by Hodel, Steve
Wilson looked intensely serious for a minute. He drew reflectively on his cigarette. I knew something I had said had made an impression on him. Most of it, I realized, had gone past him into the warm African night, but something had struck him in the strange way it occasionally did, had pierced into his armor-plated process of thought. He was pausing now to give his answer weight. I knew him so well, I thought.
“Kid,” he said, after a long pause, “you’re wrong. It’s not a crime to kill an elephant. It’s bigger than that. A crime….what the hell, that isn’t much. And that isn’t it. It’s a sin to kill an elephant, you understand, a sin. As basic as that. The only sin you can buy a license for and then go out and commit. And that’s why I want to do it before I do anything else. You understand?”
Thirty years later, Peter Viertel, by then long married to actress Deborah Kerr, wrote another book which I highly recommend, Dangerous Friends: At Large with Hemingway and Huston in the Fifties. [Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, New York, 1992]
Viertel’s recounting of his time shared in the 1950s with both of his “dangerous friends,” Huston and Hemingway, gives us a fascinating behind the scenes look into both men’s personalities.
I will close this chapter with a short excerpt from a full page letter written by Hemingway to his good friend, Peter Viertel in 1958. [Viertel adapted two of Hemingway’s novels for film—The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea.]
In reading Hemingway’s letter, it becomes obvious that a bitter Papa has nothing but contempt for Hollywood filmmaking and its hacks, and he would like to see Viertel, [who he believed has genuine talent] give up his day-job as a screenwriter and throw himself full-time into real writing—novels.
The letter to Viertel was written on May 1, 1958 from Finca Vigia [Lookout Farm], Hemingway’s home near Havana, Cuba.
…Wish to Christ you would write and not do that picture shit. Leave that to swine like Irwin and Hecht….Last winter I re-read all your books. The only one that is worthless is Line of Departure which is much worse than when I read it. But the Africa one [White Hunter Black Heart] in spite of carelessness rereads very damned well.
Go ahead and write your damned book. But don’t think you can keep jerking yourself off for pictures and then command any fee at stud…in writing they can’t yank you when you lose your stuff. What the hell. You get it back the next day or the next week. What if they knock the shit out of you? You can cut that out and go on when you have your stuff going again.
Excuse bad letter. Now I have gotten rid of this lousy bitterness about the pictures will write you good and cheerful next time.
…
Love from us both,
Papa
[“Us both” would include his wife, Mary Hemingway. Three years after writing this letter, Hemingway, back in the United States and being treated for severe depression, committed suicide in Idaho on July 2, 1961.]
Chapter 9
Lt. Frank Jemison
DA Investigator, Lt. Frank B. Jemison
One of the few men in the Black Dahlia investigation who it can be said was actually wearing a white hat was Lt. Frank B. Jemison of the LADA’s Bureau of Investigation.
From everything that I have been able to ascertain, he did his job, solved the case, and was just about to make the arrest when the powers that be pulled his plug.
We can speculate all day as to the WHY? The reasons are many and varied.
However, what is not in dispute is The Order. Lt. Jemison, in his final closing report, made it crystal clear that he had been removed from the case [later independently confirmed in a 2004 television interview of DA investigator Walter Morgan] and ordered to hand over his investigation, interviews, and all his evidence, which included the wire recordings and transcripts directly to LAPD chief Thad Brown.
As I said in an earlier chapter, Lt. Jemison’s saving grace was to copy his original investigation, complete with the Hodel Black Dahlia File, and secure it in the DA’s vault, where it would remain hidden for the next fifty-three years until finally being opened and revealed.
Los Angeles Hall of Justice
210 W. Temple Street, Los Angeles
The above photo taken by the author in 2008 shows the downtown Los Angeles Hall of Justice at the corner of Temple and Broadway Streets. The HoJ built in 1925, has a long, colorful, and macabre history. Most of LA’s famous trials were held in this courthouse. The building served as a jail detention facility for prisoners awaiting trial, as well as housing the LA Sheriff’s Department, LA County Coroner’s Office, and the DA’s Office, including Lt. Jemison’s office in the Bureau of Investigation.
