Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  I drew on the cigar and coughed loudly. Mother attempted to intervene: "George, I don't think —" He shot back at her, "No, we are all going to sit right here, all of us, until Steven finishes that cigar." There was silence around the table as I was made to take more drags of smoke. I was sick, turning green, and I was afraid of Father, but I tried to hide it. Dad, believing he had made his point, finally said to me, "Well, Steven, what do you think of smoking now?"

  I tried to look directly at his face, but could not quite manage it as I responded, "That was good, Dad. Can I have another?" My brothers and sister laughed, he stared hard at me, then looked at them. "You are all excused from the table. Steven, I will see you in the basement in five minutes."

  My brothers and I hated the basement. It was a place we never explored and kept out of our minds, because it was a place of punishment. The basement meant the razor strap, and the razor strap meant a searing pain until Father decided we'd had enough.

  As noted, among my parents' closest friends during the war years and after were Man Ray and his wife, Juliet. Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia in 1890, was one of the world's leading surrealists. In his early twenties, influenced by the nineteenth-century avant-garde French poets Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, he began drawing and painting. Also while still in his twenties, he became acquainted with the American poet William Carlos Williams, as well as artists Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the burgeoning New York Dada movement. He had a number of one-man shows in New York and became associated with American modernist painters.

  In 1921 he went to France, where Marcel Duchamp introduced him to a number of Dadaists. In Paris, he began his photographic work, establishing himself as a portrait artist, photographing such important literary figures as the expatriate American writer Gertrude Stein, as well as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Jean Cocteau. Cocteau summoned his friend Man Ray to the deathbed of Marcel Proust, to photograph and immortalize Proust's passing. His fame steadily increased and soon he was an established artist in the surrealist and Dada movements, each of which has its own relevance in the relationship between Man Ray and my father.

  Surrealism, for example, stressed the subconscious and nonrational, principally through its representation of unexpected juxtapositions that defy reality. The Dadaists also stressed the incongruity of artistic representation, while at the same time challenging convention and traditional morality.

  Along with their mutual passion for France, its people and language, my father shared with Man Ray an interest in the life and work of the Marquis de Sade. During the mid-1930s, Man Ray devoted six or eight paintings and sculptures to the notorious French writer and debauchee, whom he called his "inspiration." During his twenty years in Paris, Man Ray read and studied all of Sade's erotic writings, and through his personal interpretation of the man, the artist represented him as an example of "one of the world's freest of thinkers." Man Ray worshiped what he believed was Sade's complete freedom from convention, from the morals society imposes, and even from the constraints of literary taste. It is believed that while in Paris in the early 1920s, Man Ray was asked to photograph, for preservation purposes, a rare original handwritten manuscript by Sade entitled The 120 Days of Sodom, which had been discovered in the French government's archives at the turn of the century.

  Man Ray's fame increased as his camera lens continued to capture many of the world's rich and famous personalities, including Virginia Woolf, Henri Matisse, Coco Chanel, Henry Miller, Salvador Dalí, and Pablo Picasso. Portraits, however, while a nice source of income, were not really what Man Ray claimed to be about. He was an artist, a very special artist. But now, with the shadow of war lengthening across Europe, he felt it was time to go home.

  After his successful one-man show in Los Angeles in 1935, Man Ray decided to settle in L.A. Perhaps he was also attracted to the home of the film industry because he had experimented in filmmaking in Paris. He arrived in Hollywood in November 1940. His artistic return was not auspicious. In 1941, he had a museum show in L.A. that was not well received. The Los Angeles Times's art critic, H. Millier, in a review of Man Ray's painting entitled Imaginary Portrait of D.A.F. de Sade in the April edition of Art Digest, equated the subject matter to "crime and torture magazines."

  Man Ray's reverence for Sade is documented again and again throughout his works. A 1933 silver-print photograph entitled Monument à D.A.F. de Sade depicts a woman's buttock framed within an inverted cross, an obvious reference to Sade's preference for sodomy and his utter disdain for the church.

