A Reader’s Questions-Setting the Record Straight On Some Black Dahlia Misinformation from A Critic

Hi David:
Yes, happy to answer your questions. FYI, All of your questions have been answered in my books, so let me set the record straight.

Q1: A: I/We never lived in the Franklin House at that age. My father bought it in 1945, and we moved in with my grandfather and his then-wife when I was four. Dad returned from China when I was five, and we lived in the house off and on until 1950, when I was 9 or almost 10.
So, I lived in the house from ages 5-10. We three brothers took many bike trips from the house to Barnsdall Park and spent summer days biking to Ferndell Park, which was about one mile away. Hunt frogs in the creek and play all day at ages Mike 10, Steve 8, and Kelvin 7.

Q2:A: We only lived at the Franklin House after their divorce. My father didn’t own it before then and only moved in on his return from China in 1946. My mother and we three sons lived there at his will off and on until he fled the country and sold the house in 1950. I have never claimed “celebrities” came to the house, only named John Huston (my mother’s ex husband and friend of my father’s) and Man Ray. We boys did witness cocktail parties with many people at the home.

Q3:A: My only source on my father’s IQ score was my mother, who told us three sons, “Your father’s IQ is 186, one point above Albert Einstein’s.” I have no idea where she got that number; I only know that he was one of “Termen’s Termites” as a youth, and the newspapers called him “a genius on several levels.”

Q4:A: If he has my father’s school records, then he got them from my book. I indicated that they show “755 Hours of surgery.” (That equals 94.3 full eight-hour days of practicing nothing but surgery.) Do you think that is enough to learn how to divide a body? Also, documents show he was the sole surgeon at a logging camp after receiving his M.D. and after a year of practicing surgery at San Francisco General Hospital as an intern.

Q5:A: He is either ignorant of the facts or outright misrepresenting the truth of it. I am not going to repost Elizabeth Short’s burn marks here. They are posted in my books, and a highly respected forensic medical doctor has identified them as either cigarette or cigar burn marks. (9 or 10) and I have shown them as distinct from the moles, which are also identified on her back, as is the operation scar. The same photo also shows the ligature marks on her neck, as reported by the LAPD and the Coroner’s Report. Leaving off this torture trauma on their reports is very likely “the secret” they kept from the public to rule out fake confessions and mental cases claiming “to have killed her.” Some of the photos taken at the coroner’s office were taken by the same photographer, “GL,” who had taken them at the crime scene. They bear his initials and the DR (District Reporting) Number and were taken on the bare gurney. The photos of the burn marks were taken separately and show the body turned on its face on a sheet on the gurney. I do not believe LAPD has these photos as they were/are not aware of the burn marks, so I may be the only one in possession of the original burn mark photographs obtained by me from the granddaughter of the original Black Dahlia investigator, Det. Harry Hansen.

Q6:A: Well, your “expert” may have finally gotten one right. He has been “writing a Black Dahlia book” for over two decades now (I have written nine in that time span, which are basically all one ongoing followup investigation), and at his going rate, he will likely finish in another twenty years, which would make me 102, so we can give him that one.

I hope this answers your questions. Best Regards.

Steve