Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story

But are there only three of us? The birds, the glass, and we? Or is there a fourth? Who is standing behind our glass, invisible to us, incommunicable to us, gravely watching our brave attacks against the walls we cannot see? Is there a fifth presence, watching all the others? And a sixth, and others, hidden in mysteries beyond our dreams?

These two photographs of Elizabeth Short taken by her then lover, most probably at the Franklin House in the month preceding the crime, are unique and macabre in the extreme, premortem portent of the horrors about to befall her. They are the ultimate surreal irony, where the artist has captured both of their pasts and futures as mistress-victim and lover-avenger.

¹ Foresta, Merry, et. al. Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray. Abbeville Press, New York, 1988, p. 80.

† Uncertain of the deity's identity, I consulted Dr. Momi Naughton, professor of Asian art at Western Washington University, who confirmed it to me.

² Writers in Revolt: An Anthology (Frederic Fell Inc., New York, 1963), p. 50.

³  Manifestos of Surrealism (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1972), pp. 13-14.

20

The Franklin House Revisited

I BEGAN MY INVESTIGATION on the premise that the photographs of Elizabeth Short in Father's album were the innocent mementos of his wanton youth, about which I had always known and because of which my mother had suffered so greatly. Elizabeth Short, I assumed, was probably just one of dozens of women in his life who were nothing more to him than a 'three-month fling.'

As I went deeper and deeper into both my father's mysterious past and that of Elizabeth Short, however, fitting many scattered biographical jigsaw pieces of their separate lives into time and place, I was slowly moved to the inescapable conclusion: my father was in fact guilty of her murder. Alone, or with an accomplice.

In the pages and chapters that follow, I offer the accumulated evidence, along with the relevant photographs, that will prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Dr. George Hill Hodel was the Black Dahlia Avenger.

In October 1999, during the initial stages of my investigation, I contacted the owners of the Franklin House, whom I had met thirty years earlier while working Hollywood Division. The owner's father had purchased the house through my father's attorneys in 1950, after the Tamar incest trial.

'Bill Buck' (an assumed name to protect his anonymity) and his wife had moved into Franklin House in the early 1970s and begun restoring it. While working Hollywood Division in 1973, I chanced to meet the owners while they were gardening in front of the residence. After learning of my connection they graciously offered me a tour. In 1999, after my father's death, I learned that both Bill Buck and his wife were still living there and made an appointment to visit them again. We spent several hours discussing the history of the house, its construction, and its former owners, me sharing with them some memories of my Franklin years. As they had done so many years before, they took me on another tour, during which I took a number of photographs of both the interior and exterior. Included in the tour was a trip to the basement, which for the most part had remained untouched since the original sale some fifty years before.

During a cursory search of the dust-covered past deep in the basement, I found two items of interest, the first of which was a wooden crate, sent from China and addressed to 'Dr. George Hill Hodel, 5121 Franklin Avenue, Los Angeles, California.'

Inside the crate I discovered a bill of lading, dated October 16, 1946, which inventoried eight packages.

Exhibit 41

Franklin House bill of lading

This document established that the various art treasures purchased and shipped by Father from China had arrived at the Franklin House in the fall of 1946. Whether the crate followed his departure either by sea freight from China or via a reasonably fast military air transport, the receipt date supports my suspicion that George Hodel had arrived back in Los Angeles sometime in September 1946, discharged for what his UNRRA record cited as 'personal' reasons. Father's stay in a hospital corresponds to what Elizabeth Short's Massachusetts girlfriend Marjorie Graham told reporters in her telephone interview with them on January 17, 1947:

Elizabeth had told me her boyfriend was an Army Air Force lieutenant, currently in the hospital in Los Angeles. Elizabeth told me that she was worried about him and she hoped that he would get well and out of the hospital in time for a wedding they planned for November 1.

Bill Buck mentioned that my father had left some old magazines in the basement, but he thought they had been disposed of over the years. During my brief tour of the basement, which for me still held painful memories of leather straps and spankings, I came across a cobweb-covered box of old medical magazines dating from the mid-1940s. Examining the contents, I discovered a medical calendar book for the year 1943 that had belonged to Father. I asked Bill Buck if I could take it and he said, 'Of course.'

Exhibit 42

George Hodel's 1943 medical calendar

The book was titled Warner's Calendar of Medical History, for the use of the Medical Profession, 1943. A later careful examination of each page of the book provided some interesting discoveries, including samples of my father's handwriting on the inside cover, as well as other entries in my mother's hand. Printed in George Hodel's handwriting on the front inside cover of the book were the following notations: 'Genius and Disease: pp 126-269.' Page 126 was earmarked and said:

GENIUS & DISEASE