The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  From the moment that Sergeant Charles Stoker walked in and testified before the 1949 grand jury, his fate was sealed. He lost his job, lost his good name, and was publicly ridiculed. Ignoring warnings and threats to his life, he did ultimately publish a book about what had happened to him, which concluded:

  Villains in the story books always get their just desserts, and we — the members of the 1949 county grand jury, and I — can only hope that justice and virtue will triumph in the future. In the words of the poet Young, "Tomorrow is a satire on today, and shows its weakness."

  Ironically, on the same day a Superior Court jury was hearing testimony in the incest trial of my father — Wednesday, December 14, 1949 — the following article appeared in the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express:

  OUST STOKER AS LONE VICTIM

  OF VICE PROBE

  Charles F. Stoker, former vice squad sergeant, who touched off the lengthy grand jury investigation of police protected vice, wound up today as the only victim of the much-publicized purge.

  He was discharged from the police force by Chief W.A. Worton, who approved the recommendation of a police board of rights, which found Stoker guilty of insubordination and conduct unbecoming an officer.

  The article went on to note that, although five other police officers, including former Police Chief C. B. Horrall and former Assistant Chief Joe Reed, were also indicted on perjury and bribery charges, all were cleared.

  Twenty-five years later, on March 10, 1975, the following article appeared in the back pages of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner:

  STOKER, EX-OFFICER, DIES AT 57

  Former Los Angeles Police Sgt. Charles Stoker, who was a central figure in a 1949 department scandal, has died of an apparent heart attack.

  Stoker, 57, died yesterday morning in Glendale Memorial Hospital, where he was taken after suffering chest pains, while working in the Southern Pacific railroad yards. He was employed as a brakeman.

  Stoker played a key role in exposing corruption in the LAPD vice squad, but was later accused of a burglary, which led to his dismissal from the force. Stoker contended that he was framed on the burglary charge.

  Dr. Francis C. Ballard, the Beverly Hills physician to whom Father paid $500 for performing Tamar's abortion, was in all likelihood a member of the abortion ring Charles Stoker was trying to expose. As a matter of record, despite the strong case surrounding his October 1949 arrest for the abortion performed on Tamar, criminal charges against him were ultimately dismissed in 1950 after attorneys Giesler and Neeb successfully branded Tamar as "a pathological liar and a young girl in need of psychological treatment, who should be in a hospital, not a court of law."

  Dr. Walter A. Bayley

  In January 1997, Los Angeles Times staff writer Larry Harnisch, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Dahlia murder, wrote an article entitled "A Slaying Cloaked in Mystery and Myths, " which provided a very good overview of many of the known facts relating to the fifty-year-old unsolved case.

  Several years later, his search for a suspect would develop into a lengthy Internet article promoting his theory that the Black Dahlia killer was a Los Angeles physician by the name of Walter A. Bayley.

  Harnisch based his theory on several points: first, that Bayley was a prominent surgeon, which was in keeping with LAPD's premise that the murder and bisection of Elizabeth Short had to have been performed by a skilled surgeon; that Bayley's wife — from whom he was separated — lived at 3959 South Norton Avenue, less than a block from the Black Dahlia crime scene; that Bayley's daughter knew Adrian West, Elizabeth Short's sister, and indeed had been a witness at her marriage; and, finally, that Bayley had left his wife for a woman colleague, Dr. Alexandra von Partyka, who worked in the same office with him. Harnisch speculated that she had discovered his "crime" and was blackmailing him.

  In fact, Dr. Walter Bayley had no connection whatsoever with Elizabeth Short, or her murder. For one thing he had developed Alzheimer's disease, and had neither the mental nor physical capacity to either commit such a crime or taunt the police about it. No, his legitimate fears that Dr. Partyka would ruin his reputation arose from another source: she was undoubtedly blackmailing him with her knowledge that he was a member of the L.A. abortion ring.

