“Steve Hodel has taken this way beyond the pictures. It no longer depends on the pictures. I have no doubt in my mind that George Hodel murdered Elizabeth Short. …If the witnesses were alive today, I believe if I took that case in front of a jury, that I would convict him on both the Black Dahlia and Red Lipstick Murders.”
Stephen Kay, Head Deputy DA
(The Truth about the Black Dahlia, November 6, 2006)
Filing My Case with the District Attorney’s Office
…
It had been almost twenty years since I had last walked into the district attorney’s office to present my investigation and request a murder filing on a suspect. None of the old guard in the DA’s office was around anymore, except one. Fortunately for me and for the public, he was among the best.
In his thirty-fifth year of service in the DA’s office, Head Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay had prosecuted many of Los Angeles’s most notorious murderers. His career convictions read like a Who’s Who of California killers, including the Manson case, where he was co-counsel with the celebrated prosecutor and author Vincent Bugliosi. He later personally prosecuted the rest of the Manson family members–Tex Watson, Bruce Davis, and Leslie Van Houten. Kay was the first deputy district attorney in California history to attend a lifer parolee’s hearing and argue before the parole board for denial based on the merits of the case. To date, Steve Kay has attended a total of fifty-eight parole hearings arguing against the release of the various Manson family members.
Kay prosecuted serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, who during the commission of their crimes had actually tape-recorded one of their vicious rape-murders. Bittaker and Norris would kidnap and murder four additional victims, ages thirteen to eighteen, before being apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted by Kay.
In 1996 Kay prosecuted and convicted killer Charles Rathbun for the vicious murder of Raiderette and beauty-queen model Linda Sobek, whose body was found in Angeles National Forest.
During my career I had gone to Steve Kay and presented dozens of murder cases for his review and filing of complaints. I had always found him to be highly intelligent, conscientious, and, most importantly, a man of total integrity. Knowing he could be trusted in all matters requiring confidentiality, and knowing that above all he would give me the benefit of objectivity, I decided to submit the Dahlia investigation to him as if I were asking for a criminal filing.
Q: Lillian Lenorak identified Elizabeth Short as being a girlfriend of your father’s and also as being at parties at the Franklin House. Could you explain George Hodel’s connection with the policewoman who wrote the letter to LAPD about your father.
Yes. The policewoman, Mary Unkefer, was from Santa Barbara Police Department. Her letter (scanned below) was mailed to District Attorney Investigators, Lieutenants Jemison and Sullivan– not LAPD. It was dated, January 30, 1950.
SANTA BARBARA POLICE OFFICER MARY UNKEFER & THE UNKEFER-ELIZABETH SHORT-LILLIAN LENORAK- DR. GEORGE HODEL CONNECTIONS
From Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder pg-479
On January 16, 1947, the day “Jane Doe Number 1” was identified by the FBI as Elizabeth Short, Santa Barbara policewoman Mary Unkefer was one of the first important witnesses contacted by LAPD in the Black Dahlia investigation. Why? Because Officer Unkefer had direct and extended contact with Elizabeth Short after Elizabeth’s September 1943 arrest for “minor possession.” The L.A. Daily News of January 17, 1947, under the headline: “Identify Victim as Hollywood Resident,” detailed Officer Unkefer’s connections:
She (Elizabeth Short) had been a clerk at the Camp Cooke post exchange near Santa Barbara and was picked up for drinking with soldiers in a cafe there.
Policewoman Mary Unkefer of the Santa Barbara police department took the girl to her own home to live with her for nine days…
“We put her on the train for her home, and several times later she wrote to me from there” Miss Unkefer recalled. One of her letters said: “I’ll never forget you thank God you picked me up when you did!”
Incredibly, from information contained in these DA documents, we only now discover that Officer Mary Unkefer—who in 1943 had been directly responsible for rescuing Elizabeth Short from a dangerous environment—in January 1950 drove from Santa Barbara to Dr. Hodel’s Franklin Avenue residence, and there removed another young female victim from harm’s way. Officer Unkefer, after safely returning the victim, whose name was Lillian Lenorak,* to Santa Barbara, typed a letter to Los Angeles DA investigators, describing and informing them of Dr. Hodel’s involvement in multiple crimes, including subornation of perjury and felony assault. Here for the first time is that remarkable letter, published in its entirety, exactly as it was typed*
*Through other DA documents, we know that Lillian Lenorak was a 1949 defense witness who testified at the Hodel incest trial, was an acquaintance of George Hodel’s, and when shown photographs of Elizabeth Short by DA investigators identified her as Hodel’s girlfriend. Miss Lenorak was preparing to recant her previous sworn testimony and admit she perjured herself at the incest trial. Lenorak’s perjury at the Hodel trial had to do with the fact that she was present at Dr. Ballard’s office with Charles Smith, when Tamar, George Hodel’s 14-year-old daughter was “examined” but no abortion occurred. She was now going to admit the truth of it, that in fact, an abortion was performed on Tamar.
SANTA BARBARA OFFICER MARY UNKEFER’S ORIGINAL LETTER AS FOUND IN DA FILE
Below is Santa Barbara Police Department officer Mary Unkefer’s actual letter to the DA, as she typed it. In it she documents Dr. Hodel’s assault and drugging of the victim, and his “staging of her attempted suicide.” She additionally provides information re. Dr. Hodel’s “payoffs to police and DA through his attorney, Jerry Giesler.”
SBPD Officer Mary Unkefer mails letter “Special Delivery” to DA on January 31, 1947
(SKH Note- Franklin House witness/roomer, Joe Barrett, in a 2003, on-camera television interview for ABC’s DATELINE recounted witnessing an incident in early 1950, involving Lillian Lenorak at the Franklin House. He tells of returning home to find an excited Ellen (our maid) warning him that Lenorak was in George Hodel’s bedroom and was threatening to shoot Hodel when he came home.
Barrett entered the bedroom and found a hysterical Lenorak, armed with a rifle belonging to George Hodel. Lenorak was screaming, “He is going to pay for what he has done. He has to pay for it. I’m going to kill him.” Barrett claims he calmed her down and removed the rifle from her person. When asked in this interview by reporter Josh Mankiewicz, “What Lenorak was referring to?”, Barrett replied, “It was about the fact that Lillian knew that George had killed Elizabeth Short. Lillian knew Elizabeth and had met her at the house, and said that George had to pay for killing her.”
Barrett also stated that “When George came home, I told him about what happened, and that Lillian was going to shoot him, and George’s response was, “Why didn’t you let her?”
It is my belief that this “rifle incident” occurred in late-January, 1950, and is the event that immediately precipitated my father’s “staging her attempted suicide.” Lillian Lenorak was going to reveal to the DA what she knew, and he had to either kill her or try to discredit her. With Barrett as a witness, he couldn’t kill her, so he took the next best step. Try to set her up as a “mental case.” He then drugged her and staged her “attempt suicide” as described in policewoman Unkefer’s letter to the DA. (We even have the dramatic corroboration from Lillian’s three-year-old son, John, who witnessed George Hodel’s assault on his mother. In route to Santa Barbara with his mother and officer Unkefer, the child tells the policewoman, “He [Dr. Hodel] hit mommy hard and knocked her down.”
I expect the critics who claim Lillian was just a “mental case” would also have to include her child as well since he dramatically and immediately corroborates his mother’s assault.
May 7, 2016, UPDATE
Due to the strong interest, I’ve received on this subject, I am here adding an update to the life of Lillian Lenorak and her son, John. “The rest of the story” if you will. Unfortunately, there is no “happy ending.” Lillian’s three-year-old son, “John” was named after his father, famed film director, John Farrow, who had an affair with Lillian in the early 1940s. The full story of her life was added to Black Dahlia Avenger II, Chapter 4. I include excerpts from that chapter so that my readers may discover what followed the tragic events from 1950.
See attached PDF for further information on Lillian and John Lenorak’s lives post Dahlia.
Leave it to the cold hard double entendre of a 1940s Los Angeles psychopath to take the Zip out of Zipa-Dee-Doo Dah.
Tar-Baby- n. A situation or problem from which it is virtually impossible to disentangle oneself. [After “Bre’r Rabbit and the Tar Baby,” an Uncle Remus story by Joel Chandler Harris.
Click below photo or PDF link to read the full story of Dr. George Hill Hodel and the “Tar Baby, what’s in a name” real life anecdote.
Clips of “Tar-Baby” from 1946 Disney “Song of the South”
Have received multiple requests for documentation on witness Joe Barrett’s original statements related to the fact that Lillian Lenorak knew Elizabeth Short and his direct involvement in disarming Lillian at the Sowden/Franklin House. Barrett found her in Dr. Hodel’s bedroom armed with Hodel’s rifle and waiting to shoot the doctor because “he has to pay for the murder.” (Elizabeth Short)
See original Barrett statement clip from Court TV interview in 2004
Basically, all of the original top law enforcement officers involved in the original 1947 investigation as well as the top brass from today all confirm independently and collectively that the Black Dahlia case was and is solved. All identify the same man, Dr. George Hill Hodel as her killer. (Specifically named in the secret 1950 Hodel/DA Files, prior to his fleeing the country to avoid arrest.) See the above 5-minute video that provides their individual statements.
