Jack Anderson Wilson burned to death in a hotel room fire on February 4, 1982.

(Anon) Do you believe Elizabeth Short’s murder was the result of the making of a snuff film?

The rumor that Beth Short died as result of the making of some snuff film has no bearing on reality.

(Anon) On Feb. 17, 1947, Otto Parzyjegla confessed to the mutilation of his employer, Alfred Haij, using a blade from a paper cutter and dismembering the body. The story does not follow-up possible connections to the Black Dahlia murder and Otto Parzyjegla disappears from news. Your thoughts?

The “paper cutter” murder as confessed to by Otto Parzyjegla had its 15-minutes-of-fame and went to the bottom like a lead sinker. It was a wholly unsympathetic situation with no public “appeal” and no connection whatsoever to the Dahlia case. The severing of Beth’s body was done by a simple, old-fashioned kitchen knife and a strong arm; the edges of the wound are clearly irregular when examined closely, the result of several stop and start motions, the sawing sort of impression. This was the cause of her death, incidentally; massive hemorrhaging, though unconscious at the time of the severing of her torso.

(Shawn Colton) SEVERED does not explain several mutilations to Elizabeth Short pelvic gash and tattoo removal. Why?

Elizabeth Short never had a tattoo. This was another cliché attached to the case. She had a slight rose-colored birthmark on one thigh. As to the mutilations to her pelvic area, there is really no way to explain these; one would have to dig into the runs and twists inside the killer’s brain. Why one dismembers and another decapitates, or does vaginal excavations or disembowels or any other number of abuses to a body is simply one component to the overall crime that’s being committed. Of more importance in the Dahlia case is Wilson’s explanation that “panties” were stuffed into Beth’s mouth and down her throat (this in an attempt to suffocate), the same thing that killed Georgette Bauerdorf. This “thing” of the crimes was most unusual and one of the factors that first arrested the immediate attention of LAPD.

(Shawn Colton) On Feb. 11, 1947, the body of Jeanne T. French is discovered on a West Los Angeles hilltop The Moors with the letters B.D. on her torso. Do you believe this was another Jack Anderson Wilson murder?

There was no connection to the murder of Jeanne French and that of Elizabeth Short. It is possible that the French murder was set off by the frenzy of the press and the intensity of the Black Dahlia atmosphere, but there was no other connection.

(Shawn Colton) I heard a rumor that Elizabeth Short had a brief affair with an up and coming star Marilyn Monroe. Is this true? I am a really big fan of Monroe's and I have never heard anything about this before. What's the deal?

About Marilyn Monroe, it is most probable that she never met Elizabeth Short. Let alone ever having entered into “an affair” with her. A lot of years back while I was involved in sorting out the Florentine Gardens story and the Mark Hansen episode to do with Elizabeth Short, I conducted an interview with someone who dished out the Monroe information (not an affair, but that they knew one another). This was the first time in history those two names had been linked. I will not name this other writer (who has made many claims about his “relationship” with Monroe), but while I transcribed his information, I soon found that it had no merit whatsoever and anything he said was impossible to substantiate, even down to one single shred of the story. And while this connection might seem a “hot angle” to some, to me it’s is nothing more than a tall tale told to generated personal publicity for that writer. As interesting a tale as that might have made, the credibility is about as thin as a microbe’s wing.

(Anon) When was John St. John placed in charge of the Dahlia Investigation?

John St. John, “Jigsaw John,” Badge Number 1 (of his own devising), inherited the Dahlia file for no other reason than due to seniority. The “file” is nothing more than a sort of yoke dumped on one detective after another because someone has to answer the crank calls. The “filing cabinet” on the Dahlia case is actually an LAPD joke. Very little of the original “evidence” exists as most of it took a walk with Harry Hansen when he retired from the department. Not to say that Harry hadn’t been squirreling most of it away for quite some time before he rode off into the sunset. Certainly enough to pinch a handsome profit from the Efrem Zimbalist (who played Harry) movie, Who Was The Black Dahlia?

