by Hodel, Steve
In May 1945, secretary/girlfriend Ruth Spaulding’s secret writings, which were about to reveal George Hodel’s malpractice and criminality cost her—HER LIFE.
Five years later, in January 1950, Lillian Lenorak, after perjuring herself a second time at the trial of Dr. Francis Ballard and Charles Smith, made similar threats to George Hodel. She told George that she was “going to the DA and inform him of her twice perjured testimony and that in truth, she had witnessed Tamar’s abortion performed by Dr. Ballard and his assistant, Charles Smith.” This almost cost Lillian her life. She “got off lucky” and escaped George Hodel’s wrath with only an assault, drugging, and his staged “attempted suicide.” [He used a scalpel to inflict superficial cuts to her wrists while she lay unconscious.] Father’s actions were apparently effective enough to at least temporarily discredit her as being “psychologically distraught.”
These latest posthumous revelations from Mrs. X, supported by her original 1945 letters, along with my father’s admissions that he “had performed abortions, lots of them” at his First Street VD clinic, established powerful motives for the Spaulding overdose-murder and reinforce what my investigation has demonstrated time and time again—in 1950 Los Angeles, Dr. George Hill Hodel was UNTOUCHABLE
Chapter 4
Lillian Lenorak—Update 2011
The Back story
I first introduced Lillian Lenorak to the public in a 2004 updated chapter of BDA after I discovered a letter written by officer Mary Unkefer, a Santa Barbara P.D. policewoman and former acquaintance of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short. The Unkefer Letter—buried deep in the DA secret files—documented, confirmed, and greatly expanded upon a verbal report first made by Joe Barrett.
Joe Barrett, in 1950, was a young artist renting a room at our home in Hollywood. In a 2003 on-camera television interview for ABC’s Date line, Joe Barrett recounted witnessing an incident in early 1950 involving Lillian Lenorak at the Franklin house. He told of returning home to find an excited Ellen (our maid) warning him that Lillian Lenorak was in George Hodel’s bedroom and was threatening to shoot Hodel when he came home.
Barrett entered the bedroom and found a hysterical Lenorak, armed with a rifle belonging to George Hodel. Lenorak was screaming, “He is going to pay for what he has done. He has to pay for it. I’m going to kill him.” Barrett claims he calmed her down, and removed the rifle from her person. When asked in this interview by reporter Josh Mankiewicz, “What Lenorak was referring to?” Barrett replied, “It was about the fact that Lillian knew that George had killed Elizabeth Short. Lillian knew Elizabeth and had met her at the house, and said that George had to pay for killing her.”
Barrett went on to say that “When George came home, I told him about what happened, and that Lillian was going to shoot him, and George’s response was, ‘Why didn’t you let her?’” (In the DA Hodel Bugging transcripts in March 1950, George Hodel confirmed Barrett’s account and was overheard saying, “She [Lillian Lenorak] was going to shoot me and then kill herself.”
From Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder page 479:
Unkefer-Short-Hodel-Lenorak Connections
On January 16, 1947, the day “Jane Doe Number 1” was identified by the FBI as Elizabeth Short, Santa Barbara policewoman Mary Unkefer was one of the first important witnesses contacted by LAPD in the Black Dahlia investigation. Why? Because Officer Unkefer had direct and extended contact with Elizabeth Short after Elizabeth’s September 1943 arrest for “minor possession.” The LA Daily News of January 17, 1947, under the headline: “Identify Victim as Hollywood Resident,” detailed Officer Unkefer’s connections:
She (Elizabeth Short) had been a clerk at the Camp Cooke post exchange near Santa Barbara and was picked up for drinking with soldiers in a cafe there.
Policewoman Mary Unkefer of the Santa Barbara police department took the girl to her own home to live with her for nine days…
“We put her on the train for her home, and several times later she wrote to me from there” Miss Unkefer recalled. One of her letters said: “I’ll never forget you. Thank God you picked me up when you did!”
Incredibly, from the information contained in these DA documents, we only now discovered that Officer Mary Unkefer—who in 1943 had been directly responsible for rescuing Elizabeth Short from a dangerous environment— in January 1950 drove from Santa Barbara to Dr. Hodel’s Franklin Avenue residence and there removed another young female victim from harm’s way.
