The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

Given enough negatives, one may well prove a positive. In the Los Angeles area from 1943 to 19491 have reviewed eleven "lone woman" homicides, excluding the Jane Doe "suicide" and the Marian Newton San Diego murder. How many of these kidnap-rape-murders did they clear? Assuming for a moment that what LAPD told its citizens was the truth, that these murders were not connected to the Dahlia or to each other — according to Harry Hansen's math, ten of the eleven murders should have been cleared (or, using my more conservative rate, eight). How many were solved? None.

  I offer these numbers not to belittle LAPD and LASD homicide detectives but rather to make a point. This rash of crimes was not solved because they were most likely committed by the same suspects). These attacks and murders were not committed by eleven different sadistic rapists all operating in the same locale. No, it is my sad but firm belief that most of these crimes were committed by George Hodel and Fred Sexton, operating sometimes together, sometimes alone. That is why LAPD and LASD didn't clear any of the crimes. Had they been committed by different suspects, statistically at least half of the crimes would have been solved.

  For me, as a professional in law enforcement, the most painful reality of all is knowing that the blood of these many victims is on the hands of those officers and commanders within the Los Angeles Police Department who initiated, then perpetuated, the cover-up. Perhaps earlier crimes as well, but certainly at a minimum all the crimes committed and all the lives taken after January 21,1947, the date George Hodel's photograph was positively identified by the Johnsons at their East Washington Boulevard Hotel, can be attributed to those officers who obstructed justice and aided and abetted in the cover-up.

  * * *

  *We recall Tamar's reporting that it was on just such a trip eleven years after this murder (1969) that he drugged and took salacious pictures of his thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Fauna 2.

  33

  George Hodel-Elizabeth Short:

  Reconstructed Timeline

  IN MY INTRODUCTION I said that solving the murder of Elizabeth Short, as well as the other sadistic murders discussed in this book, "is the result of finding and piecing together hundreds of separate thoughtprints."

  In telling this complex story, I have tried first to present all the evidence related to identifying our suspects, then in later chapters to explain the connections to and motivations for LAPD's cover-up.

  The evidence linking George Hodel and Fred Sexton to the crimes has been spread across many chapters. We have heard from more than seventy witnesses, and reviewed over sixty separate exhibits. By incorporating many of the "ghost witnesses," those establishing Elizabeth Short's movements during LAPD's so-called "missing week," we now know why they had to be kept silent and discredited. By uniting the fuller knowledge of both Elizabeth Short's and George Model's movements during the mid-1940s, we can now reconstruct and distill a more accurate timeline of events, one which is most unique, as we can now walk in the shoes of both the victim and her killer.

  1944-1945

  George and Elizabeth meet and begin a relationship of sorts, platonic or otherwise. George wines and dines her in the finest restaurants. Together they frequent the Biltmore, and downtown and Hollywood nightclubs. Elizabeth gets financial aid for food and rent from George when needed.

  August 1945

  Major Matt Gordon is killed in an airplane crash over India. George Hodel, after learning that Elizabeth's fiance has been killed, asks her to marry him instead. Heartbroken and despondent over the loss of her fiance, she agrees, or at least leads him to believe she will think about it.

  October-December 1945

  While Elizabeth waits tables at Princess Whitewing's restaurant in Miami Beach, Florida, George Hodel, having joined UNRRA in December, is at the agency's home office in Washington, D.C., studying Chinese. George contacts Elizabeth and asks her to marry him when he returns from China. She expresses second thoughts about marriage. Infuriated at her rejection, he manages to control himself long enough to wire her a restrained telegram from D.C., reminding her that "a promise is a promise to a person of the world" and signing it simply, "Yours."

  April 1946

  Stationed in China with the honorary rank of lieutenant general, George sends Elizabeth the photographs showing him both in uniform and civilian clothes as "arbiter."

  Elizabeth writes to Lieutenant Gordon Fickling about her desire to return to California to see him. Fickling cautions her, "Why not pause and consider just what your coming out here to me would amount to?" Despite his admonition, she travels to California.

  August 1946

  Elizabeth returns to Hollywood and stays at Mark Hansen's Carlos Street residence, where she lives for three weeks with Hansen's girlfriend, Anne Toth. Looking for work wherever she can find it and left to her own devices, Elizabeth, rummaging through a desk, finds Mark Hansen's blank address book with his name embossed on the outside and takes it.

  September 1946

  George suffers a heart attack in China and returns to Los Angeles, where he is admitted to a hospital and discharged from UNRRA.

  Late September 1946

  Elizabeth leaves Mark Hansen's house before the end of September and moves into the Hawthorne Hotel at 1611 North Orange Drive in Hollywood, where she briefly shares a room with Lynn Martin, then shares a room with her friend from Massachusetts, Marjorie Graham.

