Black Dahlia Confidential
(Page 1 of 3)
Dec. 24, 2005
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The Black Dahlia case is the most famous
unsolved murder in Los Angeles history.
(Producers Library Service)
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(CBS) (This segment was first broadcast on Nov. 27,
2004.)
To crime writer James Ellroy, the brief life and
horrific death of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short is a
classic American tragedy, known as the Black Dahlia
case.
"She's a ghost and a blank page to record our fears and
desires," says Ellroy. "A post-war Mona Lisa, an L.A.
quintessential."
The Black Dahlia case is the most famous unsolved murder
in Los Angeles history. It involves a beautiful young
victim and a cunning psychopathic killer. It's a
real-life mystery that's inspired countless moviemakers
and writers from "Double Indemnity," "Chinatown" and
"L.A. Confidential."
Even the nickname, "Black Dahlia," is straight out of
the movies. The Blue Dahlia was a nightclub in a 1946
crime film. Newspapers adapted the title to fit the
Short murder case – and the "Black Dahlia" legend was
born.
"It's the great L.A. murder," says Ellroy. "And L.A. has
had some doozies."
Correspondent Erin Moriarty reports on a story about
love and loneliness, murder and madness, all played out
in Los Angeles.
Steve Hodel was just 5 years old when Elizabeth Short
was murdered. As a cop, he worked the same Hollywood
streets Short once knew.
"I had lots of murders where you had young runaways, and
within weeks they’d have a needle in their arm and
they’d be doing tricks on Hollywood Blvd.," says Steve,
who investigated 300 murders over more than 17 years.
To Hodel, the Black Dahlia case was just another cold
case. But after he retired, the case would come back to
haunt him. "The upper torso was juxtaposed just off to
the left, about 12 inches," he says. "The killer was
sure that it would be found fairly quickly, as it was.
Clearly, he wasn't trying to hide it. He wanted the
notoriety."
And the killer got what he wanted. For weeks, a
terrified city watched as the search for the Black
Dahlia killer unfolded. There were dozens of false
confessions, and hundreds of other suspects questioned
and cleared. The killer even wrote letters taunting the
police and sent Short's personal address book to a local
newspaper.
After the biggest manhunt in L.A. history, the murder
was officially listed as unsolved. And it's stayed that
way for nearly 60 years.
Short was a vibrant young woman from the working-class
neighborhood of Medford, Mass., outside Boston. She was
growing up in a dark time, during the height of the
Depression.
Post-war Los Angeles was a boomtown, overrun with
ex-servicemen, star-struck wannabes and hustlers. It was
a place where pretty faces were a dime a dozen and life
could be tough. Short became a Hollywood hanger-on,
going out on the town each night, usually with a
different guy.
Her last night alive was Jan. 14, 1947. "It's a
Wonderful Life" was playing at Hollywood's Pantages
Theater. Around dawn the next day, a mysterious black
car was seen in the spot where Short's body was later
found. It was a black car very similar to the 1936
Packard owned by Steve Hodel's father, Dr. George Hodel.
George Hodel was a brilliant man, with an IQ of 186, and
a child musical prodigy. After a stint as a newspaper
reporter at 16, he sailed through medical school,
studying surgery. He settled in Los Angeles, running the
county's venereal disease clinic, where it was rumored
that he treated some of L.A.'s top brass.
Black Dahlia Confidential
(Page 2 of 3)
Dec. 24, 2005
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The Black Dahlia case is the most famous unsolved murder
in Los Angeles history. (Producers Library Service)
(CBS) He lived in an exotic house in the middle of Los
Angeles that was as eccentric as its owner. "I would
describe it as looking like a Mayan temple. It was a
fortress from the world," says Tamar Hodel, one of 11
children the doctor had by five different women.
Tamar and her half-brother, Steve, remember their
father’s house as a place where artists and movie people
came for flamboyant parties presided over by the dynamic
George Hodel.
In 1999, the doctor died in his high-rise apartment in
San Francisco at the age of 91. Hodel says he came
across two pictures while going through his father's
favorite photo album with his father's widow.
"I said, 'June, who is this?' And June said, 'I don't
know. Someone your father knew from a long time ago,'"
recalls Steve. "I was trying to pull it in, where do I
know this picture? Why do I know this woman? Somewhere
deep within me, I made the connection. The Black
Dahlia."
