Legendary LAPD homicide detective Harry Hansen always prayed he would solve the most infamous unsolved homicide in American history.
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Instead, he would be haunted by the 1947 Black Dahlia murder until he breathed his last in 1980.
The dismembered body of wannabe starlet Elizabeth Short was discovered in an empty lot in L.A. in January 1947. The horrors inflicted on the 26-year-old were surgical and precise, a horror show come to life.
Short was dubbed the Black Dahlia by the Los Angeles Herald-Express because of her raven hair. Upon his retirement in 1970, Hansen told the newspaper: “My only regret is that I never solved the murder of Elizabeth Short.”
Along with the Dahlia, the double murder of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson and the Christmas 1996 slaying of child pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey are the country’s most storied unsolved murders.
A new JonBenet true crime documentary has hit Netflix and now cops are cautiously optimistic they might be on the precipice of solving the horrific crime.
“I’m not sure what it will take to bust it wide open,” an investigator told the New York Post on Sunday, “but it feels like it’s within reach. We’re hoping for 2025; this is our year.”
He added: “It (a task force) hasn’t been as aggressive as anyone had hoped but now there’s a lot of pressure to get this solved.”
America and the world awoke on Dec. 26, 1996 to reports that the six-year-old pageant queen had been reported missing from her family’s Boulder, Colo. mansion. Her father, John Ramsey, discovered his child’s lifeless body in the basement hours later.
Her skull had been bashed by a blow to the back of her head and there was a garrote around her neck. Cops targeted the family first but two weeks after the murder, cleared them.
There have been countless suspects and theories in the nearly three decades since the shocking homicide. But what there hasn’t been are arrests.
Now, Boulder’s new police chief is making closing the JonBenet Ramsey murder an all-hands-on-deck priority.
“We f***ed the case up from the start, and now with new blood, we can finally fix it,” one detective told the Post, as Netflix released its new hit documentary Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey.
“The killing of JonBenet was an unspeakable crime and this tragedy has never left our hearts,” new chief Steve Redfearn told reporters.
“We are committed to following up on every lead and we are continuing to work with DNA experts and our law enforcement partners around the country until this tragic case is solved. This investigation will always be a priority for the Boulder Police Department.”
Cops have come under heavy fire since the day of the murder. The Ramseys have long claimed the local gendarme are way over their heads. Redfearn retorted that his investigators have done everything.
But the proof is in the pudding: No arrest.
“There have been horrible failures,” John Ramsey told Today last week. “But I believe it can be solved if police accept help from outside their system. That’s been their flaw.”
Harry Hansen went to his grave knowing that he and his partner Finis Brown had done everything possible to put the Black Dahlia killer in the gas chamber at San Quentin.
Still, they fell short. With today’s cosmic forensic advances, they almost certainly would have made an arrest.
Boulder cops? They have no such excuse.
@HunterTOSun