by Steve Hodel
Paul Simone was a painting contractor living in Hollywood who had been employed by and was working at the Chancellor Hotel on Saturday, January 11, 1947, the same hotel where Elizabeth Short had shared room 501 with seven women the previous December. While working at the building on January 11, he told police he heard "loud arguing" coming from the rear of the hotel. Checking to see what the commotion was, he saw Elizabeth Short and another woman involved in what he described as "a bitter argument." The second woman was "cursing loudly at Elizabeth," according to his statement, and Simone feared the two women were on the verge of physically fighting. The second woman saw Simone approach, looked at him, and yelled, "Oh, nuts to you!" then turned and walked out of the hotel. When she was gone, Elizabeth asked Simone, "Is there a rear exit to the hotel?" He said there wasn't and walked Elizabeth to the front door, where she got into a waiting taxi.
I. A. Jorgenson was a Los Angeles cab driver who provided evidence to police of another sighting of Elizabeth Short, this time on the night of January 11, 1947. Jorgenson told the detectives his cab was parked outside of the Rosslyn Hotel, at 6th and Main Streets in downtown Los Angeles, when a man and a woman he positively identified as Elizabeth Short got in. The man told him to drive them to a motel in Hollywood. Police sources would not provide the press with the description of the man or the name of the motel, telling reporters "they would first conduct a follow-up and interview employees of the motel in Hollywood."
"John Doe Number 2," another secret witness police kept under wraps from reporters, was a gas station attendant working at the Beverly Hills Hotel who saw Elizabeth Short in the Beverly Hills area in the early-morning hours of January 11. The witness told detectives that around 2:30 a.m. he saw a vehicle, which he described as "a 1942 tan Chrysler coupe," stopped at the service station for gas. He positively identified Elizabeth Short from police photos as the same woman he saw in the backseat of the car. "She seemed very upset and frightened," he noted. He also saw a second woman in the car, whom he described only as "wearing dark clothing." He described the male driver as "about thirty years of age, six foot one, 190 pounds."
As reported earlier in the LAPD investigative chronology chapter, Mr. and Mrs. William Johnson, owners and on-site managers of a hotel located at 300 East Washington Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, are the two most important witnesses police never brought forward to the public, because on January 12 they saw Elizabeth in the company of the man who most likely killed her. They saw this prime suspect again on January 15, after Elizabeth's body had been discovered. They told police that on Sunday, January 12, 1947, at approximately 10:00 a.m., they were working at their hotel when a man, whom they described as "25 to 35 years of age, medium complexion, medium height," came to the desk and "asked for a room."
An hour later, a woman they positively identified as Elizabeth Short came to the hotel and joined the man who had booked the room. Mrs. Johnson provided the following description: "She had on beige or pink slacks, a full-length beige coat, white blouse and white bandanna over her head, and she was carrying a plastic purse with two handles."
Mr. Johnson told police that "the man refused to sign the registration, when he checked in, and told me to put down Barnes and wife." The man told Mr. Johnson they had just moved out of Hollywood. The Johnsons watched the man and Elizabeth go to their room, and that was the last time either of them saw Elizabeth Short.
LAPD detectives showed both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson photographs found in Elizabeth Short's luggage, and after viewing the many separate photographs the Johnsons positively identified the victim, Elizabeth Short, and her male companion who checked into the hotel with her as "Mr. Barnes." The police did not release the identity of "Mr. Barnes."
C. G. Williams, a bartender at the Dugout Cafe at 634 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles, told police and reporters that when he was working at the bar on the afternoon of January 12, 1947, he saw a woman, whom he positively identified as Elizabeth Short, walk into the bar accompanied by "an attractive blonde." Elizabeth was a regular customer well-known to him. The bartender clearly remembered Elizabeth's visit that day, as "a fracas occurred," along with shouting, after two men tried to pick up the ladies and were rejected.
