by Hodel, Steve
In this review, I am only going to present one specific and highly unusual aspect of the killer’s M.O.—that being his “promise to kill more victims.” That act combined with the fact that we are dealing with a serial killer is so unique that I believe it qualifies as a part of his actual SIGNATURE.
Let’s examine the below photograph which is a reproduction of the separate notes left by the killer [s] in: Chicago, Los Angeles, Riverside, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Notes
The Los Angeles Dominguez Note, “I killed that Santa Monica girl. I will kill others.” was discovered post-publication to my 2009 sequel, Most Evil and is here presented only as a “reproduction” of what the killer wrote as law enforcement never released a sample of the actual 1947 handwriting. The Chicago, Riverside, and San Francisco notes are all actual copies of the killer’s original handwriting.
Chicago, 1946—(written in lipstick)
“For heavens sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.
“Stop Me Before I Kill More.”
Los Angeles,1947
“I killed that Santa Monica girl. I will kill others.”
Riverside, 1966
“Bates Had To Die. There Will Be More.”
Z
San Francisco, 1969-
…
“I am afraid I will loose control again and take my nineth & possibly tenth victom. Please help me I am drownding.”
In Most Evil, one of my most important signature links was the fact that the killer in Chicago, Riverside and the San Francisco Bay Area was an “urban terrorist,” and left notes in each of those cities, threatening to “KILL MORE.” If this was an accurate assessment then [playing Devil’s Advocate] why had he excluded this important signature in his many LA crimes in the 1940s?
He had threatened the citizenry before and after, so why would he choose to exclude them in his hometown of Los Angeles?
Until now, we had no answer. And the absence of a Los Angeles “urban terrorist threat” weakened my hypothesis. However, with this recent discovery of the Dominguez Note, we now have an answer. Fact is, HE DIDN”T EXCLUDE LA. The threat was always there, it was just overlooked. I didn’t make the connection until discovering the note in my recent review of the facts surrounding the Dominguez Cold Case which read:
“I Killed That Santa Monica Girl. I Will Kill Others.”
The Location
In the below diagram, we see that the Lillian Dominguez murder is just two miles away from another 1947 Lone Woman murder—Mrs. Jeanne French.
According to Head Deputy District Attorney, Steve Kay, the French crime was committed by Dr. George Hill Hodel, and based on the evidence presented, had George Hodel still been alive and the witnesses available, he would have prosecuted the case, as a companion filing to the Elizabeth Short, “Black Dahlia” murder.
Two miles between 1947 Dominguez and French motiveless murders
An Avenger Motive?
In the 1966 Riverside Cheri Jo Bates murder, the victim was a teenager, who had just graduated from high school.
Riverside PD investigated the possibility that her killer was a high school classmate. They followed this lead based on a literal interpretation of a second typed note mailed in by her killer on the six-month anniversary of the Bates crime. [George Hodel mailed in both, a lengthy handwritten and a typed letter in two of his 1940s LA crimes: Georgette Bauerdorf [typed] and Gladys Kern [handwritten].]
In that lengthy Bates typewritten note taunting the police and press, he referred to his next victim and speculated on who it might be:
… “a babysitter, or MAYBE SHE WILL BE THE SHAPELY BLUE-EYED BROWNETT THAT SAID NO WHEN I ASKED HER FOR A DATE IN HIGH SCHOOL…”
San Francisco PD in 1971 connected the Riverside Bates murder to their Northern California, Zodiac crimes.
Six of their seven victims were either teenagers in high-school, or recently graduated. All these victims were parked in “lover’s lane” type locations. This too reinforced the possibility of a serial killer, an avenger, exacting revenge for being rejected in his high-school days by some young “shapely blue-eyed brownett.” [I hypothesize that George Hodel, the “super nerd,” could well have been rejected numerous times by girls both in high-school and in college, since he was one of the few fifteen-year-olds at Cal Tech. He would very likely have been rejected by many college classmates because of his youth.]
