The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  But my father had not counted on his fourteen-year-old daughter's getting pregnant.

  "George said he was going to send me away to an unwed mothers' home," Tamar told me. "The fact that I was going to be sent away was horrible to me. I was scared to death. My girlfriend Sonia told me, 'Oh, you have to have an abortion.' I didn't even know what an abortion was. Then I talked to a few more friends my age and they all said, 'You have to have an abortion.' So I went back to George and put the pressure on him, told him I had to have an abortion. He arranged it with a doctor. It was horrible. They didn't give me any anesthetic, nothing. In the middle of it I was screaming, 'Stop, stop!' But you can't stop in the middle. It was awful, the worst physical experience of my life. I was throwing up and in shock. This very strange man who was a friend of Dad's drove me back to the house on Franklin."

  Tamar told my mother about the abortion, the pain and her fear, and Dad's friend who drove her back to the house when the procedure was over. When she heard the story, Mother exploded.

  Tamar then related to me a most incredible story told her by my mother, who was Tamar's true and trusted friend and, for that brief period of time, her surrogate mother. The story involved a young woman who had worked, possibly as a nurse, for Father at his First Street Medical Clinic. She never learned the woman's name, but as told by Dorero, "the girl was in love with George." They had had an intimate relationship, and then Father, as was his nature, had moved on to other women. Soon after their breakup, the girl began to write a book, an "expose" which would reveal hidden secrets about George, his life, and his activities. Mother told Tamar that late one night she received a telephone call from George. He ordered her to come immediately to the girl's apartment, where George informed Dorero that the girl had "overdosed on pills." Mother told Tamar it was clear that "the girl was breathing and still alive." Father handed Dorero the secret books the girl had written and ordered her to "burn them." Mother did as she was told, left the apartment, and destroyed the writings. According to Mother's narrative to Tamar, George could have saved her but let his young ex-paramour die. Dorero's story was later independently confirmed by the police, who, after taking Tamar into custody on the runaway charges, told her they "found the death suspicious, suspected George Hodel was involved in her overdose, but couldn't prove anything." Tamar never learned the girl's name or any other information about her.

  When Tamar was eleven, shortly after the Black Dahlia murder, she recalled, she was living at the Franklin House and her mother sent her a doll that had curly hair. Tamar took it to Father to have him name her because he had a knack for picking great names. "He told me to call her 'Elizabeth Anne,'" she told me. "I thought that was really strange because he never picked names like that, he always picked unusual names. He did it kind of laughing, like it was a joke. So I called the doll Elizabeth Anne. Years and years later, I told a friend the story and she brought me a magazine, and I opened it and there was a very pretty face with this name, Elizabeth Anne Short. I went 'Oh, my God.' I never knew that was her name. I just heard it as the Black Dahlia."

  Tamar also revealed that Man Ray had taken portraits of my parents and was a frequent guest at Father's wild parties. He and Father shared the same hedonistic tendencies, indulging themselves in their pleasures in clear defiance of the society in which they lived. Man Ray was living in Hollywood, just a mile from the Franklin House, when the incest scandal broke, but, according to Tamar, "He and his wife left the country at the time of the trial. He was afraid he was going to be investigated."* Tamar also said that Man Ray had taken some nude photographs of her when she was thirteen.

  Although my sister appreciated Man Ray as an artist, she admitted that personally she disliked him. "He was another dirty old man." Nor did she like my father's good friend and my mother's first husband, John Huston. "I don't care how great John was, when I was eleven he tried to rape me. It was your mother, Dorero, who pulled him off of me. He was a big man. He had straddled me in the bathroom at the Franklin House, and he was very drunk. But your mother came in and pulled him off of me and saved me. The next time I saw him he was playing that man in Chinatown."

