Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  Where Dad was rock, I was water. My father was clinical, almost bloodless in his dealings with people. If he was intuitive, it was so far below the surface you wouldn't even know it was there. He was a hard and cold individual with a huge ego whose demeanor bordered on the tyrannical. "King George," friends called him in jest, but it was true. Perhaps his demeanor was the result of his many years of living in the Orient, in Manila, where there are just two classes — the very rich and the very poor. But I think not. I think it was always there, always a part of him. He was a man I had not liked even when he telephoned me out of the blue with what he said could be the offer of a lifetime.

  In 1973, he had asked me to come to Manila and take a look at his business. He had said, "Come over and take a look at what I have built in Asia. Come over and consider the possibility of working for me, Steven." By then he had built market research offices in Manila, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Singapore, and his offer was tempting. I was single again and, at thirty-two, with no children, I was free to remake my life. Visions of exotically beautiful women, along with palatial living quarters, danced like sugarplum fairies in my head at night. So I took six weeks' leave of absence from my work at Hollywood Homicide. I wanted to get as clear a picture of the operation as possible.

  By then I had been promoted to detective. It would have been a huge decision if I had chosen to leave LAPD and give up my pension when I was already halfway around the track. Here I would not be my usual impulsive self. Not on something so important that it would affect the rest of my life. So I took a leave to explore my father's world and a life that was waiting for me if I chose to embrace it.

  The six weeks in the Orient were totally indulgent. This boss's son was spoiled rotten and catered to beyond his dreams. But beneath the excitement, the fun, and the entertainment of it all, I knew it could not be. I simply could not work for such a man. His oversized business cards with his near-imperial title said it all: "Doctor George Hill Hodel, Director General." He was a control freak, and I would not subordinate myself to him. I felt like a player in a big-stakes poker game, holding only a pair of sevens and knowing there was a much stronger hand in the game. I folded.

  But by the 1990s, all that had changed. He was no longer the megalomaniac of old. He became the prodigal father returning to his native soil, changed and reformed. Now at eighty-three, his fires still burned strong, but not with the white heat of twenty-five years earlier. He was different now, settled into a final long-term marriage with June, whom he had married in 1969. With her encouragement he had exchanged much of his robber-baron lifestyle for a slower, more comfortable existence, more in keeping with his advancing years. By the time he returned to the United States from his expatriate years in Asia, he was more forgiving and accepting. And so was I.

  Our attempts at a new relationship were gradual, tentative, and laborious at first, typically expressed through faxes and notes. It was the start of communications between us that would grow stronger as the trust built. As the years followed I would make increasingly regular trips to visit Dad and June in San Francisco, and they, in turn, would make occasional trips north to Bellingham to visit me and to explore the beauty of the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound.

  For the first time in our adult lives together, quality father-and-son time would go beyond the formalities of a business meeting and take on the aspect of something social and even human. Now our gatherings would even contain some laughter, and I would be permitted brief glimpses at the man who had always walked through life behind an iron mask. It would only be a peek, though, and the occasions were rare, but it was enough. I could see that my father, after so many years of being a stranger to his son, was beginning to mellow. I had made a breakthrough with him. Though he still felt awkward and uncomfortable talking about feelings and things of the heart, I knew I could finally begin to broach some personal and honest topics with him so as to touch on what to me was the only truly important thing in life as far as I was concerned — communication and relationships. But it was too little too late.

  Just a week before my father's passing, I was concerned about his health. I had heard nothing by fax from him or June for quite a while. I'd invited them to come up during the summer, stay with me for a week or so, and we could make the short drive to Vancouver, Canada, for sightseeing and day trips.

  Sensing that his health was failing or something else was amiss, I faxed them and asked him directly about his physical condition. On May 9, 1999,I received the following fax:

  May 9, 1999

  Dear Steve:

  Thanks for your fax of yesterday May 8. Your photos also arrived yesterday and are great depictions of your beautiful new home, and we do wish that we could see it with you.

  There is a reason why you haven't heard much from us for the past few months. We certainly miss seeing you for prolonged periods such as this.

  The fact of the matter is that I have been going through a particularly difficult situation in regard to my overall health. We have not wanted to expose to you or to anyone else the full extent of my present debility and overall weakness and general helplessness. This would be humiliating, and could leave a much tarnished image in your minds.

  I am now wheelchair-bound, and cannot get around without a great deal of help from June, plus the wheelchair and rolling walker. On the rare occasions when I must go out to see a doctor we also need the help of a hired limo with a strongly built driver.

  None of this comes as an actual surprise to me. The overall clinical picture is just about what we would normally expect in a patient who has moved on into the final terminal phase of congestive heart failure. The clinical fact is that I have simply lived a few years too long.

  Let me assure you that this thought does not frighten me in the least. For example, I am going into the hospital tomorrow, Monday, for a procedure, which is called cardiac retroversion. This consists of applying two strong electric shocks to the heart, in an attempt to change its present arrhythmia (disturbance of heart rhythm), which in my case is known as "heart flutter" into a more normal rhythm.

