My good friend Clarissa loves to read —politics, history, crime — and draw connections. In my head, there’s a parallel universe and timeline where she’s a super detective with fantastically set up and connected corkboard of photographs, push pins, yarns, string, maps and newspaper clipping. In this universe, she’s a filmmaker and cinematographer. Over dinner back in 2019, she told me about an eight-episode podcast called “The Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia” and of the Philippine angle.
There’s a lot of sad, fascinating, compelling, creepy and traumatic material in the podcast—but it also contains a story of a family trying heal, look forward and step out into the light and away from such a dark and sinister legacy. “The Root of Evil” singles out the wealthy and connected Dr. George Hodel of Los Angeles, California as the one who murdered 23-year-old Elizabeth Short a.k.a. The Black Dahlia in 1947.
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