The Hodel Files: Unmasking a Hollywood Monster part 2

In the gripping conclusion of our deep dive into the Black Dahlia case, we explore the chilling life and crimes of George Hodel, one of the most controversial suspects in Elizabeth Short's murder. Was Hodel a deranged serial killer or simply a twisted figure with a dark legacy? Join Bree, Mike, and Heather as they uncover shocking details about his life, from his abusive relationships to his possible ties to other murders. We discuss the evidence, the missing files, and whether Hodel truly fits the profile of Elizabeth Short’s killer—or if the real murderer lies elsewhere. Tune in and decide for yourself!

Transcript

George Hodel Part 2 (00:00)
Hi everyone, the PIC True Crime Podcast is back for the final installment of the Black Dahlia case. Last week we started to take a look into George Hodel, one of the prime suspects in Elizabeth Shorts murder. He was a child prodigy turned doctor. Throughout his years in Tinseltown, Hodel racked up more wives, mistresses,

Anne. of all the people that created the masterful sculptures and paintings that decorated his mind-inspired mansion, or should we say the house of horrors? There he filled the walls with celebrity orgies, drugs, and he kept his children, wives, and mistresses all under one dysfunctional roof.

He was accused of assaulting his own daughter, Tamar, and pimping her out to his famous friends. Unfortunately, Tamar's own mother and another mistress testified against Tamar

and Hodel was found not guilty on the charges. But some good did come out of all of this. The mistress, Lillian Hamilton, broke down and confessed to an officer, finally putting Hodel on the suspect list for the deaths of Ruth Spaulding and Elizabeth Short. Now police suspect Hodel of fraud, for killing his secretary, assaulting Lillian Hamilton, abusing his own daughter, and maybe...

Just maybe. He killed the Black Dahlia too. Welcome back everybody, I'm Bree. I'm Mike. And I'm Heather.

Let's kick right off with Tamar, who is pregnant at age 16 and about to give birth.

Remember, if everything's true, she had had a forced abortion at age 14. But this time she had the baby. If she was still being abused and Hodel passed her around like she said he did, there's no telling who the father was. But how Dorothy number one

Tamar's mother handled the whole situation is just very bizarre. On Hodel's instructions, she arranged for the baby to be named Fauna. Dorothy then contacted an African American woman to come in and adopt the baby.

Remember, this is 1951. A white child growing up in a black family would have raised eyebrows,

But Dorothy told her that Tamar had had a relationship with a black boy and that the baby just took after his mother more. Baby Fauna's skin would grow darker with time and then the world would know that Tamar slept with a black man, ruining any chance of her getting a good white husband. That's just horrible. Unfortunately, it was very common at the time. Seriously, I mean, this kind of thing happened all the time and never was openly admitted.

10 years before the first black woman to receive an Oscar, Hattie McDaniel wasn't even allowed to collect her award at the ceremony because people of color weren't allowed on the premises. So yeah, you can imagine this kind of backlash Tamar would have gotten. There's no use in sugar coating the injustice of the time.

People of color were treated horribly long after slavery ended

And the casual way that the baby's adoptive mother was treated just shows how commonplace this kind of thing used to be.

But here's where it gets strange. The baby was white. Years later it was proven that Fauna had two Caucasian parents when they ran her DNA.

Why Dorothy number one went this route when she could have gotten her adopted by literally anyone without needing to do this song and dance of the baby being mixed race? Well, that's anyone's guess. Unless she wanted the baby to disappear as much as possible to hide the identity of the real father for some reason. Maybe he was an important guy. Or the biological father would have been jailed.

She'd have been underage and that also proves that she was abused. We'll catch up on some of Hodel's kids' lives later, but for now, he'd abandoned all of them and started working in Hawaii as a prison psychiatrist. Really? A sociopath treating violent criminals? I mean, that's just a terrible arrangement, right?

Yup, he just got his license to practice a year before and in Hawaii he lived in luxury while his kids and wives were left to fend for themselves. He never called, never checked in, and he certainly couldn't fly back because he'd be arrested. He married again, this time to a woman named Hortensia, who was originally from the Philippines.

And let me tell you, up until this point, getting Hodel's timeline in order was an absolute nightmare.

You can tell that there were more corrupt cops in LA than there were decent ones. Right when Hodel fled to Hawaii, the two other suspects for the Black Dahlia murder were being interrogated and that was Hodel's saving grace. Because the cops were interviewing the hotel owner that dated Elizabeth Short, Mark Hanson. The one they think hired Leslie Dillon to kill her and with all of the mob connections?

That guy, yes. When they brought him in for questioning, they had a bunch of other stuff on him too that had nothing to do with the murder. It caused a snowball effect that led to the firing of half the police department when it came out that so many cops were accepting bribes and falsifying evidence.