Former jockey John Jiroudek had known Elizabeth Short when she worked at the Camp Cooke PX during the time he was a G.I. stationed there. He remembered her in particular, he told police, because he was there when she was chosen as the Camp Cooke "Cutie of the Week." He told detectives he saw her again in a brief encounter on January 13, 1947, when they crossed paths at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. She was a passenger in a 1937 Ford sedan. A blonde female was driving the car. He spoke briefly with Elizabeth at the intersection, and the two women drove off.
As also referred to earlier in the LAPD investigative chronology, policewoman Myrl McBride, walking a beat in downtown Los Angeles, was probably one of the last people to have seen Elizabeth Short alive. She came forward to her bosses in the department after seeing photographs of the Jane Doe Number 1 who had just been identified from FBI records as Elizabeth Short. Myrl McBride positively identified her to superiors as the same woman who had come running up to her at the downtown bus depot, in fear for her life.
McBride reported that on the afternoon of January 14, 1947, while she was on her beat at the bus depot in downtown Los Angeles, Elizabeth Short ran up to her "sobbing in terror" and told her, "Someone wants to kill me." Short said that she had come from a bar up the street and had just run into an ex-boyfriend. Officer McBride said that Short told her she "lives in terror" of a former serviceman whom she had just met in a bar up the street. McBride added, "She told me the suitor had threatened to kill her if he found her with another man."
McBride said she walked the victim back into the Main Street bar, where she recovered her purse. A short time later, McBride again observed the victim "reenter the bar, and then emerge with two men and a woman." At that time McBride had a brief second conversation with Elizabeth Short, who told her that she "was going to meet her parents at the bus station later in the evening."
On January 16, the day the body was identified and photographs obtained, Officer McBride provided an unequivocal positive identification of Elizabeth Short as the same person who ran to her "in terror, fearful of being killed." A day or two following that positive identification, her statement was then "modified by detectives to being uncertain." My initial evaluation of McBride's statement from positive to uncertain was that LAPD detective-supervisors wanted the officer to, in police terminology, "CYA" (cover your ass). They couldn't allow the public to think that one of their own basically took no action and allowed the victim to walk into the hands of her killers just hours before she was murdered. Better to have her modify her statement and let the public think that maybe the woman McBride had contact with was not Elizabeth. (Sadly, this was not the case.) LAPD's need to minimize or reverse McBride's positive identification pointed to a much more sinister intent.
From the various witnesses who saw Elizabeth Short between January 9 and January 14, 1947, it's clear there was no "missing week" in Elizabeth's life. That week was crisscrossed with sightings by both complete strangers and acquaintances, most of whom spoke unequivocally about Elizabeth's moods and movements in the days and hours before her murder, and all of whom saw her within a twelve-mile radius of downtown Los Angeles. These twelve witnesses, culled from reports of other sightings that are less than reliable, are sound.
Officer McBride's sighting of Elizabeth just twenty hours before the discovery of her body, and a mere eight hours before Dr. Newbarr's forensic estimation of the time of her murder, must focus anyone's attention and suspicions on the three individuals in whose company she was seen. Who were these two men and the woman with Elizabeth? What were the descriptions of them provided by Officer McBride but not released to the public? Was one of these two men the person that Elizabeth told Officer McBride about in the bus depot, while "sobbing in terror"? Was he the same man w
hom Elizabeth just a short time earlier had fled from in the Main Street bar, the same "jealous suitor who had threatened to kill her"?
There is one interesting aspect to Elizabeth Short's "missing week" that may not have been apparent to the LAPD at the time but is now. In the statement made by Linda Rohr, a roommate of Elizabeth's at the Chancellor Hotel in Hollywood, she said that she last saw Elizabeth on December 6, 1946, confirming landlady Juanita Ringo's statements. Linda also said that when Elizabeth was packing to leave, she was very upset. She quoted Elizabeth as saying, "He's waiting for me," but added, "None of us ever found out who 'he' was."
The next known sighting of Elizabeth was on December 12, when she met Dorothy French at the San Diego moviehouse and was offered a place to stay at her home. So from December 6 to December 12 there is indeed a missing week for Elizabeth, but it is before she goes to San Diego and not after she leaves the Biltmore.
