by Hodel, Steve
… A certain girl is going to get the same as E.S. got if she squeals on us. We’re going to Mexico City—catch us if you can.
2K’s
[SKH Note: Does the signature “2K’s” after the “us” and “we” stand for “Two Killers”?]
As to the WHY we have multiple motives, the most likely being handed to us from inside the DA files.
It would appear that Elizabeth Short may have unwittingly signed her own death warrant by inadvertently making known to her ex-boyfriend, George Hodel, that she had gone to Chicago and was investigating the 1945 Chicago Lipstick Murders. [I would refer my readers to my sequel, Most Evil: Avenger, Zodiac and the Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hodel, Dutton 2009 for full details of that investigation.]
In a later mailing, the Black Dahlia Avenger tells us:
…“Dahlia Killing was justified”
George Hodel Album—Photo No. 2—Friend or Trophy?
Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.
The Innocence Project
I have no desire to reopen the 2003 George Hodel photo album controversy.
In my 2006 CNN interview, I was personally able to publicly eliminate photograph No. 1 in my father’s album as NOT BEING ELIZABETH SHORT. As summarized in Chapter 4, we now know that the Franklin house photo was my father’s friend, Marya Marco.
Whether the second photograph in my father’s album is or is not Elizabeth Short, no longer matters. Its initial relevance was to address the question of whether George Hodel and Elizabeth Short had ever met.
Thanks to the 2004 post-publication discovery of the secret DA files and transcripts, that question has become a moot point. We now have independent confirmation from both law enforcement documents and new witnesses that George Hodel both KNEW AND ADMITTED TO KILLING ELIZABETH SHORT.
Over the past seven-years, I have received dozens of varying opinions on WHO PHOTO No. 2 might be. Many believe the photo IS Elizabeth Short.
Photo No. 2 compared to Elizabeth Short photo at crime scene [lacerations airbrushed]
Others suggest the photo looks more like the 1949 Lone Woman Murder victim, actress Jean Spangler, whose purse was found just a half-mile from the Franklin house. Miss Spangler vanished on October 7, the day after George Hodel bailed out of jail on the child molestation charges. Jean was last seen seated at a table at a Hollywood restaurant engaged in a late-night argument with two men, one of them described as “dapper-looking” who closely fit George Hodel’s description.
Daily News 1949 Jean Spangler headlines suggesting
killer may be linked to 1947 Black Dahlia Murder
Jean Spangler comparisons to George Hodel’s Photo No. 2
Jean Spangler and Photo #2 enlargement
Was the “drop-dead gorgeous actress named Jean” who my half-brother, Duncan, recalled was dating our father and who he met at the Franklin house parties in 1948-1949—the same Jean Spangler?
George Hodel photo No. 2 nude compared to “Showgirl” Jean Spangler nude
Still others offer the possibility that Photo No. 2 could have been the unidentified woman/victim from the DA transcripts, heard crying and dialing the telephone operator from the Franklin house on February 18, 1950. [Later that same evening, in the transcript, the stakeout detectives described hearing George Hodel and his confidant, “The Baron,” go downstairs to the basement. Then beating sounds and blows were heard, which detectives described as “sounding like a pipe striking an object,” immediately followed by a woman crying out several times, then silence.]
Setting aside the speculation of who the woman in Photo No. 2 might be, let’s take a closer look at the actual photo.
In the photograph below we see George Hodel sitting on top of the desk in his home/office/living room. This photo was taken circa February 1950. Displayed on the north wall are forty-nine (49) separate Chinese and Tibetan art objects which GHH, using his “diplomatic immunity,” sent to himself from his UNRRA base in China before unexpectedly resigning and returning home in September 1946. Also, note his preference for mixing the old with the new as demonstrated by the modern art painting [enlarged, artist unknown] hanging on the wall behind his desk.
GHH album, Photo No. 2
When I initially viewed this photograph [upper right], I assumed that the woman was lying on a carpeted floor. However, in closer examination, it becomes obvious that she is not.
Based on the downward slope of her breast line, it appears that her head and shoulders are braced against a vertical object, with her left arm bent and propped behind her head.
