Severed: the true story of the Black Dahlia (Revised Edition, 2006).
by John Gilmore
Severed is a truly great read. I've finally finished it, and having settled into my newly re-habbed office space, and must say I was totally absorbed into the book. It's a brilliant, genre-breaking transcripted oral history noir, given by those involved, many of whom were still alive at the time, and are taken and crafted in the diffuse light of another less than promising LA Wednesday morning back in January, 1947, before the fog burned-off at about 10:30 AM. Then you could see her. The horror over on Norton, north of 39th. Street, south of Coliseum. Formerly Elizabeth Short of Medford, Mass. Solar energy now resolves this gruesome tableau for the passers by. The newspapers would provide most of the heat.
The paperboys always know the way. You should believe him when he says he saw a car there at six. A black Ford. Found off road dead. That's what the morning paperboys know. That's what the morning paperboys did; fold papers and ID cars. And hustle donuts from Moquin's Bakery. The Long Beach Independent. The corner of West 21st. Street and Santa Fe Avenue. Admiral Kidd Park. St. Lucy's. Myrtle, the Great Eucalyptus tree of the Westside. My Stingray bike with Hi-bars. My own long gone childhood in the Southern Califorina Sixties. Other people saw other things.
Martin Lewis, the shoe salesman's story, to me, formed an interior ring of truth, around which Gilmore's subjects have spun their true stories. That's how you know it's true. A slight return. It chords with something else, and it buzzes in your head...He had her there, for a moment, the Black Dahlia herself, and then is all but predictably knocked, skidding, off of her killers trail, just as his alkie protagonist and anti-hero, Lanky Jack Wilson is suddenly taken from him, and us, deus ex machina. "A signature sex killing." Ellroy says. I call it the perfect crime. Did Jack Wilson do Elizabeth Short in? No way in Hell. I'll bet he killed the Bauerdorf girl, though.
No matter. I suspect the real killer is in there, somewhere. Down the list. Lucid, and at times transfixing, written in seemingly effortless prose, and annealed with the inclusion of some truly shocking crime scene photos, this is the best place to start your own search for the killer, who could still be alive and at large. There is no statute of limitiations on the truth when it comes to LA's darkest and most infamous and unsolved murder case.
John Gilmore's Website
10:16:04 AM 
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