Most Evil

by Steve Hodel

  Below are excerpts from the original Ripper letters (with misspellings, and unusual and relevant words bolded):

  “Dear Boss” letter sent to Central News Agency on September 27, 1888. . .23

  You shall soon hear of me and my funny little games.

  . . . Red ink is fit enough I hope ha-ha.

  The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly.

  PS—They say I’m a doctor now. Ha-ha.

  Both Black Dahlia Avenger and Zodiac also used “ha ha” in their postings. Where the Ripper used red ink in 1888, George Hodel, the man of modern medicine, chose iodine to simulate blood and placed splotches of the red antiseptic on his 1944 Bauerdorf letter.

  “From Hell” letter sent to press October 6, 1888

  . . .

  Sor

  I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer

  signed

  Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

  The Black Dahlia Avenger essentially used the same taunt when he wrote, “We are going to Mexico City, Catch us if you can.”

  Letter sent to press on October 6, 1888

  Now I known you know me and I see your little game, and I mean to finish you and send your ears to your wife if you show this to the police or help them if you do I will finish you.

  Yours truly Jack the Ripper

  In the 1946 Degnan murder, George Hodel actually did what the Ripper threatened to do, mailing a man’s severed human ear neatly wrapped inside a cardboard box to the Degnan residence and addressing it to Mrs. Degnan (the wife).

  The “Whore Killer” Letter, sent October 6, 1888

  Dear Sir

  I don’t think I do enough murders so shall not only do them in Whitechapel—. . . .

  If I can’t get enough women to do I shall cut up men, boys & girls, just to keep my hand in practice. Ha! Ha!

  The Whore Killer

  Zodiac had promised to shoot children as they exited a school bus. In his words, “pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.”

  Letter Undated

  What fools the police are. I even give them the name of the street where I am living. Prince William Street.

  The Black Dahlia Avenger and Zodiac notes are strikingly similar to Jack the Ripper’s in terms of phraseology, tone, deliberate misspellings, and the use of cut-out letters.

  Here are a few Avenger samples for comparison:

  Here is Dahlia belongings.

  Letter to Follow

  Here is the photo of the werewolf killer. I saw him kill her. -A Friend

  Zodiac also signed his 1974 SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) letter “A Friend.”

  The person sending those other notes ought to be arrested for forgery. Ha Ha—BDA

  Ask newsman at Fifth and Hill for Clue . . . BDA

  We’re going to Mexico City—catch us if you can

  2K’s

  Some people develop their natural-born abilities to achieve greatness in music, science, and fine art. Dr. George Hodel used his cunning and intelligence to become a very successful and lethal serial killer. He created a hysterical terror from Manila to Chicago and left behind a legacy that includes not just one series of high-profile crimes, but at least three.

  He did this by studying fictional and real criminal masterminds, including the infamous Jack the Ripper. He then planned his own crimes meticulously to outwit the police. He left his own unique signature by positioning his victims’ bodies to create an intricate map of his ghastly work. As a self-proclaimed member of De Quincey’s “Society of Connoisseurs in Murder,” Dr. George Hodel elevated murder to a fine art.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens.

  Dr. Jekyll

  I’m neither a psychoanalyst nor a police profiler, and don’t pretend to be either. But both as a veteran homicide detective and my father’s son, I have a burning need to try to understand both my father’s motives and pathology.

  How do you explain a man who operated as a distinguished medical doctor and international businessman by day and a savage, vengeful killer by night?

  The closest parallel I’ve found to my father’s real-life story is author Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella called The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

  There’s a reason that this story of a handsome, respectful London scientist who develops a potion that transforms him into a fiendish, lustful murderer has captivated readers and audiences for more than a hundred years. It’s a brilliant dramatization of the pathology of a split personality and the good and evil sides of one man.

  Like Dr. Jekyll, my father was a handsome, respectable man of science who had another, much more frightening side that murdered and bisected women, and seduced and impregnated his own teenage daughter. Women, including my mother, quickly fell in love with his “Dr. Jekyll” persona, but then soon discovered his “Mr. Hyde,” which they loathed and feared. One evening when I was in my mid-teens, Mother, who was very intoxicated at the time, told me, “Your father pretends to be a doctor and a healer, but he’s really insane. You don’t know! He’s a monster. Your father is a terrible man and he’s done terrible things!”

  Our twenty-first-century textbooks have a scientific term for this condition—Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) defines DID as a mental illness in which a single person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment. According to the American Psychiatric Association, a diagnosis requires that at least two personalities routinely take control of the individual’s behavior, with associated memory loss that goes beyond normal forgetfulness. These symptoms can’t be caused by substance abuse or another medical condition.

  My father meets all the above criteria. He did have at least two distinct identities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment. And he did experience the dissociation known to accompany memory loss.

