Customer Reviews

The Black Dahlia Files: The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Being a serious Black Dahlia buff, I devour each and every new book that comes out about the crime. While my favorite book remains SEVERED by John Gilmore (my introduction to Elizabeth Short), I have to concede that THE BLACK DAHLIA FILES by Donald Wolfe is clearly the best, most authoritative, and most carefully researched book yet written on the crime, and the one that appears to come closest to actually solving this nearly 60-year-old murder mystery...almost.

The hook here is that FILES was written from newly opened Black Dahlia case files. Yes, this is certainly a hook, but I would say the real hook is that it's a book written by a skilled nonfiction crime writer who presents his case with verifiable evidence, historical context, and source notes, a first for a Dahlia book. Author Wolfe also acknowledges past books and pet theories. He notes that John Gilmore came very close to catching the killer in SEVERED (in fact, Gilmore's suspect plays a role in Wolfe's theory), he pays respect to Mary Pacios' well-researched CHILDHOOD SHADOWS (but, come on, we all knew Orson Welles didn't do it), and he thoroughly discredits the much hyped hokum of Steve Hodel's BLACK DAHLIA AVENGER and its equally delusional predecessor, DADDY WAS THE BLACK DAHLIA KILLER.

The "files" alluded to in the title are two boxes of DA case files which, unfortunately, do not include the police files nor the official autopsy with its "dark secret" (Wolfe reveals what he believes the secret to be, but I remain skeptical). While these two boxes do reveal some intriguing new information about the crime and the officers involved in the investigation, the information tends to raise more questions than it answers, and it's frustrating when Wolfe is forced to conclude many provocative passages with the admission that possible corroborating evidence remains "locked away in an LAPD warehouse" (35 boxes of files still remain sealed).

Nevertheless, Wolfe knows a lot about LAPD corruption, the newspaper business, and the mob in 1947 Los Angeles, and he firmly plants Elizabeth Short in the center of it all. It's really fascinating stuff, and midway through this book, I was convinced Wolfe had solved the crime. However, in the end, Wolfe connects the dots via a remarkable eyewitness account of the crime scene by two LAPD police officers that seemed just too good to be true. Wolfe states that these same offices provided smoking gun evidence for his previous book, THE LAST DAYS OF MARILYN MONROE. Hmmm... It's a little convenient, and until we learn more about the credibility of these men and their account, I'll leave Wolfe's dots unconnected. Still, what remains is an intriguing set of circumstantial evidence, expertly presented, along with the chilling recollections of Jack Anderson Wilson (the chief suspect in SEVERED), who almost certainly WAS at the scene of the crime.

And what of the woman herself? Unfortunately, the romantic image of Elizabeth Short as fated hauntress of the night or virginal victim stalked by a beast is dissipated somewhat in the reality of Wolfe's reconstruction. She ceases to be a cipher for noir fantasies of 1947 LA and appears before us as she most likely really was -- a foolish dreamer with bad teeth who played dangerous games with men who should have been avoided. Maybe that's why I still cling to SEVERED as my Black Dahlia bible, which transforms Betty Short into a raven-haired phantom who haunts you. With Wolfe, what haunts in the end is the feeling that this infamous crime is very, VERY close to being solved...if only.

Between the evidence presented in John Gilmore's excellent "Severed" and now Donald Wolfe's "The Black Dahlia Files", it appears that some sort of justice has finally been served for the brutal murder of Elizabeth Short. This book, by far, delivers the most plausible solution to one of the the 20th century's most intriguing mysteries. It's unfortunate, however, that many more important pieces of the puzzle are still being kept hidden from the public eye. Well, the cat's out of the bag, as they say. Hey, LA, its time to reopen the case and serve justice officially.

***It's easy for some to sit back and lob potshots at Donald Wolfe's investigation of the Dahlia case. It doesn't require any work on their part. However, it would be far more useful, and considerably more difficult, for them to present a MORE plausible solution. If an alternate TRUTH exists, please enlighten us.***

This book looks nice, lots of nice pictures and massive end notes. But after researching this book it turns out that the author bases his information on questionable sources from previous books and previously discredited sources. True Black Dahlia experts have dissected this book and found multiple errors on each page. His end notes often refer to newspaper articles that don't exist. It's been shown that the author's involvement in the story didn't exist. For instance he didn't live on the same block as Segal when he was murdered as he says he did in the book.
This book follows a pattern of people writing "crime solved" books on bogus premises to make a buck.

