by Laura Berthold Monteros
The story has all the elements of Los Angeles at its darkest: a vicious murder, a beautiful and mysterious young victim, an elusive killer, sensational press with each paper trying to outdo the others, an unforgettable moniker, countless confessions and more than a score of suspects (several of them prominent physicians), and in the end -- officially unsolvable.
It was the Black Dahlia murder, and it has haunted L.A. since the morning of Jan. 15, 1947, when the mutilated and bisected body of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot on Norton Avenue. Of all the bizarre twists the tale has taken, none is stranger than the story Steve Hodel, author of The Black Dahlia Avenger, related in a talk at the Altadena Library last Monday evening.
(Pictured: author Steve Hodel at the Altadena Library lecture).
“Truth is stranger than fiction,” he began, quoting Mark Twain, “but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”
What Hodel, a LAPD officer and detective for 23 years and a private investigator for another 23, believes to be true is that he has identified the murderer of Elizabeth Short—his own father, Dr. George Hodel. (In this article, when a first name is not used, “Hodel” refers to Steve Hodel and “Dr. Hodel” identifies his father.)
George Hodel was a brilliant man with an IQ of 186. He attended Caltech at 15 and tried various careers as a cabbie, reporter, and finally a medical doctor, skilled surgeon, and psychiatrist. He had a lust for life, sex, and money and counted the rich and famous celebrities of Los Angeles among his acquaintances. He was intimate friends with surrealists such as Marcel Duchamp, William Copley and Man Ray.
When he was brought to trial for incest with his 14-year-old daughter, legendary L.A. attorney Jerry Geisler got him off despite three people having witnessed the incident. Wild parties and orgies were regular occurrences at the Lloyd Wright-designed Sowden House on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, which the Hodels owned. (The house is currently for sale and was featured in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.)
(Pictured: a mug shot of Elizabeth Short taken in 1943)
It is in this house that Hodel believes the Black Dahlia was killed, and he believes that the ghastly mutilations and grotesque pose of the body connect with works created before and after the murder by the elder Hodel’s surrealist friends. He points to Etant donnes by Duchamp, It Is Midnight, Dr. _____ by Copley, and several photographs by Man Ray as an indication of how entwined the killing was with Dadaism and Dr. Hodel’s friendships.
“The whole surrealist thing is key,” Hodel stated to a person getting a book signed after the talk, and on his website he comments on the enigmas surrealists embedded in their work. Dadaism is “based on the principles of deliberate irrationality, anarchy, and cynicism and the rejection of laws of beauty and social organization. Randomness was a key element to all things Dada,” he writes.
Elizabeth Short’s life was something of an enigma. A nomad, she moved from her native Massachusetts to California at 19 and drifted around Florida, Chicago, and several California towns. She had a plethora of male companions, and her acquaintance with Dr. Hodel has been corroborated by some of the doctor’s friends, according to Hodel.
Of the many myths surrounding the case, Hodel cites the three biggest as these:
- There was a so-called “missing week,” the last week of Short’s life
- The murder was a stand-alone crime
- The case was never solved.
While the police and press at the time publicly asked for information on the whereabouts of Short from Jan. 9-15, Hodel asserts that the records show that 13 or 14 witnesses saw her during that time and seven of them knew her personally. In one instance, she told a Los Angeles policewoman that a former suitor was trying to kill her.
The police also connected Short’s murder to several other mutilation killings between 1943 and 1949 that were dubbed the “Lone Woman” killings. In 1947, the LAPD published 11 points of similarity among murders.
Hodel found at least eight of the Lone Woman killings had strong similarities to the Black Dahlia, and in six, there were taunting notes left, much like the taunts that were sent to newspapers by a person who called himself “The Black Dahlia Avenger.”
Hodel thinks that these and the similar “Red Lipstick” murders in Chicago, for which William Heirens was convicted, were committed by his father. He is currently investigating whether Dr. Hodel might also be responsible for the Zodiac killings in San Francisco in the ‘60s and ‘70s and a string of murders in Manila during the time his father lived there with his second wife.