  In fact, the one time he was caught, when he was arrested for incest in 1949, he told detectives, “these things must have happened,” but the incident in his mind was “unclear, like a dream.” He went on to say, “I can’t figure out whether someone is hypnotizing me or I am hypnotizing someone.”

  I’ve always been struck by what seems to be a struggle between two sides of Zodiac’s personality. The braggart and threatening murderer is given full voice in the early letters. But by the “little list,” “Willow, Tit-willow,” Red Phantom, and the Belli letters, Zodiac seems to change. He becomes almost polite.

  Another example of this is the “Badlands” letter (#23, from May 9, 1974). It is remarkable because it contains no spelling errors. Here Zodiac sounds like a cranky old gentleman writing a sarcastic letter to the editor. It reads:

  Sir:

  I would like to express my consternation concerning your poor taste & lack of sympathy for the public, as evidenced by your running of the ads for the movie Badlands, featuring the blurb—“In 1959 most people were killing time. Kit & Holly were killing people.” In light of recent events, this kind of murder-glorification can only be deplorable at best (not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable). Why don’t you show some concern for public sensibilities & cut the ad?

  A citizen

  Is this evidence that the more reasonable side of my father’s mind had gained the upper hand? Perhaps.

  Most compelling of all is the “Exorcist” letter (#21, from January 29, 1974) and its quote from The Mikado—“He plunged himself into the billowy wave and an echo rose from suicide’s grave.” It’s the reference to suicide that I find remarkable. Is this an announcement
of the impending disappearance of the Zodiac/High Executioner part of him beneath the “billowy wave” of his subconscious mind?

  Maybe. Does it explain why Zodiac never struck again? I don’t know.

  What I do know is that most psychiatrists agree that Dissociative Identity Disorder often springs from early childhood physical, psychological, or sexual trauma. When a child is harmed by a trusted caregiver or parent, he or she sometimes splits off the awareness of and memory of that traumatic event in order to continue the relationship. These memories and feelings are then pushed into the child’s subconscious, where they are experienced as a separate personality. Later in life dissociation becomes a coping mechanism for the individual when faced with further stressful situations.

  Was my father a victim of incest? Does this explain why he trained his daughter Tamar to perform oral sex and got her pregnant at age fourteen? I don’t know.

  What I can repeat, however, is what my mother, Dorothy “Dorero” Hodel, often told me: “Your father absolutely hated his mother.” As to the depth of his hatred and its cause, I can only sift through the clues and try to approximate the truth.

  Certainly, my father left behind physical evidence that points to an active internal conflict. It pitted the powerful authority figure he presented in public against the emotionally arrested child demanding attention that comes through in some of his letters. In Black Dahlia Avenger, I pointed out his childish drawings and notes with their misspelled words that were mailed to the press and police.

  Seething under the public persona of the forty-year-old doctor was an alter-personality of the childish man who wrote taunts such as, “We’re going to Mexico City—catch us if you can” and “The person sending those other notes ought to be arrested for forgery! Ha Ha!”

  Further evidence of the childish man within includes the arrow pointing to the photo of Armand Robles (in Figure 25.1), saying, “Next.” And his stocking drawing over the face of Robles (in Figure 25.2) with: “Here is a picture of the werewolf killer’s. I saw him kill her.”

  25.1

  25.2

  As a child, my father was highly pampered and tightly controlled by his mother, Esther, who before marrying my grandfather worked as a dentist in Paris. When George was five, his mother took him with her to France, where they resided together with Count and Countess Paul Troubetskoy for almost at year.

  Throughout his childhood George Hodel was treated as a prodigy, studying piano, performing, and even having a separate residence built for him on his fifteenth birthday.

  I never met my grandmother Esther. She died three years before I was born. According to my mother, when my father wanted to play baseball with his schoolmates after school, my grandmother would tell him, “No, Georgie, you’re a pianist, not a baseball player, and you might hurt your hands.”

  25.3 Esther Lyov Hodel, circa 1912

  25.4 George Hodel in Paris, circa 1912

  Was he viewed as an intellectual freak by his classmates? Possibly. Was his child’s spontaneity denied by his domineering mother? Sounds like it was. Did these denied feelings fester into something angrier and uglier locked inside his genius mind?

  In my father’s earlier biographical summary, I mentioned that as a sexually precocious teenager he had an affair with an older woman that resulted in the birth of his first child—a girl whom the mother named Folly.

  For more than fifty years Folly’s existence had been a whispered family rumor. My mother told me bits and pieces of the story when I was in my twenties: a vague reference to an early affair, which resulted in the birth of another Hodel, a half-sister, predating my father’s acknowledged firstborn son, Duncan.

  I broached the subject with him in the summer of 1997, when my father and June visited me in Bellingham, Washington, for a three-day tour of the San Juan Islands. One evening as the three of us sat watching the sun set, my father pointed out how time had seemed to pass so quickly now that he was just months away from his ninetieth birthday.