The apparent totally unmotivated and cold-bloodedness of the 1947 attack and murder of high school student Lillian Dominguez fits in quite well with what we know about these later crimes against high-schoolers, as well as ZODIAC’s stated need for revenge for being rejected by a teen sweetheart.
Based on the “hit and run” nature of the Dominguez crime and absence of any real physical evidence or witnesses, I doubt that the crime is now solvable.
It would be interesting to see the original note and compare it to George Hodel’s known handwriting. Also, I am curious as to where the Mexican restaurant and the furniture company were located?
But regardless, I do think this crime plays an important role in providing the missing piece to a much larger puzzle, and based on its unique signatures, location, along with what is known about George Hodel’s later crimes, I do believe it should be considered and included as a 1940s Category I, Lone Woman murder.
LONE WOMEN MURDER MAP [revised 2011]
In this updated victim map, I have added both the 1947 Lillian Dominguez murder [9] and the Louise Springer murder [10].
There are now a total of nine Category I victims. All of the crimes occurred within a one-half- to nine-mile distance from the Franklin house.
The black circles are 1940s victims where a letter or note was left or mailed in by the “Avenger.” This is an exceptionally rare signature act and we find that in six of the nine local Los Angeles murders, he taunted police with such a note or letter. [Short, Bauerdorf, Boomhower, Kern, French, and Dominguez]
A serial killer sending taunting notes to the police in the 1940s was so rare that preceding the “Black Dahlia Avenger,” police would have to have gone back in time some six decades to London’s “Jack the Ripper” [1888] to find a similar signature.
The authorship of most of the Avenger notes has been independently identified by a court certified questioned document expert as having been written by Dr. George Hodel. To date, no certified expert has offered an opinion that the handwriting IS NOT GEORGE HODEL’S. [In the past seven-years, two separate television documentaries have claimed that “an expert contradicted my expert.”]
In fact, he did not; he simply stated that in examining the few samples he was provided, he was unable to offer an opinion either way. He told the producers, “His findings were inconclusive. He was unable to rule Dr. Hodel in or out as to having authored the notes.” I will provide further details related to the handwriting evidence in a later chapter.
Elizabeth Short and Gladys Kern letters mailed from same downtown mailbox
Killer uses same downtown mail box to post both his Elizabeth Short (Jan.1947) and Gladys Kern (Feb.1948) handwritten notes to police. The mailbox he used was across the street from the Biltmore Hotel and just 300 yards from Dr. George Hodel’s private medical practice.
1950 DA Files Reveal Investigators Believed Crimes Linked
Documents discovered by me in LADA, Lt. Frank Jemison’s 1950 investigative files, show that his detectives were actively investigating the following Lone Woman murders:
Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French, Jean Spangler, Gladys Kern, Ruth Spaulding [George Hodel’s secretary], and the February18, 1950 “Jane Doe” suspected felony assault and or possible murder heard being committed on-tape in the basement of Dr. Hodel’s Franklin house.
By the Numbers
As I pointed out in my original 2003 investigation, if one takes the position that none of these 1940s crimes were connected, then statistically, at least half of the Lone Woman murders should have been solved. How many were?
NONE.
As is now obvious, the fact is these murders were not committed by eleven different sadistic sexual psychopaths all operating within the same locales and tripping over each other’s bodies. No! The reason none were cleared was because all were committed by the same suspect.
Despite the fact that sixty-years ago, law enforcement did not really think in terms of “serial killings,” LAPD [with a lot of help from the press] still managed to go public with their belief that many or most of these crimes were committed by the same suspect.
With the June 13, 1949 murder of Louise Springer, police once again confirmed, as they had from the very beginning, their suspicions that many if not all of the crimes WERE CONNECTED.
“Police are not overlooking the possibility that a single slayer committed all [nine] of the Los Angeles “Horror Murders.”
