Ratings5
Average rating3.6
A New York Times Best Seller! In 1947, the brutal, sadistic murder of a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth Short led to the largest manhunt in LA history. The killer teased and taunted the police and public for weeks, but his identity stayed a mystery, and the murder remained the most tantalizing unsolved case of the last century, until this book revealed the bizarre solution. Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD detective who was a private investigator, took up the case, reviewing the original evidence and records as well as those of a separate grand jury investigation into a series of murders of single women in LA at the time. The prime suspect had in fact been identified, but never indicted. Why? And who was he? In an account that partakes both of LA Confidential and Zodiac, for the corruption it exposes and the insight it offers into a serial killer’s mind, Hodel demonstrates that there was a massive police cover-up. Even more shocking, he proves that the murderer, a true-life Jekyll and Hyde who was a highly respected member of society by day and a psychopathic killer by night, was his own father. This edition of the book includes new findings and photographs added after the original publication, together with a new postscript by the author.
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Steve Hodel has entirely convinced himself of two things: his father's guilt in a number of murders, the most prominent being that of the infamous Black Dahlia; and the LAPD's complicit cover-up of him being considered as a suspect, which continues to this day, according to his book. I can appreciate the zeal with which he presents his case, both as a former investigator and as the offspring of an “evil” man, but the circularity and uncertainty of the evidence he uses to argue his point frustrate me. Perhaps if he had access to the physical evidence - which he continually refers to as things that would potentially verify his conclusions - I'd have taken his assumptions for more than face value. As it stands, the book is a very long assessment of evidence that ultimately proves nothing; his proximity to his suspect notwithstanding, this is simply a very well done work of historically-based fiction that can never be proven, much like [a:James Ellroy 2887 James Ellroy http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1251268467p2/2887.jpg]'s [b:The Black Dahlia 21704 The Black Dahlia James Ellroy http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167323078s/21704.jpg 434].