Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

by Steve Hodel

  Elizabeth herself is her own best spokesperson. Her letters abound in naiveté, which I read as a belief in the essential honesty of others. For example, in her letters to her self-described fiance Major Matt Gordon, written in April and May of 1945 and published in newspapers after Elizabeth's murder, she shares her heart's secrets. In anticipation of Matt's return from overseas and her pending marriage, she wrote:

  My Sweetheart:

  I love you, I love you, I love you. Sweetheart of all my dreams . . .

  Oh, Matt, honestly, I suppose when two people are in love as we are our letters sound out of this world to a censor .. .

  Just dreaming and hoping for a letter and now you are going to be mine . ..

  It is going to be wonderful darling, when this is all over. You want to slip away and be married. We'll do whatever you wish, darling. Whatever you want, I want. I love you and all I want is you . ..

  Beth

  Or this later letter to Matt:

  My Darling Matt:

  I have just received your most recent letter and clippings. And, darling, I can't begin to tell you how happy and proud I am . . .

  I'm so much in love with you, Matt, that I live for your return and your beautiful letters so please write when you can and be careful, Matt for me. I'm so afraid! I love you with all my heart.

  Beth

  After Matt Gordon's death, Elizabeth dated another officer, Lieutenant Joseph Gordon Fickling, in the hope of finding a new love. Fickling discouraged her; in a letter from him to her found in her luggage he wrote:

  Time and again I've suggested that you forget me as I've believed it's the only thing for you to do to be happy.

  Discharged from the service in 1946, Fickling returned to Charlotte, North Carolina. Letters addressed to him but not mailed were found in Elizabeth's luggage. On December 13, 1946, Elizabeth, her hopes for marriage with Fickling all but extinguished, wrote, but never mailed, the following:

  . . . Frankly, darling, if everyone waited to have everything all smooth before they decided to marry, none of them ever would be together.

  I'll never love any man as I do you. And, I should think that you would stop and wonder whether or not another woman will love you as much.

  Another letter found in her luggage, written by a Lieutenant Stephen Wolak, speaks directly to the issue of Elizabeth's obsessive desire to marry a military man. Wolak wrote:

  When you mentioned marriage in your letter, Beth, I got to wondering about myself. Seems like you have to be in love with a person before it's a safe bet. Infatuation is sometimes mistakenly accepted for true love, which can never be.

  A letter from a fourth serviceman, identified only as Paul Rosie, was found bound with ribbons with the rest of the letters. He wrote, as a response to what we must assume to be another love letter from Elizabeth:

  Your letter took me completely by surprise. Yes, I've always had the feeling that we had a lot in common and that we could have meant a lot to each other had we only been together more often. It's nice to receive a warm friendly letter such as yours.

  These letters, addressed to four separate servicemen and published on the front pages of L.A.'s major newspapers, are all windows into her heart. They were never expected to be read by anyone except the men to whom they were addressed, but they reveal a young woman's desperate need to find love and to marry, her overwhelming joy at finding love, and her ecstatic anticipation of her fiance's triumphant return. After the tragic news of his sudden death, she goes into a tailspin at having lost the man of her dreams and returns to California in the hope of finding another man to heal her broken heart.

  The Dahlia letters themselves have never been previously discussed by the press, the police, or in any of the books written about the investigation, yet to my mind they raise a serious question about Elizabeth's emotional or psychological health. We know from the conflicting stories Elizabeth told friends that she was not only extremely secretive, but prone to distort the truth. On a number of occasions she clearly fantasized or lied. For example:

  She told both Dorothy and Elvera French that she had been married to Matt, had borne him a child, and the child had died.

  In early letters she told her mother she had had some minor roles in films as an "extra." In her last letter to her mother in early January 1947, she told her she was working in San Diego at the hospital at Balboa Park.

  She told Robert "Red" Manley that she had been married to a major and was working at the Western Airlines office in San Diego.

  All these fabrications relate directly to her own self-image, her attempts to cast herself in a specific light: she needed to show others she was able to function normally in the world, to form relationships, to marry, to have a child, to hold a steady job.

  This raises a question: was she ever really the fiancee of Major Matt Gordon or was that too a fantasy? I believe it was. When Elizabeth was staying with the Frenches in San Diego, she showed them a newspaper clipping announcing the engagement of Matt Gordon. But Elizabeth had crossed out the fiancee's name, explaining, "They had made an error on the name in the paper."

  When Matt Gordon's mother was interviewed after Elizabeth's murder, she never confirmed that her son was engaged to marry Elizabeth. All she said was the two had known each other in Miami in 1944 and that she had sent Elizabeth a telegram informing her of her son's death. If Matt Gordon had been engaged to Elizabeth Short, why hadn't he told his mother and why didn't his mother confirm this to the police?