To this day, Hodel isn't sure what it was that made him
compare pictures of the Black Dahlia to snapshots his
father had saved of a mystery woman. But the search for
answers soon became an obsession.
Hodel spent months and months combing through newspaper
accounts, talking to old-timers and traveling back to
his childhood.
He re-visited his father's house in Hollywood, where he
and his brothers lived off and on with their father in
the late '40s. He suspects one of the pictures from his
father's album was taken at the house, which was
literally a house of secrets, complete with a secret
room where the children were never allowed to go.
It was in this fortress of a house, Steve says, where
George Hodel did what he wanted, no matter how immoral
or illegal.
Tamar says that at the age of 11, her father wanted to
teach her oral sex. She remembers her father’s friends,
among them, famous photographer Man Ray, who took nude
photos of her as a child.
She also remembers the young, beautiful women: "There
was always a line of beautiful women waiting to see my
father, or to go into his quarters, the golden bedroom."
Michelle Phillips, former singer with The Mamas and the
Papas, has been Tamar's friend since 1958. "She told me
how she had grown up in this crazy environment with her
father," says Phillips. "She obviously had been used as
a sexual object with him and his friends. It was all
amazing to me."
It wasn’t until some years later, after one of her
concerts, that Phillips finally met George Hodel. "I
felt a chill, and a lot of it was because I knew that he
knew that she had told me," says Phillips. "And I
recently started thinking about the way he looked at me.
I think he wanted to kill me."
Tamar must have felt a similar chill when, as a teenager
in 1949, she ran away from her father's home. She told
police what had been going on there: incest.
The well-known doctor was put on trial, and charged with
offering his 14-year-old daughter to several of his
friends at an orgy. "My father had intercourse with me.
It wasn't loving," recalls Tamar. "He acted
guilt-ridden, ashamed. It was very bad."
But in the courtroom, a parade of family members
testified that Tamar made up the story.
"No one wanted George Hodel to go to jail, because
George Hodel was the one making all the money," says
Phillips. "And he was supporting all the people
surrounding this tale."
The jury found George Hodel not guilty, but his troubles
with the law were far from over.
As Steve began sorting out the details of his father's
past and the Black Dahlia case, he found the two stories
merging.
He was convinced the photos in his father's album were
indeed of the Black Dahlia. But what caught him by
surprise was one of the many taunting cards and letters
the killer sent to newspapers. It was written by hand:
"Turning in Wednesday, Jan. 29. Had my fun with police.
Black Dahlia avenger."
"It was my father's handwriting," says Steve, who took
his suspicions to an old friend, deputy district
attorney Stephen Kay. "There was no question about it.
So at that point, I thought, 'Oh my God, this is the
real deal.'"
Kay tracked down the Black Dahlia file in the DA's
office: a box of investigative notes and transcripts
that no one had touched for over half a century. Steve
started going through it, and found a picture of George
Hodel. "This is the smoking gun," says Steve. "This is
the proof I've been waiting for."
When investigators for the Los Angeles DA's office began
questioning Tamar about her father, it was clear there
was more than the 1949 orgy on their minds. "They also
suspected that he had committed the murder of the Black
Dahlia," says Tamar. "They told me that."
But she never told her half-brother, Steve. So years
later, when going through the DA's file on the Black
Dahlia case, Steve got the shock of his life. In 1949,
two years after Short was murdered, the district
attorney began to zero in on a suspect.
Kay says that in the file was information from a female
witness who told authorities that George Hodel knew
Short.
Investigator Walter Morgan is 90 now, but back then, he
was a young investigator working for the DA's office,
which had taken over the Black Dahlia investigation in
1949. Back then, he did something that couldn't have
been legally done today. He, along with police
detectives, slipped into Hodel's house, and planted
eavesdropping devices all over the house. For the next
40 days, detectives listened to hundreds of Hodel's
private conversations.
The recordings no longer exist, but the transcripts are
in the DA's file. At one point, according to the
transcript, George Hodel is heard saying: “Supposing I
did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now.
They can't talk to my secretary any more because she's
dead. They can't talk to my secretary any more because
she's dead.”
