0:00:02 > 0:00:11This programme contains very strong language and scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.
0:00:16 > 0:00:19LA Confidential, the movie,
0:00:19 > 0:00:22is the best thing that happened to me in my career
0:00:22 > 0:00:25that I had NOTHING to do with.
0:00:25 > 0:00:33It was a fluke, and a wonderful one, and it is never going to happen again, a movie of that quality.
0:00:33 > 0:00:38Here's my final comment on LA Confidential, the movie.
0:00:38 > 0:00:43I go to a video store in Prairie Village, Kansas.
0:00:43 > 0:00:48The youngsters there know me as the guy who wrote LA Confidential.
0:00:48 > 0:00:53They tell the old ladies who come in to get their G-rated family flick.
0:00:53 > 0:00:59They come up to me, they say, "Oh, you wrote LA Confidential! What a wonderful movie!
0:00:59 > 0:01:06"Kim Basinger was so beautiful. Is she a nice person?" "Yeah, she's all right."
0:01:06 > 0:01:11"Oh, it was a wonderful movie. Is Kevin Spacey really gay?
0:01:11 > 0:01:16"Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful movie! I saw it four times.
0:01:16 > 0:01:20"You don't see story-telling like that on the screen any more."
0:01:20 > 0:01:28I smile. I say, "Yes, it's a WONDERFUL movie and a salutary adaptation of my wonderful novel,
0:01:28 > 0:01:34"but, Granny, you loved the movie - did you go out and buy the book?"
0:01:34 > 0:01:37And Granny invariably says, "Well, no, I didn't."
0:01:37 > 0:01:42And I say to Granny, "Then what the fuck good are you to me?"
0:02:48 > 0:02:51LOW VOICES
0:02:59 > 0:03:04..Two- and three-foot depths of water and they couldn't find her.
0:03:04 > 0:03:09After a while, the rains cleared and the gravel pit drained out,
0:03:09 > 0:03:14and, of course, one of the employees at the gravel pit found her.
0:03:14 > 0:03:18You can only imagine what this poor victim was going through.
0:03:18 > 0:03:23It's after midnight, dark, cold at that time of year.
0:03:23 > 0:03:30- This creep is attacking her and she's wondering if she's going to live, and she didn't.- Yeah.
0:03:30 > 0:03:38You wonder when you're reopening these old cases, are you opening new wounds for the victim's family?
0:03:38 > 0:03:43They've survived this long without the suspect being caught.
0:03:43 > 0:03:50Well, you know - you've reopened your mother's case. It brings back a lot of emotion.
0:03:50 > 0:03:54- Let's go pull your mother's file. - Right.
0:03:54 > 0:03:59We've got it located in a slightly different location now.
0:03:59 > 0:04:03Hard to believe all these files represent somebody's life.
0:04:03 > 0:04:07Dead people who are saying, "Solve me, solve me."
0:04:07 > 0:04:10Some represent more than one life.
0:04:25 > 0:04:28This is it right here.
0:04:34 > 0:04:36"Z483362."
0:04:36 > 0:04:41Not much to say for a person's life, is it?
0:04:41 > 0:04:4643 years...3 months...and 7 days.
0:04:48 > 0:04:50Let's go take a look at it.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57"He learned some things about murder early on.
0:04:57 > 0:05:02"He learned that men kill with less provocation than women.
0:05:02 > 0:05:06"Men killed because they were drunk, stoned and pissed off.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08"Men killed for money.
0:05:08 > 0:05:12"Men killed cos other men made them feel like sissies.
0:05:12 > 0:05:17"Men killed to impress other men. Men killed so they could talk about it.
0:05:17 > 0:05:20"Men killed cos they were weak and lazy.
0:05:20 > 0:05:23"Men killed women for capitulation -
0:05:23 > 0:05:29"the bitch wouldn't give them head or give them her money, or overcooked the steak,
0:05:29 > 0:05:35"or threw a fit when they traded her food stamps for dope or pawed her 12-year-old daughter.
0:05:35 > 0:05:42"Men did not kill women because they were systematically abused by the female gender."
0:05:44 > 0:05:51He talked about breaking in after watching her in the kitchen for a while.
0:05:51 > 0:05:57She'd gone to the back of the house and he broke in and hid in the bathroom
0:05:57 > 0:05:59and waited for her to go to bed.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02And that just made the hair stand...
0:06:02 > 0:06:08I mean, I remember sitting there in the prison listening to this kid that was like 22 years old.
0:06:08 > 0:06:13It was a terrifying statement that he gave us.
0:06:13 > 0:06:16You can just visualise her terror.
0:06:18 > 0:06:22- And...- He was 17. - He was 17 at the time, yeah.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26Think of how horny you were and unsatisfied.
0:06:26 > 0:06:35Think of the deep, dark, turbulent...passionate, but wholly tender love
0:06:35 > 0:06:42you carried around at age 17, with no release for it other than masturbation and stroke books -
0:06:42 > 0:06:47what Tom Waits called "making the scene with a magazine" -
0:06:47 > 0:06:51and then remove your conscience from the whole equation,
0:06:51 > 0:06:55and then add violence to the eroticism,
0:06:55 > 0:07:00and then realise that if you're a fucking sex psycho like Oswaldo,
0:07:00 > 0:07:03you can have any woman that you want.
0:07:03 > 0:07:10To me, that's the whole appeal of serial killers deconstructed.
0:07:10 > 0:07:12It's sexual power.
0:07:12 > 0:07:18It's the absolute sexual power that they have over virtually any human being
0:07:18 > 0:07:21that they're turned on by.
0:07:37 > 0:07:45Here you can see that in those days across the street directly from the entrance was a drive-in dairy
0:07:45 > 0:07:49which now has been replaced by McDonald's,
0:07:49 > 0:07:52so things have changed since 1958.
0:07:52 > 0:07:55This is the first crime-scene photograph,
0:07:55 > 0:08:00which you can barely see the body in the shadows of the hedges.
0:08:00 > 0:08:07And from a different angle you can start to see her dress appear through the shrubbery.
0:08:07 > 0:08:15She was actually found by a group of Little Leaguers who came here to play baseball on Saturday afternoon.
0:08:15 > 0:08:20They saw her dress in the shrubbery and brought the coaches over
0:08:20 > 0:08:24and, of course, they notified the authorities.
0:08:24 > 0:08:28Here's a photograph of Mrs Ellroy, as the body was found.
0:08:28 > 0:08:31Her bra is up around her neck,
0:08:31 > 0:08:37and, at first appearance, they thought she had probably been strangled by her bra,
0:08:37 > 0:08:43but once the body had been moved, they realised there was another method of strangulation.
0:08:43 > 0:08:48This second photo shows the cotton cord used first to strangle her,
0:08:48 > 0:08:55and the suspect broke the lead off right at the knot and he was afraid that she wasn't dead,
0:08:55 > 0:09:02so then he placed a secondary ligature around her, using a nylon,
0:09:02 > 0:09:04and strangled her again.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08The marks you see on the body are insect bites.
0:09:08 > 0:09:11She was originally on her back,
0:09:11 > 0:09:17and the minute somebody dies and they're exposed to the elements like that,
0:09:17 > 0:09:20the insects immediately attack the body.
0:09:20 > 0:09:28Closure is bullshit for murder victims, their families, murderers, for anybody acquainted with murder.
0:09:28 > 0:09:31The ramifications of murder go on and on,
0:09:31 > 0:09:36and they spread like a metastasising fucking tumour and it never ends.
0:09:36 > 0:09:41If I could eradicate one word and concept from the English language,
0:09:41 > 0:09:44it would be the word "closure".
0:09:44 > 0:09:51Anybody who thinks the execution of a loved one's murderer will bring closure is out of their mind.
0:09:51 > 0:09:54It just doesn't exist. It goes on.
0:09:54 > 0:10:00There is no closure. I've dealt with families, felt their pains.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03We got convictions, suspects do life.
0:10:03 > 0:10:09For those people there's no closure. If we found your mom's killers
0:10:09 > 0:10:13- and convicted that guy...- Yes. - ..there's no closure.
0:10:13 > 0:10:21- Yes.- Families are glad when court is done and they can put it behind them but it doesn't change what happened.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24If you found your mother's killer,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27you would have more questions.
0:10:27 > 0:10:34You'd be ripping - not the hair - but you'd be tearing yourself apart inside
0:10:34 > 0:10:40because those questions aren't going to be answered even if he gives a full-blown confession.
0:10:40 > 0:10:45- There's going to be - what's this guy all about?- Lingering questions.
0:10:45 > 0:10:49You will end up being much more discontent.
0:10:49 > 0:10:57In 1958, the suspect could drive into the street, keep the passenger side of his car up against the kerb
0:10:57 > 0:11:02and not even be seen by people on the street,
0:11:02 > 0:11:07so it would make for good camouflage for the things he was about to do.
0:11:07 > 0:11:14And this is one of the composite drawings that were made by the witnesses of the swarthy man.
0:11:16 > 0:11:21These are composite drawings made by two separate witnesses.
0:11:21 > 0:11:25You can see the similarity, yet there are differences,
0:11:25 > 0:11:29so it's probably close to what he looked like.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37"A cheap Saturday night took you down.
0:11:37 > 0:11:40"You died stupidly and harshly,
0:11:40 > 0:11:45"and without the means to hold your own life dear.
0:11:46 > 0:11:52"Your run to safety was a brief reprieve. You brought me into hiding as your good-luck charm.
0:11:52 > 0:11:56"I failed you as a talisman,
0:11:56 > 0:11:59"so I stand now as your witness.
0:12:00 > 0:12:03"Your death defines my life.
0:12:03 > 0:12:09"I want to find the love we never had and explicate it in YOUR name.
0:12:09 > 0:12:12"I want to take your secrets public.
0:12:12 > 0:12:16"I wanna burn down the distance between us.
0:12:16 > 0:12:18"I wanna give you breath."
0:12:22 > 0:12:28When I was a kid, my old man told me that he used to paw the pork to Rita Hayworth,
0:12:28 > 0:12:30not quite in those terms, but...
0:12:30 > 0:12:34RIBALD LAUGHTER
0:12:34 > 0:12:38"James...I used to have intercourse with Ms Hayworth."
0:12:38 > 0:12:45He said there was a dyke bounty out on her. He never explained what was a "dyke bounty".
0:12:45 > 0:12:51I used to think lesbians went around with butterfly nets looking for good-looking women.
