Most Evil

by Steve Hodel

  Kirk,

  Can’t wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott.

  Will work best this way while Mother is away.

  Detectives theorized that Miss Spangler may have been pregnant and was considering getting an abortion.

  The following is a map of the seven crimes, all of which were committed within a short distance of my father’s house. In five of these seven crimes, as part of his signature, the killer included a taunting note to the police or press.

  2.21 1940s Hollywood crimes in relationship to Hodel residence

  1. George Hodel’s “Franklin Avenue house”

  2. Jean Spangler’s purse found in Fern Dell Park—0.5 miles

  3. Elizabeth Short—7.3 miles

  4. Georgette Bauerdorf—4.2 miles

  5. Mimi Boomhower—7.1 miles

  6. Gladys Kern—1.1 miles

  7. Jeanne French—9.4 miles

  8. Ora Murray—7.7 miles

  Before we move on to the next series of crimes I believe my father committed, let’s take a minute to identify the primary MOs of the killer known as the Black Dahlia Avenger, who operated in 1940s Los Angeles:

  • The crimes all occurred within a ten-mile radius of Hollywood.

  • The killer targeted solitary women.

  • In the cases of Ora Murray, Elizabeth Short, Jeanne French, Gladys Kern, and Jean Spangler, the suspect was seen in public with the victim prior to her murder.

  • The suspect was described as in his thirties, tall, thin, sophisticated, dapper; “a dark-haired man with a small mustache.”

  • After a vicious assault on the victims, the killer covered their nude bodies with items of the victims’ personal clothing. (Murray, Bauerdorf, and French)

  • On two separate occasions he killed his victims by means of ligature strangulation and or asphyxiation. (Murray, Bauerdorf)

  • A white handkerchief was left at the crime scene. (French, Kern)

  • In the cases of Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French, the victims’ nude bodies were carefully posed in vacant lots.

  • The killer taunted the police and press by personally telephoning them and by repeatedly mailing in handwritten, typed, and cut-and-pasted notes and clues after the crime.

  • He chose the name “Black Dahlia Avenger” and used the press to identify, promote, and market himself to the public.

  • The killer was a highly intelligent man with an overdeveloped ego, who enjoyed publicly humiliating and outwitting authority.

  2.22 Los Angeles Examiner, June 18, 1949, showing precut clothesline ligature used in Louise Springer murder

  All eight of the crimes examined in this chapter occurred well within a ten-mile radius of the Franklin house. The crime scenes, the details left behind by the killer, and the characteristics of the victims were similar enough to firmly link four of them in the minds of the investigators at the time. Knowing what we now know about serial killers, I am certain that any competent investigator would conclude at the very least that these eight crimes must be considered possibly linked to the same man. With the preponderance of similarities in MO, witness descriptions of the suspect, crime-scene locations, victim profiles, and especially the highly unusual contact made by the at-large suspect with authorities via letter and telephone, my own homicide training would have certainly led me to believe that a serial killer was operating in 1940s Los Angeles.

  There may well be other crimes attributable to George Hodel during this period that have been mostly lost to history. I have identified at least three possible victims in whose cases simply not enough evidence currently exists to make a positive connection. However, the connections that do exist are fascinating: Marian Newton (San Diego, murdered 7/17/47), Louise Springer (Los Angeles, murdered 6/13/49) and Geneva Ellroy (El Monte, murdered 6/22/58) were all strangled using a precut length of clothesline cord that the killer brought with him. In the Marian Newton homicide the dapper, well-dressed suspect met the victim at a downtown dance hall, invited her for a drive, took her to an isolated location, and strangled her. As in the Kern and French homicides, he also left two white handkerchiefs at the scene, near the body.

  I believe the eight crimes enumerated above to be the work of my father, George Hodel. I also believe we will never know the complete extent of his murderous activities in L.A. What we do know is that DA investigators considered him a prime suspect in the dismemberment of Elizabeth Short, and were actively investigating his possible involvement in the murders of Jeanne French, Gladys Kern, and Jean Spangler.

  As the following chapters will confirm, the signatures and MOs of the crimes in L.A. will link my father to further crimes in California, elsewhere in the United States, and abroad. Finally, the Avenger’s crimes will be revealed as one part of the incredible, intricate puzzle Dr. George Hodel created during his long career as a serial killer.

  Chapter Three

  Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it.

  Jean Genet, The Thief’s Journal

  Of all the murders linked to my father, certainly the most sensational was that of Elizabeth Short. Why had he singled her out? Was she simply a girlfriend who provided a convenient target for his disturbed fantasy? Or was there a more practical reason for my father to kill her?

  The pasted note sent to Captain Donahoe on January 30, 1947, had read “Dahlia killing justified.” What did that mean?

  I knew that my father and Elizabeth Short were acquainted and that they had dated, possibly as early as 1944. Several separate witnesses saw them together at the Franklin house and other Hollywood locations in the months leading up to her murder.

