LAPD testing fingerprints of Black Dahlia and Zodiac murders suspect

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating a suspect first identified by the Daily Mail in the Black Dahlia and Zodiac murders. 

In a significant development, LAPD Detective Martin Mojarro confirmed the department is testing the fingerprints of Marvin Margolis against evidence from the murders. 

In a world exclusive in December, the Daily Mail revealed investigative consultant Alex Baber’s conclusion that Margolis – a late military veteran also known as Marvin Merrill – was responsible for both the Zodiac killings in California’s Bay Area in the late 1960s and the 1947 Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles.

Baber reached his 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. 

He also assembled circumstantial evidence from personal archives linked to Margolis. 

Now, the Daily Mail has learned that Baber has unearthed the suspect’s fingerprints and shared them with the LAPD.

‘The fingerprints were offered to us. I’m thankful that they’ve agreed to provide them to us,’ LAPD Detective Mojarro, one of two detectives assigned to the unsolved Black Dahlia case, told the Daily Mail.

‘The obvious thing would be to use them in comparison to anything that exists within our evidence.’

Elizabeth Short, 22, outside John Marshall High School in Los Angeles. A new investigation exclusively revealed by the Daily Mail identified a new suspect in her murder

On January 15, 1947, Short was found murdered in Los Angeles’s Leimert Park neighborhood. Investigators are pictured here on the scene 

Mojarro would not confirm what evidence the LAPD has from the Black Dahlia case which can now be compared to determine a potential match.

But Baber told the Daily Mail that he knows of ‘multiple’ prints on record in the case, including at least two found on a package believed to have been sent to the Los Angeles Examiner by Short’s killer in the days after her murder.

The parcel contained Short’s belongings including photographs, her birth certificate, an address book and personal papers and had the words, ‘Here is Black Dahlia’s Belongings, Letter To Follow,’ in letters cut and pasted from newspapers and magazines.

Other letters, some signed the ‘Black Dahlia Avenger,’ also followed.

Mojarro told the Daily Mail that he would also be open to testing any DNA that could be recovered from Margolis’s archives, though he stopped short of confirming if the LAPD had sought or obtained any relevant to the investigation.

‘I cannot discuss whether we do or do not have [DNA],’ he said.

‘But with advances in recent technology, I wouldn’t be opposed to revisiting any analysis that has been done or could be done.’

However, the detective warned that if DNA samples are small then testing can destroy all available evidence and prevent further analysis, raising the stakes for the decision to send them to a forensics lab.

Marvin Merrill (in an undated family photo) has been named by cold case investigator Alex Baber as the suspected perpetrator of the Black Dahlia and Zodiac crimes 

Marvin Margolis, also known as Marvin Merrill, is seen in a high school yearbook photo (left) and a photo obtained and enhanced by Baber. The LAPD has received high-resolution images of Margolis’s fingerprints from investigative consultant Alex Baber’s team, so that they can be compared to evidence in the Black Dahlia case

Baber told the Daily Mail that there were prints on this package believed to have been sent to the Los Angeles Examiner by Short’s killer in the days after her murder 

‘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,’ he said.

‘That may be just the one shot and then the evidence is gone forever.’

Mojarro said he had ‘no real doubt’ that Margolis and 22-year-old Short knew each other.

But the detective added that he remained ‘a skeptic’ of Baber’s claim to have solved both cold cases by allegedly cracking the Z13, saying: ‘Even with that, I would still need the physical evidence to prove or disprove that this person was the person responsible for the murder.’

While fingerprint analysis can be executed relatively quickly, Mojarro said that law enforcement would also need to work to verify the authenticity of the prints should they come back with a match.

‘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?’ he said.

While further investigation is needed, the analysis of the prints could allow for the first forensic breakthrough in eight decades in one of California’s most gruesome and famous murders.

Almost 80 years have gone by since Short’s mutilated body was found dumped in a vacant lot in LA, severed in two at the waist and a smile carved into her cheeks.

Baber (pictured) hopes the Black Dahlia case can be solved once and for all 

At the time, Margolis was a prime suspect in her murder as a former boyfriend who briefly lived with her and had the medical expertise to bisect a human corpse. But no one was ever charged with her murder.

‘It’s amazing because they have never done this before over the last 79 years,’ Baber said of the fingerprint analysis.

‘The last time they really compared fingerprints was back in the 1940s. Now they are moving forward and are advancing our investigation.’

Baber told the Daily Mail that his own cold case team had already compared Margolis’s prints to images of a print from the Black Dahlia case – and that it could not be excluded as a match. 

Though this marks perhaps the biggest development since the Daily Mail first published Baber’s investigation, this outlet has previously revealed how movement is being made in the cases.

In February, it emerged that the LAPD had contacted Baber’s cold case team, including highly-regarded retired LAPD detectives, and was reviewing his findings.

And, during a Daily Mail panel at the Hamptons Whodunit festival in New York in April, Baber revealed that some of Margolis’s family members had also begun cooperating with law enforcement.

‘I think we’re reaching the end of the Black Dahlia case,’ Baber told the Daily Mail this week. 

‘And I think the Zodiac case will then follow suit shortly after.’