by Steve Hodel
And then, somewhere along the line, and usually pretty soon, they make a discovery. A discovery based on advanced technology. A discovery which is totally incomprehensible, but which fills them with joy, and hope, and high excitement.
In Manila, as you may remember, my penthouse apartment faces out toward the west, onto Manila Bay. All through the afternoon, and until the sun sets behind the mountains of Bataan and the island of Corregidor, the sun’s rays beat relentlessly on the glass west wall of my apartment. Air conditioners find it hard to compete with this heavenly barrage.
Therefore, in self-defense, we put up synthetic plastic coating—a mirror film—on all the western windows, to reflect the sun’s rays and help to cool the rooms. It works quite well, and cuts down on heat and glare. Through the glass, we look out on the bay and the mountains and the sunset with slightly bluishly tinted glasses. And they look fine; they look all the better for this bit of blueness.
But to anyone on the outside (and we come back now to our brave young sparrows) the plastic-coated glass is a mirror. It is meant to be a mirror so as to turn away light and heat. It was not designed to deceive little birds. But they are deceived, and aroused, and delighted.
What do they see in the tinted mirror? They see beautiful young birds, amazingly like themselves, hopping about like they do, and full of life, and curiosity. Above all else, our little sparrows yearn to join their companions, and to sport with them, fly with them, even mate with them and continue their flight through eternities of love and time.
But there is a barrier to all these hopes. They do not know and cannot believe that the barrier, the wall of glass, can never be surmounted. There must be a way, they say, to break through somehow, into this paradise of beautiful young birds who await them, who tempt them, and who respond dancer-like to their every movement. How to enter this paradise which is right here, right at hand? How, they ask? Surely there must be a way, if they only persist. Surely they will somehow prevail, they say. Paradise will be theirs. Paradise awaits the brave, the strong, the pure in heart, they say.
And so, for hours on end, our little birds dash against the silent glass. Foray after foray, swooping from a vantage point (the Chinese lanterns near the roof) the little birds strike against the glass. The braver and more patient ones may go on all day, in their assault. The tinted glass is flecked with a thousand marks where little beaks have crashed against it, hour after hour after hour.
And then there is the third partner in this mystery. Ourselves. The tireless birds, the silent glass, and we. We stand wonderingly behind the glass, and contemplate the battle. We are like the gods, watching all and knowing all, knowing that the battle is fore-ordained. But how can we communicate our knowledge to the brave battalions of the birds? How can we warn them, console them? Send them off on other more hopeful missions?
Sadly, as we contemplate the glass and the determined little birds, we must settle with the truth. And the truth is that we cannot warn them, cannot tell them, and can only feel for them, and love them for their courage.
But are there only three of us? The birds, the glass, and we? Or is there a fourth? Who is standing behind our glass, invisible to us, incommunicable to us, gravely watching our brave attacks against the walls we cannot see? Is there a fifth presence, watching all the others? And a sixth, and others, hidden in mysteries beyond our dreams?
When you visit in Manila, I’ll show the countless marks on the glass to you and to Dorero and Marsha, Michael Sean, and Matthew. If you come at the right season, you’ll see the brave little birds themselves, and their efforts to break-through.
There are other ways, too, in which life’s secrets are shadowed forth. Have you ever watched the insect who flies back and forth in the jetliner, seeking a tiny crumb, or wanting out? How can I inform him that he is flying from Amsterdam to Tokyo, and that his life is joined with the lives of us who see beyond the crumb. But not too far beyond. We know as little about our real voyage as the insect knows about the trans-polar flight.
It is good to know that you love me, for this is not easy to achieve, for you, for many reasons. Some of the reasons you have stated, and it is fine that you are able to begin to understand and overcome them. Some of the other reasons, for our love, may be harder to understand, for they may be shrouded in mysteries, like those of the birds and the glass.
I too love you, and this is easier, because you are the very byproduct and testimonial of my love. There is an old Irish saying that “Ah, I knew you me boy, when you were only a gleam in your father’s eye”.
It is also easy (indeed, it is mandatory) for me to love you because I remember things that you do not. I remember the happy, well-controlled, serious, beautiful little boy whom we loved so much. And now love equally, but differently. Only a little difference.
I am enclosing a check for Dorero~ for the six-month period from July through December. Wish it could be more. Try to find ways to give to her—a bit of money, a bit of time, and love, much love. Remember—it was she who responded to the gleam. If she had not . . .
Dorero asked me to send her another enlargement (I brought one to her before in 1974) of her wonderful photo by Man Ray. I have had this copied, and will send it soon. If you want a print, I’ll make one for you too. And for Mike and Kelv, if they do not have them and want them.
Congratulations on your work in the case of Charles Wagenheim and Stephanie Boone. There must be an enigma inside a mystery there, too.
Hope to be out your way one of these days soon. I am interested to know what you plan to do after three years. Your life may just be beginning then.
