dahlia murders

Between July 1943 and October 1949, the Black Dahlia Avenger attacked 20 women in and around Los Angeles. He attacked in two waves – he killed five victims in the first wave and struck a further fifteen in the second wave.

The killer, who called himself the Avenger after the fictional Ripper-like serial killer in the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes,  planned his killings as a homage to the real-life Jack the Ripper.  

The Black Dahlia Avenger was the first person to realise that the same killer – or killers – was responsible for the fourteen Whitechapel and Thames Torso Murders. Modern Ripperologists – the name by which those investigating the Ripper murders are known – still debate the number of victims killed by Jack the Ripper. And yet, eighty years ago, a criminal genius determined that Jack the Ripper murdered all eleven  part-time prostitutes in Whitechapel and cut up the three women whose body parts were found in the Thames.

The Avenger was the first individual to recognise the method used by Jack the Ripper to plan his attacks, and he based his modus operandi on a modified version of Jack’s approach.

In a similar fashion, while Jack the Ripper was responsible for the three Thames Torso Murders alongside the Whitechapel Murders, the Avenger committed the three Lipstick Murders in Chicago while simultaneously attacking twenty women in Los Angeles.

Like Jack the Ripper, the Black Dahlia Avenger was never caught.