In the living-room, we see two upholstered chairs. The lower-left photo shows a close-up of the chair material in comparison to the material in Photo No. 2. To my eye, they look similar. I would suggest that the nude woman’s back was braced against one of these fabric chairs when this photo was taken.
The woman in the photo, with eyes closed, is either feigning sleep, drugged unconscious, or worse, she is dead! Could this be one of George Hodel’s “trophy” photographs?
Her lipstick is heavily applied and appears to have been smeared on as if by another.
Lipstick and lips were a regular and repeating theme seen in many of the surrealist art works of that time period.
In one of Man Ray’s later photographs, believed taken shortly before his death, he was seen holding a photograph of a large pair of lips identical to the Photo No. 2 enlargement shown below as he winks directly into the camera. Behind him, hanging on the wall in plain view, we see one of his paintings—a bisected body.
In addition, in Photo No. 2, we also have the suggestion of the surrealist’s Minotaur theme, with the woman’s arm bent at the elbow and extended above her head. Could all of this add up to another George Hodel post-mortem homage to his Dadaist Master and good friend, Man Ray?
Photo No. 2 lipstick enlarged
Regardless of who this woman was, be she Short, Spangler, the Jane Doe in the basement, or someone else, we cannot discount the very real possibility that she may have been another one of George Hodel’s victims, who was drugged, posed, and about to be or had already been slain.
As we know, drugging his victims was an important part of the doctor’s M.O…. To date, we KNOW of at least three drugging incidents: Ruth Spaulding, Lillian Lenorak, and his teenage granddaughter, Deborah Hodel [Tamar’s daughter], who, after being drugged while having dinner with him, reported awakening to find herself nude and spread-eagled on his hotel room bed with George snapping pictures of her.
The fourth probable drugging, based on a reading of the 1950 DA transcripts, was the Jane Doe victim who was assaulted and possibly slain in the Franklin house basement on February 18, 1950.
Sowden/Franklin House Photos-1969
In August 1969, the National Park Service, Department of the Interior undertook a project to both survey and photograph the Sowden/Franklin house.
This “Historic American Building Survey” CA-1940 and the photographs taken in connection with it were made public and I am here including those 1969 photographs.
George Hodel sold the house in 1950, and while it is believed the new owners initially took up residence, the home, after a few years of occupancy, became and remained vacant during the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Later, in the early 1970s, the owner’s grandson and his wife moved in and were in residence until selling the home in 2002.
[In BDA Chapter 20, “The Franklin House Revisited,” I refer to the owners as “Mr. and Mrs. Bill Buck” to protect their privacy.]
These survey photographs show that by 1969, the interior courtyard had become overgrown and the home had fallen into disrepair due to being vacant for more than a decade.
I am including these photographs from the sixties as they have preserved and best captured the look and feel of the Franklin house—AS IT WAS IN 1947.
All one need do is perform a li
ttle landscaping of the mind. Manicure the inner courtyard, cut back the cacti, trim the ivy, and YOU’RE THERE.
5121 Franklin Avenue, Hollywood, California.
It is 1947. A warm starlit night and the sweet smell of jasmine fills the air. Imagine you are one of the invited guests, standing on the polar bear rug, sipping an ice-cold gin-and-tonic, as the handsome dapper doctor approaches with a charming smile and his most sincere, “Good evening. So glad you could make it tonight.”