0:12:51 > 0:12:55When I was ten, we went to the Hollywood Ranch Market, a freakshow,
0:12:55 > 0:13:00and he told me any man that wore lacquered sunglasses is a fruit,
0:13:00 > 0:13:05and that they wore them so they can see you but you can't see them
0:13:05 > 0:13:09and they want to check out your crotch bulge covertly.
0:13:09 > 0:13:15And so I grew up, and I'd see the highway patrolmen with the lacquered sunglasses...
0:13:15 > 0:13:20and I figured that they were all fruits.
0:13:20 > 0:13:25I've often been accused of being homophobic. I blame my old man.
0:13:25 > 0:13:29But he told me, "I used to throw the salami to Rita Hayworth."
0:13:29 > 0:13:32"Fuck you, Dad, you did not!"
0:13:32 > 0:13:34He was a bullshit artist.
0:13:34 > 0:13:37OK, he died in '65.
0:13:37 > 0:13:44Ten years later, I see a biography of Rita Hayworth in a store and look up my old man's name in the index
0:13:44 > 0:13:51and he was her business manager in the late 1940s and arranged her wedding to Aly Khan,
0:13:51 > 0:13:53so maybe he did paw the pork.
0:13:53 > 0:13:56You see those three windows there?
0:13:56 > 0:14:00- Right.- And the little window? That's it.
0:14:00 > 0:14:04That first summer after my mother's death the old man worked late nights
0:14:04 > 0:14:09and I'd stare out those windows and watch the cars in Beverly Boulevard
0:14:09 > 0:14:13and wonder if the old man would ever come back.
0:14:13 > 0:14:17And I'd fantasise about the people in the cars -
0:14:17 > 0:14:25wonder how many of the women were destined to become murder victims, how many of the men were killers,
0:14:25 > 0:14:30and, more than anything else, what sex had to do with all of that.
0:14:31 > 0:14:37Did you ever think about what your dad was doing after your mom was murdered,
0:14:37 > 0:14:41then six months later giving you the Jack Webb book,
0:14:41 > 0:14:46full of horrific murders, which got you go hooked on the Black Dahlia?
0:14:46 > 0:14:49He knew I was developing adult reading tastes.
0:14:49 > 0:14:54He knew, after my mother's murder, I started reading kids' mystery books
0:14:54 > 0:15:00because I wanted to book in my mother's murder, wanted to touch the fabric of death,
0:15:00 > 0:15:04but I was touching it in a contained, kid kinda way.
0:15:04 > 0:15:11- Your dad was as warped as you. - He was a twisted motherfucker. - So that's hereditary.
0:15:11 > 0:15:17It's hereditary, but the big question remains, and only my wife knows for sure,
0:15:17 > 0:15:23the old man had an 18-inch schvonce and did it pass down a generation or did it skip?
0:15:23 > 0:15:26Let me make a little tribute here.
0:15:27 > 0:15:31James Ellroy, my friend for several years now...
0:15:31 > 0:15:34This is all seriousness now.
0:15:34 > 0:15:38We that work Homicide, and everybody here's worked Homicide,
0:15:38 > 0:15:44- we're usually one of the few people in the world that care about our victims...- Right.
0:15:44 > 0:15:49People we work around sometimes don't give a shit. We do.
0:15:49 > 0:15:53- You have always cared about your victims...- That's true.
0:15:53 > 0:15:57..in your books, your articles, stuff you're doing now.
0:15:57 > 0:16:01So we are going to initiate you into our fraternity.
0:16:01 > 0:16:07So I have something special for you that I went out and purchased.
0:16:07 > 0:16:12It is a badge - LAPD very authentic replica badge,
0:16:12 > 0:16:15that is very hard to find.
0:16:15 > 0:16:16Wow!
0:16:16 > 0:16:21Listen, badge 714. That was Jack Webb's badge number!
0:16:21 > 0:16:23Stand up.
0:16:23 > 0:16:31- And don't use it on a traffic stop. - It could go on your wall. - Better yet, on a prostitute!
0:16:33 > 0:16:36Honorary role. It is yours.
0:16:36 > 0:16:39- Hey! - CLAPPING
0:16:39 > 0:16:44- Thank you. I'm honoured to have this.- And talk about Jack Webb...
0:16:44 > 0:16:49Actually, the Dragnet thing caught you up into the way you write.
0:16:49 > 0:16:54My old man got me a book... I'll laminate this and put it on my wall.
0:16:54 > 0:17:00My dad got me The Badge by Jack Webb, recently published, Dragnet - Badge 714.
0:17:00 > 0:17:06That's where it had the Black Dahlia case - a ten-page summary of it. To this day, cases in it drive me.
0:17:06 > 0:17:08Here it is, 41 years later,
0:17:08 > 0:17:15and I remain driven, morally and psychically, by what I got out of that book.
0:17:15 > 0:17:17It's fucking astonishing!
0:17:28 > 0:17:35There it is - John Burroughs Junior High School. I was here from September '59 till June '62.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39- Kennedy was elected.- That was early '60s. That was still the innocent...
0:17:39 > 0:17:46Well, the innocent time, we figured out, in America wasn't fucking that innocent.
0:17:46 > 0:17:49- Outwardly innocent.- Yeah.
0:17:49 > 0:17:54You know, I've never had a violent sexual fantasy in my life.
0:17:54 > 0:17:58When I was breaking into pads, yeah, not that far from here,
0:17:58 > 0:18:03it would just be real nauseous going in... I mean, it was another era.
0:18:03 > 0:18:08You call up, nobody answers the phone - there's nobody home.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11- You break in, you sniff around. - HE SNIFFS
0:18:11 > 0:18:15You sniff some panties, raid the medicine chest.
0:18:15 > 0:18:19Everybody had fucking drugs back then - prescription pills.
0:18:19 > 0:18:23You pop a couple... And I'd always cover my tracks,
0:18:23 > 0:18:26because I want to get back in again.
0:18:26 > 0:18:30Take a couple of shots of liquor, make a sandwich,
0:18:30 > 0:18:35and it was, you know, little baby Ellroy - it's Jay Gatsby.
0:18:35 > 0:18:38It's the outsider looking in.
0:18:38 > 0:18:42It was Hancock Park and being hungry for the affluence
0:18:42 > 0:18:46as much as for the girls and the sex.
0:18:48 > 0:18:51These are some pads, man!
0:18:56 > 0:19:01There, that the house there. Not this one - the house next to it.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04Girl I was in love with lived there.
0:19:04 > 0:19:08- Where d'you go in?- In a side window off the driveway.
0:19:08 > 0:19:13And, of course, that gate wasn't there at all.
0:19:16 > 0:19:22Wherever that woman is now, she is 51 years old, one year younger than me.
0:19:22 > 0:19:24She was a honey blonde
0:19:24 > 0:19:31and she had ama-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-azing dark-blue eyes.
0:19:31 > 0:19:36She wanted none of my shit because she was a born-again Christian
0:19:36 > 0:19:40and she wouldn't go out with "unsaved guys".
0:19:40 > 0:19:44- Motherfucker. - HE CHUCKLES
0:19:44 > 0:19:48- You know it's a full moon tonight. - Go ahead!- Cut loose.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51HE HOWLS
0:19:55 > 0:20:00See I got a bass baritone voice normally... Hang a left here.
0:20:00 > 0:20:03..but I howl soprano.
0:20:03 > 0:20:06MORE HOWLING
0:20:25 > 0:20:29When I was working in Sheriff's Homicide,
0:20:29 > 0:20:34this area was generally known by the investigators as Body Dump Central.
0:20:34 > 0:20:41Right across the street here to my left is the area, and the case, that James and I have reopened
0:20:41 > 0:20:46where the young housewife was found in the gravel pits.
0:20:49 > 0:20:54You come out to an area like this and you have an unidentified body,
0:20:54 > 0:21:02you start trying to identify that person and come back many times to see if you missed evidence at first.
0:21:02 > 0:21:07It becomes a very personal place and you don't identify with the victim,
0:21:07 > 0:21:12but you can feel what the victim must have gone through when you come back.
0:21:12 > 0:21:17Even years later, I'd drive by an area in the mountains with my family
0:21:17 > 0:21:22and mention to my wife, "That takes me back to a case I handled."
0:21:22 > 0:21:29And she would get to the point where she'd say, "Hey, I don't want to hear about your ghosts."
0:21:29 > 0:21:31They're with you forever.
0:21:31 > 0:21:37The detective is the great fictional character of 20th-century literature
0:21:37 > 0:21:44and what I've tried to do is to take a detective who is an alienated individual,
0:21:44 > 0:21:49who seeks to restore moral and psychic order to his own life
0:21:49 > 0:21:53by solving the riddle of other lives in duress.
0:21:53 > 0:21:59And that's part of the big kick of knowing you guys, is that you actually do it,
0:21:59 > 0:22:03and I've never wanted to do it - it's not who I am.
0:22:03 > 0:22:10- I only want to live with it in my head and write about it.- And make a hundred times more a year than us.
0:22:13 > 0:22:17He had nothing - no memento of her, no photographs.
0:22:17 > 0:22:23I said, "I'll go through the file and pick out the photos that are really ugly to see."
0:22:23 > 0:22:26And he said, "No, I need to see everything."
0:22:26 > 0:22:31So I sat off to the side and let him go through the file,
0:22:31 > 0:22:36and when he was done, he said, "Thank you very much" and folded up the file
0:22:36 > 0:22:44and I walked him out to the parking lot and thought to myself, "What a cold character. No emotion at all."
0:22:44 > 0:22:51I handled the Sheriff's evidence, the ligature my mother was strangled with - a mind-blowing experience!
0:22:51 > 0:22:57I mean, it was cinched down to about that much when they cut it off her neck.
0:22:57 > 0:22:59Astonishing.
0:23:03 > 0:23:10That blew me away, the way you wrote the part about the...touching her clothing that she was w...
0:23:10 > 0:23:17- Oh, yeah, I could smell it...her. - ..all these years later. - I recognised the dress.
0:23:17 > 0:23:23- Yeah. That's bizarre. That's when Bill left you alone, right?- Yes.
0:23:23 > 0:23:25Yeah.
0:23:25 > 0:23:30- How old were you?- Ten.- That's that age, man. Suck it in and suck it in.
0:23:30 > 0:23:35- It's an empty computer filling up with everything.- That's what I was.
0:23:35 > 0:23:40You take that data, process it, and who knows the way it'll come out?
0:23:40 > 0:23:47"You were a ghost. I found you in shadows and reached out to you in terrible ways.
