Tamar was taken into custody by LAPD Juvenile detectives, who, before returning her home, asked her why she had run away. She told them simply, 'Because my home life is too depressing.' Given Dr. Hodel's glowing reputation, that made no sense to the Juvenile officers. They began questioning her: why was she so unhappy at home? Finally Tamar broke down: 'Because of all those sex parties at the Franklin House.' How did she know about such things, the Juvenile officers wanted to know: had she seen them? 'Not only seen them,' she said, 'I took part in them myself.'
By the time the questioning was over, she had implicated not only Father but Fred Sexton and two other adult women in the 'bizarre sex parties' at our home. She also admitted to having had oral sex with numerous different men and boys, outside of the home, many of whom were fellow students with her at Hollywood High School. The Juvenile officers were stunned at the revelations and quickly moved to file charges.
Tamar was detained at Juvenile Hall, and five days later Father was one of the first to be arrested. He immediately posted $5,000 bail and was released from custody on Thursday, October 6, 1949, at 10:15 a.m. But by then the scandal had already reached the newspapers. The
DOCTOR FACES ACCUSATION IN MORALS CASE
Wild parties in which a Hollywood physician and his 14-year-old daughter assertedly participated yesterday led to the arrest of the doctor and 13 boys.
The father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, 38, of 5121 Franklin Ave. was booked in Hollywood Jail on District Attorney's charges of two morals offenses.
Fellow Students
Det. Sgt. L. A. Bell and Detective Shirley Maxwell said his daughter implicated him and 19 other persons. Some of these are fellow students with her at Hollywood High School.
Dep. Dist. Atty. William L. Ritzi said the daughter ran away from home last Friday because her 'home life was too depressing' but she was found Sunday at the home of a friend. She is now held in Juvenile Hall.
Both men and women figured in the series of bizarre parties, Ritzi said. Hodel is a photography enthusiast and said they seized many questionable photographs and pornographic art objects at his home.
The article went on to say that the doctor told Ritzi that he was 'delving into the mystery of love and the universe,' and that the acts of which he was accused were 'unclear, like a dream ... I can't figure out whether someone is hypnotizing me or I am hypnotizing someone.'
The boys arrested, all of whom were juveniles, were released to the custody of their parents. Dr. Hodel's preliminary hearing was set for October 14.
In a related article in the
The 14-year-old daughter told officers that her father had molested her since she was 11 years old.
Dr. Hodel, a medical officer of the United Nations mission to China, questioned by Deputy District Attorneys Ritzi and S. Ernest Roll admitted, 'These things must have happened.' He said he wanted to consult his psychiatrist.
Still in juvenile detention and 'protective custody,' Tamar was reinterviewed by Juvenile detectives, to whom she revealed that her father had also arranged and paid for an abortion performed on her in a Beverly Hills doctor's office. Accordingly, four days after George Hodel's arrest police arrested Beverly Hills physician Dr. Francis C. Ballard, age thirty-six, and his 'associate' Charles Smith, also thirty-six, for performing an abortion on Tamar. In the complaint, the abortion was alleged to have occurred in September 1949, a month before Tamar ran away.
Several days after Father's arrest, Juvenile detectives conducted a search of the Franklin House. The search resulted in the seizure of various items deemed 'pornographic' in nature, which would have included books, photographs, and several statues of nymphs and satyrs 'frolicking' together. During the search, detectives found the statues in a secret storage room behind the living room bookcase, whose existence Tamar had revealed to the Juvenile detectives.
Since it contained all the ingredients of a big juicy Hollywood scandal, the story generated a huge amount of local public interest: a wealthy and prominent, dapper Hollywood physician, his Marilyn Monroe lookalike underage daughter, orgiastic parties, reams of pornographic material and art, some of which was stashed in secret rooms, more than a dozen Hollywood High School teenagers named in a sex ring, a secret abortion, and, just in time for the trial, the showmen defense attorneys of their day, Jerry 'Get Me' Giesler and his ringmaster partner Robert Neeb.
A preliminary hearing was held in municipal court a week after the arrest, and based on the testimony of Tamar, who remained under Juvenile Hall detention, and other witnesses present in the bedroom at the time the acts occurred, Dad was bound over to the Superior Court for trial on two felony counts: incest and oral copulation. On December 8, 1949, a jury of eight women and four men were selected and the Superior Court trial of
The prosecution was confident because they felt they had an unusually strong case. Normally, in a charge of incest you rarely have more than the one complaining victim/witness. Parents generally do not have sex with their children in front of or with other people. Prosecutor Ritzi had three adult witnesses present in Father's bedroom, two of whom allegedly had participated in the sexual acts. Ritzi also had damning statements and admissions made by the defendant that he was 'delving into the mystery of love and the universe' and that 'these things must have happened.' Also, the DA had Dad's statements — a potential 'dream defense' — where he told detectives the whole thing was 'unclear, like a dream. I can't figure out whether someone is hypnotizing me or I am hypnotizing someone.' Ritzi also had the detectives' 'loot' from the search of the Franklin House.
The first witness called to testify was Tamar. Because of her age, newspaper photographs of her were not permitted, but the attending press were overly colorful in their verbal descriptions of the young victim, characterizing Tamar in separate articles as 'sultry,' 'blonde, blue-eyed, and loquacious,' 'precocious,' and 'gesturing dramatically and frequently to the jurors.'
Tamar, questioned by prosecutor William Ritzi on direct examination, testified that on the evening of July 1, 1949, she returned home from a date. She changed her clothes and went into her father's bedroom wearing a green smock, blue jeans, gold slippers, and a brassiere. Present in her father's bedroom were her father, his friend Fred
