Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  It's clear from the outset that he controlled the Dahlia investigation, because it was his administrative responsibility as the captain of Homicide Division. In the early weeks, he fully cooperated with the press and provided them with ongoing updates about where the investigation was heading. In my estimation, and certainly by today's standards, he was overly candid and released far too many investigative details that should have been kept secret. The press's ability to stroke one's ego on page one each morning can be a not-so-subtle seduction, and Captain Jack may have simply enjoyed and succumbed to the notoriety. But Donahoe didn't last too long as the supervisor of the Dahlia investigation, because once he went public with his belief that the Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French murders were connected, Chief of Detectives Thad Brown promptly removed him.

  It is obvious to me that, at least initially, Donahoe didn't know who committed the murder of Elizabeth Short and was actively and energetically chasing every lead. Had he possessed knowledge of the suspect or been involved in the cover-up, he would not have pursued the investigation so aggressively or released vital information to the press and public in the hope of developing new leads. Donahoe was taken off both investigations by his superiors, presumably by Chief of Detectives Thad Brown, in mid-February 1947.

  His years inside the detective bureau and his promotions during the 1930s and '40s would have assured Donahoe of being in the loop within the department. While no one knows what he did or didn't do, whether he was on the take or not, we certainly can be confident that having survived the corrupt years of Mayor Frank Shaw and Chief James Davis and "the Purge," he knew who was dirty and who was not. He was Chief Thad Brown's right-hand man, and in this case the right hand had to know what the left hand was doing.

  If Donahoe was not actively involved in corruption, he certainly knew of its existence. His position as captain in charge of the Homicide Division would have placed him in direct supervision of Charles Stoker's "Bill Ball and Joe Small." It is difficult to believe that Donahoe could or would have turned a deaf ear to this large-scale operation without either taking his share of the profits or taking action to eliminate the corruption, which was an immediate threat to his power and authority as Homicide commander. If he did know of the Dahlia-French-Spangler cover-ups, it would make Captain Jack as dark and as sinister a police captain as his fictional counterpart, Captain Dudley Smith, in James Ellroy's novel L.A. Confidential.

  Donahoe retired fifteen years after the murder of Elizabeth Short and, like the fictional Captain Smith, died a hero to the department and the world. Here are extracts from what the Los Angeles Herald Examiner had to say about the man and his career in his obituary of June 20, 1966:1

  37-YEAR L.A. POLICE VETERAN

  CAPT. JACK DONAHOE DIES

  Capt. Jack Donahoe, 64, was mourned today by law enforcement officers everywhere.

  One of the most noted detectives in the country, Donahoe died yesterday at his Hollywood home after a lengthy illness . . .

  After 37 years on the Los Angeles Police Department, the detective better known as "Captain Jack" retired four years ago. He was honored by more than 700 men and women from every walk of life at an official banquet at the Police Academy .. .

  The 6-foot-1, more than 200 pound enemy of crime, had been suffering for the past three years from a back injury, and was found dead in his living room chair by his wife, Ann . ..

  On Donahoe's retirement, Chief of Detectives Thad Brown said: "I have lost my right hand."

  What I, then only a three-year rookie out of the Hollywood Division, and most of the rest of LAPD were never told was that Captain Jack, at 11:21 on the morning of June 18, 1966, while seated in his living room chair, had removed his service revolver, placed it over his heart, and pulled the trigger. His death report, a public record, reads not "after a lengthy illness" but "John Arthur Donahoe, Suicide, Cause of Death — Gunshot Wound of Chest Perforating Heart and Aorta with Massive Hemorrhage."

  It is almost certain that we will never know why this senior command officer, the highest-ranking detective assigned to the Black Dahlia murder investigation, took his own life. Was it illness? Depression? Or was it guilt? If he left a suicide note or explanation of any kind, it has long since been destroyed.

