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

  For the record, Exhibit 84, [originally presented in the updated chapter: New Investigation: Hard Evidence and Forensics] despite the fact that both women have what appears to be an identical freckle in the approximate same location on their left eyebrows, Photo No. 1, found in my father’s album, IS NOT ELIZABETH SHORT.

  Original Exhibit 84

  In September 2006, within two weeks of discovering the truth that the woman in my father’s photo album was not Elizabeth Short, I publically disclosed that fact in a televised interview on CNN News with journalist, Anderson Cooper. The eight-minute interview also discussed the surrealist aspects of my father’s crime, as well as Head Deputy DA Steve Kay’s reconfirmation that, in his opinion, “the case was solved and the evidence and proofs go way beyond the question of the photographs.”

  September 18, 2006 CNN AC-360 interview

  LA County Head Deputy DA Steve Kay [top-right]

  Two weeks later, I was able to conduct an in-person follow-up interview with the woman in the photo and wrote and published an investigative summary of that meeting on my website. In 2006, to protect the woman’s privacy, I simply called her, MAGANDA, which in Tagalog (she is Filipina) means, “Beautiful One.”

  Over the years, many of my readers, while supporting my investigation and agreeing with my conclusions that George Hodel was the killer, have also voiced their disagreement that the two photographs seen in his photo album were the same women. I hereby freely admit—they were and are CORRECT.

  As specifically related to Photo No. 1, I would now like to personally acknowledge three specific individuals who were correct in that assessment:

  First and foremost, my half-sister, Tamar, who stated that she believed the woman in Photo No. 1 appeared to be Asian and felt she may have met or seen her as a child at the Franklin house. (In the story about to unfold, we shall soon learn how and why she remembered the face, even with eyes closed.) Also, my ex-stepmother, Hortensia Starke, who also believed Photo No. 1 was an Asian acquaintance of George Hodel’s from the Franklin house days. The third would be Elizabeth Short’s living sister, who, apparently in looking at the photograph, told a third party, “that the woman was not Elizabeth, as she never wore flowers in her hair in that fashion.” My further investigation, some six years later, has proven each of you correct.

  How were these new proofs uncovered?

  In September 2006, CBS television network replayed their previously aired program, Black Dahlia Confidential. By mere happenstance, a woman was flipping the channels and saw Photo No. 1 displayed and recognized it as being her grandmother! After the show, she contacted both the network and me, which led to my immediate follow-up.

  Maganda’s Story

  (As originally reported on my website in 2006)

  On Monday, October 2, 2006, the fog had lifted early, leaving the small coastal community bathed in bright sunlight. As I pulled my Ford Crown Vic into the restaurant parking-lot, I felt high excitement, knowing that the fog surrounding a sixty-year-old mystery photograph was also about to be lifted.

  Maganda (not her real name, but one I have selected to protect her privacy, means “Beautiful One” in Tagalog, the native language of the Philippines) was seated at a large open table covered with white linens and fine china. Her two granddaughters were seated on either side of her there to protect and support their ninety-one-year-old “nanny.”

  Polite introductions were exchanged and Maganda’s older granddaughter explained to her that I was the author of a book written about Dr. George Hodel, and was also-his son. Her eyes brightened as she spoke, “You are the son of Dr. Hodel?” I nodded and smiled. “Oh, give me a hug. It was your father who I have to thank for starting me in my career as an actress.”

  I would spend the next five hours with Maganda, as she shared her incredible life story. Maganda would tell me about her life in the Philippines, in Manila, where she and her family were held captive in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. She told me how, in the mid-1940s, she and her family were freed with the liberation of Manila and hastily escorted directly to a Navy transport ship, which brought them to America.

  She narrated how, soon after her arrival in Los Angeles, she met my father, George Hodel, and their five-year association. She also told me how, in the early 1950s, she decided to leave the bright lights of Hollywood and the brand new medium of television so she could devote herself full time to raising her beautiful children.

