27. MURDER: The Black Dahlia Beyond the Headlines - Featuring Steve Hodel Pt 3 - Dark City: Touring the Hidden History, Crimes, & Hauntings of Famous & Forgotten Places

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 1 (00:50):
Hi there, this is Leah and this is April, and this
is Dark City Season 1, losAngeles.
I love you.

(01:22):
Today we are joined by SteveHodel, former LAPD homicide
detective and New York Timesbestselling author of the book
Black Dahlia Avenger, among manyothers.
Steve, we are really pleased tohave you join us because we

(01:43):
know we could never tell thispart of Elizabeth's short story
as well as you could.
I haven't read all of yourworks related to the case yet,
but probably at least a thousandpages worth.
A vast majority of it was likeprobably a year and a half ago,
and my research into thispodcast was a sketch of an idea
and I knew I was going to coverthe Black Dahlia case.

(02:04):
So I am really glad and also alittle relieved we have you here
.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
To synthesize, Well, it's great to be with the two of
you and I'm looking forward togetting rid of a lot of the
stakes we have out there.
There's a lot of them and let'ssee if we can get the record
straight here.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yes, Steve.
Can you share your backgroundand your path to becoming a
homicide detective for the LAPD?

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Sure April.
So basically as a little boyand growing up in my teens I
wanted to be a marine biologist.
You know, I did a lot of skindiving and in my youth and stuff
and I really wanted to go toScripps in California and be a
you know, be a marine biologist.
But I joined the Navy at 17.

(02:52):
As soon as I turned 17, I hadto get my mom's permission and
off.
I went into the Navy for fouryears.
I was a hospital corpsman, amedic, and did that.
I was stationed in thePhilippines a couple of years.
Amazingly, my dad had goneoverseas and was in Manila when
I actually went into the Navy.

(03:12):
So that was kind of afortuitous incident that I
hadn't planned on.
But on liberty I'd get to go toManila and be the big guy's son
, right, just in my whitesharkskin suit and play on the
roll.
And then I did two years withthe Seabees Construction
Battalion back at Port Huenemein California and got out and

(03:39):
was working at Kaiser Hospitaland fell in love with a very
attractive Eurasian woman, movedup into the Laurel Canyon in
the hills.
We had a three-year tumultuousrelationship, three years there
and she actually talked me intoleaving, being an orderly and

(04:00):
becoming a cop.
So you know, over brunch onemorning she said you know, steve
, hey, look at the newspaper.
They're paying twice yoursalary at Kaiser Hospital for
LAPD.
They're hiring.
And I said LAPD, cop, you knowwhat?
Write tickets.
No thanks, oh, jack Webb, youknow detective, that might be

(04:23):
kind of cool.
Anyway, I took the physical andthe written test and the psych
test and somehow I got throughthat.
And next thing I know I'm goingthrough the academy at LAPD and
got a gun and a badge and this21-year-old is telling
65-year-olds how to live theirlives on family disputes.

(04:47):
Anyway, worked four divisions inpatrol in uniform patrol
Wilshire, van Nuys, west, la andHollywood and had five years on
the job and had an opportunityto go to detectives, which I did
.
I transferred in, I went todetectives at Hollywood Division

(05:11):
, which is like a precinct in LA, and basically worked all the
different tables sex crimes,robbery, burglary, detail and
eventually gravitated tohomicide where I stayed for the
next 17 years 300 murderinvestigations during that time
period.
We had the highest solve rate.

(05:33):
We had a high solve rate atHollywood.
Not just me, it was a lot ofgood partners that we're working
with and we're very dedicatedand very ambitious to solve
these crimes, these cold casesSome cold, some hot, mostly hot
and basically did that and thenretired and by then I had

(05:57):
remarried, had two small boys.
My years with LAPD were 1963 to1986.
So what?
I've been retired 40 years,basically wanted to get out of
the mean streets in the 80s,move north, wound up in a
middle-sized town calledBellingham, washington, which is

(06:18):
about 25 miles south of theborder, and I got a job as a
defense investigator up there.
I'm still living and working inBellingham.
And I got that 2 am phone calland it was my father's wife,
june, who says you know, theparamedics are here.
Your father's collapsed, had aheart attack.

(06:39):
They just pronounced him dead,come down.
This was in 1999.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
and dead come down.
This was in 1999.
So after your father passed,you'd come across a few things
that ultimately put you on thispath of investigating his
involvement with ElizabethShort's death.
So can you tell us more aboutthat?

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Basically I'm sitting there with June, his wife of 40
years.
She was actually 40 years, hisjunior, she was younger than me.
They'd been married 30 years.
They'd been married and livingin Asia and traveling all over
the world and they relocatedback to, came to San Francisco

(07:19):
in 1990.
I started seeing him.
He'd come up and see me, I'dfly down and see him or drive
down, and we became in that lastdecade of his life we became
quite close.
He was never a warm fuzzy guybut of all he had 11 children by
five different women and I washis favorite.

(07:40):
Go figure, maybe I was hisfavorite or maybe not.
Maybe he just wanted to keep meclose and find out if I knew
anything.
That would come later in myinvestigation.
So basically to your question,I'm sitting there with June and
she comes out and she has asmall photo album and she says I

(08:00):
think your father would wantyou to have this.
And she gives me this smallalbum, says I think your father
would want you to have this.
And she gives me this smallalbum and I'm going through it
and it's a very small three byfive inch.
I'm going through it and thereare pictures of my mother and my
father and my brothers and mygrandfather.
Then I come across a picture ofa dark haired woman, semi-nude,

(08:22):
reclining, and I turned to Juneand I said who is this?
She says I don't know, somebodyyour father knew from a long
time ago.
And I've got to tell you tothis day I don't quite know why
Black Dahlia came to mind, butit did, but it just came in and

(08:44):
out and I didn't know anythingabout the case.
Really, a day or two later I'mon the phone with my half-sister
, tamar, and we're talking aboutwhat a great father we had.
We're talking about him and hisaccomplishments.
And she says well, you know, hewas a suspect in the Black
Delia murder.
And I said to Tamar what thehell are you talking about,
tamar, where is this coming from?
Well, she and I had had maybe20 or 30 minutes conversation in

(09:09):
50 years.
She kind of, as a young teen,kind of flipped out, went sex,
drugs, rock and roll, and I kindof went a different direction.
So we really I got a few callswhen she needed bail money and
that sort of thing for marijuanaor something, but other than
that we had no real exchange.
And I says Tamara, where isthis coming from.