St. John was the last of the old-time detectives; the hard line no-bullshit cops; the divisional detective like Harry Hansen and a few others.

(Anon) I read in your book that Elizabeth Short had some sort of vaginal abnormality that may have prevented her from having sexual intercourse. If this is the case why are there so many derogatory things said about her in reference to her being a prostitute and being very promiscuous? I felt pity for her and her lifestyle when reading your book. She seemed like a lost soul without any means of supporting herself and had to rely on men to feed her and such. Is there any truth to her being a prostitute and being promiscuous? I read about the shoe salesman in your book and felt really badly that she would have to do such things for shoes but thinking again on her lifestyle and depending on dates to eat she must have felt pressure to keep up her appearance. Very sad.

In the first weeks of the case following the murder, it was preferable (according to the detectives in charge (Harry Hansen), to let the press play their greasy hand at Elizabeth Short as hooker, prostitute, man-chaser, barfly, etc.; in short--a whore. While alive, Beth did not refute the “man-chaser” reputation she had whenever she spent time with other women. “They’re jealous,” she told a friend. And what man would say, “No, I didn’t get it on with her... I wanted to, but she gave me the brush.”

Beth’s mother knew about the girl’s “handicap,” and while she bore the assault by the press on Beth’s character, she believed it was in the interest of justice--only the killer would know the truth about that situation, and that would possibly be the means by which he’d get caught. Unfortunately, the killer was not caught and the tales told back went on without a counter-story

Beth was a lost soul, driven by a strange desire or compulsion to keep resetting the stage for a romance that could finally go nowhere. She sold herself--not her sex. She prostituted her IMAGE, not her body. Rarely did she perform any sexual act and this was limited to anal and oral sex, probably when all else failed.

With her killer, everything failed. It was the end of the line for Beth, and she’d hardly even started the journey.

( Annette) SEVERED makes no attempt to explain why Elizabeth Short’s hair was hennaed. Why?
Elizabeth Short’s hair was not hennaed. She kept her hair dyed black--as often as possible or whenever she’d find a sink; same as stuffing wax into the bad teeth to keep the pain away and to give that smile a radiance--"a waxy shine”.

When found dead, the hair had been wet, not “shampooed” or “dyed red." These are just more the non-truth cliches along with the cigarette burns to the body.

( Shawn Colton) Are there any stag films or extra roles that The Dahlia actually appeared in?

There are no actual stag films featuring Elizabeth Short. A few frames were brought to light that could’ve been her in a stag film, but again there wasn’t any substantiation. This is not to rule out that she never did act in such a film, just that such a film has never surfaced. As for working as an extra, it is possible that she did, as I learned from my sources, but again there isn’t a record of that through the old Central Casting Office or the Screen Extras Union. Again, that doesn’t mean that she didn’t. A girl who knew her fairly well, Barbara Lee, who did work as an actress, told me Beth had worked extra in a picture that Barbara had worked in. I personally believe that Beth did work as an extra at that time.

( M K Buzzell) Any theories other than Ellroy's concerning the "smile" carved into her face?

Stretches of time from 1963 until 1993, I worked on the “case," researching and investigating. I’ve traveled through probably thirty states and talked to hundreds of people from West, Texas, to San Francisco, to Boston and Chicago and Reno, Nevada, to Florida and Indianapolis. The only activity there has ever been as far as law enforcement is to interview nuts who come in to confess or others who want to blame someone else for the crime from their “mad uncle” to their father to their own mother. LAPD has, for decades, sat back and done as little as they ever did; they listen to loons and keep no notes. There was nothing to investigate until a probable suspect was throw in their laps in 1981--Jack Anderson Wilson. LAPD made the determination to nail Wilson. “He’s the boy,” St. John said. “This is going to be it for me,” the detective said, “I’m going to nail this sonovabitch and close this goddamn case so help me god...”

(Randy Osburn) Do you think that the LAPD will ever open the files and show the evidence?

