Steve Hodel was an LA homicide detective for 20 years. In his first book, published about five years ago, The Black Dahlia Avenger, Hodel names his father, George Hill Hodel, as the killer. In this most recent book, Most Evil: The Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hodel, Steve Hodel names his father as the Chicago Lipstick Killer and as Zodiac, the infamous (and never caught) San Francisco serial killer of the 1960s and 1970s.

Oh but wait there's more: Dr. George Hodel was indeed and in fact a prime suspect in the BDA investigation. He was a surgeon. The Lipstick Killer murders and the BDA murder involved a hemicorporectomy -- i.e., the bisection of a human body performed by cutting between the second and third lumbar vertebrae -- an extremely rare procedure, the use of which heralded a killer of at least moderate medical training.

And then there's the signal fact that the bisection and mutilation of Elizabeth Short's (i.e., the BD herself) body conformed to many Surrealist paintings and sculptures of the time (conformed in way too many particulars to here narrate), not least of which is Man Ray's famous "Minotaur" photograph. For those who haven't seen this photo, google it; and for those who won't, can't or don't want to google it, imagine a chiaroscuro photograph of a nude female torso, arms raised to the squares so as to form the minotaur's horns, the breasts slightly obscured in shadow so to form the minotaur's crazed and protuberant eyes, the abdomen covered entirely in shadow so as to resemble the minotaur's black mouth rounded in horror, darkened in blood. For anyone who has seen the BDA crime scene photo of E. Short's posed upper torso, and who has seen or can imagine the "Minotaur -- the idea is ridiculous that Short's murderer wasn't in some way paying twisted homage to Man Ray. (For anyone who cares to learn more about the connection between BD's murder and Surrealist Art, the book "Exquisite Corpse" is highly recommend). The kicker here is that George Hodel and Man Ray were dear, dear friends.

The Zodiac murders don't really resemble either the Lipstick or BD murders, except that the locations of the Zodiac murders form the coordinates of a sick map that points (by way of certain street signs) rather suggestively to both LA and Chicago.

All of which is to say, as ridiculous as Hodel's assertion and my description of the assertion may sound, the idea of someone using murder as a kind of canvas or typewriter, murder as the medium of art, that idea becomes harder and harder to dismiss, the more Hodel piles on the coincidences. Least of which, is the surrealist manifesto that their art is meant to combine with irreality of dreams with the drab reality of life. And if so, why must so many dreams be nightmares? ( )