An Amateur Codebreaker May Have Just Solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac Killings

Los Angeles Times (non-paywalled source): When police questioned Marvin Margolis following the murder of Elizabeth Short — who became known as the Black Dahlia — he lied about how well he had known her. The 22-year-old Short had been found mutilated in a weedy lot in South Los Angeles, severed neatly in half with what detectives thought was surgical skill. Margolis was on the list of suspects. He was a sullen 21-year-old premed student at USC, a shell-shocked World War II…