Black Dahlia Avenger II: Presenting the Follow-Up Investigation and Further Evidence Linking Dr. George Hill Hodel to Los Angeles’s Black Dahlia and other 1940s LONE WOMAN MURDERS

by Hodel, Steve

  In reading the Jemison/Dorothy Hodel transcripts for the first time, I knew my mother was lying and stonewalling Lt. Jemison. I knew that Mother was close friends with Mattie Comfort. On one occasion in the 1970s, my mother had called me up and asked if I could give her a ride out to the Sunset Strip. She wanted to go to a party being held by some friends. I drove her out and accompanied her to an apartment house. At the door, Mother briefly introduced me to a beautiful woman, simply saying, “Steven, this is Mattie, a good friend from the old days. Mattie, meet Steven.” The beautiful “Satin Doll” smiled at me. We shook hands, and I turned and left. But Mattie Comfort’s face is not a face that one forgets—it was her!

  The Whittier Meeting

  In my responding e-mail to Lynelle Lujan and Myra Hilliard, I had requested that they contact Madi’s boyfriend, “George,” and see if he was available to meet with us at their office at the Whittier Historical Museum on September 11th at 10:00 a.m. He was. “George” is George Parkington. I found him to be a gentle intelligent soul, with the look and manner of an artist. He is a carpenter. George had met Madi in 1997. The two of them had become very close and spent the last six years together before her death in 2003.

  As the four of us sat down to talk, George opened up the conversation with these words:

  I want to say something to you right away. When your book came out, there was a big article and photos of you in People Magazine. Madi always read People. And as soon as she read the piece, she called me. She was so excited. I couldn’t believe it. Madi said, “George, you’ve got to come home right now.” I drove home immediately, and she was ecstatic…thrilled because this [the Black Dahlia connection] was a secret she’d always held inside her. And now it was in the open.

  In the week after my book published, People Magazine interviewed me, and, on June 2, 2003, ran a feature story complete with photo-spread. It was entitled, “Accusing His Father: An ex-L.A. cop uncovers a painful answer to the notorious 1947 Black Dahlia slaying.” Madi Comfort never got to read my book as she died from a sudden heart attack on June 20, 2003, just eighteen days after reading the magazine article.

  My first question to George was the obvious one. “Did Madi ever discuss with you what she knew about the Black Dahlia murder? Did she ever provide any specifics?”

  George responded:

  Here’s what I will tell you. Madi told me that she and everybody else were sure that it was your father that killed the Black Dahlia. They had NO DOUBT. She told me, “We all knew that he had done it.” Now, who the “we” was I’m not sure, but there are some people still around from way back then. I’ll try and dig on that a little bit and see if there is someone you can speak with. Most of the people I know were more like from the fifties, so I’m not sure there is anybody I can locate from that exact era.

  As Lynelle, Myra, and I listened to George as he shared his memories of Madi, it was obvious that the man had been deeply devoted to her. When he spoke her name, his words were filled with a deep love and a great sense of loss.

  A half-hour into our talk, George reached into his briefcase and removed a stack of papers. Handing them to me he explained:

  Madi has written a book. It’s in rough form and unpublished and runs about twelve-hundred pages. It’s her autobiography. The title is: MADI COMFORT: THE ORIGINAL SATIN DOLL. I think Madi started writing it sometime in the seventies or maybe later. In it she mentions and writes about both your father and mother. What Madi writes about them is explicit, but I thought you would want to have everything about them. There may be other references because her writings are scattered, and she jumps back and forth in time. But, for now, I wanted you to have these pages that talk about your parents.

  I reached for the papers and asked, “Had Madi mentioned Elizabeth Short in her book?” George replied:

  I don’t think so. I don’t think, even all of these years later, that she wrote about that. That is why she was so excited when your book came out. My sense of it was that she was still protecting people she cared about even though they were dead. She would have been like your mother. She would have protected anybody she cared about. She would have protected even somebody that she didn’t care about.

  Our meeting lasted nearly two hours. It ended with a handshake and the assurance that the four of us would keep in touch. George and I exchanged contact numbers with the hope and promise to together try and search deeper into the mystery of Madi, which connected her to my father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, now known and identified as the “Black Dahlia Avenger.”

