Biography Elizabeth Short was born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. She was raised in Medford, by her mother, Phoebe Mae, after her father, Cleo Short, the left her and her four daughters in October 1930. Suffering from asthma, she spent her summers in Medford and winters in Florida. At age 19, went to Vallejo, California, to live with his father. The two moved to Los Angeles in early 1943, but after an argument, she left, getting a job in one of the following exchanges at Camp Cooke (now Base Vandenberg Air Force), near Lompoc . He moved to Santa Barbara, where he was arrested on 23 September 1943, for underage drinking and were returned to Medford by juvenile authorities. A few years resided in various cities in Florida, with occasional trips back to Massachusetts, where he got money, most of the time, working as a waitress. In Florida, he met the chief Matthew M.Gordon Jr., who was part of the 2nd Air Command and training for deployment to the CBI (China – Burma – India) theater. Short told some friends that Gordon wrote a letter from India, proposing marriage while recovering from a plane crash he suffered while trying to rescue a downed pilot. She accepted his proposal, but Gordon Jr. died in an accident on 10 August 1945, before he could return to the U.S. He later said they were married and had a son who died. Although Gordon’s friends confirmed that there was a relationship between him and Short, later, his family denied any relationship with her after the murder. He returned to Southern California in July 1946 to encontrarese with an old boyfriend she met in Florida during the war, Lt. Gordon Fickling, who was living in Long Beach. Six months before his death, he resided in Southern California, mostly in the Los Angeles area.During this time, lived in various hotels, apartment buildings, boarding houses and private homes, never staying anywhere for more than a couple of weeks.