Black Dahlia Avenger II: Presenting the Follow-Up Investigation and Further Evidence Linking Dr. George Hill Hodel to Los Angeles’s Black Dahlia and other 1940s LONE WOMAN MURDERS

by Hodel, Steve

  Next, we are presented with what many consider the film’s signature moment, a surreal “dream sequence” designed and choreographed by Salvador Dali.

  Dali’s images unfold before us on-screen as Peck describes in detail the sum and substance of his dream to the professor and Constance:

  I seemed to be in a gambling house, but there weren’t any walls, just a lot of curtains with eyes painted on them. A man was walking around with a large pair of scissors cutting all the drapes in half. Then a girl came in with hardly anything on and started walking around the gambling room kissing everybody. She came to my table first. I’m afraid she looked a little like Constance.

  I was sitting there playing cards with a man who had a beard. I was dealing to him. I dealt him a 7 of clubs. He said, ‘That makes 21 - I win.’ When he turned up his cards, they were blank. Just then the proprietor came in and accused him of cheating. The proprietor yelled, ‘This is my place, and if I catch you cheating again, I’ll fix you.

  There’s a lot more to it. Then I saw the man. He was the man with the beard leaning over the slope of a high building. I yelled at him to watch out. Then he went over—slowly—with his feet in the air. And then I saw the proprietor again—the man in the mask. He was hiding behind a tall chimney, and he had a small wheel in his hand.

  I saw him drop the wheel on the roof. Suddenly I was running and then I heard something beating over my head. It was a great pair of wings. The wings chased me and almost caught up with me and I came to the bottom of the hill.

  Spellbound dream sequence clip “curtains with eyes”

  “Man with large pair of scissors cutting the drapes”

  Spellbound dream sequence clip “the man in the mask holding a small wheel”

  Spellbound was one of my father’s favorite films, and it is easy to understand why.

  Not only was Dr. George Hill Hodel captivated by all things Dali and surreal, but add to the mix the fact that he himself was just beginning to flirt with hypnosis and dream analysis and would, within six-years, relocate to Hawaii, where he would hang out his own shingle as a Freudian psychiatrist and begin counseling to the territorial prison population’s criminally insane. Psychopath to the psychopaths—perfect!

  It is my conviction that the dream sequence in Spellbound made such a powerful impression on my father that he could not resist including a reference to it and an homage to Dali as he had done with Man Ray.

  I am now persuaded that DALI, like MAN RAY, was also recognized with a wink and a nod in my father’s Black Dahlia murder, which was committed just one year after the film’s release.

  Consider the following:

  Man Ray’s Juliet in Stocking Mask was created in Hollywood in 1945, at the same time they were filming Spellbound.

  We have examined in-depth the homage paid to Man Ray by George Hodel in imitation of his two works: The Lovers Lips and the Minotaure, as well as the many other surrealist links.

  There can be little doubt that Dali met with Man Ray at his Vine Street apartment when he visited Hollywood in 1945. Though by then, Man Ray had lived in Hollywood for five years, the two had previously been long acquainted as fellow surrealists in Paris. That these two masks by the two surrealists were created within months of each other, I believe, is not coincidence.

  I linked the Juliet Stocking Mask to Man Ray in my previous investigation, and now believe that it was a co-homage to Dali and the “masked man” in his dream-sequence.

  Dali Spellbound mask 1945 - Man Ray Juliet mask 1945-Black Dahlia Avenger mask 1947

  Ben Hecht-

  “I know the name of the killer and the psychology of his deed.”

  There is only one form of hatred that can equal in violence the symbolizing rage of the lunatic—and what that hatred is I will leave unsaid.”

  Ben Hecht

  Los Angeles Herald-Express

  Sat, Feb 1, 1947

  By 1945, Ben Hecht had become Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriter.

  He was hired by Hitchcock to write the screenplay for Spellbound, and Dali was to work with Hecht in incorporating the surreal dream sequence into the film.

