Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia (1987) and L.A. Confidential (1990).
Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, was an American woman found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on January 15, 1947. Her case became highly publicized owing to the gruesome nature of the crime, which included the mutilation of her corpse, which was bisected at the waist.
My Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir is a 1996 book, part investigative journalism and part memoir, by American crime-fiction writer James Ellroy. Ellroy's mother Geneva was murdered in 1958, when he was 10 years old, and the killer was never identified. The book is Ellroy's account of his attempt to solve the mystery by hiring a retired Los Angeles County homicide detective to investigate the crime. Ellroy also explores how being directly affected by a crime shaped his life - often for the worse - and led him to write crime novels. The book is dedicated to his mother.
John "Jonathan" Gilmore was an American author and gonzo journalist known for iconoclastic Hollywood memoirs, true crime literature and hard-boiled fiction.
Mary Pearcey was an English woman who was convicted of murdering her lover's wife, Mrs. Phoebe Hogg, and child, Tiggy, on 24 October 1890 and hanged for the crime on 23 December of the same year. The crime is sometimes mentioned in connection with Jack the Ripper, and Pearcey has been posited as a Ripper candidate.
Harold Lee Giesler, known professionally as Jerry Giesler was an American trial attorney.
Georgette Elise Bauerdorf was an American socialite and oil heiress who was strangled in her home in West Hollywood, California. Her murder remains unsolved.
Many Black Dahlia suspects, or persons of interest, have been proposed as the unidentified killer of Elizabeth Short, nicknamed the "Black Dahlia", who was murdered in 1947. Many conspiracy theories have been advanced, but none have been found to be completely persuasive by experts, and some are not taken seriously at all.
John Sowden House, also known as the "Jaws House" or the "Franklin House", is a residence built in 1926 in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles, California by Lloyd Wright. The house is noted for its use of ornamented textile blocks and for its striking facade, resembling either a Mayan temple or the gaping open mouth of a great white shark.
India Joy Eisley is an American actress. On television, she is known for her roles as Ashley Juergens in the ABC Family series The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008–2013), Audrina in the Lifetime film My Sweet Audrina (2016), and Fauna Hodel in the TNT series I Am the Night (2019). Her films include Underworld: Awakening (2012), Kite (2014), and Social Suicide (2015).
The murder of Cheri Jo Bates occurred in Riverside, California, on October 30, 1966. Bates, an 18-year-old college freshman, was stabbed and slashed to death on the grounds of Riverside City College. Police determined the assailant had disabled the ignition coil wire and distributor of Bates' Volkswagen Beetle as a method to lure her from her car as she studied in the college library. The murder itself remains one of Riverside's most infamous cold cases, and has been described by some locals as a murder which "stripped Riverside of its innocence".
Daniel S. Voorhees was a transient restaurant porter who confessed to the murder of Elizabeth Short on January 28, 1947. He asked members of the Los Angeles Police Department to meet him in downtown Los Angeles, at 4th Street and Hill Street. Voorhees was eliminated as a suspect in the Black Dahlia slaying because his handwriting did not match that in the killer's note, and after he refused to give any details and his testimony was proven false.
George Hill Hodel Jr. was an American physician and suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. He was never formally charged with the crime, but is believed by many to have been the murderer, including by two of his children. He was also accused of raping his daughter, Tamar Hodel, but was acquitted of that crime. He lived overseas several times, primarily between 1950 and 1990 in the Philippines.
Thaddeus Franklin Brown was the police chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from July 18, 1966 to February 17, 1967. Brown, who was the LAPD's Chief of Detectives, was appointed police chief on July 18, 1966, following Chief William H. Parker's death on July 16, 1966. Brown was succeeded by Thomas Reddin on February 17, 1967. His brother, Finis Brown, was also on the LAPD, and was one of the noteworthy police officers who investigated the Elizabeth Short murder, also known as the Black Dahlia murder.
Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder is a 1994 American historical true crime book by John Gilmore. The book details the life and death of Elizabeth Short, also known as "The Black Dahlia," an infamous murder victim whose mutilated body was found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles in 1947, and whose murder has remained unsolved for decades.
I Am the Night is a six-episode American limited television series created and written by Sam Sheridan, starring Chris Pine and India Eisley. The series premiered on TNT on January 28, 2019, with a sneak peek of the first episode airing on January 27, 2019.
Fauna Hodel was an American author and motivational speaker, who wrote the true-crime memoir One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel, documenting her unusual beginnings and the connection to her grandfather, George Hodel, a prime suspect in the infamous Black Dahlia murder mystery.
The Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia or simply, Root of Evil, is an American investigative crime podcast covering the Black Dahlia murder and suspect George Hodel. The podcast was produced as a partnership between Cadence13 and TNT as a companion to the fictional television series I Am the Night. The podcast was created by Zak Levitt, and hosted by Yvette Gentile and Rasha Pecoraro, George Hodel's great-granddaughters. It features interviews with those who were impacted by the murder, including Hodel's relatives. The podcast charted in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, reaching the number one spot in the United States on April 21, 2019.
Who Is the Black Dahlia? is a 1975 television film about the true crime unsolved murder of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short. Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide gives the film an Above Average rating, and states "… this atmospheric crime drama is intriguingly written and well cast down to the cameos."
The Gold Sock Killer is the moniker of an unidentified American serial killer who murdered a woman and two teenage girls in Broward County, Florida, between July and August 1973. His nickname came from how he strangled his victims to death with socks; however, a gold-colored sock was only used in two instances.
