Black Dahlia, Red Rose: The Crime, Corruption, and Cover-Up of America's Greatest Unsolved Murder

by Piu Eatwell

  Of George Hodel’s acquaintances, two women believed the doctor had known Elizabeth Short. The rest of his associates, including his ex-wife, swore that he had not known her. None of Elizabeth Short’s own friends or relatives—her mother, sister, close friend Ann Toth, her roommates at the Hawthorne or the Chancellor, or indeed Mark Hansen—identified any doctor among the dead girl’s acquaintances or boyfriends. There was no evidence to link the doctor to the body dump site in Leimert Park, the Aster Motel, the trash can in which Elizabeth’s shoe and purse had been found, the D and E that had purportedly been carved onto the body, the telephone call that had been placed to Jimmy Richardson at the Examiner, or the sending of the package containing the victim’s belongings. Hodel, in fact, showed decidedly secretive as opposed to exhibitionist tendencies in his behavior. All his dubious antics took place discreetly, behind the heavy doors of his monolithic private mansion. The idea of him dumping a body in full view in an area of Los Angeles that he never visited, sending misspelled messages to the press, or telephoning a city editor anonymously, were not far short of absurd.

  From the secret recordings of the DA’s office at Hodel’s home, it was clear that the doctor was increasingly panicked, aware of the investigators closing in on him. Even though he had eluded them in the incest trial, there was, after all, plenty more for them to get him on: his taxes, the illegal abortions, the mysterious death of his secretary, his clandestine Communist connections. Finally, the doctor decided to hightail it out of trouble. He sold off his statues of nymphs and satyrs, divested himself of his house and Packard car, and ran off to the Philippines by way of Hawaii. But he had given the DA investigators a good run for their money, and many years later he would become an even longer-running distraction in the Dahlia case.*

  In February 1951, Frank Jemison filed his last report on the Dahlia investigation. In it, he gave his final list of possible suspects. Many were individuals with barely a link to the Dahlia. Some did not even have a name. “Madam Chang,” the “queer woman surgeon,” was still featured. So was the now quasi-mythical “Sergeant Chuck,” the Army sergeant with whom the Dahlia was supposed to have quarreled during her time at Camp Cooke. The “queer woman surgeon” was in fact a certain Dr. Margaret Chung, the first Chinese-American female physician and a local celebrity in San Francisco. She had gained national fame during the war when she took under her wing thousands of soldiers, sailors, and flyboys, including Ronald Reagan. But there was nothing suspicious about Mom Chung, apart from her being a female physician, Chinese, and a lesbian.† Dr. George Hodel was also featured, although low on Jemison’s list.‡ Mark Hansen was at the bottom. There was no reference to Leslie Dillon. In the report, Jemison stated that the 1950 grand jury had shown no interest in the Dahlia murder. Therefore, it had been agreed with the Deputy Chief Thad Brown that the case would “never be assumed by the DA” again. All files were to be turned over to Homicide, and the DA investigation terminated.

  Once more, the waters closed over Elizabeth Short.

  * The amplification of George Hodel’s minor role in the Dahlia affair after his death is discussed later, on page 241.

  † Dr. Margaret Chung (1889–1959), also known as “Mom Chung,” was a colorful and flamboyant Chinese-American physician who founded one of the first Western medical clinics in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1920s. Over the war she adopted thousands of soldiers, whom she called her “fair haired bastards.” She was also a prominent celebrity and behind-the-scenes broker in World War II.

  ‡ George Hodel was never listed as a primary suspect for the Dahlia killing, although this has been claimed, as discussed later on page 241.

  20

  FALL GUY

  The LAPD had succeeded, finally, in burying the Dahlia case. Now the knives came out for Dr. De River. The doctor had testified before the grand jury against members of the police department. He was, therefore, a rat and a whistle-blower. He would not be forgiven.

  On March 2, 1950, Dr. De River spoke at a luncheon meeting for the Parkview Women’s Club, on the subject of “Juvenile Delinquency and the Home’s Influence in Its Prevention.” That afternoon he was asked to stop by the city attorney’s office on an undisclosed matter. When he got there, the doctor was greeted by officers of the State Division of Narcotic Enforcement. They were investigating him for a series of prescriptions for marijuana, written out during the period December 1949–January 1950. The doctor explained to the agents that the prescriptions were used as painkillers to help his wife, who had been in severe pain after spinal surgery had gone wrong in November of that year.

