Steve Hodel - Black Dahlia Avenger II. Presenting the Follow-Up Investigation and Further Evidence Linking Dr. George...

Los Angeles, California

Copyright 2012 by Thoughtprint Press

Los Angeles, California

Published in the United States of America

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ISBN-978-0-9830744-7-2

Author Website at www.stevehodel.com

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Twelve years and three months have now passed since I received that fateful 1:00 a.m. phone call from my stepmother on May 17, 1999.

Steve, this is June in San Francisco. Your father is dead! The paramedics are here. Come down now.

As a career homicide cop with LAPD, most of my three-hundred plus murder investigations began with a call just like that, but, always from the Hollywood Watch Commander.

Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that a personal Death Notification would become the most difficult murder investigation of my career.

But, it did and it has.

Since the spring of 99, seemingly, each month has brought a new twist to the investigation. New witnesses have surfaced, new cold case victims were discovered, and new evidence was found.

It has taken over a decade for the public perception of the investigation to transition from strong circumstantial to CASE SOLVED .

The Black Dahlia murder, has, for obvious reasons, stood out as the most challenging criminal investigation in my forty-three years of working cases.

Surprisingly, my biggest challenge did not come from within; that is, from being confronted with the fact that the prime suspect I was pursuingwas my father.

No, rather, it came from without. From finding myself in the position for the first time in my career of having toDECONSTRUCT THE EVIDENCE!

What do I mean?

Prior to the Black Dahlia, without exception, all of my previous murder investigations had always been a tabula razaa clean slate. You start with a blank field notebook and move forward as you begin to build your case.

Not so with the Dahlia. As I began my investigation, I discovered that the facts of the case were a briar patch of misinformation, constructed from fifty-years of legend and lore.

Never was the oft quoted cinematic line from the 1962 classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, truer than in the Black Dahlia murder:

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

As if to underscore this, within three short years from the time of her murder, we have Elizabeth Shorts legend appear on-screen, as a laugh line, in the 1950 Hollywood classic, Sunset Boulevard. [Ironically, the words are spoken by a young Jack Webb, who, the following year, will begin his career in his new television show, Dragnet, starring as LAPD Sergeant Joe Just the Facts Friday.]

In Sunset Boulevard, Webb plays the part of Artie Green, a young film producer, who, at his New Years Eve party, introduces his writer friend, Joe Gillis [William Holden] to the guests with the following line:

Fans, you all know Joe Gillis, the well-known screenwriter, uranium smuggler, and Black Dahlia suspect. [Much laughter]

With the publication of this, my third book on Elizabeth Short and the related 1940s Los Angeles Lone Woman Murders, I believe that I have been able to replace most of the hype and faction [hack writers hyperbolic mix of fact and fiction] with the truth as documented in my accessing of the official Los Angeles District Attorneys Black Dahlia secret files.

These records, besides providing their own factual accounts contained many of the original LAPD summaries from the 1947 Black Dahlia investigation.

Here, in BDA II, I present separate chapters detailing the Black Dahlias three major myths. Those being: (1) The Black Dahlia was a standalone crime, (2) Elizabeth Short had a missing week and (3) The case was never solved.

None of these urban legends were ever true and I present the evidence which proves them false.

In explaining and exposing the third myth, The case was never solved, I now have confirmation coming from within the LAPDfrom most of its top commanders, past and present.

The last official word from LAPD on the Black Dahlia case status came from self-professed gatekeeper, Detective Brian Carr, who, before exiting stage-right and retiring in May 2009, informed the public:

I dont have time to prove or disprove Hodels investigation. All the physical evidence from the Dahlia investigation has disappeared, so we cant do any DNA and so we cant solve the case.

On my side of the law enforcement ledger, I now have the following officers who were and are all in agreement that the Black Dahlia murder is solved.

They include four of the original top ranking command staff: two former LAPD police chiefs, as well as the original DAs investigators; a LASD under sheriff, an LASD commander, and the 2004 LAPD chief of detectives.

Also voicing his strong support was a then active head deputy district attorney, who, in 2003 and again in stronger terms in 2006, informed the public that based on the evidenceand were George Hodel still living and the witnesses availablehe would have filed two murder counts [Elizabeth Short, Black Dahlia, and Jeanne French, Red Lipstick Murder] and believed he would win a conviction in both cases in a jury trial.

The names and reasons for these separate law enforcement officers opinions, as well as the source of their statements, are all summarized in Chapter13, CASE SOLVED.

But, it is you, my readers, who have followed my ongoing investigations and served as dedicated jurors in the Court of Public Opinion, that have been my biggest supporters.

My unofficial tally, based on the many letters and thousands of e-mails I have received from you over the past decade, indicates that most of you [about 90 percent] have found the evidence not just compelling, but beyond a reasonable doubt, which of course meets the legal criteria for establishing a guilty verdict.

Within the following chapters, you will find much that is new.

In my chapter on Maganda, which deals with the controversy of the photographs found in my fathers private album, I was able to prove myself wrong [by following the evidence] on what I formerly believed was solid forensic evidence. It was not. And by following the truth of it, and self-correcting the error, it led me to new and important proofs.

That is what truth does. It opens doors and keeps on opening them until the case is made.

In a criminal investigation, one of the surest signs that one may well be on the wrong track and in pursuit of the wrong suspect, is when the doors start to close and no more open. Generally speaking, when one hits that dead-end, it is advisable to either turn around or to back out and drive down another alley.

Probably, the most dramatic new investigative finding came in 2008 with the discovery and linkage of physical evidence to the actual Black Dahlia crime scene. However, Ill leave that revelation for you to discover on your own.

Finally, there is the Huston Lettersprivate, highly personal correspondences between my mother and her former husband, famed film director/writer/actor, John Huston.

They span the years 19481957 and give us a real-time understanding of the absolute terror and horror my mother was suffering as she struggled to keep us togetherjust to survive. Her struggle was literally, week by week, during those dangerous post-Dahlia months from 1948 to 1950. The reading of those letters, which contained her desperate pleas to John for help, leave NO DOUBT that our father was a psychological time bomb, about to explode.