I think Donald H. Wolfe has come closer than anybody before him to determining what actually happened to Beth Short on January 14-15, 1947. If he's correct, he also explains the mystery of the murder of Bugsy Seigel. Bugsy Seigel's murder as explained in Dean Jennings' book We Only Kill Each Other, has never made much sense to me. The Flamingo Resort Casino, which was in a bad way in January of 1947 at the time of Beth Short's death, by June, when Seigel was killed, was already beginning to pay for itself. In Robert Lacy's book Little Man, the authorized biography of Meyer Lansky, written with the cooperation of the Lansky family, Meyer Lansky swore he never harmed his friend and partner, Ben Seigel. Outside of his being a gangster, why would he lie about it at the end of his life? The coinciding of Seigel's return to Los Angeles from Vegas expressly to raise money, with the MacCadden jewelry robberies and burgalries that took place in LA over those days, and the return of Beth Short from San Deigo on January 9th, an explaination starts to take shape. The coroner's report tells us that Beth Short was NOT tortured to death. She was killed by blunt force trauma to the side of her head by a metal instrument, and having her mouth slashed open. So the wounds inflicted to the body were made postmortum. This was a practical crime made to look like a crime of passion. Who would do something like this? Who would have the audacity to mutilate a body like that and then drop it off in a residential neighborhood a short walk from the home of LA crime boss Jack Dragna? Wolfe's theory makes a lot of circumstantial sense. We know from John Gilmore's book Severed that even LAPD believes that Jack Anderson Wilson, killed when his hotel room caught fire days after Gilmore's first article about him appeared in an LA paper, was present at the murder of the Black Daliah. But the specifics of the crime make it unlikely that Wilson was the only person involved. His own apparent murder makes one wonder, who is still alive who wants to maintain the secrecy around the motive and circumstances of Beth Short's death? From Dennis McDougal's book, Privileged Son we know that Norman Chandler, owner of the LA Times at the time of Short's murder, lived a scandlous secret life and,along with Ben Seigel, played a very close game with the corrupt LAPD of that day. I think Wolfe's solution is highly probable and expect that as more confidential files are made public we will eventually learn what happened to the Black Daliah.

The Black Dahlia Files: The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles (2006) by Donald H. Wolfe is the most recent exploration of the infamous torture-murder of actress hopeful Elizabeth Short in the Los Angeles of 1947. It has long been believed that the victim was either genitally underdeveloped or 'intergendered,' and thus incapable of engaging in a physically fulfilling relationship with a male partner.

The biggest question in the Dahlia case, of course, has been the identity of the party or parties responsible for Short's horrific death and dismemberment, and to that end, numerous persons, both famous and obscure, including American folk hero Woody Guthrie and filmmaker Orson Welles, have been put forward as possible candidates.

The Black Dahlia Files will certainly interest all followers of the case for two important reasons, the first of which is that Wolfe states categorically that not only was Short neither genitally immature nor intergendered, she was pregnant with child at the time of her murder at the age of twenty-two. Wolfe teases his audience along with this 'fact,' which he refers to as 'the secret of the autopsy,' a secret, he says, which allowed detectives at the time to instantly dismiss the admissions of the dozens of psychologically disturbed 'confessing Sams' who turned themselves in to police in the wake of the crime. However, it's difficult to believe that none of the 'confessing Sams' guessed that Short might have been pregnant at the time of her death, since pregnancy is very far from a rare phenomenon, and an unwanted pregnancy a perfectly good motive for killing someone, as indeed Wolfe believes it to have been.

The book's second major point of interest is Wolfe's fingering of maniacal mobster Bugsy Siegel as the actual hands-on murderer of Short, though the author believes Siegel killed Short and disposed of her remains in conjunction with four other men, including an abortionist who Wolfe believes performed the actual bisection of the corpse.

Wolfe draws a fairly convincing portrait of the Los Angeles underworld's near-complete infiltration of both local law enforcement and the film industry, as well as of Siegel's life, mob activity in southern California, and gangland murder only a few months following the Dahlia murder. As Wolfe sees it, Siegel, who murdered the somewhat wayward Short to protect a powerful friend in a very high place indeed, was spiraling madly out of control in several key ways, with the brutally unprecedented and very public slaughter of Short proving to both the underworld and corrupt law enforcement that Siegel himself needed to be eliminated as quickly and effectively as possible.

Readers who find it difficult to believe that someone as notorious as Bugsy Siegel could actually also be the murderer of Elizabeth Short should remember that during her lifetime, Short was merely one of the thousands of young people flooding southern California in hopes of finding work in the film industry. Socially, Short was a non-entity, a complete unknown who was clearly used and dismissed by the powerful and prominent men whose favor she disastrously courted. Therefore, there's no good reason her name couldn't have risen to the top of Siegel's hit list once Short refused to behave as expected by the men who manipulated her.

Like several previous books which have come before it, including John Gilmore's riveting Severed (1994), The Black Dahlia Files necessarily traffics in a heady brew of fact, speculation, and assumption. While irrefutable evidence concerning the identity of Short's killer is unlikely to ever come to light, The Black Dahlia Files, while not necessarily correct in its conclusions, offers its audience an intelligent, respectful, and disciplined examination of its subject.

Whether you have read every book on the Black Dahlia case or are just a little curious about it, this is the book to read. Wolfe's book is by far the most factual and best substantiated full-length account of the case to date. Wolfe's tenacious digging through official documents and other sources give us what is by far the most detailed factual account of the victim, her life, and her murder.