  Tamar remembered Kiyo as our father's beautifully exotic young girlfriend, and recalled that the Franklin House was filled with women: "George had all of these women at the house just waiting to see him. They were literally standing in line at his bedroom. I felt lucky if I could get in to see him. He was a perfect example of an ego gone wild. I think Huston did sex stuff with Dad and Fred Sexton and all the women. I know for sure Huston filmed stuff at the house."

  She had this to say about Dad's physical violence: "George was so terrible when it came to punishing you three boys. He was very cruel. Michael got it the worst. It broke my heart to see how he treated you three. Especially how he was with Mike. And he was so cruel with Dorero. I remember before Franklin, visiting you at the Valentine Street house, where I would see Dad pull her around the driveway by her hair."

  What was most important to me about Tamar's memories of 1949 and the trial wasn't the trial itself, which was a matter of public record, but the attitude of the prosecutors who interviewed her two years after the murder of Elizabeth Short. Here Tamar was, at the very center of one of the most scandalous news stories in Hollywood — a story that could well have wound up involving Man Ray and John Huston — and firmly under the control of prosecutors, who now believed they could nail my father for crimes they suspected him of having committed but couldn't prove. Tamar was the key to getting George Hodel behind bars.

  When she told my mother about the abortion — which, in 1949, was illegal — my mother realized that Tamar was a walking piece of evidence and believed Tamar's life was in danger. My mother lived in deathly fear of George and knew that getting Tamar out of the house would probably save her life. So Tamar fled.

  "I ran away," Tamar told me. "And I was found because Dorero had called my mom and told her, 'Tamar has run away and you had better come down here and help her.' So my mom came down unannounced, and George just couldn't say, 'I don't know where she is.' So George put out a missing report. I wasn't adept at running away because I had never done it before. I had just gone to friends' houses."

  The parents of Tamar's friend in whose house she was hiding were away in Europe, but her friends were living there with the servants. It seemed to be a safe haven. Tamar knew the police were looking for her, which frightened her, because she'd never had any dealings with the law. So her friends protected her. "This little gang of my friends took me from place to place, hiding me out. That's how all this came about with all the boys. All the guys helped me out, hiding me from place to place."

  In talking with the various teenagers, the police found her hiding out with a girlfriend, and Tamar, taken to the police station as a "runaway," was questioned, and quickly began to talk. "The police took me in and, because I had just had the abortion, I thought that they could tell that I had had an abortion. So I told them. Then one question led to another."

  Soon the entire story of the incest and the goings-on at the Franklin House were out in the open, and the prosecutors had their case. But they still needed Tamar to testify against her father. They needed her trust. As Tamar remembers it, a husband-and-wife team from the DA's office brought her to court every day and promised her that they would protect her and take care of her. Tamar told me, "They said that I had never been loved and I didn't know what love was and that when this trial thing was all over that they were going to adopt me. I guess that was just their way of handling it to get me to say everything. I really believed them when they told me they would adopt me and give me love."

  Adding political urgency to the incest trial and the prosecution of George Hodel was the fact that William Ritzi, the state's lead trial attorney, was also running for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. And apparently Ritzi thought he knew more about my father than what was simply in the case he was prosecuting. As Tamar remembers it, "He told me that Dad might be a sus
pect in the Black Dahlia case. 'We know all about your father and you,' he said. That's how they got me to talk to them.

  "I know that the police did talk to George back in 1947 because George said, 'We have to be careful about doing our nude sunbathing because the police are watching the place.' I'm pretty sure it was the year the Black Dahlia was killed when the police came out to the house. George never mentioned anything to me about that case. My gut feeling is that he knew and had met the Black Dahlia, but I really can't say for sure."

  Dad's statutory rape of Tamar notwithstanding, he was still cautious about how he treated her at the house. Tamar confirmed that the testimony at the incest trial, about what had happened on the night of July 1, 1949, was all true. She remembered it clearly. Even the witnesses Corrine and Barbara had told the truth to the police investigators and the prosecutors, but Dad's sharp defense attorneys were still able to make it seem as if the entire event was a figment of Tamar's imagination.