Solve – to find the reason or explanation for something; to solve a case/crime/murder(=find out who committed a crime)
(Rear Dr. George Hill Hodel age 36 and Duncan Hill Hodel age 15
Front/Left to Right, Steven, age 2, Kelvin age 1, and Michael age 4)
Just three months after committing Los Angeles’ sadistic “White Gardenia Murder” (Victim Ora Murray, July 26, 1943, was strangled and beaten to death with her semi-nude body found carefully posed on a public golf course) Dr. George Hodel is seen (left) posing with his four sons for a photograph taken by renowned LA art collector/photographer and family friend, Galka Scheyer.
Most famously remembered as the brash agent of the “Blue Four” (Alexei Jawlensky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky), Galka Scheyer was a major force in introducing European modernism to LosAngeles in the 1930s and 1940s. She occasionally acted as an intermediary for Walter Arensberg when he wished to purchase works from Marcel Duchamp. A dispute over prices ruptured their relationship in 1936, but it was mended by the time of her death, in 1945. Arensberg helped ensure that her collection was preserved intact at the Pasadena Art Institute (now the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena). Scheyer had many business dealings with Earl Stendahl and she knew John Huston. During lean years, Scheyer stayed afloat financially by developing an art education class for children. A misspelled entry in Dorothy and George Hodel’s calendar notes: “Gelka Scheyer for children’s pictures.” Scheyer was also friends with Edward G. Robinson.
Handwritten Calendar entry made by Dorothy Huston Hodel for “November 7, 1943 noting appointment with Galka Scheyer for “Children’s pictures.”
Here we see that George Hodel has placed the 1943 Galka Scheyer photograph in his private photo album, which also included some of the Man Ray family photos as well as the photograph of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short.
Galka Scheyer 1931
Galka Scheyer seated at left in her friend, architect, Rudolph Schindler’s Kings Road House. In 1933 Galka commissioned Richard Neutra to build her a home in the Hollywood Hills north of Sunset Blvd. She named the street Blue Heights Drive.
Richard Neutra built home for Galka Scheyer located at 1880 Blue Heights Dr., Los Angeles. Ms. Scheyer died in Los Angeles in 1945, just two years after taking the Hodel family photograph.
Richard Schindler was also friends with my father, Dr. George Hill Hodel and below are two sketches Schindler designed for some furniture my father had commissioned, circa 1940. (Courtesy of Schindler Archive, U.C. Santa Barbara.)
Hodel Family by Edmund Teske circa 1948
This photograph was taken in the inner courtyard of the Sowden/Hodel Franklin House circa 1947.
Edmund Teske whose artworks currently hang in international art museums throughout the world including Los Angeles’ Getty Museum ,was a close friend of Dr. George Hill Hodel and a regular visitor to the Hodel residence.
Teske took this second photograph from inside the living room of residence showing the three Hodel brothers seated in the courtyard.
From the Edmund Teske Archives:
…
Teske was drawn west by the allure of the motion picture industry and a desire to meet Greta Garbo. He worked in the stills department of Paramount Studios. He lived in the Frank Lloyd Wright residence of Aline Barnsdall on Olive Hill where he met Man Ray. He photographed actors and other notable folk. To name a few: Joel McCrea, Geraldine Page, Kenneth Anger, John Saxon, Ansel Adams, Jim Whitney, Ramblin Jack Elliott, Will Geer, Anais Nin, Jane Lawrence, and others.
Edmund Teske in scene clip from MGM’s Lust for Life (1956)
In this scene with Kirk Douglas (Vincent Van Gogh) and Anthony Quinn (Paul Gauguin) Edmund Teske, (marked with the white arrow) a fellow artist, is questioning Van Gogh’s skill as an artist. Teske was forty-five years old when the film was released. Quinn won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
Incredibly, Edmund Teske, a close friend and kindred spirit to Dr. George Hodel, and Man Ray would become a prime witness in my investigation by way of a conversation he had with an Altadena architect, Steven Lamb. Lamb was an admirer of Lloyd Wright, (son of Frank) who he knew had designed and built the Sowden House, in 1926. The Lamb/Teske conversation took place in front of the Sowden home in 1978 while Lamb was taking photographs of the front exterior of the structure. Teske approached Lamb and asked, “Do you like the house?” Lamb began to respond, “Why, yes sir. It’s a very important early Lloyd Wright…” Teske interrupted him:
“It’s an evil place! Artists, philosophers, accountants and politicians we all played and paid there. Women were tortured for sport there. Murders happened there. It’s an EVIL place.”
Teske then turned and walked away. The entire meeting and conversation as described and written by Steve Lamb, are detailed in Chapter 10 of my follow-up book, Black Dahlia Avenger II (Thoughtprint Press 2014).
How bizarre that Edmund Teske, a family friend, to my father, who took one of my favorite photographs of my brothers and me in 1948, would as if by pure happenstance, some thirty years later, play a critical role in confirming that George Hodel was a sadistic killer and that tortures and murders of multiple women occurred inside the Sowden/Franklin home.
The below Hodel family photographs were taken by Surrealist/Dadaist, Man Ray in 1944, 1945 and 1946. Man Ray, became a close friend to both George and Dorothy (“Dorero”) Hodel during the artist’s “Hollywood Years” (1940-1951). His artwork and photographs were used and included as “inspirations” in my father’s serial crimes as part of his crime-signature/M.O. of, ‘Murder as a Fine Art.” The “Man Ray Nexus” becomes critical to understanding George Hodel’s insane drive to create his own “Surreal Masterpiece” by slaying, cutting and publicly posing his victims as body sculptures, and taunting, “catch me if you can” clues to his crimes.
In 1948, Man Ray and gallerist/artist William Copley published an art book, Alphabet for Adults (Copley Gallery, Los Angeles 1948) in which they included drawings of the interior of the Sowden/Hodel residence, a man and a woman (likely George and Dorero) and linked them to the letter Q for Quarrel. See Most Evil II, Chapter 9 for full details of “word games” and connections to George Hodel.
At first glance, the fact that three of Los Angeles’ most famous modern artists from the 1940s, Galka Scheyer, Edmund Teske and Man Ray would each play a role as Hodel “family photographer” appears quite astounding.
However, after discovering George Hodel’s love for the Surrealist Movement, along with his close personal ties to each of these artists in the 1940s, provides us with a much clearer understanding.
The three Hodel photographs all predate the 1947 Black Dahlia Murder. We know that both Man Ray and Edmund Teske knew their friend, George Hodel, had killed the Dahlia, shortly after the murder, as established in my investigation. It is likely that Galka Scheyer, as part of dad’s “inner circle” also discovered the truth shortly after the crime. George Hodel’s incest/child molestation crimes committed upon his 14-year-old, daughter, Tamar, occurred in the summer of 1949. (Man Ray also took nude “family photographs” of Tamar at age 12, but they were destroyed and never became a part of the later criminal prosecution.)
Click below for the link to Part I (one-hour) of a recent podcast interview on Black Dahlia Avenger I did with crime historian and author, Erik Rivenes, host of Most Notorious. (Part II will follow in one week.)
It was a pleasure talking with Erik who was well informed and a very professional host.
Hosted by crime historian Erik Rivenes, author of the Detective Harm Queen mystery series, this podcast brings an interview every week with an expert on a historical crime, criminal or tragedy. Some well-known, others lost in time. Anyone who loves the dark side of history should subscribe!
Los Angeles, California
June 2, 2016
(Reposts andUpdates from 2006- 2010 blogs)
Q: In your author photographs I notice you have used ROSCO, a boxer dog, on the cover of your books. What’s his story?
A:
Rosco was an orphan. Shortly after birth he was adopted by a loving couple and raised in ELA’s Hollenbeck district. He is fluent (and reads) Spanish, English, French and Romanian.
Rosco is one tough dog. In his youth, he spent a fair amount of time “in the streets” growing up in LA’s barrios. He got in with the wrong pack, got “connected”, then became a “made dog” and got busted. Rosco was pressured by prosecutors to turn State’s evidence in a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) beef. He did his time was released and lived in a SAFE HOUSE in a Southern California community. Rosco “retired” and became an avid reader of books and loved classic film noir movies.
In his younger years (Christmas 2000) Rosco, “A Dog for All Seasons” was featured on the cover of DOGTIME Magazine (seen below) wishing his fans a “Cool Yule.”
