Customer Reviews

Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder

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I grew up in Los Angeles and was a child when the Black Dahlia murder exploded across the front pages of the LA daily papers, the Times, the Examiner, and the Herald. Sensational then, this murder remains so to this day.

The murder of the young, pretty, would-be starlet Elizabeth Short was particularly gruesome. The body was found in a vacant lot literally cut in half. Both halves were lying near a sidewalk easily visible from the street. The body remained in the lot for sometime and drew onlookers. I remember the atmosphere of life in the late forties, and compared with today, we were all unabashed gawkers. There was little of the finicky nature of turning away from the horrible then. Today it seems almost as if this era is as remote from us today as is the Civil War when people turned out to watch hangings.

Gilmore takes us on his own long journey of personal discovery as well as retracing the journey of the sad and confused Miss Short from eager young hopeful in Hollywood to unidentified body on a slab in the county morgue. The Dahlia seems to have been drawn almost inexorably towards a tragic death. She is the ultimate victim, helpless and lost, wandering the streets of downtown LA until she more or less disappears only to reappear and become a legend that illustrates the fallacies of Tinseltown and the realities of life on the unromantic streets.

The strange and affecting style of this book is what sets it apart from most books in the true crime genre. For one thing, there appears to be something of an attachment by Mr. Gilmore to his subject that is vaguely perverted in itself. And his interest in the Dahlia seems, at least in part, sexual, as was the interest of many men in Los Angeles toward this displaced child/woman. Though Gilmore does his best to keep his perspective professional, his emotional connection to the woman is always there. This is what makes this book even more compelling. Sometimes I got the feeling that Gilmore was trying to find out who killed his girlfriend rather than a long dead stranger (whom he may have met as a boy). This heightens the level of excitement and anguish while stoking a certain salaciousness to the whole undertaking. It is impossible, when dealing with the Black Dahlia murder, to separate objective police research with an undercurrent of lascivious interest in her. Who was she having sex with? What was she doing to the men and what were they doing to her? These thoughts permeate the case and cannot be brushed away through a pretense of "getting to the bottom" of something. And Gilmore more than understands this. He does not exploit it so much as acknowledges it; it's part of who and what the whole case has always been about.

The reader will find him or herself unable to look away, much as people did in those days. The more horrible the death, the prettier the victim, the more we looked. And the fact that the body was naked simply engulfed the public in a salacious atmosphere that resembles the old circus "freak shows" where we paid a quarter to stare at people who were disabled or stricken with some awful disease. This kind of thing gives a kind of imprimatur to our rude and ghoulish interest. After all, this was a famous murder. How can we not be interested? It is on this basis that "Severed" is so attractive to us. It's a book, with evidence, with hard detective work and some interesting speculation on the part of Gilmore that offers a new possibility as to who she was and to who might have been, in fact, her murderer. There are facts revealed in this book that were new, at least to me. The hint of a sexual dysfunction that Miss Short suffered from only makes the whole thing more even more gothic.

All in all, I believe that this book should be considered a masterpiece of its kind. It does what novels try to do. It involves the reader even when the reader wishes to remain clear and objective. We follow the Dahlia all the way to the place where she was (possibly) killed. We watch the murder and dismemberment. We watch the dumping of the body and we stand on the sidewalk with the other curious citizens whispering and craning our necks for a better view. All in all, this is a cathartic work that allows us to exercise our baser instincts in safety. But it must have haunted Mr. Gilmore for many years, both before and after he wrote it. All in all, a terrific book.

That is, of course, if you like that sort of thing.