  In my conversations with her it became obvious to me that Tamar has no current memory of the questions she was asked by attorney Robert Neeb relating to her accusing Dad of being the killer of the Black Dahlia and having a lust for blood. Nor did she remember telling anyone of her being afraid that, in her words fifty-two years ago, "My father is going to kill me and all the rest of the members of this household." Moreover, because she had been detained in Juvenile Hall during the entire trial, she had had no access to newspapers, and so to this day remains unaware of what Neeb said about her in the courtroom after his cross-examination of her. I do believe that the "lust for blood" statement and the Black Dahlia original accusations attributed to Tamar by Neeb and Giesler had originally been told to her by Dorero, because those are the identical references, "blood-lust" and "insanity," that Mother said to me in her drunken state when we lived in Pasadena.

  It is probable that Mother, while intoxicated, told Tamar about her fears or suspicions that Dad had killed Elizabeth Short after Tamar made her initial disclosure to Mother about Dad's having had sex with her. Mother was clearly fearful that if George discovered that Tamar had told anyone about their incestuous relationship, he would most likely have murdered his daughter before she could have an opportunity to reveal it to the authorities. Mother knew that Dad was capable of killing anyone, including a family member who might reveal his deepest secrets. Genuinely fearful for Tamar's safety, Mother told her of her suspicions, and may well have encouraged her to run away, to get her away from the house. That set into motion the search for the missing Tamar, the arrest of Father, the trial, and Dad's flight from Los Angeles after his acquittal.

  Tamar, Dad, Michelle Phillips, and the Mamas and the Papas

  Tamar remembered a night in 1967 when Dad visited her in San Francisco at the same time Michelle Phillips and the Mamas and the Papas were coming into town to perform their first live concert at the Pan Pacific. Tamar took George and the two beautiful Asian women he had brought with him to the St. Francis Hotel where Michelle was staying. "I introduced them to her," she told me, "and she almost fainted, and her eyes rolled back in her head and she curtsied and said to George, 'I feel like I've really known you since I was twelve.' It was because of all the things I had told Michelle about him."

  Father took over like an impresario, Tamar said. After discovering they had ordered a large dinner to be brought up by room service before the scheduled concert, Father stepped in and took control, informing them that they "shouldn't eat a large meal before a big concert." She added, "Dad had the waiters take everything back and changed it all to just appetizers, like Po Po and stuff. They all began smoking hash, and Dad passed it around, but he didn't smoke it."

  Afterward, Tamar remembers, "I met Dad and his two girlfriends and we went out to Enrico's for dinner. George got quite drunk and I was supporting him as we walked up the hill. That's when he said to me, 'Why did you do it?' I was so stupid. I didn't know what he was talking about because I always loved him. I thought he meant why had I always pursued and loved him. So I said, 'I always loved you, that's why.' Which, of course, was a very strange answer to someone who is really asking me, 'Why did you tell on me?' He was so drunk; we never really understood each other."

  Later on, Tamar asked one of the Asian women whom Dad had brought along why he hadn't smoked the hash pipe. Tamar told her he'd always smoked it in the past, that's why his refusal was so strange. And the woman said, "Oh no, he doesn't do that anymore." She explained, "Before when he smoked hash, he made me lock him in his bathroom. He always made me lock him in there and told me not to let him out. George said to me that when he smokes it sometimes he does terrible things. He would make me lock him in the bathroom and he would cry and stay there all night."

  "It made my hair stand on end," Tamar said. "I was so afraid of him because I do believe he has done so many terrible dark things."

