The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  I too love you, and this is easier, because you are the very by-product and testimonial of my love. There is an old Irish saying that "Ah, I knew you, me boy, when you were only a gleam in your father's eye."

  It is also easy (indeed, it is mandatory) for me to love you because I remember things that you do not. I remember the happy, well-controlled, serious, beautiful little boy whom we loved so much. And now love equally, but differently. Only a little difference.

  I am enclosing a check for Dorero, for the six-month period from July through December. Wish it could be more. Try to find ways to give to her--a bit of money, a bit of time, and love, much love. Remember--it was she who responded to the gleam. If she had not. . .

  Dorero asked me to send her another enlargement (I brought one to her before inI974) of her wonderful photo by Man Ray. I have had this copied, and will send it soon. If you want a print, I'll make one for you too. And for Mike and Kelv, if they do not have them and want them.

  Congratulations on your work in the case of Charles Wagenheim and Stephanie Boone. There must be an enigma inside a mystery there, too.

  Hope to be out your way one of these days soon. I am interested to know what you plan to do after three years. Your life may just be beginning then.

  Give my love to all!

  Always,

  Dad

  There it was. Latent in a twenty-year-old letter was hidden Father's automatic and unconscious response to my reference to the Wagenheim investigation, which involved my informing him, briefly, about a man, a woman, and a murder in Hollywood. In the letter, from within the context of my investigation, I could see how his mind unconsciously responded to its unique and individual programming after I filtered the keywords "enigma inside a mystery." "Congratulations," he'd written, "on your work in the case of Charles Wagenheim and Stephanie Boone. There must be an enigma inside a mystery there, too [my emphasis]."

  Father's response had no significance to me then, other than the obvious reference to unraveling a murder mystery, but with what I have since discovered, the "too" took on a great significance. What other case might my father have been comparing the Wagenheim murder to? I believe he was making an unconscious reference to the Black Dahlia case, not because Will Fowler would use that same quote ten years later, but because the Black Dahlia case had remained a mystery over the years and was still in my father's mind. I think he gave himself away, but I had no way to appreciate that reference. Now I do.

  In July 2001, I discovered what I believe to be the actual linkage and original source of Father's riddle-and-enigma quote, and again the path led directly back to Man Ray. The source for the quote actually predated Churchill's use by some nineteen years and related to a controversial and provocative 1929 photograph created by Man Ray entitled The Riddle, or The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse (exhibit 38).

  Exhibit 38

  The Riddle, or The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse

  The photo depicts an object or objects wrapped in a carpet and tied with rope. After photographing the unknown subjects, Man Ray left it up to the beholder to figure out what the blanket concealed. Is it a human body, or perhaps something less sinister? Some believe that Man Ray provided a clue to what was hidden inside his "riddle or enigma." Man Ray's biographer writes:

  At this time, Man Ray was developing an interest in vanguard French literature. The work that perhaps best exemplifies this new influence — and reveals his reliance on the very sources that had been an important literary precedent to dada — is The Riddle, or The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse, a photograph of an unidentified object, or objects, wrapped in the folds of a thick carpet, which in turn is tied with rope. Although the entire assemblage was discarded after the photograph was taken, Man Ray wanted the viewer to believe that two rather commonplace objects were hidden under the carpet. The only way a viewer could know what they were, though — and thus solve the riddle — was to have been familiar with the writings of the obscure, though extremely influential, French author Isidore Ducasse, whose pseudonym was the Comte de Lautréamont. . .

  By 1920, at least two statements by the French author had attained near legendary status: his observation that, "Poetry must be made by all, not by one." And his oft-quoted "Lovely as the fortuitous encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella." It was of course, this bizarre, though visually provocative, exemplar of beauty that Man Ray illustrated in The Riddle. "When I read Lautreamont," he later explained, "I was fascinated by the juxtaposition of unusual objects and works." Even more important, he was drawn to the count's "world of complete freedom."1

  Man Ray never revealed to anyone the actual objects inside his photograph, leaving it to the viewer to judge these obscure references to a dissecting table, a sewing machine, and an umbrella. With respect to the Dahlia investigation, it is enough to understand this further linkage to Man Ray's use of the quote in the light of Father's statement to me in response to my solving the Wagenheim murder, with his "there must be an enigma inside a mystery there, too."

  Man Ray's 1920 photograph The Riddle, or The Enigma, which to many people would represent a human body, or body parts, wrapped and bound with rope, becomes the fourth compelling photograph informing the influence Man Ray had on my father and his actions in the Black Dahlia case. Along with Man Ray's other three works of art mentioned above — Les Amoureux, The Minotaur; and Juliet in SilkStocking — they reveal the vivid images that will later turn up throughout the Black Dahlia case. In fact, the Man Ray images themselves help to unwrap the mystery of the case, which has been my father's riddle-and-enigma to the world for over fifty years.