The HoJ was within easy walking distance of all three of Dr. George Hodel’s medical facilities: Health Department, Chinatown, First Street VD Clinic at First and Central, and his private medical office at Seventh and Flower Street.
The building has a direct connection and link to our investigation for the following reasons: (1) In the early 1940s, Dr. George Hill Hodel’s Health Department office was located inside this building [1938-1942];(2) In 1947, the autopsy on Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short was performed in the Coroner’s Office in the basement of the HoJ, and the inquest into her death was held in a courtroom of the building; and (3) In 1949, Dr. George Hodel was arrested and booked into the jail facility here and was later tried in Superior Court on the lower floors of the premise. On February 15, 1950, George Hodel was detained and questioned by Lt. Jemison here, while at the same time, LAPD and DA sound technicians and detectives broke into the Franklin house and installed the microphones.
Dr. Hodel was “free to go” only after Lt. Jemison got the “all clear” call from detectives as they exited the Franklin house, having “wired it for sound.”
Charles Manson and the rest of his “Family” were tried and convicted here as was Sirhan Sirhan, Bugsy Siegel, Mickey Cohen, Robert Mitchum, as well as most of LA’s historic homme and femme fatales. In addition to Elizabeth Short, this was also the location where the autopsies on Marilyn Monroe and Robert Kennedy were performed.
The building was deemed “unsafe” after the1994 Northridge earthquake and has been vacant for nearly two decades. With such a distinguished history, hopefully, it will be saved from the wrecking ball, updated to current codes and preserved.
Dr. George Hill Hodel’s four downtown LA medical office locations: (1) Health Dept. Chinatown;(2) Health Dept., Hall of Justice [1938-1940]; (3) His privately owned, First Street VD Clinic; and (4) His private practice at Roosevelt Bldg.
Upper left GHH Chinatown office; upper right /First Street Clinic Bottom Dr. Hodel’s private practice 12th floor Seventh and Flower
A Family Secret
“The Dahlia murder suspect was a doctor and we know who did it, but we couldn’t put him away.”
Lt. Frank Jemison
Hall of Justice
Summer, 1951
In mid-October 2006, I was contacted by a close surviving relative of DA investigator, Lt. Frank B. Jemison. For privacy’s sake, I will simply use his initials—“J.F.” He advised me that he was Jemison’s nephew [Jemison’s sister’s son], a medical doctor, and a retired Air Force colonel. Here in his own words is his description of his Uncle Frank, and one very important meeting he remembers from 1951:
Family background:
Frank was my mother’s brother, the only son of a Methodist minister. He seemed a little eccentric to me. Every two years, he and his wife would fly to Detroit, pick up a new Cadillac, and drive through Ohio unannounced to visit his three sisters. If they weren’t home—too bad, until two years later. He had not followed his father Dave’s advice and entered the ministry and after graduation from Ohio Wesleyan College, he took off for the west coast. I thought he had a Law degree. Family rumor has it that he earned a good bit of money in real estate and as a financial advisor prior to his career as a DA investigator.
I know he was proud of his fortune, which was, at least in 1951, over one million dollars. While there was som
e family friction with Uncle Frank, he was always described as a person of impeccable personal integrity. I surmise that this integrity plus the fact that he had already made his fortune made him an excellent choice as investigator in the midst of apparent corruption. At his wife’s death, the estate was left to Ohio Wesleyan.
The Black Dahlia Murder Case:
When I was 12 years old in the summer of 1951, I accompanied my family to a medical convention in San Francisco and we stopped in LA for three days, my only extended contact with Uncle Frank. At dinner, he asked if my father, a family physician, and I would like to see where he worked. At that time, the Hall of Justice was one of the, if not the, tallest buildings in LA. My father and Uncle Frank sat in the front seat and I sat in back. As they drove, Dad turned and said, “You know your Uncle Frank was the investigator for the Black Dahlia case.” I liked the name but it didn’t mean much to me. They explained that it was a famous murder case. I didn’t listen too hard to the conversation until they said the body was cut up. Then I was all ears. Uncle Frank described the cuts, etc., and asked Dad what he thought. My father said he thought it had to be the work of a surgeon. Uncle Frank agreed and said that “We know who did it but we didn’t have enough to put him away.” For some reason, my twelve year old mind couldn’t understand that. I wondered why, if they knew who did it they couldn’t arrest him. I never thought of that case from that time, but the name “Black Dahlia” remained stuck in my mind. Just thought this might be interesting to you as background information. Really have enjoyed your book!
