It is obvious to me that, at least initially, Donahoe didn't know who committed the murder of Elizabeth Short and was actively and energetically chasing every lead. Had he possessed knowledge of the suspect or been involved in the cover-up, he would not have pursued the investigation so aggressively or released vital information to the press and public in the hope of developing new leads. Donahoe was taken off both investigations by his superiors, presumably by Chief of Detectives Thad Brown, in mid-February 1947.
His years inside the detective bureau and his promotions during the 1930s and '40s would have assured Donahoe of being in the loop within the department. While no one knows what he did or didn't do, whether he was on the take or not, we certainly can be confident that having survived the corrupt years of Mayor Frank Shaw and Chief James Davis and 'the Purge,' he knew who was dirty and who was not. He was Chief Thad Brown's right-hand man, and in this case the right hand had to know what the left hand was doing.
If Donahoe was not actively involved in corruption, he certainly knew of its existence. His position as captain in charge of the Homicide Division would have placed him in direct supervision of Charles Stoker's 'Bill Ball and Joe Small.' It is difficult to believe that Donahoe could or would have turned a deaf ear to this large-scale operation without either taking his share of the profits or taking action to eliminate the corruption, which was an immediate threat to his power and authority as Homicide commander. If he did know of the Dahlia-French-Spangler cover-ups, it would make Captain Jack as dark and as sinister a police captain as his fictional counterpart, Captain Dudley Smith, in James Ellroy's novel
Donahoe retired fifteen years after the murder of Elizabeth Short and, like the fictional Captain Smith, died a hero to the department and the world. Here are extracts from what the
37-YEAR L.A. POLICE VETERAN
CAPT. JACK DONAHOE DIES
Capt. Jack Donahoe, 64, was mourned today by law enforcement officers everywhere.
One of the most noted detectives in the country, Donahoe died yesterday at his Hollywood home after a lengthy illness . . .
After 37 years on the Los Angeles Police Department, the detective better known as 'Captain Jack' retired four years ago. He was honored by more than 700 men and women from every walk of life at an official banquet at the Police Academy .. .
The 6-foot-1, more than 200 pound enemy of crime, had been suffering for the past three years from a back injury, and was found dead in his living room chair by his wife, Ann . ..
On Donahoe's retirement, Chief of Detectives Thad Brown said: 'I have lost my right hand.'
What I, then only a three-year rookie out of the Hollywood Division, and most of the rest of LAPD were never told was that Captain Jack, at 11:21 on the morning of June 18, 1966, while seated in his living room chair, had removed his service revolver, placed it over his heart, and pulled the trigger. His death report, a public record, reads not 'after a lengthy illness' but 'John Arthur Donahoe, Suicide, Cause of Death — Gunshot Wound of Chest Perforating Heart and Aorta with Massive Hemorrhage.'
It is almost certain that we will never know why this senior command officer, the highest-ranking detective assigned to the Black Dahlia murder investigation, took his own life. Was it illness? Depression? Or was it guilt? If he left a suicide note or explanation of any kind, it has long since been destroyed.
Even though we may never discover the entire truth about what actually took place inside the LAPD during the years from 1947 to 1950, it's possible to speculate with confidence about what probably happened as the two candidates for chief, Brown and Parker, vied for power. I firmly believe that both men, possibly thinking they were acting in the department's best interests, actively covered up not only the abortion ring investigation, but the Dahlia, French, Spangler, and other sexual homicides as well. Even the grand jury investigation of 1949 could not pry the full story loose.
It's important to figure out who knew about the cover-up and what exactly they knew. From what Joe Barrett told me, at the time my father was arrested in 1949 the district attorney's office strongly suspected he was involved in the Dahlia case. If the DA thought so, it's clear the police must have suspected him as well but buried what they knew to protect themselves.
Who knew? Most certainly Chiefs William Worton, William Parker, and Thad Brown knew the evidence against George Hodel and Fred Sexton. The primary investigators, Finis Brown, brother of Thad Brown, and his partner, Harry Hansen, had to know as well. Gangster Squad detectives 'Bill Ball and Joe Small' were certainly in the loop, because I believe they initiated the cover-up to protect the members of the abortion ring. District Attorney Simpson, his chief of Bureau of Investigation, H. Leo Stanley, and his chief investigator, Lieutenant Frank Jemison, along with his partners who testified before the grand jury and provided them with the name of the prime suspect, all knew. And, as we will see, all eighteen of the grand jury members also heard my father named as the suspect. Therefore, in the closing months of 1949, at least twenty-eight people were informed and given the name of the prime suspect in the murders of both Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French.
But there were doubtless many more; a 'secret' like that is quickly passed around within the high-ranking inner circle. If not immediately, then ultimately, Captain Donahoe and Captain Earle Sansing discovered the truth, but were forced to keep it to themselves.* Sansing doubtless wanted to see if I knew the truth about my father when in 1963 he told me bluntly that it would be a waste of time and taxpayers' money for me to enter the L.A. Police Academy. It's also possible that many of today's surviving top brass know this secret, and are expected, like the good soldiers they are, to take it to their graves.
But why was the cover-up allowed to continue? It's clear that 'Ball and Small' were only doing what they were paid to do when they wrapped protection around the doctors in the abortion ring. If my father knew the names of the doctors in the ring, it's likely that the Gangster Squad detectives protected him as well. But when the information about the Dahlia murders reached the higher ranks, someone at the very center of power had to make the decision to suppress it.
Now, try to imagine what it must have been like in October 1949, when Deputy Chief William H. Parker and Deputy Chief Thaddeus Finis Brown faced off against each other for the top job in the LAPD. Each man realized that the department and its officers had been under constant fire from the press and the public during the past year. Crime was still rampant. Worse, terror was gripping the city's female population as a result of the dozen or more rape-murders that still had not been solved. A crazed sex killer was on the loose — back in 1949 nobody knew what a serial killer was — and no one could stop him. The stigma of the nation's most horrific and sadistic murder, the Black Dahlia, had been burned into the collective psyche of the L.A. public, and the case remained an open wound that would not heal.
Against this background, either Brown or Parker — or both — in what I suspect was a late-1949 briefing of an Internal Affairs investigation, were told by their subordinates that 'there is another problem.'t Two years earlier, in the weeks following the murder of Elizabeth Short, several detectives working on the Homicide Division's Gangster
