1925. He also had proof-sheet paper of a size and type similar to those mailed in by the Dahlia suspect in January 1947, a sample of which I possess because he returned to me my original childhood drawings in 1995. Specifically, exhibit 44, the 'Chinese Chicken' I drew and Father subsequently inscribed 'Steven April 1949,' was from that stock.
A second sample of this proof-sheet paper came into my possession from an original sales brochure Father designed and printed in late 1949 or early 1950, in connection with his marketing of the Franklin House.
Both samples should be considered potential physical evidence, and while the possibility exists, because two years had elapsed between the Dahlia murder and my father's writing on my drawing and his sales brochure, that they may not be from the same stock as the Dahlia proof sheets, a chemical and spectrographic analysis and comparison of my original copies could verily whether the stock is identical or similar. The state of the art is much advanced, and I believe the comparison would be conclusive. I suspect the pasted evidence notes retained in police custody are identical to Father's proof stock and could possibly match the Avenger notes in size, shape, and fiber content. LAPD booked into evidence these original notes mailed to the papers by the Black Dahlia Avenger. Those original proof-sheet notes correspond to our exhibit numbers 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 30, and 31. These original pasted notes should still exist in police custody in the evidence lockers, because any destruction of physical evidence known to have been connected to the LAPD's most notorious unsolved murder case would have to have been deliberate. The destruction or 'accidental loss' of evidence would tend to further substantiate a cover-up to protect the perpetrator(s) of the Dahlia and French murders.
The FBI Files
As I had for Elizabeth Short, I requested via the Freedom of Information Act any and all available information on my father. It was a slow process, but eventually I received the following information from the FBI.
No investigation has been conducted by the FBI concerning the captioned individual (George Hill Hodel) or his father. However, our files reflect the following information, which possibly relates to captioned individual.
I. A confidential informant of unknown reliability advised in October, 1924, that [redacted] .. . was a member of The Severance Club. The informant described The Severance Club as being composed of the leading 'Parlor Bolsheviks' and 'Pinks' of Pasadena, Los Angeles, and Hollywood, California, and its membership was limited in the club members' own language to 'The Cream of the Intellectual Radicals.'
II. During May, 1947, one George Hodel, 5121 Franklin Avenue, Hollywood, California, was in contact with the Soviet Embassy, Washington, D.C., concerning the 'Information Bulletin' of the U.S.S.R.
The FBI further indicated that they were withholding from release two additional pages that related to an inquiry dated October 8, 1956, from an unnamed agency related to George Hodel.
Based on the timing of the 1956 inquiry, I suspect it may have simply been a routine background check from the Manila office of the Department of Defense or possibly the United States Information Agency, both of whom Father had contracted with to perform market research. Of primary interest, however, is Father's timely and clandestine inquiry to the Soviet Union, shortly after the murder of Elizabeth Short.
Though the killers' taunting note to the press on January 29, 1947, stated that they were leaving the country for Mexico, it is possible that Father was also considering seeking a safe haven in the country of his family's beginnings — Russia.
The Department of Justice FBI file on 'Elizabeth Ann Short, The Black Dahlia' contains almost two hundred pages of previously classified material. Included in these files is the important interview their agents conducted with 'Sergeant Doe,' who dated and dined with Elizabeth Short in late September 1946 and then spent the night with her at the Figueroa Hotel.
Her dossier contains other important and hitherto unknown investigative facts:
People were led to believe from local newspaper reports and police statements in the days immediately following Short's murder that no fingerprints of the suspect existed because (a) the suspect in mailing Elizabeth Short's personal effects to the press 'soaked the materials in gasoline,' and (b) while fingerprints were found on the notes, 'they belonged to postal inspectors who touched the materials.'
The FOIA documents I received clearly establish that the FBI possessed four readable fingerprints, obtained from one or more of the suspect notes, and that they were actively comparing these original prints to potential suspects as late as 1949. Due to redaction of individual suspect(s) they cannot be identified by name. Regarding the suspect fingerprints, Special Agent Hood of the FBI's Los Angeles office said in a letter to the Bureau's Fingerprint Section in Washington, D.C.:
January 31, 1947
Director, FBI
Re: Elizabeth Short
Dear Sir:
There are enclosed herewith three photographs of fingerprints removed from an anonymous letter addressed to the Los Angeles Police Department concerning the mutilation murder of ELIZABETH SHORT. It is requested that these prints be checked through the single Fingerprint Section and if an identification is made that this office be notified by teletype immediately. In the event an identification is not made from these prints, it is requested that same be retained in the Single Fingerprint Section for possible future identification.
Very Truly yours,
P. B. Hood (Special Agent, Los Angeles)
The Bureau's Washington Fingerprint Section responded to Agent Hood in Los Angeles on February 15, 1947.
Reference is made to your letter of January 31, 1947, submitting three photographs of latent fingerprints for examination in connection with the above entitled matter, your file #62-2928. You are advised that the four latent fingerprints appearing in the photographs were searched through the single fingerprint file, but no identifications were effected. The photographs are being retained for any future comparisons, which might be desired.