Sincerely Yours,
J.F. M.D. COL USAF (ret)
Dr. J.F.’s “background information” is much more than “interesting.” With what we already know, his family reflections are extremely illuminating, especially because of his certainty as to when Uncle Frank met with him and made these statements. It was the summer of 1951!
Let’s briefly review Lt. Jemison’s investigative chronology:
1. October1949-1949 Grand Jury appointed Lt. Frank Jemison to take-over the Black Dahlia and other LA Lone Woman murder investigations. George Hill Hodel became DA Lt. Jemison’s prime Dahlia suspect.
2. February15-March 27, 1950-Jemison established an eighteen-man task force assigned to twenty-four-hour electronic-surveillance of Dr. Hodel’s Franklin house.
3. March28, 1950-George Hodel tipped to surveillance, realized he was about to be arrested and fled the residence. DA Lt. Jemison forced to remove surveillance equipment and shut down operation. Lt. Jemison and law enforcement never again have contact with prime suspect, Dr. George Hill Hodel.
4. February 1951-Lt. Jemison ordered to “close Dahlia case and turn all investigation and evidence and Hodel surveillance recordings and associate interviews over to LAPD. Complies, “closes” case, and locks away a “second set of investigative files” in the DA vault, where they remain untouched and unexamined until 2003.
5. July 1951-Lt. Jemison brought his vacationing brother-in-law, a medical doctor, and his twelve-year-old nephew, “J.F.” [who will follow in his father’s footsteps and grew up to become an MD and a US Air Force colonel] to his office at the downtown Los Angeles, Hall of Justice and informed them that “The Dahlia murder suspect was a doctor and we know who did it, but we couldn’t put him away.”
On August 15, 1967, some seventeen years after solving the Black Dahlia murder and locking his secret away in the DA vault, Frank Jemison died in Beverly Hills, California. He was sixty-eight.
He died a rich man, and in his will provisions were made for some of it to go to his alma mater, Wesleyan College in Ohio. And the rest of his assets, after the death of his wife, Jane, were placed as a trust fund for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.
In 1979, the Frank Jemison Award was established from monies specifically bequeathed for the purpose of selecting and acknowledging, “Excellence in Public Service.”
The award was to be made each year to two outstanding employees selected from the DA’s Office. One of the recipients should be a DA investigator, and the second honoree would be chosen from the DA’s support staff. Each winner will receive a $5,000 gift for outstanding service. The Jemison Award has been given annually for the past thirty-two years.
DA Investigator Walter Morgan—The Last Coyote
“I guess there’s not too many left in the hills in the city—least near where I live. So whenever I see one, I get this feeling that it might be the last one left out there. You know? The last coyote. And I guess that would bother me if it ever turned out to be true, if I never saw one again.”
Detective Harry Bosch,
From Michael Connelly’s The Last Coyote
The following is a revision from of an obituary I wrote about DA investigator Walter Morgan at the time of his death four years ago in 2007.
September 8, 2007
Los Angeles
DA investigator Walter Morgan,
Black Dahlia Murder’s Last Coyote dies at 92
1915-2007
Walter Morgan, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation “old school” detective and the last surviving member of the 1950 Black Dahlia DA Task Force, in the final years before his passing, linked Dr. George Hill Hodel to the 1947 murder.
In a 2004 CBS 48 Hours crime-special, Morgan publicly acknowledged bugging the doctor’s private residence. He also confirmed the existence of secret surveillance tapes and transcripts, and that the DA’s taskforce in 1950 was unexpectedly and summarily shutdown. In a surprisingly candid on-air response, Morgan acknowledged that he and his fellow officers suspected that the shutdown was the result of a payoff and cover-up.