  As District Attorney Detective Lt. Frank Jemison stated during his March 22, 1950, interview with my mother:

  (Jemison-Hodel transcript, page 5)

  Lt. Jemison: “Let me advise you that we do have information that he [George Hodel] did associate with Beth Short and as you know . . .”

  Two days after this interview with my mother, DA/LAPD audio surveillance transcripts record George Hodel talking to a friend “in a low voice” at the Franklin house. The transcripts show him whispering about “the Black Dahlia.” Transcripts read, “Hodel talks about leaving the country, mentions the FBI. Hodel mentions being afraid about something.” On March 26, 1950, just hours before my father fled the country, the final page of the transcript entered by LAPD detective Meyer, reads, “Hodel talking about picture police have of him and some girl—thought he had destroyed them all.”

  I’d learned that George was extremely jealous of Elizabeth showing affection to other men, especially those in military uniform. According to witnesses and her own letters, Elizabeth did flirt with military men during the war years, and afterward, in 1946, while George was in China serving as an officer with the United Nations.

  In September of that same year, my father was unexpectedly discharged “for personal reasons.” He returned to Los Angeles and spent several weeks in a local hospital. During that same time Elizabeth, who was also living in Los Angeles, informed friends that she was “going to marry George, a lieutenant, when he got out of the hospital on November 1.”

  What happened? What caused Elizabeth to change her mind? In the final stages of my Dahlia investigation, I came to believe that George killed Elizabeth out of jealousy. FBI files contained an in-depth interview with a military man (his name was redacted) who had a one-night stand with Elizabeth. Their date was on September 20, 1946, at the Figueroa Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. In their conversation, she informed him that she was attempting to break up with an older man she had been seeing, but didn’t quite know how to, as he was very jealous and she “didn’t want to hurt his feelings.” My theory was that, spurned and rejected, George turned his fury against Elizabeth. Nobody said no to George Hodel!

  But then information came to light that provided a chilling new twist. In 2001, while putting to
gether the first pieces of the Elizabeth Short “Black Dahlia” and Jeanne French “Red Lipstick” murder puzzles, I came across a headline in a Los Angeles newspaper from 1946 referring to a man named William Heirens as “The Lipstick Murderer.” Thinking the names an interesting coincidence, I briefly looked into the Heirens case.

  Bill Heirens had been arrested for the horrific murders of two adult women and a six-year-old girl in Chicago. After killing one of the women, he’d allegedly used lipstick to write a message to police on the living-room wall of her apartment.

  Knowing that my father, Dr. George Hodel, had scrawled FUCK YOU. B. D. in red lipstick on the nude body of one his victims (Jeanne French) a year later (1947), I wondered if the murders were connected. But a cursory review of the evidence the police claimed to have against Heirens, especially his confession, seemed to indicate the Chicago case had been solved. I didn’t investigate further.

  Then in 2003 I came across documents in Lt. Frank Jemison’s investigative summary of Elizabeth Short’s murder that had been locked away in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s vault for almost sixty years. In a report dated 2/20/51, Lieutenant Jemison stated that Elizabeth Short had spent three weeks in Chicago in 1946 during July, sleeping with reporters and befriending detectives because “she was keenly interested in the famous Heirens Chicago murder case.”

  Copied below is a verbatim extract from Lieutenant Jemison’s investigative report:

  R301248Lt. Frank B. Jemison2-20-51

  Elizabeth Short Murder

  pg: 4

  8.Unknown Chicago Police Officer . . .

  Further that the following named persons knew victim while she was in Chicago enroute to Long Beach, California in July 1946: Jack Chernau, residence, 7107 Grand Avenue, Chicago, he registered at the Blackstone Hotel with Short and saw her approximately fifteen times in three weeks. He had intercourse with her; he was in the upholstery business. Slig Diamond, a newspaperman whose residence is Park Row Hotel, Chicago, he saw Short over a ten-day period and has stated that he had intercourse with her and says that she was always talking about murder cases. Lou Paris, feature writer for the Chicago Daily Times, Chicago, knew Short and talked with her at which time she was keenly interested in the famous Heirens Chicago murder case. John Giampa, 3421 West Lexington, was a mailer for Chicago Herald American; he knew her and said that Short knew a Chicago detective who worked on the Heirens case. Jan Jansen, a reporter on the Chicago Daily News, has stated that he knew victim in Chicago. All of these named persons knew Short in the month of July, 1946, approximately six months before the murder and any one of these men could have had honorary special Chicago police badges. . . .

  Why would Elizabeth Short, a naïve waitress and cashier, travel to Chicago in the summer of 1946 in an effort to obtain inside information about a series of murders?

  Six months later, and just three months after my father’s return from China, her tortured, bisected body was found in a vacant L.A. lot.

  When I dug deeper into the Los Angeles District Attorney’s files, I came across another interesting fact: In January 1947, just a few days before her murder, Short was seen in front of Columbia Broadcasting Studios on Sunset Boulevard, waiting to get into the Jack Carson radio show. On her arm was a tall, dapper man in his late thirties who escorted her to the front of the line. There he flashed a badge at the usher, who opened the velvet rope and let them in.

