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

  Exactly, because just some of the pieces—what I’d heard were small pieces. But, when you put them all together, it’s bringing the whole big picture together of the Black Dahlia murder. I think Steve solved it.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if that doctor kept a diary of some type or note, and—certainly he knew who these politicians and officials were in government. And—I think they were really afraid of him. I would have to think that many of them were married, and had these girlfriends or mistresses on the side.

  …

  QUESTION:

  Tell me once more…what would you hear? What sorts of things would you hear—the scuttlebutt?

  TOM VETTER:

  They’d just start talking about her murder, and—how she’d been murdered—how they found her—how she’d been carved up. And, because of the cuttings on her—if you will, and dismemberment, it had to be done by some medical person, probably a medical doctor. And, they’d discuss that. A lot of guessing on everybody’s part as to what happened.

  QUESTION:

  But educated guesses, apparently, right?

  TOM VETTER:

  Educated guesses—I was a pretty young detective during those years in—in the ’60s and—these other—these other men down there—other detectives had many years’ experience. So, it was interesting to listen to them and just gain knowledge from their expertise.

  These guys had worked the Homicide Detail and places like that and he had—great experience, so—

  QUESTION:

  And once again, just putting a—putting a cap on it…. Did he ever mention—use the term “covered up,” “covered over” or you know, because of the doctor’s influence or power. Do you know if they ever used those terms?

  TOM VETTER:

  Yeah, it was a cover-up. Just the scuttlebutt going around that—they had found who had murdered—they had discovered who had murdered her, and it was really a cover up. Somebody had covered it up.

  QUESTION:

  Because?

  TOM VETTER:

  Because they were afraid that the doctor had the goods on too many people in high places—police official and city officials—politicians and that—regarding abortions.

  QUESTION:

  Abortions involving what?

  TOM VETTER:

  Abortions involving their girlfriends—their mistresses. Many of them were married at the time, and—they just felt the doctor had a lot of goods on them and perhaps he kept a diary or notes, or something.

  QUESTION:

  Now, as you say, you’re a young cop—a young—sheriff’s deputy at this—at this point—kind of learning the ropes. Were you shocked at this?

  TOM VETTER:

  Yeah, a little bit. You hear things, and you know, you experience things as these cases unfold, and you go through your career, but—it was a little bit shocking. I had to adjust my thinking back to the 1945s and what type of—atmosphere pervaded the Police Department then, and the Sheriff’s Department.

  END OF INTERVIEW

  Chapter 14

  “A Doctor Did It”

  “The fact that the killer was a physician, skilled in surgery, very much limited the suspect pool.”

  Stephen Kay,

  LA County, Head Deputy District Attorney

  One of the rare points that all of the professionals involved in the Dahlia investigation, past and present law enforcement officers, district attorney investigators, coroner’s experts, and FBI were in full agreement from the get-go was that the Black Dahlia’s killer was a physician skilled in surgery.

  Elizabeth Short Autopsy

  On January 16, 1947, the day after the body was found, Dr. Frederic Newbarr, then chief autopsy surgeon for the County of Los Angeles performed an autopsy on the victim. His findings determined that the cause of death was, “hemorrhage and shock from a concussion of the brain and lacerations of her face.” It was Dr. Newbarr’s further opinion that “the trauma to the head and face were the result of multiple blows using a blunt instrument.”

  Later sources provided the following additional information:

  1) As earlier described, the body had been neatly and cleanly bisected in half.

  2) A sharp, thin bladed instrument, consistent with a scalpel, had been used to perform the bisection.

  3) The incision was performed through the abdomen, and then through the intervertebral disk between the second and third lumbar vertebra.

  In 1947-1948, LAPD criminalist Ray Pinker and criminalist Lemoyne Snyder M.D. J.D., two of the most respected forensic experts of that day, after thorough study of the autopsy photographs and enlargements of tissue samples, concluded the killer had to have had advanced knowledge of anatomy and a high degree of surgical skill. [Ray Pinker had personally attended the original January 16, 1947 Elizabeth Short autopsy. And the Black Dahlia investigation was one of the first to use LAPD’s newly acquired high tech equipment to obtain high resolution color photographs documenting the trauma.]