  September 20-21, 1946

  Elizabeth meets the Army soldier "Sergeant Doe" in downtown Los Angeles, has a dinner date with him, and as they walk back to her hotel they are seen together and chased by a carload of "Hispanics," one of whom, I suspect, is Fred Sexton. Father, still hospitalized, and knowing Elizabeth is in Hollywood, may well have asked his good friend Sexton to hit the streets and see if he could find her. These males clearly recognize her, because Sergeant Doe hears one of them yell out, "There she is!"

  Elizabeth and Sergeant Doe spend the night together at the Figueroa Hotel.

  October 1946

  Elizabeth is still rooming with Marjorie Graham at the Hawthorne and tells her that her boyfriend is an "Army Air Force lieutenant" in the hospital in Los Angeles. She hopes he gets well soon so that he will get out of the hospital in time for their planned marriage on November 1.

  November 13-December 6, 1946

  Elizabeth moves to a room at the Chancellor Hotel, 1842 North Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood, which she shares with seven other women. Broke and unemployed, she is forced to move out.

  December 6, 1946

  On the day she leaves, an anxious Elizabeth tells roommate Linda Rohr, "Fve got to hurry. He's waiting for me." I submit "he" is Dr. George Hodel.

  December 6-11, 1946

  It is likely that during this period of time after she leaves the Chancellor and for the five days that follow, Elizabeth and George are together. She could be staying at the Franklin House, or perhaps George puts her up in a nearby hotel and she just visits him at his home. It is at this time that he photographs her in the nude and adjacent to the Chinese art object. An incident occurs between them, something traumatic and untoward, perhaps a physical assault, which causes Elizabeth to become fearful for her life. What is known is that Elizabeth arrives in San Diego a few days later, alone and without friends, unemployed, with little or no money, and with no place to live. She has fled!

  December 12, 1946

  Dorothy French finds Elizabeth in an all-night movie theater, homeless and without prospects, and invites her to stay temporarily with her and her mother, Elvera, at their home in the suburbs of San Diego. The Frenches report to the police that Elizabeth has dated a number of different men during her stay at their house, and that she is especially afraid of "an ex-boyfriend who [is] extremely jealous of her." Dorothy and Elvera French describe Elizabeth's emotional condition as highly agitated and secretive throughout her stay with them and that she becomes "especially frightened when anyone [comes] to the front door." But Elizabeth remains tight-lipped, continually refusing to tell Elvera French the name of the man sh
e fears.

  December 15, 1946

  Robert Manley sees Elizabeth at a bus bench across from the Western Airlines office in San Diego and offers to give her a ride home. At the house, he briefly meets Dorothy and Elvera French and returns later in the evening to take Elizabeth out for dinner and dancing.

  Mid-December, 1946

  Elizabeth is temporarily back in Los Angeles, where "five unidentified friends" see her at an unnamed nightclub in Hollywood. These same friends tell police that they also saw Elizabeth at a nightclub in Hollywood earlier in the fall, at which time she told them she "planned to marry 'George,' an Army pilot from Texas." These separate witnesses are the first to link George Hodel's first name to the military pilot Elizabeth has told other friends about.

  December 24 or 25, 1946

  Mark Hansen sees Elizabeth around Christmas, three weeks before her murder. Hansen, in his later report to police, does not say where or with whom, but it is likely in Hollywood either at a private party or possibly a public holiday gathering or at his nightclub, the Florentine Gardens.

  December 29, 1946, 7:30 p.m.

  A terrified and hysterical Elizabeth runs up to a taxi-stand manager at 115 North Garfield Avenue in East Los Angeles. Barefoot and bleeding from her knees, she relates the story of her assault "by a well-dressed man who was her acquaintance." This description matches that of George Hodel, who most likely, after arguing with her, drives her to an isolated area, attacks her in a fit of anger, and may have killed her on the spot had she not escaped.

  January 2, 1947

  Phoebe Short, Elizabeth's mother, receives a letter from her daughter, telling her that she is "living in San Diego, with a girlfriend, Vera French." In the letter, Elizabeth lies to her mother, telling her she is "working at the Naval Hospital."

  January 7, 1947

  Robert Manley wires Elizabeth at the French residence in San Diego and tells her he has plans to come down the following day and wants to see her.

  January 7, 1947, 11:30 p.m.

  That same night, Dorothy French's neighbor sees a car drive up outside of Dorothy's residence just before midnight. The neighbor sees three individuals, two men and a woman, get out of the car and go to the front door, where they knock, then wait for a few minutes. Elizabeth secretly watches them but does not answer the door, and the three hurriedly return to their car and leave. I submit that these two men are George Hodel and Fred Sexton, who somehow have found out where Elizabeth is staying.

  January 8, 1947, 5:30 p.m.