Long Beach Press Telegram
June 17, 1949
Long Beach Press Telegram, June 17, 1949
The newspaper article goes on to name the nine victims they suspect are related as:
1. Elizabeth Short
2. Mary Tate
3. Evelyn Winters
4. Jeanne French
5. Rosenda Mondragon
6. Dorothy Montgomery
7. Laura Trelstad
8. Gladys Kern
9. Louise Springer
[All of these names are included in my original investigation; however, some are listed by me as Category II and III.]
Chapter 12
Urban Myth No. 2- “The Missing Week”
On the evening of January 9, 1947, Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, walked out of the Olive Street entrance of the Biltmore Hotel, turned right, and was last seen walking south on the sidewalk. She was never seen again, until her nude, bisected body was found six days later, on January 15, posed on the vacant lot.
One of my biggest investigatory revelations came to me late in the year 2000, when I was just completing my first full year on the case. I had spent four full months chronicling the KNOWN facts and had amassed 150 different witness interviews covering the time period from 1943-1999.
After sorting them by date, time, and location, in looking at the limited time frame of January 9-14, 1947, it became obvious that there never was a missing week. All of the original witness interviews from that time period, which law enforcement had collected independent of each other, supported the same truth—there was NO MISSING WEEK.
Apparently, no one before me, including post-1960s LAPD detectives had taken the time to take a look at this. [Partly understandable on LAPD’s part as it was extremely time-intensive research, which required many months to compile.] But there it was!
Only now in recent years, have I come to understand why modern day authors, theorists, and even LAPD have no desire to underscore the obvious. Why?
In LAPD’s case, it proves that their official public position, which has been in place for decades—is simply not true. If confirmed, it exposes the department to open criticism of being either inept or ignorant and misinformed as to the true facts.
No conspiracy here—the truth is simply that no modern day LAPD detective is familiar with the facts of the case, nor have they been since the 1950s.
In the 1970s, when LAPD Robbery Homicide detectives John St. John [“Jigsaw John”] and his partner Kirk Mellecker were assigned as the official custodians of the case, they were at least honest enough to admit, they “didn’t have the time to fully review the facts of the long cold case due to active case demands.”
By the 1990s, when detective Brian Carr inherited the forty-year-old case, there was no longer even any pretense at familiarity with the facts. Carr was quick to name himself a “gatekeeper” and advised the public in his opinion “the case will never be solved and he would pass it on when he retired.”
By 2007, Detective Carr, confronted with constant questions from the press related to my investigative findings, was forced to give an on-camera interview where he simply stated, “I don’t have time to prove or disprove Hodel’s investigation.” Carr, true to his word, “passed the case on” when he retired from LAPD in May 2009.
LAPD Wanted Information Bulletin contributed to “Missing Week” Myth
At first glance, without reading the information, the official LAPD Wanted Information Bulletin would appear to confirm a missing week between January 9-15, 1947.
However, closer examination proves that it does just the opposite. The bulletin is actually a REQUEST FOR INFORMATION.
It was prepared and circulated just four days after the identification of the body as being that of Elizabeth Short and is exactly what it purports itself to be: a WANTED INFORMATION BULLETIN.
The bulletin was originally printed and distributed to uniform patrol officers and detectives at all roll-calls, and instructed officers to attempt to locate witnesses that may have seen her. I quote verbatim from the Bulletin:
“Make inquiries at local hotels, motels, apartment houses, cocktail bars and lounges, night clubs to ascertain whereabouts of victim between dates mentioned.”
On January 21, just five days into the investigation, LAPD officers did as requested and began distributing the bulletin and asking questions if anyone had seen the victim between the dates of January 9 to 15?
Their actions resulted in twelve (12) verified reliable sightings of the victim. Elizabeth Short was seen on every day of the week from January 9 through January 14. Half of these witnesses PERSONALLY KNEW HER and could not have been mistaken.
