Dark City

27. MURDER: The Black Dahlia Beyond the Headlines - Featuring Steve Hodel Pt 3

• Dark City Productions • Season 1 • Episode 27

Share episode

Los Angeles, CA | We conclude the tragic story of Elizabeth Short's 1947 murder with former LAPD homicide detective and New York Times bestselling author Steve Hodel. We delve into the moment Steve began to suspect his own father, Dr. George Hodel, was a central figure in the murder of Elizabeth Short, and subsequently the evidence he uncovered to substantiate that George was Elizabeth’s murderer. Throughout Steve's investigation, he reveals a complex web of connections linking Dr. Hodel to the art world, the disturbing crime scene, and widespread corruption within the LAPD.  You can see the works of art referenced in this episode by clicking on the linked titles below. NOTE: Viewer Discretion Advised - These links contain graphic and upsetting material related to the Black Dahlia case.
The Lovers by Man Ray
Minotaur by Man Ray
Q - Quarrel by Man Ray
It's Midnight Dr. _____ by William Copley

Steve Hodel is a New York Times bestselling author. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he spent twenty-four years with the LAPD, where, as a homicide detective, he worked on more than three hundred murder cases and achieved one of the highest “solve rates” on the force. His first book, Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder, was a NYT bestseller and was nominated for an MWA Edgar Award in the Best Fact category. Steve’s investigations and nine books, now spanning two decades, have been featured on NBC Dateline, CBS 48 Hours, Court TV, and Bill Kurtis Cold Case Files, CNN Anderson Cooper, and Discovery Channel. In 2019, Steve appeared on The Today Show, as well as Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, where he and other family members discussed the making of the hit podcast Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia Murder. This podcast was the companion piece and true story to the Patty Jenkins/Chris Pine fictionalized six-part miniseries I Am the Night (2009). Steve was not consulted, nor did he participate in the fictional version, but he did provide extensive interviews in the Root of Evil podcast. In 2022, Steve moved to Birch Bay, Washington State, and now resides there.

To read more about Steve’s work, visit his website at stevehodel.com/ and explore his collection of published books at stevehodel.com/books/.

Follow us for episode photos and more at:
📷 Instagram: instagram.com/darkcitypod 
🪡 Threads: threads.net/@darkcitypod 
👤 Facebook: facebook.com/darkcitypod
🦋 Bluesky: darkcitypodcast.bsky.social
🎥 TikTok: tiktok.com/@darkcitypod 
🌎 Website: www.darkcitypodcast.com
✉️ Email:  info@darkcitypodcast.com 

Have ideas or suggestion? We would love to hear from you! Send us a text via this link.

👏 Special thanks to our talented partners:
Paolo Sbrighi for Musical Composition (instagram.com/paulosbrighi/)
Mario Cintra for Logo Design (instagram.com/alacarala/)


Speaker 1:

Hi friends, this is Leah and this is April. Today it's easier than ever to make and publish a podcast, but that also means it's never been harder to stand out, especially as an indie podcast. We absolutely love creating Dark City episodes for you, so to make sure the show is a success, we need your help. Easy ways to do it. Number one rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Number two click that share button and send a link to friends and family you think might also like the show.

Speaker 2:

And number three follow us on social media at Dark City Pod. That's Dark City Pod on Instagram, facebook Threads and TikTok.

Speaker 1:

So remember one rate and review, two, share with family and friends, and three follow us on social media.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Speaker 1:

Hi there, this is Leah and this is April, and this is Dark City Season 1, los Angeles. I love you. Today we are joined by Steve Hodel, former LAPD homicide detective and New York Times bestselling author of the book Black Dahlia Avenger, among many others. Steve, we are really pleased to have you join us because we know we could never tell this part of Elizabeth's short story as well as you could. I haven't read all of your works related to the case yet, but probably at least a thousand pages worth. A vast majority of it was like probably a year and a half ago, and my research into this podcast was a sketch of an idea and I knew I was going to cover the Black Dahlia case. So I am really glad and also a little relieved we have you here.

Speaker 3:

To synthesize, Well, it's great to be with the two of you and I'm looking forward to getting rid of a lot of the stakes we have out there. There's a lot of them and let's see if we can get the record straight here.

Speaker 2:

Yes, Steve. Can you share your background and your path to becoming a homicide detective for the LAPD?

Speaker 3:

Sure April. So basically as a little boy and growing up in my teens I wanted to be a marine biologist. You know, I did a lot of skin diving and in my youth and stuff and I really wanted to go to Scripps in California and be a you know, be a marine biologist. But I joined the Navy at 17. As soon as I turned 17, I had to get my mom's permission and off. I went into the Navy for four years. I was a hospital corpsman, a medic, and did that. I was stationed in the Philippines a couple of years. Amazingly, my dad had gone overseas and was in Manila when I actually went into the Navy. So that was kind of a fortuitous incident that I hadn't planned on. But on liberty I'd get to go to Manila and be the big guy's son, right, just in my white sharkskin suit and play on the roll.

Speaker 3:

And then I did two years with the Seabees Construction Battalion back at Port Hueneme in California and got out and was working at Kaiser Hospital and fell in love with a very attractive Eurasian woman, moved up into the Laurel Canyon in the hills. We had a three-year tumultuous relationship, three years there and she actually talked me into leaving, being an orderly and becoming a cop. So you know, over brunch one morning she said you know, steve, hey, look at the newspaper. They're paying twice your salary at Kaiser Hospital for LAPD. They're hiring. And I said LAPD, cop, you know what? Write tickets. No thanks, oh, jack Webb, you know detective, that might be kind of cool. Anyway, I took the physical and the written test and the psych test and somehow I got through that. And next thing I know I'm going through the academy at LAPD and got a gun and a badge and this 21-year-old is telling 65-year-olds how to live their lives on family disputes.

Speaker 3:

Anyway, worked four divisions in patrol in uniform patrol Wilshire, van Nuys, west, la and Hollywood and had five years on the job and had an opportunity to go to detectives, which I did. I transferred in, I went to detectives at Hollywood Division, which is like a precinct in LA, and basically worked all the different tables sex crimes, robbery, burglary, detail and eventually gravitated to homicide where I stayed for the next 17 years 300 murder investigations during that time period. We had the highest solve rate. We had a high solve rate at Hollywood. Not just me, it was a lot of good partners that we're working with and we're very dedicated and very ambitious to solve these crimes, these cold cases Some cold, some hot, mostly hot and basically did that and then retired and by then I had remarried, had two small boys.