(09:31):
She says, well, he didn't do it,but the police that were taking
me to court on the trial toldme that they thought he had
killed the Black Dahlia.
I said, well, this isridiculous.
I said you know Dad had hisfaults ridiculous.
I said you know dad had hisfaults and I knew he's.
Of course he had been arrestedback in the 40s for having sex
with tamar, who was 14 at thetime, and, uh, there were

(09:52):
actually other adults presentduring the sex acts, so it was a
slam dunk case.
But he was actually.
He got jerry geisler, who waskind of the johnny cochran of
his day top lawyer criminallawyer defense, who was kind of
the Johnny Cochran of his daytop lawyer criminal lawyer
defense, and he painted Tamarwith a pathological liar brush
and the jury bought it and hewas found not guilty.

(10:13):
She says they told me this whenthey're taking me back and
forth to court.
I said, well, this isridiculous.
I'll be able to show you it hadnothing to do with it.
You know, three days with mybackground experience and I had
become I loved my father, I hadbecome quite close in that last
decade and I knew he had hisfaults and he was a womanizer.

(10:35):
But you know, at the same timea lot of his positive things
kind of balanced it out for me.
His extreme intelligence andstuff I set out and I didn't
know almost nothing about theBlack Dahlia murder.
I knew it was a famous LAPDunsolved from the 40s but I was
in the 60s, I was moving forward, I had my own stuff to solve.

(10:58):
We didn't look back, we lookedforward and so I started
researching it.
I know I had seen photographsof the crime scene when I went
through the police academy.
It was like an hour class wherethey showed because it was LA's
PV's most famous unsolved.
They showed photographs of thecrime scene and stuff, but no

(11:20):
details or anything, justgeneral stuff.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
And that was it?

Speaker 3 (11:23):
It never came up from anybody at any time during my
25 years on the department.
So I started researching it.
One of the first things thatcame up in my research was that
a surgeon did it a skilledsurgeon.
It had to have been a skilledsurgeon.
I thought, well, dad was adoctor and had done surgery, but

(11:44):
still, there's no way.
So then I'm doing more, and atthat time I was still in
Washington.
I had my girlfriend in LAsending me up photographs and
newspaper printings and stuff.
And she sends me up this frontpage and on it it says there's a
note and it's handwritten andit says turning myself in on

(12:06):
january uh, january 19th I thinkit was had my fun at the police
.
Uh, signed black dahlia avenger.
And I look at the handwritingand it's my father's handwriting
.
I mean, you know your parentshandwriting, your listeners know
their parents' handwriting andI knew Dad's.

(12:26):
He had a very unusual blockprinting cut and this was
undisguised and I thought, waita minute, what's going on here?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
This can't be, is he pretending to be the suspect.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
What the hell is going on?
So that really started me downthe path and I realized I
couldn't do an absenteeinvestigation in Bellingham.
So I moved, relocated back toLos Angeles.
That started my investigation.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
You conducted a very extensive investigation into
Elizabeth Short's murder andyou've published multiple books
on this topic, ultimatelyconcluding that your father,
george Hodel, was Elizabeth'skiller.
But before we go into that, canyou give our audience a good
picture of who George was andwhat type of life he led To?

Speaker 3 (13:16):
understand this crime and all of its ramifications
and crime signatures, which aremany, you have to really
understand who was George Hodel?
So that's a good question.
Let me see if I can maybe takefive minutes, or don't time me
on this, but to see if I cangive you a summary of his

(13:37):
remarkable life.
And a lot of this I didn't know.
It would become part of theinvestigation that I would
discover these things.
George Hill Hodel was an onlychild.
His parents were Russian Jews.
His mother was born in Kiev andhis father in Odessa.
My grandfather, his father,needed to escape from Russia.

(14:00):
It was the turn of the centuryand they were treated like
slaves.
Jews were treated like slavesin Russia, so he made this plan
to get away.
He dressed himself up as a verywealthy young man and the story
was going to see his sickgrandmother in Poland.
He makes it through, getsacross the Polish lines, the
original name his name wasGoldgefter and he just picks up

(14:23):
the name Hodel From what Iunderstand it's a relatively
common Swiss name Assumes thename George Hodel.
Goes on to Paris, france, meetsEsther, his wife to be.
She is a remarkable woman onher own right, also from Russia.
She's a practicing dentist inParis, france, which is

(14:45):
extremely unusual for a woman in1903.
Very unusual, very intelligent.
Rumor has it that she's fromRussian royalty.
I haven't figured that out yet,but her name was Leof.
L-E-O-V.
Anyway, they fall in love andthen they come through Ellis

(15:05):
Island.
They come out to Los Angeles In1907, george Jr is born.
They have a beautiful homebuilt near South Pasadena.
Grandfather lists hisoccupation as banker.
Kind of mysterious where themoney's coming from, but they're
living in this beautiful home.
George is born in 07.

(15:26):
By age nine he's a musicalprodigy.
He's playing his own concertsat the Shrine Auditorium
downtown Los Angeles.
He then goes to public school.
He goes to South Pasadena HighSchool and quickly excels.
Not only is he a musicalprodigy, he is exceptionally

(15:48):
bright.
He has an IQ, a tested IQ of186, one point above Einstein,
incidentally.
That skips a generation, but myboys are in good shape and
anyway he quickly goes throughhigh school.
He graduates at age 14.
And then there's Caltech inPasadena, which is kind of like

(16:09):
the MIT, I guess, of the WestCoast.
He's there a year.
He has an affair with a.
As a teen he has an affair witha professor's wife.
She gets pregnant, breaks upher marriage.
She goes back east.
George, after a year at Caltech, is asked to leave.

(16:30):
They hush up the scandal.
He goes back east toMassachusetts and says I love
you, I want to marry you, I wantto be the father of our child.
She says, george, you're achild yourself, get out of my
life.
So he comes back to LA and getsodd jobs.

(16:50):
He gets a job as a cab driver,passes himself off at 17.
You have to be 21 to get alicense.
And then he gets a job as ajournalist with the LA Record,
which was one of the largenewspapers of the 1920s, as a
reporter, investigative reporter, and at first he's riding
around with LAPD Vice and thisis during Prohibition.