Give my love to all!
Always,
DAD
Conclusion
I relished the opportunity to work on the Zodiac case. . . . I know that DNA technology will make the case progress further if it is applied.
Homicide Inspector Michael Maloney,
San Francisco Police Department
In 2001, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Stone of Columbia University developed a depravity scale from 1 to 22 to help courts rank heinous, atrocious, and cruel behavior. Category 1 includes those who kill in self-defense. At the bottom of the scale, Category 22 is reserved for the “most evil”—psychopathic torturer-murderers with torture as their primary motive.
In September 2007, on the Discovery Channel’s program entitled Most Evil, Dr. Stone ranked my father, Dr. George Hodel, in Category 22.
I’m not surprised.
The Second Commandment handed down by Moses says, in part: “for I the Lord thou God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” Even though I didn’t grow up with my father past the age of eight, which is when he fled the United States, his sins weigh heavily on me.
As those of you who have read Black Dahlia Avenger know, I stumbled on the investigation into my father’s criminal past by accident. Although it’s been painful to learn what I have about the father I loved, I accept my fate. Perhaps he knew all along that my journey into his criminal past was preordained.
I sincerely hope that my investigation brings some closure to the friends and families of Suzanne Degnan, Josephine Alice Ross, Frances Brown, Cheri Jo Bates, Betty Jensen, David Faraday, Darlene Ferrin, Cecelia Shepard, Paul Stine, and Lucila Lalu y Tolentino. I also would like to bring peace of mind to survivors Michael Mageau, Bryan Hartnell, and the hundreds of policemen and investigators from Riverside, Vallejo, Napa, and San Francisco who spent hundreds of hours trying to discover the identity of Zodiac.
For the past five years I’ve been haunted by the fact that an innocent man named William Heirens is serving time for my father’s crime. We can’t give Bill Heirens back the sixty-some years of his life that he’s spent behind bars. Zealous Chicago investigators and prosecutors took that away long ago. But we can grant him his freedom and help restore his reputation.
As a man who has dedicated his life to criminal investigation, I can’t ign
ore the facts. In my opinion, the trail of evidence leads to one conclusion: My father, Dr. George Hodel, didn’t stop killing women when he left Los Angeles in 1950. He reinvented himself as “Z” and, later, Zodiac, and extended his savage legacy into the San Francisco Bay Area and as far away as Manila. Prior to his reign of terror as the Black Dahlia Avenger, he murdered two women in Chicago and tortured and bisected a six-year-old girl.
I’m now convinced that it was Elizabeth Short’s inquiries into the sensational Suzanne Degnan murder that got her killed. I’m also convinced that my father meant to dump Elizabeth’s body on Degnan Boulevard, not Norton Street. And I believe that the pattern of dumping bodies on street names referring to other crimes is the signature link left by my father in Chicago, Los Angeles, Manila, and San Francisco.
His injured, needy, childish side needed to gloat. And in doing so, he left clues—like the fact that Elizabeth Short’s gravesite lies on the radian provided on the Phillips 66 map sent by Zodiac. Had the SFPD ever seriously considered my father as a suspect, I believe he would have been caught.
They were looking for a younger man, not a sixty-two-year-old international marketing executive who traveled to San Francisco several times a year on business. And their Los Angeles-area counterparts, the LAPD, didn’t do them any favors by expunging my father’s name from their files.
As a homicide investigator who has been called upon to collect sufficient evidence to press formal charges and ultimately convince a jury, I realize that the chain of evidence linking my father to Zodiac and the Chicago Lipstick murders is largely circumstantial. But as was found in the case of the Black Dahlia investigation, I believe that detectives possess and are still holding forensic evidence that links Dr. Hodel to the Zodiac killings and possibly even to one or more of the sixty-year-old Chicago “Lipstick Killer” murders.
It is likely that if we ever find ironclad, conclusive proof of the identity of Zodiac, it will come from the process of matching DNA samples. In 2002, SFPD’s crime lab processed and developed what they believe may be a partial DNA profile of Zodiac. It’s been reported that they have four loci markers available for comparison. A complete human chromosome contains thirteen markers, and four markers are not enough to positively identify a suspect. Further, despite claims to the contrary, neither can this four-marker sample be used to positively exclude any suspect. Why? On the October 17, 2002, episode of Primetime Live: The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer on ABC, San Francisco criminalist Dr. Cydne Holt revealed the source of this DNA: “I found a partial DNA fingerprint from a male individual who at some time has had contact with the stamp.” The stamp she’s referring was attached to one of Zodiac’s letters.
Dr. Holt couldn’t say for certain that the DNA sample belonged to Zodiac. In fact, the sample could have been deposited from the sweat on the hands of the postman or an employee of the San Francisco Chronicle who touched it, or a SFPD print man who dusted the envelope or any one of the many detectives who handled the letter over the past thirty-three years.