There is no “evidence” to be shown that hasn’t appeared in the newspapers, except for the “medical” evidence and the “paperwork” on Wilson.

( Annette) Aside from her address book, I was wondering what other belongings were sent to the L.A.P.D. by Elizabeth Short's murderer, and who is in possession of these articles at this time? Have any of her other belongings ever been sold or gone up for auction?

The address book was not sent by the murderer, nor was it sent to the police. More tall tales. Remember that the envelope itself, which has been pictured widely, isn’t even addressed to the “police”. It is addressed to the LA Examiner “and other Los Angeles papers” though who gets first crack? Right. It is highly unlikely that any such items exist, as anything once booked into evidence at LAPD has decades since disappeared. Only in the movies are there dusty boxes of evidence and stacks of records from old murders.

(Anon) The last three chapters in the book make no reference to what year the events described are taking place. Why so deliberately vague?

The time jump in the book SEVERED is to carry the reader into another decade, like sitting him on a cushion for a somewhat bumpy ride. The transition is deliberate, but I wanted the reader to keep the previous material as freshly available; to say we jump ahead many years causes one to shift focus, to store away the material they’ve already read and approach the balance as something separate, which I wanted to avoid.

(Anon) Have the film rights to SEVERED been sold? If so, to whom, and when might we see it as a film?

The film rights to SEVERED have been sold to Edward Pressman Film Corp, (THE CROW; HOFFA; REVERSAL OF FORTUNE; BAD LIEUTENANT; THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU, etc, etc). David Lynch is a strong possibility for director. If the film gets underway right now, it should be released in the Spring of ' 98, when the new version of SEVERED will be published by Amok Press, Los Angeles. The banner quote on the cover will be from David Lynch, who says: “The most satisfying and disturbing conclusion to the Black Dahlia case. After reading SEVERED I feel like I truly know Elizabeth Short and her killer.”

(Anon) Do you still maintain an office in the amazing Bradbury Building?

No, I don’t still maintain an office in the Bradbury Building. Thank you for asking. I’m a native of Los Angeles, born in “Unit One” (General Hospital), Hollywood bred and while I still am home-based in L.A., I’ve been dividing my time between there and New Mexico. That period of time at the Bradbury Building was the most intense and active of my research.

(M K Buzzell) What kind of approaches did you make in order to gain interviews and other information about the case? What type of investigative measures were used to obtain documents?

I have approached my nonfiction work as straddling a fence, operating on both sides at the same time. To simplify, you can call it the “good” and the “bad”; one side sanctioned by the law and morality, the other lawless, subterranean and dangerous. I’ve listened to people without making judgment; I have laced no value judgment on what I write about--my only criteria is that I’m able to peel back the layers and see the thing as it really is; to experience it, and to pass this experience on to others in an attempt to achieve the state of having revealed perhaps some heretofore previously unknown component of the human condition. I have moved alongside my subjects, I have ridden with my subjects, and I’ve been able to look into them as they have laid themselves bare in part. Because we are social creatures, we necessarily have ties to others, and from one such individual I might open two others, and from those two perhaps four more--perhaps not, perhaps finally leading to just one--or none, as has been the case at times. Dead ends.

(Pamela Hazelton) What type of reputation do you carry with today's LAPD in regard to your investigative coverage of Elizabeth Short, as well as works that have evolved since?

I have been favored by some; some powerful figures within the LAPD; I’ve made friends, been a pal, a drinking buddy, a joiner in their situations. I have been this on the other side at the same time. People talk to me. They want to tell me what’s inside of them. It’s a gift I have, but it’s not without a price: two divorces, homes lost, bankruptcy, almost homeless a couple of times. For what? A bundle of notes, tapes, boxes of files and transcripts; a sea of oddballs swirling around in my head; dim, dark faces, hard faces; cops with narrowed eyes and that blank mask that sets on their features like concrete when you hit a nerve with a bit of heavy information.