  But if this and other corrective procedures fail, I shall not be saddened. I have been fortunate enough to lead a very full and interesting life and to know some truly wonderful women and to have some very fine children of whom I am truly proud. The most recent few years have been among the happiest in a long life, thanks to the remarkable help given by June, who is indeed an angel.

  In the meantime, June and I send you our love.

  George and June

  In light of that fax, and intuiting that the end could possibly be near, even for this man considered by all of his children to be an immortal, I felt an urgency to speak from my heart, and mailed a letter to him the following morning.

  May 9, 1999

  Dear Father:

  Thank you for giving me an honest and accurate picture of your current health condition. I very much appreciate it, and know how difficult and naturally reluctant you are to do that, for many valid reasons. Your communication, of course, will always remain confidential. Personally, I appreciate knowing things as they are as opposed to how others or I may wish them to be.

  I want you to know that for me, likewise, the past six or seven years have been the happiest. While I have gone through many difficult personal life-changes, emotional adjustments regarding Marsha and the boys, yet I have been extremely happy and content.

  The reason for that happiness was the development of our relationship as father and son. Our relationship, yours and mine, has grown and developed and become

  real

  to me. It was not always so. For many reasons beyond both of our control, we did not have the opportunity to share our thoughts. This was neither your fault nor mine. It simply was

  what was.

  But in these past years, thanks to your openness, acceptance, and encouragement it became something real. It was like a reverse of the normal course of a father-and-son relationship. Ours was in my youth, distant, and now has
become close. I thank you for that.

  And I thank you, Father, for your support and patience in me and of me. I thank you for your wise guidance and advice over the past years. Your positive promptings for me to improve my health in many ways. (I think your encouragement in getting me to quit smoking has probably added ten or fifteen years to my natural life and health.)

  Mostly, I thank you for your time. Some wise man said that "Time is our most priceless possession." And of that you have given me much in these recent years. I look on my computer over the past six years and see hundreds and hundreds of faxes and communications from you. Each one requiring your time and your thought.

  The memories I have of visits here and there are warm reminders of these years, and will be with me while I breathe and think. Thank you for those, dear Father. I don't want this to sound like a goodbye. But if fate should make it so, then mostly I want you to know how much I love you and how grateful I am to you for the gift of life and for the time we have shared together.

  You are truly a great man, and I am very proud that you are my father.

  ALL MY LOVE

  Steven Kent

  My father read this on the final day of his life. And now, just twenty-four hours later, the flight attendant was motioning to me to raise my table to the upright position in the minutes before we made our final approach to San Francisco airport.

  The uniformed driver met my arrival at gate 33 with a sincere, "I'm so sorry about your father. He was a special man. Very few like him in the world." I nodded in the polite acknowledgment of his condolences. We drove in silence to downtown San Francisco to their condo, some forty floors above the financial district in the heart of the city.

  June was in tears when she met me at the door, and we embraced in our sorrow. I held her as she spoke softly in my ear, "I'm all alone now. I'm so afraid. He didn't have to die, Steven. I thought we would be together for another ten or more years. He died in my arms. I tried to save him but I couldn't." She was shaking and looked near death herself, pale and thin as if his death had drained her of life. I could feel her tremendous grief mixed with the fear of having to go it on her own from now on, after having been under George Hodel's protection and absolute control for thirty years. The apartment seemed woefully empty. No radiant voice, no great intellect, nothing. And that nothingness shouted out the absence of the man. Her man.

  The two of them had been inseparable for the thirty years they had been together. During all of that time they had never been apart for more than a day or two, and that mostly for business purposes. Together they had shared 11,000 sunrises, and now, with him gone, the sun would never rise again for her in the same way.

  June Hodel, my stepmother, was younger than I by about four years. She had been graduated ichiban, at the top of her college class in Japan. Bright, eager, and beautiful, she had answered an advertisement Dad had placed in the Tokyo newspaper for a personal secretary and girl Friday. June had beaten out hundreds of competing applicants for the job working directly for my father.

  Getting the job wasn't easy, because Dad personally administered the battery of tests to her, as he had all the other applicants. The tests measured her personality, intelligence, and familiarity with English. At the conclusion of the tests she was told she "would be contacted sometime in the future." A week later the phone call came. And again, as she had been in college, she was ichiban — number one.

  She took the job and moved from her southern province of Japan to the Tokyo office, away from her home and family for the first time. From that point on, from age twenty-three, she and my sixty-three-year-old father would remain inseparable, working and traveling throughout the world together. They would reside in Manila, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. They would travel to dozens of foreign countries throughout Asia and Europe, and ultimately move to San Francisco, where they remained inseparable. Then, finally, a few minutes before midnight in mid-May, he would gasp for air, collapse in her arms, and die.