  Even though we may never discover the entire truth about what actually took place inside the LAPD during the years from 1947 to 1950, it's possible to speculate with confidence about what probably happened as the two candidates for chief, Brown and Parker, vied for power. I firmly believe that both men, possibly thinking they were acting in the department's best interests, actively covered up not only the abortion ring investigation, but the Dahlia, French, Spangler, and other sexual homicides as well. Even the grand jury investigation of 1949 could not pry the full story loose.

  It's important to figure out who knew about the cover-up and what exactly they knew. From what Joe Barrett told me, at the time my father was arrested in 1949 the district attorney's office strongly suspected he was involved in the Dahlia case. If the DA thought so, it's clear the police must have suspected him as well but buried what they knew to protect themselves.

  Who knew? Most certainly Chiefs William Worton, William Parker, and Thad Brown knew the evidence against George Hodel and Fred Sexton. The primary investigators, Finis Brown, brother of Thad Brown, and his partner, Harry Hansen, had to know as well. Gangster Squad detectives "Bill Ball and Joe Small" were certainly in the loop, because I believe they initiated the cover-up to protect the members of the abortion ring. District Attorney Simpson, his chief of Bureau of Investigation, H. Leo Stanley, and his chief investigator, Lieutenant Frank Jemison, along with his partners who testified before the grand jury and provided them with the name of the prime suspect, all knew. And, as we will see, all eighteen of the grand jury members also heard my father named as the suspect. Therefore, in the closing months of 1949, at least twenty-eight people were informed and given the name of the prime suspect in the murders of both Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French.

  But there were doubtless many more; a "secret" like that is quickly passed around within the high-ranking inner circle. If not immediately, then ultimately, Captain Donahoe and Captain Earle Sansing discovered the truth, but were forced to keep it to themselves.* Sansing doubtless wanted to see if I knew the truth about my father when in 1963 he told me bluntly that it would be a waste of time and taxpayers' money for me to enter the L.A. Police Academy. It's also possible that many of today's surviving top brass know this secret, and are expected, like the good soldiers they are, to take it to their graves.

  But why was the cover-up allowed to continue? It's clear that "Ball and Small" were only doing what they were paid to do when they wrapped protection around the doctors in the abortion ring. If my father knew the names of the doctors in the ring, it's likely that the Gangster Squad detectives protected him as well. But when the information about the Dahlia murders reached the higher ranks, someone at the very center of power had to make the decision to suppress it.

  Now, try to imagine what it must have been like in October 1949, when Deputy Chief William H. Parker and Deputy Chief Thaddeus Finis Brown faced off against each other for the top job in the LAPD. Each man realized that the department and its officers had been under constant fire from the press and the public during the past year. Crime was still rampant. Worse, terror was gripping the city's female population as a result of the dozen or more rape-murders that still had not been solved. A crazed sex killer was on the loose — back in 1949 nobody knew what a serial killer was — and no one could stop him. The stigma of the nation's most horrific and sadistic murder, the Black Dahlia, had been burned into the collective psyche of the L.A. public, and the case remained an open wound that would not heal.

  Against this background, either Brown or Parker — or both — in what I suspect was a late-1949 briefing of an Internal Affairs investigation, were told by their subordinates that "there is another problem."t Two years earlier, in the weeks following the murder
of Elizabeth Short, several detectives working on the Homicide Division's Gangster Squad were assigned to assist in the investigation due to the fact that the crime may have been gangster-related, as a prominent citizen and friend to known hoodlums — also a boyfriend of the victim — was a possible suspect. The two Gangster Squad detectives (known and friendly to this suspect) informed the regular homicide detectives assigned to the Dahlia case that they had checked him out and were able to eliminate him as a suspect. They likely further minimized his 1947 connections to the crime by informing other detectives that it was simply a mix-up, a case of mistaken identity. Chiefs Brown and Parker, in their 1949 briefing, were likely further informed of the following: two years after the Dahlia murder, in October 1949, the suspect/acquaintance of these same two detectives, a prominent and wealthy Hollywood man, a medical doctor, had been arrested and charged by LAPD Juvenile Division detectives with having committed incest with his fourteen-year-old daughter. Now this guy was going to trial.