  Further, how could Elizabeth still be in possession of the letters she had written and supposedly mailed to Matt overseas? We know she wrote the letter or letters on VE Day, May 8, 1945, and we know Matt was still overseas. There are only two possibilities: (1) the letters were found in his personal effects and returned to his mother, who forwarded them to Elizabeth; (2) far more likely, the letters were written by Elizabeth and, like those found in her suitcase to Lieutenant Fickling, they were never mailed. No letters were found in her suitcases from Major Matt Gordon. In fact, it's likely that Gordon actually rejected Elizabeth, who, heartbroken, then fantasized a relationship with him. When Elizabeth learned of his engagement to another woman, she was forced to create her own fantasy, writing the letters for herself, changing the story's ending from sorrow to joy, and keeping them wrapped in ribbons. They become unmailed reminders of what might have been. To the world this becomes the true story. She found and married Major Right, and they even had a child, but, unhappily, both father and infant died.

  Examiner editor James Richardson, whose reporters scoured Medford, Massachusetts, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Diego to provide him with background information on Elizabeth, got it right when he described her in his 1954 memoir:

  Elizabeth Short. . . was in search of a good husband and a home and happiness. Not bad. Not good. Just lost and trying to find a way out. Every big city has hundreds just like her.

  From her own letters and from those that knew her in life, it is obvious that Elizabeth, at the young age of twenty-two, had several faces. As for myself, I will always think of her as the ingénue with only traces of the soubrette.

  30

  The Dahlia Investigation,

  2001-2002

  OVER THE MORE THAN TWO YEARS that I'd been conducting my investigation into the Black Dahlia case, I had come to realize that police administrators have their own agendas, which may or may not coincide with the needs of the people they are supposed to serve. Arriving at that conclusion, I was afraid that, once my disclosures became public, LAPD could well take a predictable and traditional defensive stance, responding with a terse public statement such as:

  Dr. George Hill Hodel was a prime suspect throughout our investigation. His name figures prominently in our files. He was always at the top of our list of suspects. We simply did not have enough evidence to proceed with a complaint, and then he left the country, effectively halting our investigation.

  Even as a retired senior homicide detective, with almost twenty-fo
ur years of service to LAPD, I knew that the possibility of accessing or directly viewing any of the casefile information was nil. I was not even inclined to make such a request, because I already had all the proof I needed, and had made the case. Still, I had a burning curiosity to see if the Hodel name was somewhere in the official LAPD case file. Were today's Dahlia case detectives aiding and abetting a fifty-year-old cover-up by standing guard over the locked files? One possible course of action might give me that answer, and I decided to pursue it.

  Kirk Mellecker had been my partner at Hollywood Homicide in the mid-1970s. After we had worked together for about a year, he had taken the traditional course and transferred from divisional detectives to downtown Robbery-Homicide Division. I knew that he and John "Jigsaw" St. John had become partners and grown very close, having almost a father-son relationship during the decade or so they worked together until St. John's retirement in the late 1980s. Kirk himself retired in 1991. But because he had been John St. John's partner, Kirk had been assigned to the Dahlia investigation some sixteen years longer than any other detective, with the exception of the original detective, Harry Hansen.

  I had not seen or spoken to Mellecker since my retirement in 1986. We had always been friends, and I knew him to be intelligent, dedicated, and hardworking. We had shared some special times and camaraderie at Hollywood. I wrote a letter to his last known retirement address, hoping it would find its way to him, and asked him to call me in Los Angeles. Three weeks later, on July 30, 2001, he called.

  Ironically, I learned he was now a major case specialist at NCAVC, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime near Quantico, Virginia. Kirk's current job was to train law enforcement officers nationwide in the use of a national crime computer database and retrieval program called VICAP, which is primarily used for analyzing patterns and potential evidence in serial sexual homicides and identifying possible suspects.

  During our conversation, Kirk and I talked about old times, and when he asked what I was up to, I told him I was taking a look at a number of old unsolved Hollywood homicides, particularly the Elizabeth Short-Black Dahlia investigation, and writing a book. I knew he had worked the case with St. John, I told him, and asked if he might be willing to discuss it with me, without betraying any confidences. I specifically told him that I would not ask him to reveal anything he knew to be confidential.

  Here is a summary of some salient points of that astonishingly revealing conversation, in which he cleared up for me a number of mysteries.

  I was assigned the Elizabeth Short case when I first got to Robbery- Homicide in about 1976. I read the case in detail back then. After reading it, there were a couple of things I wanted to check out, but I quickly realized that it was the department's attitude to, "Well, let's get working on things we got going today, and not worry so much about the old days." John-John [John St. John] and I played with it over the years, but not as much as we would have liked to.

  "Kirk, was the name Hodel in the case files?" I asked him.

  "What are you talking about?" he said.

  "Did you see the name Hodel anywhere in any of the case files?"

  When Kirk asked what I was getting at, because he truly didn't understand my question, I finally informed him, "My father's name was George Hodel. There are family rumors that he knew Elizabeth Short. Indeed, she may have been his girlfriend. Did you ever see his name anywhere in any of the reports?"

