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Identify — ictim as | Hollywood resident (Additional story on Page 3) A definite suspect has been established in the brutal mur- der of 22-year-old Elizabeth’: Short, whose mutilated body was found dumped in a va~ cant lot in southwestern Los. jAngeles Wednesday morning } Identification of the imade last night. by poliee from copies of her fingerprints on file with ‘the FBI in Washington. Elizabeth was a Massachusetts - irl who recently lived at a hotel it 1611 N, Orange Dr. in Holly» rood, ‘ j In 1943 she was a civilian e1 ploye at a post exchange at Cam Cooke, near Lompoc, and mort recently worked at the naval he pital in San Diego. . Investigators, who said they - were withhoiding the name of the © suspect for the present, declared that he might be the man of whom Elizabeth told friends she lwas “deadly afraid.” That Elizabeth lived iri fear of @ suitor was substantiated in San : Diego by Mrs. Vera French and her daughter, Dorothy. . ‘The Frenchs, who live at 2750 Camino Tadaro, Pacific Beach, said , Elizabeth lived with them . from Jast Dec. 12 until Jan. 8 - when she hurriedly left for Holly- wood. ry Mrs. French told officers that ‘Elizabeth, whom she had met int - San Diego, was very popular with : lmen and had.many dates. The girl, she said, often spoke, how- lever, about a hoy friend from whom she was always hiding be« ‘ause of an unexplained fear. | Harold Prank Costa, 31, afd onald Leyes, 22, who lived e samé Hollywood hotel Jabt “approadhied her at thé Sixth grat ‘Two other persons who reported to police they knew Blizabeth hen she lived in Hollywood wdte arvin Margolis, 27, and ‘Willi: | obinson, 25. soe | ‘Khe two men said. they had o! nm been in places Hlizabeth fr quented. The last time they saw her, they said, was the latter part. of November, ° On the night before the body ‘was found, a Los Angeles police- ‘woman said, a girl answering the description ‘of the pretty, darke |szaine victim asked for protection « against a man who “had threat~ rened-to kill me.” “The policewoman, M, Mee - Bride, told homicide investigators . Igte last night that the girl pad Sts. bus terminal, sobbi with terror. t ‘The policewoman said the girl: told her she had just ruh into a former boyfriend, who once had threatened to “kill her if he ever. found her with another man.” She had left him that day. . ‘Mrs, McBride, who at first be- Jieved the girl who appealed for aid was Elizabeth, was not as cer- tain after viewing photos of the slain girth ; . Mrs. Phoebe M. Short of Med- ford, Mass., mother of the slain girl, said dast night. she had re- ceived a letter from her daughter from San Diego about two weeks ago. tas far as I know she was ‘working in a naval hospital there,” said Mrs, Short. “{ just can’t believe my daugh- “ter is i Identification was made from fingerprints which the PBI had} on record from Sept, 1943, when the girl was arrested in Santa | Barbara. ~ L She had been a@ clerk at the/|! Camp Cooke post exchange near Santa Barbara and was picked up for drinking with soldiers in a cafe there, Policewoman “Mary Unkefer of the Sante Barbara police depart- ment took the girl to her own hhome to live with her for nine days. | }*She was very good looking,” | “sdid Miss Unkefer, “with beautiful x hair and fair skin. ghe essed nicely and was a long vay t , from being 9 barfly.” —t 2 Tbe. 3B foot 6, 121 pounds, brown | Miss Unketismsaid th :@ rose tatteoed on her left leg.} 1 “She Joved to sit so that it would show,” the politvewoman recalled. | ~ {The killer gouged the identifying jmark from the body. 4 H “We put her on the train for ther home, and several times later ‘she wrote to me from there,” Miss Unkefer recalied. One «* her let-- ters said: “Y7l never forget you—thank God. you picked me up when you dig” q e girl Rady | PBI records described the girf.as ; , nm eyés, medium build and With - imoles on the back of her neck, =~ “The description tallies almost exactly with that given by the coroner's office here of the body -}found Wednesday morning on Norton Ave. between 39th St. and ’ Coliseum St. . . | Yesterday an autopsy showed the girl had been. tortured with sharp metal weapons before she died, then trussed up and butchered. . Dr, Frederick D. Newbarr, chief autopsy surgeon, listed the cause of death as hemorrhage from face and head wounds after examining ithe body of the victim for three hours. ‘He ruled out the possibility that ithe pretty young girl had been strangled. Rope burns about the wrists and ankles indicated, however, that the girl had probably been stgung up for torture and it mprtem mutilation, the surge ther grotesque findings of tife opsy gave evidence of e fiendish mind of the slayer toward whose identity and capture the full force of the Los Angeles hom- icide squad was turned. Yo spur apprehension of the criminal, city officials moved to’ post a $10,000 reward. Council- yman Lloyd G. Davies said he) would propose the reward before : the City Council today, Automobiles gave detectives their only early clues to the killer, @ne car which detectives be- lieved might have been used. by the slayer was a 1940 green Hud- -son convertible which was found abandoned on a gas station lot at 951 Manchester Ave. + ., The car had bloodstains on one f door, and inside were copies of three newspapers with detailed accounts of the slaying. The registered owner of the vf-° le told police the car was stol@: m him, but he had failed fo hike a report. fe was called to headquarters for further questioning. COP EE