It does not detract much from the book that Wolfe's postulated solution to the crime is merely plausible. Wolfe relies too much and heresy and dubious sources for this part of the book to be convincing. But Wolfe is to be commended for giving detailed source notes for all the information he presents, which allows the reader to evaluate its credibility. Very refreshing compared to the chest-beating "Take my word for it! I should know!" posturing of other Dahlia authors.

The extensive appendices of this book are a trove of firsthand information, reproducing many of the official case documents. Wolfe devotes a 12-page appendix to a point-by-point debunking of Dahlia author Steve Hodel's heavily publicized 2003 claim of having proved his father was the killer. Wolfe shows that Hodel's claim that this father had photographs of the Black Dahlia have been refuted by the woman's family and by facial recognitions experts; that his claim to have matched his father's handwriting to notes supposedly written by the killer did not follow standard handwriting analysis procedures and have been refuted by handwriting experts; that Hodel deliberately misrepresents press and official references to other suspects and persons of interest as referring to his father; and that Hodel's father was not a suspect in the crime until 1949, at which point he was thoroughly investigated by LADA's office and dismissed as a suspect.

All and all, Wolfe presents a thoroughgoing look at the crime that is well worth reading.

The autopsy states "that Short was not and had never been pregnant", also in Severed by John Gilmore, when Elizabeth was in San Diego just before she was murdered she would ask the boy Cory, son of Dorothy French to buy "sanitary napkins" and other items for her, does this sound like she was pregnant? This book is good for information about the corruption of the PD but I don't feel it is correct in its conclusion. If I was in charge of the case today I would reopen and ask a coroner there opinion on the findings, apart from a knife used, could the killing have occured at an abbatoir. The criss cross marks on Elizabeth's lip, right hip and vagina, why were they done, the marks on the forehead are they intentional cuts with a message or a result of a blow? The incision on the abdomen why? Was she cut in two for easier handling or for another reason? [...] at least offers possibilities.

Over the years, I've read a few accounts of the Black Dahlia/Elizabeth Short murder case, including novels which it inspired (True Confessions by Dunne and Elroy's LA Quartet). This case will continue to fascinate because of the dramatic elements involved in real life: the LA Noir scene of the '40s and '50s, the Mob, the Hollywood connection, corrupt cops and politicians, a complicit DA. This is a case that is more fascinating than fiction, and because the LA law enforcement authorities resolutely keep the documentation secret they allow all kinds of speculation to continue to flourish.

Wolfe's book neatly capitalizes on this. It is a highly readable book that captures the essence of the era; the post-war naievete of the public, the dewy-eyed optimism of the naifs drawn to the lure of Hollywood fame, the sleaze of the LA power-mongers. It captures a time when people could still be shocked by a gruesome murder, something sadly lost in the era of OJ Simpson, the Menendez brothers, and the Night Stalker. It is an era of lost innocence.

Whether or not Wolfe has truly "solved" the case is hard to say. He paints a pretty convincing picture. But then you have to realize that though he obtained access to some investigative material not previously available, it's only some -- not all -- of the official records. Further material is provided to him in interviews with a very few of the players who are still alive over 50 years after the fact. Time dims and distorts memory; people lie when they know others who can prove their statements false are dead; one of Wolfe's sources (a self-confessed participant) was an alcoholic with a fried brain. Then, from the material provided to him Wolfe further extrapolates to reach his conclusions. At least a couple of his conclusions, particularly as to the involvement of a well-known Mob figure, seem to be a stretch.

It may well be that this case will only be finally put to rest when the LAPD releases all of the contemporary documentation, and maybe not even then. In the meantime, Wolfe's book does present a very credible theory in a very readable and enjoyable fashion that's as interesting as almost anything written by Raymond Chandler.

I recommend this book; you'll enjoy it.

LAPD Detective Harry Hansen had The Black Dahlia Case solved, but was pressured (threatened?) by his corrupt fellow policemen, including his own partner and the Chief of Police into not disclosing the intricate details of the case, but got the ball rolling. John Gilmore author of SEVERED:THE TRUE STORY OF THE BLACK DAHLIA...interviewed a co-conspirator and participant in the murder of Beth Short (but he believed him to be the LONE killer). Author Donald H. Wolfe has not only solved Georgette Baurdorf's murder (there IS a connection) but has solved 95% of Beth Short's murder. The only pertinent piece missing is the ACTUAL autopsy report, which is claimed to be "LOST"! This book is the DEFINITIVE book on The Black Dahlia Murder and SHOULD be read by all true crime and "Black Dahlia" enthusiasts!

This book is stock full of both good research and good writing. Don Wolfe takes the reader on a trip back in time to the corrupt and seamy Los Angeles of the 1940's inwhich one of America's most gruesome and famous murders occurred. The book brings us inside the police department and the competing newspapers and, with the addition of some key living sources and papers recently released, arrives at a conclusion. I believe Mr. Wolfe has solved the unsolved case of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. The author manages to lay out the results of his investigation in most readable prose inwhich he includes his own story of growing up in Los Angeles. He does this to add to the storyline rather than intruding on it. This is a well written piece of great investigative journalism that I believe any reader of true crime stories will find fascinating. BRAVO FOR A JOB WELL DONE.