Clearly a labor of love or at least obsession as former police detective and private investigator Steve Hodel investigates the very plausible scenario his father was a diabolically evil and cruel serial killer.
Overall though I think this work could have been condensed. Instead we have what sounds like the full investigation laid bare. I also find it a bit surprising that someone so experienced in the art and science of investigating crimes would use such strong phrases as ‘definitely proves’ to describe how handwriting analysis links his Father at least to the taunting letters sent to the police by the presumed killer. The trouble with such analyses is that investigators submit known samples and the test articles but rarely submit known unrelated controls to see if the graphologists can pick out matches with any sort of accuracy.
While I’m no expert into the criminal mind I would be more convinced if Steve had investigated not only his father’s links to contemporary murders in LA but murders that happened later when his father lived in Hawaii, the Philippians or Japan. Would such a cruel psychopath be able to simply put the genie back in the bottle and stop killing?
Review from Black Dahlia Avenger →