July 29, 2024 marked the centenary of Elizabeth Quick’s beginning. Born in Boston, Beth, as she typically most well-liked to be known as, was the center little one of Cleo and Phoebe Quick. She had 4 sisters: Virginia, Dorothea, Elnora, and Muriel.
In 1930, Cleo’s miniature golf course enterprise tanked. He positioned his automobile near a bridge to create the looks of suicide. A houseful of girls has its comforts, however Cleo’s abandonment seems to have profoundly affected Beth.
Just a few years later, Cleo wrote to Phoebe and requested for forgiveness. She refused. A minimum of Beth knew her father was alive. There remained a chance for a relationship. She discovered him in California in 1942. Moderately than a loving father, he was a imply drunk, on the lookout for a housekeeper, not a daughter. Their reunion failed.
In 1943, she labored at Camp Cooke, now Vandenberg Air Pressure Base, the place they voted her “Camp Cutie.” On September 23, 1943, she bought arrested for underage consuming on the El Paseo restaurant in Santa Barbara. The jail matron gave her cash for a bus ticket again to Medford, Massachusetts.
Due to her bronchial asthma, Beth would often escape the tough Massachusetts winters to work as a waitress in Florida.
Main Matt Gordon, a adorned fighter pilot, met Beth in Miami, Florida whereas on depart in 1944. He could have been on depart after sustaining accidents in a aircraft crash in February. A photograph of them collectively reveals him smiling, and Beth with stars in her eyes, and a proprietary hand on his arm. The good-looking pilot was every thing the twenty-year-old wished.
Matt’s demise in a aircraft crash close to Kalaikunda in West Bengal, India, on August 10, 1945, was a merciless accident. It occurred simply in the future after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, and solely weeks earlier than the struggle ended. Matt’s loss devastated Beth.
After August 1945, she by no means labored once more. She drifted from Medford, to Chicago, Florida, and to Los Angeles—chasing a ghost.
She lived in Lengthy Seaside, California, throughout the summer time of 1946. Whereas there, mates nicknamed her the Black Dahlia. By the tip of the yr, she was staying with Dorothy and Elvera French in San Diego. She met a touring salesman, Robert “Pink” Manley, when he supplied her a trip.
Beth and the married salesman, a reality he little doubt hid from her, corresponded for a month or two earlier than she requested him if he would drive her again to Los Angeles in early January 1947. He agreed.
Pink picked her up on the French’s on January 8th. They drove up the coast and stayed the night time in a motel earlier than arriving in Los Angeles on January 9th. Beth checked her baggage on the bus depot. Pink refused to go away her in such a sketchy neighborhood. He took her to the Biltmore Resort, the place she advised him she was assembly her sister, Virginia. It was a lie. Virginia lived a whole bunch of miles north in Oakland.
Pink stayed along with her within the resort foyer for a very long time earlier than he left. Beth, now on her personal, left the resort foyer, turned proper on Olive, and vanished.
On the morning of January 15, a Leimert Park housewife, Betty Bersinger, found Beth’s physique whereas out operating errands. The place was Beth for these lacking days? Nobody who knew her noticed her throughout that point. The considered her being held captive by her killer is horrifying.
As soon as police established her id, reporters noticed it as a chance to pry into each element of Beth’s life. The useless lose their proper to privateness. Hypothesis crammed column after column within the newspapers. The prevailing angle was that good women don’t get murdered. But Beth had executed nothing, good or unhealthy, worthy of observe. At 22-years-old, she by no means bought the prospect.
As time handed with no resolution, the case grew chilly. Different murders captured headlines. It was not till a long time later, following a few books, and a mid-Seventies made-for-TV film, that Beth’s story grew to become information once more.
It’s comprehensible that the case is understood in Los Angeles, however what I discover most attention-grabbing is that the 77-year-old Los Angeles homicide thriller has drawn world curiosity. What’s it about Beth’s homicide that resonates with folks even right this moment?
It might be the supposed Hollywood connection.
Most up to date articles erroneously describe Beth as an aspiring actress, or starlet. Such characterizations make her homicide the final word Hollywood heartbreak story with a violent twist.
Nonetheless, two distinct narratives about Beth co-exist. One is the parable of the Black Dahlia, a fictional character primarily based on Beth’s life.
The second story, and the one I imagine is true, is that of a depressed, confused, and needy younger girl in search of marriage and stability within the chaos and uncertainty of the post-war world.
Every of her sisters married and had youngsters. By the point of Phoebe’s demise in 1992, three daughters, 13 grandchildren, twenty-one great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandson survived her.
The repetition of the Black Dahlia fable has led to its acceptance as fact, however in mythologizing Beth’s story, we’ve ignored the actual individual at its core.
We’ve overpassed the troubled younger girl who got here to California to attach along with her father—to not break into the flicks.
The tragedy of Beth’s life is just not that she failed to realize Hollywood stardom, she by no means sought it.
Beth was on the lookout for what most individuals her age wished—marriage and a house. She pursued a romantic imaginative and prescient of a husband in uniform with shiny shiny brass buttons, and a bungalow with a white picket fence.
Judging by an undated letter she obtained from Lieutenant Stephen Wolak, she didn’t hesitate to press a person for marriage. Wolak’s letter reads partly, “Once you point out marriage in your letter, Beth, I get to questioning. Infatuation is usually mistaken for real love. I do know whereof I communicate, as a result of my ardent love quickly cools off.”
Wolak’s response to Beth’s letter is a frank evaluation of their relationship—which, in his estimation, was not critical. You may gauge her desperation from his response.
What number of different males in uniform obtained letters from Beth suggesting marriage?
A depressed and lonely younger girl with daddy points on the lookout for love is just not essentially the stuff of bestselling books or blockbuster films.
The pathos of Beth’s actual life could make us uncomfortable.
It’s the fable of the Black Dahlia; an epic story of an exquisite younger girl in search of stardom who then meets a brutal finish by the hands of a wicked killer that mesmerizes us.
I think about within the years to return—it doesn’t matter what could also be revealed; we are going to proceed to carry quick to the parable.
