George Hodel – Zodiac Handwriting – A New Comparison

I was filing some old photographs today, and chanced upon one that my father had sent me some decades back. In 2005, I had given a copy of this photo to authors, Mark Nelson and Sarah Bayliss, for inclusion in their book, Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder.

The photo was taken circa 1986, in my father’s penthouse home/office on Manila Bay, in the Philippines. It shows father posing with some of his friends/business associates in front of several of his prized art objects. His hand is resting on a wood sculpture that I believe was created by Filipino artist, Ramon Orlina.  (My father also made a later purchase of a large glass sculpture from the same artist, so hopefully I am not confusing the separate pieces.) 

The second art sculpture was created by the Surrealist artist, Man Ray in Hollywood in 1944 and given to his friend, George Hodel in 1948, just one year after the murder of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia”  Short. Man Ray entitled it,  Objet de mon affection-”L’oculiste”  (The term oculiste can also be interpreted as “The Witness”) After having it in his posession for over fifty-years, father decided to sell the Man Ray piece at auction at Butterfield and Butterfield’s in San Francisco. In the 1999 brochure the sculpture is authenticated as being an original Man Ray piece and described as: ”Fragments of lead and a rubber sink stopper on a curved piece of wood mounted on board.”

But, it is not the art work that interests me, but rather, my father’s hand drawn arrow (using a red marker pen) as compared to samples of arrows drawn by Zodiac (also using a marker pen) in 1969. Are they similar? Decide for yourself.