Black Dahlia Dig Finds ‘Interesting’ Items : Mystery: Police doubt the uncovering of costume jewelry and knife will help solve infamous 1947 murder.

WESTMINSTER —  A rusty knife, farm implements and costume jewelry were dug up Saturday in a vacant lot during a police excavation prompted by a woman’s belief that her father long ago was not only a killer, but the infamous, and never captured, Black Dahlia murderer.

Based on the woman’s recollections, apparently repressed for more than four decades, Westminster police officials supervised the excavation of a dirt lot where the woman’s childhood home stood.

Although the items were “very interesting,” Police Lt. Larry Woessner said it would be difficult to connect any of them to a murder, including the sensational Black Dahlia slaying that shocked Los Angeles in 1947. Police finished the search Saturday night.

The fact that the items appeared to be buried on purpose “was unusual” and puzzling, Woessner said. The items alone, however, were not enough to initiate a broader investigation.

For Janice Knowlton, 54, of Anaheim, the bizarre dig validated visions that she said came to her nearly two years ago under therapy. The visions have convinced her that her now-deceased father, George F. Knowlton, killed three women, including Elizabeth Ann Short, who was dubbed the Black Dahlia in news accounts.

On Jan. 15, 1947, Short’s body, severed at her waistline, was found in Los Angeles’ Crenshaw district. The 22-year-old aspiring actress apparently had been tortured for two days before she was killed. The murder dominated the news as sensational details of the crime were released. Since the slaying, more than 500 people have confessed to the crime and hundreds of investigative leads have been followed and discounted. The murder remains unsolved.

Saturday morning, as more than two dozen spectators and reporters looked on, a crew of 15 volunteers and a forensic anthropologist began rapidly working with shovels and sifters in the 7300 block of Texas Street. Initially, it found nothing more significant than a dog’s skeleton, an apparent cow’s jaw and a horseshoe. But after 1 p.m., the crew discovered some unusual farm tools and costume jewelry buried about two feet. A short time later, a single-edge, five-inch knife was found.

Woessner said the latter items appeared to have been buried on purpose. “We don’t know how significant this is but it is definitely interesting. . . . Why would anyone put (those things) that far underground?”

Westminster Police Detective Mike Proctor said: “Right now we’re going to move a lot more deliberately (in this investigation). We don’t know what we have. . . . We haven’t put too much credence in the Black Dahlia (connection).”

He added that small bone fragments found appeared to come from a large animal.

“We’re not really sure what they are right now, but they’re probably from an animal.”

Knowlton has said that she remembers her father torturing at least two women in the family’s detached garage and striking them with a claw hammer.

One victim--Knowlton recalls calling her Aunt Betty and believes she was Short--was beaten to death by her father with the hammer, she said. She said she believes her father used a power saw to cut the woman in two. A day after the slaying, Knowlton said, her father forced her to accompany him as he dumped the body.

After a failed attempt to dump the body in the ocean near Seal Beach, the father retrieved the body and in a fit of anger took out a knife and gutted the woman’s insides, Knowlton said she recalls. The father then wrapped the body in a blanket and ditched it in downtown Los Angeles, she said.

“I’m convinced that she was the Black Dahlia,” said Knowlton, who attended the latter half of the excavation Saturday.