  Popular crime and mystery writer of the time, Craig Rice, would later publish a book, 45 Murderers: a collection of true crime stories, [Simon and Schuster, New York, 1952] with one entire chapter devoted to “The Black Dahlia.” I quote relevant excerpts from that chapter:

  Everyone now knows that the body of Elizabeth Short was cut in two, severed at the waist, but what everybody does not know is the fact that the job was done with great precision, and with every evidence of professional skill.

  This fact had been noted by police criminologist, Captain Ray Pinker from the start; and his deductions were verified some time later in a joint study he made with Dr. Lemoyne Snyder, of the Michigan State Police Crime Laboratories, and a member of the editorial advisory board of True Police Cases.

  Going over the detailed photographs of the body, taken at the morgue, the two experts noted the clean knife marks made by the sharp instrument used in bisecting the body. They noted that not a single organ of the body was severed. They studied enlargements of some of the tissues, and came to the conclusion that the job showed extraordinary knowledge of human anatomy.

  Dr. Lemoyne Snyder was both a medical doctor and lawyer and literally “wrote the book” on homicide investigation. His book was my bible during my early training at the LAPD Police Academy, and an important reference guide during my eighteen years working Hollywood Homicide.

  LAPD criminalist Ray Pinker is legendary. A highly skilled scientist, he basically single-handedly brought LAPD into the twentieth century regarding criminal investigation of crime scenes.

  Ray was considered an expert witness in almost every field of forensics. He did it all—polygraph, chemistry, ballistics, trajectories, etc. You name it, he did it. [In the “it’s a small world category,” Ray Pinker was good friends with my uncle, Charles Eugene Harvey (my mother’s brother) who was a scientist, and, in the 1940s, was considered one of the leading world experts in the then brand new field of SPECTROSCOPY. Uncle Gene worked on the MANHATTAN PROJECT at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and, after the war, became a college professor, taught spectroscopy, and wrote three separate text books on the subject.]

  LAPD criminalist Ray Pinker, 1947, examining Black Dahlia “tip” Letter

  CBS television program, 48-Hours, in their October 2004, hour-long documentary, Black Dahlia Confidential, sought out their own expert to reexamine the photographs and provide an independent opinion.

  They went to the top and consulted with Dr. Mark Wallack, chief of surgery at St. Vincent Hospital in New York.

  CBS producers had Dr. Wallack review all the Dahlia related photographs and then asked him for his professional opinion as to whether a doctor had performed the bisection? His on-air answer:

  “You don’t get this kind of training where you can invade a human body unless you’ve had some sort of medical training. Yes, in my opinion, a doctor did it.”

  Dr. Mark Wallack,

  Chief of Surgery, St. Vincent Hospital, New York

  On-air interview for CBS 48 Hours, Black
Dahlia Confidential

  October, 2004

  Dr. Mark Wallack, informs CBS’s Erin Moriarty, in the 2006 airing of Black Dahlia Confidential that in his expert opinion, the bisection on Elizabeth Short’s body was performed by a trained physician.

  Here is a partial review of another expert’s opinion, also from 2004, which was totally unsolicited. Surgeon, Dr. Michael Keller’s opinion was included in an updated chapter of BDA. At that time, he had been practicing and instructing in surgery for over twenty-years.

  …

  The photos of the scene and the morgue which I looked at appear to show a very clean procedure. Surgeons make bold clean incisions thru each layer of tissue with the correct amount of pressure to divide only the tissues they are attending to. The uninitiated—laypersons—usually underestimate the amount of pressure it takes just to divide skin, let alone an intervertebral disc. Their procedures often result in cuts that are serrated at the ends from going over the tissue repeatedly. We derogatorily call these “Staging Laparotomies—going thru the skin in stages.” Additionally, amateurs often skive the incisions. Their cuts go thru skin at an angle to the horizontal plane so that one edge is “feathered” and the other appears peeled.