  Dorothy Huston Hodel—“Dorero”

  George Parkington had warned me that Madi’s writings about my parents were “explicit.” Well, after reading what she has written, I can certainly confirm he was “spot on” in that observation.

  Perhaps before opening the pages of Madi’s manuscript, and for those who have not read Black Dahlia Avenger, a little background and brief bio on my mother is in order.

  Dorothy Jean Harvey was born in New York (Central Park West) on April 15, 1906. Her parents moved to Los Angeles sometime in the teens. They had two children, Dorothy and her younger brother, Eugene. Dorothy was exceptionally precocious, as well as strikingly beautiful—a dangerous combination! Ever the free spirit, she was named Elysian Park’s, “Queen of the May” in 1917. As a teen in high-school, she dabbled in acting and began double-dating. Dorothy dated a teenager by the name of George Hodel, who, though only fifteen had a stratospheric IQ (186) and was enrolled and attending Pasadena’s prestigious Caltech University. The other couple who dated with them was a beautiful young woman by the name of Emilia Lawson, who worked at the newly opened Los Angeles Public Library. Her boyfriend was a lean and lanky young man by the name of John Huston, the son of one of Hollywood’s brightest film stars, Walter Huston.

  At some point in their double-dating, John and George switched partners. John and Dorothy discovered that they were in love. In about 1926, they found a Justice of the Peace who married them. Then the teens eloped to New York and decided to play house in Greenwich Village. There they began socializing with a very Bohemian crowd of intelligentia-artists, actors, and musicians—free spirits all. John and Dorothy partied with George and Ira Gershwin and many of the Algonquin Round Table types. Lots of drinking, lots of love making. Being twenty in the ’20s, they were in full roar.

  Stage and screen star, Walter Huston, meeting his son, John and new bride, Dorothy at LA train station, circa 1926. Photo on right, Dorothy Harvey Huston, age eighteen, circa 1924.

  John and Dorothy returned to Los Angeles and both became screenwriters for the film studios. Bohemian New York and its red wine were traded in for the Hollywood cocktail crowd and martinis—very dry.

  By 1934, after seven years of a very bumpy marriage, John and Dorothy had become serious alcoholics and both were sleeping with pretty much anything that moved.

  In about 1936, Dorothy, with her beautiful actress-lover, Greta Nissen in arm, took a cruise to Europe where she continued to drink and play. (In his well-researched book, The Hustons (Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY 1989) Lawrence Grobel gave a fine account of how John went to England, rescued Dorothy from an almost certain death from alcoholism, and got her back to the US where she made a full, albeit temporary, recovery.)

  For the most part, Dorothy was very open about her bisexuality. She was proud of what she called her “paganism” and pretty much wore it on her sleeve in defiance of conventionality.

  Circa 1937, Dorothy reunited with her former boyfriend, George Hodel, who had graduated from medical school. After completing his internship at San Francisco General Hospital, he was hired as a logging camp surgeon in Arizona and then took a temporary appointment as a US Health Department physician, doctoring in the Southwest to the Hopi and Navaho Indian reservations.

  George and Dorothy were now both “back in love.” George returned to LA where Dorothy immediately got pregnant. My older brother, Michael, was born in July 1939. They married in Mexico in 1940 and my t
win, “John,” and I were born in 1941, followed by my younger brother Kelvin’s birth just eleven months later.

  Our father was hired by the LA County Health Department, specializing in the treatment of venereal disease. He was quickly promoted to become the chief VD officer for all of LA County.

  Father, ever a believer in the importance and symbolism of names, christened his new wife, “Dorero,” replacing her given name of “Dorothy.” To all who would listen, he explained that his inspiration came from combining two words: “Dor,” meaning “a gift of” and “Eros,” the God of sexual desire. Hence, “Dorero”—a gift of sexual desire.

  This quick overview brings us to about the point in time when, according to Madi’s manuscript, she met my parents. So, I will let her take over the narrative from here with her own very unique perspective.