0:23:47 > 0:23:53"You didn't censure me. You withstood my assaults and let me punish myself.
0:23:53 > 0:23:56"You made me. You formed me.
0:23:56 > 0:24:00"You gave me a ghostly presence to brutalise.
0:24:00 > 0:24:03"I never wondered how you haunted other people.
0:24:03 > 0:24:08"I never questioned my sole ownership of your spirit.
0:24:08 > 0:24:10"I wouldn't share my claim.
0:24:10 > 0:24:15"I remade you perversely and sealed you off where others couldn't touch you.
0:24:15 > 0:24:22"I didn't know that simple selfishness rendered all my claims invalid.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26"You live outside of me. You live in the buried thoughts of strangers.
0:24:26 > 0:24:32"You live through your will to hide and dissemble. You live through your will to elude me.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36"I am determined to find you.
0:24:36 > 0:24:39"I know I can't do it alone."
0:24:49 > 0:24:5639th Street and Norton Avenue, the hell of the morning of January 15th 1947,
0:24:56 > 0:25:01Elizabeth Short's body was found...
0:25:01 > 0:25:06roughly at the mid-block point on the west side of the street.
0:25:06 > 0:25:09approximately...right here.
0:25:09 > 0:25:12- Right here?- Yeah, right there.
0:25:12 > 0:25:17Vacant lots covered either side of the street.
0:25:17 > 0:25:2339th on the south, Colosseum on the north either side.
0:25:23 > 0:25:25How far back was she?
0:25:26 > 0:25:31Her left foot was resting just a few inches off the sidewalk.
0:25:31 > 0:25:34And, of course, as we know,
0:25:34 > 0:25:41a woman was wheeling her child down the street to the store about 10am that morning
0:25:41 > 0:25:46and saw the body, thought it was a mannequin at first, in the weeds.
0:25:49 > 0:25:54"It was the nude body of a young woman, cut in half at the waist.
0:25:54 > 0:25:58"The bottom half lay a few feet away from the top, legs open.
0:25:58 > 0:26:02"A large triangle had been gouged out of the left thigh
0:26:02 > 0:26:08"and there was a long, wide cut running from the bisection point down to the top of the pubic hair.
0:26:08 > 0:26:13"Skin flaps by the gash were pulled back. There were no organs inside.
0:26:13 > 0:26:20"The top half was worse - the breasts were attached to the torso only by shreds of skin.
0:26:20 > 0:26:24"The cuts went down to the bone, but the worst of the worst was the face.
0:26:24 > 0:26:32"It was one huge purple bruise, the nose crushed, the mouth cut ear to ear into a leering smile,
0:26:32 > 0:26:35"somehow mocking the rest of the brutality inflicted.
0:26:35 > 0:26:39"I knew I would carry that smile with me to my grave."
0:26:42 > 0:26:46The reason James identified so strongly with the Black Dahlia
0:26:46 > 0:26:50are the things his father had told him about his mother -
0:26:50 > 0:26:55she was basically a whore and ran out and chased men all the time -
0:26:55 > 0:27:01and when you examine the background of Elizabeth Short, you have a similar situation.
0:27:01 > 0:27:07So it was easy for James to identify with that murder and kinda glom onto his mother's case,
0:27:07 > 0:27:13because as a young man growing up he really knew nothing about his mother's murder
0:27:13 > 0:27:19other than she had gone out that night and she was found the next morning strangled.
0:27:19 > 0:27:25He'd read things about the Black Dahlia case. It was just easy for him to identify with it.
0:27:25 > 0:27:31The Black Dahlia murder case. It's 1947, not a helluva lot's going on in LA.
0:27:31 > 0:27:36The city then, you get about 25, 28 murders a year.
0:27:36 > 0:27:38Mom kills Pop. Pop kills Mom.
0:27:38 > 0:27:45Mom overcooks the steak. Pop's had enough. He wants to limit his options to the gas chamber or life.
0:27:45 > 0:27:53But Elizabeth Short - the guy picks her up, tortures her for two days, taunts the press, taunts the LAPD
0:27:53 > 0:28:00with letters to the LA Herald Express, and then never fucking does it again. Just goes away.
0:28:00 > 0:28:04That's the astonishing thing - that it never happened again.
0:28:04 > 0:28:08- Maybe he died, went to prison. - Became a writer.
0:28:16 > 0:28:23Beautiful young woman comes out to LA to be a movie star, like 16 million others.
0:28:23 > 0:28:31And if you can believe this - a single sex killing and it's front-page news for ten weeks.
0:28:31 > 0:28:33Dahlia this, Dahlia that.
0:28:33 > 0:28:39"Hunt clues in werewolf's slaying den." That was a newspaper headline from the Herald in that era.
0:28:39 > 0:28:44- Werewolf's slaying den!- Hearst reporting.- That's Hearst reporting.
0:28:44 > 0:28:51Larry Harnisch... Brian knows him and Rick knows him as well. He's a writer for the LA Times.
0:28:51 > 0:28:56He's spent probably 20,000, 25,000 of his own money researching it,
0:28:56 > 0:29:02- and he's come up with the most plausible explanation that I've ever heard.- Absolutely.
0:29:02 > 0:29:09And the way he lays it out and the background he lays on his investigation, it's very plausible.
0:29:09 > 0:29:12Like you said, it's the most plausible theory.
0:29:12 > 0:29:18- Did he go so far as to name somebody?- Yeah.- Yeah.
0:29:18 > 0:29:24When my wife and I talk about the grief point of our ultimate parting, when we die,
0:29:24 > 0:29:31we start talking about what's beyond this. Will we be together and what will we learn?
0:29:31 > 0:29:40I hope you all get the knowledge per the specifics of crime that you missed out on while you were here.
0:29:40 > 0:29:44You get to talk to Elizabeth Short. Brian, especially you.
0:29:44 > 0:29:50You say, "Betty, tell me about it. You're back in two parts now. You look good.
0:29:50 > 0:29:55"Nice to see you walking around and not sliced in half.
0:29:55 > 0:29:59"Tell me who is this motherfucker and why did he do it?"
0:29:59 > 0:30:03"Well, Brian, this is the fucking story. How much time have you got?"
0:30:03 > 0:30:06"Betty, I've got eternity."
0:30:06 > 0:30:12Brian'll say, "My wife's not going to be here for another few years. Let's spend some time together."
0:30:12 > 0:30:16- "Betty, you look good, baby." - GROWLS
0:30:16 > 0:30:24I've thought about that many times. Do we get the answers to all the questions we had through our life?
0:30:24 > 0:30:28- You go to heaven...- Yeah. - ..and you're talking to your mom...
0:30:28 > 0:30:33What's your biggest question other than who killed her?
0:30:33 > 0:30:38Other than, "Who killed you?" I mean, what, do you catch up?
0:30:38 > 0:30:43I think it's, "Tell me about it. What was your whole life like?"
0:31:06 > 0:31:13I still wasn't sure I wanted to work with him. He spoke very negatively, very ugly about his mother at times,
0:31:13 > 0:31:17calling her an alcoholic and describing her as a whore.
0:31:17 > 0:31:22I wasn't sure I wanted to work with somebody reacting like that.
0:31:22 > 0:31:26I was thinking, "Wow, do I want to walk up on a 80-year-old woman,
0:31:26 > 0:31:33"knock on her door and ask for her co-operation and have James yelling, 'Come on, bitch, give it up!' "
0:31:33 > 0:31:37I wasn't sure how he'd respond once we started the investigation,
0:31:37 > 0:31:42but I told my wife, "Let's take the money he's offering, bank it,
0:31:42 > 0:31:47"and if I don't like what's going on, we'll give him back his money."
0:31:47 > 0:31:51But, as it turned out, I really wasn't prepared for what happened.
0:31:51 > 0:31:57As the investigation went on, he and I became very close, almost like brothers.
0:31:57 > 0:32:01We were sharing a very special thing together.
0:32:01 > 0:32:08I watched a grown man fall in love with his mother for the first time as an adult. It was very moving.
0:32:09 > 0:32:17"You fooled people. You gave yourself out in small increments and reinvented yourself at whim.
0:32:17 > 0:32:22"Your secret ways nullified the means to mark your death with vengeance.
0:32:22 > 0:32:25"I thought I knew you.
0:32:25 > 0:32:29"I passed my childish hatred off as intimate knowledge.
0:32:29 > 0:32:33"I never mourned you. I assailed your memory.
0:32:33 > 0:32:38"You fronted a stern rectitude. You cut it loose on Saturday nights.
0:32:38 > 0:32:42"Your brief reconciliations drove you chaotic.
0:32:42 > 0:32:44"I won't define you that way.
0:32:44 > 0:32:48"I won't give up your secrets so cheaply.
0:32:48 > 0:32:52"I want to learn where you buried your love."
0:32:55 > 0:32:57Tonight you're in for a real treat.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01- Please welcome James Ellroy. - Let's do it.
0:33:01 > 0:33:06CLAPPING
0:33:10 > 0:33:17Good evening, peepers, prowlers, paederasts, pedants, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps.
0:33:17 > 0:33:23I am the author of Brown's Requiem, Blood On The Moon, Because The Night, Suicide Hill,
0:33:23 > 0:33:29Killer On The Road, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz,
0:33:29 > 0:33:36Hollywood Nocturnes, American Tabloid, My Dark Places and Crime Wave.
0:33:36 > 0:33:41These books are written in blood, seminal fluid and napalm.
0:33:41 > 0:33:46These are books for the whole fucking family
0:33:46 > 0:33:51if the name of your family is the Manson family.
0:33:53 > 0:33:55Swingers, huh?
0:33:55 > 0:33:57Yes?
0:33:57 > 0:34:02- Who do you look for feedback?- Geeks with no lives write me letters.
0:34:02 > 0:34:07It is well known that Ellroy readers are handsomer, for the men,
0:34:07 > 0:34:11more beautiful, for the women, more intelligent,
0:34:11 > 0:34:16thus they are fulfilling their lives and have no time to write letters,
0:34:16 > 0:34:22so the folks who do are usually autograph fiends or fucking gun nuts
0:34:22 > 0:34:27who say, "Dear Mr Ellroy, I have read all 15 of your wonderful books.
0:34:27 > 0:34:34"They were truly masterpieces of a genre form in the overall great form of American literature.
0:34:34 > 0:34:38"However, on page 692 of The Cold Six Thousand,
0:34:38 > 0:34:45"you had the wrong calibre Beretta handgun with the wrong kind of ammunition,
0:34:45 > 0:34:47"thus fuck you, Mr Ellroy,
0:34:47 > 0:34:53"and may you die a painful and protracted death, you piece of shit."