Officer Unkefer, after safely returning the victim—whose name was Lillian Lenorak—to Santa Barbara, typed a letter to Los Angeles DA investigators, describing and informing them of Dr. Hodel’s involvement in multiple crimes, including subornation of perjury and felony assault.
Through other DA documents, we knew that Lillian Lenorak, a 1949 defense witness testifying at the Hodel incest trial, was an acquaintance of George Hodel. And when photographs of Elizabeth Short were shown by DA investigators, she identified her as Hodel’s girlfriend. Miss Lenorak was preparing to recant her previous sworn testimony and admit that she perjured herself at the incest trial. Lenorak’s perjury at the Hodel trial had to do with the fact that she was present at Dr. Ballard’s office with Charles Smith when Tamar, George Hodel’s fourteen-year-old daughter, was “examined” but no abortion occurred. She was now going to admit the truth that, in fact, an abortion was performed on Tamar.
[Note: It is my belief that the “rifle incident” occurred in late January 1950, and was the event that immediately precipitated my father’s “staging Lillian’s attempted suicide.” Lillian Lenorak, under pressure from George Hodel, had perjured herself twice in the preceding weeks. First, at his incest trial in late December 1949, and then again on January 15, 1950, at the abortion trial of Dr. Francis Ballard and Charles Smith. Lillian testified as a defense witness that she had been present with Tamar at Dr. Ballard’s office when she was examined, but lied and informed the court “that no abortion had occurred.” Her perjury resulted in Dr. Ballard and Smith being found “not guilty” by the judge hearing the case.]
Lillian Lenorak was now threatening to reveal the truth and to inform the DA that she was present and did witness Tamar’s abortion. George Hodel had to either kill her or try to discredit her. With Barrett as a witness, he couldn’t kill her. So, he took the next best step—try to set her up as a “mental case.” He then drugged her and staged her “attempt suicide” as described in policewoman Unkefer’s letter to the DA. We even have the dramatic corroboration from Lillian’s three-year-old son, John, who witnessed George Hodel’s assault on his mother. In route to Santa Barbara with his mother and officer Unkefer, the child told the policewoman, “He [Dr. Hodel] hit mommy and knocked her down. He made her cry hard.”
In 2003, with the post-publication discovery and release of the secret DA Hodel Files, we first learned that Lillian Lenorak met with DA Lt. Frank Jemison and made a positive identification of Elizabeth Short as being a sometime girlfriend of George Hodel.
Prior to that, Lillian Lenorak’s name had surfaced only as an acquaintance of George Hodel and as one of the “defense witnesses” in his December 1949 incest trial. Lillian also appeared as a defense witness three weeks later, on January 15, 1950, on behalf of Dr. Francis Ballard and Charles Smith who had both been arrested by LAPD and were on trial for performing the actual abortion on fourteen-year-old, Tamar Hodel.
After the discovery of the Unkefer/Lenorak Letter, I now know that Joe Barrett was not completely candid with me regarding all of the facts and his further involvement in this late January 1950 Lillian Lenorak Franklin house incident.
Joe withheld all of the critical information that followed in the immediate aftermath of Lillian’s confrontation with George at the Franklin house. Joe omitted telling me about his involvement in helping police officer Mary Unkefer transport Lillian to Santa Barbara after she had been drugged and had her wrists superficially cut and bandaged by George Hodel. This staged “attempt suicide” was my father’s w
ay of anticipating and going on the offense should Lillian follow through with her threats to inform the DA of her perjured testimony. By branding her “distraught and suicidal” in advance of any allegations she would make against him, he could make anything she said “sound, unreliable.” For the most part, it worked!
However, what George Hodel had not anticipated was the Mary Unkefer Letter. The letter written by Santa Barbara police officer Mary Unkefer to the LADA’s Office documented Joe Barrett’s, Lillian Lenorak’s, and her three-year-old son, John Lenorak’s statements of what occurred at the Franklin house in the day(s) and hours immediately following the Franklin house incident.
Here is a brief recap of excerpts from Officer Unkefer’s report, which she mailed to Lt. Jemison at the DA’s office on January 30, 1950, immediately following her contact with the three witnesses. [For a complete review of the Lenorak-Unkefer investigation, see BDA “Aftermath” chapter, pages 479-484.]
