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On Thursday at 6:30 pm, author Donald H. Wolfe will talk about his new book, The Black Dahlia Files: The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles, at a Press Club reception and signing. The book introduces yet another sensational theory in the Black Dahlia legend: that Elizabeth Short was a prostitute who became pregnant by Times publisher Norman Chandler, then was killed at the behest of mobster Bugsy Siegel. Objections have been posted over at the 1947 Project blog by another Dahlia author, Larry Harnisch.
Having been through the D.A.’s files on the Dahlia case (I inventoried and indexed every scrap of paper) I can say definitively that Bugsy Siegel, Norman Chandler, Jack Dragna and Brenda Allen are never mentioned.In fact, the D.A.’s files say 1) Elizabeth Short was not a prostitute and 2) she wasn’t in Los Angeles in 1944 or 1945. According to the D.A.’s files and everything else I have ever found, she arrived in late July or early August 1946.
I chatted with Wolfe while he was going through the files at the D.A.’s office so I know he had the opportunity to find those documents. He apparently just ignored them.
In the comments there, Harnisch also says that Wolfe lifted entire pages unattributed from Harnisch's website and from a story about the Black Dahlia case he wrote for the Times. Harnisch is a veteran Times copy editor.
Previously on LA Observed:
Black Dahlia redux
Dahlia disputed