(17:14):
They're knocking on doors,kicking doors in at speakeasies
and arresting the judge with theyoung blonde, that sort of
thing.
And then he graduates andstarts writing on with LAPD
homicide and writing thesetabloid stories in the newspaper
.
You know the bloody ace ofdiamonds next to the body and

(17:36):
that sort of thing Starts withhis own kind of a surrealist,
edgy newspaper called Fantasia.
He's also dating, double dating,with a guy named John Houston.
Now, that name may not meananything to you because we're
going back a long ways, but JohnHouston was probably one of the
most famous film directors,would become one of the most

(17:58):
famous film directors ever.
He did the Maltese Falcon.
He directed that Treasure ofSierra Madre, african Queen, all
sorts of great classic movies.
John is dating a woman by thename of Emilia and George is
dating a woman by the name ofDorothy.
Dorothy fall in love, they takeoff, go to Greenwich Village

(18:29):
and get married and George andEmily look at each other and he
says it's you and me, babe.
She gets pregnant.
They go north, he goes topre-med, goes across the bay to
San Francisco, gets his medicaldegree, has another affair with
another Dorothy, not theoriginal one and she has a child
by him.
He has another child namedDuncan.

(18:49):
So he's got the two women.
He's got the two children.
Duncan and Tamar is the otherchild.
He decides he needs some space,so he leaves the women and the
children, goes off and becomes adoctor for a logging camp.
He becomes a sole surgeon at alogging camp in Nevada, arizona.

(19:10):
Then he becomes a doctor forthe Indian reservations, comes
back to LA, hires on with thehealth department, quickly rises
to the top, becomes the healthofficer for the whole city,
specializing in venereal diseasecontrol.
What else, Basically, is the VDczar of LA by 1949, there's a

(19:35):
knock on the door Dr Hodel yes,lapd, you're under arrest for
incest.
They have the trial.
They paint this pathologicalliar brush with Tamar.
He's acquitted by a jury.
He then leaves the country in1950, goes on to Hawaii, does a
couple of years there.
He gets a degree in psychiatrycounsels the criminally insane,

(19:59):
of course.
And in the prisons marries aFilipino woman off to Manila.
They have four children in fouryears.
That marriage breaks up and hehooks up with June.
He gets into market research,has offices all throughout Asia,
becomes a leading expert inmarket research, does that for

(20:23):
30 years traveling the world,comes back with June and they
move into San Francisco highrise.
So that's not so quick anddirty life but a remarkable
individual in every respect.
It's such a shame he could havedone so much good for the world
.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Psychiatrist and how that might've played into or
informed some of the things thathe did later, Once you got on
the path of investigating George.
There's so much evidence thatyou came across along the way,

(21:04):
If you could say these were thekey points where I felt like
these pointed to him asElizabeth Short's killer.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
We've mentioned that the suspect was on the short
list because he had to have beena surgeon, a skilled surgeon,
and that's underscored by all ofthe research I did, by many of
the coroners and differentindividuals.
That said, I couldn't do asgood a job as whoever did this.
They're a better surgeon than Iam, and that was said over and

(21:35):
over again.
So there's no question that itwas a skilled surgeon, somebody
skilled in surgery.
And then, of course, thehandwriting to me was
troublesome.
That twisted me around a bit.
I just couldn't figure out theanswer to that.
Well, the suspect startedsending in a lot of different
notes taunting the police, andit became clear to me that one

(21:57):
of the main crime signatures ofthe suspect was a need to be
above the fold in the newspapers.
He wanted to be in headlines.
My first shock, of course, wasthat this is very probable, that
he is the killer of the BlackDahlia.
The next thing that kind ofturned my head was the fact that
when I started getting intothese other investigations, I

(22:18):
realized that this is a serialkiller.
It's just not a one-off.
The major myths that kind ofdeveloped from the original
Black Dahlia investigation theywere that it was a standalone
murder, none before and noneafter.
Clearly it wasn't a standaloneand they knew back then that it
wasn't a standalone.
The detective captain in chargesaid there was a murder that

(22:43):
occurred three weeks after theBlack Talia called the Jean
French murder, and she was awoman posed on a vacant lot
about five miles west of theDahlia crime scene, nude.
Her body was posed because theclothing was posed on top of her
, carefully placed on top of her.

(23:03):
Her shoes were placed on eitherside of her.
The killer had taken lipstickand written on the body on
obscenity F-U-B-D, b-d for blacktalion, and so back then they
were absolutely sure it was thesame killer.
Well, as I got into the weedsof it, I started finding a whole

(23:23):
bunch of lone women murders ina very tight geographical
pattern between Hollywood anddowntown Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
It struck us in one of our previous episodes, one of
the comments that was made withthe newspaper clippings, that
the grammar was incorrect inseveral places.
Why do you think he tried touse that bad grammar?
Was it to throw off the police?
Why did he send in a note withhis handwriting versus the

(23:57):
newspaper clipping notes?

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Basically he was taunting the police, he was
feigning illiteracy, he waspretending to be illiterate and
stuff.
But one of the things that theynoted back then was the
punctuation and everything wasperfect.
But the slang and a couple ofhis notes on a couple of the
murders it's like a sea movie, Imean.

(24:19):
It's like I knew a gangster andhe hired me to go to the house.
Now the handwriting actually isan interesting point because
ultimately I would come to thebelief that he was actually
going to turn himself in, cometo the belief that he was
actually going to turn himselfin.
It's the only one that's notdisguised or cut and paste, or
you know, he said turning myselfon January 29th, have my fun at

(24:43):
the police.
I think he was actually goingto do that.
The following note is I'vechanged my mind.
He's going to make them catchme, if you can, type of thing.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Why do you think he was going to turn himself in?

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Well, he said in another note I'll turn myself in
if you only give me 10 years.
You know, you've got to realizethis is a man that is highly,
highly intelligent but at thesame time very twisted.
He's a misogynist of thehighest order.
He hates women, he hateshumanity.
In one of the interviews I didwith Joe Barrett, who actually

(25:15):
was a tenant that lived in ourhouse for a while, that knew dad
closely, he had told himbecause he thought he was going
to jail on the incest, it won'tbe so bad, I can work in the
hospital.
He probably even believed thatif you just give me 10 years, I
can do 10 years standing on myhead.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
It seems like maybe he had an inkling that he was on
the suspect list and they hadpotentially really good evidence
.
That's why he was offeringhimself up.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
Surprisingly, I would ultimately come to discover
that a lot of people that knewGeorge knew he did it, at least
of which was my mother, but noneof this would come out.
And of course you know itwasn't until we got to the tapes
which we're going to talk aboutin a minute, the secret tape
recording.
Let me say a couple of things.

(26:04):
First of all, la was a verycorrupt town.
Lapd was a very corruptdepartment back then.
There was graft, there wascorruption, there were payoffs
and it was a real-life LA,confidential, if you will.
Dad was what they called back inthose days, a high jingo which
was basically an untouchable heknew everything about.

