Most Evil: Avenger, Zodiac, and the Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hill Hodel

When veteran LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel discovered that his late father had known the victim in the infamous Black Dahlia murder case in 1947 Los Angeles, the ensuing three-year investigation became the New York Times bestseller Black Dahlia Avenger. Publication led directly to the discovery of a cache of hidden documents, covered up for decades, that confirm George Hodel had long been law enforcement’s number one suspect in Elizabeth Short’s grisly death. A lurid murder mystery that had endured for more than fifty years was finally solved.

But for Steve Hodel, that revelation was only the beginning. With twenty-five years of experience investigating homicides as an LAPD detective, Hodel’s instincts told him that a man capable of bisecting Elizabeth Short’s body, arranging it in a gruesome and public tableau, and taunting the police and the public with notes and phone calls, did not begin or end his killing career with the Black Dahlia. A chance encounter in the wake of Black Dahlia Avenger’s publication led Steve to consider a question as preposterous as it is compelling:

Twenty years after shocking the world in Los Angeles, could Dr. George Hill Hodel have returned to terrorize California as the killer known as Zodiac?