Steve Hodel - Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder

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In 1947 the brutal, sadistic murder of a beautiful young woman led to the largest manhunt in L.A. history. The killer teased and taunted the police and public, but his identity remained a mystery. Until now...

On January 15, 1947, at about 10:30 A.M., in Los Angeles, California, a woman's body was discovered in a vacant lot at 39th and Norton. Not only had the murderer bisected her but he had horribly mutilated her body, then carefully posed her as if to leave a provocative message. When LAPD detectives arrived on the scene a few minutes later, even the most hardened among them were shocked and sickened.

That crime, which until now has never been solved, became known to history as the Black Dahlia murder. It made front-page headlines coast-to-coast for weeks, as the LAPD sought vainly to track down the killer. The murdered girl, it turned out, was lovely twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Short. From Massachusetts, she had come west, like so many women before her, in search of fame and fortune in the film capital of the world. Shortly after her murder, the L.A. papers began receiving notes from a person who called himself the Black Dahlia Avenger. For weeks the killer tormented police, clearly reveling in his notoriety and ability to avoid detection, much as his English counterpart Jack the Ripper had done in London sixty years before. At one point he offered to turn himself in, then reneged and said he was leaving town. "Catch me if you can," he challenged.

When the LAPD failed to solve the crime, the case was passed down from year to year to crack homicide detectives, but none could ever bring the killer to justice. In 1949, the Los Angeles grand juryconvened by the district attorney in the wake of public outcry against the failure of the LAPD to solve not only this crime but a dozen other murders of lone women in Los Angeles over the succeeding two yearsconducted their own investigation and subpoenaed LAPD detectives and the chief of police to testify. As a result, a "prime suspect" was identified and named in secret, but for some unexplained reason he was never indicted or brought to justice. Hints of LAPD corruption were rife during that era, and some very high-ranking police department heads rolled, as politicians vied to capitalize on the situation to their advantage.

04032745 (continued on back flap)

BLACK

DAHLIA

AVENGER

BLACK

DAHLIA

AVENGER

A Genius for Murder

STEVE HODEL

ARCADE PUBLISHING NEW YORK

Copyright 2003 by Steve Hodel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN: 1-55970-664-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2003101031

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication information is available.

Published in the United States of America by Arcade Publishing, Inc.,

New York

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For the victims, living and dead

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of Truth and Love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.

Mahatma Gandhi

Contents

Illustration Acknowledgments

The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the kind assistance he has received from the UCLA Special Collections Department, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Man Ray Trust, and Artists Rights Society.

UCLA Special Collections files:

All UCLA images courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

Photograph of Grant Terry/Roger Gardner, page 298

Photograph of Jeanette Walser, page 299

Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society:

All Man Ray images copyright 2003 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris

Man Ray, Portrait of Dorothy Hodel, 1944 page 38

Man Ray, George Model, 1946 page 79

Man Ray, Self-Portrait, page 88

Man Ray, The Minotaur, ; page 241

Man Ray, Les Atnoureux, pages 241 and 244

Man Ray, Juliet, page 242

Man Ray, The Riddle, or The Enigma of Isidore Ducasse, page 251

Man Ray, George Hodel and Yamantaka, pages 253 and 265

Man Ray, Dorothy Hodel, Hollywood, 1944, page 299

Los Angeles Public Library:

All LAPL images courtesy of the Herald Examiner Collection / Los Angeles Public Library

Photograph of "Beth Short" telegram, page 156

Photograph of envelope mailed to District Attorney, page 170

Photograph of note sent to Herald Express, page 171

Photograph of note sent to Herald Express, page 175

Photograph of note sent to Herald Express, page 177

Photographs of post cards sent to Herald Express, page 178

Photograph of Armand Robles, page 179

Photographs of notes sent to Herald Express, page 180

Photograph of note sent to Herald Express, page 181

Photograph of envelope addressed to Herald Express, page 285

Photograph of LAPD Chiefs Thad Brown and William Parker, page 365

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertantly overlooked, the author would be happy to hear from them.

BLACK

DAHLIA

AVENGER

Introduction

For almost twenty-four years, from 1963 to 1986, I was a police officer, and later a detective-supervisor, with the Los Angeles Police Department, a period generally considered to be LAPD's "golden years." I was one of Chief William H. Parker's "new breed," part of his "thin blue line."

My first years were in uniformed patrol. My initial assignment was to West Los Angeles Division, where as a young and aggressive rookie, I was, as Chief Parker had demanded of all his men, "proactive," excelling in making felony arrests by stopping "anything that moved" on the early-morning streets and alleys of Los Angeles. Over the next five years, as a street cop, I worked in three divisions: Wilshire, Van Nuys, and finally Hollywood.

In 1969,1 applied for and was accepted into the detective bureau at Hollywood. I was assigned to and worked all of the "tables": Juvenile, Auto Theft, Sex Crimes, Crimes against Persons, Burglary, and Robbery.

My ratings within the detective bureau remained "upper ten," and as the years flew by I was assigned to the more difficult and complex investigations, in charge of coordinating the various task force operations, which in some instances required the supervision and coordination of as many as seventy-five to one hundred field officers and plainclothes detectives in an effort to capture a particularly clever (or lucky) serial rapist or residential cat burglar working the Hollywood Hills.

Finally, I was selected to work what most detectives consider to be the elite table: Homicide. I did well on written exams and with my top ratings made detective I on the first exam ever given by LAPD in 1970. Several years later I was promoted to detective II, and finally, in 1983,1 competed for and was promoted to detective III.

During my career I conducted thousands of criminal investigations and was personally assigned to over three hundred separate murders. My career solve rate on those homicides was exceptionally high. I was privileged to work with some of the best patrol officers and detectives that LAPD has ever known. We believed in the department and we believed in ourselves. "To Protect and to Serve" was not just a motto, it was our credo. We were Jack Webb's "Sergeant Joe Friday" and Joseph Wambaugh's "New Centurions" rolled into one. The blood that pumped through our veins was blue, and in those decades, those "golden years," we believed in our heart of hearts that LAPD was what the nation and the world thought it to be: "proud, professional, incorruptible, and without question the finest police department in the world."