April 24, 2020
Los Angeles, California
The following article was just posted on the Film Daily website. I responded to the author, Ms. Brynley Louise at the site, with a rather lengthy “comment” fact-checking her piece, but sometimes the comments take a long time to publish and or get “lost in the ether.” I expect it will post there, but just in case, I want my readers to have my corrections to her piece. I suggest you read her article and then check out my corrections below.
Stay SAFE wear a MASK.
Steve
“Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short: One of the Saddest LA Stories Ever?”
My “comments/response” to the reportage here:
Hi Brynley Louise.
Overall mostly correct info, but, do need to provide some factual corrections on this piece some are historical myths and some directly relate to the information you provided readers. So here goes:
1) “The so-called, “Missing Week” has always been a “myth” created by hack writers and “theorists.” LAPD put out a heavily circulated “Police Bulletin” requesting information on anyone who has seen the victim during the week of Jan 9-15, 1947. Fourteen witnesses came forward giving statements of having seen her every day of that week. Seven of the fourteen knew her personally, and could not have been mistaken.
2)My years of service were from 1963-1986. I never admitted “I believed my father was the killer. I and no one else ever knew he was even “a suspect.” All those records were hidden in a police vault until after my book, Black Dahlia Avenger came out in 2003. Only then did the DA and current LAPD discover he was “the prime suspect.” I was retired thirteen years and only at my father’s death in 1999 did I receive information that he was a suspect, along with the photo of the woman seen in the album. At that point, I began a three-year investigation and was confident my father had no connection to the crime and I would be able to prove and exonerate him of any suspicions.
3) The statement, “nobody knows for sure why the police seemed reluctant to investigate him more.” Actually, we know the WHY that the LAPD and the DA’s Office stopped the investigation. It was revealed in the 2003 secret DA Electronic Tape transcripts. The reason was because Dr. Hodel, about to be arrested by the DA investigators, fled the country while they were staked out at his/our home in their sixth week of surveillance. He was “in the wind” and earlier on the stakeout they listened while a woman was savagely beaten and probably murdered in the basement of the home. The two officers took no action. Made no rescue. When the powers that be learned this and that Dr. Hodel was gone from the country, they decided to lock it all away in the vault, and come back to it after they “cleaned up Dodge, and got rid of the current 1940s corruption.” Of course, they never did return to it as Dr. Hodel remained out of the country and did not return until they were all retired or dead. He returned in 1990. Further, in the decades following the Black Dahlia murder, four of LAPDs top brass involved in the original investigation acknowledge separately that, “We solved the case and it was a Dr. living on Franklin Ave in Hollywood.” From the DA secret Hodel/Black Dahlia File we know that doctor was Dr. George Hodel.
Regards,
Detective III Steve Hodel 11394 LAPD Hollywood Homicide Division (ret.)
April 24, 2020
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