  The killer here [Black Dahlia] was educated enough not to attempt going thru the bones of the lumbar spine. He was savvy enough to locate and divide at the disc space. An amateur would probably have left hack marks on the vertebral bodies as he “casted about” for the interspace.

  Also, the willful performance of a hysterectomy which at that time [1947] would have been done through a lower vertical midline as the photos appear to show. That was a medical decision.

  The Trauma-Crime Scene and Autopsy Photographs

  As you, my readers, know from the inception of my investigation, now in its twelfth-year, I have always been reluctant to present photographs depicting the sadistic trauma inflicted on Elizabeth Short and some of the other victims.

  However, over the years in updated chapters, I have included some crime-scene and autopsy photographs to establish and support a point of evidence.

  In this investigation, YOU are the jury, and I find myself again placed in the role of the prosecutor’s investigator, who has the responsibility of preparing and making ready the exhibits and evidence to be submitted in court.

  Your need to know and view these important photographic exhibits, which in this case helps establish the absolute fact that A SKILLED SURGEON INFLICTED THE TRAUMA, demand that I include them here.

  As documented in the 2004 HarperCollins revised “Aftermath” chapter of BDA in 2003, I was contacted by Judy May, the granddaughter of Dahlia detective Harry Hansen. Judy informed me that she was in possession of her grandfather’s original photographs and provided me with an original full set of both the Black Dahlia crime scene and autopsy photographs. Several of these have never been previously published.

  Exhibit No. 1-The Hemicorpectomy

  In the below diagram [Exhibit 1] the arrows show us the location where the bisection was performed, which was done by incising between the second and third lumbar discs, the only location where a body can be divided without having to “saw through bone.”

  Exhibit No. 1

  Hemicorpectomy-Surgical procedure taught in U.S. medical schools in the 1930s.

  Exhibit No. 2-Bisected upper torso at crime-scene

  Exhibit No. 3-Bisected body at Coroner’s Office

  Exhibit No. 4 Coroner’s Office

  Exhibit No. 2 documents how responding officers observed the perfectly bisected body at the crime scene. Even to the untrained eye, it was obvious that this was done in the detective’s words, “with medical finesse.”

  Exhibit No. 3 shows the two halves removed from the crime scene and placed together on the gurney at the coroner’s office made ready for the autopsy. The crisscross incisions seen on the right hip and enlarged in the photo were clearly inflicted using a thin bladed knife, most probably a surgeon’s scalpel.

  Exhibit No. 4 shows the body part as viewed from the left side. Here, we see another expertly performed scalpel incision where the surgeon has removed a small oval section of skin immediately to the right of the victim’s left breast.

  Exhibit No. 5 – Coroner’s Office

  Exhibit No. 5 is a view of the large section of skin [weight approx. one pound] which was excised from the left thigh and placed inside the victim’s vagina. Again, it appears a scalpel was used and we see another example of what appears to be a carefully cut out “geometric shape.”

  Exhibit No. 6-Crime Scene

  Exhibit No. 6 shows the “hysterectomy incision” as seen by officers at the vacant lot, 3815 S. Norton Avenue. Chief of surgery, Dr. Mark Wallack described this in his on-air television as:

  “The willful performance of a hysterectomy which at that time [1947] would have been done through a lower vertical midline as the photos appear to show. That was a medical decision.”

  Exhibit No. 7 Crime scene comparison to Coroner’s Office

  Exhibit No. 7 establishes two important pieces of information. First, the top photograph was taken at the crime scene and clearly shows that the mouth wound was NOT A SLASHING, but rather, like all the other trauma, was an exceptionally skillful and carefully rounded incision, as if the surgeon was carving a smile into the face of the victim. The killer also made five distinct vertical incisions extending upward from the top lip.

  The urban-myth has it that Elizabeth’s mouth was “slashed from ear to ear.” NOT SO, and this photograph proves it. Like all myths it was born from individuals seeing the above coroner’s photograph and believing that was the madman’s butchery. Actually, what they are seeing is the work performed by the medical examiner. Note the black arrows I have inserted which show the four sutures that were put in place and used to stitch together the mouth for closing after the autopsy was completed.

