Severed More Books by John Gilmore Crazy Streak L. A. Despair Manson Laid Bare
	Severed: The True Story  of the  Black Dahlia Murder
	"The Definitive Account of the Crime"
	On January 15, 1947, a woman walked by a vacant lot and saw what she thought was a mannequin lying in the weeds. She thought it had fallen off of the back of a truck and broken in half, but upon farther inspection she realized it was a human body. Soon word spread throughout Hollywood that a murder victim had been found like none ever seen. The media swarmed in within minutes, stomping through the vacant lot and obliterating possible evidence. The area became one large circus tent as police and journalists tried to wade through the weeds in search of clues. The state of the body (severed in half at the waist, her faced surgically carved into a hideous grin) made newspapers leap at the story. Everyone in town talked about the crime. Her name was Elizabeth Short, but everyone called her by her nickname: "Black Dahlia".   Los Angeles police from several precincts rushed to solve the crime. They went through a couple of Chief Investigators and spent hundreds of hours chasing down false leads called in by every crackpot in the state. To this day the case remains officially open, Short's killer never found. John Gilmore has written the definitive account of the crime. It begins with Short's early years in Massachusetts and follows her to Los Angeles when she is still in her teens. She was a beautiful, outspoken girl described as having a certain swing in her step, a  swagger in her sway. She wore pounds of makeup to make herself look older and was arrested for underage drinking. She would schmooze and offer the glad hand to anyone she felt was anyone. Most people agreed she was nothing more than a likable freeloader. She would borrow money from everybody; allegedly granting sexual favors in return. Gilmore throws himself deep into the crime, digging up obscure facts like squabbles with roommates over makeup and tales of blowjobs in the back room or a shoe store. His depiction of Short as extroverted yet insecure offers a notion of a girl who would do anything for fame, but ended up infamous in a vacant lot. Reading Severed is like craning your neck to see a car crash. There are no likable characters and the book is coldly written. Its appeal is hard to pin down. The crime is frightening, not so much with regard to personal fear but in the darkness of the human spirit on display. Short lived in a world beneath the underdog where you can trust no one because everyone wants something. Gilmore drags you through it all, continually slapping you upside the head like a devil-spawned literary Oliver Stone. ...

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