The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story
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In 1947 the brutal, sadistic murder of a beautiful young woman led to the largest manhunt in L.A. history. The killer teased and taunted the police and public, but his identity remained a mystery. Until now . . .
On January 15, 1947, at about 10:30 A.M., in Los Angeles, California, a woman's body was discovered in a vacant lot at 39th and Norton. Not only had the murderer bisected her but he had horribly mutilated her body, then carefully posed her as if to leave a provocative message. When LAPD detectives arrived on the scene a few minutes later, even the most hardened among them were shocked and sickened.
That crime, which until now has never been solved, became known to history as the Black Dahlia murder. It made front-page headlines coast-to-coast for weeks, as the LAPD sought vainly to track down the killer. The murdered girl, it turned out, was lovely twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Short. From Massachusetts, she had come west, like so many women before her, in search of fame and fortune in the film capital of the world. Shortly after her murder, the L.A. papers began receiving notes from a person who called himself the Black Dahlia Avenger. For weeks the killer tormented police, clearly reveling in his notoriety and ability to avoid detection, much as his English counterpart Jack the Ripper had done in London sixty years before. At one point he offered to turn himself in, then reneged and said he was leaving town. "Catch me if you can," he challenged.
When the LAPD failed to solve the crime, the case was passed down from year to year to crack homicide detectives, but none could ever bring the killer to justice. In 1949, the Los Angeles grand jury—convened by the district attorney in the wake of public outcry against the failure of the LAPD to solve not only this crime but a dozen other murders of lone women in Los Angeles over the succeeding two years—conducted their own investigation and subpoenaed LAPD detectives and the chief of police to testify. As a result, a "prime suspect" was identified and named in secret, but for some unexplained reason he was never indicted or brought to justice. Hints of LAPD corruption were rife during that era, and some very high-ranking police department heads rolled, as politicians vied to capitalize on the situation to their advantage.
04032745 (continued on back flap)
BLACK
DAHLIA
AVENGER
BLACK
DAHLIA
AVENGER
A Genius for Murder
STEVE HODEL
ARCADE PUBLISHING • NEW YORK
Copyright © 2003 by Steve Hodel
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN: 1-55970-664-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2003101031
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication information is available.
Published in the United States of America by Arcade Publishing, Inc.,
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For the victims, living and dead
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of Truth and Love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Contents
Introduction
1 The Biltmore
2 Jane Doe Number 1
3 A Death in the Family
4 A Voice from Beyond the Grave
5 Dr. George Hill Hodel Jr., 1907-1999
6 George and Dorero
7 The Hollywood Scandal
8 Gypsies
9 SubicBay
10 Kiyo
11 The Dahlia Witnesses
12 The LAPD and the Press:
The Joint Investigation
13 The LAPD and the Press:
The Avenger Mailings
14 The "Red Lipstick" Murder
15 Tamar, Joe Barrett, and Duncan Hodel
16 Fred Sexton: "Suspect Number 2"
17 LAPD Secrets and the Marquis de Sade
18 Elizabeth Short's "Missing Week"
19 The Final Connections:
Man Ray Thoughtprints
20 The Franklin House Revisited
21 The Watch, the Proof-Sheet Papers,
the FBI Files, and the Voice
22 Handwriting Analysis
23 More 1940s L.A. Murdered Women Cases
24 The Boomhower-Spangler Kidnap-Murders
25 Sergeant Stoker, LAPD's Gangster Squad,
and the Abortion Ring
26 George Hodel: Underworld Roots— The "Hinkies"
27 Dahliagate: The Double Cover-up
28 The Grand Jury
29 The Dahlia Myths
30 The Dahlia Investigation, 2001-2002
31 Forgotten Victims, 1940s: The Probables
32 Forgotten Victims, 1950s: The Probables
33 George Hodel-Elizabeth Short:
Reconstructed Timeline
34 Filing My Case with the District
Attorney's Office
The Final Thoughtprint
Epilogue
Author's Postscript
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Illustration Acknowledgments
The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance he has received from the UCLA Special Collections Department, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Man Ray Trust, and Artists Rights Society.