For me, it ended as it began with this morning’s call from my half-sister, Tamar Hodel. “Steve, I just heard from my daughter, Fauna. Walter Morgan died this morning.”
In my book, Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder, published in 2003, here is how I originally described my introduction and first meeting with Walter Morgan, then an eighty-seven-year-old retired LA district attorney investigator.
Page 449:
My INVESTIGATION HAD BEEN COMPLETED for some four months. I was working on the final editing of the manuscript when on April 24, 2002, my phone rang. It was my sister Tamar. “Steven,” she said, “I have the most amazing news. Fauna [her eldest daughter] has just spoken with a man named Walter Morgan.” (I immediately recognized his name as a district attorney investigator, Lieutenant Jemison’s partner from the 1950 investigation, and swallowed hard at hearing his name come from her lips.) “He was a private detective or something back in the 1940s,” she said. “He was involved in investigating, guess who: Dr. George Hodel! He told Fauna that they put a bug in the Franklin House to listen in on Dad’s conversations. Can you call Fauna and find out what this is all about?”
I assured Tamar I would check it out immediately. Contacting Fauna, whom I had not spoken to for ten years, I learned she was working in the San Fernando Valley and had been visited in her place of work by a casual acquaintance, Ethel. In her seventies, Ethel was with her boyfriend whom she introduced as Walter Morgan. Walter shook Fauna’s hand and said, “‘Hodel?’ That’s an unusual name. I once worked a murder case on a Dr. Hodel. Any relation?” Fauna and Walter compared notes, and quickly learned that Morgan’s suspect and Fauna’s grandfather were one and the same.
Two days later, on April 26, I called Walter Morgan and told him my name was Steven Hodel, the uncle of Fauna Hodel, and the son of Dr. George Hill Hodel, who had died in 1999 at the age of ninety-one. I also informed him that I had retired from LAPD after working most of my career as a homicide detective in Hollywood Division.
Morgan greeted me warmly, in that unspoken bond that exists cop to cop, and proceeded to reminisce about the Hodel story.
Morgan, now eighty-seven, said he had worked for the sheriff’s department from 1939 to 1949 on radio car patrol, in vice, burglary, and in other details. Then he left LASD and became a DA investigator in 1949, where he remained until retir
ement in 1970. He worked homicide on temporary assignment for a few months back in 1950. He was sent over to help out Lieutenant Frank Jemison, who he said “had picked me to be his sidekick.”
Walter Morgan remembered well the day they had installed listening devices at the Franklin House, which he authoritatively informed me “was built by Frank Lloyd Wright.” (As we know, the true architect was his son, Lloyd Wright.) Morgan continued:
“We had a good bug man, a guy that could install bugs anywhere and everywhere. He worked in the DA’s crime lab. So the chief assigned me to take him over to the house on Franklin, and he was going to install a bug system at the Hodel residence. My chief at the DA’s office had me take him over there and we met the LAPD at Dr. Hodel’s house. It was during the daytime and nobody was home. I remember there were some ranking LAPD officers outside, and no one could figure out how to get in. I suggested, “Well, have any of you officers tried a card to see if it would open the door?” They laughed, so I pulled out my wallet, and took out some kind of a credit card or whatever card I had, slipped it through, and the front door popped right open! They couldn’t believe it. Anyway, our man went in and installed some bugs there. That was our job, to get the bugs installed so we could listen in.”
Based on Walter Morgan’s confirmations that my father was the Black Dahlia suspect and our Franklin house was bugged and secret tapes obtained, I closed the chapter (written in 2002) by publicly asking the following questions:
BDA page 454:
Standard operating procedure would have been to make transcripts of these conversations, as well as investigative follow-up reports documenting the findings. Where are these transcripts? Where are these reports? What do they say?
A month after publication (May 2003), those questions were answered.
Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley granted me access to the locked and vaulted Hodel-Black Dahlia Files, which had remained unexamined for over fifty-years, and, as they say, “the rest is history.”
In June 2004, the five-decade old surveillance transcripts and investigative reports, along with photographs and copies of the DA files were released to the public by way of a new chapter, the “AFTERMATH,” added to the BDA HarperCollins paperback edition.