  "Jesus!" he said. "Are you serious? Your father? No, his name was not in any reports. The name George Hodel never came up. You're saying your dad might have been a suspect? No, I'm positive that name never came up. Hodel is not that common a name, and you and I were partners at Hollywood for two years or so. Of course I would recognize the name Hodel if I saw it. Yes, I can say positively that the name is not in any of the reports I looked at. I looked at the case in detail during 1976 and 1977 and then we got hit with the Hillside Strangler and everything after that until the late eighties."

  Then I turned to the "Red Lipstick" murder and asked, "Do you recall the name Jeanne French, a nurse who was murdered three weeks after Elizabeth Short? Was her name and her case file connected to the Short case?

  Kirk gave me a lengthy answer, which solved a bunch of mysteries right away, including the real identity of the lead investigator on the case and why the case was able to be covered up.

  No, the name [Jeanne French] doesn't sound familiar. I don't recall any nurse being connected. No reports on that. The case files and investigation that I saw dealt pretty much with Elizabeth Short's background and lifestyle. I think there were about four guys that she was hanging out with at the time. They always treated the Short case as a single case, that's why when you mention the nurse thing, it doesn't ring a bell. But I got to tell you, by today's standards, had I worked the case, I would have looked at the possibility that he had done it before. I mean that classic of a style has to make you think serial killer. And if she wasn't his first, it certainly wouldn't have been his last.

  No, I never saw the name Sexton come up, as far as I can recall. It's been a long time though. No, there was no mention about any grand jury investigation. I don't know anything about that.

  I'm trying to remember the original detective on the case. He had a funny name. No, not Hansen, it was another name. [I provide him with the name of Finis Brown.] Yes, that's it, Finis. He came into the office one day. He was retired and living in Texas. He was the real investigator on the Short case. He was the one that did all the work but Hansen took all the credit. St. John and I were going to talk to I lansen about the case in Palm Springs, but we never got to it, then he passed away. Brown did too, I guess. Really? I didn't know that Finis Brown was related to Thad Brown. [Finis Brown was Chief Brown's brother.]

  Well, I would hope they still have the physical evidence on the case. I never pulled any of it, because I never had a need to at the time. I would think it's still there. No, I don't remember anything about anybody finding a watch. Don't remember that in any of the reports, but it's been a long time now. No, I don't think they had any fingerprints on the case. Just a body dump as I recall.

  No, there was never any indication that Elizabeth Short was a prostitute. I think Finis Brown did a tremendous job of putting the case together. No, there wasn't ever any hint of any kind of coverup. No, I never heard any reference to any grand jury investigation, I think if I had I would have remembered that.

  Danny Galindo had the case, and so did Pierce Brooks. I don't know who has it now. No, I never heard the name Brian Carr, but I don't know any of the new guys. They are all pretty much gone from the old days. When I first went down and was working the case, I had a lead in Oklahoma or somewhere. Wanted to talk to them. That's when I realized it was merely a token assignment, where they didn't really want anything clone. I mean unless there was like a safe-deposit box with a confession inside it. . .

  As I hung up, I was dumbfounded. I had just gotten off the phone with a man whom I fully respected, who had personally reviewed and maintained the Dahlia case files for over fifteen years. A highly trained professional, he had been entirely honest and open with me. He had read the file, reviewed all the evidence, and told me that there was nothing there, nothing about my father, nothing about Jeanne French, nothing about the grand jury and what they had found. Where had the information gone?

  It was clear verification that the original detectives — Finis Brown and his partner Harry Hansen — had done their duty. It was obvious that Kirk Mellecker, and most likely his predecessors Danny Galindo and Pierce Brooks, had inherited a completely sanitized investigation. Incredibly, Kirk Mellecker and John St. John knew practically nothing about the facts of the original investigation.

  Mellecker was totally ignorant of the suspected cover-up, nor did he know about the DA's investigation and grand jury recommendations that the case be taken away from LAPD. He was not aware that George Hodel had been a suspect; nothing was in the file about his link to the case as the "wealthy Holl
ywood man." Further, Mellecker had not known that, early on, Captain Jack Donahoe had provided definite links to the Jeanne French "Red Lipstick" murder. In fact, he had not even heard of that victim's name! He was also unaware that in 1947 alone more than a dozen additional rape-murders and "dumpings" had occurred in and around Los Angeles in the weeks and months preceding and following the murder of Elizabeth Short and had been publicly connected by the press.

  He did not know that a man's military-style watch had been found at the crime scene. Kirk had not spoken with Harry Hansen, LAPD's reputed expert on the Dahlia case, and had no idea that the co-investigator, Finis Brown, was the brother of LAPD's most famous and highest-ranking detective, Thaddeus Brown. He did, however, establish definitively that it was Detective Finis Brown, and not Harry Hansen, who was actually in charge of the investigation, in control of the files and running the show during those important early years.

  Kirk Mellecker and his predecessors Danny Galindo, Pierce Brooks — made famous in Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field — and John St. John were all links in a chain that was forged well before they took over the Dahlia case file and, as such, bear no blame for the cover-up. The blame goes to the source, to the original detectives, Brown and probably Hansen, as well as their bosses, who knew the truth and covered it up.