EKW

First, I take exception to 'another' reviewer's off base remarks with regard to the veracity and facts in this book. The actor, Franchot Tone, did try to pick up Ms. Short, unsuccessfully, and the Tone family has its own reasons to keep this factoid under wraps, second, the LAPD has had a Metro Division since 1933, in what is now Parker Center, and was in Room 114. Third, the detective, Herman Willis, was an actual detective at the time of the murder. These accounts can be easily verified on the Internet, and pointing them out as errors is more reflective of the critic/LA Times reporter's personal agenda rather than actual fact. The book is actually an extremely well-written, thoughtful and evocative account of this girl's descent into the quagmire of 1940's Hollywood, the absolute worst of the worst in terms of decadence and predatory types. She sought out the kind of people who were involved in petty schemes and nefarious doings and eventually encountered her killer in this melange of monsters. Her sole focus was on fame, and she did whatever she could to attain what she hoped would be a career in front of the cameras. There were plenty of criminal types who preyed on these girls, and would tell them anything they wanted to hear in order to take advantage of them and their dreams; unfortunately for Ms. Short, she went with the demon who tortured her for, what the coroner later speculated was a 72 hour torture session, and never saw her name up in lights, but achieved a grislier fame, as that of a victim who died such a terrible death that it is talked about and argued to this day, some 54 years later. Gilmore is a master of setting the mood of L.A. in the 1940's, replete with all the peripheral characters Hollywood was overflowing with and taking the reaader to the streets of same...his descriptions and attention to detail add to the rich mix of sin and glamour, the quest of which cost this doomed young girl her life. One cannot truly imagine what she endured waiting for death to release her from the horror of the things which were perpetrated on her body during those last agonal hours... Kudos to Mr. Gilmore for providing us with this incisive glimpse into a world long gone but brought back vividly to life, and giving us a taste of what Hollywood and this crime were really like and how they relate so well to each other; the perfect stage setting and the perfect crime, since no one has ever been charged, nor is likely to be at this late date.

Also recommended: Hollywood Babylon, Day of the Locust

It's understandable that a small handful of would-be or wanna be investigative writers would want to throw rocks at this book, SEVERED; because it's a great book that gets you where you live, or as the upfront boys say, grabs you where it hurts! Because John Gilmore has written an emotionally and psychologically troubling book; the most mysterious and bizarre account I have ever read concerning an 'unsolved' murder in Los Angeles. This book must be considered the definitive history on the famous Black Dahlia murder case of 1947. The murder case is still in the news, still in the mainstream press. It also appears that this case is woven into the experience of the author, a major plus for the readers! Born in Los Angeles, Gilmore's father was a policeman with the Los Angeles police department (a wonderful photo of his father is at the front of the book, dressed in the 40's LAPD uniform and standing beside the old black-and-white squad car, like the ones we see in the film noir movies). Author Gilmore is no newcomer to the crime field; I have read his other books, one on Charles Schmid, the killer in Arizona, recently published as COLD-BLOODED, and his book on Charles Manson, THE GARBAGE PEOPLE.

But it appears that this book, SEVERED, is his major work in the true crime field. This book is written with the same sureness that a Zen marksman uses in hitting a target. The reader will most assuredly have nightmares about Elizabeth Short, the young woman this tale concerns itself with as she wages a losing battle with survival. Almost too painful at moments to read, but it keeps getting deeper, and deeper into this girl. Her beauty, it seems, is a curse; she is too young to get ahead in the hard, hard town of Hollywood, and she literally dies trying.

Apart from this amazing portrait of a young woman caught in the L.A. web (thugs, crooks, gangsters), what I found most fascinating was the author's personal link to the case, to the murder (via his father, a cop doing legwork on the case in the late 1940's), his family (the name Short crops up, which brings about an encounter with the actual victim when the author was 11 years of age). These things seem at the root of Gilmore's interest or obsession with the case, the victim, and certainly his years of efforts at closing in on a plausible suspect. He tracks the participants, no doubt followed some to their death beds, hounded police and newsmen alike, and spent decades on an otherwise 'officially' futile investigation. Again and again he returns to the same subject, the strange and haunting personality of the Black Dahlia herself, would-be actress, L.A. fringe girl and drifter during the War and that lost, merry-go-round of post-war Hollywood.

This book is a real life thriller and one you will stick with to the end, despite a few spots that could raise a few nit-picking questions. It is a must read for anyone interested in true crime, police, hard-boiled, dark writing or seeking a real experience: being plunged back into L.A's. past, those swing-shift war yeras of the west coast. But this story seems to hit all coasts, east, west and inbetween as we follow the black Dahlia on her torturous journey.

The photos are shocking, but this is a frightening tale, and told by a strong writer, a new voice echoing some of the old hard-boiled school of pretty gals and gunshoe cops. But reader beware: this tale sneaks up on you, and will shake you up before you know it.

This book starts out well. The interviews and statements Gilmore has marshaled from people who knew Elizabeth Short, from detectives who were on the scene in the late 1940's - are all evocative of the period. They remind me of the movie The Best Years of Our Lives. I get a sense of how people were casting about back then, trying to come down off the high of the War effort, trying to find a place for themselves in what was becoming America's humdrum consumer landscape. That designation of those years as "The Best Years," at least as far as Elizabeth Short's life was concerned, carries a horrible irony.