  To say that Man Ray was a devoted sadist, both aesthetically and philosophically, is an understatement. He never made any attempt to conceal his beliefs regarding the subjugation and humiliation of women. On the contrary, he revelled in depicting them as objects and playthings for the true sensualist because, like Sade, he believed women exist for man's pleasure, which is only enhanced through the humiliation, degradation, and infliction of pain upon them.

  Exactly where and how Man Ray and Juliet met Mother and Father I do not know. Most likely they met shortly after his arrival from France, although one unconfirmed report has it that Father originally met Man Ray in New York when he was living and visiting Mother and John Huston in the Village in 1928.

  That these four — Man Ray, Juliet, George, and Dorero — would meet was almost inevitable. They were all sensualists; their own likes and strong desires must have drawn them as moths to the same single flame of passion. To Father life itself was surreal, a dream in which each man made up and lived by his own rules and within his own world. Like the sinister Aleister Crowley's "Black Magician" from the turn of the twentieth century, my hither conducted his life according to the dictum "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

  The first of our family photographs by Man Ray that I am aware of were taken in 1944, when we lived on Valentine Street in Elysian Park, the neighborhood where Dodger Stadium stands today, just a hardball throw from downtown. From 1945 until the fall of 1949, both Man Ray and Juliet were regular partygoers at the Franklin House, where Dad's guests could relax and indulge themselves in cocktails, a courtesan, or plenty of cocaine.

  During these years, Man Ray took a number of photographs at the Franklin House and several formally posed portraits of my mother at his residence-studio on Vine Street, just a few blocks away and directly across the street from the landmark Hollywood Ranch Market. In some of these photographs Mother was alone; in others, she posed with Juliet. In 1946, Man Ray gave Mother and Dad a self-portrait as a gift, which he would later use as the cover for his autobiography, Self Portrait, published in 1963.

  Exhibit 13

  Man Ray, 1946

  His inscription to my parents on the photograph reads:

  To Dorero and George — and my homage as I am pleased when I am asked for my phiz — so much more than when I am asked for a portrait of a greater celebrity. I celebrate you.

  Man

  In 1947, just a few months after the murder of Elizabeth Short and while the investigation was at its most heated, Man Ray left Hollywood for Paris. He later returned and remained in Hollywood through 1950, when both he and Juliet returned to Paris and established permanent residence there until his death in November 1976.

  The influence of Man Ray on George Hodel cannot be underestimated. Already an amateur photographer of some note, my father admired and looked up to the world-famous Man Ray. Despite his plethora of professions and accomplishments, in his heart of hearts, George Hodel aspired to be an artist.

  * After building the Sowden home in 1926, Lloyd Wright's next architectural endeavor (1927-28) would be to design the prototype shells for what has become one of Los Angeles's most recognizable icons, the Hollywood Bowl. This magnificent amphitheater is located only two miles west of the Franklin House.

  The Hollywood Scandal

  DESPITE HER FOURTEEN YEARS, our half-sister Tamar could have doubled for the young Marilyn Monroe, who the following year would launch her ca
reer in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle.

  What was most striking about Tamar was her physical maturity. She easily passed for someone in her early twenties. And that's exactly how she acted. Bright and strong-willed, she hungered for attention and affection and sought it any way she could find it, particularly by being seductive with boys and men. She had become too much for her mother to handle, "uncontrollable and incorrigible and it was time for her father to take over," as her mother put it. So Tamar came to L.A. and became part of the family. By the end of 1949, life, as we had known and enjoyed it, was over.

  The floating sounds of people partying across the courtyard from my room at the Franklin House grew louder night after night during the summer of 1949. So did the sound of my parents fighting: their raised voices would echo through the corridors at night.

  Then suddenly, on October 1, 1949, Tamar ran away from the Franklin House and disappeared. Dad tried to search for her privately at first, contacting her friends and schoolmates and visiting her known hangouts to see if anyone had seen her. But after coming up empty, Dad was forced to notify the police. A formal missing persons report was filed and two days later she was found hiding at a girlfriend's home.

