hidden area inside an LA motel room where a group of filmmakers and investigators known as "The Deconstructing Team" believes the Black Dahlia was killedCredit: Talestorm Productions

"I thought, 'Oh my gosh, there really might be a chance that there is some evidence that has actually been protected that we might be able to get to. That got me really excited. I was like, 'I need to be a part of this.'"

After promising the motel owner they would replace whatever they had removed, the team returned two more times and found a small room where they think Short was killed. “We found evidence of a major bloodshed event in this room,” says Thomas.

Investigators working to uncover a hidden room in an LA motel where they believe Elizabeth Short was tortured and dismembered.Credit: Talestorm Productions

Besides that, the team was able to obtain thousands of pages of files on the case that have never been made public before, Thomas says. “A lot of these reports give us a great idea of the comings and goings of the killer, but also of Elizabeth Short as well. We can see the points of intersection which also tie in with this motel.”

He adds: “Every place in the files of where eyewitnesses saw blood is where we found blood in the room.”

"Positive blood samples" found in the hidden room at a motel where The Deconstructing Team say Elizabeth Short was murderedCredit: Talestorm Productions

When they laid out the files side by side and read them, it was clear who killed Short, he says. “The really sad thing is all the answers were in plain sight. Anybody armed with the set of files and would actually read them" would see that, he says.

Now what Thomas and his team need is Short’s full, unredacted autopsy report, which the LAPD has never released. “The only way I can corroborate the motive for this murder is by viewing Elizabeth Short's autopsy report,” he says.

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

Considering how much can be learned from solving this cold case, Thomas and his team are asking for the public’s help in asking the LAPD to release the autopsy by signing a petition at Change.org/JusticeforElizabeth.

Justice, says Thomas, "is long overdue for the victim and her family."

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”