  Now in her nineties, Maganda remains alert and happy. She has been kept strong and nourished with the familial love from both grandchildren, who held “Nanny’s” arms as we conversed. After the introductions, Maganda slowly reached into the cardboard box on the table and handed me two large pictures from the group. One was framed, the other was not. She smiled and said, “Here are the two pictures your father took of me at his beautiful home in Hollywood. These pictures were on your father’s desk, and they are what got me started in motion pictures.”

  “Maganda” and author, October 2006

  Photos on left (top and bottom) taken by Dr. George Hodel at the “Franklin house” circa fall or winter, 1945

  What follows are selected, relevant excerpts of Maganda’s incredible story, told in her own words.

  Early life:

  I was born in the Philippines. My mother was Filipina and taught Spanish. My father was an American missionary. When he first saw my mother, he said, “I’m going to marry that woman.” My parents’ romance was love at first sight.

  During World War II, my husband, who was American, and I and our children were kept in a Japanese prison-of-war camp in Manila. We were there almost six years. Then American soldiers came and freed us. I had my young daughter and my newborn son. They took us straight to the Navy ship and we boarded and came to America. The ship was originally going to go to dock at San Francisco, but there was a world conference, so they came to Los Angeles, to San Pedro harbor instead. (Note: The San Francisco Conference was held on April 25, 1945. Delegates from fifty nations met in San Francisco for the United Nations Conference on International Organization. The delegates drew up the 111-article Charter, which was adopted unanimously on June 25, 1945 in the San Francisco Opera House.)

  Meeting Dr. George Hill Hodel

  I met your father through a woman that was raising money for the War Chest to send donations to the Philippines after the war had ended. She was connected somehow with the mayor’s office, and also owned a modeling agency. The woman knew George Hodel and suggested that he might want to meet and photograph me. She sent Dr. Hodel a note. And later, we met and he photographed me and took these two photographs along with some others. On the one, he had me close my eyes and tilt my head downward. I don’t know why?

  Your father’s home was filled with many of these art objects (Maganda pointed to the Chinese horse statue in the background of photo) and he wanted to photograph me with each separate art piece. There were many such objects, but it never happened and we just photographed this one.

  I don’t recall how many times your father took photographs of me. It was a number of times, but my husband was always there. He waited in the interior courtyard, or in his car. Your father and my husband liked each other. My husband was chief engineer for a large aircraft company, and your father and he enjoyed talking to each other.

  I never attended any parties at your father’s house. I was only there during the photographic sessions. Your father was always professional and never said or did anything that would be considered out of line. My husband was always present.

  It was because of these two pictures that your father took that I became an actress and got into motion pictures. The pictures were in a frame on a desk at your father’s house. Your father had two important men, patients of his, who he was seeing at his house. He was treating them for some illness or something. The men were high up in the government of a foreign country.

  They saw the pictures of me and said, “Who is this? She is perfect for a part in the film we are making.�
� George told them that he had taken the pictures and who I was, and the next thing I know; I had a small part in their film. From there, I went on to make many more films and was one of the first actresses to be involved in a television series.

  On meeting Tamar Hodel

  I never met your mother, or you boys. But, I did meet his daughter, Tamar. She actually stayed with me overnight. It was quite strange. Here is how I recall what happened. Your father called me one night and his voice was quivering. He sounded very upset. He said to me, “Are you alone?” I told him I was. He went on to say, “There has been some trouble and would you mind if my daughter, Tamar, stayed with you for some time?” I told him she could, and he sent her over in a taxi cab.

  Tamar was a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen? She arrived in the cab and was crying. She said, “My daddy was bad to me,” but wouldn’t tell me what had happened, so I didn’t ask anything further.

  I asked her if she was hungry and she said, “Do you have any milk?” I gave her the milk and put her to bed. I was rubbing her arm, comforting her on the bed, and she said, “It’s nice to have a mommy.” And I told her, “Well, I can be your mommy.” I told her that anytime she had trouble, she could talk to me.”

  George called me early the next morning and told me that “Tamar has to go to school” and for me to, “send her to school in a cab.” Tamar refused to go to school, so I told George that I was sending her back to him instead. I then sent her home.