Speaker 3:

My years with LAPD were 1963 to 1986. So what? I've been retired 40 years, basically wanted to get out of the mean streets in the 80s, move north, wound up in a middle-sized town called Bellingham, washington, which is about 25 miles south of the border, and I got a job as a defense investigator up there. I'm still living and working in Bellingham. And I got that 2 am phone call and it was my father's wife, june, who says you know, the paramedics are here. Your father's collapsed, had a heart attack. They just pronounced him dead, come down. This was in 1999.

Speaker 1:

and dead come down. This was in 1999. So after your father passed, you'd come across a few things that ultimately put you on this path of investigating his involvement with Elizabeth Short's death. So can you tell us more about that?

Speaker 3:

Basically I'm sitting there with June, his wife of 40 years. She was actually 40 years, his junior, she was younger than me. They'd been married 30 years. They'd been married and living in Asia and traveling all over the world and they relocated back to, came to San Francisco in 1990. I started seeing him. He'd come up and see me, I'd fly down and see him or drive down, and we became in that last decade of his life we became quite close. He was never a warm fuzzy guy but of all he had 11 children by five different women and I was his favorite. Go figure, maybe I was his favorite or maybe not. Maybe he just wanted to keep me close and find out if I knew anything. That would come later in my investigation. So basically to your question, I'm sitting there with June and she comes out and she has a small photo album and she says I think your father would want you to have this. And she gives me this small album, says I think your father would want you to have this. And she gives me this small album and I'm going through it and it's a very small three by five inch. I'm going through it and there are pictures of my mother and my father and my brothers and my grandfather. Then I come across a picture of a dark haired woman, semi-nude, reclining, and I turned to June and I said who is this? She says I don't know, somebody your father knew from a long time ago. And I've got to tell you to this day I don't quite know why Black Dahlia came to mind, but it did, but it just came in and out and I didn't know anything about the case.

Speaker 3:

Really, a day or two later I'm on the phone with my half-sister, tamar, and we're talking about what a great father we had. We're talking about him and his accomplishments. And she says well, you know, he was a suspect in the Black Delia murder. And I said to Tamar what the hell are you talking about, tamar, where is this coming from? Well, she and I had had maybe 20 or 30 minutes conversation in 50 years. She kind of, as a young teen, kind of flipped out, went sex, drugs, rock and roll, and I kind of went a different direction. So we really I got a few calls when she needed bail money and that sort of thing for marijuana or something, but other than that we had no real exchange. And I says Tamara, where is this coming from.

Speaker 3:

She says, well, he didn't do it, but the police that were taking me to court on the trial told me that they thought he had killed the Black Dahlia. I said, well, this is ridiculous. I said you know Dad had his faults ridiculous. I said you know dad had his faults and I knew he's.

Speaker 3:

Of course he had been arrested back in the 40s for having sex with tamar, who was 14 at the time, and, uh, there were actually other adults present during the sex acts, so it was a slam dunk case. But he was actually. He got jerry geisler, who was kind of the johnny cochran of his day top lawyer criminal lawyer defense, who was kind of the Johnny Cochran of his day top lawyer criminal lawyer defense, and he painted Tamar with a pathological liar brush and the jury bought it and he was found not guilty. She says they told me this when they're taking me back and forth to court. I said, well, this is ridiculous. I'll be able to show you it had nothing to do with it. You know, three days with my background experience and I had become I loved my father, I had become quite close in that last decade and I knew he had his faults and he was a womanizer. But you know, at the same time a lot of his positive things kind of balanced it out for me.

Speaker 3:

His extreme intelligence and stuff I set out and I didn't know almost nothing about the Black Dahlia murder. I knew it was a famous LAPD unsolved from the 40s but I was in the 60s, I was moving forward, I had my own stuff to solve. We didn't look back, we looked forward and so I started researching it. I know I had seen photographs of the crime scene when I went through the police academy. It was like an hour class where they showed because it was LA's PV's most famous unsolved. They showed photographs of the crime scene and stuff, but no details or anything, just general stuff.

Speaker 2:

And that was it?

Speaker 3:

It never came up from anybody at any time during my 25 years on the department. So I started researching it. One of the first things that came up in my research was that a surgeon did it a skilled surgeon. It had to have been a skilled surgeon. I thought, well, dad was a doctor and had done surgery, but still, there's no way. So then I'm doing more, and at that time I was still in Washington. I had my girlfriend in LA sending me up photographs and newspaper printings and stuff. And she sends me up this front page and on it it says there's a note and it's handwritten and it says turning myself in on january uh, january 19th I think it was had my fun at the police. Uh, signed black dahlia avenger. And I look at the handwriting and it's my father's handwriting. I mean, you know your parents handwriting, your listeners know their parents' handwriting and I knew Dad's. He had a very unusual block printing cut and this was undisguised and I thought, wait a minute, what's going on here?

Speaker 2:

This can't be, is he pretending to be the suspect.

Speaker 3:

What the hell is going on? So that really started me down the path and I realized I couldn't do an absentee investigation in Bellingham. So I moved, relocated back to Los Angeles. That started my investigation.

Speaker 2:

You conducted a very extensive investigation into Elizabeth Short's murder and you've published multiple books on this topic, ultimately concluding that your father, george Hodel, was Elizabeth's killer. But before we go into that, can you give our audience a good picture of who George was and what type of life he led To?

Speaker 3:

understand this crime and all of its ramifications and crime signatures, which are many, you have to really understand who was George Hodel? So that's a good question. Let me see if I can maybe take five minutes, or don't time me on this, but to see if I can give you a summary of his remarkable life. And a lot of this I didn't know. It would become part of the investigation that I would discover these things.

