Infamous America - HOLLYWOOD MURDER Ep. 6 | Black Dahlia, Part 4

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

 Investigators and prosecutors build a case against Dr. George Hodel for the murder of Elizabeth Short. But for an unknown reason, it doesn’t lead to an arrest or an indictment. Dr. Hodel moves on with his life, even as he is suspected of multiple crimes, including multiple murders. Decades after the Black Dahlia murder, Hodel’s son Steve investigates the case and concludes that his father was, without a doubt, the elusive killer. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Hit “JOIN” on the Infamous America YouTube homepage.  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4V_wVD7N1gEB045t7-V0w/featured For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. To purchase an ad on this show please reach out: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD homicide detective, has spent years investigating the Black Dahlia murder. His investigation began after his dying half sister, Tamar, told him that their late father had been a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder. She believed it was true, and it was her own personal trauma, allegedly at the hands of her father, that spurred police to investigate Dr. George Hodel. When Tamar revealed some of the history, Steve was shot, which was probably an understatement. Steve had worked as a homicide detective in the Hollywood Division for 17 years. He had been with the the LAPD for 23 years, and he had never heard any of the things his half-sister was telling him.

Of course he was familiar with the Black Dahlia murder. The case had been part of Hollywood legend for decades since the moment had happened. But as the years passed, almost all the focus of the discussion was on the victim, Elizabeth Short, and the horrible nature of the crime, and not on the man whom police came to believe was their final suspect. By the 19th, 1980s and the 1990s and the early 2000s, the case had long since gone cold, as far as the LAPD was concerned. They might have been confident that George Hodel was the killer, but the case would never officially be closed. And it was all new to Steve Hodel. He couldn't believe that after all his years working as a homicide detective, with more than 300 solved murders under his

belt. He had never once heard his father referred to as a suspect in the most well-known cold case in L.A. history. Steve Hodel knew his father was a terrible husband and a worse father. George Hodel had nine children with five different wives. He was a drinker, an occasional drug user, and abusive toward his wives and kids. Steve and his siblings feared their father, but that didn't make him a psychopathic killer. Steve needed to find out why his father was considered a suspect. In an effort to clear his father's name and his own, Steve dug into the case and began to methodically study the evidence

with as much objectivity as he could muster. That evidence eventually led him to a sickening realization. As a son, he didn't want to believe it. But as a detective, he was certain it was true. His father, Dr. George Hodel, was the Black Dolly Accum. killer. And part of the reason Steve was convinced was that he believed he found links between his father and other murders. One of them, which happened many years after the Black Dahlia and thousands of miles away, was so similar that it was nearly impossible to write off as a coincidence.

From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling two murder mystery stories from the Golden Era of Hollywood. The case of of director William Desmond Taylor and the notorious Black Dahlia case. This is episode six, the Black Dahlia Part 4 of 4, George Hodel. By the mid-1940s, George Hodel was a popular and successful doctor in Los Angeles. He had experienced a rapid rise since arriving in the late 1930s, fresh out of medical school. By 1945, he owned one of the most exotic mansions in the city. a home that was designed by the son of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Hodel threw hedonistic parties that were attended by all sorts of power players in the city. He ran a private medical clinic downtown, where he primarily treated people for sexually transmitted infections. But it was rumored that he also performed abortions, which were illegal at the time. There was plenty of speculation that he became a kind of medical fixer for the rich and powerful of the city. If they had a medical issue, they needed to be handled efficiently and quietly, they went to Dr. George Hodel. Those kinds of cases gave him leverage, which made him powerful. And, according to Steve Hodel, that's when the suspected murders started. Ruth Spalding, the secretary at the downtown clinic, died of a drug overdose in 1945. It was ruled as

suicide, but Steve believed it could have been murder. Ruth would have known about any shady or illegal practices at the clinic, and Steve believed she was having an affair with the doctor, and she became a liability. Eight months later, there was another death, this one an obvious homicide. In some respects, it looked very different from the murder of Elizabeth Short. In other respects, it was eerily similar. And since it's fairly common for killers to escalate and evolve, Steve Hodel believes this was the work of his father. On January 7, 1946,

eight months after the death of Ruth Spalding, and almost exactly a year before the death of Elizabeth Short, a six-year-old girl named Suzanne Degnan was kidnapped from her bedroom while she slept. The girl was murdered, drained of her blood, then decapitated and dismembered. Her body was also cut in half, and the incision was made in the same place as it was on Elizabeth's body. That crime happened in Chicago, Illinois, and Chicago police believed that the killer had to either be a surgeon or a professional butcher.

