Again, vicious overkill, as with Elizabeth Short. However, Jeanne French was not tortured the way Elizabeth Short was. That could be due to the fact that Dr. Hodel had a more involved personal relationship with Elizabeth Short than he did with Jeanne French.
Nevertheless, it appears that the doctor was the last one seen with Jeanne French before her murder. Witness Toni Manalatos at the Piccadilly Drive-in restaurant located at 3932 Sepulveda Blvd. served the victim her 'last meal' between 12 and 1 a.m. This witness tells of seeing the victim accompanied by a 'dark-haired man with a small moustache.' They left from the restaurant together and Jeanne French's body was found 15 blocks from the restaurant. Dr. Newbarr, who also did the autopsy on Jeanne French, determined that she was murdered between midnight and 4 a.m. on February 10, 1947. The fact that LAPD was looking for suspects who had dark hair, small moustaches and were in the low 6' range in height fits Dr. Hodel to a 'T.'
Captain Jack Donahoe, the original senior officer in charge of the Black Dahlia investigation, believed that the murders of Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French were connected. He unfortunately was removed from the investigation approximately 10 days after he made that connection. I fail to see why it was so hard to make a connection when the killer prints the initials B.D. on Jeanne French's body.
I have had only three murder cases where the killers have written words in the victim's blood. Susan Atkins wrote the word 'PIG' in Sharon Tate's blood on the front door of the Polanski residence. The next night Patricia Krenwinkel wrote the words 'rise,' 'death to pigs,' and 'Healter (sic) Skelter,' all in Leno La Bianca's blood. Krenwinkel also scratched the word 'WAR' into Leno La Bianca's abdomen with the tines of a carving fork. Less than two weeks earlier, Manson Family member Robert Beausoleil wrote the words 'political Piggy' in the blood of rock musician Gary Hinman.
I have never even heard of a killer writing on the body of a victim in lipstick. With this in mind, I noted with great interest something that Steve's half brother Duncan Hodel said. Duncan said that he visited the Franklin House in 1947, 1948, and 1949. 'I remember one party where everybody was laughing and having a good time and Dad got this red lipstick and wrote on one of the woman's breasts with the lipstick. She had these big beautiful breasts and Dad took the lipstick and drew these big targets around each one, and we all laughed and had a good time.' Since I consider writing on a woman's body with lipstick unusual (we are not talking about drawing on a little child's face for Halloween), I would definitely try to get Duncan's incident in front of the jury.
Unfortunately, there will be no jury trial or death penalty for Dr. George Hodel. One could easily say that he got away with at least two murders. However, thanks to some great detective work by his courageous son Steve, the name of Dr. George Hodel will live in infamy. I do consider Steve's work exposing his father to be courageous, especially since Steve and his dad had a good relationship at the time Dr. Hodel died at the age of 91.
Sincerely,
Stephen R. Kay
The Final Thoughtprint
MY INVESTIGATION HAD BEEN COMPLETED for some four months. I was working on the final editing of the manuscript when on April 24, 2002, my phone rang. It was my sister Tamar. 'Steven,' she said, 'I have the most amazing news. FaunaI[her eldest daughter] has just spoken with a man named Walter Morgan.' (I immediately recognized his name as a district attorney investigator, Lieutenant Jemison's partner from the 1950 investigation, and swallowed hard at hearing his name come from her lips.) 'He was a private detective or something back in the 1940s,' she said. 'He was involved in investigating, guess who:
I assured Tamar I would check it out immediately. Contacting Fauna, whom I had not spoken to for ten years, I learned she was working in the San Fernando Valley and had been visited in her place of work by a casual acquaintance, Ethel. In her seventies, Ethel was with her boyfriend, whom she introduced as Walter Morgan. Walter shook Fauna's hand, and said, ''Hodel?' That's an unusual name. I once worked a murder case on a Dr. Hodel. Any relation?' Fauna and Walter compared notes, and quickly learned that Morgan's suspect and Fauna's grandfather were one and the same.
Two days later, on April 26,1 called Walter Morgan and told him my name was Steven Hodel, the uncle of Fauna Hodel, and the son of Dr. Cieorge Hill Hodel, who had died in 1999 at the age of ninetyone. I also informed him that I had retired from LAPD after working most of my career as a homicide detective in Hollywood Division.
Morgan greeted me warmly, in that unspoken bond that exists cop to cop, and proceeded to reminisce about the Hodel story.
Morgan, now eighty-seven, said he had worked for the sheriff's department from 1939 to 1949 on radio car patrol, in vice, burglary, and in other details. Then he left LASD and became a DA investigator in 1949, where he remained until retirement in 1970. He worked homicide on temporary assignment for a few months back in 1950. He was sent over to help out Lieutenant Frank Jemison, who he said 'had picked me to be his sidekick.'
Walter Morgan remembered well the day they had installed listening devices at the Franklin House, which he authoritatively informed me 'was built by Frank Lloyd Wright.'* Morgan continued:
We had a good bug man, a guy that could install bugs anywhere and everywhere. He worked in the DA's crime lab. So the chief assigned me to take him over to the house on Franklin, and he was going to install a bug system at the Hodel residence. My chief at the DA's office had me take him over there and we met the LAPD at Dr. Hodel's house. It was during the daytime and nobody was home. I remember there were some ranking LAPD officers outside, and no one could figure out how to get in. I suggested, 'Well, have any of you officers tried a card to see if it would open the door?' They laughed, so I pulled out my wallet, and took out some kind of a credit card or whatever card I had, slipped it through, and the front door popped right open! They couldn't believe it. Anyway, our man went in and installed some bugs there. That was our job, to get the bugs installed so we could listen in.
Morgan, though not personally involved in listening to the secret recordings or transcribing conversations, confirmed that they existed. He knew that others had listened in, but didn't know the context, only that they never filed any charges against Dr. Hodel.
Morgan said he had worked, or, in his words 'rehashed,' the Black Dahlia case with Lieutenant Jemison, and then they had turned their attention to the Jeanne French murder. 'But we ran into problems with the investigation,' he said. 'On the Jeanne French murder, Jemison accused the LAPD of hiding some bloody clothes, or getting rid of some bloody clothes from a locker. They called that the Black Dahlia number two. The accusation made headlines the next day, so the DA just took him right off the case. The DA didn't give a damn if we knew who murdered Jeanne French at that point. We thought we were making some progress, and Jemison thought he had a good suspect, but when he said that about LAPD, that was it.'
Morgan remembered that my father had been suspected of 'doing away some young girl,' as he put it. 'A youngster — nineteen, twenty, or twenty-one — something like that.'