Speaker 3:

George Hill Hodel was an only child. His parents were Russian Jews. His mother was born in Kiev and his father in Odessa. My grandfather, his father, needed to escape from Russia. It was the turn of the century and they were treated like slaves. Jews were treated like slaves in Russia, so he made this plan to get away. He dressed himself up as a very wealthy young man and the story was going to see his sick grandmother in Poland. He makes it through, gets across the Polish lines, the original name his name was Goldgefter and he just picks up the name Hodel From what I understand it's a relatively common Swiss name Assumes the name George Hodel. Goes on to Paris, france, meets Esther, his wife to be. She is a remarkable woman on her own right, also from Russia. She's a practicing dentist in Paris, france, which is extremely unusual for a woman in 1903. Very unusual, very intelligent. Rumor has it that she's from Russian royalty. I haven't figured that out yet, but her name was Leof.

Speaker 3:

L-E-O-V. Anyway, they fall in love and then they come through Ellis Island. They come out to Los Angeles In 1907, george Jr is born. They have a beautiful home built near South Pasadena. Grandfather lists his occupation as banker. Kind of mysterious where the money's coming from, but they're living in this beautiful home.

Speaker 3:

George is born in 07. By age nine he's a musical prodigy. He's playing his own concerts at the Shrine Auditorium downtown Los Angeles. He then goes to public school. He goes to South Pasadena High School and quickly excels. Not only is he a musical prodigy, he is exceptionally bright. He has an IQ, a tested IQ of 186, one point above Einstein, incidentally. That skips a generation, but my boys are in good shape and anyway he quickly goes through high school. He graduates at age 14.

Speaker 3:

And then there's Caltech in Pasadena, which is kind of like the MIT, I guess, of the West Coast. He's there a year. He has an affair with a. As a teen he has an affair with a professor's wife. She gets pregnant, breaks up her marriage. She goes back east. George, after a year at Caltech, is asked to leave. They hush up the scandal. He goes back east to Massachusetts and says I love you, I want to marry you, I want to be the father of our child. She says, george, you're a child yourself, get out of my life.

Speaker 3:

So he comes back to LA and gets odd jobs. He gets a job as a cab driver, passes himself off at 17. You have to be 21 to get a license. And then he gets a job as a journalist with the LA Record, which was one of the large newspapers of the 1920s, as a reporter, investigative reporter, and at first he's riding around with LAPD Vice and this is during Prohibition. They're knocking on doors, kicking doors in at speakeasies and arresting the judge with the young blonde, that sort of thing. And then he graduates and starts writing on with LAPD homicide and writing these tabloid stories in the newspaper. You know the bloody ace of diamonds next to the body and that sort of thing Starts with his own kind of a surrealist, edgy newspaper called Fantasia.

Speaker 3:

He's also dating, double dating, with a guy named John Houston. Now, that name may not mean anything to you because we're going back a long ways, but John Houston was probably one of the most famous film directors, would become one of the most famous film directors ever. He did the Maltese Falcon. He directed that Treasure of Sierra Madre, african Queen, all sorts of great classic movies.

Speaker 3:

John is dating a woman by the name of Emilia and George is dating a woman by the name of Dorothy. Dorothy fall in love, they take off, go to Greenwich Village and get married and George and Emily look at each other and he says it's you and me, babe. She gets pregnant. They go north, he goes to pre-med, goes across the bay to San Francisco, gets his medical degree, has another affair with another Dorothy, not the original one and she has a child by him. He has another child named Duncan. So he's got the two women. He's got the two children. Duncan and Tamar is the other child.

Speaker 3:

He decides he needs some space, so he leaves the women and the children, goes off and becomes a doctor for a logging camp. He becomes a sole surgeon at a logging camp in Nevada, arizona. Then he becomes a doctor for the Indian reservations, comes back to LA, hires on with the health department, quickly rises to the top, becomes the health officer for the whole city, specializing in venereal disease control. What else, Basically, is the VD czar of LA by 1949, there's a knock on the door Dr Hodel yes, lapd, you're under arrest for incest. They have the trial. They paint this pathological liar brush with Tamar. He's acquitted by a jury.

Speaker 3:

He then leaves the country in 1950, goes on to Hawaii, does a couple of years there. He gets a degree in psychiatry counsels the criminally insane, of course. And in the prisons marries a Filipino woman off to Manila. They have four children in four years. That marriage breaks up and he hooks up with June. He gets into market research, has offices all throughout Asia, becomes a leading expert in market research, does that for 30 years traveling the world, comes back with June and they move into San Francisco high rise. So that's not so quick and dirty life but a remarkable individual in every respect. It's such a shame he could have done so much good for the world.

Speaker 1:

Psychiatrist and how that might've played into or informed some of the things that he did later, Once you got on the path of investigating George. There's so much evidence that you came across along the way, If you could say these were the key points where I felt like these pointed to him as Elizabeth Short's killer.

Speaker 3:

We've mentioned that the suspect was on the short list because he had to have been a surgeon, a skilled surgeon, and that's underscored by all of the research I did, by many of the coroners and different individuals. That said, I couldn't do as good a job as whoever did this. They're a better surgeon than I am, and that was said over and over again. So there's no question that it was a skilled surgeon, somebody skilled in surgery. And then, of course, the handwriting to me was troublesome. That twisted me around a bit. I just couldn't figure out the answer to that. Well, the suspect started sending in a lot of different notes taunting the police, and it became clear to me that one of the main crime signatures of the suspect was a need to be above the fold in the newspapers. He wanted to be in headlines. My first shock, of course, was that this is very probable, that he is the killer of the Black Dahlia. The next thing that kind of turned my head was the fact that when I started getting into these other investigations, I realized that this is a serial killer. It's just not a one-off.

Speaker 3:

The major myths that kind of developed from the original Black Dahlia investigation they were that it was a standalone murder, none before and none after. Clearly it wasn't a standalone and they knew back then that it wasn't a standalone. The detective captain in charge said there was a murder that occurred three weeks after the Black Talia called the Jean French murder, and she was a woman posed on a vacant lot about five miles west of the Dahlia crime scene, nude. Her body was posed because the clothing was posed on top of her, carefully placed on top of her. Her shoes were placed on either side of her. The killer had taken lipstick and written on the body on obscenity F-U-B-D, b-d for black talion, and so back then they were absolutely sure it was the same killer. Well, as I got into the weeds of it, I started finding a whole bunch of lone women murders in a very tight geographical pattern between Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles.

