Marilyn Monroe, the Black Dahlia, prostitution and the Internet
We have begun to take the Internet for granted. I’ve been trying to think back to when I was in high school (which isn’t really ALL that long ago) when the Internet wasn’t as fast…actually, the Internet access wasn’t as fast, I guess the Internet can’t really change speeds, just the way we connect to it…and the Internet wasn’t as accessible. I know there are millions of people in this country who probably have no idea all of the potential of the Internet and all of the uses it has. My parents certainly don’t. They don’t even have a computer and when they come to visit to look up vacation plans they have no idea what they are doing. It’s rather odd, actually. I can see the generation gap so plainly. Even in kids today I see a generation gap forming between my techno savvy self and them. They know more about programming than I ever did at their age. Of course, give me the old school “turtle” and I could run loops around them. But who wants to know how to make a little green triangle on a black computer screen “go home.” Even when I was learning about the “turtle” technology, it was slightly behind its time. I remember my first computer game was a damn text adventure on the Apple IIGS. I thought it was amazing.
Another item occupying my busy mind today is inspired by a book I am almost finished reading called, “Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer.” As a person could probably determine, I am fascinated by the minds of serial killers. Actually, I’m fascinated by minds in general and what makes people do what they do…such as when that six-year-old kid punched me in the face the other day and called me a “White pussy cracker” ever since I have been trying to figure out what his home life is like and if he has a concept of what exactly he is saying or if it is just an echo, I know he isn’t really angry at me because when the other kids ganged up on him he wanted to hide behind me-I digress…My interest in the book led me to discover several interesting things.
Norma Jean a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe was a bisexual prostitute prior to becoming the star she became. From what I understand, many women who headed out to Hollywood ended up as prostitutes, turning tricks until they could get their first film. The theory is that Norma Jean and Beth Short (Beth is the Black Dahlia) teamed up at least once a week back in…I think it was 1946…and performed together.
The LA Public Library has an on-line database where you can look through more than 2.5 million photos. I found more than 80 related to the Black Dahlia case. In comparison, the LAPL only had less than 140 related to the word “riots.” I guess you can only file so many pictures of people setting fires and breaking windows. The link is http://catalog1.lapl.org/a_photo.html
There is also a rather detailed website dedicated to the murder, one that you can get to by clicking on Beth’s picture at the bottom of this entry.
The interesting thing about this book is that true crime novelist Michael Newton with the help of Janice Knowlton writes it. Ms. Knowlton’s father is the one that murdered Beth. Nobody knew this until the 90s when Ms. Knowlton started unlocking childhood memories that she had blocked out. The unlocking of the memories led to this whole book, which revels that her father may very well have been one of our countries first serial killer and went to his grave without anyone ever knowing his secret.
I must warn anyone who plans to delve into the world of the Black Dahlia, it is complicated and addicting. While Ms. Knowlton claims seem to make sense (she claims the Beth was a pedophile and…as I said before…a prostitute) there is a school that believes Ms. Knowlton does not have all of the facts and…perhaps unknowingly…creating false memories. All of this is discussed on the website connected with Beth’s picture below.