As to obtaining documents? You cheat, beg, borrow and steal. What’s the crime? Seeking public domain material. How public is it? How available is it? It just doesn’t exist until you’re able to pry it out from under some carefully guarded rock.

Thus, in so doing, you catch them with their pants down. You catch them as they really are. I’ve sought some people out almost as they were breathing their last, choking on blood, in order to get corroboration on something or other. And then what have I got? Words--a jumble of ideas and tapes and transcripts in my head and then these have to be laid out, and sometimes they simply will not lay out, they curl up and twist away, they jerk away and refuse to conform to any pattern you’re trying to lay down.

When I had all this fairly well lumped together--after the meetings with Jack Anderson Wilson--I knew I had to go to the police. I set the subject in their lap and said here’s where it’s brought me. Thus began my sojourn with John St. John.

And that’s how it was with the character and personality of Beth Short--the Black Dahlia. Other writers and reporters have stood hammering at the front of this subject--BLACK DAHLIA- wanting in--wanting something. Meanwhile I went around to the back door and snuck in. I’ve been through every room and nook and cranny in this house. I’ve been in all the drawers and under the liners in the drawers. I’ve been over every board in the musty attic and I’ve been over every inch of the dirty dark basement.

I did my job. I brought the diverse pieces of this puzzle as closely together as they’ll ever fit. It is a dark, dark picture. An especially difficult picture, perhaps because of the victim herself. Other cases I’ve written about--pitting against odds, tangible situations and people (which create conflicts by the nature of these tangibles and each a solid entity in some realistic way bound up with the individuals). But the Black Dahlia moves from shadow into shadow. Star struck, she became the star of darkness.

( Pamela Hazelton) Have you found any other works, articles, or other types of media that have given true, just coverage to the Black Dahlia case, and it's history?

I have not found any other works, articles or other types of media coverage on the Black Dahlia that have sustained any truth whatsoever. One copies the other (have since the 1960’s--and before), and it’s like the “letter to the police” or Ellroy’s supposed handling of “the case,” or etc., etc. TV coverage drags out the same old sources-without-connection-to-fact to air their empty views. These are old, tired windbags afraid of SEVERED because it POPS balloons.

( Pamela Hazelton) What kind of credibility can we give to Janice Knowlton’s book, Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer?

I find there is no credibility whatsoever to what Janice Knowlton has written about the Black Dahlia, nor what Michael Newton has contributed.  For a couple of years I was aware of her wandering through the media, beating the bushes for notoriety. During this time she contacted associates of mine, attempting to gain any sort of “factual information” on the case so that she might thread her tale with some strings of substance lest it all blow away in the wind. To one of my associates, the following quote was made in letter from a top newsman at KTTV FOX TV. Los Angeles: “She (Knowlton) is obviously a very troubled person, and I wholehearted agree with you about the northern California murder trial being a likely influence on her.” (He referred to the young woman who accused her father of killing a young playmate, and blocked the memory. The event was true and the father confessed--was imprisoned for the long-ago murder). The reporter continues: “I have to be very suspicious about Ms. Knowlton. I’ve discovered that she’s been reading everything she can get her hands on about the case (Black Dahlia), she’s complained loudly to police officials about not having access to their information, and late last week she called, trying to convince me that I should put her on television. On the one hand, I can’t dismiss her as just another kook because her pain seems sincere; I can’t help feeling however, that justice is not what she really wants, or at least it’s not at the top of the list.”

LAPD rapidly broke off communications with her, including her own police department, in Westminster, California.

I personally DID dismiss her as “another kook” until she went on television (the Larry King Show and others), armed with some sort of “psychological associate” and what she purported to be the actual autopsy report on Elizabeth Short. (This “autopsy report” was never revealed or disclosed on these few television “appearances”). Since I had a copy of the original autopsy report in front of me, I wrote Knowlton a brief letter in March, ‘92, and sent a stamped postcard with several little blank spaces to be filled in by Knowlton, such as:

“At the beginning of the report, the Medical Examiner discusses the general condition of the body. What is the last word of his third sentence?” Or: “On the actual autopsy report there is a mark on the first page--a stamp with two lines of words. Beneath the stamp there appears two letters, initials, inscribed by hand. The letters are very clear--very legible. Which letter of the alphabet is the first letter?”