DOGTIME cover dog 2000
Roberta and Rosco preparing for a photo shoot
Rosco’s uncle Felix, who was raised by Roberta in Toluca Lake, near Warner Brother’s Studios, passed away in 1998. Felix was a prominent character actor in Hollywood, with bite-parts in a number of A-List films. (Below you may recognize him in scenes from: Godfather Part I,Unforgiven, and La Cage aux Folles.
Old Dog New Trick – Rosco Rocks! Rosco the Boxer Begins His Read of the Romanian Translation at 80!
Rosco Reading “Enigma Daliei Negre” (Romanian Black Dahlia Avenger)
Orange County, California
June 28, 2009
Rosco the Boxer, who is rapidly approaching his 80th birthday, with bull-dogged/boxer determination rarely found in dogs half his age has recently enrolled at an Orange County Community College to learn Romanian. His motivation? Purely personal. It seems he wants to read the most recent Black Dahlia Avenger translation, Enigma Daliei Negre (2008) from a copy fresh off the shelves of a Bucharest bookstore.
Some of you will recognize Rosco from earlier posts. (Reproduced above) which presents a brief bio on him and his famous film star uncle, Felix.
Rosco 1998- 2010
March 30, 2010
Rosco, the much-loved boxer dog, (who many of you know from his having posed in photographs while reading all of my separate BDA book translations) has passed on. Rosco died yesterday in Orange County. He was 12 years old.
Rosco was a warm and loving companion to my girlfriend, Roberta McCreary, who visited him frequently at her daughter’s family home in Orange County. Rosco and Roberta’s bond was very special. They were as sunshine to each other, and he will be greatly missed. The family has asked in lieu of flowers that you hug your own pet and or give it an extra treat in special memory of Rosco.
Rest In Peace Rosco
Roberta, on her regular visits to her daughter’s home in Orange County, was able to photograph Rosco (seen below lost in deep thought) as he anxiously awaited each new printing of Black Dahlia Avenger in a new language. Seen below (top to bottom) he is reading BDA in English, Greek, French, Japanese, and Romanian.
Rosco taught himself to become fluent in many languages. He grew up speaking Spanish in ELA, and went on to master: English, French, Greek, Japanese, and just before passing enrolled himself in night school to study Romanian so he could read a recent BDA publication from that country. Rosco completed Most Evil in 2009 just before his passing.
Exclusive- An Early Five Paw Review of MOST EVIL
(Original blog posted in October 2009 to correspond with publication of Most Evil I. Sadly, Rosco passed on five years before the release of Most Evil II (Rare Bird Books 2015) which contains M. Yves Person’s cracking of the authenticated Zodiac cipher and Dr. George Hill Hodel’s signed confession as to being Zodiac.)
“Makes the Hound of the Baskervilles look like puppies play.”
Rosco the Boxer, 2009
Early Review of Most Evil: Avenger, Zodiac and the Further Murders of Dr. George Hill Hodel
By
Rosco the Boxer
I just finished reading MOST EVIL (Dutton 2009), and I’d bet my pedigree that Steve Hodel is barking up the right tree. I am somewhat of an expert on Mr. Hodel’s investigations, having read Book I, Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder in all of its foreign language translations. (French, Greek, Japanese, and Romanian.)
Full disclosure. Since I am a family member, many will consider my opinion biased; therefore, I took the liberty of asking several close friends of mine to also take an objective look.
First, I loaned my copy to, Miss Marple, a well-groomed and exceptionally bright little Basset Hound, who lives in the green-and-white townhouse at the end of our cul-de-sac. (The one with the red fire hydrant in front.) After her weekend read, I waited on the front porch, knowing her master would be taking her for their regular afternoon walk. Right on time, Monday at 3:05, “Missy” tail wagging in the warm sun, looked over, winked and blinked those sad brown eyes at me and barked out her critique, “Tell Mr. Hodel I am convinced his dad did all of them. But, I’d like to see a little more done on the overseas investigation.”
Wanting to be sure I wasn’t just chasing my tail, I then gave the book to Toby, a rather eccentric old Sod, who constantly reminds me he was almost accepted into the Baker Street Irregulars. (“Just missed it by a whisker, one vote short!”) Toby, a thespian, is half Spaniel and half-Lurcher and is now long retired from the Broadway Stage. He finished MOST EVIL in four hours, and just this morning, crawled through the hole in the backyard fence, sat in the shade of our flowering Kumquat tree and without even so much as a “May I?” chewed up the last three of my biscuit treats. Then, after a dramatic pause, he took three long licks of cool water. (A real tease. He knew full well that I was dying to hear his verdict.) Finally, sitting up high on his haunches with both forelegs extended and pretending to be a two-legged human, he gave me his best oriental squint and in perfect imitation of the film screen legend and Master Detective Charlie Chan, said:
“I’d say yes, but facts say maybe.”
For the next several hours, Toby detailed point-by-point all the compelling evidence and strengths of the case that, in the end, convinced him of the doctor’s guilt. Or, as he put it, “He’s treed the right Fox.”
So there it is. It’s a doggone good read and definitely something to bark about. FIVE PAWS way up for the sequel.
Throughout my investigation, I have discussed at length my father’s “Murder as a Fine Art” crime-signature M.O. I have linked it to what I term, The Man Ray Nexus. (The Minotaur, The Lovers Lips, L’Equivoque, Juliet Stocking Mask, adding to it the most recent 2015 discovery of Man Ray’s Alphabet for Adults book, published by his friend and fellow surrealist artist, William Copley in Los Angeles in 1948. That book contained the secret inclusion of a drawing of George Hodel “quarreling” (the letter “Q”) inside the courtyard of the Sowden House. (Most Evil II, Chapter 9, Surrealist Enigmas–Riddles Wrapped in Mysteries.)
Below photo shows 1947 LAPD Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short crime scene photo compared to Man Ray’s 1947 photo Priere de toucher (Please Touch) on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Coincidence or a Surrealist Tribute to George Hodel’s
Real Death Masterpiece?
In July of 1947, Duchamp collaborated with the artist Enrico Donati to create 999 handmade covers for the deluxe edition of “Le surrealisme en 1947,” the catalog accompanying the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme at Galerie Maeght in Paris. Alongside the words “priere de Toucher” (Please Touch) the covers featured a three-dimensional, foam rubber sculpture of a breast surrounded by black velvet. A more affordable edition of the catalog had a photograph of the same breast by the French photographer Remy Duval, reproducing the image from the deluxe version.
…
Photo of Marcel Duchamp’s “Please Touch” (1 of 999) which sold in New York in 2010 for $254,500. Clearly, this is the source of Man Ray’s 1947 photograph of the same name.
The artworks created by both Duchamp and Man Ray following just months after Dr. George Hill Hodel’s “Murder as a Fine Art” January 15, 1947, murder masterpiece and homage to Man Ray, begs the question:
Did Duchamp and Man Ray recognize and return the homage to Man Ray’s close friend, George Hodel with a wink and a nod as their joint creations of- priere de Toucher (Please Touch)? Does their artwork literally represent a piece of the missing puzzle? Is it an exact copy of Elizabeth Short’s excised right breast as well as their insider’s knowledge of the crime? (We know the crime scene photographs were in possession of newspaper reporter Will Fowler, son of screenwriter, Gene Fowler, and we have established that they would have been readily available for distribution to George Hodel’s “inner circle.”)
(SKH Note- One of the most interesting overlooked facts related to the crime scene and follow-up investigation the following day at the coroner’s autopsy is this. Elizabeth Short’s excised right breast was never recovered. While other cuttings were found placed inside the victim’s private parts, the breast was not and remains missing to this day. My opinion is that it was kept as “a trophy” after being surgically removed at the Hodel/Sowden House. Never left the home and possibly could have been the “something buried at the house” referenced by the unidentified LAPD police witness. This would also give extra emphasis and underscore the possibility that Duchamp and Man Ray in their follow-up artwork, were paying homage to the “missing piece of the puzzle.” )
“Squibs. I believe I have already set down in my notes that Love greatly resembles an application of torture or a surgical operation. But this idea can be developed, and in the most ironic manner. For even when two lovers love passionately and are full of mutual desire, one of the two will always be cooler or less self-abandoned than the other. He or she is the surgeon or executioner; the other, the patient or victim.”
Charles Baudelaire
George Hodel worshiped and identified with Charles Baudelaire, whom he read and studied in the original French. It is likely that Father read these words from Baudelaire’s Journal, and took them to heart, and would later translate and apply them as part of his own surgical crime.
The following article, written by drama critic, Ted Le Berthon, appeared in his weekly column “The Merry-Go-Round” in the Los Angeles Evening Herald, on December 12, 1925. The article describes my father, George Hodel, who had just turned eighteen, but was passing himself off as “twenty-one” so he could drive taxi in downtown Los Angeles. (Le Berthon changed his name from “Hodel” to “Morel” and dad’s self-published elitist magazine Fantasia to “Whirpools.” I quote the article here in its entirety:
Los Angeles Evening Herald
December 12, 1925 The Merry-Go-Round By Ted Le Berthon
The Clouded Past of a Poet
GEORGE MOREL is tall, olive-skinned with wavy Black hair and a strong bold nose. His eyes are large, brown, somnolent. A romantic, hawklike fellow, a pianist, a poet, and editor of Whirlpools, a bizarre, darkly poetical quarterly.