  In the lobby the head usher, John “Jack” Egger, reexamined the badge, which read CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT, before admitting the couple to Studio A.

  Egger knew the beautiful young Elizabeth well. In a February 7, 1950, transcribed interview with Lt. Frank Jemison and LAPD Sgt. F. A. Brown, he remembered seeing her “at least twenty times before, at CBS, but always alone.”

  Here are excerpts from that interview:

  Egger: The man pulled out a badge and showed it to me, which I examined, and it was a Chicago police badge, at least it stated Chicago Police Department on the badge. . . .

  I let them both in without waiting in line and without a ticket.

  Sgt. Brown: Did Neemo [junior usher] recognize her as knowing her when he brought this Chicago policeman to you, was there any conversation about that, did he know her?

  Egger: The thing sir, we always notice a girl like that, she was a striking girl, with that raven hair, blue sweater or pink sweater, she more or less became a legend and when we saw her with a man we paid more attention, so Neemo brought the two of them up to me and then transpired what I told Mr. Jemison.

  John Egger went on to describe Elizabeth’s companion as “male, early forties, five foot ten, one-eighty, with penetrating eyes.” Egger felt he could recognize the man from a photograph if he ever saw him again.

  As a result of this information, and the fact that Lieutenant Jemison knew that Elizabeth Short had traveled to Chicago and become intimate with both reporters and a detective working on another investigation, he contacted the Chicago Police Department and requested a list of names of all retired Chicago detectives living in the Los Angeles area. Printed below is part of Chicago Police Department Chief of Detectives Andrew W. Aitken’s response:

  March 20, 1950

  Dear Sir: -Att. H. I. [sic] Stanley, Chief B of I.

  Replying to your letter of March 14th, in further reference to Elizabeth Short murder, . . . you mention a star-shaped badge similar to the badge of the Chicago Police Department, which was displayed by a man who accompanied the deceased shortly before the murder on January 15th, 1947.

  Please be advised that consideration must be given to the fact that the Chicago police badge is easily and frequently copied, particularly in this vicinity and usually by private watch services who outfit and equip their employees in similar uniforms. . . .

  In an interesting twist of fate, Jack Egger became an investigator for the L.A. County District Attorney’s office after he left CBS. Subsequent to the DA’s Office, he joined the Beverly Hills Police Department, where he rose to the rank of captain of detectives. Later he became chief of security for a major film studio in Hollywood.

  On December 12, 2003, I met with Chief Egger, whom I found to be cordial and cooperative. After reviewing the circumstances of his meeting with Elizabeth Short fifty-three years earlier, I showed him photo-graphs of my father circa 1949. After slowly and deliberately studying the face and features, Chief Egger said he was “ninety-nine percent certain” this was the same man who was with Elizabeth Short in early January 1947 at the CBS studio.

  3.1 Dr. George Hodel, circa 1950

  Egger remembered him as “very dapper, very stern, and never cracked a smile.” Anyone who knew my father can confirm that Egger’s description fits him to a tee.

  By mid-February, 1950, Lieutenant Jemison had identified my father as the prime suspect in the Elizabeth Short murder and had gone so far as to surreptitiously install microphones in my father’s house. Simultaneously, he had his detectives looking at two other possible suspects who were listed as “Elizabeth’s unidentified Los Angeles doctor” and an “unknown Chicago police officer.”

  3.2 Elizabeth Short, circa 1946

  Based on what I found in the DA file and Chief Egger’s 2003 positive identification, I’m now convinced that the three suspects were in fact the same man, Dr. George Hodel. In January 1947 my father was Elizabeth Short’s suitor, her “unidentified doctor” and, as we now know, a man with a badge, passing himself off as the “unknown Chicago police officer.”

  What was behind this new Elizabeth Short/Chicago connection? I couldn’t get it out of my head. I knew I’d have to dig into the case of the “Lipstick Killer” in Chicago to get to the bottom of her bizarre obsession with the crime. That investigation would prove as shocking to me as that of the Black Dahlia Avenger.

  I now believe that Elizabeth Short must have known something disturbing about my father, perhaps something he let slip during an intimate moment or while under the influence. Her search for the truth, coupled with perhap
s a misguided confession of those suspicions to George Hodel, may well have sealed her fate and caused her to become one of the most infamous murder victims in history. She died because of what she’d learned about my father’s savage activities in Chicago.

  As we’ll see, in the act of dumping Elizabeth Short’s body, he left a hidden message that links both crimes and underscores his motivation: revenge. But before we get to George Hodel’s hidden message, we have to examine Chicago’s crime of the century in detail.

  PART TWO

  CHICAGO

  Chapter Four

  For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself.

  Note written in lipstick on a wall at the

  Frances Brown crime scene, December 1945

  At the start of June 1945, with the U.S. air and ground assault starting to break through the Japanese defenses in Okinawa, Chicagoans clung to the hope that the war would soon be over and their sons and husbands would return home.