Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

criminal defense investigator.

The readers should know that Steve I lodel was not an average LAPD detective; he was simply one of their best homicide investigators. For many years he was the supervising homicide detective for the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. Steve has investigated over 300 murders and earned an excellent reputation not only among his peers but also among members of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

If Steve had not found the photographs his father had taken of Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia) in his father's cherished photo album, Steve would never have even considered investigating the famous Black Dahlia murder case. Steve is a highly trained and accomplished homicide investigator, and in the Black Dahlia case he is just doing what he has been trained to do, and that is to objectively investigate a murder case. How ironic is it that the son of one of the most brutal murderers in Los Angeles history would become a LAPD Homicide Detective and be the one to establish his father's guilt.

What Steve did not know when he started his investigation was that his father had actually been a major suspect in the Black Dahlia murder. In fact, during the early part of 1950, when the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office was involved in the Black Dahlia investigation with the LAPD, Dr. George Hodel, in my opinion, was the prime suspect. The DAs office finally cleared him because of a lack of evidence. In an interview with Steve, witness Joe Barrett quotes DA Investigator Walter Sullivan and other DA investigators saying, 'God damn it, he got away with it. Yeah, talking about the incest trial with Tamar.' Then they said, 'We want this son of a bitch. We think he killed the Black Dahlia.' Dr. Hodel was so worried about the DA's office that he fled the country for the next forty years.

Based on the results of Steve's investigation, I would have no reservations about filing two counts of murder against Dr. George Hodel. Of course, I do not speak for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office on this subject and all views I express are my own, based on 34 years of experience in the DA's office, including experience prosecuting some of the highest profile murder cases in the history of Los Angeles County. I have personally read all of Steve's written account of his father's life and crimes and I have no doubt that his father not only murdered Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia) but also murdered Jeanne French less than one month after the Black Dahlia murder.

The Black Dahlia Murder

Steve makes a compelling case against his father for the murder of Elizabeth Short on January 15, 1947. The evidence against Dr. George Hodel is circumstantial, but I believe that circumstantial evidence cases are often a lot stronger than direct evidence cases, because there is no potential problem of misidentification by an eyewitness. I view each piece of circumstantial evidence like the strands in a rope where each fact pointing to the suspect's guilt is a separate strand.

Eventually if you have enough incriminating facts, you can build a rope that will be strong enough to bind the suspect to justice.

The first thing that Steve does in his investigation is to establish a personal relationship between Elizabeth Short and Dr. George Hodel. This is accomplished by Steve's discovery of two photographs of Elizabeth taken by his father. One was apparently taken in the Franklin house where Dr. Hodel lived. The second photo is a seductive nude photograph of Elizabeth. Both of these photos were found in a section of Dr. Hodel's photo album reserved for family members and 'loved ones.'

Handwriting analysis points directly at Dr. Hodel as a murderer, not only in the Elizabeth Short murder but also in the Jeanne French murder, which I will discuss in more detail later. It is a common practice in criminal trials to have a family member, a friend, or a co-worker identify someone's handwriting. Steve is very familiar with his father's handwriting and makes some important identifications in both murder cases.

Steve positively identifies his father's hand printing on the note mailed to the Los Angeles Examiner from downtown L.A. on January 26, 1947, where the 'Black Dahlia Avenger' promises to turn himself in on January 29 at 10 a.m. Steve also identifies his father's hand printing in lipstick on the body of Jeanne French, where the murderer wrote 'Fuck You. B.D.'

Elizabeth Short was murdered on January 15, 1947, and Jeanne French was murdered on February 10, 1947. We now have Steve's hand printing identification linking the person who was sending letters and postcards about the Black Dahlia murder to the press with the murder of Jeanne French.

Steve did the right thing with his hand printing evidence. He hired an unbiased handwriting expert, Hannah McFarland from Washington, to review the evidence. Steve did not tell her who the suspect was or that the suspect was his father. He also did not tell her who the victims were.

Hannah McFarland concludes that the same suspect who wrote the message in lipstick (on the body of Jeanne French) also hand printed 4 of the postcards about the Black Dahlia murder that were sent to the Los Angeles Herald Express. We learned that the suspect in the Black Dahlia murder liked to have contact with the Los Angeles Examiner and the Los Angeles Herald Express.

The suspect even called the city editor of the L.A. Examiner.; then mailed a packet addressed to the 'Examiner and other newspapers' containing some of Elizabeth Short's personal possessions, including her Social Security card, her birth certificate, and an address book with about 75 names in it (with one page torn out). By sending possessions that the actual murderer would have obtained from Elizabeth's purse on the night of her murder, we know that we have to take contacts with the press as major clues in determining the identity of the murderer.

The fact that the murderer of Jeanne French signed the initials B.D. on her body (Black Dahlia) ties him into the Black Dahlia murder. The fact that his hand printing on Jeanne French's body has been tied by Steve and Hannah McFarland to postcards and letters sent into the L.A. Examiner and the L.A. Herald Express also ties the murderer of Jeanne French to the Black Dahlia murder. We know from Steve and from Hannah McFarland's analysis that Dr. George Hodel is the printer.

I am not familiar with Hannah McFarland since she practices in Washington State and I prosecute in California. I find her to have an excellent analytical style. When she makes a comparison, I can actually see what she is talking about. That would be very impressive to a jury. Her opinion 'highly probable' is strong, considering that she does not have the original writings of the suspect to use for comparison purposes. Hannah McFarland assured Steve that her 'highly probable' findings were the same as her being 'virtually certain' that the questioned writings (hand printing on Jeanne French's body plus the four hand printed postcards sent to the L.A. Herald Express) and the known writings (Steve's submitted printings of his father) were written by the same person.

Analysis by the LAPD crime lab connects the envelopes and the paper used, indicating that the same suspect who sent the original packet containing Elizabeth Short's Social Security card, birth certificate, and address book to the L.A. Examiner also sent the subsequent note to the Examiner, offering to surrender for a 10 year sentence. LAPD criminalist Ray Pinker determined that at least one of the notes sent by the Dahlia murderer used proof sheet paper of a type commonly found in printing shops. We know from Steve that his father had a printing press in the basement of the Franklin house and had a