by Hodel, Steve
So, I never thought that there would be any kind of closing down. So, initially LAPD took the stance of, “This is an active case, we are not going to publicly talk about it.”
Then, the press are the ones we really have to thank for forcing the door open to get inside the vault of the DA’s office. Now, I don’t know if this is clear or not, but the DA is a completely different entity, agency than the LAPD.
So, in fact, what we discovered when we got there was that it was a different set of books. I came to the suspicion, as you know in the book, that maybe they [LAPD] had sanitized it. Maybe they had removed everything from the LAPD files?
In fact, once the LAPD was backed up against the wall and had to “fess up” as we say, they said, they admitted, “Everything is gone.” They don’t know when it vanished? All the evidence, all the potential DNA—the hair follicles, the envelopes. Everything connected to the case, the most famous case LAPD has ever had, has vanished.
Now, they said, their excuse was, “Well, it’s a long time ago, these things happen and sometimes evidence gets lost.” I would agree with that. As a supervisor in homicide, I saw detectives dispose of evidence that shouldn’t have been. It happens. So, I’ll give them that. Maybe, although there were very few that had access to these files.
But, the bigger question is: everything that linked George Hodel to the crime from the LAPD files as missing. All of the fourteen interviews. His interview. All of the Tamar interviews. Everything that connected him. Now, these were not evidence that was disposed of…these were in a file, in a central file. Somebody had to take those and remove them. So that to me is really…and I’m not saying that it was today’s LAPD. It wasn’t done in modern times. This was done back then.
And the reasons for the…the reasons they did this, I take three chapters to try and explain them. I don’t think we have time tonight to go into all of that. But, what it really comes down to is a management decision on the part of LAPD. I’ll try. I’ll just say it briefly here, as I read it.
LAPD had just overcome a major scandal about eight years before, where sixty-eight officers were fired; twenty-five high-ranking officers.
Chief Parker, who was the department’s most famous chief of police, was just trying to turn the department around and be progressive and get rid of all the corruption.
And, I think what happened, in about 1950, was that a couple of….I’m not saying that Parker was involved in criminality, or Chief Brown was, but what happened I think was that a couple of detectives, Internal Affairs perhaps, came to them and said, “Look, we’ve got a problem. A couple of our gangster squad detectives turned away a possible suspect who was dating Elizabeth Short. A guy by the name of George Hodel. He’s a doctor. As a result of that, it looks like maybe in the last couple of years, maybe he killed two or three more victims. He’s now split. He’s out of the country. We’re not sure where he is. What do we do?”
So, I think that Parker and Thad Brown, chief of detectives looked at each other and said, “Well, let’s see. We could reveal this and if we do we’re out of power. The city’s coffers will be emptied by the lawsuits that come from it. And LAPD’s reputation will never recover. We could do that. He’s out of the country. We probably can never bring him back. We may not be able to locate him. Probably have problems with prosecution. If he does come back, he’s going to lay out a lot of information on a lot of different people.
“Maybe its best from a management standpoint that we just seal this off and leave it go at that.” And, I think that’s what happened. I think they said, “For a higher good, they needed to be a couple of Machiavellian princes, perhaps….for the higher good. And, we have evidence to support that.
We know that Thad Brown, came out with a statement to Jack Webb, who was the actor that played Dragnet. They had a conversation and he, Thad Brown, told Jack Webb, “Well, you know the Black Dahlia case was solved. It was a doctor that lived on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood.”
Now, it may have been another that lived in Hollywood on Franklin, but I don’t think so. [Laughter] So, that’s a very damning statement. We have the second highest ranking officer on the Sheriff’s Department, a commander, actually a deputy chief and the under sheriff who said that, “It was a doctor in Hollywood, the case was solved.”
We have lots of different after the fact indications that they knew who it was, and this was an inner secret that was kept a secret. Nobody in today’s LAPD knew about it. That’s why when they searched the files to see and there was nothing there [about George Hodel], they felt fine in giving him a clean bill of health.
Next question?
“Parker on Police”
In 1963, as young idealistic rookie cops, my partners and I really believed we were Chief Parker’s “Thin Blue Line.” At police academy graduation, he looked us in the eye, shook our hand, and told us that was so. Life for me back then was literally and philosophically, “black and white.”
Today, decades later, I realize that neither life nor people were ever that simple. Most of us are a combination of the two—black and white—which makes for lots of gray.
Today, with a much fuller historical perspective and understanding, I realize that my early hero, Chief Parker was both a white and a black knight.
In May 1949, LAPD Vice Sergeant Charles Stoker was called to his second secret meeting with then Inspector William H. Parker, commander of the newly formed LAPD Internal Affairs Division.
For me, the most riveting section of Sgt. Stoker’s 1951 Thicker’ N Thieves expose on police corruption was the Parker-Stoker conversations as documented by him at the time they actually occurred.
For those who remain skeptical that Chief Parker would or could ever have been party to any kind of “cover-up,” especially one that allowed a known, identified murder suspect to remain free, I answer—listen to Chief Parker’s own words.