0:34:53 > 0:34:56That's the kind of mail I get.
0:34:56 > 0:34:57Yes?
0:34:57 > 0:35:01- Are you going to write another LA crime novel?- No.
0:35:01 > 0:35:04Crime novels are dead.
0:35:04 > 0:35:10I need to write historical novels about bad men doing bad things in the name of authority -
0:35:10 > 0:35:17historical novels that detail the demonic thrust of America as a whole.
0:35:17 > 0:35:22All genre and genre-derived fiction is behind me. I've moved uptown.
0:35:29 > 0:35:32"America was never innocent.
0:35:32 > 0:35:38"We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets.
0:35:38 > 0:35:44"You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event
0:35:44 > 0:35:46"or set of circumstances.
0:35:46 > 0:35:50"You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
0:35:50 > 0:35:56"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hottened up for a past that never existed.
0:35:56 > 0:36:00"Hagiography sanctifies chuck-and-jive politicians
0:36:00 > 0:36:06"and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight.
0:36:06 > 0:36:12"Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight.
0:36:12 > 0:36:17"Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.
0:36:17 > 0:36:23"The REAL trinity of Camelot is look good, kick ass, get laid."
0:36:25 > 0:36:33- Next question. Yes?- How do you avoid libel suits, cos you're putting real people into...?- They're all dead.
0:36:33 > 0:36:35The real people I use are dead.
0:36:35 > 0:36:40If they're dead, they can't sue you and their families have no recourse.
0:36:40 > 0:36:45Many people ask, "You really ragged the shit out of the Kennedys!
0:36:45 > 0:36:47"How come they don't sue you?"
0:36:47 > 0:36:52If the Kennedys protested everything that was written about them,
0:36:52 > 0:36:58they'd be in court all day every day and they'd have no time to get drunk and rape women.
0:37:01 > 0:37:06- Do you get the death vibe? - Get the vibe.
0:37:06 > 0:37:09- Now, the car was right in here? - Yeah.
0:37:09 > 0:37:13Look at my hand. My trigger finger is twitching.
0:37:13 > 0:37:20Here's the travelogue - there's Houston, there's Elm, there's the sixth floor of the depository.
0:37:20 > 0:37:23Big Jack's coming down the kerb lane over there.
0:37:23 > 0:37:30There's the grassy knoll. Old man Zapruder and his secretary are on that landing where those people are.
0:37:30 > 0:37:34- I'd like to look at the film again. - You can buy the video.- Yeah.
0:37:34 > 0:37:40- You can probably see it on the Internet.- Maybe it's interactive.
0:37:40 > 0:37:45You can stand there with your mouse and you can shoot JFK.
0:37:48 > 0:37:53Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood.
0:37:53 > 0:37:58Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame.
0:37:58 > 0:38:06It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent
0:38:06 > 0:38:08and facilitated his fall.
0:38:12 > 0:38:18Look through the colonnades there. A fellow named Lee Bowers observed the action here.
0:38:18 > 0:38:24Lee Bowers appears in The Cold Six Thousand, and he saw a puff of smoke
0:38:24 > 0:38:31and some activity right over there at the juncture of the two sides of the stockade fence
0:38:31 > 0:38:33around the time the event occurred,
0:38:33 > 0:38:38so, of course, I've got some good facts to extrapolate.
0:38:38 > 0:38:42I put Bowers, who's dead now, in the book as a fictional character.
0:38:42 > 0:38:48I have him see what he sees. I have my fictional conspirators come in and muscle him.
0:38:48 > 0:38:55Research as to time, place, chronology - buttress your fiction with credibility...
0:38:55 > 0:38:57- Weave it in.- ..and weave it in.
0:38:57 > 0:39:03I gotta say this about myself, although I'll say many great things about myself,
0:39:03 > 0:39:08I got the fucking X-ray eyes for what's usable and for what's not.
0:39:08 > 0:39:11SIREN WAILS
0:39:15 > 0:39:19The attraction of unsolved crimes for novelists
0:39:19 > 0:39:21is their exploitation potential.
0:39:21 > 0:39:26You can take an unsolved crime, you can take a violent moment,
0:39:26 > 0:39:29and fill in all the blank spaces.
0:39:29 > 0:39:33And if you're gifted, if you understand individual psychology,
0:39:33 > 0:39:39if you have a strong moral viewpoint, you can tell one fuck of a good story.
0:39:39 > 0:39:46I knew Freddy Ottash, private eye to the stars, ex-LAPD guy, colleague of yours in his last years.
0:39:46 > 0:39:51And he was the guy who bugged Peter Lawford's beach-front fuck pad
0:39:51 > 0:39:58at the behest of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters and got the goods on Jack playing bury the brisket...
0:39:58 > 0:40:01- That's righteous... - This is righteous shit.
0:40:01 > 0:40:08- ..playing bury the brisket with Marilyn Monroe.- Pawing the pork. - He said Jack was hung like a cashew
0:40:08 > 0:40:15- and he was a fucking two-minute man. - Which is in your book.- Yeah, Bad Back Jack. He's giving her...
0:40:15 > 0:40:21He's in the saddle, doing it for two minutes... "Agh, shit, my back!" Sorry, Jack.
0:40:21 > 0:40:28Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history.
0:40:28 > 0:40:33He talked a slick line and wore a world-class haircut.
0:40:33 > 0:40:39He was Bill Clinton minus invasive media scrutiny
0:40:39 > 0:40:41and a few rolls of flab.
0:40:41 > 0:40:48- OK, so everybody comes full circle in life?- Yeah.- So when do you start breaking into pads again
0:40:48 > 0:40:52and stalking your junior high girlfriends?
0:40:52 > 0:40:58My junior high WOULD-BE girlfriends are getting a little long in the tooth.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02Besides, I'm in love with Helen Knode, the Cougar Woman,
0:41:02 > 0:41:10and with her, instead of breaking into pads to sniff panties, I can sniff the panties with her in 'em.
0:41:10 > 0:41:17- That's fetishism come full circle. - I'm getting that visual right now. - HE GROWLS
0:41:17 > 0:41:22There's the hex of the Cougar Woman, I being the Cougar Woman.
0:41:22 > 0:41:26And the hex before James goes out on the road is like this.
0:41:26 > 0:41:31- And the women...it's hotel keys, right?- Yes.- It's phone numbers.
0:41:31 > 0:41:37I can't blame them. Why? He's a big, strapping, handsome guy and he's a literary genius.
0:41:37 > 0:41:41I'd fuck him too, if I weren't already married to him.
0:41:41 > 0:41:49- So I have to hex him before he goes on the road. There's a few stages to the hex. I won't go all the way.- OK.
0:41:49 > 0:41:53But if you get too close, you start bleeding from the nose and the ears.
0:41:53 > 0:41:59- You too?- No. And then the ultimate thing really is you die.- Right.- Yeah.
0:41:59 > 0:42:03If you come on, come on, come on, the hex kicks in and it's over.
0:42:03 > 0:42:09- Do you want to talk about the intermediate stage?- All right, but let's be politically correct.- OK.
0:42:09 > 0:42:14- You turn into a dyke.- Yeah. It's actually happened once.
0:42:14 > 0:42:22But it's not happy, gay-pride lesbians. It's very unhappy, closeted lesbianism that you turn into.
0:42:23 > 0:42:30- Get your free white ass up here. Do you love your dad? - No, I hate him.
0:42:30 > 0:42:34- Who gets the bitches, Stud?- You. - You look good.
0:42:34 > 0:42:42- This fucking dog loves you more than he loves me. Look, he's gone back to his mom.- Cos he's heterosexual.
0:42:42 > 0:42:45People don't understand you're a feminist.
0:42:45 > 0:42:50I talk to people at your signings who go, "Oh, yeah, cool women, yeah."
0:42:50 > 0:42:57- Not just prostitutes, the noir staples, the femme fatales who are so tiresome.- Phlegm fatales.
0:42:57 > 0:43:01It's easy shit to write the hot, fast love story
0:43:01 > 0:43:05where the man meets the woman and you got to let her...
0:43:05 > 0:43:11- Once only, right.- But the long haul of monogamy, that's something else.
0:43:11 > 0:43:17This journalist says, "How can you live with a man who has such things in his head?"
0:43:17 > 0:43:22And I said, "Well, you don't know what I have in my head."
0:43:22 > 0:43:26And he honestly said things like, "You are a tormented man.
0:43:26 > 0:43:28"Life must be very painful for you."
0:43:28 > 0:43:35- I said, "No, I'm having a blast." - That's what people don't get about you - that you're having a blast.
0:43:35 > 0:43:39The books are one thing. Life's another.
0:43:39 > 0:43:42I don't think the books are too depressive.
0:43:42 > 0:43:49The books are about guys with big fucking throbbing hard-ons for life, history, and women as redemption.
0:43:49 > 0:43:56- How is it he turned out normal enough for you to marry him? - That's kind of a personal question.
0:43:56 > 0:44:00OK, this is the answer to that question -
0:44:00 > 0:44:07is that James believes in reason and he believes that this stuff doesn't have to ruin his life.
0:44:07 > 0:44:14And I think of any man I - I can't say that... But he wants to be reasonable.
0:44:16 > 0:44:18I think that's really it.
0:44:18 > 0:44:22I think there's an unbreachable code of human behaviour that's locked in.
0:44:22 > 0:44:27There are rules. There is a set way to behave.
0:44:27 > 0:44:35I eat soy, I drink health shakes, I keep my weight down, I exercise like a motherfucker
0:44:35 > 0:44:41only, ONLY for two reasons - so I can be with my wife for another 45 or 50 years
0:44:41 > 0:44:48and so I can outlive that misanthropic cocksucker Bill Clinton so I can make him the villain,
0:44:48 > 0:44:51the charmless Dudley Smith,
0:44:51 > 0:44:55of a new Washington in the '90s quartet of books.
0:44:59 > 0:45:05Bill, you cocksucker, you low-life, sexual-harassing, traitor motherfucker.
0:45:05 > 0:45:11I hate you, you cocksucker, and in my novels I will take you down.
0:45:15 > 0:45:21Obviously, your politics are a complete joke and I don't take them seriously and nobody else should.
0:45:21 > 0:45:23You motherfucker.
0:45:23 > 0:45:25And, er...