  George Hodel admired Hecht’s writing and as a young editor/publisher of his own surreal magazine, Fantasia, had written a review in 1925 of one of Hecht’s early books, The Kingdom of Evil. Here’s an excerpt from Hodel’s review:

  …Macabre forms, more dank and putrescently phantasmal than any of Hecht’s former imagining, grope blindly and crazedly in the poisonous fog out of which loom the rotting fancies that people his ‘Kingdom of Evil.’”…

  With almost animate pigments has Hecht painted this monstrous dream of Mallare’s, and with delicate and meticulous craftsmanship has he fashioned its cadaverous and perverse beauty.

  George Hill Hodel

  Fantasia Magazine, August 1925

  A short time later, the reference from his fellow Bohemians of George Hodel’s admiration for Hecht’s writings, was published in the Evening Herald article, “The Clouded Past of a Poet”:

  “It’s not George’s gloom, his preference for Huysmanns, De Gourmont, Poe, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Hecht [emphasis mine] that pains us…”

  Prior to writing Spellbound, Ben Hecht had worked with Dorothy Huston Hodel’s ex-husband, John Huston, as screenwriter to the director/writer on both Wuthering Heights and Maltese Falcon. He also worked as a writer with Dorothy’s then lover, director/writer Rowland Brown on two of his films, Quick Millions and Angels with Dirty Faces.

  There can be little doubt that Hecht not only personally knew George Hodel and very likely frequented and socialized with the same “inner circle” of Hollywood A-list writers, including Huston, Brown, Steve Fisher, Gene Fowler, and others, but that it was George Hodel that he was referring to when, two weeks after the Black Dahlia murder, he wrote in the Herald-Express that:

  “I know the name of the killer and the psychology of his deed.”

  Hecht, like his friend and fellow screenwriter, Steve Fisher, knew that the police had the killer’s name and was sure they would soon be making an arrest that would surprise and shock all of Los Angeles. Or, as Fisher put it in his separate article for the Evening Herald Express, “a lot of people who know him, and do not now suspect he has anything to do with the case, are going to be surprised and terrified.”

  I believe there is more. The likelihood of a second possible link to both George Hodel and his homage to Spellbound, is another murder and another mailing that would come—two decades later!

  In my sequel, Most Evil, Avenger, Zodiac and the Further Murders of Dr. George Hill Hodel, published in 2009, I present what I believe to be compelling evidence linking my father to additional crimes.

  Crimes committed in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Manila, Philippines, as well as the possibility that two decades after terrorizing Los Angeles as the “Avenger,” he reinvented himself in the San Francisco Bay area and gave himself the name “Zodiac”!

  I believe I have made a strong circumstantial case supporting these further series of crimes and will let the evidence speak for itself as presented in that separate investigation.

  Unlike, BDA, I am not going as far as to claim I have proven he was the killer in those crimes, but suggest that he needs to go to the top of the list of suspects and law enforcement needs to pursue and obtain confirmed Zodiac DNA and then rule George Hodel IN or OUT.

  In Most Evil, I offered evidence that the suspect continued his “Avenger” theme of murder as a fine art, not only in the method of his killings but also in his mailings wherein he made references to music, art, literature, and more on point—to specific vintage motion pictures.

  I argued that Zodiac was a cinephile who stole both characters and actions from several classic films, plagiarizing and incorporating them into his Zodiac crime signature and M.O.

  In Most Evil, I named two films: The Most Dangerous Game [1932] and Charlie Chan at Treasure Island [1939], and went on in separate chapters to detail the evidence and l
inkage to each movie.

  Based on what has been presented in this chapter, I am going to offer the possibility that my father, if he was Zodiac, appears to have hidden a clue to a third classic film in his San Francisco taunts to the press. That being his old favorite—Spellbound.

  Below is a copy of the Halloween taunt card that Zodiac sent to crime-reporter, Paul Avery at the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper in 1970.

  On the front, the card refers to Zodiac as being reporter Avery’s “Secret Pal” and promises to offer a clue to his identity. On the back, Zodiac has hand printed the different methods he has or will kill his victims, writing:

  “By Fire, By Gun, By Knife, By Rope”

  and that they will become his,

  “Slaves in Paradice”

  Law enforcement, noting the strange way Zodiac wrote the message, theorized that the “clue” he was sending may be the fact that the letters, as written, formed the letter “H” which they suggested could be a monogram clue to the killer’s name.

