Most Evil
Page 7
Figure 6.6 is a sample of Bill Heirens’s handwriting from a letter he wrote to a friend in December 1945, some three weeks before the Suzanne Degnan kidnap-murder occurred. As numerous experts have pointed out, it bears no resemblance to the handwriting found on the ransom note.
6.6 William Heirens’s handwriting, December 21, 1945
Suspecting that my father might have been the author of the Brown and Degnan murder notes, I contacted questioned document examiner Hannah McFarland and asked her to compare the handwriting in those notes to known samples of George Hodel’s handwriting. QDEs stress the importance of trying to obtain known samples, written as close in time to the questioned documents to which they are being compared. Our handwriting generally changes, sometimes quite dramatically, over the years. I included samples that spanned seventy-five years.
In addition, I asked her to examine handwriting samples that appeared on four snapshots that had been removed by newspaper reporters from Elizabeth Short’s personal photo albums back in 1947. These four original Elizabeth Short snapshots were eventually sold as part of a Los Angeles Examiner’s archive collection and put up for auction years later in February 2003, when I acquired them.
These four snapshots were all originally owned by Elizabeth Short. All four were pasted into one of several of her personal photo albums that were recovered by police during the early stages of the 1947 investigation. Black album paper can be seen sticking to the back of each photograph, indicating they were ripped from one or more of her private albums.
Some Dahlia researchers have speculated that the handwriting on these photos was that of either Elizabeth Short or possibly news reporters who initially took possession of the albums and were allowed by LAPD detectives to keep them. Based on new information from my own investigation and supported by documentation found in the DA files, it is my opinion that the words seen on the snapshots were written by George Hodel. I believe that my father somehow came into temporary possession of the albums, possibly during Elizabeth’s stay with him at either the Franklin house or a hotel. During their time together, perhaps he happened upon the photos of her with former boyfriends and asked her to name her old boyfriends as he wrote each name on the photograph.
Having recognized the handwriting on the four photos as my father’s, and knowing that he would have had opportunity to label the photos while in possession of Elizabeth Short’s album, I was interested to see if the QDE would establish a link between the Black Dahlia Avenger, the Lipstick Murderer, and my father.
6.7
6.8
Figures 6.7-6.10 were part of a set of five seperate photos mentioned in the DA secret files that were mailed in by “The Avenger” to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner a week after Elizabeth Short’s murder. They establish that the suspect had access to her photos and/or photo album.
6.9
6.10
6.11 Back of photographs showing they were ripped from her photo album(s)
On May 7, 2003, I received Questioned document examiner Hannah McFarland’s report.11 It read, in part:
Dear Mr. Hodel:
I have examined the following questioned documents (digitally reproduced) in an attempt to identify the author.
• Hand printing on four snapshot photographs from the mid- 1940s
• Brown Note, printed using lipstick, December 1945
• Ransom Note, January 1946
• Gladys Kern Note, 1948
I compared these questioned documents to known (genuine) documents (digitally reproduced) that you have represented to me as having been authored by Dr. George Hill Hodel. Following are these known documents:
• K-1 Reverse side of self-portrait photograph, “Merlin gazes at cracked mirror,” 1924
• K-2 Reverse side of self-portrait photograph, “Portrait of a chap suddenly aware of the words of Sigmund Freud,” 1924
• K-3 Medical calendar book, “Genius and Disease,” 1944
• K-4 “Chinese Chicken” drawing, April 1949
• K-6 “Love and Aloha to Father and Alice, Honolulu, 9/25/53”
• K-7 “Love to Dorero, December, 1974”
• K-8 “Dad,” printed signature mailed to you, 1997
• K-9 Notes prepared for conference with wife, 10/15/98
Based upon the available evidence it is my professional opinion that the following four questioned documents were probably hand printed by the author of K-1 to K-9:
• Three of the four snapshots (see below for the remaining snapshot)
• Ransom note
• Gladys Kern note
The probable opinion allows me to incorporate these four documents as additional comparison material against other questioned documents, which provides additional evidence of common authorship.
Note that the above expressed opinion is not conclusive because I examined non-original questioned documents and because there is less agreement between the questioned and known documents. And it appears the author deliberately altered their hand printing, except for the snapshots, to avoid identification. This disguise prevents a higher degree of agreement between the questioned and known documents. Although the snapshots do not appear disguised, the printing on them shows differences that could be due to natural variation.