Speaker 2:

It struck us in one of our previous episodes, one of the comments that was made with the newspaper clippings, that the grammar was incorrect in several places. Why do you think he tried to use that bad grammar? Was it to throw off the police? Why did he send in a note with his handwriting versus the newspaper clipping notes?

Speaker 3:

Basically he was taunting the police, he was feigning illiteracy, he was pretending to be illiterate and stuff. But one of the things that they noted back then was the punctuation and everything was perfect. But the slang and a couple of his notes on a couple of the murders it's like a sea movie, I mean. It's like I knew a gangster and he hired me to go to the house. Now the handwriting actually is an interesting point because ultimately I would come to the belief that he was actually going to turn himself in, come to the belief that he was actually going to turn himself in. It's the only one that's not disguised or cut and paste, or you know, he said turning myself on January 29th, have my fun at the police. I think he was actually going to do that. The following note is I've changed my mind. He's going to make them catch me, if you can, type of thing.

Speaker 1:

Why do you think he was going to turn himself in?

Speaker 3:

Well, he said in another note I'll turn myself in if you only give me 10 years. You know, you've got to realize this is a man that is highly, highly intelligent but at the same time very twisted. He's a misogynist of the highest order. He hates women, he hates humanity. In one of the interviews I did with Joe Barrett, who actually was a tenant that lived in our house for a while, that knew dad closely, he had told him because he thought he was going to jail on the incest, it won't be so bad, I can work in the hospital. He probably even believed that if you just give me 10 years, I can do 10 years standing on my head.

Speaker 1:

It seems like maybe he had an inkling that he was on the suspect list and they had potentially really good evidence. That's why he was offering himself up.

Speaker 3:

Surprisingly, I would ultimately come to discover that a lot of people that knew George knew he did it, at least of which was my mother, but none of this would come out. And of course you know it wasn't until we got to the tapes which we're going to talk about in a minute, the secret tape recording. Let me say a couple of things. First of all, la was a very corrupt town. Lapd was a very corrupt department back then. There was graft, there was corruption, there were payoffs and it was a real-life LA, confidential, if you will.

Speaker 3:

Dad was what they called back in those days, a high jingo which was basically an untouchable he knew everything about. Well, he may not have known everything, but he knew a hell of a lot about, especially about the top brass, because he had grown up with them through the 20s and the 30s and the 40s. So he knew he'd ridden around with these guys while they were sergeants and lieutenants and then suddenly they're the district attorney and the chief of detectives, thad Brown. He had a hell of a lot and when he fled the country they couldn't have been happier.

Speaker 1:

Going back to Elizabeth Short. So there were two pictures I remember you published in your first book of what you thought was Elizabeth, I think. One you determined later it wasn't her, it was someone else, so you were left with one that looks like her. But regardless, even if the photographs didn't exist, there was still evidence that he and Elizabeth knew each other. What was that evidence?

Speaker 3:

I put my case together as it was back in 2002. And I go to one of the active head deputy district attorneys, a guy named Stephen Kaye in Los Angeles. I knew him from the old days. I had taken a lot of my murder cases to him, along with a lot of other deals, but I was amazed he was still on the job. So I said, hey, this is all top secret. But here's the deal. And he looks at me with kind of raises his eyebrow, wonders if Steve gone, wacko, you know. And then basically says well, I'll get back to you. So he takes four months. He says based on your evidence, he says I would file on two victims Elizabeth Short, the black dahlia, and Jean French, the red lipstick. He says you're probably right on some of the others, if not all. But he says there's not quite enough there and I have a very high bar for filing. But he says I would file those and I'd win them in court. So with that I noticed Steve Lopez who has a column, a regular column for the LA Times, has for a long time. I guess he's still with them.

Speaker 3:

He was giving a talk at one of the bookstores on his book. So afterwards I go up to him and I said hey, lapd, I used to be LAPD. Here's a book, you know, take a look at it. You know, I think it presents a very strong case that my dad killed Elizabeth Shroth, the Black Talia. He goes to LAPD and says hey, odell, retired homicide guy, says his daddy killed a black guy. Lapd says go away, we don't talk about active cases. Active case, they haven't looked at it 50 years. So he's going to write this. You know, I'll go to the DA. So he goes to Steve Cooley who was the DA at that time. Cooley says well, I'm not spending a dime of taxpayers' money on a 50-year-old case.

Speaker 3:

But you know, there is a box in the vault on the Black Dahlia. Would you like to see that? Yeah. So they go down, open the vault. He gives them the box, lopez goes upstairs, sits down in a room, opens up the file, out falls a picture of Dr George Hill Hodel Whoa. He was a suspect in Medallia. He basically does a quick run through, writes a couple of articles for the newspaper on my investigation and that really kind of starts the ball going.

Speaker 3:

What he discovered was probably the turning point in the whole investigation he went through and he says I found there were some transcripts of tapes that were conducted. They went out and they bugged Dr Hodel's residence, which is this iconic southern house in Hollywood which is a Mayan temple. They picked up George, took him into downtown Hall of Justice and held him there. They went in and put micro not phone bugs. They actually put microphones in the walls of the bedroom and the living room. 18 detectives, 24-7, around the clock for six weeks, recording everything. And these recordings, these transcripts, are not the actual. And these recordings, these transcripts, are not the actual. You know, they're summaries of what was recorded and they refer you to the reels. Well, all the reels would disappear. They were destroyed. I go down to Cooley and I say, can I see the reports? He says well, I let him. I guess.

Speaker 3:

I got to let you. I sit down, I spend the whole day copying everything that's related to dad and I go back and for the next three or four months I analyze it, go through. It Turns out that basically they destroyed the tapes. The DA had taken over the investigation from LAPD because the grand jury suspected LAPD was corrupt and they were hiding things and they were involved in the cover up and stuff. So they had the DA's office do it. The DA at the time, simpson, ordered his lieutenant Jemison to turn everything back to Thad Brown, chief of detectives, tape recordings, everything and close it down and not speak another word of it. So Jemison did that. Everything was turned over back to Thad Brown.