0:45:25 > 0:45:30I had a buddy named Randy Rice that I hung out with as a youngster,
0:45:30 > 0:45:34and I haven't seen him in years and there's times when I miss him,
0:45:34 > 0:45:40but we developed something that I later termed dog humour,
0:45:40 > 0:45:47which... It's...profane. It's nihilistic.
0:45:47 > 0:45:51- It's sexual. It's... - Un-PC, before PC was invented.
0:45:51 > 0:45:56Why mince words? It's racist and homophobic
0:45:56 > 0:46:00and full of inventive use of foul language,
0:46:00 > 0:46:07and it celebrates the crassness, the most debased in human behaviour.
0:46:07 > 0:46:14And it's a way of taking the most obvious and broadest strokes of satire
0:46:14 > 0:46:18- and making it funny in context. - Uh-huh.
0:46:18 > 0:46:19Yeah.
0:46:19 > 0:46:21Yeah.
0:46:21 > 0:46:26- I was horrified when I first heard it.- You laughed at "motherfucker".
0:46:26 > 0:46:30I was delighted that I was horrified. It was so outrageous.
0:46:30 > 0:46:32So I knew it couldn't be serious.
0:46:32 > 0:46:40The first paragraph of The Cold Six Thousand, set in Dallas on November 22nd 1963, goes as follows.
0:46:40 > 0:46:47"They sent him to Dallas to kill a nigger pimp named Wendell Durfee. He wasn't sure he could do it."
0:46:47 > 0:46:51If that offends you, fuck you. If you think I'm a racist, fuck you.
0:46:51 > 0:46:58I will not justify myself and say, "I am not a racist," because anyone who would say something like that
0:46:58 > 0:47:02sounds like Richard Nixon saying, "I am not a crook."
0:47:02 > 0:47:06If you're prejudiced against the book, YOU'RE the yahoo.
0:47:06 > 0:47:10What's Part III about of the USA underworld trilogy?
0:47:10 > 0:47:16Daddy-O, I know I will see you again. You turn up like a bad penny at all my gigs.
0:47:16 > 0:47:20After you've read The Cold Six Thousand we'll discuss it.
0:47:20 > 0:47:23Read it and you'll know where it's going.
0:47:23 > 0:47:29Book for the whole family, so name your families the Hillary Clinton family.
0:47:29 > 0:47:32Yes? There's a hand way back there.
0:47:32 > 0:47:37We got there - nice-sized crowd - he just started reading it
0:47:37 > 0:47:40and it was just kinda shocking.
0:47:40 > 0:47:46You'll have to have him give you his first line of his reading.
0:47:46 > 0:47:53Six P words, I remember that. And you're kinda of just in there and then...
0:47:55 > 0:47:58I'm listening. Say what?
0:47:58 > 0:48:01He knows how to hold an audience.
0:48:01 > 0:48:08- Do you read his books? - I have read a few of them. They're really intense.
0:48:08 > 0:48:10The easiest one for me to read...
0:48:10 > 0:48:18Well, hard in many ways, but the easiest one for me to read was My Dark Places, because I could relate
0:48:18 > 0:48:24- and had lived some of the story as well.- I haven't read one yet. I've started.
0:48:24 > 0:48:29But like Jan says - they are pretty intense.
0:48:29 > 0:48:33"My mother got me a beagle puppy for my tenth birthday.
0:48:33 > 0:48:37"I named her Minna and smothered her with love.
0:48:37 > 0:48:43"My mother laid a mind-fuck on me in conjunction with the gift. She told me I was a young man now.
0:48:43 > 0:48:47"I was old enough to decide who I wanted to live with.
0:48:47 > 0:48:50"I told her I wanted to live with my father.
0:48:50 > 0:48:56"She slapped me in the face and knocked me off the living-room couch.
0:48:56 > 0:49:00"I called her a drunk and a whore. She hit me again.
0:49:00 > 0:49:04"I made up my mind to fight back next time.
0:49:04 > 0:49:08"I could brain her with an ashtray and negate her size advantage.
0:49:08 > 0:49:14"I could scratch her face and ruin her looks so men wouldn't want to fuck her.
0:49:14 > 0:49:19"She pushed me over a very simple line.
0:49:19 > 0:49:22"I used to hate her because my father did.
0:49:22 > 0:49:26"I used to hate her to prove my love for him.
0:49:26 > 0:49:30"She just bought my own, full-tilt, hatred."
0:49:30 > 0:49:34Jan...Brian. ..You must be Mindy. Hi.
0:49:34 > 0:49:39- Nice to meet you.- Hi, Mrs Hilliker. James Ellroy.- Karen.- Karen.
0:49:39 > 0:49:41Please have a seat.
0:49:43 > 0:49:49- So, are you related to me? What's the story?- We're second cousins.
0:49:49 > 0:49:53- My father was Belden.- Oh, yes.
0:49:53 > 0:49:58- And Geneva and Leoda were my first cousins.- So we're contemporaries.
0:49:58 > 0:49:59Yes.
0:49:59 > 0:50:06- Even...- More or less. I might have a couple on years on you. - It's OK. You have hair.
0:50:06 > 0:50:10No, your eyebrows would cover my head.
0:50:11 > 0:50:15We can go see some dead Hillikers out here.
0:50:15 > 0:50:20That graveyard off Iowa? Hillikers, Linscotts, Woodards and Pierces.
0:50:22 > 0:50:24Smooth move, Ellroy.
0:50:31 > 0:50:34What does that stone say, Karen?
0:50:34 > 0:50:39The stone standing up, it says GG Hilliker.
0:50:39 > 0:50:43- Uh-huh.- Gibb, Ida, Ida's mother Mary,
0:50:43 > 0:50:48and buried behind it are my parents and your grandparents.
0:50:48 > 0:50:54- Why isn't your mother here? - Buried her there. Didn't have any money to ship her.
0:50:55 > 0:50:58She belongs in LA.
0:50:59 > 0:51:02It's a bad deal altogether.
0:51:03 > 0:51:09It says, "Geneva Hilliker Ellroy. 1915-1958."
0:51:09 > 0:51:15And it's a shitty plot, flush up against a chain-link fence.
0:51:18 > 0:51:24There are some haunting things that my mother told my father that were in the divorce records.
0:51:24 > 0:51:29She hinted at horrible things within the family when she was a girl.
0:51:29 > 0:51:33She teamed up with Aunt Norma and got out of here.
0:51:33 > 0:51:37The ink was not dry on her high school graduation certificate
0:51:37 > 0:51:42when she was on a train for Chicago and nursing school.
0:51:45 > 0:51:50I can just so vividly remember this woman. That's how striking she was.
0:51:50 > 0:51:57She would come to visit and, oh, just so glamorous - as glamorous as my mom was plain.
0:51:57 > 0:52:00It was just such a contrast,
0:52:00 > 0:52:07and that alone was just such a novelty in our house, and that really stuck with me.
0:52:07 > 0:52:13All her jewellery and, er... coloured underwear, and Mom always only had white.
0:52:13 > 0:52:17It just really stuck in my mind.
0:52:17 > 0:52:21"I saw my mother half nude and nude, and stripped to her slip,
0:52:21 > 0:52:26"saw her breasts sway, saw her good nipple pebbled up from the cold.
0:52:26 > 0:52:32"I saw the red between her legs and the way steam made her skin flush.
0:52:32 > 0:52:36"I hated her and lusted for her. Then she was dead."
0:52:49 > 0:52:55I think one of the ugliest terms we deal with in Homicide is the term "body dump".
0:52:55 > 0:53:01I mean, it's a human being...
0:53:01 > 0:53:04But they're not human beings when we get there.
0:53:04 > 0:53:08But it's so descriptive. It really describes...
0:53:08 > 0:53:13It's a horrible word, but we get used to saying, "Who's up for trash?"
0:53:13 > 0:53:18But it's non-murder, non-officer involved.
0:53:18 > 0:53:23You look at a body - I don't care how fresh it is - it's still a body.
0:53:23 > 0:53:27There's no life in there and you know that.
0:53:27 > 0:53:32It's like this glass, except this glass is functional.
0:53:32 > 0:53:36We have a very unusual, sophisticated defence mechanism
0:53:36 > 0:53:39that we develop rather quickly...
0:53:39 > 0:53:47- You have to.- ..when you get into this line of work, that allows you to look at the things we look at
0:53:47 > 0:53:50and be able to cope with those.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55I often feel that your eyes can see more than your soul can take.
0:53:55 > 0:54:03You can dehumanise as much as you want to on the surface, but you really don't down in deep.
0:54:03 > 0:54:08It'll bother you, yeah, but... You don't ever forget these.
0:54:08 > 0:54:13When you look at them, no matter what they were, they no longer ARE.
0:54:13 > 0:54:17- You have to say that...- You detach. - ..because it's the truth.
0:54:17 > 0:54:24What bothers me at these scenes is not... Certainly I feel sorry that their life was cut short,
0:54:24 > 0:54:31but I immediately think about the family - the people that are going to grieve.
0:54:31 > 0:54:33It's June 22nd 1958.
0:54:33 > 0:54:37My old man takes me back to El Monte on the bus,
0:54:37 > 0:54:44puts me in a cab at the bus depot, it drops me at Maple and Bryant, where I lived with my mother.
0:54:44 > 0:54:48I see stern-looking men in plain clothes and uniform cops
0:54:48 > 0:54:52and I know immediately that she is dead.
0:54:52 > 0:54:54I knew it in the moment - 6.22.58.
0:54:54 > 0:54:59A cop said, "Son, your mother's been killed. Where's your father?"
0:54:59 > 0:55:06I said, "He's at the bus depot." I was calculating advantages already as I entered a state of shock.
0:55:06 > 0:55:08A photographer took me aside,
0:55:08 > 0:55:15shot some photographs of me at a woodworking bench in my neighbour's back shed.
0:55:15 > 0:55:17I was performing for the adults.
0:55:17 > 0:55:22What I was really doing was calculating advantages.
0:55:22 > 0:55:26My hated mother was dead. I could go live with my old man full time.
0:55:26 > 0:55:31I was a cold, withdrawn, manipulative, evil little shit.
0:55:31 > 0:55:35It's time to segue to the Black Dahlia.
0:55:35 > 0:55:38Now dig this.
0:55:38 > 0:55:45It's the king of the body dumps. Regretfully, it is an LAPD case as far as the sheriffs are concerned.
0:55:45 > 0:55:48It's unsolved.