  With the exception of some minor spelling corrections, I am going to present Madi Comfort’s writing and words here exactly as they appear in her manuscript. I have changed NOTHING. These are her verbatim descriptions, written some twenty or thirty years past. I have, however, inserted in bold my own comments to assist the reader in understanding or to clarify a specific person, place, etc.

  One further explanation is needed. What we are reading here are Madi’s personal reflections as dictated directly into a tape recorder and then transcribed to paper. So, they are not actually her “writings” so much as they are a conversational storytelling of her life, which was then transcribed into a 1200-page rough draft manuscript. The following excerpted pages, which directly relate to Madi’s association and memories of my parents, George and Dorero Hodel, were provided to me by her boyfriend, George Parkington.

  Madi Comfort: The Original Satin Doll—(Rough draft)

  Page 28 (bottom):

  Well, I was introduced to Dr. George and Dorero [Dorothy] Hodel by Suzette Harbin, who was one of the chorus girls in the show. Dorothy posed for the great photographer Man [The artist, Man Ray, a close personal friend of my parents and our family photographer] with Suzette. What a beautiful photograph! Dorero’s white delicate face profile together with Suzette’s rich beautiful brown skin was such a beautiful contrast, yet there was such a oneness.

  Page 29—

  George and Dorero lived in this tremendous mansion in Pasadena. Once entering the driveway one would wind, in this case I would wind with George and Dorero in their … [in their car up the driveway]…last to be made after or before the war. It was a gorgeous black Lincoln Continental convertible with a wheel on the back. It was pure gorgeous. Round and round and up and down for what seemed like blocks to this four-story mansion. The top floor was a ballroom; the third floor was a nursery for their three gorgeous children. The second was their bedroom quarters. I guess I should say playground because that’s where we played. They were both completely sensuous. George a very handsome polished tall lean born rich man indulged and adored by his father. George had beautiful black hair with a sophisticated wave in front, a classic nose with a perfectly trimmed mustache and very nice lips. George would smile at a person with such charm and sweetness as well as elegance in his perfect clothes with such sincerity. George could turn around and be as cold as ice, yet complete composure in his superior authoritative voice, become this strange distant in charge person. He was a doctor.

  George and Dorero led me gracefully and pleasurably, into sharing their joys in many exciting ways of the art of making love. It was all done so tastefully and made us very close friends. We liked very much bringing such joy and pleasures to one another’s life, yet we all maintained our dignity and self-respect.

  Dorero’s first husband had been John Huston. Her father-in-law, Walter Huston. Dorero had been a writer. She once told me that John and George and she were good friends. George stole her away from John. Dorero was so soft and lovely as well as feminine. I loved the way she pronounced words. Her father told me she had once been a schoolteacher. Her father also told me her name was Dorothy. She certainly had her own style.

  George and Dorero had me over to their home for dinner quite often. They would take me out, come all the way to Willowbrook to pick me up. … Dorero was having guests for dinner who had arrived from New York. They had both been put under contract. Their names were Van Heflin and Vincent Price. Actually we were having hors d’oeuvres and cocktails at their [the Hodels] home first then we were going to Chinatown for dinner afterwards. Chinatown was fairly new (remodeled) then and quite fancy and intriguing. It was a fun evening. Van and Vincent were both very charming and witty and they talked about New York and the theater. I just mostly remember what nice down-to-earth gentlemen they were.

  One morning around ten a.m. or so I was lying in bed and I hear this crash and Dorero crying. I ran into the bathroom. Dorero was in the bathtub, crying. George cool as you please explains to me Dorero is an alcoholic and has “sneaked a drink.” He was reprimanding her for her own good. I’m protesting. “You could break her neck! George I cannot stand to see you knocking poor Dorero around like this. Please don’t treat her like this.” Meanwhile, I’m busy trying to pull Dorero out of the tub. We were all stark naked.