UCLA Special Collections files:
All UCLA images courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA
Photograph of Grant Terry/Roger Gardner, page 298
Photograph of Jeanette Walser, page 299
Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society:
All Man Ray images copyright © 2003 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris
Man Ray, Portrait of Dorothy Hodel, 1944 page 38
Man Ray, George Model, 1946 page 79
Man Ray, Self-Portrait, page 88
Man Ray, The Minotaur,; page 241
Man Ray, Les Atnoureux, pages 241 and 244
Man Ray, Juliet, page 242
Man Ray, The Riddle, or The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse, page 251
Man Ray, George Hodel and Yamantaka, pages 253 and 265
Man Ray, Dorothy Hodel, Hollywood, 1944, page 299
Los Angeles Public Library:
All LAPL images courtesy of the Herald Examiner Collection / Los Angeles Public Library
Photograph of "Beth Short" telegram, page 156
Photograph of envelope mailed to District Attorney, page 170
Photograph of note sent to Herald Express, page 171
Photograph of note sent to Herald Express, page 175
Photograph of note sent to Herald Express, page 177
Photographs of post cards sent to Herald Express, page 178
Photograph of Armand Robles, page 179
Photographs of notes sent to Herald Express, page 180
Photograph of note sent to Herald Express, page 181
Photograph of envelope addressed to Herald Express, page 285
Photograph of LAPD Chiefs Thad Brown and William Parker, page 365
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders, bu
t if any have been inadvertantly overlooked, the author would be happy to hear from them.
BLACK
DAHLIA
AVENGER
Introduction
For almost twenty-four years, from 1963 to 1986, I was a police officer, and later a detective-supervisor, with the Los Angeles Police Department, a period generally considered to be LAPD's "golden years." I was one of Chief William H. Parker's "new breed," part of his "thin blue line."
My first years were in uniformed patrol. My initial assignment was to West Los Angeles Division, where as a young and aggressive rookie, I was, as Chief Parker had demanded of all his men, "proactive," excelling in making felony arrests by stopping "anything that moved" on the early-morning streets and alleys of Los Angeles. Over the next five years, as a street cop, I worked in three divisions: Wilshire, Van Nuys, and finally Hollywood.
In 1969,1 applied for and was accepted into the detective bureau at Hollywood. I was assigned to and worked all of the "tables": Juvenile, Auto Theft, Sex Crimes, Crimes against Persons, Burglary, and Robbery.
My ratings within the detective bureau remained "upper ten," and as the years flew by I was assigned to the more difficult and complex investigations, in charge of coordinating the various task force operations, which in some instances required the supervision and coordination of as many as seventy-five to one hundred field officers and plainclothes detectives in an effort to capture a particularly clever (or lucky) serial rapist or residential cat burglar working the Hollywood Hills.
Finally, I was selected to work what most detectives consider to be the elite table: Homicide. I did well on written exams and with my top ratings made detective I on the first exam ever given by LAPD in 1970. Several years later I was promoted to detective II, and finally, in 1983,1 competed for and was promoted to detective III.
During my career I conducted thousands of criminal investigations and was personally assigned to over three hundred separate murders. My career solve rate on those homicides was exceptionally high. I was privileged to work with some of the best patrol officers and detectives that LAPD has ever known. We believed in the department and we believed in ourselves. "To Protect and to Serve" was not just a motto, it was our credo. We were Jack Webb's "Sergeant Joe Friday" and Joseph Wambaugh's "New Centurions" rolled into one. The blood that pumped through our veins was blue, and in those decades, those "golden years," we believed in our heart of hearts that LAPD was what the nation and the world thought it to be: "proud, professional, incorruptible, and without question the finest police department in the world."
I was a real-life hero, born out of the imagination of Hollywood. When I stepped out of my black-and-white, in uniform with gun drawn, as I cautiously approached the front of a bank on a robbery-in-progress call, the citizens saw me exactly as they knew me from television: tall, trim, and handsome, with spit-shined shoes and a gleaming badge over my left breast. There was no difference between me and my actor-cop counterpart on Jack Webb's Dragnet or Adam-12. What they saw and what they believed — and what I believed in those early years — were one and the same. Fact and fiction morphed into "faction." Neither I nor the citizenry could distinguish one from the other.
When I retired in July of 1986, then chief of police Daryl Gates noted in his letter to me of September 4:
Over twenty-three years with the Department is no small investment, Steve. However, twenty-three years of superb, loyal and diligent service is priceless. Please know that you have my personal thanks for all that you have done over the years and for the many important investigations you directed. As I am reminded daily, the fine reputation that this Department enjoys throughout the world is based totally on the cumulative accomplishments of individuals like you.