These Parker/Stoker conversations occurred in May 1949, less than one year before the George Hodel bugging tapes, which I allege became a separate—Dahliagate.
Sgt. Charles Stoker wrote this account just a few months after it occurred, and then published the full expose in 1951.
Thicker’N Thieves, Chapter 14, Grand Jury Preview page 161-162:
I appeared before the Criminal Complaints Committee on May 5, 1949, and answered each of its questions, truthfully and to the best of my ability. I told of the Brenda Allen investigations and explained in great detail exactly how they had occurred.
I was warned to say nothing regarding the fact that I had been before the grand jury.
…
About a week after my appearance before the committee, I received a telephone call from Inspector William Parker. He asked me to meet him at the same place where we had met on the occasion when he had wanted me to put Officer Jimmy Parslow of Hollywood vice in the middle. I kept the date, and Parker gave me a preliminary build-up to the effect that he and I were of the same faith, and that it was directly due to his hard work that the Catholic boys on the Los Angeles police department were getting an even break. He reminded me that we were both veterans of World War II.
After these pleasantries, Parker asked what I knew about the Brenda Allen investigation in Hollywood. When I related the story as I had told it to the grand jury, he indicated that it was as he had suspected, since he knew positively that there were two sources of corruption in the police administration.
According to Parker, one source was controlled by Chief of Police Clemence B. Horrall. Aligned with him as a lieutenant was Sergeant Guy Rudolph, his confidential aide. He then related this story concerning Rudolph, which I have never verified.
For years, while Bowron was in office, Rudolph had controlled the vice payoffs in Los Angeles, and when Horrall held the chief’s job, Rudolph was under his wing. At one time, Rudolph had kicked a colored prostitute to death on Central Avenue; and during the investigation of that incident, he and his partner had gone to a local downtown hotel where they engaged in a drunken bra
wl with two women. Then, while Rudolph was out of the room buying a bottle of whiskey, one of the prostitutes had been killed.
He asked me if I had heard the story. When I replied that I hadn’t, Parker told me that he could prove what he had related to me. He added that Rudolph also controlled the lottery and numbers rackets operated by Chinese and Negroes, and that he had a Chinese as a partner, and maintained a business office on San Pedro Street.
According to Parker, Horrall’s other lieutenant was a Captain Tucker, who was commander of the metropolitan squad, which numbers over one hundred men. He said that the metropolitan squad furnished Los Angeles police officers to act as strike-breakers in studios for so much a head. The taxpayers paid the policemen’s salaries, while Horrall and Tucker collected the revenue, Parker declared.
Parker explained that this money was split with members of the city council, and that Tucker maintained a metropolitan vice division, whose only duty was to see that Chinese, gamblers and prostitutes were kept in line.
…
Parker went on to say that the other sources of corruption within the police department directly were controlled by Assistant Chief of Police Joe Reed. He explained that Joe Reed’s chief aide was Lieutenant Rudy Wellpott, head of the powerful administrative vice squad, who in turn had as his assistant, Sergeant Elmer V. Jackson. Parker related that Jackson had been exempted from military duty with the police department’s help and had stayed out of the war. The department’s main source of revenue during this period was the “shaking down” of bar owners on Main and East Fifth Streets to allow B-Girls, a polite name for prostitutes, who are proscribed by law, to operate.
This activity constituted a million dollar source of revenue, according to Parker; and although the average cost of a liquor license was in the vicinity of five hundred dollars, a license in those areas sold for not less than ten thousand dollars during the war.
Parker said that Nate Bass, a bar owner, was middle man between the police and bar owners.
…
What ever became of this information, including the LAPD IAD investigative files that in Parker’s words, “he could prove that the officers murdered the two downtown prostitutes”?
Obviously, nothing. None of the allegations of police graft, abuse of power, and even police officer murders, ever came to light. No officers were charged with the murders. They were simply covered up. The murder investigation on the two victims was simply, “filed and forgotten”—two more “unsolved” to add to the stack.
Any arrest of corrupt LAPD officers in 1950, especially officers who could name names and identify their “partners in crime,” would have resulted in too much scandal at a critical time of transition and reformation.
The involved officers retired and the department “moved forward” to deal with new problems and new challenges. Sound familiar?
William H. Parker
LAPD Chief of Police from 1950-1966
Chief Parker on Police Investigations and “The Law of Double Effect”
Earlier in this chapter, I indicated that it was my belief that Chiefs Parker and Brown, reasoned that their actions relating to not pursuing and arresting George Hodel, “… were done for ‘a Higher Good’; for the good of the department, for the good of the city, and naturally, for the good of themselves.”
In short, their decision was not a legal one, but rather –a moral call based on what they believed was best for the future of the department and the city.
I originally included those thoughts in BDA in 2003. I was expressing my opinion based on what I knew about the investigation and my limited knowledge of Thad Brown and Bill Parker, both of whom, as I have indicated, were my personal LAPD heroes from my 1963 academy days—forward.
Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to find confirmation and corroboration coming from the man himself! But I did and here it is—IN HIS OWN WORDS.