This whole mess took years to clean up and by the time they had Hodel's files passed on to another detective and took the whole thing from the top, more than two years had passed by and Hodel had his affairs in order.

They put in a request to have Hodel arrested over in Hawaii where he'd be transported back to the mainland for prosecution for the murder of Ruth Spaulding. That was the plan anyway. Unfortunately, Hodel still had enough contacts in LA to tip him off again. By the time the warrant for his arrest was granted, Hodel had fled to the Philippines with his new wife and four kids.

He'd spent nearly three years getting his visa in order and he'd already bought a couple of properties over in the Philippines. When he got there he opened up shop immediately and went into the business of medical marketing. Seriously, he had offices in several Asian countries and traveled between them extensively, making more money than he'd ever done in the US. He even worked for Boeing at one point.

Anyway, Hoda was in the wind. Unless he was stupid enough to come back to the US, there was no way they could get him. But if I remember right, he was tied into a few murders over there too, right? I mean, the jigsaw killing, if I remember the story correctly? That's where we're heading toward, yes, but let's hunker down here for a minute first. The family he'd left behind in the US was fractured and they each went their own way.

Tamar would end up having four more children from four different men. She named one of her daughters Fauna in memory of the baby she had to give up. The first baby, Fauna, was growing up thinking she was just unusually light-skinned African-American child. And even though she always wondered about her biological parents, baby Fauna had a better, more loving childhood than any of the Hodel children ever did.

She met Tamar as an adult, but that's their story to tell. By the time Tamar finally met her first daughter, she was a broken woman, like every wife, mistress, and child that suffered under Hodel was. None of the women who came out of that mansion was ever really the same. The only other Hodel child that ever made an appearance was Steven,

And it's thanks to him that Hodel's movements and what we now suspect him of getting up to in Asia was brought up again all these years later. Steven was a policeman upgraded to detective and solved more than 300 murders during his career. He claims that Hodel did come to the US on occasion to see his sons. He'd get off the plane, meet his sons at a diner near the airport, and then they'd have just enough time to get a bite while catching up.

on what was going on and what was in their lives before their father got on to the next flight back to the Philippines. He was in and out of the country so quickly that no one even realized that he'd been there. It really seemed like he was taking the risk purely to see his sons. So I'm assuming that he didn't bother to see any of his other kids, especially not Tamar, right?

Nope, only the sons he had with Dorothy number two, but baby Fauna, who'd grown up not knowing any of them existed, later stated that she was sure that she was being watched on occasion while she was growing up. This is a little out there and there's no proof outside of Fauna's testimony, but she said that every few months she'd notice men in suits following her for a few days before they disappeared again for a few months.

When she grew up and moved out of her childhood home as a young adult, her home phone sometimes had a distinctive clicking sound in the receiver, which she thought meant that someone was tapping her phone. She changed telephones and addresses several times, but the clicking sound always reappeared at the same time that the men who seemed to be following her did. Normally, I wouldn't have even included something like this

Since there's no proof to confirm it, but in the Hodel's case, I'll make an exception.

He was known for obsessively controlling every aspect of his wives' lives, even after they divorced. Heck, he even named Tamars baby and decided where she'd be placed after being born. I wouldn't put it past him that he was keeping tabs on all of his children and ex-wives.

With or without Hodel, the kids grew up and went their separate ways, with only Steven, the one who worked in law enforcement, keeping in touch with his father, though their communication was sporadic. He was never on bad terms with Hodel nor did he have many memories of him while they lived in the mansion, where most of Hodel's depravities took place. He was just too young at the time.

Even though he was aware of the incest case and the suspicion that his father was a murderer, he didn't believe any of it. Tamar had kind of gone off the rails after she moved out, so he didn't consider her a very reliable source of information, and quite frankly the Black Dahlia case had so many suspects and theories that his father's name being among the suspects didn't mean much to him. Hell, the police!

had every medical student in California questioned about her death and a few hundred other men too, so the suspect pool was just too large for him to really have any faith in the theories. But that all changed in 1999. George Hodel was now 93 and he'd flown back to the US one last time with his newest wife, June. Who June was is a little vague, but it seems like he def-

divorced Hortensia in the 60s and went on to marry June and they remained married until his death in 99. They never had any children together.

That's a shocker. How many kids did he have by the end? Eleven that we know of. He might have had more in Asia. Steven did try to get in touch with the half-siblings on Hortensia's side, but he was never able to track them down, or they just weren't interested.

When Hodel arrived in the US, he rented out a penthouse for his final days and died of natural causes in the comfort of his own bed.