Historic American Buildings Survey-National Park Service
Sowden House Photographs-1969
(Full text and diagrams attached as Addendum)
ENTRANCE, OBLIQUE VIEW
ENTRANCE, AXIAL VIEW
ENTRANCE GATE
ENTRANCE GATE – DETAIL VIEW
LIVING ROOM, DISTANT VIEW, LOOKING WEST TO STUDY
LIVING ROOM, CLOSE VIEW LOOKING WEST TO STUDY
STUDY, FIREPLACE
GLAZED OPENING, LIVING ROOM, LOOKING TOWARDS COURT
COURT, LOOKING NORTH FROM LIVING ROOM TERRACE
ENTRANCE TO STUDIO AT NORTH END OF COURT, FROM COURT
CLOSE VIEW, ENTRANCE TO STUDIO AT NORTH END OF COURT
VIEW IN COURTYARD, LOOKING SOUTH TO LIVING ROOM
LIVING ROOM, CLOSE VIEW FROM COURTYARD
COLONNADE, LOOKING THROUGH DOOR
COLONNADE, BEYOND DOOR
BATHROOM, TUB
BATHROOM, SINK
Chapter 6
The DA-Hodel Black Dahlia Transcripts
As you begin to read the following summaries, it is important to understand that the detective’s entries that make-up these 146-pages of transcriptions are nothing more than THEIR PERSONAL LOG. In these files, [with a few fortunate exceptions] we are only reading brief “headlines” as to what was contained in each of the separately recorded conversations.
The officers’ entries, made in real time, summarized only bits and pieces of each conversation. Consequently, we are only receiving a few sentences of a total conversation.
Unfortunately, the actual forty-one wire recordings have “disappeared” from LAPD custody, and, it is almost certain, that the missing recordings containing the complete conversations were destroyed and will never become available.
It is also important to understand that the modern day LAPD had nothing to do with the original investigation and had no idea that Dr. George Hill Hodel was ever named as a suspect, let alone that he had confessed on tape to committing the crimes. Today’s LAPD first learned of both Dr. George Hodel’s existence and these transcripts only AFTER the publication of BDA in 2003.
Today’s LAPD had NO KNOWLEDGE that these DA transcripts existed. All of the evidence connecting George Hodel to the crimes, as well as these transcripts, was removed from LAPD files a long time ago, probably in the 1950s or 1960s.
LASO undersheriff James Downey was almost correct when he told his chief of detectives, Gordon Bowers, when speaking about George Hodel and LAPD solving the case, “…it will never come out.” It did take fifty-five years!
Also, keep in mind, as you read these transcripts, that we owe their existence solely to one honest [and very cautious] detective.
It was Lt. Frank B. Jemison who was assigned by the 1949 Grand Jury to reinvestigate the Black Dahlia and other Lone Woman murders. He did it and he solved it. When he was then ordered by his superiors to “shut it down” and turn over all the files, tape recordings, and transcripts to LAPD’s chief of detectives, Thad Brown, he did that too.
But it was Lt. Jemison’s final act that ultimately changed the course of history and permitted the public to ultimately discover the TRUTH.
Prior to turning over all the materials to LAPD, as ordered, Lt. Jemison made a copy of his complete investigation, including the Hodel transcripts, and secretly locked all of the documents away in the DA’s vault, where they remained unopened and untouched for six-decades. This was his insurance. UNBENOWNST TO ALL THE TOP BRASS IN BOTH THE DA’S OFFICE AND THE LAPD, LT. JEMISON KEPT A SECOND SET OF BOOKS!
Here then—thanks to an honest and careful cop—are those books!
Note: In the pages that follow, I have reduced the 146-pages down to just 15 for easier readability. Included in those pages are extracts of what I consider to be the most relevant statements and admissions.
For historical purposes and the hardcore researchers, [and in case I have missed something that an eagle-eyed armchair detective might find] I have included the complete unedited Hodel-Black Dahlia transcripts in the “Addendum.”
LOS ANGELES DISTRICT ATTORNEY
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
HODEL – BLACK DAHLIA CASE FILE
ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE TRANSCRIPTS OF GEORGE HILL HODEL M.D.
DA Case No. 30-1268
Title: Elizabeth Short
Suspect: Dr. George Hill Hodel
Inv. Assigned: Lt. Frank Jemison
Charge: Murder
Case: ACTIVE
The following fifteen-page annotated summary was prepared by retired LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel. It contains the verbatim statements and entries of both DA and LAPD detectives as found in the original 1950 DA Case File.
The statements and admissions made by Dr. George Hill Hodel are also verbatim, taken from the pages of the DA’s transcription of the secret wire-recordings.