  The candidates received more bad news. An independent investigation by Internal Affairs officers had just turned up evidence that the two Gangster Squad detectives who had originally eliminated this suspect had probably destroyed some bloody clothing that may have connected him to another murder shortly after the Dahlia killing. In fact, according to IAD, these detectives might well have done everything they could to cover the doctor's tracks, so that he would not be discovered. What were their motives? Probably financial, because it's known that this Hollywood doctor was not only tied to known gangsters but also might well have either been involved in payoffs to the police or been tied to the abortion ring Charles Stoker testified about before the grand jury. Perhaps both.

  But the worst was yet to come. According to the IAD officers, it was highly likely that many more of the recent murder victims since 1947 were connected to this same man, and he might well have been responsible for a dozen or more sexual homicides over recent years. This killer, whose identity was known to police, was still on the loose.

  Both Parker and Brown — and it was Brown's own brother who had investigated this suspect — knew that they had everything to lose and nothing to gain by putting this guy away and risking a full disclosure. With the elections eight months away, were the truth to become public, each candidate and everything he'd worked for would be swept away in a tidal wave of scandal. The humiliation sure to follow would not only result in each man's total loss of power within the department, but would probably destroy the department as well. The LAPD would never recover.

  Could either Parker or Brown, both of whom were creatures of the system, admit to the public that two of their veteran detectives were running an abortion ring, taking protection money as payoffs, and then covering up Los Angeles's most brutal murder to protect a friend tied to the same gangsters who were paying them off? Finally, as a direct result of their actions, this madman had been allowed to remain free to continue his killing spree for two more years within the city.

  Disclosure was not an option. The liability to the city alone from the lawsuits by relatives would almost certainly bankrupt the city. Two corrupt policemen could not be allowed to destroy the careers of the many. Nor could they be allowed to destroy the reputation of the department. There was only one solution: a cover-up of the Gangster Squad detectives' cover-up. For the good of the entire department, for the good of the city, and probably for their own good as well, the two candidates for chief rationalized and justified their actions and put in place a cover-up.

  So the orders came down: all Dahlia records were to be sealed, entombed at Homicide Division. It was an informational lockdown. No one was to see the investigation. One detective was to be assigned to the case and even his own partner would be restricted from access to the files. Nothing on the Dahlia case was to be shared with any other jurisdiction, and trusted sentinels were to be posted as gatekeepers to the locked files. Maybe even the files themselves were destroyed in an attempt to remove anything that might shed light on the truth. After all, these women were all alone in the world. And they were dead. Nothing would bring them back. Why destroy the department when it would accomplish nothing? Both Brown and Parker were united in the same conclusion — the department could not look back, only forward. Each man, were he to be made chief, doubtless vowed to put reforms into place that would keep a disaster like this from ever happening again. And when Parker became chief, he began just such a decade of reforms.

  These, I believe, were some of the main reasons — and justifications — by a few men in power at the very top to implement a cover-up: to preserve the department, the administration, and the city coffers.

  In 1949 Los Angeles it was business as usual.

  1Three weeks later, Chief Parker would suffer a massive heart attack while giving a public speech and die. Thad Brown would then assume command.

  *Daryl Gates, in his autobiography, Chief: My Life in the LAPD, refers to Sansing as LAPD's "greatest captain of all time."

  LAPD's Internal Affairs Division (IAD) was established in 1949, by then interim chief Worton, who promoted Inspector Parker to the rank of deputy chief and placed him in charge of this newly established unit. IAD detectives were (and are to this day) both feared and hated because of their role of investigating and ferreting out crooked cops.

  28

  The Grand Jury

  Even truth itself decays, and lo, from truth's sad ashes pain and falsehood grow.

  — Herman Melville

  WHILE MUCH OF THE INFORMATION that follows is probative and directly supports the fact that George Hodel, the 1949 grand jury's "wealthy Hollywood man," was the prime suspect in both the Black Dahlia and Red Lipstick murders, we need no further proof. We have reviewed the evidence, seen the proof, and now know he was without question the killer.