His secretary, Ruth Spaulding, died of an apparent drug
overdose.
Despite the statements caught on wire recordings, the
Dahlia investigation was abruptly shut down in the
spring of 1950. And even more surprising, chief
investigator Frank Jemison summed up the audiotape
evidence, saying it "tends to eliminate the suspect."
"How can you say those tapes clear Dr. Hodel," asks Kay.
"If anything, they sound like a guilty man, who is ready
to take it on the lam."
So why was the investigation closed? The answer may be
in those secret audiotapes. At one point, according to
the transcript, George Hodel is heard saying, "This is
the best payoff I've seen between law enforcement
agencies. And I'd like to get a connection made in the
DA's office."
"The only thing I can think of is some money must have
transpired between people," says Morgan. "Everybody
thought that [there was a cover-up.]"
In fact, 48 Hours has learned that the probe was shut
down, even though several within the investigation later
told their relatives that they knew who the killer was.
Black Dahlia Confidential
(Page 3 of 3)
Dec. 24, 2005
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The Black Dahlia case is the most famous unsolved murder
in Los Angeles history. (Producers Library Service)
(CBS) And, according to Kay, actor Jack Webb, who played
a cop on television, and had close friends on the force,
told a friend that the chief of detectives had
specifically described the Black Dahlia killer as "a
doctor in Hollywood, who lived on Franklin Avenue."
That was the same street where George Hodel lived.
Back in 1949, the LAPD was a dirty department rocked by
scandals involving cops and gangsters, prostitutes and
payoffs. It was a time and a place that crime writer
James Ellroy knows well.
"Reports recommending whether or not to file charges
were on sale for $500 a pop," says Ellroy. "The
detective bureau was a repository of drunks and cronies
of high-ranking LAPD officers. At the time of Elizabeth
Short's death, it was a very corrupt institution."
Before she was known only as the "Black Dahlia," Short
was just another struggling young woman in 1946 post-war
Los Angeles.
"She lived off her friends. She basically didn't have a
job," says Steve. "She'd go out on dates with men, but
she wasn't a prostitute. And she didn't drink."
But that clean-cut image of Short didn't sell
newspapers, says Ellroy. "[She was] portrayed as a
prostitute. It isn't true," says Ellroy. "Portrayed as a
movie-mad girl who got parts in a lot of movies …it
certainly isn't true. Portrayed as a lesbian, it
certainly isn't true."
Short's beauty certainly entranced men. And after she
was murdered, her suitors became suspects. Among the
suspects were nightclub owner Mark Hansen, described as
one of Short's jealous boyfriends, and Short's landlord,
Glenn Wolf, who was also described by others to police
as a sexual maniac.
But they can be eliminated, says Steve, for one simple
reason: the condition of Short's body.
"What I discovered, to my surprise, was that the killer
was a surgeon," says Steve. "Not a meat cutter, not a
butcher, a skilled professional surgeon."
48 Hours decided to put Steve's theories to the test,
and showed the crime photos and short’s autopsy to Dr.
Mark Wallack, chief of surgery at St. Vincent’s Hospital
in New York. He was asked to look at the crime scene
photos as well as Short's autopsy.
"You don't get this kind of training where you can
actually invade a human body, unless you've had some
surgical experience," says Wallack, who believes a
doctor committed the crime.
Although Steve’s father didn’t actually practice
surgery, he excelled at it in medical school. "He was a
surgeon," says Steve. "She was killed by a surgeon. That
really is a limiting pool of suspects."
There are other pieces of the puzzle that convince Steve
that his father was the killer. For instance, he says
the killer's handwritten notes, sent to newspapers right
after Short's murder, were in his father's handwriting.
48 Hours also asked John Osborn, one of the most
respected document examiners in the field, to compare
letters the killer sent to the newspapers with examples
of handwriting from Dr. George Hodel.
Osborn questioned the uppercase versions of the letter
'N' in Hodel's letters, and said those of the Black
Dahlia killer were different.
"There is simply not enough evidence to prove one way or
another whether his father was the writer or not the
writer," says Osborn.
But what about the photographs of the mystery woman
found in the album, the ones that started Steve on his
investigation? Is this, in fact, Elizabeth Short?
