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

  Letter No. 1

  2313 Bushrod Lane

  Los Angeles 24

  April 7, 1948.

  Dear John,

  This letter really should begin: “Stranger, you ask me why I am so sad…” Its precipitating cause is a check I didn’t get. I wrote a radio script dealing with a romantic and lovely Russian princess, which was accepted with a perfunctory “Charming” and has remained in the producer’s archives since November. When I timidly asked for a check, he recoiled in horror. In view of the Russian Situation and his job, the script can’t be produced. No Russian, even one long dead, can be permitted on the air in a glamorous light. And so, so close is the margin on which the babes and I exist, no food, no rent paid, George hasn’t given us any alimony for months, and in view of his mental difficulties, I don’t want to be unpleasant. I’m really having a tough time, since both the boys and earning a living are a full time job. There aren’t enough hours. So many things take time: like listening to a neighbor elucidate Technocracy, so he’ll be won over and let Mike ride his pony. Something’s always cropping up! We’re very happy, and life is good; difficult, but good.

  I’ve got eight radio scripts assigned, but I can’t get them out fast enough, or get paid for them fast enough to meet this emergency. Listen…

  Two boys in bed with fever and virus x.

  Third slightly lacerated from aforementioned pony.

  Mother out of hospital after major operation, with us,

  Needing medicine and nursing.

  No rent paid.

  No electric bill paid.

  No grocery bill paid.

  No bills paid.

  No bank balance.

  I’ll be forty two next week

  STRANGER, YOU ASK ME WHY I AM SO SAD.

  If you could loan me, and I mean loan, about five hundred dollars (or even five!) I could repay it within six months. This epidemic can’t last forever. I finished a script by working all night last night, rushed it by messenger to the producer today, only to discover I can’t get paid for it for at least three weeks. Gandhi could have weathered it, but not the boys! I did a washing this morning, cooked, cleaned, took three temperatures, all too high, placed a cool hand of three fevered brows in rapid succession, and ironed until eleven tonight. If this letter sounds flippant or gay, it’s only because I’m frightened. I’ve done everything I could, and it isn’t enough

  If you’re able to help, please do.

  Dorothy

  Author Notes—

  Based on the return address, this letter indicates we are living in a rental several miles north of Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Glen Canyon. The home was called, “ROBBER’S ROOST.” Immediately behind the house, there were some high caves set into the mountain. According to legend, these caves were used as a hideout for Banditos at the turn of the century. Situated as they were, literally, in our own backyard, we three brothers would climb up and into them to hangout and “make our plans.”

  George and Dorothy were separated in 1944 and formally divorced in 1945.

  In this April 1948 letter, Mother made reference to our father’s “mental difficulties,” a full eighteen months in advance of his October 1949 arrest for incest and child molestation, which informs us that they were preexisting and ongoing.

  “Mother” was Dorothy Harvey, our maternal grandmother, who in 1948 would have been in her late sixties.

  Letter No. 2

  5121 Franklin Ave

  Los Angeles 27

  October 24, 1949

  Dear John,

  I’m sending you this because I think it is the kind of story you would like. Please let me know how you like it. It is a pattern that particularly fascinates me: one that Bierce used first, and later Conrad Aiken used in a beautiful tale called “Mr. Arcularis.” In your opinion is it too slight for a motion picture?

  I’m working at General Service Studios with Rowland Brown.

  Call me there if you can – GR 3111-or at home OL 3476.

  Dorothy

  Author Notes:

  While there is no mention about George Hodel in this letter, he had been arrested for incest/child molestation on October 6, just eighteen days prior.

  “Bierce” is Ambrose “Bitter” Bierce, one of Mother’s longstanding HEROES. [She wrote a screen or radio play about the journalist’s mysterious disappearance called, “Occurrence at an Unknown Bridge.”

  As mentioned previously, Mother was having an ongoing affair with film director Rowland Brown. And here we learn that Rowland has hired her to work/write at his office.

  Letter No. 3

  410 Santa Monica Pier

  Santa Monica, Calif.