In the world of handwriting terminology, a “probable” finding points “strongly toward the questioned and known documents having been written by the same individual,” but falls short of “virtually certain.” QD experts define six degrees of confidence that are less than “probable.” They are: “indications,” “no conclusion,” “indications did not,” “probably did not,” “strong probability did not,” and “elimination.” (Source: Journal of Forensic Sciences, Letters to the Editor, March 1991)
In her report, QDE Hannah McFarland describes certain characteristics that led to her conclusion that George Hodel was the “probable” author of the Suzanne Degnan ransom note. I quote:
Ransom Note
• The letter “O” slants to the left while the other letters are primarily vertical or slant to the right;
• Variable letter size with the letter “O” repeatedly being much smaller than the other letters;
• Terminal downstrokes that are extra long;
• Terminal upstrokes that are extra high;
• Wide word spacing;
• The portion of the capital “R,” “B,” and “P” that resemble a capital “D” has extra-long horizontal initial and terminal strokes;
• The letter “U” does not have a downstroke on the right;
• The capital “I” is simplified by being devoid of cross-bars;
• Use of upper- and lowercase letters;
• Ascending cross-bars
Ms. McFarland based her conclusion that George Hodel “probably” wrote the Frances Brown “Lipstick Killer” message on the following:
Brown Note
• The letter “O” is much smaller than the other letters;
• The terminal downstroke of the letter “S” is extra long;
• Wide word spacing;
• Slant is primarily vertical;
• The letter “C” has a loop at the top
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of Washington that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.
EXECUTED this seventh day of May, 2003, in Seattle, Washington
HANNAH McFARLAND
The similar handwriting is certainly a compelling link between George Hodel and the Chicago crime scenes, but it remains just one piece of the puzzle. As mentioned earlier, Chicago detectives had established that Suzanne Degnan had been strangled before her body was expertly dissected with a sharp knife. According to the Associated Press two lengths of clothesline were found in the basement where the dismemberment took place. This conflicts with other reports that they were found in the alley just outside “the murder room.”
Figure 6.12, below, is a comparison of the Degnan noose
to one used by the Black Dahlia Avenger to strangle Louise Springer in Los Angeles in June 1949.
6.12
Also found near the Degnan crime scene were the two handkerchiefs. According to police, one of these was “wrapped like a gag.”
In at least three of the Black Dahlia killings, a white handkerchief was left at the scene. This is so unusual a signature that I have always suspected it may have been an important part of the killer’s MO. George Hodel, a medical doctor, would have easy access to chloroform and probably carried it in his black bag. Poured onto a handkerchief, it would be the perfect way to quickly silence his victims and prevent them from calling out. To my knowledge, none of the handkerchiefs were ever examined for traces of this chemical substance.
Interestingly, neither the handkerchief nor precut lengths of clothesline were mentioned in Bill Heirens’s “confession.” Instead, he claimed that he “just used [his] hands” to strangle the child inside her bedroom.
After the Chicago coroner examined the assembled pieces of Suzanne Degnan’s body, he concluded: “It was a very clean job with absolutely no signs of hacking as would be evident if a dull tool was used.” Dr. Jerry Kearns, the coroner’s expert, added: “The killer had to be an expert. . . . Not even the average doctor could be so skillful.”
In the coroner’s report, the cause of death was listed as asphyxiation by strangulation. There were some visible marks to the neck. However, due to the decapitation, the coroner was unable to determine if it was caused by the ligatures found near the crime scene. In reviewing the 1946 coroner’s protocol, I noticed a description of the actual bisection.
The head has been removed at the level of the 4th cervical vertebra. . . . The trunk has been divided at the level of the umbilicus anteriorly and the 2nd lumbar vertebra posteriorly.
I found this highly significant. Why? Because in my Black Dahlia investigation the medical experts and surgeons who reviewed the Elizabeth Short coroner’s reports and autopsy photos all came to the conclusion that the person who performed the bisection was a trained physician and surgeon—like my father.
In their opinion, Elizabeth Short’s killer knew how to bisect a human body without having to cut through bone. As mentioned earlier, the procedure is known as a hemicorpectomy. It requires the physician to divide at the level of the umbilicus anteriorly and the second lumbar vertebra posteriorly. The hemicorpectomy on little Suzanne Degnan in January 1946 was the same one performed on Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short in January 1947.
Subsequent to the bisections, both victims were washed clean and sadistically posed in their respective city’s streets so that the killer could create maximum horror. Suzanne Degnan’s killer wanted the parts found, since he telephoned the police shortly after his crime and told them where to look. In the Elizabeth Short murder only about a year later, the killer would make certain they would be found with no need for a phone call by simply posing the body in plain view of a quiet suburban street.
