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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 41 |
 STEVE HODEL'S BLACK DAHLIA AVENGER |
 An Amazing Book by A Killer's Son? |
An unforgettable account
of an incredible 'cold case'
of TheColumnists.com
One of this year's most incredible non-fiction mystery books is Steve Hodel's "Black Dahlia Avenger" (Arcade, $27.95), the much-publicized story behind a former L.A.P.D. detective's "solution" to the most notorious homicide "cold case" in Los Angeles history--the "Black Dahlia" murder.
What makes Hodel's immensely readable book so distinctively unusual is that he ends up concluding that his own father was the Black Dahlia killer.
Before I go much further, I need to say that the evidence Hodel has accumulated is all circumstantial. Some may decide he's making giant leaps of deduction based on very flimsy clues. What's more, nothing is very likely to come of it since the suspect Hodel names--Dr. George Hill Hodel, Jr.--died of natural causes in 1999.
But that doesn't mean Hodel is just blowing smoke at us, reviving a murder case that has been revived ad nauseum--by real-life sleuths and by such novelists as James Ellroy ("L.A. Confidential"), whose own version of the story was the best-seller "The Black Dahlia." Hodel makes a much better case for his culprit than any other investigator I've come across so far.
The murder involved took place in 1947. When the body of Elizabeth Short was discovered, cut in half and "posed" in an empty lot where passers-by were sure to notice it, it stunned not only the Los Angeles community, but a nation that reeled as details of the case were leaked by newspapers and True Crime magazines.
It had all the elements of a "super" murder case. Elizabeth Short, nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" for the flower she often wore, was a beautiful young woman from Massachusetts who had come west to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. She ended up being murdered after being tortured by a killer or killers who also expertly severed her corpse into two halves and mutilated her naked form.
Hodel had spent most of his adult life as a Los Angeles police detective who personally was involved in the investigation of hundreds of murders. Like most L.A. cops, he'd heard of the "Black Dahlia" case, but had never worked on it or given it much thought. His interest suddenly developed after the death of his father, a well-known medical doctor. His father's widow had asked him to go through some of his father's most personal effects. That's when Hodel found a book of very special photos of his father's wives, children and most intimate friends.
In that book, Hodel found two photos of Elizabeth Short, one of them a nude pose. Why would his father keep photos of the "Black Dahlia" murder victim among his most personal pictures? That's what Hodel set out to discover.
Take my word for it, "Black Dahlia Avenger" is something you'll read compulsively. It's loaded with awesome and incredible stuff. Even if somebody else proves conclusively that the "Black Dahlia" killer wasn't Hodel's father, Hodel's book still will be well worth reading just for the portrait it gives us of a most bizarre and frightening man whose outlook on life most resembles that of Hannibal Lecter, the cannibal killer of "Red Dragon," "Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal."
Let me cite just a couple of most interesting tidbits:
* Steve Hodel's mother was Dorothy "Dorero" Hodel, who was the ex-wife of famed movie director/actor John Huston. Huston and Hodel's father were close friends and Hodel even suggests Huston was involved in some of the senior Hodel's bizarre activities in Los Angeles.
* Among those activities was a propensity for illicit sex that ultimately plunged Hodel's father into the middle of a major scandal in which he had to stand trial for allegedly having sex with his own 17-year-old daughter (Steve Hodel's older sister) at a wild orgy in which she also had sex with other adult men--and women.
* Hodel also alleges that his father was part of a Southern California "abortion ring" that was being protected by the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department.
* Hodel also suggests that evidence linking his father to the "Black Dahlia" murder may have been destroyed or covered up by the police, fearful that he might implicate them in his other activities.
* That leads Hodel to also pose the strong possibility that the L.A.P.D. knew his father and a close associate of his father were responsible for the death of Elizabeth Short, but left them alone to prey on other women in the L.A. area. Hodel has developed circumstantial evidence linking his father to several other notorious unsolved murders of Southern California women.
If, like me, you are fascinated by that era of 1940s L.A.--the time of racketeer Mickey Cohen and all the scandals James Ellroy dealt with in "L.A. Confidential"--this book will be a honeycomb of delicious details about the underbelly of that era.s
Hodel convinced me that his dad, surely a genius who veered off into lunatic behavior at times, deserved to be locked up for any number of anti-social activities. Dr. Hodel's path also crossed the paths of many well-known Hollywood personalities and international characters, including the celebrated photographic artist Man Ray, author Henry Miller and that whole art crowd.
Nestled within this large volume is also a most painful personal odyssey for author Hodel, who had finally developed a special rapport with his elderly, larger-than-life father just before the father's death. How the author managed to rip and tear at his own family history in order to get to the truth about Dr. Hodel is a story in itself--and seldom a pretty one.
©2003 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The book
cover reproduction is ©2003 by Arcade Publishing.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
teaches classes in mystery and related topics at Whatcom Community
College and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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