  February 2, 1950

  Dear John:

  Thank you very much for the needed $$$$. They averted famine and the sheriff. I feel a certain hesitancy about calling you at home and there are two matters to ask you about.

  I saw George’s attorney yesterday. He thinks it will be about six months before the house and antiques can be sold and a trust fund set up. George has sent out about a hundred letters to find work in outlying parts of the world. My problem is to keep the children alive for the next few months. As I told you I have various scripts out and something may happen at any time. It’s the uncertainty!

  Could you help to keep the children going until affairs straighten out? $200 a month will do it. I have no claim on your generosity and this is a difficult letter to write. I have lived so close to terror and disaster; and it is impossible to conceal this entirely from the children.

  I went to an employment agency down here and got some work—night work at a hotel for a couple of nights. But I can’t do that and take care of the children too. The certainty of a sum of money on the first of the month would make it possible to plan and budget and work out a way of life. I’m sure I can repay it soon. But if you feel hesitancy about doing it, and cannot for any reason, please say no.

  The second thing whether or not Horizon Pictures is interested in acquiring outside money for making pictures. There are Philippino [sic] business interests (friends of George) who want to put money ($250,000 up to a million) in a motion picture. They don’t want any voice in the making of it; they would like a part to be done in the Philippines.

  They want an Academy award director; they care less about name actors. John Ford was going to do it, but his recent removal to Republic gives him no time for a year to do anything outside, and they want to act sooner. If this interests you, why don’t you call George at Normandy 2-7464.

  They’ve given him full power to act; and he doesn’t know anything about pictures. It might be a chance to do something really good – Hardy’s Return of the Native? If it’s not the sort of thing you care about, maybe you could suggest someone?

  Please let me hear from you. I’ve started work on the cowboy Hamlet. Do you honestly think it might get a production?

  Dorothy

  Author Notes

  We see that this was written on February 2, 1950 from the apartment on Santa Monica Pier. Two weeks later, the DA/LAPD secretly installed the microphones at the Franklin house and began recording George Hodel’s conversations. Lt. Jemison will interview Dorothy at this address in March.

  The Filipino “money connections” could well be Hortensia Laguda, who, in two years, would become George’s wife. Hortensia met my father after responding to a personal advertisement he had placed in the Saturday Review Literature magazine requesting to correspond with “an Oriental woman of sensitive tastes.” In 1949, Hortensia, who was taking some classes in New York, responded to the ad and followed up with a visit to George at the Franklin house where she met George, Dorothy, and Tamar, and attended several social parties.

  Letter No. 4

  410 Santa Monica Pier

  Santa Monica, Calif

  June 13, 1950

  Dear John,

  I have the impression that you are very busy and it is difficult for you to get away. It might be a short cut to put down a plan:
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  1. I could start working on a treatment of THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.

  2. I could submit one-page suggestions for stories. I read enormously and have run across a great deal of material: To do SERENA BLANDISH as a musical. MGM owns the rights. I think it would be better than GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES.

  To do a picture like QUARTET: one whose subject matter concerns children. The beautiful mood story of Conrad Aiken’s SILENT SNOW…FALLING SNOW together with MY OLD MAN of Hemingway’s, and perhaps one other. The Jose Allonada story.

  3. I could finish a novel I have 100 page start on. It isn’t one you have seen. It is experimental and candor compels me to admit it has more in common with New Directions than with Bessie Smith. Still if you would care to gamble on the royalties….

  I’m afraid you were right about George…several jobs were offered and then withdrawn when they found out about the recent trial. He will work out something, but right now I feel as though we were walking a tightrope. Kelvin is ill (aftermath of mumps, he almost had encephalitis) and I don’t even have carfare to take him to the doctor’s. I literally don’t know where the children’s next meal is coming from. It takes $250 to cover the monthly necessities. I don’t know if you can afford to gamble that much on my accomplishing anything; I imagine your responsibilities are heavy. Please let me know what you want me to do, what would be most useful for your purposes. It is a situation that calls for the Marines!

  Why don’t you send Pedro down to stay with us for a week or two when school is out?