Speaker 3:

Well, lapd to this had no idea of any of this. They never even heard the name George O'Dell, other than Thad Brown. Of course, clearly he got rid of the tapes. He got rid of everything that was related to. Clearly he got rid of the tapes, he got rid of everything that was related to. But what he didn't know and what Jemison, lieutenant Jemison did was he kept a second set of books and he locked them away in the DA's office. So when I went down to talk about dad stuff, today's LAPD had no knowledge of George Hodel. He didn't exist and the only reason we got it was thanks to this Lieutenant Jemison locking away the second Hodel. He didn't exist and the only reason we got it was thanks to this Lieutenant Jefferson locking away the second Hodel file.

Speaker 3:

I'll read you some of those statements. Now, this was only on the third day of the recording and it went on for six weeks. This is Dr George Hill Hodel. Verbatim excerpts from the DA LAPD Black Dahlia Task Force audio surveillance tapes at the Hodel residence, february, march 1950. And he's talking to another guy who I identify as a baron Haringa, who was a friend of his, and he says this is the best payoff I've seen between law enforcement agencies. You'd not have the right connections made in the DA's office. Don't confess ever.

Speaker 3:

He goes on to say supposing I did kill the Black Dahlia, they couldn't prove it. Now they can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead and they investigated him the year before for overdoses, suspected overdose of his secretary. She was going to inform on him and he overdosed her. And then he goes on to say the FBI were over to see me three weeks ago. Another statement Well, anyway, she hasn't said she committed incest or killed the Black Dahlia. Don't say anything on the phone, it's tapped. I'll have to get your phone number and have to go out and call you. So he suspected the phone was tapped, but he had no clue that he was wired for sound. They're probably watching me. Do you think we could hire some girls to find out what they're doing?

Speaker 3:

Then Hodel talked to a woman about his downtown clinic. Women mentions having a career, but in 1944, that was the same as an abortion. Hodel tells her he's done lots of them at the clinic. He mentions Black Dahlia Passport. Please have a picture of me in that. I thought I had destroyed all of them. So then the last one talks about his secretary killing his secretary. Put a pillow over her head and covered her with a blanket. Got a taxi called George's, receiving hospital right away. Expired at 1239. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary and she was going to inform on him. Ruth Spalding was her name.

Speaker 1:

Ruth Spalding. So she knew so much, I'm sure, as the secretary Was she going to inform too on. Wasn't he part of an abortion racket as well?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there was a whole abortion ring of doctors. Each was paying whatever, let's say 500 a month, and that kept them from getting arrested. And there was, however many, 20. So it was a sizable amount of money which was being split up. This was going to the vice cops, lapd, and it was protection money and so they didn't have to worry about getting arrested.

Speaker 3:

And he was one of those one of the many, yeah, but there were also other things he was cheating. We learned from a letter that I printed in one of the many, yeah, but there were also other things he was cheating. We learned from a letter that I printed in one of the later editions that she was going to inform on him cheating on his patients, that he was overcharging them, he was misdiagnosing them. In this one case, we have a letter from a woman back east I think she was, who had been treated by him and misdiagnosed. He told her she had venereal disease and she didn't. He was into a lot of shady stuff and, like I say, he was an untouchable. The truth is that LAPD was glad that he split.

Speaker 1:

What was the one event that happened? And then, all of a sudden, he was just gone.

Speaker 3:

There's still taping in March. Now I think he left in March in the middle of the taping, I don't think, because it ends abruptly. There's no clean ending to it and there's a lot of reports we don't have. Of course I would explain that One of the biggies to my mind and this is one of the many reasons why they didn't prosecute him was on day three of the recordings. I'm reading this and I can't quite believe what I'm reading.

Speaker 3:

I'm reading the transcript and it says George and the Baron go downstairs to the basement. An object is heard striking. A woman screams. An object is heard striking again, a woman screams again. And I'm reading this and I'm saying what the hell? They're six minutes away at Hollywood Station in the basement listening. Why aren't they out the door? They're only five minutes away and do a rescue. I mean, if it's not a murder, it's a serious felony assault. Rescue, I mean, if it's not a murder, it's a serious felony assault. And before that we upstairs, we hear her she'd been drugged and we hear her trying to phone for help and dropping the receiver and stuff. So she, you know, then she passes out and they take her to the basement.

Speaker 3:

Either a serious felony assault occurred, or a murder, which I believe the latter occurred occurred, or a murder, which I believe the latter occurred, and of course they do nothing and to this day I can't explain why they did nothing, other than they may have the two detectives that were sitting in the basement may have thought well, what do we do? This is only day three of the investigation. We don't want to blow the cover. Maybe they called Lieutenant Jemison and he wasn't available and they said well, it's all quiet now. Maybe he's into kinky sex, so maybe that's what it was. For whatever reasons, they did nothing, stupidly or unintentionally, but we'll never know that.

Speaker 3:

The recording's going on for quite some time, with all these other statements he left. I think he left about in March, at least temporarily. He would have probably come back to sell the house, to get money to pay his attorneys and stuff Returned regularly. Once he got into the market researching in Asia and became the leading expert, he would come back multiple times every year. But it would be two or three days in San Francisco, two or three days. I'd get a phone call in the middle of the night and he'd say hello, stephen, this is your father speaking. Get your brothers together and meet me for lunch tomorrow. I've only got a few hours and that was kind of the way he did things.

Speaker 3:

Another huge point is Steve Hodel didn't solve this. This is not Steve Hodel's theory. Lapd solved it way back then. They solved it. They identified George Hodel. They just didn't arrest him and clear it. Let me read you a couple of the top brass's statements proving this. This is Chief Parker, who was our most famous police chief back then. He was my chief for three years. He says quote we identified the Black Dahlia. This is not public, this is all between themselves. We identified the Black Dahlia suspect. He was a doctor, says Parker. Thad Brown says a Black Dahlia case was solved. He was a doctor who lived on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. Now, maybe that's another doctor who lived on Franklin, but I don't think so. Lieutenant Jemison, we know who the Black Dahlia killer was. He was a doctor, but we didn't have enough to put him away. Yeah, they did. No-transcript.

Speaker 1:

Can you talk to me about? There was Glenn Martin, the letter that was found 70 years. Can you tell the story of that?