  Front and back of Zodiac’s 1970 Halloween card sent to San Francisco Chronicle

  Letter “H”?

  But it is the inside of this Halloween card that is on point in our current examination.

  Interior of 1970 Halloween Card

  In addition to writing his signatory circle and cross, Zodiac included a strange symbol at the bottom of the card, as well as drawing a set of thirteen eyes with a threatening message to the Chronicle reporter Avery, reading, “peek-a-boo, you are doomed!”

  Keeping in mind that George Hodel had a perfect photographic memory, compare Dali’s hand drawn eyes from the dream sequence in Spellbound to the eyes drawn by Zodiac.

  1970 Zodiac Halloween card mailed to San Francisco Chronicle

  Dali eyes [top] compared to Zodiac’s hand drawn eyes [bottom] enlarged—another enigmatic clue?

  George Hodel as the 1947 “Avenger” very likely paid homage to both Man Ray and Dali in his 1947 mailings to the press. Did he repeat his “M.O.” two decades later as Zodiac?

  Chapter 22

  TOUCH DNA

  “The family of JonBenet Ramsey has been formally cleared of any role in the 6-year-old’s 1996 murder, a Colorado prosecutor announced Wednesday, citing newly discovered DNA evidence.”

  USA Today

  April 16, 2009

  The 2009 USA Today article went on to state:

  Boulder, Colorado—District Attorney Mary Lacy said in a statement on Wednesday that DNA evidence recovered from the child’s clothing [pajamas] pointed to an “unexplained third party.” Lacy apologized to the family for the suspicions that made their lives “an ongoing living hell.”

  … The new evidence, described as “irrefutable” in clearing the Ramseys, would be checked against other profiles in the national DNA database managed by the FBI.

  The new physical evidence was obtained by technicians from Bode Technology, in Lorton, Virginia. Bode is considered to be one of the top forensic laboratories in the United States and is frequently the lab of choice used by the FBI, and law enforcement agencies across the nation.

  The relatively new procedure used by Bode Labs in extracting the suspect’s DNA in the Ramsey investigation is called, “Touch DNA.”

  Touch DNA is the collection of skin cells which have been transferred from an individual’s skin to the surface of items it has come in contact with, such as the grip of a gun, luggage, a car’s steering wheel, a victim’s clothing, or a ligature used in the commission of a crime.

  The collection of the skin cells can be accomplished in various methods, such as swabbing, cutting, tape-lift, and scraping.

  In the past several years, this method of collecting evidence has resulted in a number of successful murder prosecutions, as well as aiding in establishing the actual innocence of a number of wrongfully convicted individuals.

  A Search for George Hill Hodel’s DNA

  In April 2009, I contacted Bode Laboratories. And after exchanging telephone calls, letters, and e-mails with Dr. Angela Williamson, Director of Forensic Casework, we decided on what we hoped would be the best course of action to attempt to isolate and obtain my father’s DNA.

  I carefully packaged and forwarded to the Virginia based lab a number of my father’s personal effects, some of which had been in my possession for over forty-years. They included a pair of his Bally dress shoes, size 10e, as well as four separate letters written by him over the past decades—all of which contained stamps and envelopes which could potentially yield his DNA.

  By July 2010, over a year had elapsed, and three of the four items, including the shoes, had proved negative for paternal DNA.

  We were down to the last item, a letter my father had mailed to me in 1971 from Manila, Philippines.

  BINGO!

  Success came on this very last evidentiary item—the envelope contained his full genetic DNA profile!

  George Hill Hodel Letter mailed from Manila in 1971

  George Hill Hodel’s DNA profile remains in my possession and upon request will be made available to any legitimate law enforcement agency in furtherance of their cold case investigations.

  George Hodel 1949 Booking DNA full profile now available

  For those who have not read my sequel to BDA, Most Evil: Avenger, Zodiac, and the Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hill Hodel, I will here provide only the briefest of summaries.

  I will do this so that you may understand that the discussion that follows related to potentially connecting George Hodel’s newly obtained DNA to other crimes in other cities is not simply arbitrary, but rather is based on compelling circumstantial evidence as provided in that book.