“George is a nice boy but…”
How often did one hear that!
What his friends hinted was that George, being young, was inclined to write of melancholy things.
Of course, George could have pointed to Keats, Rupert Brooke or Stephen Crane for precedent, but…”It’s not George’s gloom, his preference for Huysmans, De Gourmont, Poe, Baudelaire, Verlaine and Hecht that pains us,” these “friends” would parry, “but his stilted elegance, his meticulous speech!”
George drowned himself at times in an ocean of deep dreams. Only part of him seemed present. He would muse standing before one in a black, flowered dressing gown lined with scarlet silk, oblivious to one’s presence.
Suddenly, though, his eyes would flare up like signal lights and he would say, “The formless fastidiousness of perfumes in a seventeenth-century boudoir is comparable to my mind in the presence of twilight.”
One might have answered “What of it?”- but one just didn’t.
As one of George’s “friends” put it: “He’s young. He’ll get over it. What he needs is contact with harsh realities. At present his writing is tenuous, dreamy, monotonous–and he is like his writing.”
A Future Realistic Novelist
I HADN’T seen George for about a year…
And last night, strolling up Spring street in a sort of Morelian reverie myself, I was startled by hearing a familiar voice. The next moment I saw a tall young fellow in a taxi driver’s uniform seize a burly, argumentative man by the coat lapels and growl menacingly:
“Come across with that taxi fare or I’ll smack you in the nose, right here and now!”
The speaker was GEORGE MOREL.
This photo of the Star Spangled Banner taken in 1914
Happy July 4th weekend to ALL.
Wanted to share an interesting historical article from the Smithsonian Magazine on Francis Scott Key’s writing of the Star Spangled Banner and the making of the flag that was “still there.”
“The Story Behind the Star Spangled Banner,” written for the Smithsonian.com by Cate Lineberry provides not only the story of how Francis Scott Key wrote the poem, but also the history of the flag. Excellent article. Easy reading. No bun or BBQ sauce needed. Perfect as is. See link above or click on PDF below.
…”This little French boy to is declared to be a genius along several lines. At the age of 9 he is in the seventh grade at school and has already written many poems. Recently his verses have been on the European war. One of them, written a short time before the fall of the Russian Czar reads:
Armies; scattered; withered–what for?
What has Europe gained by war?
When will cannon’s mouth be cold
From killing by the hundredfold?
German’s strength and England’s flower
Ruthlessly destroyed for lust and power!
Rulers’ jealousy, monarchs’ hate;
Not the sudden turns of fate,
Has made this murderous field!
When will kaiser, king, and Tzar
Be no more, human lives to mar?
SKH Note: As one of the many investigative ironies note that immediately adjacent to this “George Hodel Boy Genius” article the Evening Herald reports a Los Angeles murder. “Man Beaten To Death At Own Doorstep” which goes on to describe, “Angeleno’s Skull is Crushed by Gas Pipe: Finger Print is Clew.” As we know, George, the young genius will grow up not to become a concert pianist or poet, but rather a serial killer, with one of his favorite MO’s being to crush his victim’s skulls by way of blunt force trauma. (Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short, Jeanne French etc.) Also, note the then common spelling of the word “Clew” which would be regularly used in GHH’s later articles as a crime reporter for the LA Record newspaper in the Twenties. He would also continue to use this unique spelling in his letters to the press in the Sixties and Seventies, as Zodiac.
PPS. The Evening Herald’s reference to “this little French boy…” is due to the fact that French was the Hodel family’s first language for George growing up. Both of his parents, though from Russia, spoke fluent French from living in France before coming to the U.S. through Ellis Island in 1901. (Recall on the Jeanne French murder in 1947, the suspect is reported to be speaking French with the victim just prior to their leaving a restaurant and her being murdered.)
Twelve individual witness sightings each day of “Missing Week” debunk Dahlia Myth.
In my sequel, Black Dahlia Avenger II (Thoughtprint Press 2014) I present three major Black Dahlia Myths. They are:
Myth No. 1- “It was a standalone murder.”
Myth No. 2- “There was a Missing or Lost Week.”
Myth No. 3- “The case was never solved by the LAPD.”
In BDA II, Chapter 12, I document the myth of the Black Dahlia’s Missing Week. As can be seen in the above diagram, twelve separate witnesses, six of whom personally knew and spoke with Elizabeth Short during each day of that week either in Hollywood or the downtown area. Below I attach the complete Chapter 12, for your review, which lists the separate reliable witnesses and shows exactly where and when each saw and or spoke to the victim. Incredibly, the last witness to stop and speak with Elizabeth Short was LAPD uniform policewoman, Meryl McBride on January 14, 1947, in the afternoon hours. Elizabeth was exiting a bar with “two males and a female” and when officer McBride, recognizing her from an earlier contact, asked her “are you alright?” she replied, “Yes, I’m going to meet my father at the Greyhound Bus Depot.” This last sighting was just ten hours before her estimated time of death which the coroner believed occurred in the early mornings hours of January 15, 1947.
Photo below shows author at the Biltmore Hotel lobby (Olive Street Entrance) in 2016. Author’s investigation (press and police reports) debunks the legend that this lobby was the “last location where the victim was seen prior to her body being found on January 15, 1947.” DA Files document that a Mr. Studholme a Biltmore employee observed Elizabeth Short in the lobby until 10 p.m. when he believed she was signaled by someone from outside the glass doors on the Olive Street entrance. She exited out the door, turned right (south) possibly with the unknown person? (That individual is believed to have been Dr. George Hill Hodel, and they were likely headed for his private practice, located just four blocks southwest of the Biltmore Hotel at 7th & Flower.) We then have eleven more sightings of Elizabeth on each and every day from January 9-14th.
The Library Community Room is located at 1115 El Centro Street. No tickets or reservations are necessary and refreshments will be served. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Autographed books will be available for purchase.
An Author Night with dynamic true crime writing duo, Burl Barer and Frank Girardot, will be presented at the South Pasadena Public Library onThursday, August 25 at 7:00 p.m. The arresting event will focus on their 2016 investigative thriller “A Taste For Murder”. The Author Night is presented by the South Pasadena Public Library, the Friends of the South Pasadena Public Library, and Sisters in Crime—LA, a mystery and true crime reading group that has met monthly at the South Pasadena Public Library for many years.
Frank Rodriguez, a much-loved counselor of troubled teens, lay dead on his bedroom floor. His wife and step-daughter were in total shock, and so was the medical examiner who performed the autopsy. Although he was found dead, Frank had been in perfect health. Demanding to know the cause of her husband’s death, Angie Rodriguez badgered the police, insisting Frank was murdered. The cops attributed her assertions to overwhelming grief, but soon they believed that Frank didn’t die of natural causes. When the police enlisted their number one suspect to help in the investigation, things spiraled out of control until police were dealing with a daring plot to murder Angie’s best friend, and allegations of another homicide so evil and twisted that even seasoned L.A County Detectives were startled beyond belief.
The case first came to Frank Girardot’s attention when he was compiling a database of unsolved homicides in LA County. Out of more than 11,000 homicides that occurred between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2010, only one of them involved poison –the murder of Frank Rodriguez. Frank shared his findings with Burl Barer and together the award-winning journalist and the Edgar Award-winning writer began researching the case. The research took them from the gritty eastern LA suburbs to the gleaming Central California Coast. Their efforts convinced a superior court judge to allow them access to never-before-released court documents that revealed the planned hit on a key witness in the case, and a previous murder with similar circumstances. They also revealed the grisly details of Angie’s childhood.
Frank C. Girardot is the former Editor of the Pasadena Star-News and an honorary board member of the Justice for Homicide victims in LA County. He has been twice recognized as the group’s hero of the year. Girardot is the author of “Name Dropper: Investigating the Clark Rockefeller Mystery”. Frank’s 1994 story on the unsolved murder of Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, the mother of novelist James Ellroy, resulted in Ellroy’s book, “My Dark Places”. Frank has won several writing awards including the Southern California Press Association’s award for Investigative Journalism 1995, the LA Press Club’s Award for sportswriting in 1998 and was a finalist for the 2015 University of Florida Investigative Data Journalism Award. Girardot headed a project for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, “Getting Away with Murder.” that chronicled more than 11,000 homicides that occurred in L.A. County over a decade and found less than half were ever solved.
Burl Barer is an acclaimed author of bestselling fiction and non-fiction. He is best known for “The Saint”, “Capturing the Saint,” and many other true crime classics. Regarded as one of America’s premier investigative journalists, Barer’s true crime books are required reading in many criminology classes and among true crime fans. Burl Barer is an Edgar Award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction and is best known for “The Saint”, “Capture the Saint” and many bestselling True Crime Classics. Regarded as one of America’s premier investigative journalists, Barer’s true crime books are required reading in many criminology classes and among true crime fans.