  The Los Angeles Hotel, 1969

  About two years after the Mamas and the Papas concert, Dad saw Tamar again in Los Angeles when he was making one of his business trips through town from Manila. Tamar was pregnant when Dad took her to lunch at one of the Beverly Hills hotels. As they were walking through the lobby, George suddenly stopped and pointed to a design on the carpet. He asked Tamar, "What does that remind you of?" She looked at the carpet and said, "I don't know, some kind of flower or something. Maybe rhododendrons?" George said, "No," and pointed around the edges with his finger. Then he said, "No, look again, it's a vagina and lips." He said, "They are nether lips." Then he stomped hard on the design and he said, "Did that hurt?" "God," Tamar told me, "I couldn't believe it. It sent chills down my spine. 'Nether lips'. He never used that word before."

  The next day, George took out Tamar's daughter, Fauna 2, who was then thirteen. Fauna 2 is one of Tamar's five children from five different fathers, and is her second daughter, born from her marriage to folk singer Stan Wilson. She was originally named Deborah, but decided to change her name to Fauna as an adult. But her older sister, from a different father, is also named Fauna. So the children differentiated themselves by calling themselves Fauna 1 and Fauna 2.

  Fauna 2 kept secret for many years what happened that night, only telling her mother about it after she had become an adult. At dinner, Fauna 2 suddenly became groggy, attempted to stand up, and almost collapsed on the floor. As she described it to Tamar, both the waiter and George rushed to her side, Dad catching her before she fell. Dismissing the waiter, he then helped her walk out of the dining room. The next thing Fauna 2 recalled was waking up in a hotel. She was lying on a bed, completely nude, having been undressed while she was unconscious. Her legs had been spread open, and George was taking pictures of her with a camera. Fauna was convinced she had been drugged.

  Tamar was stunned at hearing her daughter's disclosure. Now, she thought, with Fauna 2's supportive testimony, maybe Tamar's mother would believe her. But it was not to be. "We both went to my mother and told her the story, thinking that finally it might make her believe the truth of what happened to me back at the Franklin House," Tamar told me. "Well, she didn't believe either one of us, and said she never wanted to see either of us again. She refused to believe her granddaughter just as she refused to believe her daughter." To this day, Fauna 2 told her mother, she "still hopes that the truth about what happened to her in that hotel room with her grandfather would be believed." As for Tamar, since her truth has been buried for more than fifty years, I suspect she has by now given up all hope of ever being vindicated.

  Joe Barrett and the Franklin Years

  In early 1948, a year after the murder of Elizabeth Short, a talented twenty-year-old artist named Joe Barrett rented the studio at the north end of the Franklin House, became friends with my father, and lived in the studio through the entire incest trial. Even after the family broke up when Dad left the country, Joe remained a good friend to my mother and kept in touch with her through the years, whenever he could find our gypsy encampment in L.A. He and my mother remained good friends until her death in 1982.
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  Joe and I saw each other only a few times during my years in the LAPD and we lost touch after I retired and moved to Washington State. But he had kept in occasional contact with my brother Kelvin in Los Angeles. And when the time came for me to talk to him about the past, it was through Kelvin that I was able to reach him in 1999, shortly after my father's death and at the early stages of my investigation.

  Joe was an important window to the past. He was a young adult living there right at the time of the rape and the trial, the DA's investigation into my father's behavior, and the comings and goings of Man Ray. In the same way that I approached my interviews with Tamar, I did not tell him I was conducting an investigation. I merely talked with him in the hope of gaining deeper understanding about a father I had just lost and wanted to know more about. I told him I wanted to get an accurate picture of my father as he really was, as Joe knew him from the Franklin years.

  Barrett's insights were astonishing, because in addition to providing me with detailed descriptions of Dad, he also informed me, long before I discovered it through my own independent sources and research, that he himself was officially solicited by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office to assist them in their investigation of my father as "the prime suspect in the Black Dahlia murder." I would discover through my interviews with Joe Barrett that in early 1950, Barrett was picked up by the DA's detectives, taken to their office, and actively solicited to be their mole inside the Franklin House — "to be their eyes and ears there" was how they put it — in their effort to establish that Dr. Hodel was indeed the Black Dahlia Avenger.