“Ghostland” by Colin Dickey, Page 136.
OK, who can spot the mistake in the highlighted passage? (And yes, Dickey is about to invoke the name of Kenneth Anger, who has caused more grief for historians than any other writer). This occurs in a chapter of “Ghostland” that opens with the Black Dahlia at the Biltmore.
San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 10, 1921.
That’s right: Virginia Rappe died in San Francisco.
Now where do you suppose Colin Dickey got the idea that Virginia Rappe died in Los Angeles.
Let’s put on our thinking caps: Black Dahlia … Virginia Rappe …
Could it be?
It is, of course, Steve Hodel’s “Black Dahlia Avenger,” and look at the load of errors we have here. Steve Hodel says that the film industry was connected to the cases of Winnie Ruth Judd, Bugsy Siegel and Caryl Chessman. Seriously?
This is a paragraph that makes my head explode.
Let us catalog the errors:
Caryl Chessman was executed by the state of California even though he never killed anybody.
Winnie Ruth Judd was taken into custody in Los Angeles, but she was tried and convicted in Phoenix, where the killings occurred.
Bugsy Siegel was shot to death in Beverly Hills — and for you out-of-towners and others who are unaware how Los Angeles is put together — it’s a separate jurisdiction with its own police department, which opened an investigation with the involvement of the district attorney’s office and Sheriff’s Department.
And then there is the Fatty Arbuckle case, which occurred in San Francisco.
And so Steve Hodel’s non-facts take on new life in other books. It is amazing to me that an author who can cram so many mistakes into one paragraph is taken seriously by anyone.
Does anyone really do research anymore in our post-factual age? Apparently not Colin Dickey.