  My search of the 1946 Los Angeles-area telephone book showed that Dr. Walter Bayley's private practice was located at 1052 West 6th Street, the same address as that of Dr. Audrain, Stoker's head of the protected abortion ring. It is very likely that the name of the warned abortionist, contacted by the Gangster Squad detectives the night before Stoker's pending arrest, and who closed his office for a week following, was indeed Dr. Walter A. Bayley.

  My research revealed a coincidental connection that seems to have gone unnoticed by police and press in the early days of the Dahlia investigation. Mrs. Betty Bersinger, who first discovered Elizabeth Short's body, told reporters that in notifying the police, she "ran to the closest house, " which she described as "the second house on Norton Avenue from 39th Street, " and said that it belonged to a doctor. It is highly probable that this house was the residence of Dr. Walter Bayley and his wife Ruth, out of which Dr. Bayley had moved the previous year.

  I suspect, too, that my father knew Dr. Bayley, and probably Dr. Partyka and Dr. Audrain as well. All had worked for Los Angeles County, and their downtown medical offices were within six blocks of each other. If George Hodel knew or worked with active members of the M.D. abortion ring, which I believe he did, the probability that they were acquainted would be very strong. Although I don't believe George Hodel performed abortions, because he was opposed to them in principle — except in the unusual position of being coerced by his own daughter under an implied threat of disclosure — it is almost certain that he not only associated with the doctors inside the ring but knew they were being protected by the LAPD's Gangster Squad.

  As a result of this inside knowledge and the people he could incriminate were he to have been prosecuted for any of the murders he committed, he was himself protected by the very same Gangster Squad that protected and profited from the work of the abortion ring that Charles Stoker sacrificed his career to expose.

  Abortion Ring-Spangler Connections

  Kirk,

  Can't wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott.

  Will work best this way while Mother is away.

  It is my further contention that the Spangler note, related to the fact that Jean Spangler needed to obtain an abortion. I believe that "Kirk" is not a first name, as LAPD chief of detectives Thad Brown tried to suggest when he personally interviewed actor Kirk Douglas, but a surname. Kirk, I submit, was Dr. Eric Kirk, Sergeant Stoker's chiropractor, abortionist, and informant. I further submit that Jean Spangler was initially planning to have Kirk perform her abortion. Her note was directed to him! Because he was suddenly and unexpectedly arrested and incarcerated by Detectives "Bill Ball and Joe Small, " and because time was of the essence, she was forced to find a replacement for "Kirk, " either through or with the help of "Dr. Scott."

  On September 17, 1949, just twenty days before Jean Spangler's kidnapping and murder, an article appeared in the Los Angeles Mirror over the headline "Wife of L.A. Abortionist in Hiding." The story carried a picture of Dr. Eric H. Kirk, captioned: "He'll testify." The article said that Kirk's wife, Mrs. Marion Kirk, "a key witness in a huge abortion-payoff-ring probe, was in hiding after it was learned that she received numerous telephone threats to 'keep her mouth shut.'" The article indicated that Dr. Kirk would testify to what he knew, with the following caveat: "I'm not going to name other doctors. I'm no stool pigeon. If all the doctors who perform abortions in Los Angeles were cleaned out, there wouldn't be many doctors left."

  As a matter of procedure, it's likely that the Gangster Squad detectives involved in the Spangler investigation, in a fox-in-the-hen-house type of scenario, were assigned the task of trying to locate and identify the "Kirk" and "Dr. Scott" in the Spangler note. This would be logical because of their familiarity w
ith abortionists city-wide. It of course permitted them to protect themselves, and their operation, by keeping the identities of both men secret. As we know from newspaper reports, despite these detectives' "exhaustive search, " neither "Dr. Scott" nor "Kirk" was ever located or identified.