And as a circumstantial link between the murders, one that seems tailor-made for a book on conspiracy theories, the street where Elizabeth's body was found was Norton Avenue, a few blocks south of the vacant, lot, Norton Avenue turns into Degnan Boulevard. According to Steve Hodel, his father had a connection to Chicago at that time. George Hodel had apparently enrolled in language classes at the University of Chicago. He was studying Chinese because he eventually planned to work in China. It doesn't seem like he ever went to China, but as you'll hear, he got close. A man named William Herons eventually confessed to the murder of Susan.

Degnan. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. But he later recanted and claimed his confession was coerced. Steve Hodel, believing his father committed the murder, wrote to the Illinois governor and asked for clemency for the elderly inmate. It was denied. And one year and two days after Suzanne Degnan's body was found, Elizabeth Short walked out of the back entrance of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, and was never seen alive again. There's been lots of speculation, including by Steve Hodel, that his father was acquainted with Elizabeth Short.

She might have been a patient at his clinic, or Dr. Hodel was known to enjoy the Florentine Gardens nightclub where Elizabeth worked for a short time. He could have seen her there or gotten to know her. But as of now, there's still no direct, provable connection between George Hodel and Elizabeth Short. and there certainly wasn't back in the late 1940s. But two years after the murder, the doctor landed squarely on the LAPD's radar.

In 1949, his daughter Tamar accused him of incestuous rape. She was 14. She said she became pregnant and eventually gave the baby up for adoption. Police and prosecutors felt they had enough evidence to take the case to court, but that was where it fell apart. Witnesses who at first claimed they had either seen or been involved in sex acts with George and his daughter refused to testify. Hodel's defense team painted Tamar as a promiscuous girl, and her own mother testified that she was a pathological liar. And Hodel had spent more than 10 years building a list of powerful friends and allies.

He may have had leverage against some of them through his clinic. It was certainly possible that he threatened to expose. their secrets. In December of 1949, George Hodel was acquitted, but the trial opened the door for suspicion in the Black Dahlia case. During the trial, Tamar accused her father of being the Black Dahlia killer and claimed she had seen Elizabeth Short in their home. That was explosive testimony for investigators. The extent and nature of Elizabeth's injuries made it highly probable that she was held captive for some period of time. Hodel's massive mansion in Hollywood would have been an ideal place for such crimes.

Elizabeth's body was cut in half and drained of all its blood, but there was no blood in the vacant lot where she was found, so that operation had to have happened somewhere else. And everyone believed it had been done by the hand of a medical professional. Despite Hodel's acquittal and the potential skepticism around Tumar's claim, investigators moved Dr. George Hodel to the top of their list of suspects and began investigating him as a person of interest. And there was another murder that was the one-two punch,

which pushed investigators to take active steps to snare George Hodel. On June 16, 1949, the body of a 35-year-old woman named, named Louise Springer, was found dead in the back of her car. She had been strangled to death with a length of clothesline. Louise had been reported missing by her husband Lawrence three days earlier. That day, Lawrence had picked up his wife at the beauty parlor where she worked near downtown L.A. When Louise got in the car, she kicked off her shoes. Her feet were sore from standing all day at work.

But then she realized she had forgotten her glasses back in the salon. Being a good husband, Lawrence offered to go into the beauty parlor and get them for her. He told Louise to stay in the car and listen to the radio, which she did. He went inside, retrieved the glasses, and when he came back out, his car with Louise in it was gone. Lawrence reported his wife missing and police discovered the car three days later. Louise's body was in the back seat, covered with a tarp. She had been strangled and had experienced other. extreme injuries. For those who want to read the graphic details of her murder, they're available

