January 15, 1947... In a vacant, weed-strewn lot in residential Los Angeles, a young mother makes a horrifying discovery. It appears at first to be a broken mannequin, but the truth is infinitely more gruesome: the body of a young woman, severed cleanly in two, drained of all blood, and posed with grotesque precision.

The victim is Elizabeth Short, a 22-year-old aspiring actress with striking black hair and a mysterious past. In the ensuing media frenzy, the press gives her a name that will become legendary in the annals of American crime: The Black Dahlia.

Join host Ryan Fitz as Ciphered investigates the dark heart of post-war Hollywood. This episode peels back the layers of myth to uncover the real Elizabeth Short, a woman whose tragic story was rewritten by newspapers locked in a circulation war. We explore a crime scene meticulously scrubbed of evidence, a killer who taunted police by mailing the victim’s personal belongings, and an investigation that descended into a circus of false confessions.

The trail leads through the glitz and grime of the studio system to the doorstep of a powerful and brilliant physician, Dr. George Hodel, a man whose own son—a retired LAPD homicide detective—would later build a chilling case against him. This is the story of how a brutal murder became Hollywood’s most infamous cold case, a haunting puzzle where the victim herself became the most tragic and misunderstood clue.