Re. Lillian Lenorak
…She [Lillian] told me she had witnessed an abortion performed on his [George Hodel] little girl [Tamar, age 14] He had threatened to have her child [John Lenorak, age 3] taken away from her if she did not testify in his favor in Court. She said that she had never attempted suicide and that she had never cut her wrists or her hands. She said that the Dr. constantly gave her drugs and that when she wakened the cutting had been done. There were scratches and bruises on her forehead and arms. Lillian stated that she had a very guilty mind after the trial and told Hodel that she was going to tell the DA that she had lied on the witness stand and that Dr. Hodel told her if she squealed that he would name Charles and the other doctor [Smith and Ballard] as being the ones who performed the operation. [Tamar’s abortion] Lillian said she would like to tell me all the true facts concerning the doctor’s activities, but knew that he [Hodel] would have her done away with as well as her baby. …she was just PLUMB SCARED to tell for fear he would carry out his threat to have her Boy taken from her and to have her committed to an insane institution.
Re. John Lenorak [Lillian’s three-year-old son]
Her three-year-old baby told me that “the doctor knocked his mommie down and made mommie cry hard.”
Re. Joe Barrett
He stated emphatically that there was nothing wrong with Lillian except what had been brought on by the cruel treatment received from Dr. Hodel. He stated that he knew Lillian had perjured herself at the trial because the Dr. had her under his influence. He stated that the relations between the Dr. and his Child [Tamar] were terrible and were worse than I had any idea. He stated that Dr. boasted that the $15,000.00 the doctor paid Jerry Giesler [his criminal defense attorney] was used to influence the DA and that was how the doctor was cleared of the charge against him. Barrett described Dr. Hodel as being “A REAL NO GOOD GUY.”
Officer Unkefer had originally responded to Dr. Hodel’s residence to pick up Lillian and her son, John, at the specific request of Lillian’s mother, Mrs. Hamilton, a prominent resident of Santa Barbara.
Unkefer, after arriving at the Franklin house, insisted that Dr. Hodel call an adult female friend to accompany Lillian on the ride back home. George Hodel called, Karoun Tootikian, a dance instructor at the Ruth St. Denis Studio, who rode with Joe Barrett and Officer Mary Unkefer to Santa Barbara. [Tootikian would remain with the St. Denis Studio for the next twenty years and eventually become a director and head of the Oriental Dance Dept.]
On their arrival in Santa Barbara, three-year-old John was dropped off at his grandmother’s home, and Lillian, due to her drugged and distraught mental condition, was driven by Unkefer to the Psychiatric Evaluation Unit where she was examined and initially admitted for “72-hour observations.” [Note: The subsequent hospitalization likely would and could have been avoided had Mrs. Lillian Hitchcock Hamilton been willing to take Lillian into her custody. But due to a “falling out” between mother and daughter, she refused. Mrs. Hamilton died five years later in 1955.]
Officer Unkefer in her January 30, 1950 letter to the DA’s Office offers the following additional information:
This morning I went to the hearing at the Psycho Ward and it was determined that she [Lillian] was mentally upset. The Dr. said a great deal of the condition was brought about from the strain of the trial. Both Drs. stated that they felt she should have medical care. So she is to be taken to Camarillo State Hospital for treatment.
My personal opinion is that if the feeling between her and her Mother was not so strained, she might have been given a chance to go home & be taken care of by her Mother. There seems to have never been love between these two. The Mother takes the attitude that she is going to MAKE Lillian do things the way she (Mother) wants them & the Girl seems just as determined that she is not going to be always treated as a Child. Hence there is fireworks between them.
George Hodel (center) December 1949 at the LA Courthouse awaiting trial charged with incest and sexual molestation of his fourteen-year-old daughter, Tamar. Lillian Lenorak will, by her own admissions, provide perjured testimony in behalf of Dr. Hodel, and, just one month later in January 1950, will repeat her perjury at the felony trials of abortionists Dr. Ballard and his assistant, Charles Smith, resulting in the case being dismissed by the judge. Within days of that dismissal, Lillian would confront George Hodel at his Franklin house at gunpoint and threatened to recant her testimony and admit she was present during the abortion. These actions and threats resulted in Dr. George Hodel’s drugging her and staging her “attempted suicide,” as well as threatening to have her son, John, taken from her, and to harm him should she go to the police.