  It is inconceivable to me that the LAPD was unable to make the obvious connection between the abortionist Kirk and Spangler's handwritten note, addressed to him. Kirk's identity should have been obvious to the investigators, because "Bill Ball and Joe Small" arrested him for performing illegal abortions just three weeks prior to the discovery of the Spangler note. Their failure to identify the real Kirk was all part of the abortion ring cover-up. As we will soon discover, these same Gangster Squad detectives were subpoenaed and forced to testify in secret before the 1949 grand jury. Their testimony would be labeled "evasive" and "contradictory" and they would publicly be accused by both the grand jury members and the district attorney's Bureau of Investigation of "covering up" facts and destroying evidence relating to "the Wealthy Hollywood Man" (Dr. George Hodel) named in secret before the grand jury as the prime suspect in both the Black Dahlia and Red Lipstick murders.

  Thanks to Sergeant Stoker's detailed explanation of how the L.A. abortion ring operated, we are able to connect the dots not only to Dr. Bayley and his role as an abortionist, but, more importantly, to "Bill Ball and Joe Small." With Stoker's help, we see them as they were: active ringleaders in a LAPD high-stakes money-for-protection racket. By successfully silencing Dr. Eric Kirk, and speedily sending him to prison, the Gangster Squad detectives prevented any linkage between Kirk and Jean Spangler, who had likely sought him out to perform her abortion in the weeks preceding her disappearance. Then with his arrest and incarceration, she wrote the note, which remained undelivered in her purse, and was found only three weeks later, after she was kidnapped and murdered.

  It was October 1949. In the previous two years, more than a dozen lone women had been found savagely murdered in the streets of Hollywood and downtown L.A. Two other socially prominent Hollywood women had disappeared and were suspected to have met the same fate. Gangsters were firing away at each other in open gun battles on Sunset Boulevard, wounding government officials and nearly killing a member of the press. An LAPD chief of police, an assistant chief, a lieutenant, and two vice squad officers were under indictment. My father had just been arrested for incest in a sex scandal that was making the front pages of the local papers. Sergeant Stoker, after testifying in secret before the grand jury as a whistle-blower, along with his partner, Officer Ruggles, had been fired. Corruption in the city and throughout its administration was so pervasive that even sexual predators were able to prey on women without fear of arrest.

  Who was actually governing the city and why were the police powerless to stop crime?

  * * *

  1While a sample was taken, no real test was ever completed, as was standard operating procedure. At $250-$500 for a half-hour's work, it was an excellent financial decision to inform all women they were pregnant.

  *The organizational structure of the Gangster Squad and their duties and responsibilities within the Homicide Division have been explained at length in an earlier chapter. This is the same detective unit that had, in January 1947, "assisted" in the investigation of the Black Dahlia murder and had discredited two key witnesses, the Johnsons, and their positive identification of the probable killer, "Mr. Barnes, " who had checked into their Washington Boulevard hotel with Elizabeth Short.

  26

  George Hodel: Underworld

  Roots — The "Hinkies"

  "AS YOUR LAST ACT OF LOVE FOR ME you must dispose of all my effects." This was, as noted, Father's order to June after he suffered a stroke in 1998 and planned on taking his life. He did not want June to handle his personal effects either while he was still alive or after his death. There were secrets he wanted buried with his ashes.

  Father wanted his photo album destroyed because it contained his only link to Elizabeth Short, and we now know why. But he had said "all my effects." Were there other links to his past that he also wanted erased? I now know that the answer was yes.

  Among these personal effects to be destroyed were his early photographs, which June had showed me on a visit to San Francisco some months after Father's death. The photographs, which had been taken in the mid-1920s, had been shown in a Pasadena art gallery as part of his one-man show. There were architectural photos of early L.A. — Long Beach oil derricks, downtown buildings, all artistically composed — plus many portraits: a black man, an oil rigger, construction workers, and others with hard faces, rough men whose visages were etched by years of cunning.

