WESTMINSTER, Calif. -- With a mix of skepticism and morbid facination, more than a dozen volunteers armed with shovels Saturday dug up a vacant lot in search of clues to the infamous Black Dahlia murder.
By late in the afternoon, the volunteers came up with two small claw hammers, a knife, and a dog's skeleton.
Police said tests would be performed on a few of the more odd-looking bones to make sure they aren't human.
The excavation was prompted by claims made by Janice Knowlton, 53, who once lived in a house on the lot and, after repressing horrifying memories for years, now says she witnessed her father kill two women in the family garage in 1947.
Knowlton, who now lives in Anaheim, believes at least one of the victims was buried in the garage's dirt-floor.
Nearly two dozen area residents and other curious onlookers were on hand Saturday as the volunteers -- a team of current and former students and colleagues of Cal State Fullerton forensic anthropology professor Judy Suchey -- arrived to the site about 7 a.m., Lt. Larry Woessner said.
The search was organized despite police doubts that any evidence of the Black Dahlia murder -- one of the most sensational and gruesome in Hollywood history -- would be uncovered.
'We have a lot of people offering up their father and various relatives as the Black Dahlia killer,' Los Angeles Police Detective John P. St. John said. 'The things that she (Knowlton) is saying are not consistent with the facts of the case.'
In any case, the search Saturday also focused on the possibility that another woman's body was buried at the site some 30 miles south of Los Angeles.
The volunteers concentrated on a 15-foot-square area and dug down about six feet. Knowlton's former residence was razed four years ago to make way for a commercial development and remains vacant.
As she recalled the alleged crimes during therapy, Knowlton went to a library and researched murders that occurred around the time of her 10th birthday, in January of 1947.
What she found, she says, are startling similarities between what she witnessed and the gruesome slaying of Black Dahlia victim Elizabeth Short.
Dubbed the Black Dahlia because of her black hair and her penchant for tight-fitting black dresses, Short, 22, was discovered nude in an empty lot in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles Jan. 15, 1947.
Short, who lived on the fringes of Hollywood and with a reputation for an array of sexual encounters, had been tortured and mutilated, with her internal organs removed and her body drained of blood. In a final act of cruelty, the killer carved an ear-to-ear grin on her face.
Her murder remains unsolved.
Knowlton claims she watched her late father, George A. Knowlton, use an electric saw to sever a woman's body in the garage.
George Knowlton threatened to kill his daughter if she told anyone, Janice Knowlton has told police.
'I'll get something out of it (the dig) because there is a certain satisfaction in being believed,' Knowlton said Saturday.
George Knowlton was believed killed in a 1962 car accident in Oklahoma while visiting relatives. But the victim was burned so badly that positive identification was never made.
Janice Knowlton, who sought therapy because of sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father when she was a young girl, says she now lives in fear that her father will resurface, believing he may have faked his own death.