  For my purposes, one of the most telling portraits Man Ray photographed was the one of my father and a statue of the deity Yamantaka (exhibit 39), which probably sums up their relationship to each other and to their private sexual fantasies.†

  Exhibit 39

  George Hodel and Yamantaka

  Man Ray took this photograph of my father in 1946, in his UNRRA "lieutenant general" topcoat. Knowing that Father rarely took any action that did not hold a symbolic meaning, I was sure this Man Ray photograph contained some hidden intent. It is important because it represents a collaboration between Man Ray and George Hodel to create what Man Ray believed all his photos would become — works of art. Therefore, the object that my father is embracing in the photograph takes on a great significance both to him and to Man Ray.

  A Tibetan deity and one of the most complex divinities of the Lamaistic pantheon, Yamantaka is a powerful nine-headed god whose primary head is that of a bull. Yamantaka's manifestation is purportedly so terrible that he is said to have overpowered Yama, god of death, roughly equivalent to Satan or the ruler of the underworld. In this particular statue, Yamantaka is shown in what is termed the "yab-yum" position, performing sexual intercourse with his consort.

  In the photograph, Father, in what appears to be a state of worshipful reverence, looks as if he's transfixed by Yamantaka. Like Yamantaka, George Hodel believed he was omnipotent and, as a doctor, could overthrow death. He also believed he was sexually omnipotent, and inflicted this belief upon all the women he met, including his own daughter; thus the choice of Yamantaka in the act of sexual intercourse. For Man Ray, the fascination of Yamantaka is the bull-headed deity itself, the Lamaistic counterpart to Man Ray's own destroyer of maidens, the Minotaur.

  In this portrait of my father embracing Yamantaka, both Man Ray and my father juxtapose their own representations of omnipotence, sexuality, and dominance over death itself. But the portrait goes beyond juxtaposition; it is an objectification of all the elements that define their relationship to each other and to the visions they shared.

  There is, in addition, a secondary deviant psychology that I believe also explains the way Elizabeth's body was posed. The Black Dahlia crime scene was a kind of flowering in my father's mind of the kinds of scenes he had written about as a young crime reporter in the 1920s, when, I believe, the early seeds of his violent sexual visions were firs
t sown.

  Further, Father 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, took them to heart, and would later translate and apply them as part of his own surgical crime:

  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.2

  Finally, there is exhibit 40 in comparison with Father's original two photographs of Elizabeth (exhibit 7). I call it "The Dream." Taken in 1929, the photo portrays a gathering of the major surrealists in Paris, including Andre Breton, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, and Salvador Dalí. Each member of the group has formally posed for his portrait with his eyes closed, affirming his support and preference for the subjective dream state in defiance of the conscious and rational.

  Exhibit 40

  The surrealists, 1929

  In the 1920s, Andre Breton became the spokesman for surrealism and wrote the movement's first manifesto in 1924. His stated philosophy relating to the importance of dreams and the state of sleep is described in that original manifesto:

  The mind of the man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill, fly faster, love to your heart's content. And if you should die, are you not certain of reawaking among the dead? Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless . . .

  I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.3

  My father's most revealing thoughtprints are those two damning photos of Elizabeth Short, as seen on page 41 as exhibit 7. Here again the artist/photographer has signed his work, only this one was private and was meant to remain so.

  In these photographs of his lover, George Hodel reveals his esoteric "marriage" to Elizabeth Short by personally initiating her into his world. After carefully posing her in both photographs, Father instructs Elizabeth to close her eyes, as if she is asleep or in a dream state. With his lens, he then captures the dream, transporting her to his world, the world of the surreal, where dreams are reality, where the rational and the conscious are only backgrounds and are reversed to become the shadows of unreality.

  True to his philosophy, George Hodel remained the absolute surrealist throughout his life, the young poet of seventeen, described in the newspaper of his day:

  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.

  Add to that his published statement to the police at the time of his 1949 arrest for incest that he was "delving into the mystery of love and the universe," and that the acts of which he was then accused were "unclear, like a dream. I can't figure out whether someone is hypnotizing me or I am hypnotizing someone."

  And finally, Father's "Parable of the Sparrows" letter of 1980, with its mystical questioning:

  But are there only three of us? The birds, the glass, and we? Or is there a fourth? Who is standing behind our glass, invisible to us, incommunicable to us, gravely watching our brave attacks against the walls we cannot see? Is there a fifth presence, watching all the others? And a sixth, and others, hidden in mysteries beyond our dreams?

  These two photographs of Elizabeth Short taken by her then lover, most probably at the Franklin House in the month preceding the crime, are unique and macabre in the extreme, premortem portent of the horrors about to befall her. They are the ultimate surreal irony, where the artist has captured both of their pasts and futures as mistress-victim and lover-avenger.