  Misdemeanor charges were filed against De River by the state narcotics agency on March 22, 1950. Nobody was under any illusion as to who was behind the charges. As Aggie’s newspaper the Herald-Express reported, the LAPD had pushed the city attorney’s office to prosecute the case, after “the District Attorney’s office refused to issue the complaint.” According to the doctor’s lawyers, “the case against Dr. De River was pressed by the Police Department in retaliation for the psychiatrist’s appearance before the County Grand Jury in an investigation last year into the unsolved murder of Elizabeth ‘Black Dahlia’ Short.”

  Not content to rest with the trumped-up narcotics charges, the police department also began investigating the doctor in relation to a book he had published the previous October. The Sexual Criminal: A Psychoanalytical Study was a textbook of forensic psychiatry. Despite its undoubtedly voyeuristic content, it was and is still widely considered a pioneering book on the subject. The introduction to the textbook was written by Eugene Williams, former chief deputy district attorney of Los Angeles County, and investigator on the Babes of Inglewood case. Williams had bonded with De River, Aggie Underwood, and Judge White during the trial of Albert Dyer back in 1937. The lawyer, the doctor, the journalist, and the judge had remained close friends ever since.* Further chapters in The Sexual Criminal were contributed by the distinguished Los Angeles public defender Ellery E. Cuff,† Judge Joseph Call,‡ and Inspector Roy Blick of the Washington metropolitan police Vice Squad.§

  While primarily a textbook of psychiatry, The Sexual Criminal was influenced by the yellow press “true crime” paperbacks of the day. It was written in the doctor’s usual dramatic style, with rhetorical flourishes and a liberal sprinkling of lurid crime-scene photographs from famous cases. The identities of the killers and victims were ill-concealed by bars superimposed across their eyes, in a half-hearted attempt to anonymize the well-known “case studies.” The assorted accounts of rape, pederasty, and murder told a story of postwar Los Angeles at its most grimly noir. Incensed by the unauthorized use of crime scene photographs, the LAPD referred the book to the Police Commission. An unnamed member of the commission handed a copy of the book to the City Council.

  Councilman Ernest E. Debs—De River’s old enemy who had challenged his professional credentials previously—was quick to jump on The Sexual Criminal. “The book is filthy and shocking,” boomed the outraged city worthy. “There’s no question about it, that De River, who calls himself a crime psychologist and sexologist, is using the pictures just to sell the book.” Debs demanded an immediate vote by the City Council to abolish De River’s position as police psychiatrist, on the basis that the doctor had used crime scene photographs “without permission of the department.” The final council vote was split seven to six in favor of the motion. Because the vote was required to be unanimous, the doctor had escaped. But not for long.

  De River had already been suspended from his position without pay by the LAPD, pending the outcome of his drugs trial. That trial began on July 3, 1950, before Municipal Judge Vernon W. Hunt. Five witnesses, mainly the doctor’s relatives, were called to the stand. Three testified that they did not use the drugs prescribed in their name by the doctor. Two could not recall whether they had ever done so. The next day, the doctor himself took the stand. He admitted obtaining the painkillers for his sick wife, because “I adore her, next to God.” According to t
he Los Angeles Times, the doctor blamed his prosecution on a “factional fight within the Police Department, centering about the infamous and as yet unsolved ‘Black Dahlia’ case.” He maintained that he was “caught in the middle” of the factional difficulties. The doctor called three judges to stand as character witnesses, all of whom testified that he was known to them as a man of honesty and good repute. The prosecution took the unusual step of requesting the dismissal of three of the four charges. It then rested its case.