  Now June would be alone for the first time in her fifty-four years. It was a terrible feeling for her. And in those hours after my father's death when I was holding her there in a sorrowful embrace, I could feel the totality of her loneliness. And I feared for her.

  We spent that afternoon and late into the evening talking about "the Great Man" and what a remarkable life he had lived. And despite my previous eight years of conversations with him to reestablish our relationship, I realized I actually knew very little about him — as did the rest of his children. Like the Wizard of Oz, he had been the all-powerful figurehead behind the curtain. But in reality, who was he?

  My father's father, George Sr., was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and fled to Paris near the turn of the century. There he met Esther Leov, a dentist, and they married. Like most immigrants, they came through Ellis Island. Then they traveled west to California.

  Dad was born in Los Angeles in 1907. I knew that he was a musical prodigy, that he had played his own piano compositions at age seven or eight in the Shrine auditorium, had a genius IQ — one point above Einstein's, I was told — and later went to medical school in San Francisco. He returned to Los Angeles, opened a successful medical practice, married my mother, had children, and moved us all to the historic Lloyd Wright Sowden House, on Franklin Avenue in the heart of Hollywood.

  After a family scandal, my father divorced my mother and moved to Hawaii, where he became a psychiatrist. Then he moved to the Far East and married a wealthy Filipina woman with whom he had four children. Ultimately he became a famous market researcher and respected social scientist with offices throughout Asia.

  This was virtually all I knew — just fragments. When my father and I got to know each other during the last years of his life, much of his past, particularly as it related to me and my brothers, still remained a mystery. His children from other marriages probably knew less than I, but that was his way — secret and private — and I respected it. I figured his business was his business and if he chose not to share it with others, even his family, that was his choice.

  Even when he had begun to open up with me during his final years, what he said about his life was still very general, but it had taken a new direction. I took it to be more of an attitudinal change than specific information. Our time together was slower, softer, and gentler, in stark contrast to the brisk lunch meetings of earlier years, where my two brothers and I would receive a last-minute summons to meet him for lunch near L.A. airport, "between flights," where he would give each of us five minutes to "update him on our lives."

  During those last years, when I tried to share my thoughts, feelings, and reflections on life with both my father and June, they seemed to appreciate my openness, but it was never fully reciprocated. Weren't Renaissance men like that — guardians of their secrets? At least that's what I thought. Now I guessed that probably no one ever knew the real George Hodel, not even his widow.

  After consoling June, I returned to my San Francisco hotel room late that evening filled with an increased sense of loss. For most of the afternoon I'd been a homicide detective, dealing with someone else's grief. Now my own feelings moved to the forefront as I finally realized my father was gone. Whatever wars would have to be fought between father and son, whatever unresolved issues still lingered in the air, would remain. From this point forward I'd have to deal only with his memory and the unanswered questions in his life that would remain the province of ghosts. At that moment, I too felt the great sense of aloneness that I knew June was feeling. And as I stretched out on the bed in my hotel room, I was overcome with a melancholy sense of the passage of time, of lost opportunities, and above all the loss of my father.

  All of us have our own special days in life, days that relate directly to the core of our being and have the same sign hanging on them, saying, "Private, Keep Out." We usually see such days only in retrospect; only later do we recognize them as turning points in life. May 18, 1999, would be just such a day for me.

  On that day I returned to Dad and June's
penthouse suite early in the morning, remarking to myself how beautiful the morning sun could be in San Francisco with its promise of a complete renewal. Standing there in the living room, looking eastward, I could see both the Oakland Bay and Golden Gate Bridges, appearing as if by magic through the early-morning fog hanging low over the bay as it was dissipated by the sun. It was a sight that for a moment dissipated our own sadness. But June's sobs as she went through my father's personal effects broke into my reverie.

  She was still in a state of shock and emotional trauma. She still blamed herself, believing she could have done something to save him, torturing herself by asking, "What if I had checked on him sooner? What if I had taken him in for a checkup? What if he hadn't gone to have the arrhythmic procedure done? What if the paramedics had arrived sooner?" I had no words to console her. "It was his time, June," I repeated. "He lived a long and wonderful life. Ninety-one years filled with adventure and travel is much more than most men have. The thirty years you shared with him were much more than you could have expected. And they were only possible through your love and care."

  But I saw my words gave her no comfort. She wasn't functioning, and I realized I would have to make all the arrangements. My first priority was to notify the rest of his children, my sibling and half-siblings. Father had had ten children from four marriages. Seven of his children were still living. His eldest son, Duncan, now seventy and semi-retired, lived a short distance away in a San Francisco suburb. His second-born was a daughter, Tamar, who was now living in Hawaii. Then there were the four children from my mother. Michael, my older full brother, had died in 1986.I was a twin, and my brother John had died a few weeks after he was born, his death ascribed to "failure to thrive." Kelvin, eleven months my junior, was living in Los Angeles. Then there were Dad's children from his marriage in the Philippines: Teresa, Diane, Ramon, and Mark. Ramon had died of AIDS at age forty, just four years earlier.