Also, read the book Severed. Really interesting. My buddies grandmother grew up next to her in Somerville MA.
Said she was very beautiful but very odd.
His pals were all "artistic" Hollywood types...Man Ray,John Huston,etc.The guy's daughter said that her father offered her,sexually,to his friends.She says that she was raped by,among others,John Huston.
Has anyone seen the film yet? Talk is it's terrible.
Too bad becauase the book is quite good.
Ellroy's book is fiction. I'm partial to John Douglas' explanation--the crime had all the markings of a disorganized serial killer being the perp.
Black Dahlia BTTT
I don't plan on seeing the movie. I find this case interesting and have seen several documentaries on it, incl. the one covering Hodel's son's accusations that his father was the killer (the documentary puts that theory away, although there are some intersting coincidences).
One notable thing about Short that no one is mentioning, and which may have been part of what caused her death, is that she was a hermaphrodite. Although pretty and flirtatious, and although she dated...she was unable to have sex. In fact, she was not quite 100% female. It's possible that some nut got her alone, where she flirted as usual, but when he decided he wanted more, he was quite surprised to find out what was under her skirt. Few people knew about such things back then, so it's easy (for me, anyway) to see some nutcase go berzerk.
Still, she had a sad life that ended horribly (and I guess painfully). I can't answer exactly why this case holds my interest, like it does for so many others. But it does. Maybe because the crime was so unnecessarily brutal and intentionally humiliating, and she was, it seemed, a genuinely nice gal just trying to make it on her own.