  On July 7, a jury of nine women and three men found Dr. De River guilty of improperly maintaining prescription records. Judge Hunt sentenced him to thirty days’ probation, “with the sole condition that he not violate narcotics laws of the state.” The judge continued:

  “The defendant in this case is a reputable physician who, rather than impose on his professional colleagues, undertook to personally administer pain-killing narcotics to his suffering wife—and resorted to ill-advised means of obtaining narcotics for her. There can be no doubt that his wife was and is suffering. This is not a case where narcotics were obtained for improper purposes, but rather it is a case where they were obtained for perfectly proper and humane purposes. . . . The defendant, a highly respected professional man, has already suffered far greater punishment than is justified by the purely technical nature of the charges in this case and this court is not disposed to impose any further penalty.”

  On August 9, 1950, Chief William Worton resigned from his post and took up office as a police commissioner. The retired Marine general, who had been made interim police chief following the Brenda Allen fiasco, had fulfilled the function for which he was appointed. He had presided over the LAPD during the greatest scandal of its history. During his term of office, he had attempted to reorganize the police department and impose some order. Now it was time to hand the responsibility over to a successor.

  The battle for the new chief of the Los Angeles Police Department was a bitter one. Pitted against each other were the popular chief of detectives Thad Brown, the preferred choice of the Protestants, Freemasons, and the underworld; and Thad Brown’s polar opposite, the cold and calculating William Parker, the candidate preferred by the Catholic contingent of the city. Widely considered the dark horse, Parker had been placed in charge of the Intelligence Division that Worton created to replace the disbanded Gangster Squad.

  The campaign for the appointment of a new chief was characterized by the usual LAPD opacity and intrigue. Mickey Cohen and his underworld cronies were certain that they had Thad Brown’s appointment in the bag. That is, until the sudden death of one of Thad’s supporters on the appointments commission, Agnes Albro, from breast cancer. The loss of that key vote propelled Parker into the top job. “I know I’m supposedly coming in with a life expectancy of two weeks,” Parker told the press corps when he was selected. “We’ll see.” He lasted sixteen years.

  With the appointment of Bill Parker as chief, the LAPD entered a new era. Gone were the old days of the “gangster cops,” the cozy relationship played out in downtown bars between police and mobsters, the wads of dough traded at the doors of the gambling dens and whorehouses as a price for being left alone. In came a superficially sanitized police force: an army of tanned, cookie-cutter motorcycle cops with inscrutable features hidden by dark sunglasses. They were Bill Parker’s elite squad, the “New Centurions.” Under Parker, the cops on the streets turned clean and the backroom deals went right to the top: to the now-supreme Intelligence Division, the department formed from the old vestiges of the Gangster Squad, which became the all-powerful, all-seeing, all-snooping organ through which Bill Parker ruled the department and the city with a rod of iron and secret phone taps. It was the era of the “thin blue line,” a new type of policing that swiftly identified and targeted a new type of enemy. Not the old-time gangsters of the likes of Bugsy Siegel or Mickey Cohen; they were swiftly fading into the nostalgic recesses of collective memory. Rather, the new enemy was hinted at in the first signs of rebellion and restlessness coming from the simmering black areas of the city, the run-down streets of Compton and Boyle Heights. A new war to be waged against a new foe, one that was to erupt with violence in the carnage of Watts and the turbulence of the civil rights era. But that was, and is, another story.

  The immediate consequence of Bill Parker’s appointment and Chief Worton’s transfer to the Police Commission, as far as Dr. De River was concerned, was that he was fired. On August 23, Worton instructed Chief Parker to sack the doctor and abolish the position of LAPD police psychiatrist. According to the Los Angeles Examiner, Worton said that “in the 13 months he was chief of police, he decided a full-time psychiatrist was not needed, and that the city could hire a qualified medical expert at a saving to the taxpayers when one was needed.” Because he was not protected by any civil service provisions, the doctor received no pension. Nor, in the opinion of the city attorneys, was he entitled to compensation for the lack of pay during his period of suspension pending trial on the narcotics charges.

  By now the doctor was living in Beachwood Canyon, in a red-roofed Spanish villa crouching beneath the tall, jagged white capitals of the Hollywood sign. It was fall, and the ginkgo trees and Japanese maples were streaks of flaming color. The doctor’s eldest daughter, Jacqueline, was home on a visit from campus at UCLA. She was explaining to her parents how it was hard to make friends, as the university was so big.

  Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door. Jacqueline went to open it.