(26:27):
Well, he may not have knowneverything, but he knew a hell
of a lot about, especially aboutthe top brass, because he had
grown up with them through the20s and the 30s and the 40s.
So he knew he'd ridden aroundwith these guys while they were
sergeants and lieutenants andthen suddenly they're the
district attorney and the chiefof detectives, thad Brown.

(26:49):
He had a hell of a lot and whenhe fled the country they
couldn't have been happier.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Going back to Elizabeth Short.
So there were two pictures Iremember you published in your
first book of what you thoughtwas Elizabeth, I think.
One you determined later itwasn't her, it was someone else,
so you were left with one thatlooks like her.
But regardless, even if thephotographs didn't exist, there
was still evidence that he andElizabeth knew each other.

(27:18):
What was that evidence?

Speaker 3 (27:21):
I put my case together as it was back in 2002.
And I go to one of the activehead deputy district attorneys,
a guy named Stephen Kaye in LosAngeles.
I knew him from the old days.
I had taken a lot of my murdercases to him, along with a lot
of other deals, but I was amazedhe was still on the job.

(27:41):
So I said, hey, this is all topsecret.
But here's the deal.
And he looks at me with kind ofraises his eyebrow, wonders if
Steve gone, wacko, you know.
And then basically says well,I'll get back to you.
So he takes four months.
He says based on your evidence,he says I would file on two
victims Elizabeth Short, theblack dahlia, and Jean French,

(28:06):
the red lipstick.
He says you're probably righton some of the others, if not
all.
But he says there's not quiteenough there and I have a very
high bar for filing.
But he says I would file thoseand I'd win them in court.
So with that I noticed SteveLopez who has a column, a
regular column for the LA Times,has for a long time.

(28:29):
I guess he's still with them.
He was giving a talk at one ofthe bookstores on his book.
So afterwards I go up to himand I said hey, lapd, I used to
be LAPD.
Here's a book, you know, take alook at it.
You know, I think it presents avery strong case that my dad
killed Elizabeth Shroth, theBlack Talia.
He goes to LAPD and says hey,odell, retired homicide guy,

(28:51):
says his daddy killed a blackguy.
Lapd says go away, we don'ttalk about active cases.
Active case, they haven'tlooked at it 50 years.
So he's going to write this.
You know, I'll go to the DA.
So he goes to Steve Cooley whowas the DA at that time.
Cooley says well, I'm notspending a dime of taxpayers'

(29:12):
money on a 50-year-old case.
But you know, there is a box inthe vault on the Black Dahlia.
Would you like to see that?
Yeah.
So they go down, open the vault.
He gives them the box, lopezgoes upstairs, sits down in a
room, opens up the file, outfalls a picture of Dr George

(29:33):
Hill Hodel Whoa.
He was a suspect in Medallia.
He basically does a quick runthrough, writes a couple of
articles for the newspaper on myinvestigation and that really
kind of starts the ball going.
What he discovered was probablythe turning point in the whole

(29:54):
investigation he went throughand he says I found there were
some transcripts of tapes thatwere conducted.
They went out and they buggedDr Hodel's residence, which is
this iconic southern house inHollywood which is a Mayan
temple.
They picked up George, took himinto downtown Hall of Justice

(30:15):
and held him there.
They went in and put micro notphone bugs.
They actually put microphonesin the walls of the bedroom and
the living room.
18 detectives, 24-7, around theclock for six weeks, recording
everything.
And these recordings, thesetranscripts, are not the actual.
And these recordings, thesetranscripts, are not the actual.

(30:35):
You know, they're summaries ofwhat was recorded and they refer
you to the reels.
Well, all the reels woulddisappear.
They were destroyed.
I go down to Cooley and I say,can I see the reports?
He says well, I let him.
I guess.
I got to let you.
I sit down, I spend the wholeday copying everything that's
related to dad and I go back andfor the next three or four

(30:57):
months I analyze it, go through.
It Turns out that basicallythey destroyed the tapes.
The DA had taken over theinvestigation from LAPD because
the grand jury suspected LAPDwas corrupt and they were hiding
things and they were involvedin the cover up and stuff.
So they had the DA's office doit.

(31:17):
The DA at the time, simpson,ordered his lieutenant Jemison
to turn everything back to ThadBrown, chief of detectives, tape
recordings, everything andclose it down and not speak
another word of it.
So Jemison did that.
Everything was turned over backto Thad Brown.

(31:40):
Well, lapd to this had no ideaof any of this.
They never even heard the nameGeorge O'Dell, other than Thad
Brown.
Of course, clearly he got ridof the tapes.
He got rid of everything thatwas related to.
Clearly he got rid of the tapes, he got rid of everything that
was related to.
But what he didn't know andwhat Jemison, lieutenant Jemison

(32:00):
did was he kept a second set ofbooks and he locked them away
in the DA's office.
So when I went down to talkabout dad stuff, today's LAPD
had no knowledge of George Hodel.
He didn't exist and the onlyreason we got it was thanks to
this Lieutenant Jemison lockingaway the second Hodel.
He didn't exist and the onlyreason we got it was thanks to
this Lieutenant Jeffersonlocking away the second Hodel

(32:20):
file.
I'll read you some of thosestatements.
Now, this was only on the thirdday of the recording and it
went on for six weeks.
This is Dr George Hill Hodel.
Verbatim excerpts from the DALAPD Black Dahlia Task Force
audio surveillance tapes at theHodel residence, february, march
1950.
And he's talking to another guywho I identify as a baron

(32:43):
Haringa, who was a friend of his, and he says this is the best
payoff I've seen between lawenforcement agencies.
You'd not have the rightconnections made in the DA's
office.
Don't confess ever.
He goes on to say supposing Idid kill the Black Dahlia, they
couldn't prove it.
Now they can't talk to mysecretary anymore because she's

(33:04):
dead and they investigated himthe year before for overdoses,
suspected overdose of hissecretary.
She was going to inform on himand he overdosed her.
And then he goes on to say theFBI were over to see me three
weeks ago.
Another statement Well, anyway,she hasn't said she committed
incest or killed the BlackDahlia.

(33:24):
Don't say anything on the phone, it's tapped.
I'll have to get your phonenumber and have to go out and
call you.
So he suspected the phone wastapped, but he had no clue that
he was wired for sound.
They're probably watching me.
Do you think we could hire somegirls to find out what they're
doing?

