Q: I’m confused on how the LAPD Chief Thad Brown photograph taken with you as a rookie police officer connects to the Black Dahlia murder. Can you explain it?

   1966 In front of—Parker Center “The Glass House”

    Steve Hodel        Chief Thad Brown

Yes.  The above photograph was taken in 1966, in front of what was then known as the LAPD’s, PAB. ( Police Administration Building) (Shortly after this photo was taken it was renamed Parker Center in honor of Chief William H. Parker.) Immediately after Parker’s death in 1966, then Chief of Detectives, Thad Brown was named as Los Angeles’ interim chief of police. (This is common for a high-ranking officer to be selected and assume command, while other staff officers prepare to compete for the exam, orals and permanent selection.)

In 1966, with only three-years on the job,  I was a rookie officer working Hollywood Patrol and was sent, along with a dozen other officers from Hollywood, to attend Thad Brown’s swearing in ceremony in the police auditorium.

Immediately after the ceremony, a photographer approached me as I was walking out the front door and asked, “Would you like to have your picture taken with the new chief?”  Surprised and honored I readily agreed and Chief Brown smiled as we walked out in front of the building where this photograph was taken. About three weeks later, I received this copy through the Inter-Department mails. I threw it in a box and forgot about it

The photo had no real meaning or significance to me, other than the obvious honor of being with the chief. However, we now know it had tremendous meaning and import to Thad Brown. He knew then, what I would not discover for another 35-years. Thad Brown KNEW I was the son of the Black Dahlia killer, and it is obvious he just could not resist the “photo-op”. It would not be until after the completion of my investigation and the publication of my book that we would learn  from an LAPD reserve officer, about the conversation between Thad Brown and actor Jack Webb, his close friend who played, LAPD’s Sgt. Joe Friday. In that confidential conversation Thad Brown discloses to Jack Webb, “We know who killed the Black Dahlia. The case was solved. It was a doctor in Hollywood, who lived on Franklin Avenue.”  This was Chief Brown’s independent and separate confirmation of what we discovered from the D.A. DAHLIA/HODEL Files. Those files opened in 2003 as a result of my investigation, revealed Dr. George Hodel to be the prime Black Dahlia suspect as of late-1949

December 20, 2009-

Today marks the 41st anniversary of the double-homicide of teenagers, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. David and Betty Lou were slain near the town of Vallejo as they sat and talked in their car on their first date.Their killer would later identify himself as “ZODIAC” in mailings sent to the press as he continued his Bay Area reign of terror in 1969.

                    Betty Lou Jensen  16                               David Faraday 17    

Los Angeles Times article December 22, 1968     

REST IN PEACE BETTY LOU & DAVID

Murder As a Fine Art Continues….

(SKH Note- Below section was included in final draft of MOST EVIL , but edited out due to space limitations. However, to my mind, it remains an important part of “the big picture” (pun intended) providing increased weight to my theory that part of George Hodel’s bizarre signature -M.O. (Murder as a Fine Art) was to include and edit scenes from 1930s films into his real life serial killings.)  

1930s films as M.O.

     We have examined two 1930s-period films, The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) and I have suggested that Zodiac, in his 1960s murders, was borrowing themes and characters from each film. Let us now examine two additional films from that period, which I believe buttress my theory.

     In February, 1934, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio distributed a U.K. made film, The Mystery of Mr. X. The film starred a young Robert Montgomery, as Sir Nicholas Revel. The story involved a mad serial killer, “Mr. X”, who uses a rapier-like sword to stab and slay unsuspecting uniformed policemen, walking their beats in different sections of London. Mr. X, after slaying his victims, then mails taunting cut-and-pasted notes to the press, and as the film rushes to its climax, our hero, Sir Nicholas, by plotting the locations of the murder victims on a city map, cleverly deduces that the killer is constructing a giant letter X, with only one killing more needed to complete his “project.” Sir Nicholas, disguised in the uniform of a Bobbie, decides to use himself as bait, and drives to the anticipated final location, where he confronts Mr. X  for a fight-to-the-finish finale.[1]

A                                                                                                              B

  In the above film clips, we see: (a) Mr. X’s cut and pasted notes, mailed to the police, which read: “Tonight X”, and “With kindest Regards from X.” In (b) we see Mr. X slaying a downed policeman with his long sword,[2] and Sir. Nicholas, using a London town map to deduce the exact location where Mr. X is planning to slay his final victim. 