Women who were in their twenties just after WW II have often waxed nostalgic about those days. They've told me how innocent things were then, how they could go out on dates with ex-servicemen - and the boys were all gentleman who never demanded anything more than a chaste kiss at the end of the evening. But reading this book, I began to doubt the goldenness of those times for women. Certainly the men who knew Elizabeth Short were rarely satisfied with a kiss. She had to endure the crudest of advances. She had to provide the most tawdry of services in exchange for a meal. She was beautiful, adrift, ambitious - a combination that marked her as prey to the randy, predatory men orbiting her.

Gilmore etches us into that black-and-white scene. I was projected back into that excellent TV movie made about the case a few decades ago, starring Lucy Arnez as the Dahlia. That movie deserves to come back into circulation. Lucy Arnez did her best acting turn in that movie. She was the Dahlia, as Gilmore paints her for us - with that long, last look going off into an unimaginable fate.

But Gilmore's book starts to disintegrate past the midway point. And I'm not convinced by his solution to the murder. The man he fingers comes across as just a perennial, vulgar drunkard. It's not that I expect all serial killers to conform to the TV and movie stereotype of brilliant predators adept at playing mind games with the police. Still, Gilmore's candidate seems to fall just too far short. This is particularly true in light of the fact that Gilmore links the Black Dahlia's murder to the previous murder of socialite Georgette Bauerdorf. If the murders are in fact linked, that makes it especially unlikely that Gilmore's man was the perpetrator. The Bauerdorf murderer exercised some special tricky forethought in his approach to his victim. It seems he might have unscrewed an entryway light bulb in order to extinguish his silhouette. That doesn't sound like the work of a stumbling wino.

Gilmore at least distinguishes himself in one respect from the covey of writers who have recently undertaken to solve this case. At least Gilmore doesn't conclude it was his father who done it.

The book dissolves completely at the end though. Out of nowhere, Gilmore pops in a statement that the Black Dahlia visited his house back east, researching her family history. Then it's over. What?

But "Severed" is still worth reading. It will orient you to the general facts of the case and serve as supplement to the new major motion picture that is being released. However, be forewarned - the photographs reproduced in this book are very graphic.

I am emotionally wrung out after reading this book.And I'm so sad for poor Beth.Its so tragic what happened to her.This is one of the most disturbing crimes I've ever heard of.
Beth and the crime itself will not leave your mind once you hear of it.Beth was just a nice girl who was a victim of circumstances, trusted the wrong person and got caught in the grip of a sexual sadist who killed her.
Although questions have been raised about the authenticity of certain people and events in the book, I think that John Gilmore has unmasked the true killer.Although, it can never be proved %100 since the main suspect died just days before his arrest for Beth's murder, I think Mr. Gilmore has come much closer than anybody else and he did some extraordinary work in gaining the killers trust and getting him to talk as much as he did over a period of time.
Plus Gilmore is a skillful writer. The book was engrossing and hard to put down.
If you want to read a true life tale of an unforgettable girl trying to live the Hollywood dream who was savagely murdered in the dawn of a new postwar America and the years long search for the killer , this is a book for you.

I have just finished reading John Gilmore's SEVERED for the third time, it just keeps getting better. The best thing about this book is how Mr. Gilmore presents this young woman known as "The Black Dahlia". He does not portray her as a tramp who caused her own terrible death, as other books and resources have over the years, but he doesn't sugar-coat her either. In this book she becomes real, not just a mutilated corpse the world has gawked at for a half of century. Beth Short is a human being with some wonderful qualities and some not so wonderful qualities. Mr. Gilmore does not force his own opinion on the reader but instead gives facts and voices the opinions of others who had known her in life. He shows professionalism, unlike some of his critics who sorely lack it. I recommend SEVERED to anyone who is a true crime fan and anyone who has forgotten that Elizabeth Short was not just a ravaged body of a crime victim. She was a beautiful young woman full of hopes, dreams, and pain. SEVERED does a beautiful job of reminding us.

