Graphological analysis falls within the area of psychological profiling, which has tremendous potential value in possible screening and detection to be used as an investigative tool. However, due to the subjective and highly complex nature of the human mind, its evidentiary value must be viewed with healthy skepticism. In this case, knowing what we do about the writer, we find that the expert was highly accurate in her personality assessment/analysis.
This bridge between these two branches of handwriting analysis specifically relates to the 'Chinese Chicken' sample, K-5, and the printing Father wrote on the drawing in 1949.
In the sample below, I have enlarged my name, 'STEVEN.' During her character analysis of the known writing, Ms. McFarland noted a handwriting phenomenon so exceptionally rare that in her examination of documents over many years she had never come across it. This rarity related to the manner in which the three letters 'TEV' in 'STEVEN' were written.
As Ms. McFarland explained:
It appears that all three letters were highly connected. The T bar connects directly to the top of the E. Most people lift the pen at this point to complete the E. But instead, this printer keeps going in order to form the V, and then goes back to complete the E.
She advised me that to find two connected letters was not particularly rare, but three connected was unheard of, and would indicate the type of exceptionally high intelligence and forethought that might be found in a master chess champion such as a Boris Spassky or a Bobby Fischer. Confirmation of her observation was possible because I possessed the original drawing and was therefore able to verify the three unbroken letters. Thus, in this particular instance, because we were able to view the original document, her analysis of the three connected letters was 'positive' instead of highly probable.
Above is the sample K-5, with an enlargement of the name 'STEVEN' demonstrating the printed 'TEV' connected and unbroken.
Here, also, is one final sample (K-10), although it was not used as a submitted known sample to the expert. K-10 is copied from a portion of a contract document and was written and dated by George Hodel on January 11, 1999, just four months before his death. I include it because it demonstrates his consistency in the use of a specific characteristic. Within this limited sample of his printing, where he has printed only five sentences, we find he has written the open-bottomed letter 'B' (circled) seven out of the eight times he used it.
This open 'B' is only one of the four unique and individual characteristics of my father's handwriting that identify him as the author of the Black Dahlia Avenger and Jeanne French notes.
Hannah McFarland's opinion was confirmed in large measure by two previous handwriting experts in their separate 1947 analyses. Like their modern-day counterpart, both of these earlier experts were a combination of graphologist and questioned-document examiner. Submitting a character analysis of the suspect, they concluded that an unspecified number of the postcards were handprinted by the same person.
Clark Sellers, the internationally recognized handwriting expert who provided forensic testimony that resulted in the conviction and execution of Bruno Hauptmann for the murder of the Lindbergh baby, was requested to examine the Black Dahlia evidence. He told the police and public that, in his opinion, 'It was evident the writer took great pains to disguise his or her personality by printing instead of writing the message and by endeavoring to appear illiterate.' But, he added, 'The style and formation of the printed letters betrayed the writer as an educated person.'
In examining the Black Dahlia documents, handwriting expert Henry Silver told the police, 'The sender is an egomaniac and possibly a musician. The fluctuating base line of the writing reveals the writer to be affected by extreme fluctuations of mood, dropping to melancholy. The writer suffers from mental conflict growing out of resentment or hatred due to frustration of sex urge.'
George Hodel's profile includes all three of these characteristics: he was highly educated, a musician, and an egomaniac.
Based on the accumulated evidence, there can be no farther doubt: my father was the sadistic psychopath who killed both Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French.
However, it's also important to examine the 'why' behind the crimes and to establish whether or not George Hodel, and in all likelihood his partner Fred Sexton, were responsible for the deaths of other lone women during the 1940s and '50s in and around Los Angeles. Was it possible that George Hodel had not only killed Elizabeth Short and Jeanne French but others as well? Had he, as I now began to fear, been a serial killer?
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More 1940s L.A. Murdered
Women Cases
BECAUSE OF THE SENSATIONAL COVERAGE of the Black Dahlia murder in newspapers around the country in the late 1940s, most people who followed the case don't realize that Elizabeth Short's murder was only one of a series of crimes against lone attractive women from 1943 through the end of the decade. These cases bore striking similarities to one another, not only in the victims' profiles but in the nature and proximity of their crime scenes, the types of evidence that turned up, the descriptions of the men last seen with them, and the ways in which the police were taunted after the crimes.
In researching many of these crimes, some of which have already been examined by earlier researchers and authors, I found that law enforcement agencies other than the LAPD, such as the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, the Long Beach police, and the San Diego police, had also considered the possibility that these crimes were, in the
