Childhood Shadows

The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder

by Mary Pacios


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Softcover
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$13.95
Softcover
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Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 7/17/2000

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 5x8
Page Count : 424
ISBN : 9781585004843

About the Book

Electronic Distribution Date: February 2007

Printed & Bound Distribution Date: February 2007

This updated version of Childhood Shadows, a book first published in 1999, adds new details to a compelling account of the Black Dahlia murder—one of Hollywood’s most infamous unsolved crimes. Combining personal experience as a close friend of the victim, Elizabeth Short, with in-depth research, Childhood Shadows brings a unique perspective and opens up an intriguing new area of speculation about who the killer may be.

Author Mary Pacios sets the stage by recreating the neighborhood she shared with Elizabeth “Bette” Short during the years of the Great Depression and World War II. The war ends, but instead of peace, the horrendous murder of the young and beautiful Elizabeth Short send shock waves through the nation. Years later, haunted by the unsolved murder of her childhood friend, Pacios sets out to discover the true circumstances surrounding her friend’s brutal death. Because of her personal relationship with the victim, Pacios gains access to officials close to the case who discuss with her unpublicized details of the murxder and their own privately held theories of who killed the woman known as the Black Dahlia. The research Pacios expects to last only a few months turns into a strange twenty-year odyssey that explodes many of the myths surrounding the victim and her murder.

Appendices include photographs, official documents, synopses of the various suspects and an extensive annotated bibliography. .


About the Author

Mary Adeline Pacios, born and raised in Medford, Massachusetts, was a neighbor and friend of murder victim Elizabeth Short for ten years. Pacios' personal connection to Elizabeth Short has enabled her to focus with remarkable insight into the life, as well as the sensational death, of one of the most publicized and puzzled-over victims of the 20th century.

Pacios, an accomplished artist and writer with a special interest in urban affairs and history, has written and edited essays, reports, and technical papers dealing with environmental issues, social change, contemporary printmaking, African art, and German Expressionism. For a U.S. edition, Ms. Pacios 'translated' The Complete Manual of Relief Printing (Dorling Kindersley, 1988) from British English to American English. She also edited the hilarious autobiography of underground filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar, Reflections from a Cinematic Cesspool.

Pacios, a prize-winning painter and printmaker with an extensive international exhibition record, has lectured and demonstrated her printmaking techniques on college campuses. Her art work, has been shown in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and is included in prestigious public and private art collections. As an artist, she brings to this reconsideration of an infamous crime an unusual aptitude for detailed appraisal.