John Gilmore's Severed (1994) is a carefully measured and respectful investigation into the abominable 1947 murder and mutilation of starlet - hopeful Elizabeth Short. Also known on the Hollywood and Los Angeles streets as the "Black Dahlia," in death Short has become a numinous cult figure, with a variety of groups, including feminists, vying to defend, correct, champion, and solidify Short's character for present and future generations. Though some newspapers characterized Short as a streetwalker at the time of her murder, today Short has been largely reinvented as a strictly tender - hearted young woman who became the wholly innocent victim of a demented sexual predator. Gilmore's book, like Mary Pacios' Childhood Shadows (1999) and Steve Hodel's Black Dahlia Avenger (2003), is partially an earnest attempt to discover who Elizabeth Short was in fact. No one should be dismayed to learn that Short was an average human being in almost every way, vulnerable, fallible, and, by turns, considerate and selfish, thoughtful and aggressive.

The abundant evidence establishes that Short was neither a prostitute nor a promiscuous young woman. The product of a good, but broken, New England home, Short was a pretty teenager who dreamt of a career in Hollywood films. At 16, she began spending the winter months in Miami to ease her severe asthma. Away from her immediate family, well mannered and vivacious, Short dated freely, was fond of enlisted men, and actively sought a respectable fiance. At some point in early adulthood, Short discovered that her reproductive organs were so undeveloped that she was incapable of engaging in ..... intercourse. What affect this traumatic discovery had on Elizabeth's life and psyche is one of the key questions of the case. As Severed illustrates, at least one apparently loving young man unhappily broke off their engagement because of this abnormality.

Making her way to Southern California, where she simplistically hoped to achieve stardom, Short began a vagabond existence of struggle, hunger, irregular employment, and constant changes of address. In well over her head, Short developed a habit of striking up acquaintanceships with anyone she thought might be able to help her attain her goals. Reduced to freeloading, Short often lived parasitically off friends and strangers.

Short's involvements with men remained inevitably problematic; she seemed to have slowly surrendered hope of ever achieving a happy marriage. Unaware of her inability to engage in intercourse, some men thought her a supercilious tease. Over time, Short began identifying with the self - loathing alcoholics, social outcasts, marginal figures, and hoodlums who increasingly became her companions. Always a risk taker, Short's behavior during this period suggests an absence of common sense, the presence of mental imbalance, and a weak survival instinct: she continually jeopardized her own security, made reckless decisions, and took enormous risks with her physical safety. She was involved in at least one physically abusive relationship, and often appeared to be terrorized and on the run from one or more persons. Importantly, though she could have returned permanently to the security of her mother's Massachusetts home at any time, she did not. Though she had become a skillful emotional manipulator and used others freely for personal gain, Short paradoxically continued to retain her naiveté, sentimentality, and fantasies of success and romantic fulfillment.

In the age of Lana Turner, Betty Grable, Anne Sheridan, and Lizbeth Scott, Short misguidedly created the noirish persona that came to be known on the streets as the "Black Dahlia": she wore thick layers of "geisha - white" facial makeup, "blood - red" lipstick, dark clothing, and her trademark dyed, jet - black hair stacked high. People, especially men, did take notice, but they were not the talent scouts and film agents Short hoped to attract. Psychologically, the Black Dahlia persona can be interpreted as a neurotically - motivated defense mechanism spontaneously generated to compensate Short, via inflation, for the fundamental problem of her genital handicap.

A tragic, isolated, and increasingly deluded figure obsessed with "making contacts," at the time of her death at only 23, Short's teeth were so decayed (as friends, as well as the coroner's report, noted) that she used white candle wax to fill in the cavities before going outdoors. Despite such hard and telling facts, and though she had no formal training or apparent talent, Short believed a career as a film star remained an inevitability for her.

As Gilmore's text carefully illustrates, Short's psychological and ethical decline did play a role in her death. Short was an assertive personality who did as she pleased, continually placed herself in dangerous circumstances, and was neither helpless nor innocent. Thus the problem for feminists, who want to believe that Short had every right to act irresponsibly without coming to harm. Those feminists defending Short also fail to grasp that human character is an area where "paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity abound." At the time of her death, Short was a liminal figure, a shrewdly calculating opportunist who nonetheless perceived herself as an ambitious young lady of good intention. Those who knew Short as a sweet child and likable young lady in Medford, Massachusetts ignore the fact that people can and sometimes do change for the worse, especially under adverse circumstances. Since Short's murder has never been officially solved, it is Short's fascinating psychology, in conjunction with the grisly nature of her death, which remains the focus of the case for almost all interested parties.