  Franklin House Connections

  I met a few people and recognized some names that you mentioned, but I never really met any other girls at your father’s house. Fred Sexton and Joe Barrett sound familiar. There was an artist friend of your father’s that gave me a large wooden sculpture of a pelican. He had made it for some important person in Brentwood, but they decided they didn’t want it, so he gave it to me. I still have it at home. It is very large, all carved from one piece of wood. It was quite modern. (Note: The artist was most likely Fred Sexton, who as we know, sculpted in wood and carved “The Black Bird” for his friend, John Huston, which John used in The Maltese Falcon in 1941.)

  I remember that your father had told me that “he had gotten into some trouble and was going on a long trip.” I asked him, “Are you going to get out of it?” He told me, “Oh yes, one of these days I will.” Shortly after that he left for the Philippines.

  The last contact I had with your father was very strange. He called me from Manila. I was still living in Los Angeles. He asked me, “Do you know of any young women here in the Philippines that I could take pictures of?” I told him, “No, I don’t.” It was a very strange call, and I felt a bit uncomfortable about it. That was the last I ever heard from your father. No, I never was invited to any of the parties. No, I never met Hortensia.

  Maganda Identified

  More than five-years have passed since my original interview with Maganda and I have decided now to reveal her true identity. I break no confidence since she never asked me to keep her name private and I believe she deserves just credit and recognition for helping us better understand the truth of what occurred in the mid to late 1940s.

  Based on Maganda’s statements, it became obvious that she had unknowingly become an important witness related to the July 1949 sexual molestation by George Hodel of his then fourteen-year-old daughter, Tamar.

  We learned that George telephoned Maganda and told her, “There has been some trouble and would you mind if my daughter, Tamar, stayed with you for some time?” She agreed, and he immediately sent Tamar by taxi to the residence, where, upon arrival, Tamar was crying and immediately told Maganda, “My daddy was bad to me.” (Had the DA’s office known about these actions and statements, Maganda certainly would have been called to testify as an important prosecution witness at George Hodel’s December 1949 criminal trial.)

  Maganda’s real name is Marya Marco, aka Mary Marco, aka Maria San Marco. Her acting credits include both screen and television. To name just a few of her early films: Anna and the King of Siam (1946), Song of the Thin Man (1946), Intrigue (1947), Tycoon (1947), Sleep, My Love (1948), and The Clay Pigeon (1949)

  Marya Marco publicity photo from Intrigue (1947)

  Film starred George Raft and June Havoc

  Marya in scene from Song of the Thin Man (1947)

  Sleep, My Love (1948)

  Star Bob Cummings in scene with Marya

  George Hodel bought the Sowden/Franklin house in 1945. He likely took the Marya photographs that same year—probably in the spring or winter of 1945—sometime after she arrived in the US and prior to his departure for China in February, 1946.

  In my interview with Marya, it became clear that she had no knowledge or suspicions that my father had been the DA’s prime suspect in the Black Dahlia investigation, nor did it appear that she was even aware of his 1949 arrest by LAPD for child molestation and incest. Her only reference to George was him telling her just before his departure from the US that he “was in some trouble and was leaving the country and expected one day to get out of it.” Then, at the close of our talk, she mentioned that her final contact with my father was “a strange and uncomfortable telephone phone call” she received from him from Manila, where George asked her if she could provide him with the names of any girls in the Philippines that he could photograph.

  Dr. George Hill Hodel—One Degree of Separation

  During her acting career, Marya Marco came in contact with many well-known actors. One of them was the handsome lead actor, Robert Cummings, who gave her the below autographed photograph circa 1948. As shown in the previous clip, Marya and Bob worked together in the 1948 film, Sleep My Love.

