Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

brother, that it wasn't you: our father was incapable of loving anyone. To my two sons and to all future generations of our family, I say: Wear the Hodel name with courage and pride. Trust in your own inner guidance, and know that right motive, followed by right action, is the key to finding happiness and understanding life's mysteries. To my Filipino brother and sisters, Teresa, Diane, Mark, and their mother, Hortensia: while our contacts have been few, and our estrangements many, yet we are united through a common destiny

To the wronged dead, and the many heroes and heroines in our story, my posthumous gratitude to you all. To LAPD Sergeant Charles Stoker: Thank you, Officer. Though it cost you everything — your name, your profession, and your peace — you single-handedly stood up and spoke out against the many abuses and corruptions of your day. Thanks too to the 1949 renegade grand jury and its foreman, Harry Lawson, for their brave stand against the corrupt politics of the time. Like Stoker, they saw and knew the truth, but were also branded and silenced.

Also to be acknowledged is the Fourth Estate, with its many voices, such as city editors James Richardson and Agness Underwood, whose bold editorials fought for the truth in hopes of protecting the public interest. Thanks too to the press's many unnamed reporters, whose relentless investigative prying and searching would eventually assist in the ultimate solutions, by documenting many of the connecting links to the serial killings. History has many such unsung heroes, men and women who were never, and never will be, recognized for the important roles they played in serving as guides to future truths.

Every now and then, something does come forward and present itself as a curiosity. It may be something as simple and unsuspecting as a fifty-year-old photograph. A two-by-three photo in a private family album. A never-seen or long-forgotten picture of an attractive young woman with raven hair and a natural innocence, waiting for some mental dust to fall upon the silver plate that hides her face, which then raises the picture's latent, dormant potential and reveals it to be a thoughtprint. A thoughtprint, containing the answer to a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

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