Cherchez La Femme: My Affair with The Black Dahlia
Posted in Books, Films, Halloween, Horror, True Crime |Wisely, Hodel begins with details on his exemplary record while a police officer and describes how he spent many of those years as a Homicide detective with a high “solve rate” in the 300 murders to which he was assigned. After the death of his father in 1999, Hodel found two photos found in his father’s personal effects which he felt certain were Elizabeth Short. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that his father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, had committed the Black Dahlia murder.
I recalled seeing these photos on an episode of 48 Hours in 2004. At that time, I didn’t believe the woman in the photos was Short and dismissed Hodel’s theories. Despite Hodel’s credible background, I remained skeptical as I read the book. By the time I reached the end, however, I became convinced that his father, Dr. Hodel, was not only responsible for the murder of Elizabeth Short, but at least three other women from a list of 31 unsolved homicides from the years between 1943 and 1950.
This is not because of the photos. And it’s not because of the foreword to the book, written by James Ellroy, who himself reviewed years of newspaper articles and public documents when writing his fictionalized novel. Ellroy flat-out says that Hodel has solved the crime, despite not believing those two photographs are of Short.
I have been convinced by Hodel’s years of painstaking, meticulous research and his in-depth analysis of not only the official Elizabeth Short files from LAPD, but secret files that were “sanitized” by the force to cover up years of corruption and scandal. And, despite my long-held beliefs, the real story is both complex and fantastic.
Now looking back at Gilmore’s book, I realize how shoddy his “investigative techniques” were. The book is captivating, but it reads more like fiction than a true crime exposé. Unlike Hodel’s book, there are no footnotes, endnotes, or works cited. There is no verifiable proof that Gilmore even reviewed the police files.
Although I believe Hodel’s theory, here are some of the others:
The Black Dahlia Solution website is operated by someone who claims to have “spent 30 years working for the US Government as a mathematician” and who “garnered considerable experience in decryption.” This unidentified person claims to have “decrypted” the letters that were sent to newspapers and police in 1947 by someone calling themselves the “Black Dahlia Avenger.” The site is written in a rambling, confusing style and it is difficult to determine who is being accused of the murder, although someone named “Ed Burns” seems to be the site owner’s prime suspect.
Janice Knowlton (Daddy Was The Black Dahlia Killer), who speculated that her own father, George Knowlton committed the crime, based her theory on “repressed memories” which surfaced in the therapy she received to recover from an abusive childhood. While I don’t doubt the veracity of her abuse claims, such “repressed memories” have long been considered questionable by respected members of the mental health profession. Additionally, Knowlton’s vulgar and vicious missives to Pamela Hazelton destroy her reliability and convey her compromised mental and emotional state in the years before her suicide in 2004.
Mary Pacios, a childhood friend of Short’s who wrote about the murder in her book Childhood Shadows, throws Orson Welles into the list of suspects. On her Black Dahlia Info website she also provides a not-so-subtle commentary on her opinion of Hodel’s theory, by quoting Sgt. John St. John of the LAPD: “”It is amazing how many people offer up a relative as the killer.” However, Pacios only provides synopses of excerpts of the official documents and there is nothing which shows she has reviewed the complete LAPD files.
Donald H. Wolfe, author of The Black Dahlia Files, builds upon much of the information presented in Gilmore’s book and proposes that several people were involved with the Short murder: Norman Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times; West Coast gangster Bugsy Siegel; mobsters Albert Greenberg and Maurice Clement; abortion doctor Dr. Leslie C. Audrain; and the same Jack Anderson Wilson named in Gilmore’s book. He provides fairly compelling evidence of their involvement, convinced that the “key question” kept secret by the LAPD all these years was that Short was pregnant with Chandler’s child and that she was killed because of this.
Wolfe further attempts to debunk Hodel’s theory using twelve “exhibits;” however, several of these do not successfully discount Hodel’s theories and actually misrepresent his claims. Additionally, even if some of Wolfe’s “exhibits” proved true, they are not pieces of circumstantial evidence that would remove Dr. Hodel as a suspect. The most damning evidence against Wolfe’s theory is the coroner’s report that Short was not pregnant at the time of her murder. There is no evidence in any documentation to support this pregnancy.
Larry Harnisch, writer for the L.A. Times and a close friend of LAPD Detective Brian Carr (who inherited the Dahlia case from his predecessor), proposed his own theories on his Heaven Is Here website, speculating that a Dr. Walter A. Bayley was the murderer. Harnisch tries to discredit Hodel but admits he hasn’t even read his entire book. Harnisch has also publicly insulted Hodel and John Gilmore. Such behavior, accompanied by a distinct lack of proof, render his theory pretty flimsy.