  “To my dear friend Maria, beautiful, exotic, charming, and I mean very, your friend, Robert Cummings”

  As detailed in BDA, Robert Cummings was also friends with actress Jean Spangler, and was one of the last persons known to have seen her alive. He had a conversation with Spangler at the studio on October 5, 1949, just two days before her date with an unidentified new boyfriend. Spangler at that time told Cummings, “I have a happy new romance and am having the time of my life.” [Note: Refer to BDA, chapter 24, for the linkage of victim Spangler to George Hodel, as being this probable “new boyfriend.”]

  I showed a photograph of Jean Spangler to Marya, who indicated “she looked familiar,” and thought she may well have seen her on the studio lots back in the forties, but did not personally know her.

  The new information received from Madi Comfort informed us that George Hodel was personally acquainted with actor Vincent Price, as Madi was present at the Hodel residence when George and Dorero hosted Price and Van Heflin. After which, the five of them went to dinner in Chinatown.

  Jean Spangler’s last movie, Champagne for Caesar, was filmed in Hollywood in 1949, just weeks before she was murdered. One of the stars of that comedy was Vincent Price, George Hodel’s acquaintance and former dinner guest. I strongly suspect that Jean Spangler knew and was dating my father in October 1949, and was the same “Jean” whom Duncan, my then [1949] twenty-one-year-old half-brother, met at the Franklin house as one of our father’s dates. Duncan described her as, “a drop-dead gorgeous actress by the name of Jean.”

  What we do now know for sure is that with both the Robert Cummings-Marya Marco and the Vincent Price connections, we again have just one degree of separation between Lone Woman Murder victim, Jean Spangler, and George Hodel.

  Hollywood’s Dirty Big Secret

  Who was included in the “we” that Madi Comfort spoke of as knowing that George Hodel had killed Elizabeth Short? Clearly, some were from her inner circle of friends from the late 1940s.

  That would include many of Hollywood’s literati, as well as actors, artists, dancers, and politicians, many of whom visited George and were entertained at his lavish Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.-built Mayan temple in the heart of Hollywood. Film stars like Walter and John Huston, Tim Holt, the surrealist artist, and our family photographer, Man Ray, writer Henry Miller, beat poe
t Kenneth Rexroth, along with lesser luminaries, and the beautiful but yet undiscovered wannabes, who, like pilot fish, can always be found swimming close to the larger catch.

  Also, in attendance at the Franklin house parties were “the girls,” many of them current or ex-patients from George’s First Street VD clinic, very likely working double shifts on loan from Madam Brenda Allen. Brenda, known as Hollywood’s “Queen of Hearts” was the Heidi Fleiss of her day. Before her arrest for pandering in 1948, Brenda had 114 girls working in her stable, and was making sizeable weekly pay offs to LAPD’s vice squad and brass.

  Dr. George Hill Hodel as the head venereal disease control officer for the entire LA County was powerful and connected. So much so that he was basically, “untouchable.” If you were a studio exec [like the two producers Marya told us visited Dr. Hodel at his private residence for medical treatment], a politician, or a cop with a girlfriend “in trouble,” Dr. George—as “top dog”—was the go-to guy in 1940s LA, a true bon vivant and a man who could be trusted with any confidence.

  Many of Hollywood’s elite must have whispered the secret. Power and information go hand in hand. But, it was like a low burning grass fire, which had to be stepped on and smothered before it had a chance to spread. There was simply too much at risk to allow this secret to become public knowledge. This was not difficult in 1947 Los Angeles, which was a real life LA Confidential, where corruption was the rule rather than the exception.

  Practically, on the very day of the Black Dahlia murder, Hollywood novelist turned screenwriter, Steve Fisher, who wrote I Wake Up Screaming, Destination Tokyo, Song of the Thin Man, and Winter Kill for MGM in 1947, had just finished adapting a screenplay for Raymond Chandler’s, Lady in the Lake.

  One of LA’s largest dailies, the Los Angeles Herald Express, asked Fisher to contribute his thoughts on whodunit. On February 3, 1947, just over two weeks after the Dahlia murder, in a Herald Express article headlined, “Noted Film Scenarist Predicts ‘Dahlia’ Killer Will Soon Be in Toils,” Fisher complied.