It’s also my understanding that since 2002 law-enforcement agencies in Riverside, Vallejo, Napa, and maybe even California’s Department of Justice have developed their own separate Zodiac DNA profiles. I’ve also heard that none of these profiles match one another, which raises major concerns.
I’m confident my father’s DNA can be obtained from a number of sources, including his shoes, the wristband of his watch, and other personal items he left with me. I’m also in possession of the envelope of a letter mailed by my father to me in 1971. Not only did my father place a dozen stamps on it, potentially including his saliva, but there also appears to be a hair strand stuck under the Scotch tape used as a seal.
26.1 George Hodel letter mailed to author 12/2/1971
An even more intriguing source of both my father’s and Zodiac’s DNA could be the pair of black leather gloves that were recovered from Paul Stine’s cab in San Francisco. The following is the DOJ special report filed by investigators. I direct your attention to the last line under the heading “evidence” two-thirds of the way down.
26.2
26.3
SFPD detectives determined that the gloves did not belong to the victim, and believe they belonged to Zodiac. Thirteen days earlier Zodiac was described as wearing a pair of leather gloves when he stabbed Cecelia Shep-pard to death at Lake Berryessa. That means there’s a good reason to believe that SFPD is correct and the gloves belonged to Zodiac and were left in the cab by mistake. Possibly they fell out of his pocket, or maybe he removed them before pulling the trigger.
26.4 SFPD evidence photo showing Stine shirt and men’s black leather gloves at the bottom of the frame in clear plastic evidence bag
I find the gloves to be an especially tantalizing piece of evidence. Why? Because my father regularly carried with him and frequently wore black leather gloves. I checked with a London glove expert and discovered that a man’s size-7 glove is somewhat unusual. Unusual not because of the size, but because, in her words, “Size-seven gloves would be the type worn by a man with long, slender fingers—like those of a concert pianist.” Pictured below is George with his characteristic pair of black leather gloves, his concert days long behind him, and his wife, June, captured on my home video recorder in November 1995, some four years before his death.
26.5 George and June Hodel, Rosario Retreat, Orcas Island, Washington, 1995
Are the Zodiac evidence gloves traceable? Possibly. Can DNA be obtained from inside the fingers of the gloves? I would assume so, because hands sweat. “Touch DNA” is now the state-of-the-art method of obtaining DNA on hard-to-examine surfaces.
I’ve reached the end of a very personal, difficult, and unexpected journey. Now that I present my findings to the public, this case will take on new life. The press will raise questions and demand answers. As with Black Dahlia Avenger, I expect new witnesses will come forward, new evidence will come to light, new links will be established.
And pressure will be put on law enforcement in California, Chicago, and Manila to be forthcoming. As an ex-cop myself, I understand their mind-set. I, too, have had to deal with annoying reporters prying into places they don’t belong and the fact that some members of the public regard the police as “the enemy.” I’ve seen the “circle the wagons” mentality that can develop and multijurisdictional feuds that sometimes arise when the klieg lights of publicity are turned on.
In the interest of honoring the victims of these crimes and their families, I hope that doesn’t happen here.
From the law-enforcement point of view, the Zodiac case in particular has been complicated, immensely time-consuming, and frustrating. Some of the difficulty has been the result of different jurisdictions (Napa, Riverside, Solano, San Francisco) conducting their own investigations into what initially appeared to be separate crimes.
Since 1970 the California Department of Justice has assumed the role of coordinator of the Zodiac investigations by various local police and sheriff departments. That’s why I suggest that California DOJ, headed by Attorney General Jerry Brown, conduct the follow-up investigation that results from this book.
Such a follow-up needn’t be difficult or time-consuming. One or two state investigators will be required to collect the potential DNA evidence from Riverside, Napa, Solano, and San Francisco; ensure chain-of-custody on the samples; and compare them with one another. If the state forensic technicians find that any two samples match, we can be almost certain they represent Zodiac’s DNA.
Once Zodiac’s DNA is established, a comparison can be made with samples from Dr. George Hill Hodel in my possession. If they match, the case is solved. If not, the investigation goes on.
SFPD homicide inspector Michael Maloney, who was one of the last detectives actively assigned to Zodiac, died believing that DNA would one day solve the case. In an open letter to the public written in 2005, two years before his death, he said: “This case is so much about DNA that most police investigators’ eyes would grow very large if
given the chance and the means to work it.”
I hope he’s right.
As I end the current investigation and prepare for what’s to come, I’m going to let my father have the last word. The following is a poem he wrote and published in his 1925 literary magazine Fantasia under the pseudonym Vernon Morel. Keep in mind as you read it that these are the earliest recorded words of the man who horrified Los Angeles in 1947 as the Black Dahlia Avenger, and may well be the same man who, two decades later, spread his evil through the San Francisco Bay Area as Zodiac.
Inference
I was conceived
In sin
On a mad night
Carnal
And incarnadin
Then was the incense rising
Poisonously