0:55:48 > 0:55:55And, of course, Larry Harnisch, my dear friend and esteemed colleague and Black Dahlia obsessee,
0:55:55 > 0:56:03has come up with what I think is the only plausible explanation as to what happened
0:56:03 > 0:56:08to the raven-haired seductress Elizabeth Short, in LA,
0:56:08 > 0:56:12roughly 54 years ago today.
0:56:12 > 0:56:19- She was missing today.- This was the lost week. She was dropped off at the Biltmore on the 9th,
0:56:19 > 0:56:21her body was found on the 15th.
0:56:21 > 0:56:27Elizabeth Short is a 22-year-old woman from Massachusetts.
0:56:27 > 0:56:30She's one of five girls.
0:56:30 > 0:56:36The dad walked out, so the oldest one, Virginia, raises the other kids.
0:56:36 > 0:56:41Late July, early August of '46, Elizabeth Short comes to Los Angeles.
0:56:41 > 0:56:48She goes up to Hollywood and she somehow gets involved with an outfit called the Florentine Gardens.
0:56:48 > 0:56:54Florentine Gardens is a nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard. It's still there.
0:56:54 > 0:56:57Still called that. It was very racy.
0:56:57 > 0:57:02She rents a room from the business manager at the nightclub.
0:57:02 > 0:57:08He rents rooms to attractive young women who want to be starlets.
0:57:08 > 0:57:11All this time she's in LA, she's not working,
0:57:11 > 0:57:14so where did she get money?
0:57:14 > 0:57:18She was not shy about asking people for money.
0:57:18 > 0:57:23She finally ended up living in a place on Cherokee.
0:57:23 > 0:57:28It was a dollar a day, eight girls in bunkbeds - each pay a dollar a day.
0:57:28 > 0:57:30OK!
0:57:30 > 0:57:37And she's up and down Hollywood Boulevard getting...getting picked up.
0:57:37 > 0:57:40You know. ELLROY GROWLS
0:57:40 > 0:57:43- But no money...- She's not charging?
0:57:43 > 0:57:49Well, she's letting these guys spend money on her and then stiffing them, so to speak.
0:57:49 > 0:57:53- "Thanks for the lovely meal..." - It happens.
0:57:53 > 0:57:55She stiffed the wrong guy? >
0:57:55 > 0:58:00So this is like a justifiable... what you're describing here(?)
0:58:00 > 0:58:04- That's how she was existing. - Do you think she was hooking?
0:58:04 > 0:58:09No, I don't. I think she was shaking guys down...
0:58:09 > 0:58:15- Did she have a guy? - I think a little bit of hand here, a little bit of head there,
0:58:15 > 0:58:18maybe some intercourse there.
0:58:18 > 0:58:22On and off, ad hoc, according to what was going on in the moment.
0:58:22 > 0:58:25I thought she was a hooker. Yeah.
0:58:25 > 0:58:29But... But in everything you've told me...
0:58:29 > 0:58:35would indicate to me, no offence, whether you believe she's a hooker or not,
0:58:35 > 0:58:40if she's out there every night going with different guys,
0:58:40 > 0:58:47and I believe, as James said, at times if she could get out of it, she will, cos she can go to the next guy,
0:58:47 > 0:58:50but there will be times you can't. Yeah.
0:58:50 > 0:58:53Then what happens? Did she have sex?
0:58:53 > 0:59:01I'd have to reserve judgement. To be clinical about it, I haven't found any evidence...
0:59:01 > 0:59:04Is there a differentiation between...?
0:59:04 > 0:59:09Did she possibly get killed by a trick or by a boyfriend?
0:59:09 > 0:59:13She didn't have a boyfriend per se.
0:59:13 > 0:59:17- She had boyfriends?- Yeah. > We're almost back to tricks.
0:59:17 > 0:59:21We're in between tricks and... Boyfriends. > Exactly.
0:59:21 > 0:59:24So what didn't she have...?
0:59:24 > 0:59:31You see, this is the way we would kick it around today. > We'd beat her up today.
0:59:31 > 0:59:38We would say, "Come on." Her mother would tell us, "She went out every night with a different guy,
0:59:38 > 0:59:40"but she never had sex with them."
0:59:40 > 0:59:43We'd say, "Fine." And then we'd go on to reality.
0:59:43 > 0:59:48And reality tells us that if a girl today, or 50 years ago,
0:59:48 > 0:59:56is out on the street, going out, getting in a car or doing whatever she's doing with this guy,
0:59:56 > 0:59:58she's doing this for a living.
0:59:58 > 1:00:01She has no job. Yeah.
1:00:01 > 1:00:08There are not too many guys out there before she runs into somebody that's gonna say,
1:00:08 > 1:00:12"I'm not giving you 5 or 500 or whatever it is unless we get it on."
1:00:12 > 1:00:18She says no and he kills her. Boom - she's a dead whore.
1:00:18 > 1:00:19Nick!
1:00:19 > 1:00:24- I'm just going to sit in. - Grab a chair!
1:00:24 > 1:00:27- Why are you limping?- Pulled a nerve.
1:00:27 > 1:00:29I'm getting that fixed.
1:00:29 > 1:00:38- Then I had those 60-year-old age spots removed, so it looks like I got in a fight.- You look about 40.
1:00:38 > 1:00:42They're making some fucked-up movie about me.
1:00:42 > 1:00:48Here are my policemen and journalist friends. We had a long recitation on the Black Dahlia murder case.
1:00:48 > 1:00:54- You wanted to hear it all.- No, no, Larry has probably solved the case.
1:00:54 > 1:01:00Larry... These guys are tormenting him because they are empiricists.
1:01:00 > 1:01:07These guys - half of them are half-lit - are interested in deconstructing Larry's theory
1:01:07 > 1:01:12and going at it with established police methods, step by step.
1:01:13 > 1:01:16Yeah. 4980 Beverly Boulevard.
1:01:16 > 1:01:19This place, right here.
1:01:19 > 1:01:25After my mother died, my old man was living in the small, back upstairs apartment.
1:01:25 > 1:01:30I moved in with him there. We had Minna, our beagle dog,
1:01:30 > 1:01:34and she immediately went to work...
1:01:34 > 1:01:41on urinating and defecating with abandon all over the place.
1:01:42 > 1:01:47The place where he had the heart attack, was that a second place?
1:01:47 > 1:01:51We got booted out of 4980 Beverly in the summer of '63.
1:01:51 > 1:01:56We moved to this place further east, a smaller place with fewer rugs,
1:01:56 > 1:02:00so the dog shit got that much more concentrated
1:02:00 > 1:02:05and the place allegedly had to be fumigated after we left.
1:02:05 > 1:02:09- Did you get your deposit back(?)- No.
1:02:09 > 1:02:14- So that was '64?- Spring of '64. - When did he die?- June of '65.
1:02:14 > 1:02:21- His last words were, "Try to pick up every waitress who serves you." - From his hospital bed?- Yeah.
1:02:21 > 1:02:24He died 20 minutes later.
1:02:26 > 1:02:30OK. Now, the body is very, er...
1:02:30 > 1:02:34been uniquely carved. First of all, it's cut in half.
1:02:34 > 1:02:42She had a tattoo on her leg that has been, er, to be a little evasive, it has been cut out of her leg.
1:02:42 > 1:02:46- It had been removed.- It had. So the guy took souvenirs. >
1:02:46 > 1:02:53AND the... I'll phrase it as the newspaper did of the day - it was recovered during her autopsy.
1:02:53 > 1:02:57- He stuck it in her vagina.- Yeah.
1:02:57 > 1:03:03- Yeah.- No.- No? Where did he put it? It's not found on the body?
1:03:03 > 1:03:05- No, it is. Not in the vagina.- Where?
1:03:05 > 1:03:08- In her ear? - Keep guessing!
1:03:08 > 1:03:11< Don't tell 'em? OK, I won't tell you.
1:03:11 > 1:03:16- What is the cause of death?- Choked on her own blood.- Asphyxiation.
1:03:16 > 1:03:20- That's what they think it was. - But there's no beatings?
1:03:20 > 1:03:22< Anything other than cut marks? Uh-uh.
1:03:22 > 1:03:26- She did get a beating... - There are stab wounds.- On the back.
1:03:26 > 1:03:30No, she was hit on the head.
1:03:30 > 1:03:33Part of one breast was removed...
1:03:33 > 1:03:37- What part?- Up here. Not the nipple, but just over.
1:03:37 > 1:03:43And probably the most unique thing was her mouth was cut like this...
1:03:43 > 1:03:46and like that. Both sides.
1:03:46 > 1:03:50- All the way up.- Like a smile. - Exactly. Like a smile.
1:03:50 > 1:03:55The body is, er, washed clean, completely drained of blood.
1:03:55 > 1:04:01The investigators find like one drop of blood on the sidewalk.
1:04:01 > 1:04:06It's clearly done by somebody who knew how to cut somebody in half.
1:04:06 > 1:04:08A magician(!)
1:04:08 > 1:04:15They think it was with a big knife and he went right between the vertebrae.
1:04:15 > 1:04:20The guy who used to be head of LAPD crime lab, Ray Pinker, he's dead,
1:04:20 > 1:04:25but his widow said he always said it was a clean, professional job.
1:04:25 > 1:04:29- Maybe a doctor, with some medical background?- Ah...
1:04:29 > 1:04:35- We're right on the cusp...- You're holding back from us.- ..of part two.
1:04:35 > 1:04:39Two-second intermission. We're on the cusp of part two,
1:04:39 > 1:04:44which is Larry's suspect and how Larry put it together
1:04:44 > 1:04:50and how it conforms to everything we know about the case and answers the question,
1:04:50 > 1:04:58why did this motherfucker dump the two parts of Elizabeth Short specifically at 39th and Norton?
1:05:07 > 1:05:12- Let's forget Elizabeth Short. Let's leave her lying...- In two pieces.
1:05:12 > 1:05:19Yeah. Let's go back to her older sister. Remember Virginia? Let's go back to 1945.
1:05:19 > 1:05:23When I started doing research, people sent me things.
1:05:23 > 1:05:26This box of stuff shows up.
1:05:26 > 1:05:31One thing is the marriage certificate of Virginia Short and Adrian West.
1:05:31 > 1:05:35I decide to go find the house where they got married,
1:05:35 > 1:05:38and I'm looking at the certificate
1:05:38 > 1:05:44and down at the bottom, where we've got the address of where they got married,
1:05:44 > 1:05:49one of the witnesses has signed. It's real hard to read what it is.
1:05:49 > 1:05:52It says, "Barbara Lindgren."