(33:44):
Then Hodel talked to a womanabout his downtown clinic.
Women mentions having a career,but in 1944, that was the same
as an abortion.
Hodel tells her he's done lotsof them at the clinic.
He mentions Black DahliaPassport.
Please have a picture of me inthat.
I thought I had destroyed allof them.
So then the last one talksabout his secretary killing his

(34:06):
secretary.
Put a pillow over her head andcovered her with a blanket.
Got a taxi called George's,receiving hospital right away.
Expired at 1239.
They thought there wassomething fishy.
Anyway, now they may havefigured it out killed her.
Maybe I did kill my secretaryand she was going to inform on

(34:29):
him.
Ruth Spalding was her name.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Ruth Spalding.
So she knew so much, I'm sure,as the secretary Was she going
to inform too on.
Wasn't he part of an abortionracket as well?

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Yeah, there was a whole abortion ring of doctors.
Each was paying whatever, let'ssay 500 a month, and that kept
them from getting arrested.
And there was, however many, 20.
So it was a sizable amount ofmoney which was being split up.
This was going to the vice cops, lapd, and it was protection
money and so they didn't have toworry about getting arrested.

(35:07):
And he was one of those one ofthe many, yeah, but there were
also other things he wascheating.
We learned from a letter that Iprinted in one of the many,
yeah, but there were also otherthings he was cheating.
We learned from a letter that Iprinted in one of the later
editions that she was going toinform on him cheating on his
patients, that he wasovercharging them, he was
misdiagnosing them.

(35:27):
In this one case, we have aletter from a woman back east I
think she was, who had beentreated by him and misdiagnosed.
He told her she had venerealdisease and she didn't.
He was into a lot of shadystuff and, like I say, he was an
untouchable.
The truth is that LAPD was gladthat he split.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
What was the one event that happened?
And then, all of a sudden, hewas just gone.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
There's still taping in March.
Now I think he left in March inthe middle of the taping, I
don't think, because it endsabruptly.
There's no clean ending to itand there's a lot of reports we
don't have.
Of course I would explain thatOne of the biggies to my mind

(36:17):
and this is one of the manyreasons why they didn't
prosecute him was on day threeof the recordings.
I'm reading this and I can'tquite believe what I'm reading.
I'm reading the transcript andit says George and the Baron go
downstairs to the basement.
An object is heard striking.
A woman screams.
An object is heard strikingagain, a woman screams again.

(36:38):
And I'm reading this and I'msaying what the hell?
They're six minutes away atHollywood Station in the
basement listening.
Why aren't they out the door?
They're only five minutes awayand do a rescue.
I mean, if it's not a murder,it's a serious felony assault.
Rescue, I mean, if it's not amurder, it's a serious felony
assault.
And before that we upstairs, wehear her she'd been drugged and

(37:03):
we hear her trying to phone forhelp and dropping the receiver
and stuff.
So she, you know, then shepasses out and they take her to
the basement.
Either a serious felony assaultoccurred, or a murder, which I
believe the latter occurredoccurred, or a murder, which I
believe the latter occurred, andof course they do nothing and
to this day I can't explain whythey did nothing, other than
they may have the two detectivesthat were sitting in the

(37:24):
basement may have thought well,what do we do?
This is only day three of theinvestigation.
We don't want to blow the cover.
Maybe they called LieutenantJemison and he wasn't available
and they said well, it's allquiet now.
Maybe he's into kinky sex, somaybe that's what it was.
For whatever reasons, they didnothing, stupidly or

(37:46):
unintentionally, but we'll neverknow that.
The recording's going on forquite some time, with all these
other statements he left.
I think he left about in March,at least temporarily.
He would have probably comeback to sell the house, to get
money to pay his attorneys andstuff Returned regularly.
Once he got into the marketresearching in Asia and became

(38:08):
the leading expert, he wouldcome back multiple times every
year.
But it would be two or threedays in San Francisco, two or
three days.
I'd get a phone call in themiddle of the night and he'd say
hello, stephen, this is yourfather speaking.
Get your brothers together andmeet me for lunch tomorrow.
I've only got a few hours andthat was kind of the way he did

(38:31):
things.
Another huge point is SteveHodel didn't solve this.
This is not Steve Hodel'stheory.
Lapd solved it way back then.
They solved it.
They identified George Hodel.
They just didn't arrest him andclear it.
Let me read you a couple of thetop brass's statements proving

(38:51):
this.
This is Chief Parker, who wasour most famous police chief
back then.
He was my chief for three years.
He says quote we identified theBlack Dahlia.
This is not public, this is allbetween themselves.
We identified the Black Dahliasuspect.
He was a doctor, says Parker.
Thad Brown says a Black Dahliacase was solved.

(39:14):
He was a doctor who lived onFranklin Avenue in Hollywood.
Now, maybe that's anotherdoctor who lived on Franklin,
but I don't think so.
Lieutenant Jemison, we know whothe Black Dahlia killer was.
He was a doctor, but we didn'thave enough to put him away.
Yeah, they did.
No-transcript.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Can you talk to me about?
There was Glenn Martin, theletter that was found 70 years.
Can you tell the story of that?

Speaker 3 (39:57):
I got an email from the granddaughter of a man who
had passed on and she contactedme because she was aware of my
black-tie investigation.
And she said my grandfather wasa man by the name of Glenn
Martin.
He was a paid undercoverinformant for LAPD back in the

(40:23):
40s.
He was basically working withLAPD to identify corrupt men who
were on the take and that sortof thing men who were on the
take and that sort of thing.
He died, I think in the 60s.
And she said I was goingthrough my grandmother's things.
She said I found a letter andit said open only in case of

(40:49):
emergency or the death of.
And then he names his twodaughters.
So she says I opened it up, Iwanted to send it to you because
he talks about your father andknowing that he killed Elizabeth
Short, the Black Dahlia, Ipublished the entire letter in
my books.

(41:10):
He knew George on a personallevel.
He doesn't say how theyoriginally met and now he says
GH.
He doesn't ever really sayGeorge Hodel, but he says GH.
But you can draw your ownconclusions on that.
And he went on to say LAPD paysme, I'm hired to work
undercover and to come up withtrying to get dirty cops and

(41:33):
stuff.
He says George was picked up byLAPD, taken in and grilled and
he's I'm afraid that, as was mydaughter who knew George.
He says I'm afraid that Georgeis going to harm my daughter,
one of my daughters, becausehe's mad at me.
And he said I'm writing thisletter and I'm sealing it and

(41:56):
it's only to be opened in casesomething happens to one of my
daughters.
Well, nothing happened toeither daughter, so it was never
opened and it was never turnedover to authorities.
It lay there in that trunk for60 years, 70 years, until she
got it to me.