It would have taken anyone less than a minute or so to fill out the postcard and drop it in the mail. I never heard from Knowlton or the psychological associate. But a few months later I received a letter from one Michael Newton, seeking “information” from me about Elizabeth Short (not to do with a book, of course, so he says), and about the condition of her body, and facts related to the actual autopsy. It was not until almost a year later that I learned that he was the collaborator on Knowlton’s book!

For two years previous to this, my associate had been swamped with weird poems from Knowlton and letters inviting my associate to “visit Norton Avenue together as a memorial--privately. I’ve already anointed the place I am drawn to with holy water.” And of course I knew the various themes swimming in Knowlton’s head: Short had been beaten to death with a hammer (there was no damage to Short’s skull or brain); she had been cut in half with an electric Skill-saw, a hand circular saw! As time progressed I observed these “repressed memories” altering to fit whatever factual information she was always to pry away from somewhere. But it wasn’t until she began becoming a “television star” that I responded with my little quiz--which no doubt blew into the wind with all the other Knowlton serial remembrances.

There’s more to the Knowlton/Michael Newton story that needs not be aired, but suffice to say as an investigative writer, I find no credibility in Knowlton’s hairball tale, nor have I interest in Newton’s anthology-like crime writing or his gilding of Knowlton’s fairy tales. No matter how much gingerbread is dumped on Knowlton’s so-called reveries, nothing, in my opinion, can float their bottomless boat.

( Pamela Hazelton) A Web site visitor e-mailed me once: The more you learn about The Black Dahlia, the less you know. Do you find this to be true, and if so, in what respect?

I went through many years of learning much and realizing I knew even less. Had I not gone through that awful, dark-night-of the-soul experience I would not have arrived at the thing in itself. Luckily, as I reached that point (perhaps a dozen times), I’d gone too far in to back out, and I knew I could never back out until I’d arrived at a point where I felt that I had done my job to the best of my ability.

(Pamela Hazelton) Please explain how the investigation of police reports and murders differ today opposed to 50 years ago.

It is so vast, the difference between police investigative work today and what it was 50 years ago... You’d need to write a book about it. We take fingerprints off skin now--off substances that never could have yielded prints. Back then, a case was littered and trashed as a result of the jockeying for power of divisional detectives and DA’s. Cops and press were caught up in a daisy chain feeding one another and the public was lost. The worst thing was the territorial struggle between County and City; it was a war zone.

( Pamela Hazelton) At the fifty-year mark, this year, was there anything you did in respect to Elizabeth Shorts murder and your years of study pertaining to this case?

I extended the option on the movie and got drunk with the ghost of Beth Short.

( Pamela Hazelton) How well was your book received as you first approached publishers about the subject of The Black Dahlia?

The publishers believed there was no market for a book on the Black Dahlia because, they said, “the subject has been covered.” Remarkable when you understand that my book was the only true crime book ever to be written exclusively on the Black Dahlia case. New York was afraid of the book (of course, now with the movie deal they’re not afraid at all--they’re all grinning and showing their teeth). But I made a rule for myself a long time ago: There’d be no compromise. I could not write the book as it HAD to be written if I compromised at all. I did not compromise and this “maverick” book is now heading into 'bestselldom.'

( Pamela Hazelton) Certain family members and friends have contacted myself about them wanting The Black Dahlia Web site either removed, or to remain, but without graphics in regard to the murder itself. A) Have you faced any sort of threats or severe hostility regarding your investigation over the years, from family members or others, and what is your take on that; and B) Do you believe that we, as an interested society, take things too far because we want to know so much?

