Black Dahlia

Severed: The True Story Of The Black Dahlia Murder...continued

In a scene recreated in pornographic detail, Gilmore describes how an enraged Wilson tortured and killed Short after she refused to have sex with him. (Gilmore's fixation on the sleazier elements of the case come as no surprise given the series of sex pulps he wrote under the pen name Neil Egri, such as "Lesbos in Panama.") The house where the killing allegedly took place, on East 31^st street, is only a few blocks from the empty lot where Short's body was found.

To up the gross factor ante, Gilmore has added several corpse shots to his book, including several stomach-churning close-ups of Short's mutilated face and body.

Gilmore links Wilson to another unsolved murder that happened a year before Short's, that of Georgette Bauerdorf, an oil heiress and socialite who was raped, strangled, and dumped in a bathtub. The two women came from opposite ends of the social stratum, but apparently frequented the same bar Wilson did. Gilmore writes that Bauderdorf was seen shortly before her death in the company of a tall, thin man who — you guessed it—walked with a limp.

Before the police could arrest him, however, Wilson died in a fire in the flophouse where he was rooming, taking any physical evidence that tied him to Short to the grave with him. "His body burst like a skewered animal, and with death's rush went the hopes of an official end to the Black Dahlia case," Gilmore writes in his typically overblown prose.

And so the legend continues...

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1. Black Dahlia Intro
2. Macabre Discovery
3. The Investigation
4. Bette Short
5. "Camp Cutie"
6. Doomed Romance
7. Fickling
8. Last Days
9. The Investigation
10. The Missing Week
11. Suspects
12. Daughter
13. Bibliography
14. Photo Gallery
15. Time Line
16. Black Dahlia Maps
17. The Black Dahlia Movie
18. Book & Movie Reviews