Nearly eight decades after 22-year-old Elizabeth Short was found murdered in a Los Angeles neighborhood, the LAPD has obtained fingerprints of a newly identified suspect and is comparing them against evidence from one of America's most notorious unsolved cases.
Detective Martin Mojarro, one of two detectives still assigned to the Black Dahlia cold case, confirmed that the department received high-resolution images of fingerprints belonging to Marvin Margolis, a late military veteran also known as Marvin Merrill, and intends to run them against whatever physical evidence remains in LAPD custody.
The development marks the first known fingerprint comparison in the case since the 1940s, and it follows months of behind-the-scenes contact between the department and a private cold case team led by investigative consultant Alex Baber. If the prints yield a match, it could bring the closest thing to an answer the Black Dahlia case has ever produced. If they don't, another lead joins a list that stretches back to the Truman administration.
How the suspect surfaced
The Daily Mail first reported in December that Baber had concluded Margolis was responsible for both the 1947 killing of Short and the Zodiac murders that terrorized California's Bay Area in the late 1960s. Baber said he reached that conclusion after solving the Zodiac's Z13 cipher, a 13-character code sent to the San Francisco Chronicle in 1970, allegedly containing the killer's name.
By February, LAPD had contacted Baber's team and begun reviewing his findings. The department's willingness to engage is notable for a case that has attracted decades of amateur theories, false confessions, and dead ends, and in which no one has ever been charged.
Baber assembled what he described as circumstantial evidence drawn from personal archives linked to Margolis. He said his team unearthed the suspect's fingerprints and provided them to the LAPD. At a Daily Mail panel during the Hamptons Whodunit festival in New York in April, Baber told attendees that some of Margolis's family members had begun cooperating with law enforcement.
Cold cases that stretch across generations present unique challenges, and ongoing investigations into unidentified remains elsewhere in the country show how difficult it can be to close the gap between suspicion and proof even with modern forensic tools.
What the detective said, and didn't say
Mojarro chose his words carefully. He confirmed the fingerprints had been offered to the department and expressed gratitude for the cooperation.
"The fingerprints were offered to us. I'm thankful that they've agreed to provide them to us. The obvious thing would be to use them in comparison to anything that exists within our evidence."
But he declined to say exactly what evidence LAPD still holds from the original investigation. He would not confirm whether the department possesses DNA connected to the case, saying only that he "cannot discuss whether we do or do not have" such material.
He left the door open to broader forensic work, though he flagged the risk that comes with testing old evidence.
"But with advances in recent technology, I wouldn't be opposed to revisiting any analysis that has been done or could be done. The problem is that a lot of times it'll become our last chance, because of the possibility of consuming the physical evidence for one analysis. That may be just the one shot and then the evidence is gone forever."
That tension, between the desire to test and the fear of destroying irreplaceable material, is familiar to anyone who follows cold case forensics. A single swab can exhaust a sample. Get it wrong, and the evidence vanishes with nothing to show for it.
Skepticism on the record
Mojarro did not simply accept Baber's theory at face value. He described himself as "a skeptic" of Baber's claim to have solved both cold cases by cracking the Z13 cipher. At the same time, he said he had "no real doubt" that Margolis and Short knew each other, though the basis for that statement was not explained.
He also raised a chain-of-custody concern that any defense attorney would seize on if the case ever moved toward a formal resolution. Even a fingerprint match would not end the inquiry.
"Even with that, I would still need the physical evidence to prove or disprove that this person was the person responsible for the murder."
And he questioned whether the prints themselves could be authenticated.
"I'm not the expert when it comes to the analysis of comparisons, but I guarantee you that the analyst who would be assigned to make the comparison would probably question the same thing: How do we know the validity of the samples that are being provided?"
That's a fair question. The fingerprints came from private archives, not a government database. If a match surfaces, LAPD would still need to verify that the prints genuinely belong to Margolis, a man who is no longer alive to provide a fresh set.
The difficulty of verifying evidence in long-dormant cases echoes the frustration families face in prolonged missing-person investigations, where answers remain out of reach for weeks, months, or decades.
The Black Dahlia case, briefly
Elizabeth Short was found killed on January 15, 1947, in Los Angeles's Leimert Park neighborhood. She was 22. The case became one of the most infamous unsolved murders in American history, generating tabloid coverage, books, films, and an endless parade of suspects, none of whom were ever charged.
In the days after her killing, a package believed to have been sent by Short's killer arrived at the Los Angeles Examiner. Baber told the Daily Mail that there were "at least two" fingerprints found on that package. Those prints, if they still exist in usable condition, represent some of the most direct physical evidence ever linked to the crime.
The Zodiac killings, which occurred in California's Bay Area in the late 1960s, produced their own trove of taunting letters and ciphers sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. The Z13 cipher has resisted official decryption for more than half a century. Baber's claim to have cracked it, and to have extracted Margolis's name from it, is the foundation of his theory linking the two cases.
Violent crime investigations that go cold for years or decades test the limits of institutional memory and forensic science alike. In a very different context, a recent case involving a Marine veteran killed in Wichita shows how even contemporary homicides demand swift, decisive police work to reach a resolution.
Where it stands now
Baber told the Daily Mail this week that he believes the investigation is nearing its conclusion.
"I think we're reaching the end of the Black Dahlia case. And I think the Zodiac case will then follow suit shortly after."
He also praised the LAPD's engagement, calling it unprecedented.
"It's amazing because they have never done this before over the last 79 years. The last time they really compared fingerprints was back in the 1940s. Now they are moving forward and are advancing our investigation."
Baber's team said it had already compared Margolis's prints to images of a print from the Black Dahlia case and that the suspect could not be excluded as a match. That preliminary finding, however, came from a private team, not from LAPD's own analysts. The official comparison is what matters now.
Several questions remain unanswered. What specific evidence does LAPD still hold from the original investigation? Were the prints provided to detectives original impressions or digital reproductions? What is the chain of custody for material pulled from private archives decades after the suspect's death? And can a cipher solution offered by a private consultant withstand the scrutiny that law enforcement and the courts would demand?
Cases like this remind us why effective law enforcement leadership matters, not just for the crimes of today, but for the ones that have waited generations for an answer.
The real test ahead
Detective Mojarro's willingness to test the prints is encouraging. His skepticism is equally important. A case this old, this famous, and this layered with mythology demands exactly the kind of careful, evidence-first approach he described. The worst outcome would be a premature declaration that collapses under scrutiny, or the destruction of irreplaceable evidence in pursuit of a theory that doesn't hold.
If Margolis's prints match, the work is only beginning. Authentication, chain-of-custody verification, and corroboration would all follow. If they don't match, the Black Dahlia joins the list of American mysteries that outlast every generation that tries to solve them.
After 79 years, Elizabeth Short deserves an answer. But she also deserves one that's right.
