I confess to be being fascinated by a tawdry murder case, more than half a century old. One worse than the Scott Peterson trial I so recently derided as an object of obsessive press attention. Perhaps this makes me a terrible hypocrite. But maybe not.

The Black Dahlia case, in which a young and beautiful woman of mysterious character, Elizabeth Short, was discovered in Los Angeles,  cut in half with surgical precision, her face set in a hideous expression, was the murder sensation of the mid—Twentieth Century. A tatoo on her body of a black dahlia gave the case its alluring name. Driven in particular by the lurid coverage in the Hearst—owned Los Angeles Herald—Examiner, the case became a national preoccupation for years, and has never been solved.

Along the way, it has inspired many books, including a fictionalized treatment by James Ellroy, a literary master of singular voice, which became the trigger for my own interest in the case.

A strange new chapter has been written in the Black Dahlia case, however. In the words of Lewis Carroll, it gets curioser and curioser. Steve Hodel, a retired Los Angeles cop who went on to become a private eye, has authored a book accusing his own father, George Hodel, M.D., of being the Black Dahlia murderer.

At first, Hodel was derided and dismissed. But serious people, including Ellroy and many other experts on the case, took a look. The Los Angeles Distict Attorney's office released its case file, which indicated that George Hodel was indeed the prime suspect, though proof was never available. Hodel's book, re—released in paperback with new data, is garnering plenty of respect.

The Los Angeles Times has a lengthy article on Steve Hodel, the case, and the curious refusal of the Los Angeles police to meaningfully utilize the further evidence developed by Steve. If you have the slightest interest, I urge to read it, because, quite frankly, this case has it all.

Dr. George Hodel looks to be a fascinating and horrifying man: the very model of the evil genius. Measured with a 186 IQ, he entered Cal Tech at the age of 15, only to be thrown out after seducing a professor's wife. He went on to become a medical doctor, specializing in drug addiction and venereal diseases. He may well have accumulated and used extensive files full of incriminating evidence to blackmail LA's power structure. And he may have been a brutal sex crime serial murderer.

Call me a shameless and pale reflection of Greta van Susteren, but the Black Dahlia case looks to me like the touchstone of an era in Southern California. James Ellroy's novels got me hooked on that particular time and place, home of the freeway, suburbanization, and the mass culture of movies and television, as a distillation of some quintessentially American cultural developments. The corruption of this place has a wider significance than just a local matter.

Thomas Lifson   11 21 04