Speaker 3:

I got an email from the granddaughter of a man who had passed on and she contacted me because she was aware of my black-tie investigation. And she said my grandfather was a man by the name of Glenn Martin. He was a paid undercover informant for LAPD back in the 40s. He was basically working with LAPD to identify corrupt men who were on the take and that sort of thing men who were on the take and that sort of thing. He died, I think in the 60s. And she said I was going through my grandmother's things. She said I found a letter and it said open only in case of emergency or the death of. And then he names his two daughters. So she says I opened it up, I wanted to send it to you because he talks about your father and knowing that he killed Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, I published the entire letter in my books.

Speaker 3:

He knew George on a personal level. He doesn't say how they originally met and now he says GH. He doesn't ever really say George Hodel, but he says GH. But you can draw your own conclusions on that. And he went on to say LAPD pays me, I'm hired to work undercover and to come up with trying to get dirty cops and stuff. He says George was picked up by LAPD, taken in and grilled and he's I'm afraid that, as was my daughter who knew George. He says I'm afraid that George is going to harm my daughter, one of my daughters, because he's mad at me. And he said I'm writing this letter and I'm sealing it and it's only to be opened in case something happens to one of my daughters. Well, nothing happened to either daughter, so it was never opened and it was never turned over to authorities. It lay there in that trunk for 60 years, 70 years, until she got it to me.

Speaker 3:

I reprinted the whole letter and it's very, very convincing. There's no doubt in my mind. And this of course, none of this was mentioned by LAPD to the DA okay, because this is in June of 49, and they didn't start the DA investigation until 50,. The tape recording stuff until 50. So none of this was ever mentioned and Jemison was not aware of any of this. He was never clued in. So it was a huge, huge find on her part. And again, it's just more and more corroboration. Then, of course, we have the physical evidence the cement sacks. Okay, it's just more and more corroboration. And of course we have the physical evidence the cement sacks.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's talk about that, the home where you grew up. I feel like, before we go into the physical evidence you found related, I feel like this house is almost its own character in the story, so can you just describe it a little bit like what it looked like, how it was organized?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, Well, I mean, it's a very famous, iconic home in Hollywood. It was Frank Lloyd Wright was a famous architect, probably the most famous American architect. His son was Lloyd Wright, frank Lloyd Wright Jr, and he was also a very well-known architect. There's a church out on the Palos Verdes you may be familiar with. I think it's called the Wayfarer's Chapel or something out on that was built by Lloyd Wright.

Speaker 1:

Oh, okay, you know it's being relocated too because of all of the issues they're having with um oh the land yeah, it's a big mess.

Speaker 3:

Anyway, he was very famous, did a lot of very famous homes. Well, he did this. He built this home 26 for john soudan, who was a movie guy somehow connected in the films. I think he was a stage uh involved in stage design or something. He he had this built at the northwest corner of Franklin and Normandy basically, and it literally is a Mayan temple. I mean, you look at it, it looks like right out of a stage set and you walk up the steps and you walk in and you go through this dark corner corner and you make a turn. Have you ever been in it?

Speaker 1:

No, I went by and I went to go take a picture of it. Oh gosh Again, this was when I was just roughly researching the season and it's so funny Someone was there taking a picture of it already, Like a random Tuesday in between meetings or something like that. It's quite popular.

Speaker 2:

I think I've seen it on TV too. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

The series I am the night, which is loosely, loosely, if at all, really based on this. So I guess the cast, though they filmed a little bit in there and they all said it has a vibe to it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you're familiar with LA, confidential, the movie yes, okay, you're familiar with LA, confidential, the movie yes, okay, well, that's also. They also have a couple of short scenes. Oh, it's where the girls are dancing with the tricks, the Johns dancing in there, that's in the living room, oh my gosh. And then when the sergeant gets shot, the captain, that's actually in the kitchen. Before it was remodeled, that was taken from a small kitchen and they've done other films. And Aviator, there's a big scene in there where he gets in an argument with the actress I forget, girlfriend actress and they're throwing stuff at each other in the living room. Oh yeah, a very iconic home. Dad bought it in 45 to go along with you know. He is now at the top of LA County Health Department, as the VDs are, and he wanted a home befitting his prestige and we all move in and so it's like we're the three little princes I'm one of my, so I'm four years old, my brother's six and my other brother's three. So we all move into the home with mom, and now he's divorced from her at this time. So we're kind of living there at his pleasure and we don't stay there the full from night till he leaves. He sells it in 1950. We're not there the full time, we're kind of in and out, but a lot of time there.

Speaker 3:

I love the place. I mean there was no darkness to it at all. For me as a child it was all fantasy land and dad would have a lot of cocktail parties and we'd climb up on the roof, my brothers and I, and we'd watch. And it wasn't some of these myths of sex everywhere. It wasn't that at all. It was cocktail parties, you know, where a lot of interesting people, a lot of film people would come and drink and have a good time. Now, I'm not saying there wasn't a little hanky-panky going on in some of the rooms, I don't know, but it wasn't as some people portray it as a gangbang-type thing in the courtyard and it's very different from what it is today. There was no pool. The whole center courtyard was solid and a small pond at one end. We loved it.

Speaker 3:

And then, of course, there was this mysterious hidden. Everybody says it was a sliding door that led down to the basement. Well, that's not true. It was simply just a closet, you know, a fairly small closet. You did slide the bookcases open, oh, cool, yeah, and there was a closet, maybe three feet wide by 10 feet long, and it's where they. It was built during Prohibition, so it was where they stored the booze and that's it. You know, but it was none of this as depicted on what's the name of the film you just mentioned, with Chris Pine.

Speaker 1:

I am the night.

Speaker 3:

Basically it was, you know, fun time. And then you know, in 1949, when dad's arrested, suddenly mom grabs those three kids and says we're out of here. Actually, we were put in military school for a short time and then we moved up. She got us and we moved on out to Rancho Mirage, which was just a little dust bowl town. At that time it was nothing like this today. So I have nothing but fond memories and I've been back a number of times for interviews and doing 48 hours and court TV and different things. And I obviously have a bit of a different feeling now because I'm absolutely convinced that that was the crime scene where he was murdered.

Speaker 1:

Can you talk about the evidence that you found that it was?

