Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

Captain Donahoe quickly entered the case, believing that Parzyjegla might possibly be the suspect in the Black Dahlia and Lipstick cases. Donahoe theorized that the violence that Parzyjegla had displayed in killing and mutilating his employer could well link all three murders. Donahoe informed reporters that Parzyjegla worked in a print shop, adding, 'one of the letters received by the Black Dahlia suspect bore evidence of having been mailed by someone working in a printing establishment.' After his preliminary investigation, Donahoe said, 'Parzyjegla is the hottest suspect yet in the 'Black Dahlia' killing.'

Tuesday, February 18, 1947

Captain Donahoe organized a live 'show-up' of suspect Parzyjegla for 2:00 P.M. for Toni Manalatos. He wanted her to 'attend the show-up of Parzyjegla,' along with those witnesses 'claiming to have seen Elizabeth Short with various men during the last six days of her life.' Donahoe wanted to give Parzyjegla the largest exposure possible in front of the broadest array of witnesses, in the hope that someone who had seen either Elizabeth or Jeanne French in the company of a man would identify Parzyjegla as the person who had been with one or both of the victims. The description given for Parzyjegla was 'a tall 36-year-old male, of light complexion, with darkish blonde hair and powerful hands.' Parzyjegla, however, while he readily admitted to slaying his employer, 'vehemently denied any connection with the slayings of the two women,' according to press reports.

At the same time Donahoe was organizing his witnesses to see Parzyjegla, the LAPD crime lab began conducting an examination of possible physical evidence that could potentially connect him to the other murders. LAPD police chemist Ray Pinker conducted an examination of 'proof-sheet' paper taken from Haij's printing office, because, according to Captain Donahoe, 'at least one of the notes sent in by the Dahlia killer in that case, used proof-sheet paper, of a type commonly found in printing shops.' Donahoe was hoping the print shop would be the key that could link the three murders to the suspect, someone who would have had access to the blank proof sheets.

Thursday, February 20, 1947

Suspect Otto Parzyjegla was formally charged with his self-described 'dream murder' of his employer, and the case was closed. At a police show-up conducted at the Wilshire Division station on February 19, the six women victims of attempted attacks, as well as other witnesses from the French and Dahlia investigations, eliminated Parzyjegla as a suspect.

With Parzyjegla out of the picture, the search for the person(s) responsible for the Black Dahlia and the Red Lipstick murders turned back to San Diego, where apparently a new clue was discovered. Four detectives were assigned to San Diego, but LAPD and San Diego detectives kept secret, even from reporters, what that new clue might be.

As indicated, initially Captain Donahoe publicly confirmed LAPD'S belief that the Dahlia and the French cases were connected. Within days of that announcement a strange and never-explained series of events occurred, all related to the investigation.

First, Captain Donahoe was personally removed, by Chief of Detectives Thad Brown, as officer-in-charge of both investigations, and was summarily transferred from his position as commander of the Homicide Division and placed in charge of Robbery Division, then a separate entity. This effectively terminated his personal involvement in both murder cases. What was it about this case that made the LAPD brass nervous enough to remove the one commander who could have solved it? Was Donahoe getting too close to the truth?

Next, as I saw it, there appeared to be a simultaneous lockdown of information in two separate and critical fronts of the investigation. First, the 'San Diego connection' sounded as if LAPD had successfully traced Elizabeth Short's January 8 phone call to a man in Los Angeles. Second, relative to the recent newspaper reports of the 'mystery man' who was sharing Jeanne French's P.O. box, again LAPD acknowledged they had identified, interviewed, and 'eliminated' him. However, his identity, unlike other 'non-involved' witnesses, was kept secret, and to this day remains a mystery.

In addition, the police high command made another startling revelation. Immediately after Donahoe's removal from the case, LAPD revised their assessment of the Jeanne French murder. They no longer saw it as a second homicide by the same suspect, but rather as a 'copycat murder.' Within less than a year, the Lipstick murder became totally disassociated from the Dahlia case and quickly fell into obscurity. Now the official LAPD line was that the murder of Elizabeth Short was a standalone, unconnected to any other crimes of murdered, sexually assaulted, and bludgeoned women. That remains the official LAPD position to this day: Elizabeth Short's murderer never killed anyone before or after that brutal murder. Why did LAPD take such a hard line on this? Why was it that, immediately after Donahoe's transfer out of Homicide, the link between the two murders was officially severed? All of this was not a coincidence but, as will ultimately become clear, part of an organized conspiracy within the LAPD to protect the identity of the self-described Black Dahlia Avenger. In doing so, the conspirators were covering up one of the biggest corruption scandals in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department. These overt and deliberate actions by LAPD's highest-ranking officers would ultimately transform them from respected law enforcers to criminal co-conspirators, accomplices to murder after the fact.

15

Tamar, Joe Barrett,

and Duncan Hodel

MAYBE IT WAS MY OWN DESIGN and not simply the passage of time that kept the true story of Tamar and the family scandal a dark mystery to me for many years. Even in my adult mind, Tamar was the image of the adolescent temptress Lolita. She would go on to blaze a trail from the beat generation of the middle 1950s to the street generation of the late '60s, bouncing off poets, folk singers, druggies, and hippies.

Tamar was described by singer Michelle Phillips in her book California Dreamin': The True Story of the Mamas and the Papas as her 'very best friend, who got me interested in folk music, or at least into folk music people.' Michelle's description of Tamar is a snapshot of the young girl who, a decade earlier, unwittingly had come within a hair of playing a critical role in the Black Dahlia investigation. Phillips writes:

So, off we went to Tamar's. As soon as I set eyes on her, I thought she was the most fabulous, glamorous girl I had ever met. She had a wonderful lavender colored room, with lavender pillows and curtains, lavender lead-glass ashtrays, all of that. I thought it was just great. She had just acquired a new pink and lavender Rambler, buying it on time.

She hung out with a very hip Bohemian crowd —Josh White, Dick Gregory, Odetta, Bud and Travis. Tamar was incredible. She gave me my first fake ID, my first amphetamines ('uppers' to help me stay awake in class after late nights). This was a girl after my own heart, and we became very close . . . and now she was my idol.

But everything Tamar Hodel would become by the 1960s, she already was during those few months in the