Elizabeth Short, also known as the "Black Dahlia," is one of the most famous people buried in Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery, but how exactly did she end up buried there instead of Los Angeles where she was killed?

Elizabeth, known by friends as Betty, was found brutally murdered in a vacant lot at Norton Ave and 39th Street in Southwest Los Angeles on the morning of Jan. 15, 1947. She was an aspiring actress who had moved to California from Massachusetts in hopes of becoming a movie star.

Short's mother, Phoebe M. Short, arrived at San Francisco Airport on Jan. 18, 1947 - three days after her daughter's body was found. Phoebe had flown from her home in Medford, Massachusetts to see her daughters (Virginia and Elizabeth). Virginia, who lived in Berkeley, greeted her at the airport. But Elizabeth had never shown up for the family reunion.

Phoebe Short learned about her daughter's death from Wain Sutton, a rewrite man for the LA Examiner. Sutton first told the mother that her daughter had won a contest and they were checking with her for background info. After squeezing Elizabeth's life story out of her for a while, Examiner city editor Jimmy Richardson told Sutton to give Phoebe the bad news.

Elizabeth's body arrived in Oakland a day later, at the same time that police in Los Angeles were conducting house-to-house searches to find the Dahlia murder site. They never did.

She was buried Jan. 25, 1947. Despite the hot media coverage, her funeral was a lonely one, attended by her mother, sister, brother-in-law, and a pair of men in trench coats - either cops, or reporters. The case has never been solved.

Source:SecretOakland