  Madi Comfort’s two lovers—George and Dorothy (“Dorero”)

  Dorero Hodel 1942

  George Hodel circa 1950

  The photo on left was taken in October/November 1942. It shows Mother holding her newborn son, my younger brother, Kelvin, as I look on while standing on the fencepost. Based on the timing, this photo would have been taken at the hilltop “tremendous mansion” described earlier by Madi. (I have no memory of this location, but my half-sister, Tamar, recalls the home, and specifically remembers seeing our father “physically abusing Dorero by pulling her around by her hair in the large open driveway.”

  Page 31—

  I truly enjoyed my job, and loved walking around meeting people, being constantly complimented. I shared the dressing room when I changed with the chorus girls. … Here comes Joe Comfort on his first furlough from Camp Rucker, Alabama. What a thrill. …Joe proposed marriage. I naturally said, “Yes.” There was a problem.

  One had to wait three days after getting your license at City Hall plus the blood test. Well, Dr. George Hodel solved that problem for me. He pulled strings at City Hall and we got our marriage license in one day. Off we went with my sister, and Joseph’s sister, Laura, as witnesses, to the preacher.

  Page 39—

  I married him [Joe Comfort] on May 13, 1943. I missed him so much when he left and went back to Alabama. I couldn’t sleep. I cried most of the time. They said, “You can’t go to the South with all its prejudices.” …George and Dorero Hodel bought me a ticket and put me on the train. Dorero gave me some advice about pleasing my new husband. She suggested that I should before kissing and sucking Joe’s penis, I should gargle or drink some very hot water so my mouth would be steaming hot. She said that would drive Joe crazy. She said, better yet for me to chew some of those red, dried chili peppers and that would really send Joe into pure ecstasy. …When I tried to kiss Joe’s penis he had a pure fit. He snatched his penis out of my mouth and asked, ‘Where did you learn that?’ I told him Dorero had told me about it, and Dorero had said, ‘you’d be in pure heaven.’ ‘Well, I’m not in pure heaven. I don’t want my wife doing things like that.’…

  Some Final Thoughts

  Madi’s unpublished manuscript with its candid and highly explicit narrative is a remarkable historical find. Because it surfaced posthumously, there is no breach of Madi’s personal code of silence, only CONFIRMATION. Madi’s excited call to her boyfriend, George, came on June 2, 2003—the very day the People Magazine article informed the world that George Hodel was the Black Dahlia killer

  The day and the time it became public knowledge, permitted her—in Madi’s mind—to reveal to George Parkington her fifty-six-year-old secret. She could now finally, in good conscience, relieve herself of a terrible burden and tell her closest friend her darkest secret, “We all knew that he had done it.”

&nb
sp; Two weeks later, she was gone. But look at what she has left us. Madi’s memoirs, written decades ago, just like the DA’s secret “Hodel Black Dahlia Files,” have now in the twenty-first century presented us with new evidence and new confirmations into what the DA and the LAPD knew back then.

  Madi Comfort’s boyfriend, George Parkington at a 2010 meeting with author at Whittier Museum

  Whittier Daily News, September 27, 2010, announcing Madi Comfort’s connection to the Black Dahlia

  Madi passed away in Whittier, California on June 20, 2003, just two weeks after revealing her fifty-six year-old secret to her boyfriend, George Parkington.

  Madi Comfort with self-portrait done in acrylic

  REST IN PEACE PRETTY MADI COMFORT

  Chapter 2

  “This anatomical anomaly [identical freckle on left eyebrows] is as distinct as a tattoo, and proves beyond any doubt that they are one and the same woman.”

  Steve Hodel, 2005, Black Dahlia Avenger page546

  Photograph No. 1—“Maganda”

  One of the things I enjoy most about being my own P.I. is the fact that in my criminal investigations, I get to wear all the hats. I am the gumshoe “in the field,” knocking on doors and taking routine witness statements, as well as being the detective supervisor sitting behind the desk, reviewing his/my own reports for accuracy.

  In this chapter, I will present my own reinvestigation and offer direct evidence disproving my initial claim that Elizabeth Short and Photo No. 1 in my father’s album (the woman standing by the horse statue) were one and the same person. In other words, by continuing to follow new evidence, I am going to prove that my former assertions relating to the identification of photograph No. 1 as being Elizabeth Short—was incorrect.