Zodiac’s unique sounding description of his potential future victim to be a “Blue Eyed Brownett” is not so unique after all. The identical description has been found in several newspaper articles written by reporters across the nation in the Fifties and Sixties, and likely existed and was used much earlier.
We know that George Hodel, as the 1947 “Black Dahlia Avenger” used his training as a Los Angeles Record crime-reporter to write his cut-and-paste headline taunts when he mailed in his letters to the press and police. He wrote:
“Dahlia’s Killer Cracking Wants Terms”
“‘Go Slow’ Man Killer Says Black Dahlia Case”
Did George Hodel also call upon his early journalistic training twenty years later, in 1966, in his taunting letter mailed to the press and police? On the one-month anniversary of the brutal stabbing murder of Cheri Jo Bates, the 18-year-old college student, in Riverside, California, Zodiac mailed in his ‘Confession Letter.”
It would appear so. Here is what I have discovered.
A 1956 article in a New Mexico newspaper references an FBI APB (All Points Bulletin) for a Los Angeles couple wanted for counterfeiting. The article names Herbert Dennis Bechtel age 40, with an extensive police record and several aliases, along with his wife, Lena Mae Cox, who the journalist describes as “an attractive blue-eyed brownett” in her early 30s. (See below)
Then on September 19, 1966, just five weeks before the Cheri Jo Bates murder in Riverside, California, two front page articles appeared headlined in The Dispatch, a Lexington, N.C. newspaper.
The lead story read, ” Over 3,000 Attend “Erlanger Day”
The article displayed a photograph of an attractive young woman and went on to say, “Judy Hegler Crowned Queen”; Judy Hegler, 17, a blue-eyed brownett and a 1966 graduate of Lexington Senior High won the honor in competition with six other lovely young ladies, all daughters of Erlanger employees.”…
Also featured on the front page, immediately below the “blue eyed brownett” description was a separate and unrelated story, describing the horrific bludgeon/stabbing murder of a young woman in Chicago, Illinois.
The victim was Valerie Percy, age 21, the daughter of Republican senatorial candidate Charles H. Percy. The murder would become major news in all of the Chicago newspapers and went on to describe how a burglar broke into the family estate while all family members were asleep. The suspect after forcing entry then went to the victim’s bedroom where he attacked and savagely stabbed her to death. He left without taking any property and though thousands of man hours would be spent attempting to identify the killer, fifty years later, the Valerie Percy case still remains an unsolved murder.
(SKH Note: The Valerie Percy murder occurred just eight miles north of where George Hodel’s three “Lipstick Murders” were committed in 1945 and 1946. All of those crimes were nighttime burglaries of occupied residences where the victims were attacked while sleeping and then stabbed to death. In one instance, Suzanne Degnan, a six-year-old child, was carried from the home and her body surgically bisected in a nearby basement, then the body parts were spread out in drainage sewers in the neighborhood, “for the whole city to see.”)
See related headlines on Valerie Percy murder below.
1966 Zodiac Cheri Jo Bates “Confession” Letter which includes his description of a “BLUE EYED BROWNETT.” (Red underscored.)
…OR MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE SHAPELY BLUE EYED BROWNETT THAT SAID NO WHEN I ASKED HER FOR A DATE IN HIGH SCHOOL…
…
…BUT I SHALL CUT OFF HER FEMALE PARTS AND DEPOSIT THEM FOR THE WHOLE CITY TO SEE.*
*(SKH Note- George Hodel did exactly that in the 1946 Suzanne Degnan murder, and in the 1947 surgical bisection murder of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short, as well as repeating it a third time in his 1967 Manila, Philippines surgical bisection murder of victim Lucila Lalu, whose body parts (like the Degnan and Black Dahlia murders) he “deposited for the whole city to see.”
(SKH Note): The initial 1956 article describing the suspects in a “major counterfeit ring” appeared in the LA Times two days prior to the article referenced in the Alamagordo NM Daily News.. Below is the LA coverage of the above mentioned Herbert Bechtel and his wife, Lena Mae Cox, referred to as “the attractive blue eyed brownett.”
Photograph of actual Note typed by Bauerdorf Killer (Red spots were placed on paper by killer to mimic blood. Analysis by LA Sheriff’s crime lab showed substance to be the medical antiseptic–IODINE.)
In my original investigation of the 1940s Lone Woman Murders, I presented evidence which I believe linked the 1944 Georgette Bauerdorf murder to other crimes which occurred both pre-and-post Black Dahlia. I won’t here review all of that linkage, but want just to focus on and update one particular aspect of that investigation–The Bauerdorf Note.
First, let me restate some points originally presented in 2003 in Black Dahlia Avenger- pages 306-308:
Nearly a year after the murder, an article appeared in the Examiner on September 21, 1945, that read almost like an epitaph. The story included a typed note from someone claiming to be her killer. Below the headline the paper ran Georgette’s picture, along with the note, in which the killer taunted the police and promised to revisit the Hollywood Canteen within the month. The note, exactly as the self-proclaimed killer typed it, read:
To the Los Angeles police–
Almost a year ago Georgette
Bauerdorf, age 20, Hollywood
Canteen hostess was murdered
in her apartment in West Holly-
wood–
Between now and Oct. 11–a year
after her death–the one who
murdered her will appear at the
Hollywood Canteen. The murderer
will be in uniform. He has since
he committed the murder been in
action at Okinawa. The murder
of Georgette Bauerdorf was Divine
Retribution–
Let the Los Angeles police arrest
the murderer if they can–
An eleven-year-old student named Marilyn Silk had found the note on her way home from school. Written on a sheet of personal notepaper and stuffed inside a dirty envelope, the missive was lying on a stone retaining wall near Fairfax High School in Hollywood. The newspaper also dropped a clue that had not been disclosed to the public at the time of the homicide a year earlier when it reported, “There was the suggestion by friends that she [Bauerdorf] was accompanied home by a man in uniform.”
(SKH Note- May have been an error in reporting actual location of note as the teenager’s home is literally at or adjacent to the Bauerdorf residence. My guess is she found the note in front of the Bauerdorf residence and turned it in to school authorities upon arriving at Fairfax High School.)
What struck me in the Bauerdorf case was its obvious similarity to the later Dahlia killing, in which the suspect also taunted police via notes to the newspaper. The Bauerdorf suspect promised police that he would appear at the Hollywood Canteen in uniform by October 11. (Father’s birthday was October 10.) The killer’s “Let the Los Angeles police arrest the murderer if they can” echoes the words used two years later in the pasted message to the police in the Dahlia case: “We’re going to Mexico City–catch us if you can.” The killer’s need to seek recognition and publicity for his crimes was a way to exert control both over the police and his victim. Announcing that Georgette’s murder was not a crime but his dispensation of “Divine Retribution” also bears an eerie resemblance to what Elizabeth Short’s killer would say two years later when he called himself the “Black Dahlia Avenger.”
The Bauerdorf Note
Other similarities in both the Elizabeth Short and Bauerdorf homicides are, in my opinion, striking enough to be considered thoughtprints linking the same suspect to the two crimes.
In both cases, the notes the suspect wrote to the police suggest that he had some experience as a journalist. In the Bauerdorf murder note, the taunting letter opens with a lead paragraph similar in style to the lead paragraph of a morning newspaper in which the “what, when, where, and who” are all answered.
To the Los Angeles police–
(when) (who)
Almost a year ago Georgette
Bauerdorf, age 20, Hollywood
(What)
Canteen hostess, was murdered
(where)
in her apartment in West Holly-
wood–
The killer tells us the “why” in his next sentence, where he identifies the crime as an act of retribution, and in so doing identifies himself indirectly as an “avenger.”
In the pasted Dahlia notes, the killer again demonstrates journalistic knowledge, this time as a headline writer, in his two separate taunts to police:
‘Go Slow’
Man Killer Says
Black Dahlia Case
Followed in a few days by:
Dahlia’s Killer Cracking, Wants Terms
These are not notes from a streetwise thug, but professional headlines. So professional, in fact, that true-crime author and commentator Joseph Wambaugh told television viewers in the Learning Channel’s production Case Reopened: The Black Dahlia that:
“Obviously, journalists sent the letter. Cutting and pasting newsprint as was done in a B-movie clichés of the era. The same cruel and unscrupulous reporters who elicited background information from Mrs. Short, the mother, by claiming her daughter had won a beauty contest. But, at the end of the day, they didn’t prevent the case from being solved.”
[Author Note- Wambaugh’s observation above referencing his belief that “unscrupulous journalists sent the notes” was made on the television show in October 1999, some four years before the publication of my book.]