  Dorothy

  Letter No. 5—The Telegram

  JOHN HUSTON – MGM AUG 4, 1950 9:49 A.M.

  YOUR HUNCH ABOUT GEORGE TRUE CAN YOU HELP CHILDREN AND ME GET OUT OF HIS HOUSE TODAY IF POSSIBLE OLYMPIA 3476

  DOROTHY

  Copy of original Telegram sent by Dorothy from Franklin house to John at MGM on August 4, 1950

  Author Notes:

  It doesn’t get any more ominous sounding than this. We can only guess at John’s “hunch about George.” Had he heard that George was the Black Dahlia killer? Another murder? Whatever it was, it is clear that Mother was confirming that John was correct and believed that she, and we, her three sons, were in IMMINENT DANGER and must immediately flee the house for our safety. [More information on what John may have known will be presented at the end of this chapter.]

  Letter No. 6

  5121 Franklin Ave

  Los Angeles 27

  August 23, 1950

  Dear John:

  Back at George’s again, after two weeks away – nothing to eat, nowhere to go. It is acutely dangerous for the children to be here. There is danger from two sources: George (I won’t go into that one! – except to say there is a growing threat of no-control and physical violence;) the second source is from neighborhood hostility towards everyone connected with George’s house, which centers on the children because they are the only ones who have contact with the neighbors. I have had to keep them entirely indoors after one woman heaped the most unspeakable abuse on them because they were their father’s children! The boys were completely bewildered, because they know nothing of the trial at all. They shouldn’t know anything about a world like that.

  The children and I went to Palm Springs Sunday. (Steve was looking for a horned toad and a mirage. I was looking for a house, in which to live a less frenzied future – (possibly a mirage, too!) I found one, built in the modern charming desert fashion – 4 bedrms, 2 baths, and large grounds for $85 a month, furnished….by the year. Palm Springs is probably as safe a place to be as any if people start exploding bombs—(Duncan has just been inducted, by the way) and anyhow I love the desert, and it’s a fine place for the children…(but there were no horned toads)!…bombs or no bombs, it gives them room to expand and a horizon to see. The schools there are excellent.

  I would have to take it right away – this weekend, because rents there start soaring, and they won’t hold it longer. They could probably get 200 for it during the season. It would require 170 dollars for 2 mos rent on the year’s lease, and something for utility deposits. George will give me 100 on Sept 5, and 200 every month hereafter, he says. He is working at Ross-Loos clinic. If you could (as Mark suggested) put me on your payroll for 100 a month starting Oct (and I will work on Mysterious Stranger) –I think I can just make it.

  I have 6 prospects of jobs – mostly television; they can be worked out there with occasional commuting… the Greyhound bus is a block from the house.

  So all our future depends on you, and if you can send enough now to get in the house – 200 for that and about 50 more for groceries and moving. And a hundred a month after, which I will do my best to earn.

  Darling, I know you have immense responsibilities. I hate piling mine on top of you. But there is no one else I can go to; and the danger to the children is very real. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and wait to hear from you.

  Dorothy

  Olympia 3476

  Author’s Notes:

  A couple of new points are contained in Mother’s letter of August 23rd.

  The first is that George Hodel is back in town and has taken a temporary job with ROSS-LOOS clinic. Perhaps his presence was necessary for the sale of the Franklin House. [We know that he will be gone in six to eight weeks and relocate to the Territory of Hawaii, where he has accepted a professorship at the University of Hawaii and will begin teaching a course in Abnormal Child Psychology, as well as counseling the criminally insane in the prisons.]

  Secondly, are the comments regarding the neighbors coming down hard on us three boys for father’s actions? While I have no memory of this, I do recall that my brother, Kelvin and I at about this time, lit an empty cardboard egg carton on fire and threw it into the next door neighbor’s garage. The garage caught fire requiring the fire department to respond and put it out. There was minimal damage to the residence structure. In later years, when I asked Mother why we did that, she responded that we claimed, “We simply wanted to see the fire trucks roll,” which made very little sense. Based on what was revealed in these letters, I have to believe our motive was to get even with our neighbors for “the bad things they said about our father.” [I guess I can clear my conscience on this now, since there is only a three-year statute of limitations for committing arson.]

