Solving the Black Dahlia Audible, 2022

In 1947, a young woman named Elizabeth Short was murdered in Los Angeles. The killer bisected her body and placed it on the side of a busy street six miles southwest of downtown. The LAPD questioned an endless line of suspects, some of whom claimed to be the killer. But none proved to know certain critical details about the crime scene. Desperate for a lead, a rogue LAPD team even kidnapped a suspect from Florida and interrogated him to no avail. Police could not identify the killer.

Fast forward 75 years.

Former CIA case officer Douglas Laux boards a bus in Los Angeles for the Black Dahlia tour. Doug, in his early 30s, is whisked to locations around LA related to Elizabeth Short’s murder. He knows virtually nothing about her case. He also isn’t sure why Short’s identity and name have been replaced by a mostly fictional Hollywood narrative of a tragic ingenue called the Black Dahlia who was murdered after visiting the Biltmore Hotel. But the fact that an unsolved murder from 1947 is still popular enough to support its own bus tour tells him there may be a lot of conflicting history to uncover. He’s surprised to discover that there are still many passionately argued different theories about who killed Elizabeth Short. But only one theory can be right, or they are all wrong. Doug decides to find out.

Like many before him, Doug becomes fixated on the case. For eight years he leverages his CIA skillset to try and solve the Black Dahlia murder. Now, he believes he has.

Creator and Executive Producer (both with Douglas Laux and Heather Miller)