  “Who is it?”

  “Lieutenant Hamilton from the LAPD Intelligence Unit.” The man was tall and lean. He was not smiling. “Is your father in?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “I take it you’re his daughter.”

  “Yes. . . .”

  “You’d better invite me in.”

  The man brushed past the girl and went straight to the living room. He clearly knew the layout of the house.

  The doctor rose to greet him, and introduced his wife. The men shook hands. What followed, according to Jacqueline, was a long diatribe. And a clear warning. “People have disappeared,” said the lieutenant. “They’ve been killed. Whole families have suffered. And these were good people.” He paused. “But they insisted on sticking their nose into someone else’s business.”

  Finally, the man stopped talking. He looked directly at De River. “Do you have any questions, doctor?”

  The doctor shook his head and moved to the door. His face was grave, his voice calm. “Good evening, Lieutenant.” He nodded goodbye.

  “What the Lieutenant warned us about,” recalled Jacqueline many years later, “was the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, and any possible interest my father still had in the case.”¶

  De River’s curt dismissal of the Intelligence chief’s warning was to have consequences. Already, the doctor had been subject to a campaign of harassment. Back in March that year, his adopted daughter, Margaret, had been frightened by two men trespassing outside her bedroom window. The doctor had fired two shots, and the men had run away unharmed. Now the campaign of harassment intensified. When the doctor’s other daughters, Jacqueline and Gloria, got off the bus and walked up the hill to their home, a police patrol car would be waiting to follow them. One day, Gloria was stopped by one of the officers in the car.

  “Aren’t you doing some modeling in the garment district?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “I thought I’d seen you around. What does your father think about that?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  The doctor still had his .45, and a license to carry it. One evening, when he and Jacqueline were in the house, they heard noises on the side of the hill outside. The doctor got his daughter to call the Hollywood Division. They promised to send someone around. The pair returned to the living room to read. Again, the same noises. The doctor ventured outside, and fired a couple of shots. There was silence. The doctor and his daughter waited all night for the promised visit by the
cops. Nobody showed up. “We came to the conclusion,” said Jacqueline, “that we could call and call and no one on the department would help us.” One of De River’s granddaughters, now a successful attorney, also recalled the campaign of police harassment to which the family was subjected. “They were followed constantly,” she said. “One day, they opened the front door and there was a dead fish on the doorstep.”

  Throughout the doctor’s misfortunes, his old friend Aggie Underwood tried to help him. Aggie offered De River’s daughter Jacqueline a job at the Herald-Express, to tide the family over. The only opening available was a part-time job in classifieds on Saturdays. But Aggie, too, was very afraid. Her daughter-in-law, Rilla Underwood, recalled how, in the early 1950s, she “seemed to behave differently, nervous, and took to carrying a gun. She warned me to watch the children and be extra careful.” Aggie’s own statements about her beliefs as to the identity of the Dahlia killer were telling. “There were grave suspicions about one guy who was questioned. Evidence was almost conclusive,” she said, years later. “The police had him, and they let him go. He was no one of much importance.”

  Who could the police have “had, and let go,” but Leslie Dillon? The fact that Dillon was Aggie’s prime suspect for the Dahlia murder was later confirmed by her daughter-in-law, Rilla, in a letter to Jacqueline De River. “Aggie and your father worked closely on the case, and she said they believed they knew who killed Elizabeth Short,” wrote Rilla to Jacqueline. “If my memory serves me, about that time or shortly thereafter, your father was let go from the department.”

  A dramatic change in Aggie’s journalistic approach at this point also suggests that, like the doctor, she had been threatened or harassed. On Christmas morning of 1951, six (mainly Chicano) prisoners in the Los Angeles Central City Jail were severely beaten by LAPD officers at a drunken Christmas party after (incorrect) rumors that they had blinded an LAPD officer in a brawl. As many as fifty police officers—including Dahlia investigator Harry Fremont—participated in the beatings, in what was to become known as the infamous “Bloody Christmas” case.# All the prisoners received major injuries, including punctured organs and broken facial bones. At least a hundred people knew of or witnessed the beatings. But Chief Parker still managed to keep the events out of the press for almost three months.