 Just 14-months prior to the release of The Mystery of Mr. X, the same studio (MGM) released another film. The name of this film was, Red Dust (1932). The film starred, Clark Cable and Jean Harlow, in a romantic drama which takes place on a rubber plantation in Indochina. The story line as best I can tell, is unimportant to our investigation. However, there is a scene in the film that I consider to be exactly—on point. Again, I believe Zodiac has plagiarized and incorporated a small scene from the film and incorporated it into his real life killing spree.

In Red Dust, a man-eating tiger has attacked some villagers, and the protagonist, Dennis Carson (Clark Gable) is determined to hunt it down. He solicits the help of a plantation visitor, Gary Willis (co-star, Gene Raymond) and together they set out into the jungle, to track and kill the beast.

They decide of a set trap by tying an animal to a tree in hopes that the tiger will attack the prey by night and they can shoot it. They stake-out the location by climbing the tree (a blind) and wait for nightfall. Because it would be a difficult shot in the dark of night, Gable shows his younger, inexperienced hunter an old trick. He attaches a flashlight to both of their rifle barrels, so they can simply point and shoot. The below clips from Red Dust, show their plan worked. In pitch dark, the tiger moves in for the kill, they turn on their flashlights and shoot it dead. The villagers are avenged and safe. 

Gable attaching the flashlight to his weapon for a night shot and the kill 

ZODIAC’S  DEBUT LETTER 

Let us reexamine some excerpts from Zodiac’s boastful handwritten, three-page letter to the San Francisco Examiner on 8/4/69:

… “Last Christmass

In that episode the police were wondering as to how I could shoot & hit my victoms in the dark…   What I did was tape a small pencel flash light to the barrel of my gun.  … When taped to a gun barrel, the bullet will strike exactly in the center of the black dot in the light. All I had to do was spray them as if it was a water hose; there was no need to use the gun sights.”

 Throughout the 1930s, while attending medical school, George Hodel maintained close personal ties and connections to the Hollywood film studios.  His high school friend, John Huston was a screenwriter and in 1932 had just completed writing the script dialogue for Universal’s, Murders in the Rue Morgue, released in February of that same year. At that time, my mother, still married to Huston, was also a screenwriter (uncredited) doing freelance writing for: Universal, MGM and RKO. By 1932, Dorothy and John, after a very rocky six-year marriage, were on the verge of divorce. By then, both had been long involved in multiple affairs. Dorothy was intimate with a number of celebrity actors, which, by her own account included: Johnny Weissmuller, Sam Jaffe, and noted screen writer/director, Rowland Brown.[3] In both the Dahlia and now the Zodiac investigation, I keep returning to a statement made by Joe Barrett, who was a roomer/tenant at the Franklin House from 1948-1950, and in a 1999 conversation with me, shortly after my father’s death, made, what I now consider an exceptionally astute observation. Joe in describing my father’s mental brilliance and genius– put it this way:  [Black Dahlia Avenger, pg. 211]

You know Steve, George was gifted with a perfect photographic memory, that permitted him to absorb ideas from other people, and make them sound as if they were his own. He was super intelligent, but not particularly original.   

Joe’s description is exactly what has been presented to us. Zodiac’s mind is not original, but, rather it is a moviola.[4] Cursed with “a perfect photographic memory” he has extracted scenes and frames from this film and that one, and edited them into his own—noir horrors.

Zodiac’s 1960s serial killings are a diabolical remake of his past favorites, using real locations, real crimes, and real victims!  
[1] In 1952, the film was remade for the big screen as, The Hour of 13, this time starring Peter Lawford as, Sir Nicholas. In the remake, the serial killer, renamed “The Terror” chose his victims locations throughout 1890 London town, to form the letter “T”. 

[2]“By Knife”- I believe Zodiac used a sword to stab his victims in the Shepard-Hartnell crimes, because—the script called for it! Mr. X used a sword, and so too would Zodiac.

[3]Rowland Brown, though mostly unknown today, in the 1930s was a true rebel, and quite well known to the public. In the 20s he had been a Chicago sportswriter, and like his good friend, Ben Hecht, had come west to check out the birth of Hollywood and filmmaking. Like most of the “Front Page” pioneers, he was a hard drinking, pugnacious, iconoclast. Brown loved women, gangsters, (credited with discovering George Raft) and fast horses. He would fight to the death for “the little guy” which was oftentimes the theme in his films. Brown’s filmography included such greats as: Quick Million (1931)), States Attorney (1932), Oscar nominated, What Price Hollywood (1932, co-written with Gene Fowler), Blood Money (1933) and Angels with Dirty Faces (1938, co-written with Ben Hecht.) Brown and Huston would be regular attendees at my father’s Hollywood parties, at his Franklin House during the mid-to-late 1940ss, and in the spring of 1950, the DA surveillance tapes would capture my mother in conversation with Rowland Brown, just prior to Father fleeing the country. Shortly after the 1947 Black Dahlia murder, two of Hollywood’s top screenwriters, Ben Hecht and Steve Fisher, (Lady in the Lake, 1947, Song of the Thin Man, 1947) would both provide their “expert opinions” in separate newspaper articles. Both indicated they believed they knew the identity and actual name of the Dahlia killer, and reassured the public that the police were just about to arrest him. Steve Fisher, (also a good friend of Rowland Brown), in his article wrote, “…I think I know who the killer is. I’m sure the police do, too, and that in a very short time, they will have his name…..When the killer-suspect’s name is published, a lot of people who know him, and who do not now suspect he has anything to do with the case, are going to be surprised and terrified….The man will have to flee….he will never get out of the city.”

[4] Moviola - A special projection machine (used by film editors) that holds several reels of film simultaneously and can run at variable speeds, backward or forward, and stop at any frame.

I have had a number of e-mail requests asking if I could give a podcast summary of both books as an overview of my investigation from 1999 to the present.

CHICAGO POLICE CLAIM, “HAIR FOLLICLE FOUND ON BODY OF SUZANNE DEGNAN IS THAT OF HER KILLER”-  

 On January 8, 1946 Chicago Police Captain John Sullivan removed a black hair follicle from the nude bisected body of slain blonde haired, 6-year-old, Suzanne Degnan. Detectives informed the public “that there could be no doubt that the evidence came from her sadistic killer”. 

So important and critical was this evidence that on that very same morning, Chicago police Captain Sullivan hand delivered the hair follicle to the FBI’s forensic laboratory.  (See below receipt.)

Below FBI receipt No. PC-16339-AO    Q21 FBI Laboratory  reads:

“Black hair from body recovered by Capt John R. Sullivan 40th Dist morning of Jan 8th at about 5 am.”

Original Jan 8, 1947 receipt from FBI on hair follice booked in evidence

TIME TO PROVE WILLIAM HEIRENS GUILTY OR INNOCENT

The evidence in support of  William Heirens actual innocence is overwhelming.  No reasonable person objectively reviewing all of the facts and evidence can believe he committed these three heinous crimes. The facts argue otherwise.

Whether my investigation and belief that George Hodel was the actual killer is correct or not makes no difference. The fact remains that William Heirens IS INNOCENT and has now served 63-years for a crime he DID NOT COMMIT.

Justice demands that the FBI go to their storage archive, remove the hair follicle and take it to their laboratory and TEST IT. A simple and inexpensive test which can Rule Heirens IN or OUT.  If the DNA proves to be HEIRENS- end of story. If not, then release him!

Chicago Public Radio 2009 author interview of Heirens Case

Chicago Reader 2009 Article author interview on Heirens Case

 FBI Director, J. Edgar and partner, Clyde Tolson pull some “G-Strings.” Stay at  Ambassador Hotel and  get box seats at Del Mar Racetrack during their 1947 working vacation to Los Angeles. 

In my original 2001 rough draft of Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder, I included what I thought were some very telling communications found buried in the ELIZABETH SHORT FBI FILES.  (Note that even to this day (2009) the FBI still uses the victim’s fictitious middle name of “ANN”. No documentation has ever been produced that she ever used the name in her lifetime.)    

Personally, I found the FBI correspondence with the SSA  fascinating and include them here to set and keep the historical record straight.

What this correspondence shows is that the FBI attempted to use the high-profile notoriety of the Los Angeles Black Dahlia investigation to set a precedent for them to gain access into the highly confidential Social Security Administration files. (Viewing these Federal files was strictly prohibited by law and previously only accessible during war time emergencies and only then in an extreme case such as-Espionage. Had Hoover and Tamm succeeded in their attempt it would have been a huge step backward for American citizens and their Rights to Privacy.)

CLICK  TO SEE SQUAD ROOM BLOG FOR COMPLETE INFO ON THIS POST

The below Email and photos received from E.S. after he examined and rescanned the original crime scene photo using his “new shadow enhancement tools.” 

We see with the brain, not the eye, which perforce brings into the mix our individual personal experiences along with our inherent bias, so no two people see the same image. (For television viewers, I highly recommend Charlie Rose’s ongoing series on The Brain. Last week’s segment addressed this very subject.)

Thanks to E.S.’s rescan, seen below, I am now leaning more toward the object still being a watchband, but I do think the “stripped bands” could well be shadows cast from blades of grass. With this closer look, I do see what appear to be similar shadows elsewhere in the photo. We know a man’s military watch was found near the body (and went missing from LAPD evidence room). What we don’t know is if that watch had a band attached or not? The object could be another watchband, different from the one seen in the Man Ray photo, one with a plain canvas band. (Keep in mind the watch wasn’t discovered until a week after this photo was taken, so the object could easily have been interpred as being preexisting debris.)

 In answer to E.S.’s question, I do think that the “extension” is a blade of grass, which appears to be lower and thinner than “the object.”

E-mail from E.S. received 12.07.09 “A Little More Digging”

Steve,

  

 The question first came to my attention in the book, “This is the Zodiac Speaking” (Westport, CT: Praeger Publisher, 2002) by Michael Kelleher and Dr. David Van Nuys.  In that book, clinical psychologist, Dr. Van Nuys, to my mind made a very persuasive argument and actually came out with a formal diagnosis that, in his professional opinion, the killer known as Zodiac was very likely suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder.  

Personally, I am generally very skeptical about the role psychology plays in criminal investigations, especially since it is a fairly common “defense ruse” for many serial killers. (Think Hillside Strangler killer, Kenneth Bianchi’s faking his “multiple personalities” and blaming the murders on one of his other personas.)

However, after a careful review of Dr. Van Nuys point by point diagnosis of Zodiac and taking into account my own ten-year investigation into the “Jekyll and Hyde” personality of my father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, I found myself seriously questioning my own skepticism.

 In fact, I found Dr. Van Nuys detailed listing of the many “symptoms” and early-life behavioral causes so convincing and so much in line with what I knew about my own father’s life and demonstrated psychology, that I included Dr. Van Nuys probable diagnosis in the closing chapters of my own book. For those interested in more detail, I would highly recommend you read from, ”This Is the Zodiac Speaking,” Dr. Van Nuys summary and ten-page clinical diagnosis found in his chapter: The Mind of A Killer: Reflections of David Van Nuys                

 Question #2- Can DID influence and change the handwriting of its author and or “alters”?

During my research I came across a fascinating article by sociologists, Dr. Eli Somer and Ron Yishai entitled, Handwriting Examination: Can It Help In Establishing Authenticity In Dissociative Identity Disorder?   Below is their introduction to the paper along with a link to the full article:

Eli Somer, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the School of Social Work at the University of Haifa, and Director of the Israel Institute for Treatment and Prevention of Stress, both in Haifa, Israel . Ron Yishai, M .A ., is the Director of Yishai Forensic Graphology, in Haifa, Israel.

 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fifth Spring Conference of the ISSD, Amsterdam, May, 1995.

 ABSTRACT

Questions with regard to the genuineness of amnesia and DID in forensic settings have been of considerable past concern in trials of accused criminals claiming amnesia, accused perpetrators of incest and psychotherapists accused of negligently implanting memories or creating DID symptoms . This study has used document examination methods to investigate 30 different manuscripts suspected to have been mailed by three alters of a DID patient . In the present single case study we have found that despite the striking differences between the three handwritings identified, single authorship of the documents could be established. We have also shown that these handwritings could not have been a result of conscious disguise, and we were thus able to determine the authenticity of the phenomenon. Forensic implications of these findings are discussed.

 HANDWRITING EXAMINATION: CAN IT HELP IN ESTABLISHING AUTHENTICITY IN DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER?

Were the below handwriting samples written by three separate authors or just one?  (See full article)

          HW Samples from the Somer/Yishai research on DID and HW analysis

Does New Scan Present Additional “Hard Evidence” Linking George Hodel to Dahlia Crime Scene?

Readers straw poll leans toward the crime scene object being - “a watchband.”

Thanks to all of you that e-mailed me your responses in the past few days.  Here are the results:

Watchband- 8

Clasp or hairclip- 3

Handcuff-1

Piece of bicycle tire- 1

Handbag strap- 1

I agree with the majority vote- I too think it is a watchband, but, unlike you, I had some additional information. Still, I wanted to get your uninfluenced opinions before presenting you with some, “facts not in evidence.” Here they are:

In December, 2006, I decided to rescan the original Dahlia crime-scene photos to see if I had missed anything. In focusing my scans in and near the body I discovered the object which I had missed in previous scans. It was found in the grass about 12″ southwest of the upper torso.  The rectangular shaped object appears to be made of a cloth-like material possibly canvas or leather, white or tan in color, with black vertical stripes evenly spaced. The end of the object appears to be frayed.

MAN RAY FOR THE PROSECUTION?

A few days after the rescan, I was preparing to archive my Man Ray photographs which included the photo taken by Man Ray of father holding the Tibetan God, Yamantaka. Dad’s dark-faced military watch immediately caught my eye. Within seconds I was at my monitor making an on-screen inspection and enlargement of-the watchband!

It appeared to be made of cloth, was white or tan in color with black vertical stripes and was a close match to the object found in the grass. Furthermore, there was a logical explanation as to why it could be there. Everything seemed to fit.

 Hodel watchband in Man Ray photograph enlarged

 Hodel watchband rotated 90′ shown in comparison to crime-scene object

  Let’s reexamine what we KNOW.

Man Ray took the above Yamantaka photograph of my father after his return from China, and obviously after his one-month hospitalization.

We can establish his approximate hospital discharge date from what Elizabeth Short told her friends. “I’m going to marry my boyfriend on November 1st, when he gets out of the hospital.” (Other of her acquaintance/witnesses informed police Elizabeth told them his name was “George.”)

This establishes the Yamantaka photograph was probably taken between November-December, 1946, just weeks or days before Elizabeth’s murder.

Second, we know from a newspaper article in the Washington News dated January 21, 1947:

“The police department’s homicide squad figuratively starting from scratch, was augmented by 100 additional policemen, began a widespread search for new clues to the girl’s murderer. Half of them combed the area where the bisected body was found… the search turned up a military-type watch, still unidentified.”

In 2004, when asked about the watch, LAPD was forced to acknowledge that the watch, along with the rest of the physical evidence, “had disappeared from the locked property room.”

In comparing George Hodel’s military-style watchband to the object seen near the body the size and descriptive qualities including the unusual black vertical striping appear identical. The crime scene band is seen to be curved and frayed, which I believe was caused by the band being either intentionally or accidentally ripped away from the body of the watch. I suspect the cloth band then fell (or was thrown) to the ground where it remained hidden in the grass. It was likely never recovered during the search and is NOT VISIBLE in the normal sized original police photographs. Only now, after sixty-two years, for the first time is it revealed through the high-resolution scan and enlargements.

For ten years this investigation has repeatedly stacked irony upon irony and now once again in 2009 are we again forced to question FATE.

Did Man Ray’s,Yamantaka photograph, taken just weeks or days before George Hodel’s brutal crime, accidentally capture and preserve hard physical evidence linking his good friend to the murder of Elizabeth Short?

A SIGNATURE ACT?

In Most Evil:  Avenger, Zodiac, the Further Serial Murders of Dr. George Hill Hodel we examine the possibility that the watches and watchbands found at both the Avenger and Zodiac crime scenes were not  accidents, but rather a part of my father’s M.O. and a deliberate signature act.

  Zodiac victim Cheri Jo Bates-   1966 Riverside Crime Scene

Watchband torn from watch and both parts found near the victim’s body

SKH NOTE- 

So there are no misunderstandings.  I am not offering any of the above as “proofs.” Though in posession of this information in 2006 I did not include it as part of my  investigation in my second book, MOST EVIL. I do not believe that there is any possibility of developing anything further on what is here presented. Because of that the exhibits will likely remain subjective and interpretive. My findings and what they show are offered here rhetorically- as questions. Possibilities.  I leave it to the individual reader to decide for his or her self whether the information has relevance or not. Some readers have suggested the object’s shape is not quite right and the stripes seen in the crime scene object are shadows, which I admit is a possibility. Could it be a watchband, but from a different watch? Certainly.