1:05:52 > 1:05:55And, hard to read,
1:05:55 > 1:05:57"Norton Avenue."
1:05:57 > 1:06:02- Now, I've talked to John Douglas. - The celebrated FBI profiler.
1:06:02 > 1:06:06Everybody has a different opinion of him,
1:06:06 > 1:06:10but he said, "There's something about that neighbourhood.
1:06:10 > 1:06:17"When you get a killer with a car, he makes a decision why he leaves the body there and not somewhere else.
1:06:17 > 1:06:24"In 15 minutes, he could've been in the mountains, the desert, nobody would ever have found her."
1:06:24 > 1:06:30"But he didn't do that. He goes to a residential neighbourhood, right off of Crenshaw,
1:06:30 > 1:06:35"there's houses one block south and north of there.
1:06:35 > 1:06:40"Not a good spot to leave a body. So, what is it about this neighbourhood?"
1:06:40 > 1:06:45So I'm looking at the certificate - not just Norton Avenue,
1:06:45 > 1:06:50but 3959 South Norton Avenue. That is a block from the crime scene.
1:06:50 > 1:06:54- Bingo.- Now you've got something totally different.
1:06:54 > 1:07:01Elizabeth Short is lying in the 3800 block, the sister knows somebody a block away.
1:07:01 > 1:07:03That's too good not to follow.
1:07:03 > 1:07:09Never reported in the Black Dahlia literature. Completely unreported.
1:07:28 > 1:07:32I go to the Hall of Records, down to the basement,
1:07:32 > 1:07:36and find out who owned the property in 1947, this address.
1:07:36 > 1:07:41Long story short, it's a woman named Ruth Bayley. B-A-Y-L-E-Y.
1:07:41 > 1:07:46Go back to the Times clip files and look up Ruth Bayley.
1:07:46 > 1:07:49And what do we find?
1:07:49 > 1:07:56Ruth Bayley, first of all, is the mother of the gal who signed the marriage certificate as the witness.
1:07:56 > 1:08:02Ruth Bayley is married to not only a doctor, but a surgeon.
1:08:02 > 1:08:06- Ah.- His name's... - You're talking clean-cut!
1:08:06 > 1:08:10You're talking about a guy named Walter Bayley,
1:08:10 > 1:08:14former Chief of Staff at County Hospital,
1:08:14 > 1:08:17on the staff of USC Medical School,
1:08:17 > 1:08:20but Walter, his life is unravelling.
1:08:20 > 1:08:25- Oh, yeah?- He's got... We would recognise it today as Alzheimer's.
1:08:25 > 1:08:28He's not all there.
1:08:28 > 1:08:31He dies, as it turns out, in 1948,
1:08:31 > 1:08:35not quite a year after the Black Dahlia case.
1:08:35 > 1:08:40Did he leave a note saying, "I wish I wouldn't have done that"(?)
1:08:40 > 1:08:44< Larry, go more into his medical condition.
1:08:44 > 1:08:47Yeah. He had a, er, he had a...
1:08:47 > 1:08:54a thing called encephalomalacia, which is actually a softening of the brain tissue.
1:08:54 > 1:09:01Dr Bayley's brain condition was known to produce homicidal behaviour in normally passive individuals.
1:09:01 > 1:09:06- < A lot of guys in Homicide had that! - How did you find that out?
1:09:06 > 1:09:10Well, it's... It's on his death certificate.
1:09:11 > 1:09:18Let me ask you this. The sister, Virginia, is she ever interviewed? She was...
1:09:18 > 1:09:23The first thing a detective will say is, "Who do you know that she knew in LA?"
1:09:23 > 1:09:27Virginia Short or Adrian West told sister Betty,
1:09:27 > 1:09:32"If you're ever down and out in LA, call Dr Bayley. He's the guy."
1:09:32 > 1:09:38Larry interviewed Barbara Lindgren, on the wedding certificate,
1:09:38 > 1:09:43and questioned her about her time around the Dahlia death
1:09:43 > 1:09:47and she disingenuously contended that she didn't recall it,
1:09:47 > 1:09:51when it happened a block from the family homestead.
1:09:51 > 1:09:57When I talked to her, I said, "You were at a wedding with these people.
1:09:57 > 1:10:04"Did you know that this lady's younger sister was found killed a block from your house?"
1:10:04 > 1:10:11- "No. Mother never mentioned it." - The most celebrated unsolved homicide in American history.
1:10:11 > 1:10:15- She'd never heard of it. - A block from the family pad.
1:10:15 > 1:10:19The reason we know about Walter is because after he died
1:10:19 > 1:10:23his widow sued his girlfriend over his estate.
1:10:23 > 1:10:26What happened with Walter is,
1:10:26 > 1:10:31- Walter...had originally befriended a nurse...- The devil!
1:10:31 > 1:10:38..from Vienna - a graduate of the University of Vienna Medical School, who'd come to the US as an emigre.
1:10:38 > 1:10:45- You know those Viennese(!) - She worked as a nurse and then became a partner in his practice.
1:10:45 > 1:10:50- Originally, she had just befriended him...- A partner?!- Yeah.
1:10:50 > 1:10:55- Yeah. She's a doctor.- Yeah. She's another surgeon.- Oh, my God.
1:10:55 > 1:11:01- Maybe SHE did it!- The kind of practice Walter Bayley does is,
1:11:01 > 1:11:07he does mastectomies, hysterectomies, and the surgical removal of fat.
1:11:07 > 1:11:11- In 1947?!- They were doing it earlier than that.
1:11:11 > 1:11:15He had walked out on the wife for the girlfriend
1:11:15 > 1:11:20- in October '46...- '46? - Yeah, October '46.
1:11:20 > 1:11:24- Right before... - We're three months away.- Yeah.
1:11:24 > 1:11:29Died in January '48. The girlfriend and the wife start this lawsuit.
1:11:29 > 1:11:37What the wife says in the lawsuit over his estate is that he had a secret,
1:11:37 > 1:11:45and the girlfriend had learned this secret and he had lived in terror that she was going to reveal it
1:11:45 > 1:11:47because it would ruin him.
1:11:47 > 1:11:53Every time he wanted to return to his family, she'd bring up this secret.
1:11:53 > 1:12:01- Where's he living?- I tried to find out. The address he used was a medical office right down the street.
1:12:01 > 1:12:08His receptionist told me that what he and his girlfriend liked to do of an evening...
1:12:08 > 1:12:15They were in the Professional Building on 6th Street, and there was a restaurant on the first floor.
1:12:15 > 1:12:20They would have their dinner sent up and he had a projector and a screen
1:12:20 > 1:12:25and they would put on classical music and eat dinner
1:12:25 > 1:12:32- and would watch movies of surgery. That was their entertainment of an evening.- Really?!
1:12:32 > 1:12:39The doctor and his girlfriend, for kicks, used to get bombed together, watch autopsy films,
1:12:39 > 1:12:45- while they blasted off on classical music.- Is that strange, or what?
1:13:00 > 1:13:03What did the profiler say about he cuts here,
1:13:03 > 1:13:07the breasts, and especially about the tattoo?
1:13:07 > 1:13:13He said, "It tells me it's personal, that they spent some time together,
1:13:13 > 1:13:17"that there was personal anger directed at her."
1:13:17 > 1:13:21- This was, she said something. - She said no.
1:13:21 > 1:13:26She said something. She laughed, she made fun of him or something.
1:13:26 > 1:13:30- It was personal? - Yeah, it was personal.
1:13:30 > 1:13:33The important thing is it was personal.
1:13:33 > 1:13:39If you've got this kind of anger, it isn't just, "I won't sleep with you."
1:13:39 > 1:13:41This is something deeper.
1:13:41 > 1:13:46This is something that's gotta keep the rage going long enough
1:13:46 > 1:13:49to cut her in half, to mutilate her.
1:13:49 > 1:13:56Apparently, you have to drain the blood from somebody as soon as they're killed.
1:13:56 > 1:14:01The time that it takes, you've gotta keep the anger going.
1:14:01 > 1:14:04So...what could it be?
1:14:04 > 1:14:09You look at this guy - he's a doctor, his oath is to save lives.
1:14:09 > 1:14:13What could possibly make a human being do this?
1:14:13 > 1:14:18Well, how did Elizabeth Short get money? She had a sob story, OK?
1:14:18 > 1:14:24This is how it went. Her fiance killed himself in the war. True.
1:14:24 > 1:14:29Well, he got promoted to husband got killed in the war,
1:14:29 > 1:14:34but a lot of women's husbands got killed, so the story gets better.
1:14:34 > 1:14:40They had a kid that she had to give up. Then the final version was,
1:14:40 > 1:14:45her husband was killed in the war, they had a son who died.
1:14:45 > 1:14:48What do we know about Walter Bayley?
1:14:48 > 1:14:52One thing we know is he had a son, named Walter.
1:14:52 > 1:14:54What we know about Walter is...
1:14:54 > 1:15:01that he was killed in a car accident down on Vermont, where they used to live.
1:15:01 > 1:15:03He was riding his bicycle...
1:15:03 > 1:15:08The Bayleys adopted two girls. The younger one signed the certificate.
1:15:08 > 1:15:13There was an older girl. In 1920, she was two years old.
1:15:13 > 1:15:18This girl was on the street corner and wanted to cross the street.
1:15:18 > 1:15:25This boy, 11 years old, Walter Junior, rides his bicycle over to lead her across the street.
1:15:25 > 1:15:28He's run over by a truck and killed.
1:15:28 > 1:15:33They take him to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital.
1:15:33 > 1:15:37Walter Bayley is a surgeon. Where is he? In surgery.
1:15:37 > 1:15:41So he's doing his operation. His beloved son,
1:15:41 > 1:15:46- the centre of his life... - The apple of his eye.- ..is dead
1:15:46 > 1:15:50He's in the operating room. They don't tell him.
1:15:50 > 1:15:54- Oh, cool(!)- Because he's in the middle of an operation.
1:15:54 > 1:16:01The operation's a success, he comes out. BOOM - "Your son is dead." He's devastated.
1:16:01 > 1:16:07When you talk to the Bayley family, who are not crazy about my theory,
1:16:07 > 1:16:09they still have the dead son's stuff.
1:16:09 > 1:16:13- This is from 1920.- Really? - They still have it.
1:16:13 > 1:16:19I think if there's one thing that's going to send Walter Bayley off.
1:16:19 > 1:16:27He's devastated by his son's death. You've got Elizabeth Short with her story to get money - the dead son.