And the brazen taunting didn’t stop there. In the Elizabeth Short case, Dr. George Hodel, calling himself the Black Dahlia Avenger, mailed a wrapped package to the Los Angeles Examiner containing some of the victim’s personal belongings: her address book, photographs, and identification. Suzanne Degnan’s killer addressed and mailed a similar package, not to the press, but to the child’s parents. In an act of pure evil, the monster sent the grieving mother a small cardboard box containing a human ear and the message: “will cut your ear next.”
We know now that the bisection of Suzanne Degnan, her strangulation with a precut piece of clothesline, the handwriting in notes and at the crime scenes, the contacting of newspapers and investigators via handwritten notes, and the posing of Josephine Ross and Frances Brown all closely matched the crime signatures of the Black Dahlia Avenger’s activities in L.A. While the evidence fell short of a smoking gun, I had not yet uncovered anything to rule my father out, and the circumstantial and forensic evidence was getting stronger as the investigation progressed.
My thoughts turned to the matter of opportunity: Could George Hodel have even been in Chicago to commit the crimes? Although it has so far been impossible to pinpoint where Dr. George Hodel was on a particular day some sixty years ago, I have been able to establish that he traveled often between 1944 and 1946. I know for a fact that my father made multiple trips east for business purposes and to study Chinese in preparation for his UN assignment to Hankow, China. In researching the subject, I learned that during the war years, the military’s top language training school, known as the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), was located in Chicago, Illinois. The program offered a course in accelerated Chinese and was taught at the University of Chicago. If in fact this was the crash course my father took in preparation for China, he would have walked the grounds and shared the campus with a then-unknown young student by the name of William Heirens.
My father’s letters confirm that he was in Washington, D.C., in January 1946, and in February 1946 he left for China. His UN assignment ended abruptly in August 1946 when he was discharged for unspecified “personal reasons” and returned to Los Angeles.
Therefore, it is possible that George Hodel visited Chicago in 1945 and again in 1946 either on business or as part of his training for his upcoming assignment with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He could also have stopped in Chicago on his way to Washington, D.C., as very few direct flights existed at the time and many would have stopped in Chicago.
I found all of this deeply disturbing. As a veteran homicide detective it was clear to me that the Josephine Ross, Frances Brown, and Suzanne Degnan murders were not the acts of an opportunist teenage burglar with no previous history of violence. Instead, the murders were likely committed by a sophisticated and experienced sadist like my father—someone who felt compelled to kill. And I could not ignore the multiple coincidences between the Chicago and Los Angeles murders. But we are still missing a final piece of the puzzle, one that has convinced me that the bisections of Elizabeth Short and Suzanne Degnan were committed by the same person.
Chapter Seven
’Tis strange but true; for truth is always strange—stranger than fiction.
Byron, Don Juan
There’s another very tantalizing piece of evidence that my father left deliberately to link himself to the murder of Suzanne Degnan. I discovered it by chance as I was retracing the likely route he would have driven to dump Elizabeth Short’s body at the location where she was discovered.
In nearly all of the historical references to the Black Dahlia crime scene, the cross street has been identified as Thirty-ninth and Norton, in the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles. That’s wrong. The actual location was nearly a full city block north.
Many have asked: Why this location? In Black Dahlia Avenger I detailed and substantiated the reasons why Elizabeth Short’s body was posed the way it was: as George Hodel’s surreal homage to his friend Man Ray’s most famous works, The Minotaur and The Lover’s Lips. But why was the body placed where it was? For such a deliberate killer, there must have been a specific reason.
The answer from LAPD detectives in 1947: “It was a quiet residential neighborhood, and a lover’s lane, where he wouldn’t be seen.”
But the real reason has nothing to do with it being a lover’s lane, and everything to do with George Hodel’s word games and an eerie link to Chicago and the Suzanne Degnan murder the year before.
George Hodel had been a cabdriver for the Los Angeles Yellow Cab Company in the 1920s. He knew the city’s streets. Name any address, and the young genius, renowned for his perfect photographic memory, could take you there.
On the chilly winter morning of January 15, 1947, Dr. George Hodel was alone at the Franklin house. His ex-wife and three sons were temporarily away, staying at their uncle’s home nearly two miles away. He began to prepare his masterpiece.
The extended torture and sadistic sexual abuse of his victim/girlfriend, Elizabeth Short, had e
nded. She lay dead. Like the operation performed on little Suzanne Degnan just a year before, he skillfully bisected the body. He knew exactly how and where to go with his scalpel. As with the Degnan body, the bisection was made between the second and third lumbar vertebrae. Using a coconut fiber brush, he then washed the two sections clean in the master bathtub, drying them with a towel. He walked downstairs and retrieved two large empty paper cement sacks from the basement, left behind by day laborers who’d been working for a week to reinforce the structural pillars beneath the house.