Since at the beginning of that week in early December we know Elizabeth was hurrying to meet her mysterious boyfriend, who that day was "waiting" for her, we can fairly assume she spent part if not all of the missing week with him. It was here that she disappeared off the radar screen. Who was this man? Where did they stay? What happened to her? Five days later Elizabeth resurfaced in San Diego, huddling for warmth in an all-night moviehouse, lonely, destitute, and afraid.
19
The Final Connections: Man Ray Thoughtprints
THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF MY INVESTIGATION, the more I researched, the more I became aware of how important Man Ray was to George Hodel, who clearly considered him a kindred spirit. However, it was some time before I realized just how close and influential that relationship had been. Did that profound influence, I wondered, have anything to do with the Black Dahlia?
It was the "Black Dahlia Avenger" who told police that he'd murdered Elizabeth Short and, through his notes, that his sadistic torture and murder was justified. Perhaps, like the "Ballad of Frankie and Johnny," in which Frankie kills her lover "cause he done her wrong," in his mind Elizabeth had wronged him. I suspect he and Elizabeth were lovers and were going to be married. I also believe Elizabeth had made a promise to him — "a promise is a promise to a person of the world," the anonymous 1945 telegram from Washington, D.C., had said — but Elizabeth broke that promise. In breaking her word she "done him wrong," and like Johnny she would pay for it with her life.
Essential to the nature of a true "avenger," the killer had to inflict pain on the person, but it differs in that the acts were seen by the avenger as retribution and were, in the avenger's mind, therefore morally justified. The avenger likened himself to a state-sanctioned executioner, who takes the life of a prisoner in the name of the people, exacting retribution for a capital offense. As his pasted message to the press announced, "Dahlia killing was justified."
What distinguishes the crime of Elizabeth Short from the murder of many other lone women in L.A. in the 1940s is the manner of her execution, the horrible mutilation of her body, and the posing of her corpse.
Through the years, one of the most intriguing and frustrating questions the police had never been able to answer was: why had the killer gone to such extraordinary lengths to "pose" his victim? Surely this was a thoughtprint, a message for the world to read, if only it could. It was surreal, fiendishly surreal.. . There was clearly a method to the killer's madness, a reason he posed the body the way he did. In his game of cat and mouse with the police and public, the "avenger" was, by that bizarre pose, leaving a message, as if he was challenging police to pick it up — a riddle, a test of wits, with himself as the master criminal.
Given George Hodel's relationship to and love of Man Ray's work, I examined hundreds of photographs in all of Man Ray's books. Just as I was about to give up, I found what I was looking for: a painting, Les Amoureux (The Lovers) (1933-34), and a photograph, The Minotaur (1936), two of his most celebrated pieces. The former portrays a pair of lips as two bodies entwine and stretch across the horizon from end to end, the latter shows a victim of the mythological monster, which had the head of a bull and the body of a man. The Minotaur was kept imprisoned in the labyrinth on the island of Crete, where it was fed young maidens to satisfy it and keep it alive.
In Man Ray's Minotaur, we see a woman's naked body with her arms raised over her head, the right arm placed at a forty-five-degree angle away from the body and then bent at the elbow to form a ninety-degree angle. The left arm is similarly bent at the elbow to form a second ninety-degree angle. This positioning recreates the horns of the bull-headed beast. The body is bisected at the waist so that only the upper torso is in frame. One can easily imagine the two breasts as a creature's ghoulish eyes and the shadow above the stomach as the creature's mouth, as if the face of the carnivorous beast is superimposed on the body of its victim.
I pulled from my file the crime-scene photo of Elizabeth Short as she was discovered by police on the morning of January 15, 1947, in the vacant lot on Norton. The positioning of Elizabeth's arms precisely duplicates the position of the subject's arms in Man Ray's photograph! In this precise posing of the arms, the killer had replicated the horns just as Man Ray intended them in his original photograph. But there's more. The excised piece of flesh below Elizabeth's left breast imitates the shadow below the victim's breasts in the Man Ray photograph. I offer as evidence exhibits 35a and 35b.