  Seeing that he was uncharacteristically mellow, I asked, “Is it true, Father? Is there a Folly out there? A sister I’ve never met?”

  As he paused, I could almost see him travel back in time. “The rumor is true,” he answered. “I was very young, a boy of fifteen, and very much in love.”

  Then he filled in the details, telling me that while he was attending CalTech he had had an affair with a much older, married woman. Her husband discovered the infidelity and they separated. She moved to the East Coast and gave birth to the child, a girl whom she indeed christened Folly.

  “I followed her east,” my father continued, “found where she was living in a small town, and told her I wanted to marry her and raise the child. She wouldn’t have it. She laughed at me and said, ‘You’re just a child yourself. Go away, George. This has all been a terrible mistake. Just go away from me. I never want to see you again.’”

  Father said he remained on the East Coast and tried to convince his former lover that they should be together, but to no avail. Eventually he returned to Los Angeles and never again attempted to make contact with mother or daughter.

  As a way of demonstrating the new computer software I’d recently purchased for searching and locating witnesses, I suggested we check to see if Folly was “in the system.” He gave me the mother’s last name and the name of the small town where she had been living seven decades earlier. I input the information and pressed Enter.

  Incredibly, Folly’s name popped up. Gazing at the screen in disbelief, my father turned pale. I suggested that maybe it was now time to make contact. In a firm voice that bordered on anger, he answered, “No! You must destroy this information. Destroy it now. She must never know. There must never be any contact. Do you understand?”

  Those were the last words he ever spoke to me about his Folly.

  Was this a possible trigger? Had he pursued his first love east and asked her to marry him only to be laughed at and rejected with those stinging words “you’re just a child yourself”?

  Did his hatred of women begin there? Would all future women who dared reject him pay the price? Elizabeth Short violated his trust by going to Chicago and investigating the Degnan murder. As a result, he tracked her down and killed her brutally. Georgette Bauerdorf also rejected him and was murdered.

  Twenty years later, most of Zodiac’s victims were teenage lovers in or just out of high school. Cheri Jo Bates was just eighteen, Betty Lou Jensen sixteen, David Faraday seventeen, Darlene Ferrin twenty-two, Michael Mageau nineteen, Bryan Hartnell twenty, and Cecelia Shepard twenty-two. Had young George Hodel, the intellectually superior but emotionally immature fourteen-year-old high-school senior, suffered other rejections in his socially awkward attempts at dating? In his Cheri Jo Bates confession letter, he referenced “the shapely blue eyed brownett that said no when I asked her for a date in high school” and threatened to kill more.

  Are these the “blighted affections” he was referring to when he quoted from The Mikado? His rejection by women seems to have touched a deep-seated sense of inferiority that triggered a murderous, blinding rage personified by a variation of Mr. Hyde. The results were pure evil visited on the innocent, injuring and disrupting hundreds of lives.

  In the Zodiac letters, he cast himself alternately as Ko-Ko the Lord High Executioner and the tom-tit—the little sparrowlike songbird that threatens to commit suicide. The latter association is particularly interesting in light of a letter my father sent me in June 1980.

  Five months earlier, I had mailed a highly personal letter to my father in the Philippines, in which I shared reflections in many areas of my life, including my deep love and respect for him despite the years of separation. I enclosed an article from the Hollywood Independent that said my partner, Rick Papke, and I had been chosen to receive the Inspector Clouseau Award for solving the murder of veteran film actor Charles Wagenheim.

  Roughly four months later, I received the following very personal reply. It was by turns sad, cruel, tender, a
nd fatalistic, and the clearest peek I know of into my father’s complex, bifurcated mind.

  Dr. George Hill Hodel

  June 4, 1980

  Dear Steve:

  It was good to get your last letter, with its long perspectives. To communicate is such a mysterious process, at any level. And to truly communicate is rare. I am glad that you made the effort and that you succeeded. That you succeeded in beginning to make a breakthrough. One of these days, if time permits, let’s try together, to push through further.

  It is not easy to explain what I mean. But let me give you an example. A parable. But a true example. When you visit here in Manila again I’ll show you the birds, and the glass, and the watchers (we), and we can try together to unlock the secrets of the three. Or is it four?

  Safely hidden away from harm, in the overhead roof rafters of my penthouse in the Excelsior, are a tribe of small birds. Perhaps they are sparrows, house sparrows. They build their nests there, slip between the curves of the galvanized roofing into their separate havens, mate there, and raise their young.

  Each season a generation of brave new little birds squeeze out through the curves of the roofing, and survey their cosmos. They practice hopping about, and pecking at each other, and winging along the balcony. They even discover a tiny swing which I have put up for them (birds love to play, you know) and they jump from the window frames to the metal swing, push back and forward, and hop back delightedly to their take-off place.