For Viewers of the TNT Series I Am the Night and Fans of the Root of Evil Podcast, the Bestselling Book That Revealed the Shocking Identity of the Black Dahlia Killer and the Police Corruption That Concealed It for So Long A New York Times Bestseller An International Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book An Edgar Award Finalist 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.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Black Dahlia Avenger Former LAPD detective Steve Hodel compiles never-before-seen evidence that reveals his father as a serial killer who may have been responsible for some of the most infamous murders of the last century- including the Zodiac killings.

Knowlton experiences a flood of repressed childhood memories, and realizes that her father was L.A.'s notorious Black Dahlia Killer. Carefully documenting her claims, she exposes George Knowlton's 30-year rampage of rape and murder. Even more shocking is the evidence she provides revealing that the police always knew the killer's identity.

In 1946, Elizabeth Short traveled to Hollywood to become famous and see her name up in lights. Instead, the dark-haired beauty became immortalized in the headlines as the "Black Dahlia" when her nude and bisected body was discovered in the weeds of a vacant lot. Despite the efforts of more than four hundred police officers and homicide investigators, the heinous crime was never solved. Now, after endless speculation and false claims, bestselling author Donald H. Wolfe discovers startling new evidence—buried in the files of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office for more than half a century. With the aid of archival photos, news clippings, and investigative reports, Wolfe documents the riveting untold story that names the brutal murderer—the notorious Mafia leader, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel—and the motive—an unwanted pregnancy resulting from Short's involvement with the most powerful figure in Los Angeles, Norman Chandler. But Wolfe goes even further to unravel the large-scale cover-up behind the case. Wolfe's extensive research, based on the evidence he discovered in the recently opened LADA files, makes The Black Dahlia Files the authoritative work on the murder that has drawn endless scrutiny but remained unsolved—until now.

This new edition of the L.A. noir classic is released just in time to accompany the Brian De Palma film.

Presenting the most compelling explanation yet for the bizarre nature of the Black Dahlia murder, this volume includes never-before published crime-scene photographs and links the alleged killer to a vast array of influential people.

The highly acclaimed novel based on America's most infamous unsolved murder case. Dive into 1940s Los Angeles as two cops spiral out of control in their hunt for The Black Dahlia's killer in this powerful thriller that is "brutal and at the same time believable" (New York Times). On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a Los Angeles vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia -- and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and rivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia -- driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches -- into a region of total madness.

The inspiration for the TNT TV series I Am the Night. The Black Dahlia Murder is near-legend in the annals of true crime. But behind the shocking case of a young actress’s gruesome slaying lies the story of another woman. Was Fauna Hodel the child of incest, and the catalyst for a sensational trial that left her well-to-do family scarred by scandal, even as the accused sexual predator walked free? Taken as an infant from her teenage mother, Fauna was placed in the care of a working-class black woman, who raised the white child as her own. Together, as a close-knit mother and daughter, they weathered years of poverty and bigotry, alcoholism and sexual abuse, pregnancy and even death—until the time came for Fauna to seek out her real mother, and uncover her lost past. But as Fauna will learn, some truths don’t want to be told. Now includes an 8-page photo insert from Fauna's personal collection.

From the author of To Die in Beverly Hills comes a harrowing tale of the dark underside of America's West Coast metropolis. Two U.S. Treasury agents, partners and antagonists, are drawn into a matrix of violence and corruption, southern California-style, that becomes a journey through a sunlit hell - at the end of which they become experts on the thin line between what it takes to live - and die - in L.A. To Live and Die in L.A., the book that inspired the major motion picture.

LADA Bureau of Investigation Hodel-Black Dahlia Case File No. 30-1268 contains the official unabridged transcripts of the 1950 electronic surveillance stake-out by a joint taskforce from the LADA Bureau of Investigation and LAPD's homicide detectives. The wire-recordings capture, Dr. George Hill Hodel's secret conversations in which he confessed to: police payoffs, performing illegal abortions and admissions to having committed the 1945 murder of his personal secretary, Ruth Spaulding as well as the 1947 torture-murder of Elizabeth "Black Dahlia" Short. These transcripts also contain the assault, beating and probable real-time murder of a woman as recorded by detectives during their actual 1950 police stakeout. The on-duty detectives listen in as their prime-suspect, Dr. George Hill Hodel, accompanied by a second man, Baron Ernst Harringa, go downstairs to the residence basement. Detectives listen in and hear sounds of a pipe striking an object, "A woman screams" more blows, "a woman screams again" then silence. The officers, though only minutes away from the residence, TAKE NO ACTION. This is the "smoking gun" that law enforcement cannot allow to be made public. The police and political powers that be-make their decision. The transcripts are sealed and locked away for fifty-four years and are not discovered until the publication of Black Dahlia Avenger, which opens the locked files at the L.A. District Attorney's Office and ultimately results in these transcripts being made public. In addition to the original 146-page transcripts of the DA/LAPD forty-day stakeout, the book contains a chapter originally published in Black Dahlia Avenger II, (the author's follow-up investigation 2006-2012) providing background and biographical information on the two law-enforcement heroes of this real life investigation-D.A. Lt. Frank Jemison and his partner, D.A. investigator Walter Morgan. Also included is Lt. Frank Jemison's original six-page transcribed interview on March 22, 1950, with Dr. George Hill Hodel's ex-wife, Dorothy Huston Hodel (author's mother and former wife of famed film director, John Huston). During this interview, conducted at her apartment on the Santa Monica pier, Dorothy stonewalls Lt. Jemison's attempts at getting to the truth and the following day alerts Dr. Hodel to the evidence that the DA's investigators have accumulated. Dr. George Hill Hodel, after receiving this information and realizing he is about to be arrested-flees the country just four days later. "We identified the Black Dahlia suspect. He was a doctor." William H. Parker, LAPD Chief of Police "The Black Dahlia case was solved. He was a doctor who lived on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood." Thad Brown, LAPD Chief of Detectives "The Black Dahlia case was solved, but it will never come out. The suspect was a doctor they [LAPD] all knew in Hollywood, involved in abortions." James Downey, Undersheriff, LASD "We know who the Black Dahlia killer was. He was a doctor [George Hodel] but we didn't have enough to put him away." Lt. Frank Jemison, LADA Bureau of Investigation