Three days ago, on September 5, 2011, I found and ordered a rare book. It was one I knew existed, but had never read. It is, Parker on Police, written by William H. Parker and published in 1957. [Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, 1957]
I knew it contained his thinking on police administration, which has never particularly interested me. But I felt I should have it in my library, at least for historical reference. I received the copy today.
I began scanning the book and came to a chapter which DID INTEREST ME. It is entitled, Surveillance by Wiretap or Dictograph: Threat or Protection?
I’ll set the scene and cut directly to the chase.
It is February 1954. Bill Parker has been LAPD’s police chief for three and a half years. He is testifying before the Appropriations Committee, House of Representatives in Washington, DC.
Chief Parker is arguing in support of the need for law enforcement to be able to wiretap [listen in on telephone and telegraph lines] and eavesdrop by dictograph [use of a hidden microphone and recording device, as was done in the Franklin house.]
After making various legal arguments [Parker was a licensed attorney] on why he felt that it was absolutely essential to allow law enforcement to continue their efforts to fight crime by using wiretaps and dictograph recordings, he then gave the committee his “closing arguments.” Here is his verbatim testimony to the committee as recorded in his book, Parker on Police, pages 111-112:
…
In a consideration of the morality of wiretap and dictograph, we may apply the principle of ethics entitled, “The Law of Double Effect.” This law posits that when an action produces two effects, one good, and one bad, as long as the good effect is intended, and as long as the means are either morally good or morally neutral, the act may be morally justified. Thus, when this nation was faced with the ethics of warfare in the use of the atom bomb, it was obviously morally justified according to this principle. … In the case of the wiretap or dictograph the identical rationale may be applicable.
We would not attempt to justify a wiretap or dictograph if the ends sought were extortion, blackmail, or like evil. If these techniques are used they must, of necessity, be rigidly controlled. But if the end is the protection of the commonwealth, then the evil effect (eavesdropping upon the conversations of the innocent) is not intended, and the action may be morally justified.
…
We are not arguing that the end justifies the means; on the contrary, we argue that the means are neutral—as is any mechanical technique, and that the use of these means is justified by moral as well as by statute law. Behind all statute law stands moral law. If an action is morally defensible, then, too, it is legally defensible. It is my opinion that the use of the wiretap and dictograph do not violate a moral precept, and that, therefore, the statute law should echo this viewpoint.
Far from being a threat to our freedoms, the use of modern technological devices by the police service may well be its most powerful weapon in combating our internal enemies, and a vital necessity in the protection of our nation’s security, harmony and internal well-being.
To my mind, Parker’s words here leave no doubt as to where he stood. This was a man of religion and passion who would follow HIS moral compass whichever direction it pointed. Be that to the heights of heaven or to the depths of hell.
A Conspiracy of Silence
It is now, November, 2011. This week’s headlines are just beginning to uncover what has overnight become one this year’s biggest news stories—The Jerry Sandusky-Joe Paterno, Penn State Sex Scandal.
Former Penn State defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, has just been arrested and charged with sexually molesting eight young boys over the past fifteen year period.
This week, PSU’s president, Graham Spanier, and his legendary head coach, Joe Paterno, have both been fired from the university as a result of failing to report and take necessary action after being notified of Sandusky’s criminality more than nine years ago.
A reading of the 2011 “Finding of Fact” transcript as summarized by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury reveals that Coa
ch Sandusky allegedly committed serial child molestations including oral copulation and sodomy on minor boys. The offenses have apparently been ongoing for more than a decade.
The transcripts further describe a 1998 child molestation incident that was investigated by Penn State University Police, which included detectives, eavesdropping on a conversation held between one victim’s mother and Sandusky. In May 1998, detectives with the mother’s permission, listened in on two separate conversations and overheard Sandusky admit to the crimes committed against her then eight-year-old son wherein he stated to the mother, “I understand I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.”
The case was submitted to the then Centre County District Attorney’s Office who advised there would be no charges filed and the investigating detective was ordered to “close the case” by the director of the campus police.
While this story is just beginning to unfold, early indications are that had the information been aggressively acted upon when first reported in 1998 or in the subsequent offenses in 2002, both of which should have resulted in Sandusky’s arrest; it would have prevented six or more young boys from becoming his later victims of sexual assault.
As more information is forthcoming we will very likely discover that the motivations, the WHY of the Penn State Sex Scandal cover-up, will turn out to be for the same reasons they always are—a conspiracy of silence to protect the powerful and their institutions.
Now that the facts have become public, those men in power who failed to disclose and report known criminal activity will likely try to justify their actions and attempt to rationalize their cover-up and silence by saying they wanted to try and protect the University and the Team from becoming embroiled in a major scandal that would expose the university to costly civil lawsuits.
Their twisted view of morality is that iconic institutions like Penn State and national heroes, like Head Coach Joe Paterno, are to be protected at all costs; even if that means that a known identified serial-pedophile was allowed to remain free to continue his sexual abuse and rape of children for more than a decade.