Speaker 3:

I find out that there's a Frank Lloyd Wright Jr Lloyd Wright file at UCLA Archives. I go out there and you go down into the basement, you put on your white gloves, you go in and they bring you the file and they let you go through it. Much to my surprise, within the Lloyd Wright file there's a Dr George Hill Hodel file Whoa. So I open that up and it's receipts for cement and manure fertilizer, receipts for several hundred dollars of landscaping materials which is a lot of money back then, based on the price, I determined these are the large.

Speaker 3:

These cement bags are the large, large bags. And of course I know that at the crime scene there were large bags to transport the body from a residence to the crime scene. And she was posed and the bags were just thrown nearby, just within a few feet. I look at the date on the receipt and it's January 10, 1947. It was just five days before the bodies posed down there. So they did the cement work at the house and they left the empty bags there. So they did the cement work at the house and they left the empty bags there.

Speaker 3:

So, dad, simply, after he bisects the body surgically, washes it clean in the bathtub, pats it dry, replaces each half on separate bags, probably to not get his car bloody or dirty or whatever, Then transports the car and the body parts to the crime scene, carefully, poses the body in what I call the minotaur position, where she's laying on her back hands above her head in a surrender-type position and the lower half is juxtaposed. Well, this is reminiscent of a painting, a famous painting that Mavray did called the Minotaur, and the Minotaur was the mascot of the surrealists. And there's another one he did called Le Amoureux, which is the lovers, and it's red lips from horizon to horizon with an observatory in the background. Her mouth was cut from ear to horizon, with an observatory in the background. Her mouth was cut from ear to ear and it was. Everybody says it was a jet.

Speaker 3:

You look at the photograph of the autopsy. It looks all jagged but actually that's not the case. It was carefully rounded. But what created the jagged look was when they sutured the mouth shut at the coroner's office. It created this distortion. But actually when you see the crime scene photos which I have, it's carefully rounded surgically with a scalpel. So that was my initial first two clues was okay, george is paying homage to his friend man Ray by posing, and these were artworks that were done much earlier. They weren't done at that same time. They were done, I think, in the 30s or 20s. I'm saying he's paying homage to man Ray on those two. They were friends. Man Ray and George and William Copley were friends from 1943 probably, or 42 or 43 until 1950 when Dad split.

Speaker 2:

Do you think that man Ray realized that Elizabeth was posed kind of and inspired by that artwork?

Speaker 3:

I do. I do believe that man Ray well, we certainly know it because in his later writings he actually pays homage back to George and of course they were very close. I have some beautiful photographs you've probably seen, of my mother with Juliet man Ray. He took photographs of us three boys. He took photographs of dad, mom, so he was really kind of like a family photographer, if you will. Surrealists were in. It was a wink and a nod type of thing. They hid a lot of secrets in their artwork.

Speaker 3:

Man Ray and Copley come out with a book in 1948. So this is a year after called Alphabet for Adults and in that they have a kind of playful. Each letter is made into a playful, like G, and they make it into a giraffe. Well, the letter Q they make for quarrel, like two people are quarreling, and that's actually drawn inside the Franklin House, the Southern House, and it's got two people facing each other arguing, and it's actually drawn inside the Franklin House, the Southern House, and it's got two people facing each other arguing and it's also got a nude woman's body at the other end of the painting. Man Ray did a sculpture and he gifted it that same year to George and he uses it in the place of the private parts, actually the vagina of the nude. In the drawing he places this object so it's like an all-seeing eye, it's looking into the courtyard, so I mean there's all sorts of connections. But that was a biggie. It's midnight, dr Blank. There's pictures of the bathroom, identical to the shower in the master bathroom, and she's laying on the floor and he's got his surgical instruments and I present that they're even spelling out Hodel in the surgical instruments.

Speaker 3:

See, there were a lot of people, actually a lot of people, that knew. There were writers, screenwriters, that knew and even said so in articles. They said they know who did it and they believe the police know and they'll soon be arrested. That was Steve Fisher, who was a screenwriter of the day. Very prominent Ben Hacks was another famous writer. He was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood. Anyway, they knew, but they were all terrified of March. He was alive and they were not going to say anything because they were sure the police already knew who did it and that they were going to arrest him. It wasn't until many years later that man Ray and Copley reveal these things in their drawings. Hopefully, reveal these things in their drawings.

Speaker 1:

One thing I just wanted to mention too, with the receipts from the Frank Lloyd Wright files you found for the cement, but also the fertilizer is significant too, because they found feces in Elizabeth's intestines, right.

Speaker 3:

Excellent. And it was even more specific than that, because what they found? Yes, they found feces in her stomach and the only way it's going to get into the stomach is by being force-fixed. They also said in the coroner's report that it had unidentified green particles or substance within the feces. Well, come to find out that this particular brand that was manufactured back then was called Fertilite and it had little green pellets, little green pellets within the steer manure. So that's what they were seeing. Were these little green pellets in the Fertilite? You can even see on the bag at the crime scene Fertilite.

Speaker 1:

Maybe you said that in one of the books that you wrote that I read the green pellets from it. I don't remember that detail at all. I just remember thinking fertilizer Okay, that makes sense. I do remember the green substance. I didn't know about the link back to that specific type of fertilizer. Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 1:

So when I was researching this case it was like very early stages. So I knew about the call with the secretary reference and I knew it had to be a surgeon probably. I think I'd come across your evidence that you'd found of the receipts. And then it wasn't until I listened to the Root of Evil, which is another podcast.

Speaker 1:

I remember that was the first time that they talked about the surrealist connection with Rayman and when they talked about the lovers, that painting the lips in the sky and then the minotaur especially, which I think you might've described this, but in the painting it's really just like the trunk of a woman and it looks exactly like how her upper body was posed. And I remember when that man Ray connection came through to me I was like, okay, you know what Close the case. This just completely makes sense because the body was very much staged. It was very much staged in a deliberate way. You don't have to be a criminal profiler. I think to know that because the body was very much staged. It was very much staged in a deliberate way. It's like you don't have to be a criminal profiler. I think to know that this was done with a lot of intention and it was put somewhere to be found with a lot of intention. And you look at the minotaur and you look at just the upper torso and it's just exact. It's crazy.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and it's a woman's torso she's posed. And it's a woman's torso she's posed in. And that's a very famous position with the surrealists. It's not just a one-off, it's. You know, the whole movement had that as their. The Minotaur was their. You know, the Minotaur was the beast in the island of Crete that devoured maidens and young men, was fed, kept in the labyrinth of Crete. That devoured maidens and young men, was fed, kept in the labyrinth in Crete. And it was this half-beast, half-man monster. You know that was very much a part of it. They were very edgy, you know, with a lot of stuff, a lot of hiding stuff.

