Author’s Introduction from the 2025 Definitive Edition of Black Dahlia Avenger–Case Closed
By Steve Hodel
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Introduction to the Arcade/Skyhorse 2025 Edition
I had kept my California P.I. license active. That same year, I had recently concluded a major criminal defense investigation that involved a high-profile Los Angeles/Tokyo, Japan international murder known as the Kazumi Miura Murder case. Two defendants, Kazuyoshi Miura and Yoshikuni Okubo, were on trial in Japan for the murder of Miura’s wife, which law enforcement believed was a “staged shooting”—an ostensible “robbery” in the streets of Los Angeles in 1981.
By 2003, I had completed my four-year investigation into the facts—not theories—surrounding the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short. I had backgrounded myself into her life and movements preceding the murder, as well as amassing numerous witness interviews obtained from LAPD and LADA police files from the 1940s, as well as in-person witness interviews of surviving witnesses from the present.
I presented a forensic handwriting expert’s analysis and opinion that George Hodel wrote the “Black Dahlia Avenger Note” and numerous other letters mailed to the police and press. I also compiled evidentiary photographs related to the investigation and uncovered secret LADA files linking Dr. George Hodel as law enforcement’s prime suspect back in 1950 based on their surveillance of his/our home in 1950.
I submitted my entire investigation to then-active Los Angeles County Head Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay. DDA Kay then reviewed the investigation over several months, resulting in his legal opinion that both the Black Dahlia and Red Lipstick Murders were “solved.” Further, Kay stated, “Were he still alive, there was sufficient evidence to file and prosecute Dr. George Hill Hodel for two counts of murder.” One count against Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short and a second count for the murder of Jeanne French, “The Red Lipstick Murder.” (For details, see the chapter, “Filing My Case with the District Attorney’s Office.”)
This was followed by both Head DDA Kay and me presenting my investigation to the LAPD.
In attendance were LAPD command officers, including several Deputy Chiefs, the Captain of the Robbery/Homicide Division, and his Cold Case detectives, which also included the then-assigned “Black Dahlia” case detective Brian Carr.
Subsequent to our presentation, Deputy Chief James McMurray, then Chief of Detectives, ordered his Cold Case detectives, “Unless you can find some major holes in Steve Hodel’s investigation, go ahead and clear the Black Dahlia case based on the evidence presented.” During this presentation, Detectives David Lambkin, Rick Jackson, and Brian Carr (who were actively involved and working on the Miura/Okubo investigation back in the 1990s) sat silently in 2003, making no comment and asking not one question.
Why?
After this meeting, these Cold Case detectives took no action, and when Chief McMurray retired six months later, they had still not complied with his order. To this day, the case remains an “open” cold case.
Unfortunately, as a retired LAPD Detective III and then a private investigator for the defense, I was no longer one of the band of brothers in blue; I had “gone over to the other side,” the “Dark Side.” I was considered a pariah, particularly by these detectives, because I overturned their case. A case they, as a unit, had staked their reputation on that Mr. Okubo was guilty. My investigation in the Okubo case resulted in freeing Mr. Okubo, an innocent man, whom they had helped imprison for years.
If these detectives had followed Chief McMurray’s order and cleared the Black Dahlia murder case back in 2003, they would have substantiated and legitimized my investigation. This move would have totally removed any doubt as to the factual nature of my investigations, forever blowing up and destroying the idea that Steve Hodel’s “claims are only a theory… one of many theories.”
No, my investigation did not supply a theory in the Elizabeth Short Black Dahlia Murder. The facts I presented in 2003 resulted in LA DDA Kay’s opinion that the case was solved, and the LAPD Chief of Detectives ordered the Elizabeth Short Black Dahlia Murder case “cleared.”
Closing Note for Readers
After twenty-two years of continuing investigation, the 2025 definitive edition brings the case to its conclusion — with 150 pages of new evidence and findings that finally close the file on America’s most infamous unsolved murder.
Living in another country, I find it difficult to understand how police in the US seem to take sides immediately in cases and hold grudges at the expense of solving crimes. I have seen it in nearly every media that competition between police, sheriffs, and federal law enforcement agencies (usually over solve rates and funding) grind down the wheels of justice ever so slowly. While this is not typical of how all police appear to work, the overall impression many outsiders get is that too often law enforcement in the US is a huge game between jurisdictions and departments where there are winners and losers in terms of arrest records and convictions that leads to a lack of cooperation, especially in major cases. Your introduction just adds more evidence to that impression.
Had your fellow detectives put aside their egos, Elizabeth Short’s murder case would have been closed many years ago. How sad for her surviving family and the justice system.
When the book is released, it will be interesting to see whether the acting LAPD Chief will close the case once and for all or let individual egos and fear of embarrassment that people will no longer trust the department over this decades-old case prevent him from doing the right thing.
Ron R:
Very articulate response. You nailed it Ron. Egos, territoriality, fear of confirming past Department abuses and corruption, all part of the “Blue Code” that Trump’s (word used advisedly) Truth and Public Service. As we moved forward from the Sixties/Seventies/Eighties (my years as a cop) I would like to think all that was in the past, but not so. A few top cops have tried it in the past, but sadly were run out of leadership for attempting to make the positive changes. Best, Steve
Thanks for a peek into the last word on the case.
Living in another country, I find it difficult to understand how police in the US seem to take sides immediately in cases and hold grudges at the expense of solving crimes. I have seen it in nearly every media that competition between police, sheriffs, and federal law enforcement agencies (usually over solve rates and funding) grind down the wheels of justice ever so slowly. While this is not typical of how all police appear to work, the overall impression many outsiders get is that too often law enforcement in the US is a huge game between jurisdictions and departments where there are winners and losers in terms of arrest records and convictions that leads to a lack of cooperation, especially in major cases. Your introduction just adds more evidence to that impression.
Had your fellow detectives put aside their egos, Elizabeth Short’s murder case would have been closed many years ago. How sad for her surviving family and the justice system.
When the book is released, it will be interesting to see whether the acting LAPD Chief will close the case once and for all or let individual egos and fear of embarrassment that people will no longer trust the department over this decades-old case prevent him from doing the right thing.
Ron R:
Very articulate response. You nailed it Ron. Egos, territoriality, fear of confirming past Department abuses and corruption, all part of the “Blue Code” that Trump’s (word used advisedly) Truth and Public Service. As we moved forward from the Sixties/Seventies/Eighties (my years as a cop) I would like to think all that was in the past, but not so. A few top cops have tried it in the past, but sadly were run out of leadership for attempting to make the positive changes. Best, Steve