"Initially, I did think that they were very, very
close," says forensic artist Sunni Chapman, who uses and
distributes E-Fit, facial recognition software that
compiles detailed sketches of suspects for police
investigations.
Chapman examined two of the photos and initially saw a
lot of similarities between Elizabeth Short and the
mystery woman. But upon closer examination, and after
measuring the facial features in both photos, Chapman
said she was "85 percent certain that these two
photographs are not of the same woman."
None of these expert opinions, however, changes Steve's
mind. That's because he says he's uncovered yet another
clue that points to his father as the killer: a photo
taken by George Hodel's close friend, the artist Man
Ray.
"He wanted to be like Man Ray," says Steve of his
father. "He wanted to be an artist, and I think this was
his masterpiece."
Steve believes his father posed Short's body to resemble
the Minotaur, the mythical beast that devoured young
maidens. He positioned her arms like the horns of the
beast.
"I've tried lots of murder cases. And I've only had one
other case where the victim had been posed," says Kay,
who agrees with Steve's theory.
Kay also says cuts found across Short's face and mouth
were meant to mimic another May Ray work: "The Lovers."
"I know that this is a bizarre thing, but this was a
bizarre man," he says.
After Steve's book was published, the LAPD was wiling to
hear his theories. But until now, they weren't willing
to open the original police files on the case.
The book Steve Hodel has written about his investigation
has won over some powerful allies, including mystery
writer James Ellroy. "I think he's solved the Black
Dahlia murder case," says Ellroy.
But there are also plenty of skeptics, including
Elizabeth's childhood friend, Mary Pacios. She believes
that Hodel relies too much on speculation, not facts, in
the case against his father. "He could probably go into
a list of about half a dozen good suspects," says Pacios.
And the LAPD agrees. A year and a half after the DA
opened his files, the LAPD finally revealed, in an
off-camera briefing, the secrets of its own Black Dahlia
investigation.
There was no surprise. Dr. George Hodel was a major
suspect in the case at one point. Police say he was only
one of 22 major suspects – seven of whom were doctors.
Police also contradicted Steve and claimed they were
unable to find any proof that his father dated or even
knew Elizabeth Short. But the LAPD has its own
credibility problems.
The LAPD now admits that in the years since Short's
murder, virtually all the physical evidence in the case
has disappeared. The police aren't sure how this
happened, but it has simply vanished from the files.
The bottom line: L.A.'s most famous unsolved murder may
never be solved.
"How can you lose all of the physical evidence in the
most important crime that the LAPD has ever had," says
Steve. "It's not just the physical evidence. It's the
interviews. It's the wire recordings of my father.
Everything has disappeared. These things don't just
disappear."
Shocked and angered by the LAPD's response, Steve also
dismisses the findings of two handwriting experts hired
by 48 Hours and the LAPD -- who both said they were not
convinced that the handwriting in the killer's letters
matched Dr. George Hodel.
"It's my father's handwriting," says Steve. "I don't
have to be convinced. I don't need an expert to tell me.
I know it as a fact."
Why is he so determined to prove that his father was the
Black Dahlia killer? "Because it's the truth," says
Steve.
Whatever the truth may be, George Hodel is still causing
pain for the people closest to him. His son, Steve, is
struggling with conflicting emotions for a man he
believes is both a monster and his father.
Was there any sense of revenge against his father by
publishing his book? "None at all," says Steve. "I love
my father. I love him to this day."
His daughter, Tamar, says she has never gotten over the
trauma of being molested at 14 by her father: "I loved
him, too, even though I was very hurt by him, and kept
waiting for him to be a good guy."
But if Steve is correct, the ultimate victim was
Elizabeth Short. We may never know for sure who killed
Short, or whether George Hodel was the Black Dahlia
killer. He fled the United States just days after the DA
stopped its investigation in 1950. He didn't return
until 40 years later, when the search for the killer had
long gone cold.
"This case, this investigation, has been described as a
riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma," says
Steve. "I can't think of a more perfect description than
that."
It may be a mystery, but to crime writer James Ellroy,
it's one with a perfect ending.
"It's divine providence that a mad doctor spawns a son
who becomes a LAPD homicide detective, who sees
photographs that are not even Elizabeth Short," says
Ellroy. "And it turns out that his old man did the job,
anyways. I dig it."
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