The Black Dahlia, Part 3 - The Likely Suspects
A retired LAPD homicide detective went looking for the Black Dahlia killer and discovered that the most likely suspect was.... his father.
The Black Dahlia case was still open, but as the old saying goes, it was cold as Kelsey’s nuts. Enter retired LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel. Hodel was the son of a very prominent Los Angeles doctor named George Hodel.
If the term mad genius applies to anyone, it applies to George Hodel. His IQ clocked in at 186. “Genius” is anything above 140. He graduated high school three years early and started Cal Tech at the age of 15. In addition to his staggering intellect, he enjoyed a rapacious sexual appetite. In his first year at Cal Tech, he managed to get good grades and have an affair with the wife of one his professors. The liaison resulted in the couple’s divorce and Hodel’s first child. He was 15 years old. When the expectant mother fled to her native Massachusetts, Hodel followed, proclaiming his love and offering to raise their child. The woman wisely rebuffed his offer, reminding him that he was a child himself. Rejected, he returned to California. According to Steve Hodel, being interviewed on the podcast From The Void, the woman remained in Massachusetts and named the child, “Folly.”
By the time Hodel was 29 years old he had three children with as many women and had achieved his medical degree. Eventually he married Dorothy Harvey (the former Mrs. John Huston) and had three more children, among them, future LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel. George Hodel ended up working for the LA County Dept Of Health. He ran a venereal disease clinic and also managed a robust back alley abortion business to boot. In other words, he had something on everyone while at the same time being indispensable to the powers-that-be. He ascended into the upper echelons of Los Angeles society accruing wealth, power, and connections. He moved his family into a home on Franklin Ave designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. The house, resembling a Mayan temple, is now an LA landmark, referred to as The Sowden House.
George Hodel, awash in money and influence, settled comfortable into Los Angeles’ uppermost social circles. He was well connected to the then-burgeoning surrealist art movement, counting it’s preeminent practitioner, Man Ray, among his close friends.
You would think that, for young Steve Hodel. Growing up in a famous house with a famous father and his famous friends on a town that worshipped nothing more than fame would be a pretty sweet deal. Not so! In addition to his mother and two brothers, Steve Hodel shared his childhood home with his father’s ex-wife, Dorothy Anthony, their daughter Tamar, yet another one of his dad’s baby-mamas from before his marriage to Anthony, as well as a limitless number of girlfriends, one-night stands and other high-class hedonists. The Hodel home was no place for a kid. George Hodel played merry master of ceremonies to a seemingly endless party, with a revolving door of guests and hangers on who quite often often got naked and creepy.
The Sowden House. If those walls could talk... (shudder)
In 1945, Hodel’s secretary died under suspicious circumstances. The belief is that she and Hodel, who had had an affair, was going to release incriminating evidence about Hodel’s abortion business and that Hodel silenced her, making the death look like a suicide. Although he was under suspicion, the case was never brought due to lack of evidence.
In 1949, Hodel’s daughter Tamar accused her father of sexual abuse. During the investigation, the police wiretapped Franklin Ave. house. The taps revealed some amazing comments. Speaking to a friend about his secretary’s death he said, “They (the police) thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out… Maybe I did kill my secretary.”
More shockingly, referring to the murder of Elizabeth Short, which at that time, had been unsolved for two years, “Supposing I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn’t prove it now. They can’t talk to my secretary anymore because she’s dead.”
George Hodel died in 1999, by which time he had divorced Steve Hodel’s mother, relocated to the Philippines, remarried, fathered four more children, divorced, remarried someone else and relocated back to the U.S. Upon his death, Steve Hodel, now retired from the LAPD, had a conversation with his half-sister Tamar in which she told him that their father was a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder. Upon going through his father’s effects, Steve came across photos of a woman who looked suspiciously like Elizabeth Short.
Somewhat annoyed, this was his father, after all, Hodel set out to disprove his half-sister’s claim. As a retired LAPD Homicide Detective, he was able to access the files and evidence box of the Black Dahlia case, which was still open. As he removed one of the thick evidence binders, out slipped a photo of his father.
The story of Steve Hodel’s investigation is told in the book The Black Dahlia Avenger and if you have even a passing interest in this stuff it is a highly recommended read. Did George Hodel murder Elizabeth Short, his own son makes a compelling case. But George Hodel was not the only believable suspect in the case.
Next week, in our stunning conclusion (!), we will examine the strange case of Dr. Walter Bayley.