Gilmore's generally excellent book offers an interpretation of the broad facts and names a suspect. Here, the killer is believed to be an individual the author himself pursued for two long decades. Severed is cautious, non - exploitive, fair, and realistically sympathetic to Short throughout. At no time does Gilmore suggest that Short, in any manner, deserved her fate. The absence of footnotes, sources, and an index may lead some to question the book's credibility. Potential readers unfamiliar with the very graphic morgue photos of Short's mutilated corpse, which are included, may want to approach Severed cautiously.

Reading SEVERED is an experience one is not likely to forget too quickly. This is the story of a ghastly murder in post-war Los Angeles, and the author, John Gilmore, details the crime in in the most disturbing manner I have read in ages. The book is astounding in its scope and depth, and the pictures presented by the prose seem to become branded into ones mind: unforgetable. Keeps coming back. The author weaves in and out of the characters. This is a superb work in the field of recreated crimes; certainly this crime is one of the most famous. The writing is sharp, clear, pure noir and hardboiled. This is not a book to be missed. You don't know whether you really want to keep reading it because it is so disturbing (it gets under your skin), but you can't put the book down! Few writers in this field get this close to perfection.

When 22 year old Elizabeth Short's body was found mutilated in 1947 Los Angeles the case quickly grew a reputation as unsolvable with too many suspects and not enough solid leads. Author John Gilmore extensively researched the case (beginning in the early 60's for a film that was never made) and began sorting fact from fiction including the largely unflattering portrait painted of Short herself.

Gilmore bonded with many of the L.A.P.D. officers (and had a family connection with a relative that was a member of the police department)allowing him a unique insight into the case. He also had access to what remained of the evidence and provided information for the person the L.A.P.D. thought was the strongest and most likely suspect a would be actor (and supposed friend of Tom Mix) named Jack Wilson a man with a drinking problem and possible serial killer.

With the recent release of Brian DePalma's poorly received film "The Black Dahlia" (based on James Ellroy's well written book that comes to a totally different and unlikely conclusion based on the evidence that Gilmore uncovers)"Severed" returns to print after an absence of of a number of years. Gilmore makes a strong case for Wilson as the murderer but, more importantly, examines the circumstances that allowed Wilson to get away scott free with another killing before Short. Gilmore also examines the political atmosphere in Los Angeles during the late 40's as well as the dedicated police detectives that tried to tackle the case and those that tried to bury it or use it for their own profit. Well written and researched this is the best book that I've seen on the case. Gilmore manages to capture post-war Los Angeles, the dreams of stardom that many actresses had and the ultimate end that resulted in at least one unfortunate case.

The FBI's legendary profiler and mindhunter John Douglas writes about "Severed" in his fascinating book, "The Cases that Haunt Us," and offers unquestionable support for Gilmore's findings. I was familiar with the Black Dahlia case and had heard of Gilmore's book. After reading the John Douglas book, I immediaely obtained a copy of "Severed" and found this a great book!

I have been intrigued by the Black Dahlia and was totally blown away by the "Case Reopened" documentary which highlights Gilmore's book, reenacting the murder. Scary stuff! I have since read other material on the case, but Gilmore's "Severed" has to be the bible to the Black Dahlia.

No matter how many different takes are offered on this famous case, it becomes clear that the one core account is "Severed." Another reviewer says the book has a haunting effect, and I offer this is due to the abundance of personal details Gilmore has brought to light about the real person, Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia). He has made her so real she seems to jump off the pages.

The suspect in "Severed" is a totally creepy individual, wholly believable, and this has been underscored by John Douglas. However, Gilmore doesn't claim he has solved the murder. Though he worked extensively with the detectives who handled the case, he makes clear that a dead man cannot confess or be tried. He tells the story of this awful crime, gathered from exclusive police points of view and information, from postmortem files and medical records that makes a readers hair stand on end. The massive amount of very personal details about Elizabeth Short, from her lipstick and face powder right down to descriptions of her underwear, makes this work so important. Elizabeth has been labeled a prostitute and a streetwalker in other books, and Gilmore skillfully proves this to be untrue. Elizabeth was never a prostitute or a streetwalker. Gilmore makes her so real that the reader cannot help but feel the pain and anguish, the loneliness and desperation Elizabeth must have experienced in her all-too-short life. This is a pitiful story, told by a fine writer, and painful at times to read. I believe this is one of the most important books even written in the field of true crime. An unforgettable read, as others have said, that merits the utmost praise.