  Robert Manley arrives at the French residence to see Elizabeth, who asks for a ride with him back to Los Angeles. He tells her he has business to take care of first but that he will take her with him and they can return to Los Angeles the following day. Manley gets a motel room in San Diego for the night, and, for the first time, as he tells the police after they pick him up for questioning after Elizabeth's murder, he notices deep scratches on her arms. Elizabeth informs him they are from "a jealous dark-haired, Italian man from San Diego." These visible marks and scratches on Elizabeth's arms are completely consistent with the story of her attack that she told the taxi-stand manager ten days earlier. Elizabeth places a phone call from a cafe at Pacific Highway and Balboa Drive just outside San Diego to a man in Los Angeles. Red Manley, standing nearby, overhears parts of the conversation, enough of it at least to inform police later on that she called a man in Los Angeles and "made arrangements to meet him somewhere in the downtown area, the following evening, January 9." LAPD and DA investigators will later successfully trace the phone records and verify that the person she called was the "wealthy Hollywood man," whose identity has been established as Dr. George Hodel.

  January9-11, 1947

  Over the course of these two days, friends and acquaintances see and speak with Elizabeth in the downtown and Hollywood areas.

  Also, between these dates, George Hodel accosts and assaults seventeen-year-old Armand Robles while the young man is approaching a footpad in the downtown area. George will later send the young man's photos to the press, identifying Robles as "the werewolf killer."

  January 12, 1947

  George and Elizabeth go to the downtown hotel at 300 East Washington Boulevard, where the hotel owners, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, see the couple during check-in and, after the murder, make positive identifications of both from photographs.

  January 14, 1947, in the afternoon

  A sobbing and fearful Elizabeth runs up to Officer McBride in a downtown bus depot. McBride escorts her back to a Main Street bar to obtain her purse and later sees her exit with two men and a woman. I believe these three are the same trio that came searching for Elizabeth at the Frenches' residence a week earlier, that is, George Hodel, Fred Sexton, and the same unidentified woman.

  January 14, 1947, 3:00-4:00 P.M.

  From the downtown bar, George Hodel takes Elizabeth Short to the Franklin House. He gags her mouth, binds her hands and feet with rope, and then begins a prolonged and systematic process in which Elizabeth is beaten and subjected to ritualistic and sadistic torture, is sexually assaulted and then slain.

  January 14-15, 1947

  George Hodel removes Elizabeth's body from the Franklin House, drives due south on Normandie Avenue and parks his car at the isolated vacant lot at 39th and Norton. Father removes both sections of the body, and carefully poses his "masterpiece." On his drive home he stops halfway and places her purse and shoes on top of a trashcan on Crenshaw Boulevard.

  January 15, 1947

  Tying up loose ends, possibly to pay for the hotel room, and still using the identity of "Mr. Barnes," George Hodel returns to the hotel at 300 East Washington Boulevard, where he tells Mr. Johnson he "expects his wife to join him." When Johnson jokingly replies, "You were gone a few days; I thought you might be dead," George becomes agitated, visibly nervous, and immediately leaves.

  January 15, 1947, late evening

  George Hodel enters an unidentified Hollywood bar, where he asks the bartender whether "Sherryl" is working that night. After being told it is her night off, he leaves.

  January 16, 1947, late evening

  George Hodel returns to the same bar the next night and meets Sherryl Maylond, the ex-roommate of Elizabeth Short's at the Chancellor Hotel, room 501. Identifying himself as "Clement," George Hodel informs Sherryl he wants to talk to her "about Betty Short." But Sherryl refuses to talk to him and he leaves the bar.

  January 21, 25, and 26, 1947

  George Hodel enters the Hub Bar and Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, where on three separate nights he identifies himself to women and the bartender as "George, an FBI agent working on the Black Dahlia investigation." On the final day he approaches an attractive waitress named Dorothy Perfect, whom he propositions by promising her, "I can fix you up with your own apartment on the Sunset Strip." He also informs the waitress, "I can tell you who killed Elizabeth Short." Dorothy Perfect, believing the man is under the influence of narcotics, calls the sheriff's department, while George Hodel flees into the night, never to return.

  In the days and weeks that follow the discovery of Elizabeth Short's body, George phones city editor James Richardson, promising to mail him a few of her personal belongings, which he does. Then, as the Black Dahlia Avenger, he sends a dozen taunting mailings to the press and detectives, makes and then withdraws his promise to surrender, and continues his ongoing cat-and-mouse game with the police department.

  In rapid succession during the months following the Dahlia killing, George and Fred kidnap, rape, and murder lone women off the streets of Los Angeles, most of whom they savagely beat and strangle. More kidnappings and murders follow in 1948 and 1949. Even after Father's arrest for incest on October 6, 1949, he and Sexton commit one more crime, the kidnap and murder of actress Jean Spangler on October 7, the day following his bail out from lockup.

  After his acquittal in December, 1949, the DA investigators confront him in early 1950 at the Franklin House, where they inform him they are aware
of his crimes and promise they will arrest him and bring him to justice. George Hodel, confronted with the probability of an imminent arrest by the DA investigators, who are outside of his sphere of LAPD protection, quickly flees the United States and remains outside the country for forty years.

  After the incest trial, Sexton eventually flees to Mexico City. Unlike George Hodel, however, Sexton returns to live off-and-on in the Los Angeles area during the 1950s and '60s, continuing his sporadic serial killings.