  Exhibit No. 8 shown below are the cigarette burns marks on Elizabeth Short’s back which both the LAPD and the DA’s reports claim DID NOT EXIST. That would have forever remained A LIE had Harry Hansen’s granddaughter, Judy May, not given me the full set of coroner’s photographs to share with the public.

  Lt. Jemison wrote in his October 1949 report to the Grand Jury on two separate pages as follows:

  Page 7- …There were no cigarette burns and no tattoo marks on the body.

  Page 13-…It was found that there were no cigarette burns or other burns on her body as he had maintained.

  Lt. Jemison was either (1) deliberately lying to the 1949 Grand Jury or (2) deliberately lied to by the LAPD who wanted to keep the burn marks secret.

  It is one thing to verbally lie about facts in a criminal investigation, which is done fairly frequently in order to maintain secrets, but to put it in writing as part of your formal presentation to a seated grand jury is a whole different matter.

  For that reason, it is my belief that LAPD deliberately kept DA investigator, Lt. Jemison in the dark about this particular aspect, which they had kept secret from EVERYBODY for the three-years prior to his being assigned by the grand jury to reinvestigate THEIR handling of the case.

  Exhibit No. 8 Cigarette burn marks [8 or 9] to victim’s back

  An independent review of the above photographs by nationally respected forensic expert and cardiologist, Dr. D.P. Lyle, M.D. provided the following opinion:

  …The lesions on the mid-back appear to be traumatic in nature. They appear to be cigarette burns, which are partially healed. They could be only hours old but are more likely 1 to 3 days old, since they seem to display some degree of healing in the central portion of each.

  Dr. George Hill Hodel—A skilled surgeon

  Over the years, a few critics have tried to suggest that Dr. Hodel had no training in surgery and was just a VD specialist and an “Administrator.”

  A&E Cold Case Files TV Host Bill Kurtis interviewing LAPD Det. Brian Carr in 2006

  LAPD detective, Brian Carr, prior to his retirement, informed Bill Kurtis o
n A&E Black Dahlia Confidential that due to heavy case demands over the previous six-years, he “didn’t have time to prove or disprove Hodel’s investigation.”

  In an earlier Court TV interview, Detective Carr [now retired], when questioned about George Hodel’s skill as a surgeon, replied, “He was not a skilled surgeon. He worked at a VD clinic.”

  To set the record straight, I decided to see if I could document my father’s background, skill, and experience as a surgeon.

  First, I contacted my father’s medical school, University of California at San Francisco, and they provided me with his official transcripts and an “ANNOUNCEMENT FOR 1932-33,” which listed all of the required curriculum and course hours.

  Unlike today’s medical training where “specialization rules,” medical students in the 1930s underwent very heavy course training in the field of SURGERY. All students were required to accomplish 744 hours in surgery.

  In their four years of medical school, twenty-three percent [23%] of their entire medical training was devoted to SURGERY. This does not include their fifth year of internship, which would require much more “hands on training.”

  Here are George Hodel’s specific surgery courses, as listed in his personal transcripts, taken by my father during his four-years at UCSF. His totals actually exceed the required number of hours:

  1) Surgery 101 48 hours

  2) Surgery 102 64 hours

  3) Surgery 103 280 hours

  4) Surgery 104 16 hours

  5) Surgery 105 214 hours

  6) Surgery 106 64 hours

  7) Surgery 107 32 hours

  8) Surgery 108 32 hours

  9) Orthopedic Surgery 101 6 hours

  George Hodel’s Surgery total hours

  766 hours

  His UCSF transcripts further show that during his four-years, he attended and personally performed:

  “53 separate surgical operations and 12 autopsies”

  His fifth year was his internship at San Francisco General Hospital, where he practiced and performed emergency surgery on a daily/weekly basis for a full year.

  This photograph was taken by George Hodel in 1935 and shows students receiving surgical instruction in the operating theater at UCSF School of Medicine. These photos, along with others taken by my father, were part of a large mural on display for decades in the campus medical-building.