(42:16):
I reprinted the whole letter andit's very, very convincing.
There's no doubt in my mind.
And this of course, none ofthis was mentioned by LAPD to
the DA okay, because this is inJune of 49, and they didn't
start the DA investigation until50,.

(42:37):
The tape recording stuff until50.
So none of this was evermentioned and Jemison was not
aware of any of this.
He was never clued in.
So it was a huge, huge find onher part.
And again, it's just more andmore corroboration.
Then, of course, we have thephysical evidence the cement
sacks.
Okay, it's just more and morecorroboration.
And of course we have thephysical evidence the cement
sacks.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Okay, let's talk about that, the home where you
grew up.
I feel like, before we go intothe physical evidence you found
related, I feel like this houseis almost its own character in
the story, so can you justdescribe it a little bit like
what it looked like, how it wasorganized?

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, Well, I mean, it's a very famous, iconic home
in Hollywood.
It was Frank Lloyd Wright was afamous architect, probably the
most famous American architect.
His son was Lloyd Wright, frankLloyd Wright Jr, and he was

(43:34):
also a very well-known architect.
There's a church out on thePalos Verdes you may be familiar
with.
I think it's called theWayfarer's Chapel or something
out on that was built by LloydWright.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Oh, okay, you know it's being relocated too because
of all of the issues they'rehaving with um oh the land yeah,
it's a big mess.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Anyway, he was very famous, did a lot of very famous
homes.
Well, he did this.
He built this home 26 for johnsoudan, who was a movie guy
somehow connected in the films.
I think he was a stage uhinvolved in stage design or
something.
He he had this built at thenorthwest corner of Franklin and
Normandy basically, and itliterally is a Mayan temple.

(44:22):
I mean, you look at it, itlooks like right out of a stage
set and you walk up the stepsand you walk in and you go
through this dark corner cornerand you make a turn.
Have you ever been in it?

Speaker 1 (44:35):
No, I went by and I went to go take a picture of it.
Oh gosh Again, this was when Iwas just roughly researching the
season and it's so funnySomeone was there taking a
picture of it already, Like arandom Tuesday in between
meetings or something like that.
It's quite popular.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
I think I've seen it on TV too.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
The series I am the night, which is loosely, loosely
, if at all, really based onthis.
So I guess the cast, thoughthey filmed a little bit in
there and they all said it has avibe to it.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah, you're familiar with LA, confidential, the
movie yes, okay, you're familiarwith LA, confidential, the
movie yes, okay, well, that'salso.
They also have a couple ofshort scenes.
Oh, it's where the girls aredancing with the tricks, the
Johns dancing in there, that'sin the living room, oh my gosh.
And then when the sergeant getsshot, the captain, that's

(45:33):
actually in the kitchen.
Before it was remodeled, thatwas taken from a small kitchen
and they've done other films.
And Aviator, there's a bigscene in there where he gets in
an argument with the actress Iforget, girlfriend actress and
they're throwing stuff at eachother in the living room.
Oh yeah, a very iconic home.

(45:54):
Dad bought it in 45 to go alongwith you know.
He is now at the top of LACounty Health Department, as the
VDs are, and he wanted a homebefitting his prestige and we
all move in and so it's likewe're the three little princes
I'm one of my, so I'm four yearsold, my brother's six and my

(46:16):
other brother's three.
So we all move into the homewith mom, and now he's divorced
from her at this time.
So we're kind of living thereat his pleasure and we don't
stay there the full from nighttill he leaves.
He sells it in 1950.
We're not there the full time,we're kind of in and out, but a
lot of time there.
I love the place.

(46:36):
I mean there was no darkness toit at all.
For me as a child it was allfantasy land and dad would have
a lot of cocktail parties andwe'd climb up on the roof, my
brothers and I, and we'd watch.
And it wasn't some of thesemyths of sex everywhere.
It wasn't that at all.
It was cocktail parties, youknow, where a lot of interesting

(46:57):
people, a lot of film peoplewould come and drink and have a
good time.
Now, I'm not saying therewasn't a little hanky-panky
going on in some of the rooms, Idon't know, but it wasn't as
some people portray it as agangbang-type thing in the
courtyard and it's verydifferent from what it is today.
There was no pool.

(47:18):
The whole center courtyard wassolid and a small pond at one
end.
We loved it.
And then, of course, there wasthis mysterious hidden.
Everybody says it was a slidingdoor that led down to the
basement.
Well, that's not true.
It was simply just a closet,you know, a fairly small closet.

(47:39):
You did slide the bookcasesopen, oh, cool, yeah, and there
was a closet, maybe three feetwide by 10 feet long, and it's
where they.
It was built during Prohibition, so it was where they stored
the booze and that's it.
You know, but it was none ofthis as depicted on what's the

(48:01):
name of the film you justmentioned, with Chris Pine.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
I am the night.

Speaker 3 (48:06):
Basically it was, you know, fun time.
And then you know, in 1949,when dad's arrested, suddenly
mom grabs those three kids andsays we're out of here.
Actually, we were put inmilitary school for a short time
and then we moved up.
She got us and we moved on outto Rancho Mirage, which was just

(48:29):
a little dust bowl town.
At that time it was nothinglike this today.
So I have nothing but fondmemories and I've been back a
number of times for interviewsand doing 48 hours and court TV
and different things.
And I obviously have a bit of adifferent feeling now because
I'm absolutely convinced thatthat was the crime scene where

(48:52):
he was murdered.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Can you talk about the evidence that you found that
it was?

Speaker 3 (48:59):
I find out that there's a Frank Lloyd Wright Jr
Lloyd Wright file at UCLAArchives.
I go out there and you go downinto the basement, you put on
your white gloves, you go in andthey bring you the file and
they let you go through it.
Much to my surprise, within theLloyd Wright file there's a Dr
George Hill Hodel file Whoa.

(49:21):
So I open that up and it'sreceipts for cement and manure
fertilizer, receipts for severalhundred dollars of landscaping
materials which is a lot ofmoney back then, based on the
price, I determined these arethe large.
These cement bags are the large,large bags.
And of course I know that atthe crime scene there were large

(49:47):
bags to transport the body froma residence to the crime scene.
And she was posed and the bagswere just thrown nearby, just
within a few feet.
I look at the date on thereceipt and it's January 10,
1947.
It was just five days beforethe bodies posed down there.

