The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  Army-Navy Club on Manila Bay. I wore my Navy blues, he wore a white sharkskin suit, and while I was wilting in the tropics, he sat there, cool and collected, not a hair on his head out of place. Father's appearance surpassed the legends and visions I had woven around him in my mind. Though at six foot one he was an inch shorter than me, he seemed to tower over me, physically as well as in his demeanor. He was strikingly handsome and as strong as if he were in his twenties, and he behaved as if he wielded the power of the universe with his fingertips. Immaculately dressed, he immediately conveyed to one and all that he was not only a man of wealth, but a commanding presence. But it was more than that: it was the force behind his words that completely dominated and controlled every situation down to the smallest detail. Whether he was making a major financial decision for his company that would involve millions of pesos, or was simply ordering a glass of iced tea, it was the same.

  Dad's arrogance, I soon came to see, put him at the center of his own universe and demanded his listener's complete attention. Women loved him for that power and presence. Men respected and feared him for it. As for me, I was intimidated but not fearful like the others, whom I watched kowtow to him, no matter how outrageous his demands. My relationship with him was cautious, polite, but not obsequious. In the two years I spent in the Philippines and in my father's presence, I saw how he dismissed most people out of hand with an arrogant "Leave us." But he treated me differently. He and I were strangers, but I was blood, and maybe that made the difference.

  I also got to meet the children from Dad's new life, my young half-brothers and sisters who at that time were about five, six, seven, and eight years old. All four of them were very beautiful and at the sight of the tall American sailor whom Dad introduced as their brother they laughed and giggled, murmuring in both Tagalog and English.

  I also discovered that Dad and his wife, my stepmother,* were living in separate residences. She and the children lived in a large home in a Beverly Hills-type neighborhood in the suburbs of Manila. Dad was living and had his offices at the Admiral Apartments on Manila Bay in an impressive five-room layout that had been General Douglas McArthur's headquarters after his return to the Philippines. If it was good enough for the general it was good enough for the emperor. The operation ran smoothly and efficiently, with the help of an omnipresent "manager" named Diana, a beautiful Chinese woman who appeared to be in her late twenties and spoke as if she had been educated at one of the Seven Sisters schools.

  Throughout my stint at the Navy hospital, Dad remained aloof and private, completely absorbed in his own world. Hortensia, whom I later discovered had originally met my father at a 1948 party at the Franklin House, was ever the gracious hostess, welcoming me into her home as family. During this period, Father spent most of his time building his market research company, traveling throughout Asia and Europe on business, and our brief encounters were perfunctory, emotionally shallow, revealing none of the intimate details about him that I was looking for. Besides having verified through my own personal observation that my father was a successful, wealthy, politically connected, charming, multitalented, charismatic womanizer, who was also an overbearing, arrogant, egotistical control freak, I discovered very little about the inner man. What was truly troubling, however, and most confusing to me, had little to do with his personality, because, whatever his strengths and shortcomings, I could accept them.

  It was his internal blindness that troubled me, his obliviousness to the needs and concerns of anyone around him. He was a psychiatrist, trained to probe the needs of his patients. Yet he was emotionally inaccessible to his family, a fortified castle unto himself, with a moat around his heart.

  As a young man and his son, I respected his power, his authority, and his accomplishments. I took great pride when I was in his presence, glory by association. But when I wasn't with him, away from his world, I could sense his sadness, his solitude, his emotional pain, and knew it was dark and ran very deep. I also believed that he would never speak or share that secret pain with anyone, personally or professionally, and that was the saddest reality of all for me. When I left him a year and a half after my arrival, I was less certain about the man than when I had first arrived.

  As the end of my enlistment was approaching, I was assigned to the Mobile Construction Battalion of Seabees stationed out of Port Hueneme in Ventura, California. I had become my mother's son rather than my father's. Maybe it was the thirsty Irish genes that had played themselves out during her long binges while I was growing up, or maybe I simply learned to drink by example. But drink I did, and lots of it. "Johnnie Walker" became my new best friend.

  Through alcohol, I had come to understand my mother better. It was as if I had met the enemy and she was me. So I joined her. With money in my pockets, I stood the two of us our daily ration of booze: "I'll have a fifth of Johnnie Walker, Black Label, Mom, and here, get yourself a bottle of whatever."

  This was a new twist to the family relationship. With her son drinking, Mother actually became more relaxed and downright temperate for a short period. Now it was I, not Mother, who was out of control and excessive. Older brother Michael didn't drink, just shook his head at me, and kept on reading his beloved books. Michael Hodel would one day become one of the stalwart radio announcers on L.A.'s KPFK-FM, with his own sci-fi program, Hour-25, as well as a science fiction editor and writer. Michael's Enter the Lion: A Posthumous Memoir of Mycroft Holmes is still considered a detective-fiction cult classic among Conan Doyle fans.

  During my thirty-day leave, Mother, in good spirits one afternoon, turned to me and said, "Steven, let's go to a real Hollywood party tonight. I haven't been to one in years. It will be like the old days. I have a friend who called and invited us. It's at her home in the hills. She's an actress and knows a lot of the Hollywood people from the studios. It should be fun."

  I was in a good mood myself that afternoon, and up for some fun, so I needed no convincing. What I found at that home that night was far more than I bargained for. In fact, it would change my life.

  *Hortensia Laguda Hodel Starke in the early 1960s obtained a divorce from Father through papal dispensation, remarried, and in the 1980s would be elected to the Philippine Congress, representing the people of Negros Occidental (in the southern Philippines), where she owned and operated a 450-acre sugar plantation.

  10

  Kiyo

  I have very few memories of what went on at the party in the Hollywood Hills that afternoon, because whoever I met and whatever I saw was erased by the presence of Amilda Kiyoko Tachibana Mclntyre, known to her friends as Kiyo. Kiyo was a beautiful Eurasian. With her round face, onyx eyes, and straight jet-black hair that flowed like a waterfall to just below her tight buttocks, she was irresistible magic to a sailor newly home on leave.

  Kiyo had been a singer and a dancer and had performed in several feature films. She also taught piano and, in the years before the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, was an astrologer to many entertainers and other show-business personalities. She was thirty, sophisticated, smart, eloquent, and she knew from the moment I walked through her front door and our eyes met that I was a goner. We engaged in small talk as she deftly fended off the attentions of other guests. Then, as the afternoon wore on and guests began to leave, we found ourselves touching one another and finding excuses to cross one another's paths in parts of her house where no one else would disturb us. Maybe there were others looking at us, but it seemed as if Kiyo and I had been transported to a world of our own. My mother left the party, but I remained behind, transfixed by Kiyo's beauty and apparent interest in me and determined to find out more about her. She was the most enchanting person I had ever met.

  I stayed with her that night, and through the weekend. I couldn't get enough of her. For the first time in my life I was in love. Sunday morning she served hot tea, fresh fruit, and homemade pastries, and her eyes shone as she spoke. "I did your chart last night," she said as she poured the tea. "You are a Scorpio and Taurus is your
rising sign." I smiled back at her. "No," I answered. "You are my rising sign."

  She laughed. "Yes, well, there's that, too. But seriously, Steven, you have an amazing chart. You will make lots of money in real estate and you will —" She paused as I touched her arm. "Kiyo, I don't know anything about that stuff," I said. "And, to be honest, I don't care about it. All I care about is you and me. I've never known anyone like you, and I love the way I feel when I'm with you." Her voice turned serious. "You must not tell anyone about us, not your mother, not your brothers, no one. Understand?"

  I shook my head. "Why?" I asked, without really wanting to know the truth. "Are you married or something?"

  "No," she said. "It's just that you must promise me you will not say anything to anyone about us. Promise me that. Give me your word of honor." I gave her my word.

  While I agonized over the slow passing of the final months before my military discharge, I also discovered that Kiyo was a very assertive person. She had an in-your-face attitude that had begun to set off my warning bells. But I ignored them, because I told myself that I was in love. Unbeknownst to me, Kiyo had driven up to the Navy base, demanded to see my C.O., told him we were getting married, and asked him if it would be possible for me to get an early discharge in July. She said she wanted me to start college in late August. "You said what to him?" I asked her in disbelief. "Why would you say such a thing?"

  "Oh," she answered. "It's just my Leo way. I have six planets in Leo, so sometimes I get a bit pushy, but it's not really me."

  But it really was. The following weekend, at her insistence, we drove to the nearest state where we could marry without parental consent because I was still a minor: I wouldn't be twenty-one for another four months. I hadn't told my mother about Kiyo, nor had I made any contact with my brothers. I had simply dropped out of sight to be with Kiyo. I ignored my instincts, which kept shouting, "Careful! Wait!" I also ignored my emotions when I found myself eyeing lasciviously the person who was performing our one-witness marriage ceremony — Miss Idaho of 1954. She had gone on from winning her state's beauty pageant to become a justice of the peace in Twin Falls, Idaho. On our drive back we stopped overnight at

  Yosemite National Park and stood out near the edge of the high ridge, embracing each other, looking exactly like newlyweds should.

  An old man watching us, who looked as if he'd been prospecting in the surrounding mountains since the Gold Rush of 1849, said to me, "You be careful, son. In another two years, she'll be pushing you off the edge of that cliff." Kiyo and I turned around as he walked silently away. I looked at her and teased, "Nice guy. He must be a pushy Leo."

  Had I been even a little knowledgeable about astrological combinations I would have known that Scorpios and Leos don't make for an easy relationship. Kiyo was fire and I was water, and the ensuing three years of our marriage generated a lot of steam as each of us tried to force the other to adjust. Kiyo knew a lot of Hollywood people and some of them, like Jane Russell, attended her astrology classes, respected her knowledge, and were genuinely interested in what she was teaching. And Kiyo's relationships with her clients got us on the guest list of lots of Hollywood personalities, particularly with Jane Russell and her husband, Bob Waterfield, the great former quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams.

  I was slightly disconcerted that most of Kiyo's friends seemed much older than she. And, of course, since I was ten years younger than Kiyo, I felt awkward and uncomfortable with many of them. They would invariably remark, "Steven, you look so young. How old are you?" They always seemed surprised at my answer, "I am young; I'm twenty-one." I began to feel that talking about age around Kiyo and her friends was taboo.

  One Sunday morning, about three months after we had married, Kiyo threw the classified section of the Los Angeles Times at me and said, "Look, the Los Angeles Police Department is hiring. The starting salary is a hundred dollars a month, more than you're making now." I read the ad out loud:

  LAPD WANTS YOU!

  Are you one of the four in a hundred applicants that will make it through the process to our police academy training? Would you like an exciting and rewarding career in law enforcement and retire in twenty years? Apply at City Hall now!

  I was working at the time as an orderly at Kaiser Hospital in Hollywood, emptying bedpans, moving patients, making sure that whatever slop came out of a patient was cleaned up before the next patient was brought in. It was a job I hated, certainly not my idea of an "exciting and rewarding" career. I looked back at Kiyo, who had been staring at me in silence, and asked, "What does a policeman do? Write tickets? Direct traffic?" A cop? I knew nothing about it, and cared less. Maybe I could be a detective, I thought, just like Joe Friday on Dragnet. After another week of Kiyo's prodding and her wily offhand comments of, "I think guys in uniform are very sexy," and her prompting, "We could sure use the extra money," I'd had enough. I applied at city hall for both LAPD and the sheriff's department.

  Two weeks after I had passed both entrance exams and had been rejected by the sheriff's department at the in-person interview for being too young, I was called in for my oral at LAPD. That went better. I fit their job description as if I'd come right out of central casting. I was a young, trim, tall WASP who racked up strong written scores on the exam, was married, and had four years of military training. At that time, the department was trying to rid itself of the old image of the fat sloppy cop stealing an apple. They were looking for young, idealistic men that they could mold into professionals. I was what my interviewers said was the "new breed."

  I took the psych test, convincing the department psychological evaluator that, even though my father was a psychiatrist, I wasn't neurotic, or worse. Then I underwent the background check in which the department's investigators checked out every movement I had made on this planet from birth, including personal interviews with out-of-state Navy buddies and neighbors from old addresses ten years back. The only smudge on my background check was a drunken brawl I had been involved in while on Guam, where I punched out a fellow sailor in a bar and got arrested by the MPs. Actually, I think the investigators liked that tidbit: it gave me just enough macho credibility.

  But when a few months passed following my original application and exams without any word from the department, I began to get worried. I believed I had made good impressions in person, on paper, and in the difficult physical agility tests. And during the process I had evolved from an emotionally blase, take-it-or-leave-it attitude to a strong feeling that I really wanted this job. Finally, on a Friday afternoon in mid-January 1963,1 received a phone call from a secretary in LAPD's personnel division, informing me that I was scheduled to report to their office the following Monday, January 14, at 9:00 a.m., to meet with the captain.

  I was a half-hour early and very nervous as I sat on the long bench outside of room 311 at the police administration building. I knew from other applicants that the civil service standard operating procedure for acceptance or rejection to the police academy was by mail. Why then was I being called in personally to speak with the captain? At which point a heavyset man in his fifties walked down the hall, stood in front of the locked door, turned to look down at me, frowned, and asked, "Hodel?" I stood up, answering, "Yes, sir." He put his key in the lock and turned it decisively. "I'm Captain San-sing," he said over the loud clack of the deadbolt snapping back into the door lock. "You're early — come on in, we might as well get this over with before the others arrive."

  I knew from his tone and the way he said "over with" that I was finished, hadn't made it. But why? What had I done? The burly captain opened the door, and I followed him to the rear, where we entered his private office. He shut the door behind me.

  I stood at full attention in front of his desk, glancing at the silver nameplate, "Captain Earle Sansing, Commander, Personnel Division." He sat down in the large leather chair and said, "I'm not going to mince words, son. I am not going to certify you for acceptance to the police academy. You have no business being a police offic
er. I know all about your family and your father. It would be a waste of the taxpayers' money to let you go to the academy. It would be a total waste of their time, your time, and my time. I am going to reject your certification."

  Standing there in disbelief and intimidated by this man who held the final word, I responded with a mixture of controlled anger and passion. I spoke with real emotion, and before I realized it, I was making a formal plea.

  "Captain, sir," I began. "I have spent the last five months preparing for this moment. During that time I have tried to focus my heart and my mind toward one purpose, one goal, making it to the academy. I have finally done that. I have proven myself to be of fit character, mentally, physically, and morally. I don't know what you mean about knowing my father. I can only assume you are referring to his trial back in 1949. I know nothing of it other than he was found innocent of some charges that my half-sister Tamar made against him. He left us right after the trial, and my mother never spoke about it. I do know that I am not my father. I am myself. I also know that it is I, not my father, who wants to become a policeman. It is I, not my father, who has worked and sweated and struggled through each separate test toward this opportunity. Please, sir, do not take away this chance from me now. Let me prove myself in the academy. All I am asking from you is the chance for me to prove myself."

  The veteran captain never took his eyes off of me, studying every inch of me, as if he were looking at an X-ray, sizing me up as if he were doing long division in his head. I also got the impression that he was trying to use his street smarts and intuition, which any experienced cop develops over the years on the job. It's what enables him to trust his gut feelings and not second-guess himself when he has to make a shoot/no shoot decision. Captain Sansing was taking a mental photograph of me that morning, looking for something in me that he could compute and confirm a decision he was trying to reach. A full minute passed, but it seemed like an eternal silence. Then he blinked, and I thought I saw his hardness change to a twinkle.