Setting the Record Straight: Black Dahlia, Zodiac and the Historical Timeline

February 6, 2026
Birch Bay, Washington

A brief clarification of the Dahlia–Zodiac linkage, LAPD investigative findings, and forthcoming evidence inAs Within So Without.

Over the past few months there’s been a surge of media attention around a new claim that the Black Dahlia murder and the Zodiac killings were committed by the same person. Much of that attention has focused on a newly proposed suspect and the support of several well-known voices.

I’ve stayed mostly silent. Not because I don’t have an opinion, but because in homicide work—and in history—the noise usually settles on its own. Still, when the public story starts moving faster than the factual timeline, it’s time to quietly set a few things straight.

This Link Wasn’t Born Yesterday

The idea that the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short and the Zodiac crimes might be connected didn’t begin with the current headlines.

I first laid out the forensic and behavioral basis for that possibility in my book Most Evil back in 2009. Six years later, in Most Evil II (2015), I expanded that work and documented 32 specific crime-signature parallels between the two case histories.

Investigators can disagree—and often do—about the final suspect. That’s nothing new in cold cases. But the published existence of the linkage itself, years before today’s publicity, isn’t a matter of opinion. It’s part of the record.

What Happened Behind the Scenes

Between 2022 and early 2023, I had extended professional communication with Alex Baber, who at the time expressed strong support for my investigation and its conclusions. During that period, he requested and I shared a substantial portion of my investigative archive with him—decades of research, official reports, supporting documents, and the full body of my published work (seven books) on the Black Dahlia case, Zodiac, and related homicides. Our correspondence ultimately totaled more than one hundred emails.

After that exchange, communication stopped.
Nearly two years later came the public announcement of what was described as a newly discovered solution linking the Black Dahlia and Zodiac crimes under a different suspect identity, accompanied by significant media attention and the public support of Michael Connelly and several retired Los Angeles Police Department detectives associated with his work.

I’m not here to argue motive or intent. That’s not my style, and it isn’t necessary.
But timeline matters, and chronology is part of the historical record.

Two Separate Questions

What’s getting blurred in the current coverage are two very different questions:

Are the Black Dahlia and Zodiac crimes connected?
And if they are, who committed them?

Those are not the same issue.

The first question is about forensic behavior, signatures, and documented patterns.
The second is about proving a specific suspect.

My work over the past two decades has addressed both, but the linkage analysis stands on its own, regardless of which name anyone places at the top of a suspect list today.

And if a newly proposed suspect theory eventually falls apart—as many historically have—the failure of that theory should not erase the underlying evidence that first raised the question of connection.

How These Cases Move Through History

High-profile murder cases tend to move in waves.
Every few years, a new “final answer” captures public attention.
Then time and evidence do what they always do—they sort things out.

Publicity fades.
Documentation remains.

That’s the only reason for this note: to make sure the chronology stays clear for anyone who cares about the truth of these cases and the memory of the victims.

One Thing That Has Changed

For years, the question was whether the Black Dahlia and Zodiac crimes could even be related.
Now the debate has shifted to who the killer might be.

That change didn’t happen overnight.
It grew out of years of published investigative work placing the linkage itself into the public record.

Where future evidence ultimately leads is something only time—and perhaps DNA—will answer.

But the origin of the linkage, and the path it took to reach today’s conversation, are already matters of fact.

And facts, in the end, are what solve cases.
Or at least keep the truth alive until they do.

P.S.

For readers seeking completeness of the public record, I am including an official Los Angeles Police Department summary of the Elizabeth Short investigation. (Original 1950 LAPD document attached below)

Within that report, LAPD recorded:

“An investigation was made which eliminated them as suspects due to their work and where they were during the time the victim was missing.”

The individuals referenced in that finding were Marvin Margolis and Bill Robinson, as reflected in the same investigative summary. The document itself speaks more clearly than any modern commentary.

I would also note that my investigation has continued to develop. With the forthcoming publication of As Within So Without: Man Ray, Surrealism and the Secrets Behind the Black Dahlia Murder,  expected within the coming week, additional material will enter the historical record, including the Jane Doe imagery and the acknowledged Man Ray/Copley “As Within As Without” works—artifacts reflecting contemporaneous artistic knowledge consistent with conclusions I first reached through homicide investigation rather than art history.

That same work presents documented comparative analysis indicating a 97–99% probability that the Jane Doe depicted in the photograph taken by my father and presereved in his private album, is Elizabeth Short, along with forensic image assessment suggesting a high probability that the subject was either unconscious or deceased at the time the photograph was created—findings that directly align with and reinforce District Attorney records establishing that “Short and Dr. George Hodel were in fact acquainted prior to her murder.”

As always, I will allow the documented record—not headlines or passing theories—to determine where the truth ultimately settles.

— Steve Hodel

1950 LAPD Black Dahlia Investigative Summary: pages 1, 11,12.

page 11

Page 12

P.P.S:  Per the original LAPD summary it should be noted that both Marvin Margolis, on their own, after learning of the identity of the Jane Doe#1 victim as being Elizabeth Short both voluntarily, on their own, went to Hollywood Police Station, referred to Central Homicide where they informed officers they knew the victim and her girlfriend and the two women stayed with them for ten days at their Hollywood Blvd., apartment. LAPD in this report clears both Margolis and Robinson based on time schedules indicating they could not have committed the murder.