Exhibits 35a and 35b
a) Elizabeth Short crime scene b) Man Ray's Les Amoureux and Minotaur
From the view in exhibit 35a we cannot see whether Elizabeth's right side was also excised in similar fashion. Perhaps most tellingly, the laceration the killer cut into Elizabeth's face extends her mouth from ear to ear, and her lips appear grotesquely identical to the lover's lips extending across the horizon in Man Ray's Les Amoureux.
The killer had to make her death extraordinary both in planning and execution. In his role as a surreal artist, he determined that his work would be a masterpiece of the macabre, a crime so shocking and horrible it would endure, be immortalized through the annals of crime lore. As avenger, he would use her body as his canvas, and his surgeon's scalpel as his paintbrush!
Much as I wanted to deny it to myself or to look for other possible explanations, I now realized the facts were undeniable: George Hodel, through the homage he consciously paid to Man Ray, was provocatively revealing himself to be the murderer of Elizabeth Short. Her body, and the way she was posed, was Dr. George signature — both artistic and psychological — on his own surreal masterpiece, in which he juxtaposed the unexpected in a "still death" tribute to his master, using human body parts! The premeditated and deliberate use of these two photographs — one symbolizing my father and Elizabeth as the lovers in Les Amoureux, and another my father as the avenger, the Minotaur himself, the bull-headed beast consuming and destroying the young maiden, Elizabeth, in sacrifice — is my father's grisly message of his and Man Ray's shared vision of violent sexual fantasy. Given George Hodel's megalomaniacal ego, it was also a dash of one-upmanship.
Another instance of the morbid influence of Man Ray's photographs on my father is exhibit 36: Man Ray's 1945 photograph of his wife, Juliet, beneath a silk stocking mask. I maintain that photo was the inspiration for Father's altering the photograph of his assault victim, seventeen-year-old Armand Robles (exhibit 36):
Exhibit 36
In the early 1970s, after having lived and practiced in Manila for twenty years, George Hodel attended a one-man show at the Philippines Cultural Center called the Erotic and Non-Erotic Drawings of Modesto, where he discovered the promising young artist Fernando Modesto. Father was instantly drawn to the twenty-two-year-old artist's erotic works and to what he would later term "the brilliant style of the artist's approach." From that first showing until his return to the United States from Asia in 1990, Father would be Modesto's patron, buying virtually everything he created. And Modesto was prolific. By 1990 Father had amassed a personal collection of over 1,600 Modesto works, 95 percent of which would have to be c
onsidered erotica.
In the months prior to his death, George Hodel was preparing to market his private collection to the public, which required that he develop a strategy and promotion campaign. His first step would be to tell the world something about the artist, who by that time had developed a reputation in Europe and Asia but was less known in the States. Included in this marketing program would be a description of the artist and his developing vision, which had evolved over his twenty-year career through various stages. A sampling of the works from Modesto's different periods of development were included in Father's brochure, along with relevant catalog descriptions. This catalog copy was not comprised of Modesto's interpretations of his own art, but rather those of his patron, a pioneer in marketing, a businessman, and a psychiatrist.
FERNANDO MODESTO
by Dr. George Hodel
Page 2, 1976 —(Examples 17-21)
They seem to have several levels of meaning. One level appears to reflect the artist's views on the universality of the erotic drive, which impels all creatures and unites them in a cosmic identity.
Page 3, 1982 — (Examples 35-36)
Homage to Man Ray. Modesto has always greatly admired, and has been inspired by, the work of Man Ray. He has collected many books on Man Ray, and often looks at these photos, paintings, and sculptures.
From Father's private collection of these artworks, there is only one piece that specifically relates to the investigation of the murder of Elizabeth Short. I call it Modesto's Lovers (exhibit 37). It is displayed here in comparison to its inspiration, Man Ray's 1934 Les Amoureux. I came across it only after Father's death while I was helping June photograph and catalog the entire collection.
Top: Man Ray's Les Amoureux; Bottom: Modesto's Lovers