5) Alhambra PD —Ikidnap/attempted murder (Viola Norton).
Since I have no access to the various police files,Iacknowledge that some of these crimes may have since been solved. Each law enforcement agency can easily and quickly do their own review to ascertain if the case was cleared or not.
By the Numbers
One final observation about these serial murders: the numbers themselves. In the
I would argue with Hansen's math. A homicide clearance rate of 97 percent in a major metropolitan city like Los Angeles is all but impossible. A remarkable clearance rate, with lots of hard work and lots of lucky breaks, would run around 80 percent.
A review of the latest California Department of Justice statistics for Los Angeles County during the last ten-year period (1990-2000) shows an alarming drop in the solve rate! A mere 37 percent of all Los Angeles homicides were solved for the year 2000. The highest clearance rate for the decade occurred in 1991:
Let's give the department the benefit of the doubt and say that in the mid-1940s they cleared 75 percent of their annual homicides.
Given enough negatives, one may well prove a positive. In the Los Angeles area from 1943 to 19491 have reviewed eleven 'lone woman' homicides, excluding the Jane Doe 'suicide' and the Marian Newton San Diego murder. How many of these kidnap-rape-murders did they clear? Assuming for a moment that what LAPD told its citizens was the truth, that these murders were not connected to the Dahlia or to each other — according to Harry Hansen's math, ten of the eleven murders should have been cleared (or, using my more conservative rate, eight). How many were solved?
I offer these numbers not to belittle LAPD and LASD homicide detectives but rather to make a point. This rash of crimes was not solved because they were most likely committed by the same suspects). These attacks and murders were not committed by eleven different sadistic rapists all operating in the same locale. No, it is my sad but firm belief that most of these crimes were committed by George Hodel and Fred Sexton, operating sometimes together, sometimes alone. That is why LAPD and LASD didn't clear any of the crimes. Had they been committed by different suspects, statistically at least
For me, as a professional in law enforcement, the most painful reality of all is knowing that the blood of these many victims is on the hands of those officers and commanders within the Los Angeles Police Department who initiated, then perpetuated, the cover-up. Perhaps earlier crimes as well, but certainly at a minimum all the crimes committed and all the lives taken after January 21,1947, the date George Hodel's photograph was positively identified by the Johnsons at their East Washington Boulevard Hotel, can be attributed to those officers who obstructed justice and aided and abetted in the cover-up.
*We recall Tamar's reporting that it was on just such a trip eleven years after this murder (1969) that he drugged and took salacious pictures of his thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Fauna 2.
33
George Hodel-Elizabeth Short:
Reconstructed Timeline
IN MY INTRODUCTION I said that solving the murder of Elizabeth Short, as well as the other sadistic murders discussed in this book, 'is the result of finding and piecing together hundreds of separate thoughtprints.'
In telling this complex story, I have tried first to present all the evidence related to identifying our suspects, then in later chapters to explain the connections to and motivations for LAPD's cover-up.
The evidence linking George Hodel and Fred Sexton to the crimes has been spread across many chapters. We have heard from more than seventy witnesses, and reviewed over sixty separate exhibits. By incorporating many of the 'ghost witnesses,' those establishing Elizabeth Short's movements during LAPD's so-called 'missing week,' we now know why they had to be kept silent and discredited. By uniting the fuller knowledge of both Elizabeth Short's and George Model's movements during the mid-1940s, we can now reconstruct and distill a more accurate timeline of events, one which is most unique, as we can now walk in the shoes of both the victim and her killer.
1944-1945
George and Elizabeth meet and begin a relationship of sorts, platonic or otherwise. George wines and dines her in the finest restaurants. Together they frequent the Biltmore, and downtown and Hollywood nightclubs. Elizabeth gets financial aid for food and rent from George when needed.
August 1945
Major Matt Gordon is killed in an airplane crash over India. George Hodel, after learning that Elizabeth's fiance has been killed, asks her to marry him instead. Heartbroken and despondent over the loss of her fiance, she agrees, or at least leads him to believe she will think about it.
October-December 1945
While Elizabeth waits tables at Princess Whitewing's restaurant in Miami Beach, Florida, George Hodel, having joined UNRRA in December, is at the agency's home office in Washington, D.C., studying Chinese. George contacts Elizabeth and asks her to marry him when he returns from China. She expresses second thoughts about marriage. Infuriated at her rejection, he manages to control himself long enough to wire her a restrained telegram from D.C., reminding her that 'a promise is a promise to a person of the world' and signing it simply, 'Yours.'
April 1946
Stationed in China with the honorary rank of lieutenant general, George sends Elizabeth the photographs showing him both in uniform and civilian clothes as 'arbiter.'
Elizabeth writes to Lieutenant Gordon Fickling about her desire to return to California to see him. Fickling cautions her, 'Why not pause and consider just what your coming out here to me would amount to?' Despite his admonition, she travels to California.
