Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 2

SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL Sunday, May 11, 2003 IN DEPTH A2 mlS'imm 111- DM Retired detective says father is killer in L.A.'s oldest cold case Associated Press photos Steve Hodel, a retired police homicide detective, poses while holding his new book, 'Black Dahlia in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. Hodel claims his late father, Dr. George Hodel, a respected Los Angeles doctor, was the fiendish torture killer of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. If he is correct, Hodel has cracked a more than half-century-old murder case that is the oldest and most notorious unsolved 'cold case' in Los Angeles history. ki I ifv If Ml si 4 i I LA r-'S'q.

,1 a -'Cn-rU te ff i ij By LINDA DEUTSCH Tllli ASSOCIATED I'RKSS LOS ANGELES Ho carries it in his pocket as a talisman, a tiny three-inch book of grainy photos that he touches now and then as if reminding himself that the horror is real. Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD homicide detective, is adjusting to the discovery of evidence, including this little book, that he says proves his late father, a respected Los Angeles doctor, was the torture killer of Elizabeth Short, the so-called Black Dahlia. Hodel also believes his father might have killed several other women, as well. If he is correct, Hodel has cracked a more than half-centu-ry-old murder case that is the oldest and most notorious of Los Angeles' unsolved "cold cases." It also is one of the most sensational, a mystery replete with a beautiful victim, a grotesque murder, an incest trial and famous characters from the heyday of old Hollywood. Hodel, 61, has written this gruesome tale in a book.

"Black Dahlia Avenger." "This is Hannibal Lector meets LA Confidential in Chinatown," said Hodel, who now lives in Lake Arrowhead, a mountain town east of Los Angeles. "You couldn't make up a story like this. "Even before this, people would say to me, 'Your family is so interesting you should write a Hodel said in an interview. "But the fact that I would grow up to be a policeman arid then discover this, His voice trails off in sadness. In his book, Hodel paints his father, Dr.

George Hodel, as a fiend who tortured and carved up a young woman and perhaps went on to kill others before he abandoned his family and fled the United States. "I loved my father and respected him," Hodel said. "His blood flows through my body. He gave me being. Hut now I have come to look at my father as the true Dr.

Jekyl and Mr. Hyde." Little brown book Steve Hodel's journey into the darkness of his father's life began with the little brown photo album given to him by his father's widow when the elder Hodel died in 1999 at the age of 91. Its yellowing pages contained snapshots of some of George Hodel's 11 children from four marriages, including Steve and his mother, the ex-wife of director John Huston. But what caught his eye were two carefully posed and framed photographs of a mystery woman with flowers in her hair. "It wasn't immediate recognition," the author recalls.

"But I thought, 'Why do I know this He remembered a movie about the Black Dahlia case and began to do computer research, comparing the photos in the album with those of Elizabeth Short. "Initially, I was sure there was some other explanation," Hodel said. "Dad knew a lot of beautiful women. I was in denial." But as his research continued, his conclusion became inescapable. Dr.

George Hodel was a man with a genius I.Q. who socialized with Hollywood legends such as Huston and artist-photographer Man Ray, among other luminaries. He is shown in his son's book as the central figure in a depraved social set that dabbled in sex orgies and drugs. Ultimately, his father's path led to murder, Hodel said. The 1947 Black Dahlia killing is a Los Angeles legend, a murder so gruesome If makes other Hodel displays two photographs of Elizabeth Short, known in 1947 as the Black Dahlia and the victim of a bizarre and brutal murder the same year, contained in a tiny 3-inch book of grainy photos given to him by his father's widow when the elder Hodel died in 1999.

Jack the Ripper is not without its skeptics. Over the years, many people confessed to being the Black Dahlia killer, but no one was ever charged with the crime. Books were written and movies made giving both real and fictional accounts of the case. Dozens of Web sites, including some featuring Black Dahlia trivia quizzes and games, have been devoted to every aspect of the killing. Theories abound about who might have killed Elizabeth Short.

One writer even tried to implicate director Orson Welles. A supporter of Hodel's theory is Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay, a former prosecutor in the Charles Manson case who worked with Steve Hodel for many years. He said Hodel's story is different because he arrives with unusual credentials. For 24 years, he was a Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective assigned to Hollywood. "I think he's a straight arrow guy," Kay said.

