Tuesday, January 31, 2006 6:20 PM
BY TED JOHNSON, ted@LApressclub.org
Was Bugsy Siegel responsible for the murder of the Black Dahlia? That’s the
conclusion posited by author Donald H. Wolfe in his new book “The Black Dahlia Files: The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles,” (Judith Regen Books, 2006), which he outlined in a Los Angeles Press Club event in January.
Stepping into one of Los Angeles’ most notorious unsolved crimes, Wolfe is the latest writer to try to shed new light on the 59-year-old murder. On Jan. 15, 1947, the dismembered body of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot of the 3800 block of South Norton Avenue in Leimert Park. The gruesome nature of the nourish crime and the Los Angeles Police Department’s inability to solve it quickly made it a media sensation that has lingered to this day.
In his research, Wolfe relied extensively on newly released archives from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, weaving a complex tale involving a call girl ring, corrupt police detectives and legendary gangsters. He claims that Norman Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, impregnated Short when she worked for a notorious Hollywood madam. That led to her killed by Siegel and other perpetrators.
Wolfe also relied on interviews with such legendary newsmen like Will Fowler, as well as Los Angeles police detectives from that era, as well as other sources.
Knowing that the Chandler hypothesis would invite particular attention, Wolfe said at the event, “That is a horrible thing to say about anybody…But I wouldn’t have written that had I not thought that I was absolutely correct.” Other authors have pinned the murder on a wide range of suspects, the most notable recent hypothesis being that of former LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel, who claimed in his 2003 book “Black Dahlia Avenger,” that his father, Dr. George Hodel, committed the murder. Wolfe’s book also details the audacious tactics of Los Angeles newspapers to scoop one another on the story. For example, editors deceived Short’s mother into talking. Meanwhile, LAPD files remain sealed, or have been lost, as well as many of the details of Short’s autopsy. Wolfe concedes that there is bound to be more written about the murder, and he plans to pursue additional leads. “It is kind of the neverending story,” he says. “There are still a lot of loose ends to put together.”