online. If you do, you'll understand why her murder was called the Green Twig murder. The killer was obviously a vicious and sadistic predator. According to people who knew Louise, she was a devoted wife and mother who didn't have an enemy in the world. And at that stage, it was impossible to know whether her abduction and murder were crimes of opportunity, or if the killer had specifically targeted her and had been waiting for the right time to strike. Although police were cautious about connecting the Springer murder to the short murder, the press jumped on it. As the Black Dahlia case eventually grew cold, the relentless media coverage faded. But now, with another brutal slaying, newspapers worked themselves into a lather

again. Was the Black Dahlia killer on the hunt again? How many of the unsolved murders of women could he be responsible for? All of them, some of them? If it was some, which ones? There was a string of murders in Los Angeles that were known as the lone women murders. The press could now go back and resurrect all those cases and compare them. And to be fair, the press did have some cause to tie the Springer murder and the short murder together. Louise was abducted from a parking lot, just one block away from the vacant lot where Elizabeth Short's body was discovered. It might have been a coincidence, like the fact that Norton Avenue turned into Degnan Boulevard. But it also might not have been a coincidence.

Maybe that part of the city was the layer of the werewolf, as the press sometimes called the killer. George Hodel's house was eight miles straight north of the two locations. And even as the police launched the largest manhunt since the block, Black Dahlia murder, they remained focused on the notorious doctor. More and more they believed Hodel was the Black Dahlia killer. Maybe he was the Green Twig killer too, but the circumstances of that murder were different. It was brutal and gory, but there was nothing to indicate that it might have been committed by a person with medical training. So investigators remain focused on connecting Hodel to Elizabeth Short's murder. The problem was,

they had absolutely no evidence against him. But as they thoroughly investigated him, they reviewed the death of his secretary, Ruth Spalding, four and a half years earlier. Investigators now felt pretty certain Hodel had murdered her. But again, they had no evidence to prove it. January of 1950 marked the three-year anniversary

of Elizabeth Short's murder. It's safe to assume it had been a long and frustrating three years for the last. the police and Elizabeth's friends and family. But now the police were more convinced than ever that Hodel was their man. They became more aggressive. Undercover police began to surveil George Hodel day and night. They monitored his every move, but that wasn't all. On the morning of February 15, 1950, the L.A. County District Attorney's Office summoned George Hodel downtown, where he was detained and interrogated at length about Louise Springer's murder.

He could certainly have been considered a suspect, but the meeting was partially a ploy. While Hodel was away, experts from the DA's office and the LAPD planted several listening devices in Hodel's home. From February 15th to March 27th, 18 LAPD officers listened to everything Hodel said around the clock. What they heard would prove to be very enlightening. The 24-7 surveillance of George Hodel hadn't provided investigators with any evidence or insights into his possible involvement in the Black Dahlia murder. But bugging his home provided investigators with some enticing circumstantial evidence. When he believed he was safe from the police, he said some things that raised some red flags. The statement that

was probably the most incriminating was this. Suppose an I did kill the black Dahlia. They can't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they must have figured it out. Maybe I did kill my secretary. He was also heard saying that his strategy, if he was ever arrested, was to, quote, never confess. Even behind closed doors, He was careful to qualify his statements. He didn't directly confess to the crimes, but he came close enough. The listening devices were removed at the end of March, 1950.

By the end of April, the L.A. County District Attorney's Office decided they were going to arrest George Hodel. He would be charged for Elizabeth Short's murder and the murder of his secretary, Ruth Spalding. If convicted, he would almost certainly face the death penalty. But the arrest never happened. The whole legal process stalled. Hodel had used his famous home in Hollywood as collateral to pay his lawyer's fee for his rape trial. Now, he sold the home, paid his lawyer, and slipped quietly out of town. The timing left outside observers with an either-or question.

Had he sensed the authorities were closing in, or had he been tipped off by someone inside law enforcement? Many believe he was tipped off by someone in the DA's office or the LAPD. The LAPD and the DA's office were notoriously corrupt in those days. Hodel had a lot of money, and he knew a lot of people, and some of them may have owed him favors. He was easily in a position to bribe or threaten his way out of trouble. Several detectives who worked on the Black Dahlia case and the Ruth Spalding case were interviewed after their retirement. The consensus was that Hodel had been paying people off. The detectives believed there were powerful people in the upper echelons of the DA's office and the LAPD,