  Los Angeles DA Files—Elizabeth Short—The Chicago Lipstick Murders

  In my further review of the Los Angeles DA files, I discovered documents which showed that in July 1946, while my father was stationed with UNRRA in China, Elizabeth Short traveled to Chicago, Illinois and began her own personal investigation into three exceptionally high-profile crimes known as Chicago’s “Lipstick Murders.”

  The three crime victims, Josephine Ross, Frances Brown, and Suzanne Degnan had been national headlines in 1945 and 1946.

  The third Lipstick victim, gained the most notoriety as it involved the horrific kidnap-strangulation murder and surgical bisection of a six-year-old girl, little Suzanne Degnan. Her sadist killer, after kidnapping the sleeping child from her bedroom, carried her to a basement just a few blocks from her home, where, after strangling her, performed a highly skilled surgical operation known as a “hemicorpectomy” and divided the body by cutting through the second and third lumbar vertebrae. [The exact same operation performed on Elizabeth Short one-year later.] The suspect then carried the body parts to six separate catch basins in and near that north-side neighborhood, and then wrote a message in lipstick on a post in front of the “murder room” which read:

  “Stop Me Before I Kill More.”

  Chicago’s 1945 Frances Brown Lipstick Murder

  Written on apartment wall in lipstick less than one month prior to the Degnan murder:

  “For heaven’s sake catch me Before I Kill more. I cannot control myself”

  The DA files document that Elizabeth Short spent three weeks in Chicago and slept with four separate Chicago newspaper reporters, apparently, attempting to gain some “inside information” on the three separate Lipstick Murder investigations. She also informed the newsmen that “she knew a Chicago detective that was working the Degnan case.”

  The DA files also contained information indicating that the Dahlia suspect could possibly have been an “Unknown Chicago Police Officer.” Why?

  The information was based on the fact that Elizabeth Short attended the Jack Carson radio show at the CBS studio in Hollywood in early January 1947, just days prior to her being slain.

  The chief usher, Jack Egger, identified her as standing in line with an older “dapper male in his 30s” who identified himself to Egger as a “Chicago Police Officer,” showing
Egger a police badge. Egger allowed both Short and the man to jump the line and enter the studio for the show. Egger was familiar with Short as she regularly attended the shows, but this was the first time he ever recalled her being accompanied by a male.

  Jack Egger went on to become a DA investigator, then joined the Beverly Hills Police Department, and rose to command that department’s Detective Bureau. After retirement, he became chief of security for Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank.

  As detailed in my sequel, I discovered that Jack was still employed with Warner Brother’s studio as their chief investigator, and I met with him in 2004.

  After reviewing and verifying the facts as detailed by him in his original 1950 DA interview, I then showed Chief Egger a photograph of Dr. George Hill Hodel, circa 1950, which he positively identified as the person he saw with Elizabeth Short at the CBS studio and the same individual who had shown him a Chicago Police Officer’s badge.

  I am also in possession of original Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department investigative reports that show that LASD, in 1946, was actively investigating the possibility that their 1944 Hollywood Lone Woman Murder of oil-heiress Georgette Bauerdorf may have been connected to the later 1945 Chicago Lipstick Murders. Those reports indicate that LASD requested prints and additional information to ascertain if the crimes were linked.

  Photo identification by Warner Brother’s Studio, Chief Jack Egger

  What’s in a Name?—Another Black Dahlia Avenger Taunt

  In an earlier chapter, I described how I “reenacted” by driving myself on what I believed was my father’s probable original route from the Franklin house to the vacant lot on South Norton Avenue.

  On arrival, I spent only four minutes at the vacant lot, just as the original witness had described it when he saw the black sedan pull up and stop on January 15, 1947.

  I then resumed my drive home; again taking what I believed was my father’s probable route. Driving north, I stopped halfway between the lot and the Franklin house and simulated placing Elizabeth Short’s purse and shoes on top of a restaurant trash can in the 1100 block of South Crenshaw Boulevard—just where the witness had described seeing them. And then I went back home to Franklin and Normandie.