  1 Foresta, Merry, et. al. Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray. Abbeville Press, New York, 1988, p. 80.

  † Uncertain of the deity's identity, I consulted Dr. Momi Naughton, professor of Asian art at Western Washington University, who confirmed it to me.

  2 Writers in Revolt: An Anthology (Frederic Fell Inc., New York, 1963), p. 50.

  3 Manifestos of Surrealism (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1972), pp. 13-14.

  20

  The Franklin House Revisited

  I BEGAN MY INVESTIGATION on the premise that the photographs of Elizabeth Short in Father's album were the innocent mementos of his wanton youth, about which I had always known and because of which my mother had suffered so greatly. Elizabeth Short, I assumed, was probably just one of dozens of women in his life who were nothing more to him than a "three-month fling."

  As I went deeper and deeper into both my father's mysterious past and that of Elizabeth Short, however, fitting many scattered biographical jigsaw pieces of their separate lives into time and place, I was slowly moved to the inescapable conclusion: my father was in fact guilty of her murder. Alone, or with an accomplice.

  In the pages and chapters that follow, I offer the accumulated evidence, along with the relevant photographs, that will prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Dr. George Hill Hodel was the Black Dahlia Avenger.

  In October 1999, during the initial stages of my investigation, I contacted the owners of the Franklin House, whom I had met thirty years earlier while working Hollywood Division. The owner's father had purchased the house through my father's attorneys in 1950, after the Tamar incest trial.

  "Bill Buck" (an assumed name to protect his anonymity) and his wife had moved into Franklin House in the early 1970s and begun restoring it. While working Hollywood Division in 1973, I chanced to meet the owners while they were gardening in front of the residence. After learning of my connection they graciously offered me a tour. In 1999, after my father's death, I learned that both Bill Buck and his wife were still living there and made an appointment to visit them again. We spent several hours discussing the history of the house, its construction, and its former owners, me sharing with them some memories of my Franklin years. As they had done so many years before, they took me on another tour, during which I took a number of photographs of both the interior and exterior. Included in the tour was a trip to the basement, which for the most part had remained untouched since the original sale some fifty years before.

  During a cursory search of the dust-covered past deep in the basement, I found two items of interest, the first of which was a wooden crate, sent from China and addressed to "Dr. George Hill Hodel, 5121 Franklin Avenue, Los Angeles, California."

  Inside the crate I discovered a bill of lading, dated October 16, 1946, which inventoried eight packages.

  Exhibit 41

  Franklin House bill of lading

  This document established that the various art treasures purchased and shipped by Father from China had arrived at the Franklin House in the fall of 1946. Whether the crate followed his departure either by sea freight from China or via a reasonably fast military air transport, the receipt date supports my suspicion that George Hodel had arrived back in Los Angeles sometime in September 1946, discharged for what his UNRRA record cited as "personal" reasons. Father's stay in a hospital corresponds to what Elizabeth Short's Massachusetts girlfriend Marjorie Graham told reporters in her telephone interview with them on January 17, 1947:

  Elizabeth had told me her boyfriend was an Army Air Force lieutenant, currently in the hospital in Los Angeles. Elizabeth told me that she was worried about him and she hoped that he would get well and out of the hospital in time for a wedding they planned for November 1.

  Bill Buck mentioned that my father had left some old magazines in the basement, but he thought they had been disposed of over the years. During my brief tour of the basement, which for me still held
painful memories of leather straps and spankings, I came across a cobweb-covered box of old medical magazines dating from the mid-1940s. Examining the contents, I discovered a medical calendar book for the year 1943 that had belonged to Father. I asked Bill Buck if I could take it and he said, "Of course."

  Exhibit 42

  George Hodel's 1943 medical calendar

  The book was titled Warner's Calendar of Medical History, for the use of the Medical Profession, 1943. A later careful examination of each page of the book provided some interesting discoveries, including samples of my father's handwriting on the inside cover, as well as other entries in my mother's hand. Printed in George Hodel's handwriting on the front inside cover of the book were the following notations: "Genius and Disease: pp 126-269." Page 126 was earmarked and said:

  GENIUS & DISEASE

  Many attempts have been made to define genius. Some believe it to be no more than "an infinite capacity for taking pains"; others, like Lombroso, aver that it borders on insanity or is a matter of heredity. The fascination of the subject lies in the fact that any approach to it leads to interesting, if futile, speculations. Of course, not all great men have been of unstable nature, but the fact remains that all too frequently geniuses have had to contend with physical, nervous, or mental anomalies of one kind or another. The sketches following have been chosen to illustrate that the superlatively talented in any field of endeavor may time and again be held in check by seemingly insurmountable physical burdens, only to find in them the challenge to greater efforts, even though in some cases the burden ultimately proved too great for human endurance.