  There was also a group of savvy street-smart faces from the 1920s. Who were these men? Friends? Were they people he knew when he was driving a cab in L.A.? His wife didn't know. Perhaps they were nobodies, forgotten people from a distant past. June kept the originals but allowed me to make copies for myself.

  Among these photographs were six men I was curious about and wanted to identify. Cops have a term for men with faces like these: we call them hitikies. "Hinky" is a combination of "suspicious," "evasive," "dirty," or just plain up to no good. And these faces were hinky; they had too much experience with what cops normally see — the dark side of life. They had eyes that said, this guy has seen and known hard anger and brutality. These were criminal eyes, gangster eyes, part shifty, part confrontational, mostly desensitized — thoroughly tough. I wanted to know who they were and why they were part of his past.

  To date I have not been able to obtain positive identifications on all of these men, but in exhibit 60 I do have tentative identifications for three of them.

  Exhibit 60

  George Hodel photos taken circa 1925

  Photograph 1: Kent Kane Parrot, tentative ID

  Photograph 2: Tom Evans (age approx. 26), tentative ID

  Photograph 3: Fred Sexton (age approx. 19), tentative ID

  Photographs 4, 5, 6: Unidentified to date

  Based on the fact that three of the six photograph subjects were connected with L.A.'s underworld, there is a strong probability the remaining three have gangster connections as well. I believe that George Hodel and Fred Sexton were either full-fledged henchmen of an early crime gang, or, at least, remained close friends and associates for the next twenty-five years. To me, these photographs are more dark shadows from George Hodel's past, which might well connect him to notorious gangsters and killers of the time.

  Photo 2 is especially compelling: it's of Tom Evans at age twenty-six, the convicted rum-running, drug-smuggling con man we have earlier identified as Tony Cornero's bodyguard, the same man who, in his words, was "rousted" by LAPD in 1949 under suspicion of the kidnappings and murders of both Mimi Boomhower and Jean Spangler. These photographs show that Evans was linked to George Hodel as far back as 1925. What was my father, who prided himself on his intelligence, erudition, and culture, doing hanging around with a thug like Tom Evans? Perhaps the answer lies in photograph 1, which, I suspect, is a much younger picture of early L.A.'s least familiar but most powerful syndicate boss, the notorious Kent Kane Parrot.

  Kent Kane Parrot arrived in Los Angeles to attend law school at the University of Southern California in 1907, the same year Father was born. He was a big man, six foot two, and possessed a magnetic personality. He obtained his law degree and was admitted to the state bar.

  Parrot was a deal-maker with phenomenal "people skills," whose real talent lay in his ability to bring together people of diametrically opposed beliefs and lifestyles — conservatives and liberals, prohibitionists and rum-runners — to establish some common causes that would allow them to unite. He didn't do this out of the goodness of his heart. A consummate broker, he pocketed handsome commissions either in hard cash or by somehow making his clients beholden to him in exchange for some future payment in the coin of power or influence. Through his ability to forge relationships, Parrot got himself into politics, which he once defined very simply a
s "people in motion." And that's exactly how he played the game.

  By 1924, Kent Parrot had become the power behind the throne in Los Angeles municipal politics. In the 1921 race for mayor, he successfully selected and got elected George Cryer, who became known as "Parrot's Puppet," at which point Parrot quickly aligned himself with Los Angeles's vice lords, including the young bootlegging czar Tony Cornero. Parrot, while publicly discreet in his dealings with the underworld, would entertain its members and broker relationships among them at his private apartment at the city's newest and finest downtown hotel, the Biltmore, about which he once boasted, "Everyone in the state of California has possibly been there in the official line."

  As Parrot's influence and power grew, he placed more and more importance in the Los Angeles Police Department. Wielding payoffs, bagmen, and vice-supervisors, Parrot wound up with most of LAPD in his pocket and, though out of the public eye, became the most powerful man in Los Angeles politics from the 1920s through the 1940s. Citizen Kent Kane Parrot's word was law, because he owned the law.