Lillian Lenorak and Film Director John Farrow
As previously documented in 2003, with the post-publication discovery and release of the secret DA Hodel Files, we learned that Lillian Lenorak met with DA Lt. Frank Jemison and made a positive identification of Elizabeth Short as being a sometime girlfriend of George Hodel.
Lillian was an extremely intelligent and attractive woman, as well as a talented dancer with the famed Ruth St. Denis studio.
In the mid-1940s, Lillian met and had an affair with the well-known Hollywood film director, John Farrow, who at that time was married to actress Maureen O’Sullivan. [John Farrow 1904-1963. Credited with directing forty-seven films, including: Two Years Before the Mast (1946), The Big Clock (1948), Where Danger Lives (1950), Hondo (1953), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), and many more.]
Out of their relationship was born a son, John, who would, three-years later in January 1950, be the eyewitness to George Hodel’s brutal assault on his mother at the Franklin house. [We recalled the boy’s statement to Officer Mary Unkefer, in route to Santa Barbara, “He knocked mommie down and made her cry hard.”]
In the DA Hodel Surveillance Transcript (page 114), there was a reference to my mother knowing and having met John Farrow. Exhibit F is a scanned extract from that page. The date was March 11, 1950. The police log showed the time to be 1:59 p.m. My mother was at the Franklin house. She dialed and spoke with a secretary, “Elsie,” then to a person identified only as, “Bob.” She talked about “John getting her a job.” [Here she was referring to John Huston, her ex-husband, not John Farrow.] She then went on to mention a story idea for a screen play she thought might interest John Farrow.
Exhibit F
DA Hodel Surveillance transcript (scanned excerpt) page 114
At the same time the DA/LAPD was bugging and staking out on our home, director John Farrow was completing his noir-film, Where Danger Lives, to be released in July 1950. The story involved a woman who attempted suicide [Maureen O’Sullivan], a young doctor who falls in love with her [Robert Mitchum], a murder, and their attempt to escape to Mexico. But the irony doesn’t stop there. Cast in a bit part in the film was an attractive Eurasian actress by the name of Kiyo Cuddy, the ex-lover of George Hodel and future wife-to-be of then nine-year-old Steve Hodel.
John Lenorak would not discover that his actual biological father was film director John Farrow until
adulthood. As the fates would have it, the disclosure did not come from a family member, but rather from his mother’s 1940s acquaintance and former Franklin house tenant, Joe Barrett.
The two men had a chance meeting which I believe occurred sometime in the late 1970s. John had no memory and Joe Barrett made no mention of the January, 1950 Franklin house assault by George Hodel on his mother. Their discussion centered strictly on Barrett informing John that he was the son of film director John Farrow.
Subsequent to receiving this information, I was told that John contacted and met his half-sister, Mia Farrow, and was accepted into the Farrow clan. John, after verifying the truth of it, then changed his name to John Lenorak Farrow.
The Palm Springs Murder
Lillian Hamilton Lenorak was murdered on November 8, 1959. She was just forty-two. Here is a summary of what happened. It’s short, senseless, and very sad.
Lillian was living in Hollywood and was dating Dr. Frank Back, a wealthy physicist and businessman, with an office at Hollywood’s Crossroads of the World. Dr. Back designed and manufactured movie camera lenses and had become world famous for his development of television’s Zoomar Lens.
Frank Back picked Lillian up at her Hollywood home for a weekend getaway on Saturday, November 7, 1959. They drove from Hollywood to his vacation home, two hours away, in the desert community of Palm Springs. They had known each other for about one-year.
After spending the day at Dr. Back’s home, the two dressed for dinner, and, at about 8:00 p.m., left to go dine at the Rivera Hotel. In route, an argument ensued in the car, and Lillian, apparently having decided to return to Los Angeles, asked Frank for the keys to his house so she could pick up her clothes. He refused. The quarrel escalated and Lillian demanded that he pull to the side of the road and let her out of the car. He stopped and she got out in front of the El Mirador Hotel and walked away. Dr. Back drove back to his home. And when Lillian failed to return the following morning, he gathered her clothes together and drove himself back to Hollywood.