1:16:27 > 1:16:31But Walter, unlike every other pigeon, is a doctor.
1:16:31 > 1:16:34- He's gonna ask her...- How did he die?
1:16:34 > 1:16:41Yeah. How did he die, or about her pregnancy or something. When did he take his first step?
1:16:41 > 1:16:46- He figures it out.- She gives him a bullshit story.- Right.
1:16:46 > 1:16:51And he goes, "This isn't a story. MY story is real.
1:16:51 > 1:16:53"Her story is not real."
1:16:53 > 1:16:59And the other thing is, when is Walter Junior's birthday?
1:16:59 > 1:17:01- January 13th.- Oh, my God.
1:17:01 > 1:17:05- Her body is found on the 15th. - Oh, my God!
1:17:05 > 1:17:09- So we're right there. - A terrible coincidence.- Yeah.
1:17:09 > 1:17:12Which it may just be. >
1:17:12 > 1:17:15Two days from now. I'm going home(!)
1:17:21 > 1:17:24This guy's been taking a ribbing,
1:17:24 > 1:17:30- but the theory's great and it's just about watertight in most ways.- Yeah.
1:17:30 > 1:17:33There's a lot of coincidences,
1:17:33 > 1:17:38and when you go into coincidences in Homicide, you go, "Wait a minute."
1:17:38 > 1:17:41And that's what it's made me do.
1:17:41 > 1:17:46I think you're ball-parking it, you're in that vicinity.
1:17:46 > 1:17:50But the problem is... The problem is time. Yeah.
1:17:50 > 1:17:53What you have is time is your enemy.
1:17:59 > 1:18:07- 'Yes?- Has that woman who thinks that her dad killed the Black Dahlia AND your mom talked to you?
1:18:07 > 1:18:09'Oh, Lord...'
1:18:09 > 1:18:11HE GROANS
1:18:11 > 1:18:16'This man is talking about a woman who labours under the misconception
1:18:16 > 1:18:23'that not only did her father kill my mother, but killed Elizabeth Short, the ill-fated Black Dahlia,
1:18:23 > 1:18:28'the subject of my brilliant masterpiece, The Black Dahlia.
1:18:28 > 1:18:32'I have not talked to the woman in 15 years.'
1:18:32 > 1:18:36The truth about the Black Dahlia, metaphysically, is this.
1:18:36 > 1:18:40We'll never know. We were not meant to know.
1:18:40 > 1:18:46It will continue to inspire writers who riff on misogynistic violence
1:18:46 > 1:18:54and writers who take the facts to conform to their own theses as to why something so horrible happened.
1:18:58 > 1:19:02When I was thinking of Elizabeth Short's death,
1:19:02 > 1:19:07imagining the various ways she ended up at 39th and Norton,
1:19:07 > 1:19:11I never thought about what happened to my mother,
1:19:11 > 1:19:15because Betty Short was, in places, my mother's stand-in.
1:19:15 > 1:19:19Her purpose was to shut Geneva Hilliker Ellroy out.
1:19:19 > 1:19:26The mutilations inflicted on Betty Short were so hyperbolic compared to what happened to my mother.
1:19:26 > 1:19:31My mother was prosaic and in every way mundane by comparison.
1:19:37 > 1:19:41I always thought that she fought the guy,
1:19:41 > 1:19:45that there were beard fragments under her fingernails.
1:19:45 > 1:19:48It was the way I wanted to see her.
1:19:48 > 1:19:51I didn't want her to be a rape victim,
1:19:51 > 1:19:56and everything we've put together about her makes it appear she was.
1:19:56 > 1:20:04I had revised the story of her death with a novelist's aplomb, to hold back the worst from myself.
1:20:04 > 1:20:09So these weren't things that your father told you over the years?
1:20:09 > 1:20:16My father told me it was probably a three-way gone bad, which enticed me as a kid, just learning about sex.
1:20:16 > 1:20:19That was his take on it.
1:20:31 > 1:20:36"My mother's last night alive defied strict interpretation.
1:20:36 > 1:20:40"She left the house in her car. She was at the Manger bar alone.
1:20:40 > 1:20:46"She met the swarthy man somewhere. She dropped her car off somewhere and got into his car.
1:20:46 > 1:20:51"Yvonne Chambers served them in his car. They left Stan's Drive-in.
1:20:51 > 1:20:58"They went to the Desert Inn. They picked up the blonde en route. They went back to Stan's in his car.
1:20:58 > 1:21:02"Her car was found behind the Desert Inn.
1:21:02 > 1:21:08"She could have met the swarthy man at his pad or at a cocktail lounge.
1:21:08 > 1:21:14"She could have left her car at either location. They went to Stan's in his car.
1:21:14 > 1:21:22"She could have picked up her car right after. He could have picked up the blonde, or she could have.
1:21:22 > 1:21:28"They partied at the Desert Inn. They left together. They could have gone somewhere as a group.
1:21:28 > 1:21:36"The blonde could have gone off. My mother and the swarthy man could have fondled in his car, or her car.
1:21:36 > 1:21:43"They could have gone to his pad, could have fondled in the Desert Inn parking lot before the 2am nightcap.
1:21:43 > 1:21:47"She could have turned off the sex in his car or her car.
1:21:47 > 1:21:53"She could have shut him down at his pad or at the blonde's pad.
1:21:53 > 1:21:55"They went back to the Desert Inn.
1:21:55 > 1:22:02"They could have gone back from the blonde's place or the swarthy man's place or another cocktail lounge.
1:22:02 > 1:22:08"My mother could have left her car at the blonde's place or the swarthy man's place.
1:22:08 > 1:22:15"She could have left it at either location during any of the evening's reconstructive time gaps.
1:22:15 > 1:22:22"The swarthy man could've retrieved the car after he killed her, could have dumped it at the Desert Inn.
1:22:22 > 1:22:29"The blonde could have dumped it. They could have run a two-car convoy.
1:22:29 > 1:22:34"They could have split the scene in the blonde's car or the swarthy man's car.
1:22:34 > 1:22:39"It's 2.40am. My mother and the swarthy man split Stan's Drive-In.
1:22:39 > 1:22:44"Her car's parked behind the Desert Inn or parked somewhere else.
1:22:44 > 1:22:48"He's bored and sullen. She's half drunk and chatty.
1:22:48 > 1:22:54"They go to his place or the blonde's place, or Arroyo High School, or some place.
1:22:54 > 1:22:58"She shuts him down again or says the wrong thing,
1:22:58 > 1:23:04"or looks at him the wrong way or enrages him with a barely perceptible gesture.
1:23:04 > 1:23:12"You had a seven-hour time span and a geographically localised series of events that resulted in murder.
1:23:12 > 1:23:17"You could extrapolate off the extracted facts and interpret the prelude
1:23:17 > 1:23:20"in an infinite number of ways."
1:23:21 > 1:23:23Yes?
1:23:23 > 1:23:29Since the publication of My Dark Places has there been any developments in your mother's case?
1:23:29 > 1:23:36My Dark Places is the story of my search for the man who killed my mother. It's also my autobiography.
1:23:36 > 1:23:44Bill Stoner and I decided to frame an 85-year-old senile male Caucasian for the murder of my mother...
1:23:45 > 1:23:50..to put the book back on the New York Times' bestseller list.
1:23:50 > 1:23:55We figure we'll get some down-in-the-mouth old wino
1:23:55 > 1:23:58and frame this old cocksucker.
1:23:58 > 1:24:02We'll put some pictures of my mother in his pocket.
1:24:02 > 1:24:05We'll grab him off skid row.
1:24:05 > 1:24:12We'll get him strung out on crack cocaine for a couple of weeks and log the information.
1:24:12 > 1:24:16If God exists, what would you like him to say to you?
1:24:19 > 1:24:22"Welcome, Daddy-O.
1:24:22 > 1:24:27"Here you will get your questions answered.
1:24:27 > 1:24:34"They will be etched in bas-relief. They will be precise. They will be philosophically defined..."
1:24:34 > 1:24:37MICROPHONE SCREECHES
1:24:37 > 1:24:43- "You'll find out who killed the Black Dahlia..." - SCREECHES AGAIN
1:24:43 > 1:24:48"You will be reunited with your mother and the dogs that you loved.
1:24:48 > 1:24:56"If Helen Knode predeceases you, you will find that sex exists in heaven."
1:24:56 > 1:25:00I'll step back, I'll assess this a little bit,
1:25:00 > 1:25:06and then God will say to me, "Thanks, Daddy-O, you worked hard and you tried to tell the truth."
1:25:06 > 1:25:11- Ladies and gentlemen! Yeah! - WHOOPING AND APPLAUSE
1:25:11 > 1:25:18Peepers, prowlers, paederasts, pedants, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps, I thank you.
1:25:34 > 1:25:38"I'm with you now. You ran and hid and I found you.
1:25:38 > 1:25:42"Your secrets were not safe with me.
1:25:42 > 1:25:48"You earned my devotion. You paid for it in public disclosure.
1:25:56 > 1:26:00"I robbed your grave. I revealed you.
1:26:01 > 1:26:06"I showed you in shameful moments. I learned things about you.
1:26:06 > 1:26:11"Everything I learned made me love you more dearly.
1:26:11 > 1:26:17"I'll learn more. I'll follow your tracks and invade your hidden time.
1:26:17 > 1:26:19"I'll uncover your lies.
1:26:19 > 1:26:25"I'll rewrite your history and revise my judgement as your old secrets explode.
1:26:25 > 1:26:30"I will justify it all in the name of the obsessive life you gave me.
1:26:33 > 1:26:36"I can't hear your voice.
1:26:36 > 1:26:39"I can smell you and taste your breath.
1:26:39 > 1:26:43"I can feel you. You're brushing against me.
1:26:43 > 1:26:47"You're gone and I want more of you."
1:27:05 > 1:27:07Yeah!
1:27:19 > 1:27:21I see Ls.
1:27:21 > 1:27:23Nah.
1:27:25 > 1:27:26This...
1:27:26 > 1:27:29Somebody named Smith.
1:27:29 > 1:27:32Sounds like an alias to me.
1:27:32 > 1:27:34Somebody named Smith.
1:27:39 > 1:27:41No.
1:27:43 > 1:27:45T-H...
1:27:45 > 1:27:47I...
1:27:47 > 1:27:49No, it's Hilliker reversed!
1:29:29 > 1:29:35Subtitles by Carolyn Donaldson and Neil Gemmill BBC Scotland - 2001
1:29:35 > 1:29:39E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk