July 23, 2011
Los Angeles

 ANDERSON COOPER/JOHN WALSH BLACK DAHLIA INTERVIEW 7.22.2011

“I do believe who killed the Black Dahlia was the main suspect they had. [Dr. George Hill Hodel]

…

He was the main suspect. They never had enough to indict him. He got away with that case. He was the logical suspect…In my heart and in my gut from doing this so many years, I believe it was that doctor.”

                                            America’s Most Wanted Host, John Walsh 
                                            on CNN  Anderson Cooper 360 “Notorious Crimes”
                                            July 22, 2011

Los Angeles
July 23, 2011

Last night’s Anderson Cooper 360 aired an updated segment devoted to various “Notorious Crimes” In September 2006, Anderson had interviewed me on the Black Dahlia Murder and on that show I eliminated the one photo in my father’s album as NOT BEING ELIZABETH SHORT, and discussed the posing of the body and various signature connections of my father’s crime to- SURREALISM.   

In last night’s segment Anderson updated my investigation and introduced the viewers to one of my most important new discoveries, the linking  of physical evidence from my father’s Sowden/Franklin House to evidence at the 39th & Norton vacant lot. Anderson showed the photographs  and original receipts I had discovered at the UCLA  Frank Lloyd Wright Jr Special. Collections linking the cement bags from the house to be identical to the ones  LAPD determined were used to transport Elizabeth Short’s body to the vacant lot. 

Anderson  also established the important fact that Dr. Hodel fled the country BEFORE detectives were able to arrest and interview him regarding the tape-recorded admissions and confessions he made to killing Elizabeth Short and his secretary, Ruth Spaulding as well as admitting personally performing  abortions at his V.D. clinic and to making payoffs to the police.

The interview with John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted fame, was much appreciated in that Mr. Walsh expressed a strong conviction, “in my heart and in my gut from doing this for so many years, I believe it was the doctor.”  [See his interview on the subject in transcript and on the sound bite below.]

  John Walsh Host of America’s Most Wanted

John Walsh has been a dedicated fighter for victim’s rights for twenty-three years and his success as the host of America’s Most Wanted has resulted in more than 1200 “solves” and in helping law enforcement take so many vicious criminals ”off the streets” has also resulted in an incalculable number of CRIMES PREVENTED. My personal congratulations and respect for a JOB WELL DONE!

skh walsh WMA sound.wma

CNN Anderson-Cooper 360

Crime & Punishment-Notorious Crimes

John Walsh interview by Anderson Cooper

July 22, 2011 CNN

(Partial transcript from program)

 AC:    The Black Dahlia case. This is a case that has been fascinating Hollywood and the country for decades.

JW:     Bestselling book, movie, all that spin. But, I do believe who killed the Black Dahlia, the main suspect they had. The doctor who is now deceased. I believe he got away with that case. They never charged him. He was a stalker. He was the main suspect. They never had enough to indict him. She was dismembered by someone who had great knowledge of anatomy and skills in surgery. He was the logical suspect, but back in those days they didn’t have the tools that we have now.

AC:    They obviously sensationalized the case not because she was beautiful, but because of the  gruesome way that she was killed.

JW:    The way that he displayed her. He displayed her as a trophy, like lots of serial killers and horrible narcissistic murders do. He displayed her in the field for the whole world to see his work.

 ”In my heart and in my gut from doing this so many years I believe it was that doctor.”

AC:   Initially, there were so many false confessions, people coming forward and saying they were involved.

 JW:   Look at the Jon Benet Ramsey. Look at that creep that confessed. Look at that low life. All of them. They want their fifteen minutes of fame Anderson. They want to get on the Anderson Cooper 360 and say, “I killed that person.” They were low life scumbags here and all of a sudden somebody’s paying attention to them. People confess to murders they didn’t do all the time, on for the notoriety.

 For those unfamiliar with the CEMENT BAG LINKAGE see the below links to my Squad Room Blogs on the subject:

Lloyd Wright Soweden/Franklin House link to crime scene 

More crime scene linkage Part II

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  A few months ago, I was contacted by French journalist and author, Philippe Garnier, who asked if I might meet with him at the Sowden/Franklin house for an interview? Turns out he was doing an article for GQ France and had made an appointment with the owner to see and do a walk-through of the house and was I available to give him a “guided tour?

I was, and we met out front and thanks to a friendly employee of the then owner, Xorin Balbes, we were given free rein to do a walkthrough. [Xorin Balbes has had the house on the market since renovating it in 2002, and it just closed escrow last week, after selling for 3.85 million.] 

GQ France August 2011

We started in the main living-room which is the room seen in L.A. Confidential where Pierce Patchett’s [David Straithairn] girls are seen partying and dancing with L.A.’s “movers and shakers”

 When we,  as a family,  lived in the Franklin House [1946-1950] this room, which dad referred to in his 1950 sales brochure as “the south studio,”  was primarily furnished with just one item, a large polar bear skin rug, as seen below:

From here we moved west to the library/living room which is one of the rooms where the DA’s investigators in Feb. 1950, installed a microphone “inside the wall” for electronic monitoring of father’s live conversations. This is also the room that contains “the secret room” behind the sliding bookcases, which was originally built in 1926 to “hide the booze” during Prohibition.

 George Hodel seated on desk in home-office-library Franklin House 1950 

 From there we walked north through the dining room, kitchen, maids quarters, all of which have been completely changed in the 2002 remodel. Then on to the north studio, which is now the Master bedroom, complete with its own koi-pond and walk-in closets.

On to the East wing where I showed Philippe my old bedroom [all the bedrooms are quite small]  and told him the story that my mother frequently told us about how my parents decided to have a “Martini painting party” and invited a large number of guests to help out.

They decided on “fire engine red” for the kitchen and worked and drank their way around the house. By the time they got to my bedroom IN the northeast corner, they were all very drunk and decided that the perfect color would be- CHARTEUSE

To this day, my friends and younger brother Kelvin insist, “That explains a lot.”

 This 2001 ”tour” with Philippe was most revealing for me. While I had been back to the house on four or five prior occasions to do interviews and shoot documentaries since BDA was published in 2003, this time it was different.

This time back was the first time since my discovery of the Lloyd Wright papers.This time, I KNEW that the house was the actual MURDER LOCATION.

 Because of my 2008 linkage of the “cement sacks” connecting them to both the Franklin House and the vacant lot on South Norton Ave, I KNEW THE MURDER HAD BEEN COMMITTED HERE. Prior to my 2008 discovery of the physical evidence, I only suspected, and had allowed myself to consider other possible locations such as my dad’s downtown clinic

 Contrary to what one would expect, even though I now knew this was so, at the same time on this return, I also felt and experienced much more detachment. 

For some unexplainable reason not only was the MAGIC GONE, [as a child I loved living in this palace with my parents reigning as King and Queen] but so was the HORROR. 

On my prior revisits to the house, while standing inside this Temple of Doom, I had always felt uneasy. But, no longer. Not this time.  Why?  Perhaps, because for the first time I came to understand that the Sowden/Franklin House IS NO MORE.

 One can no longer hear the glasses clinking, or the laughter. No more witty remarks from dapper-dressed men in stylish fedoras. No more mix of beautiful women, wannabe actresses, ingenues and femme fatales in low-cut evening gowns, standing in the courtyard sipping on gin sours.

 I came to realize that the house has been GHOSTBUSTED. 

 The Xorin Balbes retrofit removed all the cobwebs and with them went the aura and the magic of a former era. The nostalgia is gone–shrink-wrapped and hauled off to the dump to make way for the 21st century.

The house is of this age now. High tech kitchen, Wi-Fi and Internet in every room.

 This short visit with Philippe made me realize that, for me at least, the Franklin House is no longer a place of Happiness or Horror. I now find myself unchained from both the Good and the Bad of it.

 Today, for me, it is simply a different home in a different time.

 Steve giving author-journalist Philippe Garnier the Franklin House ”guided tour”

 Philippe Garnier

Philippe Garnier is a Writer, journalist,translator and cinephile extraordinaire.  He has lived in Los Angeles for the past thirty-years. His article, SOWDEN HOUSE:LA MAISON MAUDITE DE LOS ANGELES, as seen above in the August, 2011 edition of GQ France hits the streets, in France, today, July 20, 2011. 

Note- For those unfamiliar with the new physical evidence linking the Sowden/ Franklin House to the Black Dahlia crime-scene see below two blogs:

Sowden House Linked to Crime Scene

More crime scene linkage

Dad bought the house in 1945 for $38,500 so just add a couple of ZEROS and you have today’s selling price.

The below article,  Lloyd Wright’s Sowden House in Los Feliz Sells For $3.85 Million, noting the sale and close of escrow yesterday of the Sowden/Franklin House, written by Adrian Glick Kudler appeared on the CurbedLA website.

Designer Xorin Balbes has finally unloaded the Lloyd Wright-designed Sowden/Jaws House after at least five years of trying. Balbes bought the Los Feliz house in 2001 for $1.2 million, then did two kooky renovations (and added a lot of geodes). Between the renos, he listed the house both for sale (never with a price), and for rent ($25,000 per month). After a few years off the market, he put it up for sale again in March 2011, asking $4.2 million. Besides being a favorite filming spot (see it in The Aviator), the Sowden has a compelling old Hollywood backstory: former LAPD detective Steve Hodel, who lived there as a kid, claims that his father killed the Black Dahlia at the Sowden in 1947. The property closed escrow today with Redfin listing a sale price of $3.85 million. A tipster tells us the buyer “is a collector of historic real estate.” Is that you, Michael LaFetra?
· Lloyd Wright’s Los Feliz Sowden House Back on the Market [Curbed LA]

Set your Tweet Alarms  Friday, July 15, 2011  Noon-1:00 PM

#cclivechat

Greetings from Los Angeles!

Have recently discovered an interestng and highly informative website called, DEFROSTING COLD CASES.   Definitely a CLASS ACT.

 Its webmaster is a man using the name VIDSTER who has a very impressive backgound as “a lawyer with a long history in the fields of criminology and human rights defense; however, I am not a practitioner.” See his bio here.

I recommend you check out his website and he is clearly one of the “good guys” who is obviously fully supports the victims, their families, and the search for TRUTH.

On July 15, 2011 the VIDSTER will be hosting a themed chat on Twitter on the Black Dahlia Case. (Friday Noon-1pm EST on Twitter. See his website for details)

I don’t have a Twitter account, so I won’t be there, but have offered to respond to all questions submitted to me through the Vidster. See his ASK STEVE for details. Anyone from my website that would like to participate in his livechat and or ask a question just follow Vidster’s instructions, and I’ll do my best to respond.

Vidocq

Author’s Note- Hard at work on Book III

Wanted to let you know that one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging as regular as I would like is because I’m pushing hard on Book III, which will be a major investigative  update focused on the Black Dahlia investigation. 2004-2011 My goal is to finish it in the next six-months. 

Happy Summer to All,

Steve Hodel

Los Angeles