Skyhorse/Arcade Pub. Offers 2015 Updated Print Edition of NYT Bestseller, Black Dahlia Avenger

January 29, 2015
Los Angeles, California

Arcade Publishing will be offering their updated print edition of Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder, available in stores and on-line in mid-February, 2015. (Since 2012, this edition has previously only been available, in e-book format.)

Over the past decade there have been several reprintings and updates to the paperback edition to Black Dahlia Avenger  (HarperCollins 2004, 2006) so let me here clarify that this 2015 printing is the “go to book” for  the original publication in that it includes all previous updated chapters and revisions through January, 2015. (See “Author’s Note” to this edition below. As referenced there, a sequel, Black Dahlia Avenger II (Thoughtprint Press 2014) contains separate additional investigations from 2006-2014, that are not contained in this original BDA I publication.)

For those of you who have already purchased the Skyhorse/Arcade 2012 EBook, this is that same edition, only now made available in PRINT format.

ARCADE PUBLISHING (An Imprint, of Skyhorse Pub. Since 2010) in mid-February, will publish this 2015 print edition of Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder.

Black Dahlia Avenger—Arcade 2015 Paperback Edition

Publication date- 19 February 2015

Format: Paperback / softback, 550 pages
Pub. Date: 19-Feb-2015
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
ISBN-10: 1628724390
ISBN-13: 9781628724394

Book Description:
“In 1947, the brutal, sadistic murder of a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth Short led to the largest manhunt in LA history. The killer teased and taunted the police and public for weeks, but his identity stayed a mystery, and the murder remained the most tantalizing unsolved case of the last century, until this book revealed the bizarre solution. Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD detective who was a private investigator, took up the case, reviewing the original evidence and records as well as those of a separate grand jury investigation into a series of murders of single women in LA at the time. The prime suspect had in fact been identified, but never indicted. Why? And who was he? In an account that partakes both of LA Confidential and Zodiac, for the corruption it exposes and the insight it offers into a serial killer’s mind, Hodel demonstrates that there was a massive police cover-up. Even more shocking, he proves that the murderer, a true-life Jekyll and Hyde who was a highly respected member of society by day and a psychopathic killer by night, was his own father. This edition of the book includes new findings and photographs added after the original publication, together with a new postscript by the author. “–

“Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD detective who was a private investigator, takes up the case of the Black Dahlia murder. In an account that partakes both of LA Confidential and Zodiac, for the corruption it exposes and the insight it offers into a serial killer’s mind, Hodel reveals for the first time the true killer and the massive cover-up of the truth”____________________

Author’s Note to the Arcade 2015 Edition

This Arcade 2015 edition is an update to the original 2003 Arcade hardback edition. (Arcade is now an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing.)

The two updated chapters (Aftermath and New Investigation: Hard Evidence and Forensics) included in the July 2006 HarperCollins paper-back edition have been added here with some slight modifications and revisions. The main one being my location, identification, and elimination of Photo Number 2, “Maganda,” as not being Elizabeth Short.

In addition, to what has been included in the new chapters, more evidence has surfaced and new witnesses have come forward. New discoveries have been found inside the pages of the Los Angeles District Attorney 1950 transcripts, and new documents from the UCLA archives have established and confirmed my belief that my father’s Sowden/Franklin House was the actual “Black Dahlia” murder location.

Chief among this new evidence:

1. DA Files documenting that in 1950, Lt. Frank Jemison was actively investigating the possibility that bodies may have been buried in the basement of George Hodel’s residence as well as his reopening and reinterviewing of witnesses in the LAPD’s original 1945 investigation of George Hodel as the possible killer of his personal secretary, Ruth Spaulding.

2. Newly discovered DA file tape-recorded admissions by Dr. George Hodel confirming he performed abortions, “lots of them,” at his downtown First Street Clinic.

3. The most important and damning new evidence was discovered in 2008 and relates to letters and receipts found at UCLA archives in the Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. Papers. These original 1947 documents establish a direct link between fifty-pound cement sacks left at the Franklin House by workers (contracted by Lloyd Wright) on January 10, 1947, to identical paper cement sacks used by Elizabeth Short’s killer to transport her bisected body parts to the vacant lot at 39th & Norton just five days later. (LAPD confirmed at the 1947 Coroner’s Inquest that these fifty-pound paper cement sacks seen and photographed next to the body were used to bring the body to the scene.)

For a full discussion on all of the above and additional investigative findings, I refer my readers to my website: www.stevehodel.com.

May 2014—A sequel to this book entitled, Black Dahlia Avenger II: Presenting the Follow-Up Investigation and Further Evidence Linking Dr. George Hill Hodel to Los Angeles’s Black Dahlia and other 1940s-LONE WOMAN MURDERS (Thoughtprint Press, Los Angeles 2014) has just been published.

BDA II contains all of the above listed summaries and much more, including my entire follow-up investigation from 2006 to 2014.

Steve Hodel October 2014