in
Tamar remembered Kiyo as our father's beautifully exotic young girlfriend, and recalled that the Franklin House was filled with women: 'George had all of these women at the house just waiting to see him. They were literally standing in line at his bedroom. I felt lucky if I could get in to see him. He was a perfect example of an ego gone wild. I think Huston did sex stuff with Dad and Fred Sexton and all the women. I know for sure Huston filmed stuff at the house.'
She had this to say about Dad's physical violence: 'George was so terrible when it came to punishing you three boys. He was very cruel. Michael got it the worst. It broke my heart to see how he treated you three. Especially how he was with Mike. And he was so cruel with Dorero. I remember before Franklin, visiting you at the Valentine Street house, where I would see Dad pull her around the driveway by her hair.'
What was most important to me about Tamar's memories of 1949 and the trial wasn't the trial itself, which was a matter of public record, but the attitude of the prosecutors who interviewed her two years after the murder of Elizabeth Short. Here Tamar was, at the very center of one of the most scandalous news stories in Hollywood — a story that could well have wound up involving Man Ray and John Huston — and firmly under the control of prosecutors, who now believed they could nail my father for crimes they suspected him of having committed but couldn't prove. Tamar was the key to getting George Hodel behind bars.
When she told my mother about the abortion — which, in 1949, was illegal — my mother realized that Tamar was a walking piece of evidence and believed Tamar's life was in danger. My mother lived in deathly fear of George and knew that getting Tamar out of the house would probably save her life. So Tamar fled.
'I ran away,' Tamar told me. 'And I was found because Dorero had called my mom and told her, 'Tamar has run away and you had better come down here and help her.' So my mom came down unannounced, and George just couldn't say, 'I don't know where she is.' So George put out a missing report. I wasn't adept at running away because I had never done it before. I had just gone to friends' houses.'
The parents of Tamar's friend in whose house she was hiding were away in Europe, but her friends were living there with the servants. It seemed to be a safe haven. Tamar knew the police were looking for her, which frightened her, because she'd never had any dealings with the law. So her friends protected her. 'This little gang of my friends took me from place to place, hiding me out. That's how all this came about with all the boys. All the guys helped me out, hiding me from place to place.'
In talking with the various teenagers, the police found her hiding out with a girlfriend, and Tamar, taken to the police station as a 'runaway,' was questioned, and quickly began to talk. 'The police took me in and, because I had just had the abortion, I thought that they could tell that I had had an abortion. So I told them. Then one question led to another.'
Soon the entire story of the incest and the goings-on at the Franklin House were out in the open, and the prosecutors had their case. But they still needed Tamar to testify against her father. They needed her trust. As Tamar remembers it, a husband-and-wife team from the DA's office brought her to court every day and promised her that they would protect her and take care of her. Tamar told me, 'They said that I had never been loved and I didn't know what love was and that when this trial thing was all over that they were going to adopt me. I guess that was just their way of handling it to get me to say everything. I really believed them when they told me they would adopt me and give me love.'
Adding political urgency to the incest trial and the prosecution of George Hodel was the fact that William Ritzi, the state's lead trial attorney, was also running for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. And apparently Ritzi thought he knew more about my father than what was simply in the case he was prosecuting. As Tamar remembers it, 'He told me that Dad might be a suspect in the Black Dahlia case. 'We know all about your father and you,' he said. That's how they got me to talk to them.
'I know that the police did talk to George back in 1947 because George said, 'We have to be careful about doing our nude sunbathing because the police are watching the place.' I'm pretty sure it was the year the Black Dahlia was killed when the police came out to the house. George never mentioned anything to me about that case. My gut feeling is that he knew and had met the Black Dahlia, but I really can't say for sure.'
Dad's statutory rape of Tamar notwithstanding, he was still cautious about how he treated her at the house. Tamar confirmed that the testimony at the incest trial, about what had happened on the night of July 1, 1949, was all true. She remembered it clearly. Even the witnesses Corrine and Barbara had told the truth to the police investigators and the prosecutors, but Dad's sharp defense attorneys were still able to make it seem as if the entire event was a figment of Tamar's imagination.
In my conversations with her it became obvious to me that Tamar has no current memory of the questions she was asked by attorney Robert Neeb relating to her accusing Dad of being the killer of the Black Dahlia and having a lust for blood. Nor did she remember telling anyone of her being afraid that, in her words fifty-two years ago, 'My father is going to kill me and all the rest of the members of this household.' Moreover, because she had been detained in Juvenile Hall during the entire trial, she had had no access to newspapers, and so to this day remains unaware of what Neeb said about her in the courtroom after his cross-examination of her. I do believe that the 'lust for blood' statement and the Black Dahlia original accusations attributed to Tamar by Neeb and Giesler had originally been told to her by Dorero, because those are the identical references, 'blood-lust' and 'insanity,' that Mother said to me in her drunken state when we lived in Pasadena.
It is probable that Mother, while intoxicated, told Tamar about her fears or suspicions that Dad had killed Elizabeth Short after Tamar made her initial disclosure to Mother about Dad's having had sex with her. Mother was clearly fearful that if George discovered that Tamar had told anyone about their incestuous relationship, he would most likely have murdered his daughter before she could have an opportunity to reveal it to the authorities. Mother knew that Dad was capable of killing anyone, including a family member who might reveal his deepest secrets. Genuinely fearful for Tamar's safety, Mother told her of her suspicions, and may well have encouraged her to run away, to get her away from the house. That set into motion the search for the missing Tamar, the arrest of Father, the trial, and Dad's flight from Los Angeles after his acquittal.
Tamar, Dad, Michelle Phillips, and the Mamas and the Papas
Tamar remembered a night in 1967 when Dad visited her in San Francisco at the same time Michelle Phillips and the Mamas and the Papas were coming into town to perform their first live concert at the Pan Pacific. Tamar took George and the two beautiful Asian women he had brought with him to the St. Francis Hotel where Michelle was staying. 'I introduced them to her,' she told me, 'and she almost fainted, and her eyes rolled back in her head and she curtsied and said to George, 'I feel like I've really known you since I was twelve.' It was because of all the things I had told Michelle about him.'
Father took over like an impresario, Tamar said. After discovering they had ordered a large dinner to be brought up by room service before the scheduled concert, Father stepped in and took control, informing them that they 'shouldn't eat a large meal before a big concert.' She added, 'Dad had the waiters take everything back and changed it all to just appetizers, like Po Po and stuff. They all began smoking hash, and Dad passed it around, but he didn't smoke it.'