The recordings were obtained during a joint DA/LAPD taskforce stakeout comprised of eighteen detectives. The electronic surveillance was ongoing 24/7 over a five-week period from February 15, 1950 through March 27, 1950 (1872 man hours) and was terminated only because Dr. Hodel, after being tipped-off, then fled his residence.
As of that date, detectives had recorded forty-one wire spools of Dr. Hodel’s personal conversations. The DA’s original summary resulted in 146 pages of transcription. In the pages that follow, I have left the original timeline intact and included only those statements that are relevant to criminal activity, payoffs to law enforcement, and which make specific references to the Black Dahlia Murder investigation. The complete and unedited 146-page transcript is included as an addendum to this book.
ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE INSTALLATION
DR. GEORGE HILL HODEL RESIDENCE —5121 FRANKLIN AVE, HOLLYWOOD
2/15/50
The handwritten report (above) is a copy of the one found in the DA Hodel-Black Dahlia File.
The verbatim typewritten copy at the right includes all spellings and punctuations as they appear in the above original.
D.A. Hodel/Black Dahlia File
“INVESTIGATOR’S PROGRESS REPORT”
Case No. 30-1268 Date: 2/27/50
Title: Short, Eliz.
Suspects: Dr. Geo. Hill Inv. Assigned Jemison
Charge: Murder
THIS CASE IS: ACTIVE BRIEF STATEMENT AS TO RESULTS TO DATE: (Indicate present status if being brought to trial at this time.)
“On Feb. 15, 1950 the undersigned investigator, working with Sgts Stanton & Guinnis from the LAPD crime lab, installed two microfones in the home of Dr. Geo. Hodel.
The microfones were connected to a wire recorder located in the basement of the Hollywood Station of the LAPD thru telephone lines leased from the Pac. Tel. & Tel. Co. Trouble was not rectified until approx. 2:00, Feb. 18. No intelligible conversation was heard over the system until that time.”
Signed—David E. Bronson
Chapter 7
“The Baron”
In February 2009, almost fifty-nine years to the day after the “Baron” is first overheard by detectives speaking in conversation with my father on the DA Hodel-Black Dahlia transcripts, he has been identified.
Previously, all we—the LAPD and the DA detectives—knew about the mysterious “Baron” was that he had a German accent. And according to the 1950 transcript, his possible last name was HERRINGER.
Over the years, while I came up with several possibles, I was never able to actually correctly identify the Baron. None of the later police reports in my possession ever even showed an a
ttempt at trying to learn his identity.
Then on February 9, 2009, I received the following e-mail from Jil Anderson, a genealogist/researcher, who succeeded where the rest of us had failed. Here is her original verbatim e-mail:
Dear Steve,
After having read all of your website, I forgot to mention that I think I may have discovered the identity of “Baron Herringer”, not that it will make any difference, but thought you might be interested to know what popped up on a genealogy website. (I have frequently done “random acts of genealogical kindness” for people searching their ancestry; and likewise, people have helped me with discovering my own family tree.)
Maybe you already know about him, but your intriguing statement that no one knew who he was, made me wonder if I could locate him in the genealogical databases. Since he was German, and I know that families wanting to express nobility frequently use the name “von” in their names, I looked him up that way. The fact that he was called “Baron” makes me think that was a nickname, leading people to believe him to be of noble heritage. So I have attached some records of one “Ernst Von Harringa” who emigrated from Germany, via Chungking China, to the United States. He applied for naturalization 5 times and wed an American in 1939. (Actually he had changed his name from Ernst Franz Meyer which was his name in Germany.) He was a writer and an art dealer and married a socialite by the name Alene.
Also in a book about Aleister Crowley, titled The Unknown God, there is a mention of “Baron Ernst Von Harringa”.
I’ve attached these documents … the extent of my suspicion of who “Baron Herringer” was.
Best, Jil Anderson
I spent the next two months conducting a background investigation and further research on the name provided by JIL, and my findings proved her “suspicions” to be correct.
Baron Ernst von Harringa, aka Ernst Meyer was in fact the same man tape-recorded by law-enforcement and overheard in multiple conversations with Dr. George Hodel at the Franklin house in February and March 1950.
Who was “Baron” Ernst Von Harringa?—A Timeline