Getting Away With Murder

L. A.’s most well-known unsolved murders are, often, only as notorious as the local media have made them. The brutality of the killing, the beauty of the victim, a mob connection--all seem to help raise the crime to a mass-cultural obsession. We asked Marvin J. Wolf, co-author of “Fallen Angels: Chronicles of L.A. Crime and Mystery,” and John Gilmore, author of “Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder,” for their most confounding high-profile cases of the century.

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Jose Diaz: The 21-year-old was fatally beaten Aug. 1, 1942, during a fight at a party in an East Los Angeles area known as Sleepy Lagoon. Twenty-four Latino youths were initially indicted in the murder, and prosecutors cited the defendants’ zoot suits and haircuts as proof of guilt. Twelve were convicted. But liberal Los Angeles rallied around them and an appeals court overturned the convictions 18 months later. The question remains: Who killed Jose Diaz?

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Elizabeth Short: A housewife pushing a baby stroller discovered Short’s mutilated body in a vacant lot on 39th Street and Norton Avenue in January 1947. Her aimless life as a struggling actress in postwar L.A. became fodder for reams of newsprint. Though Gilmore’s book explores some strong connections between Short, nicknamed the Black Dahlia, and a drifter who later died in a hotel fire, no one was ever convicted.

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Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel: On June 20, 1947, four shots tore through a window of his mistress’s Beverly Hills home on 810 Linden Drive, killing the mobster instantly. Rumors of mob hits, gambling debts and love triangles circulated. Who shot him?

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Karyn Kupcinet: The 22-year-old daughter of Chicago Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet was pursuing an acting career in L.A. when she was strangled in her Sweetzer Avenue apartment in November 1963. Who killed her?

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Marina Habe: During Christmas break in 1968, the daughter of well-known German novelist Hans Habe was abducted from in front of her West Hollywood home. Her body was later found off Mulholland Drive. Who did it?