Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

It is also easy (indeed, it is mandatory) for me to love you because I remember things that you do not. I remember the happy, well-controlled, serious, beautiful little boy whom we loved so much. And now love equally, but differently. Only a little difference.

I am enclosing a check for Dorero, for the six-month period from July through December. Wish it could be more. Try to find ways to give to her--a bit of money, a bit of time, and love, much love. Remember--it was she who responded to the gleam. If she had not. . .

Dorero asked me to send her another enlargement (I brought one to her before inI974) of her wonderful photo by Man Ray. I have had this copied, and will send it soon. If you want a print, I'll make one for you too. And for Mike and Kelv, if they do not have them and want them.

Congratulations on your work in the case of Charles Wagenheim and Stephanie Boone. There must be an enigma inside a mystery there, too.

Hope to be out your way one of these days soon. I am interested to know what you plan to do after three years. Your life may just be beginning then.

Give my love to all!

Always,

Dad

There it was. Latent in a twenty-year-old letter was hidden Father's automatic and unconscious response to my reference to the Wagenheim investigation, which involved my informing him, briefly, about a man, a woman, and a murder in Hollywood. In the letter, from within the context of my investigation, I could see how his mind unconsciously responded to its unique and individual programming after I filtered the keywords 'enigma inside a mystery.' 'Congratulations,' he'd written, 'on your work in the case of Charles Wagenheim and Stephanie Boone. There must be an enigma inside a mystery there, too [my emphasis].'

Father's response had no significance to me then, other than the obvious reference to unraveling a murder mystery, but with what I have since discovered, the 'too' took on a great significance. What other case might my father have been comparing the Wagenheim murder to? I believe he was making an unconscious reference to the Black Dahlia case, not because Will Fowler would use that same quote ten years later, but because the Black Dahlia case had remained a mystery over the years and was still in my father's mind. I think he gave himself away, but I had no way to appreciate that reference. Now I do.

In July 2001, I discovered what I believe to be the actual linkage and original source of Father's riddle-and- enigma quote, and again the path led directly back to Man Ray. The source for the quote actually predated Churchill's use by some nineteen years and related to a controversial and provocative 1929 photograph created by Man Ray entitled The Riddle, or The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse (exhibit 38).

Exhibit 38

The Riddle, or The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse

The photo depicts an object or objects wrapped in a carpet and tied with rope. After photographing the unknown subjects, Man Ray left it up to the beholder to figure out what the blanket concealed. Is it a human body, or perhaps something less sinister? Some believe that Man Ray provided a clue to what was hidden inside his 'riddle or enigma.' Man Ray's biographer writes:

At this time, Man Ray was developing an interest in vanguard French literature. The work that perhaps best exemplifies this new influence — and reveals his reliance on the very sources that had been an important literary precedent to dada — is

The Riddle, or The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse,

a photograph of an unidentified object, or objects, wrapped in the folds of a thick carpet, which in turn is tied with rope. Although the entire assemblage was discarded after the photograph was taken, Man Ray wanted the viewer to believe that two rather commonplace objects were hidden under the carpet. The only way a viewer could know what they were, though — and thus solve the riddle — was to have been familiar with the writings of the obscure, though extremely influential, French author Isidore Ducasse, whose pseudonym was the Comte de Lautreamont. . .

By 1920, at least two statements by the French author had attained near legendary status: his observation that, 'Poetry must be made by all, not by one.' And his oft-quoted 'Lovely as the fortuitous encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella.' It was of course, this bizarre, though visually provocative, exemplar of beauty that Man Ray illustrated in

The Riddle.

'When I read Lautreamont,' he later explained, 'I was fascinated by the juxtaposition of unusual objects and works.' Even more important, he was drawn to the count's 'world of complete freedom.'

¹

Man Ray never revealed to anyone the actual objects inside his photograph, leaving it to the viewer to judge these obscure references to a dissecting table, a sewing machine, and an umbrella. With respect to the Dahlia investigation, it is enough to understand this further linkage to Man Ray's use of the quote in the light of Father's statement to me in response to my solving the Wagenheim murder, with his 'there must be an enigma inside a mystery there, too.'

Man Ray's 1920 photograph The Riddle, or The Enigma, which to many people would represent a human body, or body parts, wrapped and bound with rope, becomes the fourth compelling photograph informing the influence Man Ray had on my father and his actions in the Black Dahlia case. Along with Man Ray's other three works of art mentioned above — Les Amoureux, The Minotaur; and Juliet in SilkStocking — they reveal the vivid images that will later turn up throughout the Black Dahlia case. In fact, the Man Ray images themselves help to unwrap the mystery of the case, which has been my father's riddle-and-enigma to the world for over fifty years.

For my purposes, one of the most telling portraits Man Ray photographed was the one of my father and a statue of the deity Yamantaka (exhibit 39), which probably sums up their relationship to each other and to their private sexual fantasies.^†

Exhibit 39