  But there remains a further truth that needs be addressed. Like myself, many will find this second truth to be as dark as, or darker than, the stark reality of my father's madness.

  That truth has to do with proving my allegation that the Los Angeles Police Department did commit a Dahliagate. The department's two highest officers, Thad Brown and William Parker, in a conscious and deliberate obstruction of justice, aided and abetted a cover-up and, along with their subordinates, were directly responsible for knowingly permitting a psychopathic serial killer to remain free until he was finally forced to leave the country in 1950.

  I make these allegations with the utmost reluctance and a heavy heart. These two leaders, Parker and Brown, were on the job and in command during my watch. Both were my personal heroes and remain unarguably LAPD's two most important legends. But the facts are undeniable.

  Violence was so prevalent on the streets of Los Angeles by 1949 that the public had finally had enough. Each day's headlines featured new stories of kidnapping, rape, and murders of women even in the city's upscale neighborhoods. No one was safe, and the community was outraged over the ineffectiveness of their police department. Worse, the department itself seemed to be no better than the gamblers, hoods, and thugs it was supposed to be getting off the streets.

  First, there were the revelations of graft and corruption that came out of the Administrative Vice Division when Sergeant Stoker went public with the story of the Brenda Allen scandal. Hard on the heels of a public airing of LAPD's dirty laundry came the murder of Louise Springer, whose body was found strangled in her car near downtown. Then came what was to be known as "the Battle of Sunset Boulevard," when famed gangster Mickey Cohen and his entourage were gunned down on the streets of Hollywood. Then people began disappearing under mysterious circumstances, one after the other. First was Mimi Boomhower on August 18. Then on September 2 came the turn of Barney Weiner, a fifty-year-old newspaperman and district manager for the Daily Racing Form. Frank Niccoli, a close friend and business associate of Mickey Cohen, vanished on the same day. Their respective cars were soon located, but no bodies were found. Actress Jean Spangler disappeared on October 7, and three days later Dave "Little Davey" O
gul, another Cohen henchman, also vanished, and his car, like the others, was found abandoned in West Los Angeles. Cohen was quoted as saying about Niccoli and Ogul, "Fm afraid the guys ain't living. They was swallowed up."

  By October, Los Angeles had jokingly become known as "the Port of Missing Persons," but it was no joke and its citizens were not laughing. Not only notorious hoods and gangsters went missing, but ordinary people as well. It was time the district attorney did what he was elected to do and put a stop to it.

  In 1949, a grand jury was empaneled. Very quickly, it became proactive and, led by fiery jury foreman Harry Lawson, seemed determined to get some answers. Conducting its own investigations, and using its subpoena powers, it began with the Brenda Allen case and Stoker's charges of a systemic corruption within the LAPD, reaching all the way to the top.

  After the Brenda Allen case and Charles Stoker, the next item on the grand jury's agenda was the Black Dahlia murder. Why hadn't the case been solved, and, if a fix had been put in, who was behind it?

  Investigators from the district attorney's office, working through their own operatives, interviews with witnesses, and information developed by unnamed private investigators independent of the LAPD, provided dramatic new information to the grand jury.

  The actual testimony itself, as with all grand juries, was secret and, because the case is still technically open, remains secret to this day. However, from articles printed in the dailies, it became clear that DA investigators believed that detectives within the LAPD assigned to the Gangster Squad had orchestrated the cover-up. DA investigators testified before the grand jury with respect to their own investigation and findings, which were the results of having assembled and organized all facts related to the Dahlia investigation during the thirty-four-month period since the murder. They suspected that the Gangster Squad detectives were protecting the identity of "a wealthy Hollywood man" who was a prime suspect. The DA investigators gave the grand jury the name of the suspect and his address, saying they had found witnesses who would testify to having seen bloody clothing of the type and size worn by Elizabeth Short, as well as bloody bedsheets, inside the suspect's home.