Birch Bay, Washington
January 1, 2025
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(This 2024 photo looking across the harbor to Canada is by local Birch Bay photographer Clive Stevens)
Greetings from Birch Bay and the NW corner of the United States.
First, let me wish all my readers a HAPPY NEW YEAR and let’s all hit the ground running and make this a constructive year for us both personally and professionally.
To jumpstart that goal, (on both a personal and professional level) let me start the New Year, by setting the record straight on the myth that began twenty-two years ago and has grown even stronger through the decades.
It is oft repeated in news reportage, and in remake documentaries, as well as frequently published in true crime magazine articles and parroted in podcasts and by online self-proclaimed “experts”:
THE MYTH goes something like this:
“The 1947 Black Dahlia Murder is one of LA’s most famous whodunits and remains unsolved to this day. In 2003, a retired Los Angeles detective, Steve Hodel, published a NYT bestselling book, Black Dahlia Avenger, which presents his theory that his father, Dr. George Hodel, committed her murder. He also claims that his father killed numerous other Los Angeles women in the 1940s and then fled the country.”
THE FACTS:
The 2003 publication of Black Dahlia Avenger, and the naming of his father, Dr. George Hill Hodel
as the sadistic torture/murderer of Elizabeth Short “IS NOT HIS THEORY”.
Likewise, the 1940s LA Lone Women kidnap/murders ARE NOT HIS THEORY.
A theory is a set of ideas intended to explain facts or events. However, a theory is not fact, no matter how well-supported it may be. A theory does not generate a solution. What does generate a solution? An investigation of a proveable set of facts that leads to answering some or all of the who, what, when, where, why, and how of a crime or crimes generates its own solution.
The Black Dahlia Murder and related serial crimes and the identification and solution that Dr. George Hill Hodel committed those crimes came from THE LAPD AND THE LADA DETECTIVES. SPECIFICALLY, THE 1947 “BLACK DAHLIA” CRIME, THE MURDER OF ELIZABETH SHORT, WAS ACKNOWLEDGED “SOLVED” AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT. (LAPD CHIEF OF DETECTIVES, THAD BROWN AND THEN MR. DA, WILLIAM E. SIMPSON) BACK IN 1950.
Black Dahlia Avenger is not a son’s theory alleging his father was the killer of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short. Rather it is a veteran homicide detective’s investigation into and discovery of the documented solution and coverup of that crime in 1950, by LAPD and the LADA’s investigators.
It is often said in life, in politics, and in crime that the covering up of an event is often worse than the event itself. Hard to imagine that the cover-up of a murder can be worse than the murder… but in the fullness of time the discovery of the cover-up was far worse as it permitted the actions of corrupt law enforcement agencies to result in a known, identified serial killer to continue killing for another twenty years.
The discovery of this coverup was the unexpected result of a highly trained, highly skilled, veteran homicide investigator starting out to prove that allegations that “his father was a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder” had no merit and to his four-year investigation leading to the discovery of DA documents and hidden wire recorded transcripts proving the opposite and to a 1950 coverup at the highest levels of law enforcement by the LADA and LAPD.
Hopefully, with the 78th anniversary of the murder of Elizabeth Short (January 15, 2025) rapidly approaching we can begin to separate THE MYTH from the FACT and understand that my now twenty-six-year investigation is not “a son’s theory that Daddy did It”, but rather the uncovering of law enforcement’s original investigation and solution that “Dr. George Hill Hodel did it.” Discovering in their original 1950 investigation that they determined and documented that George Hodel knew Elizabeth Short, had dated her, and admitted killing her and his personal secretary, Ruth Spaulding in secret wire-recorded statements, along with an LAPD-paid undercover informant (Glenn Martin) identifying George Hodel as the killer of Elizabeth Short and a second victim, Louise Springer (June 1949) all conducted by a joint task force of eighteen LAPD and DA detectives back in 1950.
Again, my best wishes to all as we begin the New Year of 2025.
Detective III Steve Hodel #11394
LAPD Hollywood Homicide Detectives (ret.)
The post HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025 – Theory vs. Fact: The Demythification of the Source, Identification and Solving of the Black Dahlia Murder appeared first on Steve Hodel.