busterIn the Eastern Sierra many have heard of retired Mammoth Police Detective Paul Dostie and his cadaver dog Buster.  Friday night, the greater Los Angeles area met them and heard that Buster may have uncovered clues about the infamous and unsolved 1947 murder of a woman known as the Black Dahlia.

The KNBC 11 o’clock news featured an exclusive story from reporter Patrick Healy.  He told of retired Los Angeles Police Detective Steve Hodel who believes his father, prominent surgeon George Hodel, killed the Black Dahlia in 1947.  Hodel told Channel 4 that he is “wired to search for truth.”  The story went back to a Hollywood mansion where Hodel’s family lived and his suspicion that his father stevehodelkilled 22-year-old Elizabeth Short in that house.

Ten years ago, Hodel wrote a New York Times bestseller called “Black Dahlia Avenger”.  In 2012, he met retired Sergeant Dostie and Buster.  He invited them to the mansion.  The KNBC story showed the two men and Buster who the report said alerted on four different locations in the basement of the mansion and upslope from the home.  The soil in these areas will now be analyzed in a laboratory.  Buster is trained to sniff out human remains.

In the Channel 4 story, Dostie said, “What Buster is pauldostietelling us is that we have a pretty solid decompositional signal.”  Did Buster sniff out the remains of the Black Dahlia?  Lab results will answer that possibility.

KNBC revealed another finding when they said the District Attorney’s office unsealed Black Dahlia files in which a transcript of a recorded bugging of Dr. Hodel’s home said the sound of blows and screams could be heard and that Dr. Hodel said, “Suppose I did kill the Black Dahlia.  They couldn’t prove it now.” Reporter Healy said Dr. Hodel had fled to Asia in 1950.

66 years ago, someone cut Elizabeth Short’s body in half and left her remains on LA streets.  Detective Hodel was 7-years-old at the time.  Friday night he told KNBC that he won’t give up until “the whole world recognizes the truth of this.”

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