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Sitting on bench seats in a retrofitted old hearse, stuck in quintessentially choked Los Angeles highway traffic, I listened to a woman narrate the macabre details of an 80-year-old murder. The guide, Blaze Lovejoy—whose business card identified her as a “dark storyteller” and “Manson specialist”—had already driven us through Hollywood. Now she was bringing us to downtown Los Angeles, the heart of this particular darkness. Lovejoy wore combat boots with flames across the toes and had a microphone headset on, her British accent giving the narration a Vincent Price vibe: “A Hollywood dream turned to a real-life nightmare, with a...

An amateur sleuth and self-taught cryptography expert is convinced he’s cracked the notorious unsolved Zodiac and Black Dahlia murders — and that the killer is the same man. Alex Baber — a 50-year-old West Virginian with autism — used AI programs and his codebreaking prowess to whittle down the Zodiac killer’s infamous 1970 clue he sent to newspapers and identify a single suspect with an overwhelming connection across all the murders: a late Chicagoan named Marvin Margolis. “It’s my autism. Once I start on something, I have to see it through. The deeper I go, the harder I push. My...

Emerging clues may shine a new light on Hollywood’s darkest tale: the shocking 1947 death of Elizabeth Short. On January 15, 1947, an aspiring 22-year-old actress named Elizabeth Short was found brutally murdered in a vacant lot near Leimert Park in Los Angeles, California, her nude, posed body cut in half and severely mutilated. “It was pretty gruesome,” Brian Carr, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who worked on Short’s case, later said. It was an understatement; Short’s killer had also drained her corpse of blood and scrubbed it clean. “I just can’t imagine someone doing that to...

The notorious Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles in 1947 is arguably the most gruesome of America's cold cases ever. The body of aspiring starlet Elizabeth Short was found beside a sidewalk in a vacant lot in a southern Los Angeles suburb and shocked even the most hardened newspaper crime reporters.

Brian De Palma Casts for 'Untouchables' An inadvertent casting listing this week could have gotten famed director Brian De Palma in a lot of trouble. De Palma and producer Art Linson — the men who gave us "The Untouchables" a decade ago — are casting a supporting role for their new film, "The Black Dahlia." Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson and possibly Hilary Swank will play the leads. But eyebrows were raised yesterday when DePalma and Linson sent out a casting call for a girl who looks 13 to play nude lesbian scenes in the movie. The film is based on...

A retired homicide detective believes that his father committed the notorious "Black Dahlia" murder that has been unsolved for half a century. In a new book, Steve Hodel states that late physician George Hodel killed 22-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short in a fit of jealousy. Her body, severed at the waist, nearly drained of blood and posed with arms and legs spread-eagle, was found in a vacant lot in 1947. Authorities said her face and body had been slashed, apparently while she was alive. Short was nicknamed the "Black Dahlia" by acquaintances because of the black clothing and the flower...

A former LAPD homicide detective unveiled new evidence Thursday that he says reveals who killed the Black Dahlia. Steve Hodel believes the killer was his own father. Hodel’s father George was booked in 1949 for incest and child molestation. He was also a prime suspect for the 1947 never-solved Black Dahlia murder.

William Heirens, the notorious "Lipstick Killer" who confessed to three murders on the North Side in the 1940s, has died. Heirens, 83, was pronounced dead at 8:45 p.m. Monday at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. He was the longest-serving inmate in Illinois history. Officials at Dixon Correctional Center in Dixon found Heirens unresponsive in his cell and he was brought to the UIC Medical Center, a medical examiner’s spokeswoman said. An autopsy is scheduled for today. Heirens was a 17-year-old college student when he confessed to killing two women...

With the film version of James Ellroy's novel, "The Black Dahlia" soon to be released, it is necessary to let people know the Elizabeth Short portrayed in the novel and on the screen is not the real Elizabeth Short at all. Here is a website created and maintained by Mary Pacios, who actually knew her, and author of the book, "Childhood Shadows."