Here are THE FACTS.
All of the witnesses listed below made official reports directly to the LAPD. They are fresh accounts from January, 1947.
They were published in the various Los Angeles newspapers in the days and weeks immediately following the discovery of the body. [See BDA Chapter 18, pages 232-238 and page 527 for a detailed narrative of each of these 1947 witnesses statements and where and when they were documented.]
DIAGRAM OF LOCATIONS
Above diagram shows the 4 x 9 mile perimeter between Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, within which boundaries Elizabeth Short was seen on twelve separate occasions during the five days (January10—January 14) prior to the discovery of her body on January15, 1947. Incredibly, six of these tweleve witnesses were personally acquainted with the victim, so their positive identifications are not in question. (Solid black circles signify those witnesses.)
Also included in the diagram are: Dr. George Hodel’s 1947 private residence, the Franklin house at 5121 Franklin Avenue, his privately owned downtown VD clinic at First and Alameda Street, and his private medical practice, at Seventh and Flower Street, just three blocks from the Biltmore Hotel [1].
Sightings of Elizabeth Short by location and day of the week during the five-day period:
Downtown Los Angeles—five independent sightings
1. Thursday, January 9
2. Saturday, January 11
3. Sunday, January 12
4. Sunday, January 12
5. Tuesday, January 14
Though each witness report to the police was individual and separate from the other reports, nevertheless, all separate downtown sightings of Elizabeth Short were within a one-mile radius of each other on four separate days of the week.
Hollywood—six independent sightings
1. Friday, January 10
2. Friday, January 10
3. Friday, January 10
4. Friday, January 10
5. Saturday, January 11
6. Monday, January 13
Though each witness report to the police was individual and separate from the other reports, nevertheless, all Hollywood sightings of Elizabeth Short were within a four-block radius of each other on three separate days of the week.
Beverly Hills—one sighting
1. Saturday, January 11
This sighting was close in time to the four January 10 Hollywood sightings as it occurred just a few hours after midnight. This location is approximately four [4] miles west
of the earlier Hollywood sightings, and was immediately west of the Sunset Strip, just inside the Beverly Hills city limits.
Los Angeles Herald-Express
Feb 7, 1947
LAPD Capt. Jack Donahoe was convinced that the January 11, 1947 witness sighting at the Beverly Hills Hotel gas-station was accurate and kept the “John Doe No. 2” witness’ name confidential. Here is the report from the February 7, 1947, Herald Express article on that sighting:
The “lost week” of the “Black Dahlia” prior to her murder was narrowed by two days today with a report that placed her in the city on Jan 11, four days before her body was found.
A service station attendant who handles the gasoline pumps at the Beverly Hills Hotel “positively” identified the slain beauty, Elizabeth Short, as one of the occupants of a car that drove up for gas between 2:30 and 3 a.m. on that date.
The attendant said the “Dahlia” was accompanied by another woman and a man, and that she seemed “very upset and frightened.” The man driving the car, a 1942 Chrysler coupe, was described as about 30 years old, 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighed about 190 pounds. The other woman was dressed in dark clothing, the attendant said.
Capt. Jack Donahoe ordered an immediate check on the car and its occupants.
…
During her so called, “Missing Week” [it was actually only a five-day period], Elizabeth Short was seen in Hollywood on six separate occasions by six different witnesses. Five of the witnesses KNEW her personally and could not have been mistaken. [The sixth may have also known her, but his name was withheld by police and released publicly only as “John Doe.”] All of these Hollywood contacts were within a four square block area occurring on three separate days of the week. [January10, 11, and 13.]
Chapter 13
Urban Myth No. 3- “Black Dahlia Murder Never Solved”
Since 1947, hundreds of suspects were questioned by LAPD detectives, but the killer of the Black Dahlia was never identified. The case was never solved.
LAPD, LASD, DA Bureau of Investigation officers past and present agree:
“CASE SOLVED”