There exists another clue to the identity of the letter writer in his unique method and manner of typing, seen in six different locations in the Bauerdorf note, in which he unconsciously leaves two separated dashes (–) at the end of some of his sentences. In the Bauerdorf note, these double-dashes follow the words: “police–“, “Hollywood–“, “Oct. 11–“, “death–“, “Retribution–“, and “can–“.
In the long letter Father sent me on June 4, 1980, referred to here as The Parable of the Sparrows, which he typed himself rather than giving it to his secretary or wife to type, there are five separate instances where he used his unique double-dash endings:
Page 2
“plastic coating–“
“mirror film– “
Page 3
“for Dorero–“
“to her–“
“Remember–“
The use of these double-spaced dashes is such a rarity that their appearances in the Bauerdorf note and in my father’s letter to me set off a loud alarm.
Exhibit 56a shows how the original note appeared in the September 21, 1945, Examiner article along with Georgette’s photograph. A separate Los Angeles Times article on the same date informed readers that detectives believe red iodine stains visible on the typed paper were placed there by the suspect to represent blood. Exhibit 56b is reproduced from my father’s Franklin House sales brochure, prepared in 1949, and shows him seated atop his desk, which pictures an old Royal typewriter (enlarged as an insert). This typewriter could well have been the instrument used to type the Bauerdorf note and those of some of the later crimes.
Exhibit 56a and 56b
GHH Royal typewriter on desk enlarged in upper left insert.
In August 2003, Jon L. Breen, the highly respected, veteran mystery writer and two-time MWA Edgar Award winner wrote an early critique of my book, Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder. Breen’s thoughtful critique entitled “Daddy Did It” was published in the Weekly Standard on August 18, 2003. His six-page review was well balanced and pointed to what he then considered being some of the strengths and weaknesses of in my investigation. One of the weaknesses highlighted by Jon Breen was from the section currently under review–the Bauerdorf Note. Here is the extract from Mr. Breen’s 2003 critique: “Hodel obviously is not required to make an iron clad case…Still; reasoning that is far-fetched or obviously erroneous serves to cast further doubt on his main case. For example, Hodel compares one of his father’s typewritten letters with one purportedly from the killer of Georgette Bauerdorf, victim of a 1944 bathtub murder. Hodel assumes that using a double hyphen to represent a dash is somehow unusual. On the contrary, it is standard. Word processing programs do it automatically.”
Mr. Breen ended his 2003 review with the following:
“So what is the final verdict on Black Dahlia Avenger? Its accounts of cover-ups and civic corruption are all too believable, and much of the circumstantial evidence it presents against George Hodel is persuasive. …Has Steve Hodel solved the case? I think so, but he has some tidying up to do for the paperback edition.”
Five years later, he included his original full review of Black Dahlia Avenger in his excellent book, “A Shot Rang Out: Selected Mystery Criticism” (Ramble House 2008) adding the below P.S.:
Postscript 2008: Hodel did, in fact, include additional material to strengthen his case…One writer who believes his solution is Orson Welles biographer, Simon Callow, who examines the evidence against Welles with some admiration in Orson Welles: Hello Americans (2006) before averring that Hodel’s conclusion is definitive. [Emphasis mine–and ‘thank you” Mr. Callow.]
An English Teacher/ Tech Editor Proofs Bauerdorf Note
“The writer {Bauerdorf Note] had both masterful/arcane knowledge of English punctuation as well as of specialized typographic/printer(!) conventions.”
A few years back I received this welcome and informative e-mail from a high-school English teacher and former tech-writer/editor.“P.M.” had this to say about the Bauerdorf Note, excerpted from his longer e-mail:
Dear Mr. Hodel:
…
I’m almost done with your fascinating & engaging book, which I bought
after finishing James Ellroy’s “My Dark Places.” I’m a retired (63)
tech writer/editor from Silicon Valley & Microsoft (Redmond WA) with a
Calif. Credential to teach H.S. English. So…
Those double dashes were more than a personal peculiarity: in
the age of typewriters, they were the accepted substitute for what’s
called an “em” dash, a punctuation mark similar in use/meaning to a
semicolon but less formal (precedes amplification of meaning, etc.).
They weren’t on typewriters, so people used 2 dashes instead. The single/shorter dash (“en” dash) and hyphens have different usages &meanings. So the writer using them (your Dad) had both
masterful/arcane knowledge of English punctuation as well as of
specialized typographic/printer (!) conventions. Hmmm…
P.M., South Carolina
Thank you, P.M. for setting the record straight on what I in 2003 ignorantly referred to as my father’s seemingly, “unconscious characteristic of using double-dashes.”
EM and EN —AQuick English Lesson for Dummies (like me)
em·dash or em dash ( m d sh ) n.
A symbol ( ) used in writing and printing to indicate a break in thought or sentence structure, to introduce a phrase added for emphasis, definition, or explanation, or to separate two clauses.(Its name derives from being the width of an m in printing.)
en·dash or en dash ( n d sh ) n.
A symbol (- ) used in writing or printing to connect continuing or inclusive numbers or to connect elements of a compound adjective when either of the elements is an open compound, as 1880-1945 or Princeton-New York trains.(Its name derives from being the width of an n in printing.)
In the below exhibit I have reproduced both the killer’s original 1945 typed Bauerdorf Note and the LA Times retyped reproduction of it both of which were published in the newspaper.
Note that in the killer’s typewriter written note on the right we see he was forced to use “double dashes” [highlighted with red arrows] since the EM dash was not available to him.
However, when the newspaper reproduced the killer’s note, [left] they correctly replaced his intended EM dash, with actual ones, which were available to them on their linotype machines. [Also highlighted with red arrows. Note they missed reproducing two of his EM dashes which I have indicated as green arrows.]
Bauerdorf Note- “To The Los Angeles Police”
In the below exhibit I have extracted the sections of my father’s original 1980 Parable of the Sparrows Letter, wherein he demonstrates his continued use of the typewritten “double dash” in place of the EM dash. The letter, also written on a typewriter, predated computers by just a few years. I believe the first commercial use, making the EM dash available on WordStar and DOS, was offered just two years later, in 1982-1983.
Author’s Note
A massive amount of circumstantial evidence linking George Hodel to the Georgette Bauerdorf Murder underscoring it as one of the “Lone Woman Murders” has surfaced since the original publication of BDA. That information/evidence has been presented elsewhere in my writings, including my updated 2014 edition of Black Dahlia Avenger II. This blog merely examines and updates the information pertaining to the Bauerdorf Note.
George Hodel in March 1979 (age 71) seen here with his top INRA-ASIA Exec, Leo Murray in Hong Kong.
Leo was also a helicopter pilot (seen here in his Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force uniform.) The occasion of this photo was the two men celebrating the opening of a new INRA-ASIA HQ
office in Hong Kong.
GHH no mustache
In the above 1974 photo, we see George with a rather faint graying mustache which would likely be impossible to see from across the street in the dark of night. (Think Zodiac’s 1969 Paul Stine cab-murder witnesses who were looking out a second story window 150′ away.)
For full summary on the above Zodiac Composite GHH compare click HERE.
The 1979 photo from Leo Murray serves as my rebuttal to those naysayers that claim that “George Hodel was never clean shaven and always wore a mustache.”
The photo was sent to me by my longtime friend, Leo Murray who came across it while going through some of his old albums. (I first met Leo in Hong Kong back in the early 1970s, while on tour with my father of his INRA ASIA offices. Leo was in charge of the HK office and remained as a loyal executive to dad for several decades. Leo, now long retired and a world traveler continues to reside in Hong Kong.
(And, to those who might wonder, like I did, “Did Leo in his close position to George over the decades, ever suspect George’s crimes? The answer is –no. Like myself, Leo was aware of some of George’s failings, and his need to control people, but he never saw or suspected any criminality.
Thanks for sending me the photo Leo. Continued Safe Travels to you and your beautiful wife, Elaine.
…Bosch had an idea what was coming. The fixer was here now. The investigation was about to go through the spin cycle where decisions and public pronouncements would be made based on what best served the department, not the truth.”
From Angels Flight by Michael Connelly
LAPD CHIEF WILLIAM H. PARKER:
WHITE KNIGHT BLACK KNIGHT
THE WHITE KNIGHT
Robert “Bob” Taylor is the Immediate Past Chairman of the Los Angeles Police Museum’s Board of Directors. In the April/May 2016 Museum’s newsletter known as “The Hot Sheet, ” Bob devoted the entire edition to the memory of former LAPD police chief William H. Parker. (This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Parker’s death in 1966.)
Bob has written an outstanding article summarizing Chief Parker’s life and service to the City of Los Angeles. I highly recommend you take the time to read it in its entirety. It is attached here as a PDF and can also be read on-line at the following link which will direct you to it at the Police Museum’s web page.