  John must have “come through again with the money” as mother did rent the house and we moved to Palm Springs that fall. [Actually, Rancho Mirage, where we lived very close to Rowland Brown and his wife, and their son, Steven.]

  Duncan is my older half-brother, born to Emilia and George Hodel in 1928.

  Again, Mother made clear references to the threat of physical danger to her and to us from Father. As we know from earlier chapters, Mother did suffer physical violence from George. I suspect quite a lot!

  While the remaining series of letters have no direct bearing on my investigation, I am going to include them here due to their historical value and interest to film buffs, historians, and the general reading public. [I must confess a second motive, which is to put on display the absolute elegance of my mother’s intellect and her remarkable ability to communicate.]

  Letter No. 7

  754 Locust St.

  Pasadena, California

  June 10, 1954

  Dear John,

  I have a wonderful – although startling suggestion to make. Let’s do Ulysses. You’ve told me you think I have talent, and you’d like me to write something, and I think you mean it sincerely. Who except you and I could do such a picture? I am sure we are the only two people in the world who have ever read it through twice aloud. If it came off it would be the greatest picture ever made. The freshness and vitality of the book and of the language, the panorama of Dublin from dawn through the night; the changes of style in storytelling from girly-girly Gertie on the beach to the drunken dreamlike sequence of the whores—there has never been a picture like it. Ulysses remains for me after countless readings the most exciting and living book ever written.

&n
bsp; Please let me try! I should like to begin right away. I am still working in the real estate office, because I can’t find a job that pays more. Of course it would be ideal if you could keep me on salary while I wrote the picture. But if that isn’t feasible I could work on it nights. George isn’t sending me anything, so all I have is my salary, and I do loath the work. I am revoltingly good at it. Please let me know right away!

  The boys are getting very grown-up. They are really wonderful. I am trying to model them on you, because you remain the man in the whole world I most admire, probably because you caught me young and made so deep an impression upon my malleable nature! I came upon a photograph of you as a child—do you remember that very beautiful one your mother wrote a verse on? Twice I have carried it to the post office to send to you thinking you would probably like to have it, and then brought it back home because I didn’t want to part with it. It should belong to your children, I suppose. Perhaps I can have it copied.

  Let me know right away about Ulysses. If you think it is not feasible, I would also like to do Mr. Gilhooley. But Ulysses is all I can think about at the moment!

  Love,

  Dorothy

  Letter No. 8

  754 Locust St.

  Pasadena, Calif

  November 9, 1954

  Dear John,

  An English poet and bullfighter wrote once a description of our bullfighter, Manolete:

  “Andalusian art reach the summit of its expression in the style of the bullfighter Manolete. He was ornate yet severe like Seneca. He was called ‘the tower of Cordoba’. He personified opposite extremes at one and the same moment contrasting, in one being the austerity, coldness and hardness of a statue with the softness and warmth of a flower: for while his brain, his muscles and his sword were dedicated to the clear and icy geometry of death, yet with his crimson cape and his scarlet mulete he sculptured to the imagination of the full-blown corollas of magnolias, roses, and camellias.”

  This sums up; it seems to me, the whole essence of what we should try to do in the picture. Therefore, your suggestion of using the rigid pattern of the bullfight as frame for the story, and keeping it within the confines of the ancient stole of La Maestranza is exactly right. The story is a duel between Life and Death enacted almost as a ritual dance between the superb overflowing vitality of the matador and the cold shadow of Absence, while each augments and enhances the stature and mystery of the other. A towering spiral—Lorca’s “spiral of whiteness” in which the two forces contend in a sort of ecstasy. I hope this doesn’t sound too high flown or too abstract. I have to think this way! If I get clear sure feeling of the bones of the story, in this case the bullfight, then I get a fine feeling of freedom in describing the flesh on the bones, the whole glorious exhuberance [sic] and sound and smell of life and its great careless profusion thrown into relief by the Shadow.