(50:11):
So they did the cement work atthe house and they left the
empty bags there.
So they did the cement work atthe house and they left the
empty bags there.
So, dad, simply, after hebisects the body surgically,
washes it clean in the bathtub,pats it dry, replaces each half
on separate bags, probably tonot get his car bloody or dirty

(50:33):
or whatever, Then transports thecar and the body parts to the
crime scene, carefully, posesthe body in what I call the
minotaur position, where she'slaying on her back hands above
her head in a surrender-typeposition and the lower half is
juxtaposed.
Well, this is reminiscent of apainting, a famous painting that

(50:57):
Mavray did called the Minotaur,and the Minotaur was the mascot
of the surrealists.
And there's another one he didcalled Le Amoureux, which is the
lovers, and it's red lips fromhorizon to horizon with an
observatory in the background.
Her mouth was cut from ear tohorizon, with an observatory in
the background.
Her mouth was cut from ear toear and it was.

(51:18):
Everybody says it was a jet.
You look at the photograph ofthe autopsy.
It looks all jagged butactually that's not the case.
It was carefully rounded.
But what created the jaggedlook was when they sutured the
mouth shut at the coroner'soffice.
It created this distortion.
But actually when you see thecrime scene photos which I have,
it's carefully roundedsurgically with a scalpel.

(51:42):
So that was my initial firsttwo clues was okay, george is
paying homage to his friend manRay by posing, and these were
artworks that were done muchearlier.
They weren't done at that sametime.
They were done, I think, in the30s or 20s.
I'm saying he's paying homageto man Ray on those two.

(52:05):
They were friends.
Man Ray and George and WilliamCopley were friends from 1943
probably, or 42 or 43 until 1950when Dad split.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Do you think that man Ray realized that Elizabeth was
posed kind of and inspired bythat artwork?

Speaker 3 (52:29):
I do.
I do believe that man Ray well,we certainly know it because in
his later writings he actuallypays homage back to George and
of course they were very close.
I have some beautifulphotographs you've probably seen
, of my mother with Juliet manRay.
He took photographs of us threeboys.
He took photographs of dad, mom, so he was really kind of like

(52:54):
a family photographer, if youwill.
Surrealists were in.
It was a wink and a nod type ofthing.
They hid a lot of secrets intheir artwork.
Man Ray and Copley come out witha book in 1948.
So this is a year after calledAlphabet for Adults and in that

(53:15):
they have a kind of playful.
Each letter is made into aplayful, like G, and they make
it into a giraffe.
Well, the letter Q they makefor quarrel, like two people are
quarreling, and that's actuallydrawn inside the Franklin House
, the Southern House, and it'sgot two people facing each other

(53:36):
arguing, and it's actuallydrawn inside the Franklin House,
the Southern House, and it'sgot two people facing each other
arguing and it's also got anude woman's body at the other
end of the painting.
Man Ray did a sculpture and hegifted it that same year to
George and he uses it in theplace of the private parts,
actually the vagina of the nude.
In the drawing he places thisobject so it's like an

(54:00):
all-seeing eye, it's lookinginto the courtyard, so I mean
there's all sorts of connections.
But that was a biggie.
It's midnight, dr Blank.
There's pictures of thebathroom, identical to the
shower in the master bathroom,and she's laying on the floor
and he's got his surgicalinstruments and I present that

(54:23):
they're even spelling out Hodelin the surgical instruments.
See, there were a lot of people,actually a lot of people, that
knew.
There were writers,screenwriters, that knew and
even said so in articles.
They said they know who did itand they believe the police know
and they'll soon be arrested.
That was Steve Fisher, who wasa screenwriter of the day.

(54:45):
Very prominent Ben Hacks wasanother famous writer.
He was the highest paidscreenwriter in Hollywood.
Anyway, they knew, but theywere all terrified of March.
He was alive and they were notgoing to say anything because
they were sure the policealready knew who did it and that
they were going to arrest him.

(55:06):
It wasn't until many yearslater that man Ray and Copley
reveal these things in theirdrawings.
Hopefully, reveal these thingsin their drawings.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
One thing I just wanted to mention too, with the
receipts from the Frank LloydWright files you found for the
cement, but also the fertilizeris significant too, because they
found feces in Elizabeth'sintestines, right.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
Excellent.
And it was even more specificthan that, because what they
found?
Yes, they found feces in herstomach and the only way it's
going to get into the stomach isby being force-fixed.
They also said in the coroner'sreport that it had unidentified
green particles or substancewithin the feces.

(55:49):
Well, come to find out thatthis particular brand that was
manufactured back then wascalled Fertilite and it had
little green pellets, littlegreen pellets within the steer
manure.
So that's what they were seeing.
Were these little green pelletsin the Fertilite?
You can even see on the bag atthe crime scene Fertilite.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Maybe you said that in one of the books that you
wrote that I read the greenpellets from it.
I don't remember that detail atall.
I just remember thinkingfertilizer Okay, that makes
sense.
I do remember the greensubstance.
I didn't know about the linkback to that specific type of
fertilizer.
Oh, that's interesting.
So when I was researching thiscase it was like very early

(56:36):
stages.
So I knew about the call withthe secretary reference and I
knew it had to be a surgeonprobably.
I think I'd come across yourevidence that you'd found of the
receipts.
And then it wasn't until Ilistened to the Root of Evil,
which is another podcast.
I remember that was the firsttime that they talked about the

(56:57):
surrealist connection withRayman and when they talked
about the lovers, that paintingthe lips in the sky and then the
minotaur especially, which Ithink you might've described
this, but in the painting it'sreally just like the trunk of a
woman and it looks exactly likehow her upper body was posed.

(57:21):
And I remember when that manRay connection came through to
me I was like, okay, you knowwhat Close the case.
This just completely makessense because the body was very
much staged.
It was very much staged in adeliberate way.
You don't have to be a criminalprofiler.
I think to know that becausethe body was very much staged.
It was very much staged in adeliberate way.
It's like you don't have to bea criminal profiler.

(57:42):
I think to know that this wasdone with a lot of intention and
it was put somewhere to befound with a lot of intention.
And you look at the minotaurand you look at just the upper
torso and it's just exact.
It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Yeah, and it's a woman's torso she's posed.
And it's a woman's torso she'sposed in.
And that's a very famousposition with the surrealists.
It's not just a one-off, it's.
You know, the whole movementhad that as their.
The Minotaur was their.
You know, the Minotaur was thebeast in the island of Crete

(58:11):
that devoured maidens and youngmen, was fed, kept in the
labyrinth of Crete.
That devoured maidens and youngmen, was fed, kept in the
labyrinth in Crete.
And it was this half-beast,half-man monster.
You know that was very much apart of it.
They were very edgy, you know,with a lot of stuff, a lot of
hiding stuff.