who knew Hodel was guilty of raping his daughter and murdering Elizabeth Short and Ruth Spalding. But as long as Hodel kept paying them, they wouldn't move forward with arrests or indictments. George Hodel had an additional degree in psychiatry from San Francisco. state, and he moved to Hawaii when he left L.A. Hawaii was still an American territory at that time. It wouldn't become the 50th state in the Union until 1959. It's believed he took a job as a counselor at the territorial prison. While living in Hawaii, he met a young Filipino woman who came from a wealthy family in Manila. Somewhere around 1953, the couple married and moved to Manila where they started a family. Hodel resumed practicing medicine. He could rest easy now

that he was part of a prominent family who could protect him. But there was an added level of protection as well. If he was ever indicted for murder in California, he was virtually untouchable because the U.S. and the Philippines did not have an extradition treaty at that time. Twenty years passed, and then it happened again. The most damning end of the United States of the evidence against George Hodel was the discovery of another body. The similarities to other crimes he could have committed were simply impossible to ignore. On February 28, 1967, an attractive young woman named Lucila Lalu was abducted from her Manila salon where she worked as a hairdresser. Her torso was found in a vacant lot. Her head and legs were missing, and her torso had been surgically

bisected in the same way Elizabeth's shorts had been. Her arms were bent at the elbow and raised above the space where her head would have been. It was the same pose as Elizabeth's arms. But this time, obviously the killer went further. Lucila's head and legs had been surgically removed. Her legs had been cut into four precise pieces and were later found wrapped in newspaper in different garbage cans. her head was never found. The abduction and brutal murder sent shockwaves through the city of Manila and all of the Philippines. At the time, George Hodel had been living with his wife and family in Manila for about 15 years. He was now 60 years old and still practicing medicine.

And so, for anyone who was willing to look, the situation became one of probability. What were the odds? The vacant lot where Lucila's torso was found was about a half a mile from George Hodel's home in a posh manila suburb. So, what were the odds that the body of a young woman, which had experienced surgical cuts and had been posed in a similar fashion to the Black Dahlia, was found just a half a mile from the home of the man who became the prime suspect in the Black Dahlia case? Almost exactly 20 years after the Black Dahlia murder, and 7,000 miles away from Los Angeles, what were the odds that a similar murder happened less than a mile from the home of a notorious

Los Angeles doctor who was essentially on the run? George Hodel's son, Steve, thinks they're tiny. Mathematically, statistically, theoretically, of course it's possible that someone else committed the crime in Manila. but if so, the coincidental connection to the Black Dahlia case would fall into a category beyond remarkable. A 28-year-old dental student later confessed to the murder but then retracted his confession. George Hodel lived in the Philippines until 1990, when he returned to the U.S. to live permanently in a penthouse apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay. But according to Steve Hodel, his father traveled back in.

forth from Manila to the Bay Area frequently in the 1960s. Steve Hodel has done a deep dive into researching the Elizabeth Short murder and the Ruth Spalding murder, and he's built a pretty intriguing case against his father. But his information needs to be digested with a dose of caution. Steve went on to suggest that his father might also have been the infamous serial killer known as the Zodiac. Between 1968 and 1969, the Zodiac Killer terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area, resulting in five confirmed victims. It's believed by many that the Zodiac may have killed as many as 40 others, and the killer was never caught. Dr. George Hodel knew the San Francisco area, and if Steve Hodel is correct, the doctor traveled to the area during the time when the killer was active. But the crimes of the

Zodiac killer are radically different from the murders of women in Los Angeles in the 1940s and the murder of Lucila Lalu in Manila. And unfortunately, at this point, there's very little chance the crimes will be officially solved. It allows the mystery and intrigue to remain forever, but it doesn't allow a case-closed ending. In 1999, nine years after George Hodel returned to the United States, he committed suicide at the age of To this date, Louise Springer's murder remains unsolved, and no one has ever been charged with the murder of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia. Next time on Infamous America, we're going back to the gangsters of the 1930s. You've heard the stories of John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd. Now it's time for the FBI's third public enemy number one, Babyface Nelson.

After Dillinger and Floyd fell, Nelson assumed the top spot, and his story is truly wild. That's next time on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched and written by Michael Byrne and myself. Original music by Rob Villeer. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer.

Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.