  Tamar was taken into custody by LAPD Juvenile detectives, who, before returning her home, asked her why she had run away. She told them simply, "Because my home life is too depressing." Given Dr. Hodel's glowing reputation, that made no sense to the Juvenile officers. They began questioning her: why was she so unhappy at home? Finally Tamar broke down: "Because of all those sex parties at the Franklin House." How did she know about such things, the Juvenile officers wanted to know: had she seen them? "Not only seen them," she said, "I took part in them myself."

  By the time the questioning was over, she had implicated not only Father but Fred Sexton and two other adult women in the "bizarre sex parties" at our home. She also admitted to having had oral sex with numerous different men and boys, outside of the home, many of whom were fellow students with her at Hollywood High School. The Juvenile officers were stunned at the revelations and quickly moved to file charges.

  Tamar was detained at Juvenile Hall, and five days later Father was one of the first to be arrested. He immediately posted $5,000 bail and was released from custody on Thursday, October 6, 1949, at 10:15 a.m. But by then the scandal had already reached the newspapers. The Los Angeles Times of October 7, 1949, ran the following article, accompanied by a photo of Dad standing with his attorney after his release on bail:

  DOCTOR FACES ACCUSATION IN MORALS CASE

  DAUGHTER'S STORY CREDITED ALSO IN ARREST OF 13 BOYS

  Wild parties in which a Hollywood physician and his 14-year-old daughter assertedly participated yesterday led to the arrest of the doctor and 13 boys.

  The father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, 38, of 5121 Franklin Ave. was booked in Hollywood Jail on District Attorney's charges of two morals offenses.

  Fellow Students

  Det. Sgt. L. A. Bell and Detective Shirley Maxwell said his daughter implicated him and 19 other persons. Some of these are fellow students with her at Hollywood High School.

  Dep. Dist. Atty. William L. Ritzi said the daughter ran away from home last Friday because her "home life was too depressing" but she was found Sunday at the home of a friend. She is now held in Juvenile Hall.

  Both men and women figured in the series of bizarre parties, Ritzi said. Hodel is a photography enthusiast and said they seized many questionable photographs and pornographic art objects at his home.

  The article went on to say that the doctor told Ritzi that he was "delving into the mystery of love and the universe," and that the acts of which he was accused were "unclear, like a dream ... I can't figure out whether someone is hypnotizing me or I am hypnotizing someone."

  The boys arrested, all of whom were juveniles, were released to the custody of their parents. Dr. Hodel's preliminary hearing was set for October 14.

  In a related article in the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express on October 7, under the headline "Doctor Nabbed on Hollywood Incest Charge," the reporter added several important facts to the story:

  The 14-year-old daughter told officers that her father had molested her since she was 11 years old.

  Dr. Hodel, a medical officer of the United Nations mission to China, questioned by Deputy District Attorneys Ritzi and S. Ernest Roll admitted, "These things must have happened." He said he wanted to consult his psychiatrist.

  Still in juvenile detention and "protective custody," Tamar was reinterviewed by Juvenile detectives, to whom she revealed that her father had also arranged and paid for an abortion performed on her in a Beverly Hills doctor's office. Accordingly, four days after George Hodel's arrest police arrested Beverly Hills physician Dr. Francis C. Ballard, age thirty-six, and his "associate" Charles Smith, also thirty-six, for performing an abortion on Tamar. In the complaint, the abortion was alleged to have occurred in September 1949, a month before Tamar ran away.

  Several days after Father's arrest, Juvenile detectives conducted a search of the Franklin House. The search resulted in the seizure of various items deemed "pornographic" in nature, which would have included books, photographs, and several statues of nymphs and satyrs "frolicking" together. During the search, detectives found the statues in a secret storage room behind the living room bookcase, whose existence Tamar had revealed to the Juvenile detectives.