(58:33):
Here's a note from Jemison.
He was about to move forward onthe investigation when he was
pulled off it, as I describedearlier by the DA Lieutenant
Jemison's handwritten notes forMarch 2nd 1950.
So that's late in the game,actively showing he is actively
reinvestigating LAPD's 1945original murder investigation of

(58:57):
George Hodel suspected offorced overdose using
barbiturates.
Lieutenant Jemison'shandwritten notes indicate he's
planning to re-interview all ofthe original witnesses related
to the death of George Hodel'sVD clinic secretary girlfriend
Ruth Spalding.
George Hodel admits to killingboth the Black Dahlia and his

(59:18):
secretary during the tapesurveillance conversation and
you see his handwriting here andit says he wants to
re-interview a whole bunch ofthem.
He wants to re-interview Ruth'sdeath secretary to Hodel.
So he was going to move forwardwith a whole bunch of
investigation when he was pulledoff of it.
There are eight, nine more booksthat came out after Black Dog

(59:42):
Avenger.
Some of the most recent onesare the early years, part one
and two.
I don't know how much if you'reeven familiar with those, but I
realized that dad didn't wakeup after one morning.
He usually got up in theafternoon, let's say morning, at
age 40, and says I think I'llbe a serial killer.
So I knew there had to be moreand the more I looked the deeper

(01:00:07):
, the more rabbit holes I found.
And actually in the early yearsI thought it would be one book
and it's actually.
I had to break it up into two.
So I lay out his suspectedcrimes from the 20s and the 30s
in book two and there's 25 morecrimes before we even get to the
1940s.

(01:00:29):
These are very unusual crimesignatures, very unusual crime
signatures.
Normally as a homicidedetective, if you get two or
three or even four crimesignatures that match, you say
let's take a look at this.
Guy Could be a serial killer orhe could have done this other
one.
If you get three or four, Icame up with 32 crime signatures

(01:00:50):
that match from the early years.
The interesting thing is thepast the 40s and 60s prove the
early years and the early onesprove the past.
So I mean he's consistentthroughout.
Above the fold, headlinestaunting, sending in letters,
phone calls.

(01:01:10):
I never had one suspect in the300 murders I investigated that
ever made a phone call or sentin a letter.
It's very unusual.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Yeah, that's like a whole other level.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
It is, it is.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
There's always the question of why, like looking at
Elizabeth Short, her, thetorture, the mutilation, the
killing it reflects, you know itlooks very specific toward her,
like a hatred toward her.
But I think even you had saidit it seems like there's just
this general hatred of women inall of this.
How do you think that developedand why do you think he did all

(01:01:46):
of these things?

Speaker 3 (01:01:48):
Well, I mean, you know there's a whole bunch of
reasons that I've kind of run bymyself and of course one is
congenital insanity.
I'm sure he had to be certainlyinsane from birth Because he
was so advanced as a student.
I'm sure that when he went toCaltech, well, first the
rejection by the professor'swife saying get out of here,

(01:02:11):
you're a child yourself, george.
So there's that rejection.
He's always been way ahead ofall the other students in class.
So you know, super nerd beforethe term was ever invented, I'm
sure a lot of the girls, becausehe was so much younger, didn't
want any part of him.
You know drug use.
You know we know that he wasusing drugs, hashish.

(01:02:33):
You know we know that he wasusing drugs, hashish.
This whole over the edge thingwith the magazine Fantasia when
you read some of the stuff thathe's written in that it's really
pretty far out there and Iinclude that in some of my books
.
I suspect that he was probablypossibly the victim of incest,

(01:02:53):
either his mother or anotherfamily member, maybe because he
was sexually precocious and hismother was overprotective and he
was like a little Lord.
Pampered.
So I think all of these thingscame together in a perfect storm
to what became one of the worstmonsters I think we've ever

(01:03:16):
seen in criminology.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Did he have a pretty difficult relationship with his
mother.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Well, according to my mom, he hated his mother.
That was what my mother saidthat he absolutely hated her.
She was domineering.
She was highly intelligent,very controlling.
So yeah, I think that we'llnever know, but she died early.

(01:03:47):
She died in 35 of tuberculosis.
I don't know about his father.
I don't think he thought muchof his father.
I think he saw his father as.
I think he kind of pictured himas kind of a weak man or
something.
I'm not really sure.
I have vague memories of mygrandfather, and he was the

(01:04:08):
small man Dad was 6'1" and hewas like 5'4", something like
that.
I really don't know much aboutGrandfather, other than I didn't
get the sense that he was muchof an influence either way.

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
One last person I wanted to ask you about.
There was a jazz singer, MaddieComfort, who knew.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
Yeah, maddie Comfort was a great.
You know what was reallyinteresting?
And she was lovers with mymother and my father.
My mom was bisexual, herboyfriend.
After she died, her boyfriendbrought me her manuscript that
she was going to publish.
It was written in the 70s, Ithink, and she talks about
George and Dorothy and what agreat lovers they were.

(01:04:55):
They taught her everythingabout sex, everything that she
learned and going on and onabout it, and she knew George
had killed Elizabeth Short andshe went home.
When my book was published shecalled her boyfriend, george,
and says, oh, come home, comehome quick.
So he goes home and she says,finally the truth has come out.

(01:05:17):
She says there's this bookcalled the Black Dahlia and it's
finally, after all these years,the truth has come out.
And then she died three weekslater.
You know I have a whole chapter, several chapters, on her in
this book.
She's an important witness.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
It's like one more person in his life that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
Yeah, there were quite a few.
Actually One of the pointsagain, I'll just state it to
reemphasize it I didn't solvethis case.
It was solved back then.
It's just never been cleared.
You know, that kind of isimportant for people to know
that this is not my theory.
It's my proving their theories,if you will, or not their
theory, but their knowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Steve, thank you so much for joining us.
Like I said at the beginning,we couldn't have told it as well
as you did, so we appreciatethat you came on to tell the
story.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
It's been a pleasure talking to you tonight and
basically stay tuned.
We may be seeing a documentaryand a film coming out.
I'm working on that now.
But you know, the story needsto be told truthfully and it's
been my job to try and demythifyall of the false information.
I wanted to give a voice to thevictims and to speak for them.

(01:06:31):
It's been a pleasure and I'mlooking forward to seeing you
guys do a lot of reallyconstructive, interesting
podcasts down the road.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Thank you.

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

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}27. MURDER: The Black Dahlia Beyond the Headlines - Featuring Steve Hodel Pt 3