The third myth—that the murders were never solved—seems particularly frustrating for Hodel, especially in light of his copious research into the case. He said that while today’s LAPD refuses to acknowledge that the crime was solved, the LAPD and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department at the time put Dr. Hodel at the top of their list of suspects. Some even said they knew who killed Short.
In investigating the case, Steve Hodel pored over evidence, including photos of the cut-and-paste notes sent to the Examiner by the Black Dahlia Avenger. Among them was one handwritten postcard. Hodel immediately recognized his father’s distinctive block printing.
Given all the people who claimed to be the killer, Hodel said, “At first, I thought Dad just knew her and was pretending to be the killer.” But as he dug deeper, he became more and more convinced that the man he had thought of as king of the castle was indeed a horrific killer.
“Steve Fisher of the Herald Express said he knew who it was,” Hodel stated. Officers who worked for the LAPD and LASD at the time said it was solved, according to Hodel, and one said it was a doctor who lived on Franklin Avenue, but they didn’t have enough evidence to put him away. Another police official said it was “some doctor they knew out in Hollywood.”
Dr. Hodel was still the prime suspect in 1950 when the grand jury took the case from the LAPD and handed it over to the district attorney. The house on Franklin was bugged with wires dropped in the walls, and for six weeks investigators listened in on conversations. Once the doctor realized he was a top suspect, he took off for the orient and stayed there for a decade.
Hodel even sees an eerie coincidence when he was a young officer on the LAPD. Coming out of a meeting with acting chief Thad Brown in 1966, a photographer asked if he’d like his picture taken with the chief. Pleased at the time that the chief acquiesced, Hodel now thinks it was intentionally ironic. He thinks Brown knew that the rookie on his right was the son of the notorious murderer.
Hodel gathered enough evidence to convince Manson Family prosecutor Stephen R. Kay that his theory is correct, but he can’t convince today’s LAPD. DNA on the stamps on the letters sent to the Examiner might be compared to stamps on a letter Dr. Hodel sent his son, but they have all disappeared.
As a former LAPD detective, Hodel says, “I would believe this normally, but not in this case. The evidence box is there, but the files on (George Hodel) are missing.”
Was there a motive for the Black Dahlia killing? Hodel believes so. He thinks the other murders he attributes to his father were “not personal,” but this one was. “He was a terrorist,” Hodel stated. “It gave him pleasure to terrorize a city. Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Manila. He was an urban terrorist.” It was about power and ego, but nothing personal.
In Elizabeth Short’s case, he thinks there was a compelling reason for his father not only to kill, but to viciously torture and horrifically mutilate the woman. He discovered secret district attorney files that indicated Short went to Chicago to investigate the Red Lipstick murders. He thinks she got wind of some information and went there to check it out. “That was her death warrant,” Hodel said.
One of the Chicago murders was a six-year-old girl whose body, like Short’s, was bisected. Her name was Suzanne Degnan. Just north of MLK Boulevard (at the time named Santa Barbara), Degnan Boulevard forks, with Norton a soft left and Degnan a soft right. Hodel thinks Dr. Hodel meant to tie Short to the Chicago murder by leaving her on Degnan, but mistakenly took the left fork.
Whether the case is ever officially closed or not, it remains arguably the most notorious murder in Los Angeles history. Hodel commented on the fascination with the subject.
It was the last blockbuster news story before television took over, he said. At the time, there were six competing newspapers in Los Angeles.
“I think the Black Dahlia is wrapped around the whole psyche of Los Angeles,” he said. “A lot of people don’t want to mess with the myth. It’s absolute noir.”
Film noir is such a vital part of Los Angeles, he said, that even the 1950 movie Sunset Boulevard—shot a few blocks away from the Hodel home at the time Dr. Hodel was being surveiled—had a reference to the Black Dahlia. “It’s so ingrained in the city—it will always be that way,” he said.
George Hodel died in 1991. He spent the last 10 years of his life getting closer Steve than they had ever been before. When asked by an audience member what his response was when he came to believe his father was the killer, Hodel replied, “I really loved my father. I went through every possible emotion. Now I am saddened.
“It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I loved the Dr. Jekyll. It seems the monster within was a different person.”
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Hodel's site is here (warning: there are some very graphic crime scene pictures).
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Laura Berthold Monteros writes about Altadena.
