It is one of the most enduringly fascinating crimes in American history.
On January 15, 1947, passersby made a grisly discovery in a vacant lot in Los Angeles: the body of a naked young woman, cut in two, and savagely mutilated.
The victim was identified as Elizabeth Short, a struggling Hollywood actress.
Nicknamed the Black Dahlia by a headline-hungry press, her lurid demise sparked a desperate manhunt.
But the mystery of the Black Dahlia murder remained unsolved for nearly half a century -- until now.
A victim of incest and brutality from infancy, Janice Knowlton was an old hand at repressing hideous memories by age ten, when she watched her father, George Frederick Knowlton , torture, kill, and dismember Elizabeth Short in the detached garage of their California home.
It was not the first of Daddy's murders Jon had witnessed, and it would not be the last -- but she had been so traumatized that it took over four decades for fragments of her memory to resurface.
Aided by a family counselor specializing in child abuse, Jan experienced a nightmare flood of childhood memories -- and realized that she had witnessed her father commit up to nine savage and sadistic murders, including that of her own infant son, a child of incest.
Using census records, maps, family interviews, police reports, and clippings from a dozen newspapers to document her searing memories, Janice exposes her father's thirty-year rampage of rope and murder in this astonishing survivor's testament -- and provides persuasive evidence that Los Angeles low enforcement authorities always knew the shocking truth.
About author(s): Michael Newton is the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction works, including Waste Land, Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer, and Cat and Mouse .
A leading expert on serial murder, Newton lives with his wife in Nashville, Indiana.
| Angeles | The body of a naked young woman cut in two and savagely mutilated |
|---|---|
| About author(s) | Michael |