  Since it contained all the ingredients of a big juicy Hollywood scandal, the story generated a huge amount of local public interest: a wealthy and prominent, dapper Hollywood physician, his Marilyn Monroe lookalike underage daughter, orgiastic parties, reams of pornographic material and art, some of which was stashed in secret rooms, more than a dozen Hollywood High School teenagers named in a sex ring, a secret abortion, and, just in time for the trial, the showmen defense attorneys of their day, Jerry "Get Me" Giesler and his ringmaster partner Robert Neeb.

  A preliminary hearing was held in municipal court a week after the arrest, and based on the testimony of Tamar, who remained under Juvenile Hall detention, and other witnesses present in the bedroom at the time the acts occurred, Dad was bound over to the Superior Court for trial on two felony counts: incest and oral copulation. On December 8, 1949, a jury of eight women and four men were selected and the Superior Court trial of State of California vs. Dr. George Hill Hodel began.

  The prosecution was confident because they felt they had an unusually strong case. Normally, in a charge of incest you rarely have more than the one complaining victim/witness. Parents generally do not have sex with their children in front of or with other people. Prosecutor Ritzi had three adult witnesses present in Father's bedroom, two of whom allegedly had participated in the sexual acts. Ritzi also had damning statements and admissions made by the defendant that he was "delving into the mystery of love and the universe" and that "these things must have happened." Also, the DA had Dad's statements — a potential "dream defense" — where he told detectives the whole thing was "unclear, like a dream. I can't figure out whether someone is hypnotizing me or I am hypnotizing someone." Ritzi also had the detectives' "loot" from the search of the Franklin House.

  The first witness called to testify was Tamar. Because of her age, newspaper photographs of her were not permitted, but the attending press were overly colorful in their verbal descriptions of the young victim, characterizing Tamar in separate articles as "sultry," "blonde, blue-eyed, and loquacious," "precocious," and "gesturing dramatically and frequently to the jurors."

  Tamar, questioned by prosecutor William Ritzi on direct examination, testified that on the evening of July 1, 1949, she returned home from a date. She changed her clothes and went into her father's bedroom wearing a green smock, blue jeans, gold slippers, and a brassiere. Present in her father's bedroom were her father, his friend Fred Sexton, and two adult women, Barbara Sherman, age twenty-two, and Mrs. Corrine Tarin, age twenty-seven. Tamar drank a tumbler full of sherry, and then Fred Sexton undressed her and committed an act of or
al copulation. She testified that her father then performed both oral sex and an act of intercourse and was followed by Barbara Sherman, who orally copulated with her.

  Tamar's direct testimony was followed by what the newspapers described as "two blistering days of cross examination by Giesler's partner, attorney Robert A. Neeb." On the second day, with Tamar just about to leave the witness stand, Neeb begged, "Just one more question, Your Honor." He stepped in close to the young teenager on the stand, turned and looked into the eyes of the jurors, paused for dramatic effect, and then demanded of the witness:

  Tamar, do you recall a conversation you had with a roommate at the Franklin House by the name of Joe Barrett? And do you recall, in that conversation, making the following statement to him: "This house has secret passages. My father is the murderer of the Black Dahlia. My father is going to kill me and all the rest of the members of this household because he has a lust for blood. He is insane"?

  The courtroom was shocked into silence as all eyes focused on the witness, awaiting her response. My sister's eyes darted to meet the eyes of her father, who was seated with defense counsel, wearing his most conservative dark suit. Then they quickly averted. Trembling and fearful with her eyes downcast, she could not speak. Ordered by the judge to answer, she simply stated, "I don't remember saying that to Joe."

  The following morning, December 17, the Daily News reported the dramatic testimony: "Girl Accused of Trying to Pin Dahlia Murder on Dad." The Los Angeles Mirror's article of the same day declared, "Girl's Story Is 'Fantasy,' Court Hears." The article read, in part:

  The 14-year-old daughter of a prominent Hollywood physician "plotted his downfall" with fantastic stories, including one that he killed Elizabeth (Black Dahlia) Short, his attorney, Robert A. Neeb Jr., sought to prove today.

  Neeb hammered at the "fantasies" of blonde Tamar Hodel in her cross-examination at the morals trial of Dr. George Hill Hodel, 38.