In the eyes of most of the LAPD Chief William H. Parker remains legendary. Right up there with men like Gen. George S. Patton and J. Edgar Hoover. In 1950, he took command of a highly corrupt Department and for the next sixteen years ruled with an iron fist, retooled and professionalized the Police Academy training and marketed his “New Breed” by turning on the bright klieg lights of Hollywood, capturing national attention with the introduction of the new TV series, “Dragnet” starring, Sgt. Joe “Just the Facts” Friday (Jack Webb) and positioning his “No. 2 Man” Chief Thad Brown as the show’s technical advisor.
Chief Parker known as “Whiskey Bill” was tough as nails hard and uncompromising. Here is a personal anecdote to illustrate the point.
In 1964, I was a rookie patrol officer with just over a year on the job. I was assigned to Wilshire Division, Morning Watch.
One morning, at about 4:00 A.M. the following broadcast was received from Communications Division. “Attention all Wilshire Division patrol officers. Report to Wilshire Station “Code 2.” (Code for “immediately, without delay.) I and my partner, along with all of the other uniformed officers (about ten two-man teams as I recall) did so, and the Watch Commander had all of us report upstairs to the Roll Call Room.
We were lined up side by side in a long row, order to “attention” and the Watch Commander, accompanied by a middle-aged woman of Chinese decent entered the squad room, and the two of them did a “walk by” as she looked into each one of our faces. The two then left and we were then ordered back to the field to resume our patrol duties.
Long story short, turns out that the woman had been walking home from a local bar, highly intoxicated and was stopped as she was about to enter her apartment, by a uniformed officer and his young probationer, who had just graduated from the Academy. Both officers approached her on the sidewalk and it was obvious that she was intoxicated. The senior officer then ordered his partner to “get in the car and listen to the police radio in case we get a hot call. I’ll make sure she gets to her apartment OK.” The rookie followed orders and sat in the patrol car. About fifteen minutes later, his partner came out of the apt building, and they resumed patrol.
A few minutes later, the woman’s boyfriend returned home, found her asleep on the couch in what can only be described as a highly compromised condition. (Her face and clothing were covered with semen.) She informed her boyfriend that a police officer had threatened to arrest her for “drunk and disorderly” but would “let her slide if she gave him a blowjob.” She did, and he did, returning to his partner who unaware of any misconduct or crime waited patiently in the car.
The irate boyfriend drove her to Wilshire Station and informed the Watch Commander who then immediately had all of his patrol officers report to the station for a “live show-up.”
The victim subsequently positively identified the one officer from the show-up, he and his partner were interviewed, the senior officer admitted it and his partner, rightfully claimed, “no knowledge.” In a later “Board of Rights Hearing” Chief Parker had both officers fired on the spot. Parker’s position in regards to the rookie/probationer was ” no matter, he should not have allowed his partner to go with the woman by himself.” (The probationer on appeal was later reinstated.)
The point of the story being that for Chief Parker there were no “mitigating circumstances.” Policework like Life was “Black and White.” There was only “Good and Bad.” “Right and Wrong.” Unfortunately, this “philosophy” and his personal view of life, carried over to his troops and became a “Us and Them” mentality, which Parker strongly promoted calling it “proactive policing.” These hardline attitudes divided the citizenry and would be partly to blame for what two years into my career under Parker’s command became known as, “The Watts Riots.” (As noted by many researchers, the underlying causes of the Watts Riots were many and LAPD’s “proactive, hardline policing” was only one piece of a very complex puzzle.)
In Black Dahlia Avenger II, I include a chapter that contains several important sections that focus on Chief William H. Parker. As introduction to that section I wrote:
In 1963, as young, idealistic rookie cops, my partners and I really believed we were Chief Parker’s “Thin Blue Line.” At police academy graduation, he looked us in the eye, shook our hand, and told us that was so. Life for me back then was literally and philosophically, “black and white.”
Today, decades later, I realize that neither life nor people were ever that simple. Most of us are a combination of the two—black and white—which makes for lots of gray.
Today, with a much fuller historical perspective and understanding, I realize that my early hero, Chief Parker, was both a white and a black knight.
In that chapter, I include: “Parker on Police” which presents Parker’s 1949 private verbatim conversations with LAPD Vice-Sergeant, Charles Stoker as discussed in Stoker’s 1950 expose, Thicker’N Thieves.
I also quote from Parker’s book, Parker on Police (Charles C. Thoms, Springfield, Ilinois 1957) which includes his 1954, direct testimony before the Appropriations Committee, House of Representatives, in Washington, DC. Parker in speaking to the Committee, introduces his theory on, “The Law of Double Effect.” He uses this concept in his defense to push for the passage of laws allowing police to eavesdrop using hidden microphones and recording devices to crush crime. (As we know, this was done by DA/LAPD at the Hodel residence just three years earlier on the Black Dahlia Task Force stakeout.)
I am here attaching a PDF scan of that section of Black Dahlia Avenger II, for those interested in obtaining a deeper understanding of Chief Parker’s philosophy, coming from his own mouth.
“With almost animate pigments has Hecht painted this monstrous dream of Mallare’s, and with delicate and meticulous craftsmanship has he fashioned its cadaverous and perverse beauty.”
George Hill Hodel
Excerpt from 1925 “Fantasia Magazine” George Hodel review of “THE KINGDOM OF EVIL,” By Ben Hecht. (Pascal Covici, publisher 1925)
“I know the name of the killer [Black Dahlia Avenger] and the psychology of his deed. […] There is only one form of hatred that can equal in violence the symbolizing rage of the lunatic—and what that hatred is I will leave unsaid.” —
Ben Hecht, Los Angeles Herald-Express, Sat, Feb 1, 1947
Cover of George Hill Hodel’s 1925 “Fantasia Magazine”
I received the following e-mail from Mr. Luigi Warren, who is one of my readers, is highly versed in all four of my books and has become an insightful “comment contributor” to my blog site. Here is his email received in a few days ago, which speaks for itself.
Steve:
Just finished reading Ben Hecht’s “Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath” (1922), one of GHH’s boyhood favorites. you have discussed it fairly briefly in your books. Like GHH’s early murder scene dispatches and his “Inference” poem it seems worth revisiting in the context of the Zodiac crimes.
Background…Fantazius is a partially first-person account of an artist’s descent into madness and murder. Hecht ran into trouble with the censors on account of its obscene content and illustrations. The major literary inspiration was “A rebours,” by J.K. Huysmans (another of GHH’s favorites), itself said to have been a model for the Decadent novel which corrupted Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s story. Hecht is also reported to have modeled Mallare on John Barrymore (star of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”), a fellow member of the Bundy Drive Boys (the “Hollywood Hellfire Club”). Interestingly, I see that Will Fowler (newsman at Black Dahlia crime scene) was another member of this notorious band of hellraisers. (SKH Note: Actually, it was Will Fowler’s father, Gene Fowler and friend and co-screenwriter with Rowland Brown (Dorothy Hodel’s then lover) that was one of the Bundy Drive Boys. His son, Will may have been an “honorary member” but I doubt it. As noted in BDA II, Will Fowler (son of Gene) was likely the source of distributing the Dahlia crime scene photos as well as inventing and admitting to circulating the rumor that Elizabeth Short “had an infantile vagina” which he claimed was “a prank.”)
The book itself…If one were to do a “word cloud” of the novel, the word “red” (red dress, red hands, red face, red room, etc.) would be way up there, as would the word “phantom.” Some thought prints from the book: (1) megalomania combined with misanthropy, toying with the notion of suicide but concluding that the destruction of others is the road back to Godhood; (2) desire to create and rule a world in which others are tormented and the idea that one dominates one’s victims after they die; (3) the idea that insanity might be a preferred state; (4) egotistical resentment that words are defined by others and impulse to reassert superiority by inventing one’s own words; (5) solipsism and inability to distinguish dream and reality; (6) erotomania combined with misogyny based on resentment of female sexual power; (7) obsessive documentation of inconsequential banalities. Of Wallace Smith’s illustrations, the first depicting an emaciated male figure having coitus with a female tree spirit strikes me as interesting w.r.t. interpretation of the Zodiac Halloween card.
Is there any chance you could present the entirety of GHH’s review of Hecht’s sequel, “The Kingdom of Evil?” Personally, I find the question of GHH’s early Symbolist/Decadent influences at least as interesting as the later Surrealist/Dadaist material.
Regards,
Luigi Warren
Luigi, thank you for your latest comments relating to GHH, Ben Hecht and his early books, Fantazius Mallare: A Mysterious Oath and its sequel, The Kingdom of Evil.
Per your request, here is my father’s full review of the latter, as originally published in the January 1925 edition of Fantasia. (Keep in mind GHH was just seventeen when he published this elitist magazine.)
Click below for enlarged copy of GHH Ben Hecht Review
Above is a page from that same edition that includes GHH’s poem, INFERENCE which he wrote using the pseudonym, “Vernon Morel.”