Speaker 3:

Here's a note from Jemison. He was about to move forward on the investigation when he was pulled off it, as I described earlier by the DA Lieutenant Jemison's handwritten notes for March 2nd 1950. So that's late in the game, actively showing he is actively reinvestigating LAPD's 1945 original murder investigation of George Hodel suspected of forced overdose using barbiturates. Lieutenant Jemison's handwritten notes indicate he's planning to re-interview all of the original witnesses related to the death of George Hodel's VD clinic secretary girlfriend Ruth Spalding. George Hodel admits to killing both the Black Dahlia and his secretary during the tape surveillance conversation and you see his handwriting here and it says he wants to re-interview a whole bunch of them. He wants to re-interview Ruth's death secretary to Hodel. So he was going to move forward with a whole bunch of investigation when he was pulled off of it.

Speaker 3:

There are eight, nine more books that came out after Black Dog Avenger. Some of the most recent ones are the early years, part one and two. I don't know how much if you're even familiar with those, but I realized that dad didn't wake up after one morning. He usually got up in the afternoon, let's say morning, at age 40, and says I think I'll be a serial killer. So I knew there had to be more and the more I looked the deeper, the more rabbit holes I found. And actually in the early years I thought it would be one book and it's actually. I had to break it up into two. So I lay out his suspected crimes from the 20s and the 30s in book two and there's 25 more crimes before we even get to the 1940s.

Speaker 3:

These are very unusual crime signatures, very unusual crime signatures. Normally as a homicide detective, if you get two or three or even four crime signatures that match, you say let's take a look at this. Guy Could be a serial killer or he could have done this other one. If you get three or four, I came up with 32 crime signatures that match from the early years. The interesting thing is the past the 40s and 60s prove the early years and the early ones prove the past. So I mean he's consistent throughout. Above the fold, headlines taunting, sending in letters, phone calls. I never had one suspect in the 300 murders I investigated that ever made a phone call or sent in a letter. It's very unusual.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's like a whole other level.

Speaker 3:

It is, it is.

Speaker 1:

There's always the question of why, like looking at Elizabeth Short, her, the torture, the mutilation, the killing it reflects, you know it looks very specific toward her, like a hatred toward her. But I think even you had said it it seems like there's just this general hatred of women in all of this. How do you think that developed and why do you think he did all of these things?

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean, you know there's a whole bunch of reasons that I've kind of run by myself and of course one is congenital insanity. I'm sure he had to be certainly insane from birth Because he was so advanced as a student. I'm sure that when he went to Caltech, well, first the rejection by the professor's wife saying get out of here, you're a child yourself, george. So there's that rejection. He's always been way ahead of all the other students in class. So you know, super nerd before the term was ever invented, I'm sure a lot of the girls, because he was so much younger, didn't want any part of him.

Speaker 3:

You know drug use. You know we know that he was using drugs, hashish. You know we know that he was using drugs, hashish. This whole over the edge thing with the magazine Fantasia when you read some of the stuff that he's written in that it's really pretty far out there and I include that in some of my books. I suspect that he was probably possibly the victim of incest, either his mother or another family member, maybe because he was sexually precocious and his mother was overprotective and he was like a little Lord.

Speaker 3:

Pampered. So I think all of these things came together in a perfect storm to what became one of the worst monsters I think we've ever seen in criminology.

Speaker 2:

Did he have a pretty difficult relationship with his mother.

Speaker 3:

Well, according to my mom, he hated his mother. That was what my mother said that he absolutely hated her. She was domineering. She was highly intelligent, very controlling. So yeah, I think that we'll never know, but she died early. She died in 35 of tuberculosis. I don't know about his father. I don't think he thought much of his father. I think he saw his father as. I think he kind of pictured him as kind of a weak man or something. I'm not really sure. I have vague memories of my grandfather, and he was the small man Dad was 6'1" and he was like 5'4", something like that. I really don't know much about Grandfather, other than I didn't get the sense that he was much of an influence either way.

Speaker 1:

One last person I wanted to ask you about. There was a jazz singer, Maddie Comfort, who knew.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, maddie Comfort was a great. You know what was really interesting? And she was lovers with my mother and my father. My mom was bisexual, her boyfriend. After she died, her boyfriend brought me her manuscript that she was going to publish. It was written in the 70s, I think, and she talks about George and Dorothy and what a great lovers they were. They taught her everything about sex, everything that she learned and going on and on about it, and she knew George had killed Elizabeth Short and she went home. When my book was published she called her boyfriend, george, and says, oh, come home, come home quick. So he goes home and she says, finally the truth has come out. She says there's this book called the Black Dahlia and it's finally, after all these years, the truth has come out. And then she died three weeks later. You know I have a whole chapter, several chapters, on her in this book. She's an important witness.

Speaker 1:

It's like one more person in his life that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there were quite a few. Actually One of the points again, I'll just state it to reemphasize it I didn't solve this case. It was solved back then. It's just never been cleared. You know, that kind of is important for people to know that this is not my theory. It's my proving their theories, if you will, or not their theory, but their knowledge.

Speaker 1:

Steve, thank you so much for joining us. Like I said at the beginning, we couldn't have told it as well as you did, so we appreciate that you came on to tell the story.

Speaker 3:

It's been a pleasure talking to you tonight and basically stay tuned. We may be seeing a documentary and a film coming out. I'm working on that now. But you know, the story needs to be told truthfully and it's been my job to try and demythify all of the false information. I wanted to give a voice to the victims and to speak for them. It's been a pleasure and I'm looking forward to seeing you guys do a lot of really constructive, interesting podcasts down the road.

Speaker 2:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you.