"He had a reputation for honesty and being a good investigator." He notes that when the younger Hodel began his unusual project, he came to Kay and swore him to secrecy. The prosecutor, stepping outside his official duties, said he would privately examine Hodel's evidence and tell him if the case could have been prosecuted, even though today no one is left to punish. At the time Hodel wrote the book, the DA's files were not open to him. He gleaned most of his information from newspapers, public documents and family archives. Based on Hodel's evidence, Kay said he would have no reluctance to file a murder case on onionskin paper that is yellowed and crumbling.

But they make clear that Dr. Hodel was one of the prime suspects in the investigation of Short's murder. He had been tried and acquitted on a charge of committing incest on his 14-year-old daughter in a sensational 1949 trial during which the Black Dahlia was mentioned. Afterward, police electronically bugged his Hollywood mansion, a Lloyd Wright-designed Mayan-style edifice where the rich and famous partied. The transcripts of overheard conversations include a statement in Hodel's voice saying: "Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia.

They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead." At another point, he is quoted as saying, "Maybe I did kill my secretary." And there is a tape in which a woman is heard screaming. The younger Hodel now believes that his father killed the secretary to keep her from talking. He also links Hodel to the so-called "red lipstick murder" of Jeanne French, a woman found slain within weeks of Short's murder with an obscenity and the initials "B.D." scrawled on her nude body in red lipstick. The author also said he recognizes his father's handwriting on taunting cards and letters sent to police after the Black Dahlia killing.

He said his research indicates that his father and an alleged accomplice might also be linked to the murders of seven other of women and suggests they were serial killers. against Dr. Hodel if he was alive. But Dr. Hodel is dead and so are the key witnesses and investigators.

"As a homicide detective, he was trained to step back and look at things objectively," he said. "And he used that training." Family divided Hodel has broken with some family members over his book. His father's widow no longer speaks to him. But his half-sister, Tamar, the subject of the incest trial, is convinced he is right. "I always thought my father had killed the Black Dahlia," she said in a telephone interview.

"I said it back then." Tamar Hodel, now 68 and living in Hawaii, said she was branded a liar in the trial and went into exile with her mother in Mexico after the scandal. "Now everything is falling into a clear light," she said. "I didn't know how badly I'd been smeared. In 1949, people didn't talk about incest much. It was a very different time.

I got the message when I was so young that I was bad and a liar. "Even with all the horrible things they said aboutine; I'ttas under my father's spell for quite awhile," she said. "But I'm so glad I told the truth Now I understand his cruelty, and I see it had nothing to do with me." Steve Hodel believes his search was worthwhile. He said he often imagined Elizabeth Short and the other women his father might have killed crying out for justice. "I've investigated 300 murders, and I've never seen anything close to this," he said.

"I feel that I was I being guided to find these important truths. It's been a spiritual trip for me." famous killings pale by comparison. The body was severed at the waist, drained of blood and washed, then carefully posed in a vacant lot. Hodel said the pose was right out of a sculpture by Dr. Hodel's famous friend, Man Ray.

Contributing to the crime's enduring fascination were the beauty of the 22-year-old victim, who wore dahlias in her black hair, and the stories circulated at the time of her Hollywood ambitions. "It's become synonymous with unsolved murders of beautiful women," said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. "It captured the imagination of the nation and still does. It was straight out of a movie." Mystery writer Robert Crais, the author of, "L.A. Requiem" and other books set in Los Angeles, said it was no ordinary crime.

"Certain things are part of the fabric of Los Angeles," he said, "and the Black Dahlia is one of them." Incriminating evidence Elizabeth Short had come from Massachusetts in the 1940s in search of a better life. She dated many men and lost her true love in a wartime plane crash. Records show that several witnesses identified Short as a girlfriend of Dr. George Hodel. When District Attorney Steve Cooley decided recently to release the long-secret files on the case, Steve Hodel's theory gained substance.

His father's photograph was in the file, along with transcripts of electronic surveillance on his home for three weeks in 1950. The reports are fragile, typed Respected Los Angeles physician Dr. George Hodel is shown this 1952 file photo taken in Oahu, Hawaii, after he fled Los Angeles in the wake of his 1950 incest trial in which he was acquitted. Hollywood doctor Why didn't the police prosecute Hodel's father? The book offers a rather complicated theory involving police corruption and Hodel's position as the doctor who worked with the public health department in treating venereal diseases in Los Angeles. His medical files might have included some famous names.

Steve Hodel also suggests some authorities were bribed. He also notes that as the investigation progressed, Dr. Hodel left the country, spending most of the rest of his life in the Philippines. Hodel's theory that his father was a killer in the same league as famous murderers such as.