During my years with LAPD, many high-profile crimes became legendary investigations within the department, and ultimately household names across the nation. Many of the men I worked with as partners, and some I trained as new detectives, went on to become part of world-renowned cases: the Tate-La Bianca-Manson Family murders; the Robert Kennedy assassination; the Hillside Stranglers; the Skid Row Slasher; the Night Stalker; and, in recent years, perhaps the most high-profile case of all, the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
Before these "modern" crimes, there were other Los Angeles murders that in their day were equally publicized. Many of them were Hollywood crimes connected with scandals involving early film studios, cases such as the Fatty Arbuclkle death investigation, the William Desmond Taylor murder, the Winnie Judd trunk murder, the Bugsy Siegel murder, and the "Red Light Bandit," Caryl Chessman. But in those dust-covered crime annals and page-worn homicide books of the past, one crime stands out above all others. Los Angeles's most notorious unsolved murder occurred well over half a century ago, in January 1947. The case was, and remains known as, the Black Dahlia.
As a rookie cop in the police academy, I had heard of this famous case. Later, as a fledgling detective, I learned that some of LAPD's top cops had worked on it, including legendary detective Harry Hansen. After he retired, all the "big boys" at downtown Robbery-Homicide took over. Famed LAPD detectives such as Danny Galindo, Pierce Brooks, and old Badge Number 1, John "Jigsaw" St. John, took their "at-bats," all to no avail. The Black Dahlia murder remained stubbornly unsolved.
Like most other detectives, I knew little about the facts of the case, already sixteen years cold when I joined the force. Unlike many other "unsolveds," where rumors flowed like rivers, the Black Dahlia always seemed surrounded by an aura of mystery, even for us on the inside. For some reason, whatever leads there may have been remained tightly locked and secure within the files. No leaks existed. Nothing was ever discussed.
In 1975, a made-for-television movie, entitled Who Is the Black Dahlia? and starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Sergeant Harry Hansen and Lucie Arnaz as the "Dahlia," was aired. It told the tragic story of a beautiful young woman who came to Hollywood during World War II to find fame and fortune. In 1947 she was abducted and murdered by a madman, her nude body cut in half and dumped in a vacant lot in a residential section, where a horrified neighbor discovered her and called the police. A statewide dragnet ensued, but her killer was never caught. This was all I and my fellow detectives knew about the crime. Fragments of a cold case, fictionalized in a TV movie.
On several occasions during my long tour of duty at Hollywood Homicide, I would answer the phone and someone would say, "I have information on a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder case." Most of the callers were psychos, living in the past and caught up in the sensationalism of decades gone by. I would patiently refer them downtown to the Robbery-Homicide detail and advise them to report their information to the detective currently assigned to the case.
Despite the near-legendary status of the Black Dahlia, neither I nor any detective I knew ever spent much time discussing the case. It had not occurred on our watch. It belonged to the past; we belonged to the present and the future.
Law enforcement has learned a lot since the 1960s, when the first serious attempts were made to identify the phenomena known as serial killers. Earlier, with the exception of a few forward-thinking investigators scattered throughout the country, most cases were characterized in the files of their local police departments as separate, unrelated homicides, especially if they happened to cross jurisdictional and territorial boundaries between city and county. For example, a murder on the north side of famed Sunset Boulevard would be handled by LAPD, but if the body had fallen ten feet to the south it would become the responsibility of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. As recently as the 1980s, these two departments rarely if ever shared information, modus operandi, or even notes on their unsolved homicides.
Today, experts in the fields of criminology and psychology are light-years ahead of their counterparts of even a decade ago in dealing with serial killers. Law enforcement officials have become much more aware and effective in their ability to connect serial crimes. Advances in education, training, communication, and technology, particular
ly in forensics and computerization, have made today's criminal investigator much more aware of crime-scene potentials. He has "gone to school" on the Ted Bundys, Jeffrey Dahmers, and Kenneth Bianchis of the world. Through their independent analysis, joint studies and pooling of data, through interviews and observations, recognized experts in this highly specialized field have fine-tuned what we thought we knew, and have expanded on the old ideas.