I find it interesting that George after noting in his poem that he “was conceived in sin” then goes on to insert on the adjacent page a modernist drawing by the artist, Ben Berlin, entitled, Adam and Eve. (Shown Above) Difficult to discern from the rendering if Berlin’s depiction is pre or post Original Sin, but regardless, it remains apropos. (Kind of like comparing apples to apples.)
SKH Note: Ben Berlin was considered as one of the most talented local LA artists of his time. See his fascinating short LACMA bio here.
In 1934, Berlin painted the above portrait of his friend and intellectual guru, Sadakichi Hartmann, who had contributed a poem to George Hodel’s Fantasia Magazine a decade earlier. (Sadakichi’s poem, while listed on the Fantasia Content Page as “Naked Ghosts” did not appear in the magazine. It is possible that in scanning the original back in 1999, I accidentally omitted that page?)
Based on a separate article, we discover that young crime reporter George Hodel temporarily switched hats and became the paper’s literary critic to conduct an interview with Sadakichi Hartmann, who he referred to as “a literary aristocrat.” Here is George’s interview as it appeared in that daily:
A Nice Little Thoughtprint
Thanks to Luigi Warren’s comments and request that I provide the additional material from the original Fantasia, we now have uncovered a new thoughtprint. Did you catch it?
Let’s read the closing line in George Hodel’s 1924 article on Hartmann. He writes:
“He (Sadikichi Hartmann) waves his long bony hands in fanciful gestures, as if in magic incantation. One closes one’s eyes and one is in some dark Confucian temple, with the incense curling, languorously, fantastically.”
Now compare that to George Hodel’s “Inference” poem, written less than a year later and self-published in Fantasia using his alias, “Vernon Morel.” The poem’s third stand reads:
Then was the incense rising
Poisonously
In the temple of Cybele curling
Dolorously
And in phantasmal wraiths writhing
Languorously
Again, originality was never George Hodel’s strong suit. Even when plagiarizing himself. But, as a “nice little thoughtprint” it does make for a strong byline link to the authorship of George the reporter to George the poet.
See below link to an article by Professor George Knox. Excerpted from the Introduction of The Life and Times of Sadakichi Hartmann, 1867-1944. An Exhibition Presented and Co-sponsored by the University Library and the Riverside Press-Enterprise Co. at the University of California, Riverside, May 1 to May 31, 1970. (UCR is also the only location that contains an original copy of GHH’s Fantasia magazine.)
Professor Knox appears to be one of the leading experts on Hartmann’s life.
In BDA II I examined the Hodel/Hecht connections which we know spanned more than twenty years. (1925-1947) From GHH’s Fantasia Review of Hecht’s novel to his co-writing of films with Rowland Brown, then lover of Dorothy Hodel, to the surrealist connections with Man Ray and Dali on Spellbound, to his published acknowledgment of “knowing the name of the Black Dahlia killer and the psychology of his deed.”
The below link is to an excellent 2009 blog on both Ben Hecht and his Fantazius illustrator, Wallace Smith. The author of the blog provides an excellent backgrounding of both individuals and includes Hecht’s “Dedication” from Fantazius Mallare. Nothing provides better insight into a person than their own words. Take a look at Hecht’s “Dedication.” This coming from the same man that was a young crime reporter for the Chicago Daily News then came west in the mid-Twenties, began writing screenplays and brought us such classics as: Notorious (with Rowland Brown), Spellbound, Scarface, Gilda, The Front Page, Lifeboat, The Outlaw, Stagecoach, It’s a Wonderful World, Angels with Dirty Faces (Story by Rowland Brown), A Star is Born, What Price Hollywood (with Rowland Brown) and many more.
For those that desire to go deeper into the weeds of the mind of the young Ben Hecht (careful it’s a swamp filled with quicksand) the Gutenberg Project has reproduced his 1922 novel as originally published. Link below.
Yesterday I discovered a new “taunting clue” left by my father in his commission of the 1947 murder of former actress and aviatrix, Jeanne French.
Though it was in plain sight all along and readily discoverable, I had simply missed it for the past fifteen years.
Before revealing our newly discovered clue, let’s take a short refresher course of GHH’s crime-signature MOs as presented in Black Dahlia Avenger I & II. Specifically, let’s examine his unique “catch me if you can” MO of placing his victim’s bodies adjacent to streets that relate directly to his crimes.
Chicago Lipstick Murder January 6, 1946, Chicago, Illinois
Suzanne Degnan age 6
In the horrific kidnap-murder of little Suzanne Degnan, the child was taken from her home and slain in the basement of a nearby apartment complex which detectives determined was “The Murder Room.” A surgical procedure known as a hemicorpectomy was performed (body bisected between the 2nd and 3rd lumbar vertebrae), and her body parts were then placed in sewers in the neighborhood.
Six weeks after the crime the victim’s arms, posed and “bent at the elbows” were discovered in a sewer one-half mile away from the murder room. As indicated in the below Chicago Daily Tribune article, they had been posed and placed in a sewer just off “HOLLYWOOD STREET.”
The gruesome discovery of Suzanne Degnan’s arms found in an alley off Hollywood Street.
Black Dahlia Murder January 15, 1947, Los Angeles, California
Elizabeth Short, age 22
Elizabeth Short’s body was surgically bisected at George Hodel’s Hollywood residence. A surgical procedure known as a hemicorporectomy was performed (body bisected between the 2nd and 3rd lumbar vertebrae), and the body parts were then transported to a vacant lot in Liemert Park district of Los Angeles some seven miles south of Hollywood.
On January 15, 1947, her body “arms bent at the elbows” was found posed just off the sidewalk. Geoge Hodel as a taunting clue placed the body on what he thought was “DEGNAN BLVD,” (a subtle “catch me if you can” clue to his Chicago, Suzanne Degnan “Lipstick Murder.” Unbeknownst to GHH, the street transitions from Degnan Blvd to become Norton Ave, just south of where he posed the body.)
Elizabeth Short body parts shown posed on a vacant lot at Norton/Degnan Ave.
The Jigsaw Murder May 28, 1967, Manila, Philippines
Lucila Lalu, age 28
Lucila Lalu was kidnapped from her place of business in Metropolitan Manila on May 28, 1967. Her body was surgically bisected by a skilled surgeon and her body parts placed on a vacant lot in the Makati district of Manila, adjacent to a street named Epifano De Los Santos immediately adjacent to a street named ZODIAC. (Six months earlier, Riverside, California murder victim, Cheri Jo Bates, (George Hodel’s first known Zodiac victim) was slain and in a typewritten note, sent one month later, he promised he would commit a kidnap/murder and “I shall cut off her female parts and deposit them for the whole city to see.”
Circle in below graphic shows the approximate location of Lalu body part adjacent to ZODIAC ST.
The Red Lipstick Murder- The New Clue (Discovered September 25, 2016)
Jeanne T. French, age 40
Actress/Aviatrix
Mrs. Jeanne French was last seen having dinner with “a dark-haired man with a mustache” at the Picadilly Restaurant, 3932 Sepulveda Blvd., in West Lost Angeles on February 10, 1947. Mrs. French left her vehicle, a 1928 Ford Roadster, in the restaurant parking lot and left with the suspect at 2:00 a.m. in what a restaurant witness described as a “1937 Black Sedan.” (GHH drove a 1937 Black Packard.)
The coroner estimated Mrs. French was slain at approximately 4:00 a.m. Her nude body was found posed in a vacant lot near the intersection of Indianapolis and Grand View. Written on her torso in red lipstick were the words, “FUCK YOU, B.D.” (Killer’s taunt meant to inform police and press he was the Black Dahlia Avenger, and the same man who had slain Elizabeth Short just three weeks earlier.)
The New Clue
Just two weeks before the Jeanne French “Red Lipstick Murder,” funeral services were held for Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short. The Short family decided to have her buried near one of her sister’s home in Oakland, California.
Below photos show the funeral, held on January 25, 1947. The Oakland Tribune article reads, “the victim was laid to rest in Oakland’s Mountain View cemetery.”
Two weeks after those services, Dr. George Hill Hodel kidnaped and brutally murdered Mrs. Jeanne French. The cause of death was “blunt force trauma to the head.” ( The coroner suspected a possible tire iron was used.) The victim was then dragged from the vehicle stripped of her clothing and stomped on causing her ribs to puncture her heart. The profane lipstick message was then written on her torso and her fur coat placed on top of her body.
As seen in the photo and map diagram below, in 1947, the location chosen to dump the body was another isolated vacant lot. The street directly adjacent to where the body was placed? MOUNTAIN VIEW AVE. Another, (his fourth) taunting street clue connecting himself to his crimes.
Victim Jeanne French body posed adjacent to MOUNTAIN VIEW AVE
I will be giving a talk on my newest book, Most Evil II (Rare Bird Books 2015) along with a backgrounding and overview of my previous Black Dahlia Avenger investigation. Talk will be followed by a Q&A. Hope to see you there October 20th at the Whittwood Branch of the Whittier Public Library.