The issues of State and Church seem to lie beneath the rocks we tread as we make our way through this life--both seem to inevitably be in conflict with the areas of the very constitution the country is founded upon. Franz Kafka once wrote about how the educational system parries the “child’s impetuous assault on the truth,” and how we gradually, step-by-step, by means of the educational system ,divert the child’s assault on the truth and initiate this child into the lie—to accept a reality manufactured by society, and to avoid any revelation of the truth as it is--the thing in itself--the "ding en sich," as the poet, Rilke, put it. Rather, we ramble on through life with beneath the banner of ignorance is bliss.

We are an enabling, lack-based society; Big Brother has the answer, let Big Brother tell what part of the news we must hear- what part of the news is the truth, and what part of it must be hidden and kept secret from those interested parties--the child who wants the truthful answer--the mass of adults who, if not too far gone beneath the imposition of living the lie, still seek to know what is beyond the veil--beyond what we see and smell and hear and touch.

I suppose some rather things have been said about me for letting tumble from the closets the skeletons so long kept under the floorboards. The relatives of the Shorts (very few survive and I suspect the ones making such a fuss have other agendas) have expressed somewhat mixed reactions to my work: thankful that the truth about Beth is loosed, that she was incapable of being a whore and a tramp and etc., while disturbed with the picture in its entirety. Most of the complaints have come from other would-be writers or wannabes who fantasized themselves writing a book on the case.

How far is too far? What is so much that wants to be known? What are the limits? Who imposes the limits? In my own lifetime I have seen man climb the peaks of impossibility. A cure to polio--that dread that hung over each year like a dark shroud- crippling and killing so many children...? Going faster than the speed of sound? IMPOSSIBLE! A man on the moon? YOU’RE CRAZY! That was going TOO FAR!

Not so long ago Lenny Bruce was arrested--again and again- for saying a word in public that offended the church/state combo. Andres Serrano has been castigated by the federal government for his photograph of a plastic crucifix placed in a jar of urine.

Censorship is an act of power. The Fascist mentality censors to gain power; discrimination is power; racism is power; control of the media is power. Who has the power? Big Brother has the power. The government with it’s handmaidens church and state shall dictate what is to be photographed, what is to be painted, filmed, written about, what is to be worn, how to behave, who is bad and who is good.

Murder is part of life--our everyday lives are crowded with murder; with assassination, with torture and brutality and famine and death. It is the other side of the moon and the moon as the earth cannot exist without two sides; without the day and the night.

The only aggravation I faced in my years of investigation was from those individuals who had managed to corner a fragment of some sort of power and who were terrified to let it go. It is like a monkey trap--you drill a hole in a gourd large enough for the monkey to slide his hand in but too small for him to pull a fist back through. Inside the gourd is a tasty tidbit which he grabs and will not release. So his clutch on this tidbit quickly proves his downfall. It is the paradox. Hitler sought to control the world but the greater his greed the more quickly he lost all.

Nothing can be hidden now. Our world is too small. And it is only by pulling away the layers of mediocrity in search of the real truth about ourselves, will we gain the strength and purpose of our existence. Censorship, like mediocrity, breeds fascism. But what fascism (the hunger for power and control over others) mounts becomes a collapsing construction--a house of cards, and like the monkey, the censor is sooner or later extinguished... All part of man’s progress through fear and chaos.

( Pamela Hazelton) We all try to stay away from "What ifs?…" But in your opinion, what if Elizabeth Short had not been murdered? Would she have ever made it in any sort of film? What could have become of her life?

If Beth had lived just few more years, she might well have been “cured” of her handicap (not that she could ever have had children, but she would not have had to be afraid of sexual intercourse with a man), thus possibly finding the man she so yearned for. With her flair and at times outgoing verve, she might have been able to get into movies. I believe she might have been able to do this if she had not run away from Hollywood after the Florentine Gardens situation. I think her next step--had she gone TOWARDS something (rather than running from something) would have been to get a speaking part in a movie at Columbia pictures.

( Pamela Hazelton) Summing up in 20 words or less, what is the fascination with this particular murder case?

The pale white body severed in two and left for the world to view, and her name: