The Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  In the mid-to late 1960s, Sexton returns and establishes a permanent residence in Mexico and, at age sixty-two, marries a teenager who, like June, will remain his wife for the next thirty years. Sexton dies in Mexico in 1996, his death preceding that of his lifelong friend and accomplice George Hodel by just four years.

  34

  Filing My Case with the District

  Attorney's Office

  AT THE TIME I CONCLUDED MY INVESTIGATION, I had no idea whether the district attorney's office had any files from its presentation to the 1949 grand jury. Still, I needed to know whether the material I'd assembled would persuade the district attorney that there was a prosecutable case here. I therefore submitted the results of my investigation to a former colleague, someone I'd worked with and respected during my years as a homicide detective. I presented the material as I would have brought him a case twenty years ago, hopeful that I had assembled enough evidence to convince a prosecutor that there was sufficient probable cause to file charges.

  The final stage of all criminal investigations comes with the formal presentation by the detective of his case to the district attorney's office for a filing. General filing policies within the prosecutor's office vary from state to state and county to county. From my experience in L.A. County, the reviewing deputy district attorney needs to be convinced that the suspect(s) did indeed commit the crime, and be strongly confident that he or she will win a conviction in court. Anything less will result in an outright rejection, or a "continued for further investigation," requiring an immediate release of the person arrested. This is how it's supposed to work under our Constitution. All good working detectives know and prepare for this moment of truth.

  It had been almost twenty years since I had last walked into the district attorney's office to present my investigation and request a murder filing on a suspect. None of the old guard in the DA's office was around anymore, except one. Fortunately for me and for the public, he was among the best.

  In his thirty-fifth year of service in the DA's office, Head Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay had prosecuted many of Los Angeles's most notorious murderers. His career convictions read like a Who's Who of California killers, including the Manson case, where he was co-counsel with the celebrated prosecutor and author Vincent Bugliosi. He later personally prosecuted the rest of the Manson family members — Tex Watson, Bruce Davis, and Leslie Van Houten. Kay was the first deputy district attorney in California history to attend a lifer parolee's hearing and argue before the parole board for denial based on the merits of the case. To date, Steve Kay has attended a total of fifty-eight parole hearings arguing against the release of the various Manson family members.

  Kay prosecuted serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, who during the commission of their crimes had actually tape-recorded one of their vicious rape-murders. Bittaker and Norris would kidnap and murder four additional victims, ages thirteen to eighteen, before being apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted by Kay.

  In 1996 Kay prosecuted and convicted killer Charles Rathbun for the vicious murder of Raiderette and beauty-queen model Linda Sobek, whose body was found in Angeles National Forest.

  During my career I had gone to Steve Kay and presented dozens of murder cases for his review and filing of complaints. I had always found him to be highly intelligent, conscientious, and, most importantly, a man of total integrity. Knowing he could be trusted in all matters requiring confidentiality, and knowing that above all he would give me the benefit of objectivity, I decided to submit the Dahlia investigation to him as if I were asking for a criminal filing.

  We met for three hours. I gave him an overview of the investigation, informing him of my suspicions relating to the serial killings and my belief, based on my two-year-plus investigation, that my father was not only the killer of Elizabeth Short but also the "wealthy Hollywood man" identified in 1949 by Lieutenant Jemison as the DA's prime suspect. I provided Kay with my entire manuscript and investigation, complete with photographs and exhibits.

  Understandably, Steve Kay was shocked and stunned by my disclosures, but he maintained his composure, voiced his confidence and trust in my ability as a homicide investigator, and said he would review the entire case file on his own time, not as an official in the DA's office. He would, he said, review it as if I were actively submitting it to him for a criminal filing. Further, he promised he would use the same rigorous standards he requires of all investigators and would give me his opinion after a careful and considered review.

  A month later I received the following letter in the mail.

  September 30, 2001

  To Whom It May Concern:

  The most haunting murder mystery in Los Angeles County during the twentieth century has finally been solved in the twenty-first century. The case of the Black Dahlia murder was solved by one of the Los Angeles Police Department's finest homicide investigators, Steve Hodel. This, however, was anything but a normal LAPD homicide investigation, since Steve retired from the LAPD in 1986 and since the murderer was none other than Steve's father, Dr. GeorgeIlill Hodel.

  I first met Detective Steve Hodel in 1973 when, after being on the prosecution team in the Tate-La Bianca murders and the Gary Hinman and "Shorty" Shea murders against the Manson Family for three years, I received an assignment to the Central Operations Complaint Division. This Division is the largest felony case filing Division of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. I liked Steve from the first time I met him. Not only was he very bright and personable, but the cases he presented for filing were always well prepared and well investigated.

  Also, if Steve believed that he did not have sufficient evidence to have a case filed, he would come right out and say so!

  Steve was a tenacious detective. If he believed someone was guilty, he would leave no stone unturned in attempting to prove his guilt. On the other hand, if he believed that a suspect was not guilty, he would do everything in his power to establish his innocence. Because of his objectivity and fairness, Steve was able not only to be an outstanding police detective, but in his retirement years he has easily adapted to becoming an excellent criminal defense investigator.

  The readers should know that Steve I lodel was not an average LAPD detective; he was simply one of their best homicide investigators. For many years he was the supervising homicide detective for the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. Steve has investigated over 300 murders and earned an excellent reputation not only among his peers but also among members of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

  If Steve had not found the photographs his father had taken of Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia) in his father's cherished photo album, Steve would never have even considered investigating the famous Black Dahlia murder case. Steve is a highly trained and accomplished homicide investigator, and in the Black Dahlia case he is just doing what he has been trained to do, and that is to objectively investigate a murder case. How ironic is it that the son of one of the most brutal murderers in Los Angeles history would become a LAPD Homicide Detective and be the one to establish his father's guilt.

  What Steve did not know when he started his investigation was that his father had actually been a major suspect in the Black Dahlia murder. In fact, during the early part of 1950, when the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office was involved in the Black Dahlia investigation with the LAPD, Dr. George Hodel, in my opinion, was the prime suspect. The DAs office finally cleared him because of a lack of evidence. In an interview with Steve, witness Joe Barrett quotes DA Investigator Walter Sullivan and other DA investigators saying, "God damn it, he got away with it. Yeah, talking about the incest trial with Tamar." Then they said, "We want this son of a bitch. We think he killed the Black Dahlia." Dr. Hodel was so worried about the DA's office that he fled the country for the next forty years.

  Based on the results of Steve's investigation, I would have no reservations about filing two counts of murder against Dr. George Hodel. Of course, I do not speak
for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office on this subject and all views I express are my own, based on 34 years of experience in the DA's office, including experience prosecuting some of the highest profile murder cases in the history of Los Angeles County. I have personally read all of Steve's written account of his father's life and crimes and I have no doubt that his father not only murdered Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia) but also murdered Jeanne French less than one month after the Black Dahlia murder.

  The Black Dahlia Murder

  Steve makes a compelling case against his father for the murder of Elizabeth Short on January 15, 1947. The evidence against Dr. George Hodel is circumstantial, but I believe that circumstantial evidence cases are often a lot stronger than direct evidence cases, because there is no potential problem of misidentification by an eyewitness. I view each piece of circumstantial evidence like the strands in a rope where each fact pointing to the suspect's guilt is a separate strand.

  Eventually if you have enough incriminating facts, you can build a rope that will be strong enough to bind the suspect to justice.

  The first thing that Steve does in his investigation is to establish a personal relationship between Elizabeth Short and Dr. George Hodel. This is accomplished by Steve's discovery of two photographs of Elizabeth taken by his father. One was apparently taken in the Franklin house where Dr. Hodel lived. The second photo is a seductive nude photograph of Elizabeth. Both of these photos were found in a section of Dr. Hodel's photo album reserved for family members and "loved ones."

  Handwriting analysis points directly at Dr. Hodel as a murderer, not only in the Elizabeth Short murder but also in the Jeanne French murder, which I will discuss in more detail later. It is a common practice in criminal trials to have a family member, a friend, or a co-worker identify someone's handwriting. Steve is very familiar with his father's handwriting and makes some important identifications in both murder cases.

  Steve positively identifies his father's hand printing on the note mailed to the Los Angeles Examiner from downtown L.A. on January 26, 1947, where the "Black Dahlia Avenger" promises to turn himself in on January 29 at 10 a.m. Steve also identifies his father's hand printing in lipstick on the body of Jeanne French, where the murderer wrote "Fuck You. B.D."

  Elizabeth Short was murdered on January 15, 1947, and Jeanne French was murdered on February 10, 1947. We now have Steve's hand printing identification linking the person who was sending letters and postcards about the Black Dahlia murder to the press with the murder of Jeanne French.

  Steve did the right thing with his hand printing evidence. He hired an unbiased handwriting expert, Hannah McFarland from Washington, to review the evidence. Steve did not tell her who the suspect was or that the suspect was his father. He also did not tell her who the victims were.

  Hannah McFarland concludes that the same suspect who wrote the message in lipstick (on the body of Jeanne French) also hand printed 4 of the postcards about the Black Dahlia murder that were sent to the Los Angeles Herald Express. We learned that the suspect in the Black Dahlia murder liked to have contact with the Los Angeles Examiner and the Los Angeles Herald Express.

  The suspect even called the city editor of the L.A. Examiner.; then mailed a packet addressed to the "Examiner and other newspapers" containing some of Elizabeth Short's personal possessions, including her Social Security card, her birth certificate, and an address book with about 75 names in it (with one page torn out). By sending possessions that the actual murderer would have obtained from Elizabeth's purse on the night of her murder, we know that we have to take contacts with the press as major clues in determining the identity of the murderer.

  The fact that the murderer of Jeanne French signed the initials B.D. on her body (Black Dahlia) ties him into the Black Dahlia murder. The fact that his hand printing on Jeanne French's body has been tied by Steve and Hannah McFarland to postcards and letters sent into the L.A. Examiner and the L.A. Herald Express also ties the murderer of Jeanne French to the Black Dahlia murder. We know from Steve and from Hannah McFarland's analysis that Dr. George Hodel is the printer.

  I am not familiar with Hannah McFarland since she practices in Washington State and I prosecute in California. I find her to have an excellent analytical style. When she makes a comparison, I can actually see what she is talking about. That would be very impressive to a jury. Her opinion "highly probable" is strong, considering that she does not have the original writings of the suspect to use for comparison purposes. Hannah McFarland assured Steve that her "highly probable" findings were the same as her being "virtually certain" that the questioned writings (hand printing on Jeanne French's body plus the four hand printed postcards sent to the L.A. Herald Express) and the known writings (Steve's submitted printings of his father) were written by the same person.

  Analysis by the LAPD crime lab connects the envelopes and the paper used, indicating that the same suspect who sent the original packet containing Elizabeth Short's Social Security card, birth certificate, and address book to the L.A. Examiner also sent the subsequent note to the Examiner, offering to surrender for a 10 year sentence. LAPD criminalist Ray Pinker determined that at least one of the notes sent by the Dahlia murderer used proof sheet paper of a type commonly found in printing shops. We know from Steve that his father had a printing press in the basement of the Franklin house and had a supply of proof sheet paper such as the one on which Steve made his "Chinese Chicken" drawing.

  These are more important pieces of evidence connecting Dr. George Hodel to the Black Dahlia murder — more strands in the rope.

  The manner of bisection of Elizabeth Short's body leads me to conclude that a doctor was the murderer. In a letter from Special Agent R. B. Hood of the Los Angeles office to J. Edgar Hoover, he states "the body was cut into around the waist with a very sharp instrument and the cut was very cleanly done — none of the internal organs being touched except to sever the intestines. The cut through the backbone was very cleanly done. There is some speculation that the murderer had some training in the dissection of bodies. The manner in which Elizabeth Short's body was dissected has indicated the possibility that the murderer was a person somewhat experienced in medical work . . ." USC turned over a list of 300 names of their medical students for follow up investigation.

  Dr. Frederic Newbarr, the Chief autopsy surgeon for the County of Los Angeles, performed the autopsy on Elizabeth Short on January 16, 1947. He determined that a sharp, thin bladed instrument consistent with a scalpel had been used to perform the bisection. The incision was performed through the abdomen, and then through the intervertebral disk between the second and third vertebra.

  The body had been washed clean and drained of blood. Fibers believed to originate from a scrub brush were found on the body.

  In a 1971 L.A. Times interview entitled "Farewell My Black Dahlia," the original Black Dahlia homicide investigator, Detective Harry Hansen, upon his retirement stated that his own personal theory was that a man with medical training was the murderer. He stated, "It was a clean definitely professional job. You have to know exactly how and where or you just can't do it. When I asked medical authorities what kind of person could have performed that bisection, they said someone with medical finesse."

  We know from Steve's investigation that when attending UC San Francisco medical school that George Hodel had an outstanding reputation as a surgeon. More strands in the rope.

  The body of Elizabeth Short had been posed. In all the murder cases I have handled over the years, I have only had one body posed. It is a very rare occurrence. When I prosecuted photographer Charles Rathbun for the murder of model and former Los Angeles Raider cheerleader Linda Sobek, Rathbun posed Linda Sobek in the grave he dug for her before covering her up with dirt.

  How was Elizabeth Short's body posed? Both arms were raised above the head, the right arm placed at a 45-degree angle, away from the body, then bent at the elbow to form a 90-degree angle. The left arm was placed at a 45-degree angle away from the
body and then bent again to form a second 90-degree angle that paralleled the body. Why was her body posed? To answer this question, Steve cleverly delves into his father's admiration of his close friend and now world famous photographer, Man Ray.

  Steve notes that Man Ray's position was that women exist "at man's will and for man's pleasure, and those pleasures are often enhanced and increased through humiliation, degradation and the infliction of pain upon them." This could explain why Elizabeth was tortured before she was killed.

  Steve points out that the position of Elizabeth's arms is an exact duplication of Man Ray's photograph entitled The Minotaur (the destroyer of young maidens). The excised flesh below Elizabeth Short's breast imitates the shadows seen in the photograph. The lacerations to her face give the appearance of the lips in Man Ray's famous photograph entitled The Lovers.

  From Dr. Newbarr's autopsy report, we learn that Dr. Hodel inflicted unbelievable pain and degradation on Elizabeth before he killed her. Dr. Newbarr states that Elizabeth was tortured initially by the infliction of minor cuts to her body and private parts where the pubic hairs are cut away. She was then beaten and kicked about her entire body (as was Jeanne French). She was then forced to eat her own or his fecal excrement. Also large pieces of flesh were cut from her body and inserted into her vagina and rectum. Is it just a coincidence that Elizabeth Short's body was posed, and her face and breasts were cut to imitate two of Man Ray's famous photographs? More strands in the rope.

  Another piece of evidence I have taken into consideration in forming my opinion that Dr. Hodel murdered Elizabeth Short is the doctor's missing black-faced military watch. In a photo of the doctor by Man Ray in 1946, the doctor can be seen wearing a military style watch with a black face. In an undated photo Steve believes to have been taken in the spring or summer of 1947, the doctor is wearing a watch with a white face. On January 20, 1947, LAPD utilized fifty officers to carefully comb through the vacant lot at 39th and Norton where Elizabeth Short's body was found on January 15, 1947. As a result of this search, a man's military type wristwatch was found in the vacant lot close to where Elizabeth's body w as found. Another strand.