June contacted Steven with Hodels final wishes that his ashes be strewn under the Golden Gate Bridge. She also said that Hodell instructed her to burn all of his documents, photos, and any paperwork still in existence after he died. She did so, except she kept the photo albums. She thought that Steven and his brothers and sisters would appreciate pictures of their childhood, since Hodell had taken all of the photos when he fled the country and they had none.

That's where the floodgates opened up again. Steven went through those albums and saw some things that made him look deeper into his father after all these years of defending him. Steven was no longer so sure that he was innocent of anything.

Do we know what was in the documents that June destroyed?

No idea. I don't know if she just didn't bother to check them or if she kept quiet about what she knew. But we don't know what was on them.

The photo albums contained a few family photos taken by the famous photographer and friends of Hodels Man Ray. Two pictures showing a woman with dark hair looking down and nude from the waist up stood out to Steven. He was sure that the woman was Elizabeth Short.

I don't agree with him on this and you guys can make up your own minds about it, but the hairline is all wrong and except for the dark hair and superficial resemblance, well, there's no way to definitively state that this was Elizabeth.

But it was enough to convince Steven to pull the files, go through the recordings, and look at the case from the

By the time he was through, he was sure that his father, George Hodell, had killed Ruth Spaulding, the Black Dahlia, and that he had abused his sister Tamar.

He was caught up to where we are now and he managed to add a detail to Hodel's timeline during the time Elizabeth Short would have been killed. Both Tamar and her mother, as well as a mistress of Hodel's at the time, said that he was gone for a few days during the week that Elizabeth would have been held captive.

But honestly, it was so long ago

and no official statements were made at the time, that it's hard to put too much faith in those statements.

I hate to say it, but Tamar and her mother aren't the best witnesses. After suffering at the hands of for so many years, neither woman had the most stable life after he left the country. I don't think they're liars, I really don't. I'm willing to bet that Hodel did abuse his daughter the way she said he did.

It's just that all of the Hodels are desperate to prove that their patriarch killed the Black Dahlia, to the point that they're willing to tie him into anything possible to prove what a monster he was. Stevens tried to tie Hordel to the Zodiac Killings, the Lipstick Murders, the Cleveland Torso Murders, and the Werewolf Killings, all serial murders that happened around the 30s and 40s,

But only one of them sort of stands out, and that was the murder of 6 year old Susan Degnan because of how expertly she'd been dismembered. I'm not putting my money on Hodel for that murder either though because-

Besides this dismemberment there's nothing else to suggest that he'd steal a child from her bedroom window in the middle of the night. I do, however, see where Steven was going when he dug into Hodel travels around Asia. He found a case in Manila in the Philippines

from 1967 where a woman named Lucilia Lalu was killed under very gruesome circumstances. The business owner was missing for weeks before her body parts were discovered, scattered around the city. Besides being expertly cut up with surgical precision and drained of all bodily fluids, the remains also showed signs of having been frozen before they were discarded.

Lucilia became known as the Chop Chop Lady or the Jigsaw Murder. Steven was able to trace his father's movements proving that he'd been in Manila around the time of Lucilia's disappearance, but again, the evidence is circumstantial.

During his nearly 40 years in Asia, Stevens tried to tie him to hundreds of cases, and I'm afraid none of them stand out to me.

Lucilia's was interesting because authorities were sure that the murderer must have had some background in medicine to have been able to do such an expert job at it. But let's be honest, there were more doctors around than just Hodel and it's impossible to prove where he was or at what dates he was close to the murder sites. He traveled a lot. I don't want to completely discard Steven's investigative skills.

He's obviously got a very analytic head on his shoulders and his track record as a detective is nothing short of stellar. He was really good at his job

But he and all of his siblings are hell-bent on finding proof that their father was a murderer. And let's face it, Hodel was a sicko child and wife abuser and he almost certainly killed Ruth Spaulding to keep himself out of jail, but other than that, it's hard to prove he killed anyone else. But what about Elizabeth Short's death?

There were a lot of witnesses that say they saw them together.

Here's my problem with all of this. I just don't think Elizabeth was a big enough deal to hang out with Hodel. He dated a few actresses and models and he was part of the tippy-top crowd of elites in Hollywood. Elizabeth was beautiful and certainly wanted to be a part of that crowd, but she'd never had a role or any kind of recognition before her death.

I

There's physical proof that Hanson and Leslie knew Elizabeth, not just witness testimony.

What about the recordings on the surveillance tapes though? Where is that quote? Hold on, here it is.

Maybe I did kill my secretary. That's pretty much a confession, isn't it? mean,

If we're going by Heather's leaning toward Leslie and Hanson being guilty and what we know about Hodel's personality, I think he had a big enough ego to play into the Black Dahlia's murder just for clout.

The nature of that murder fit into his obsession with the surrealist art, sex, death, and abuse. He wasn't shy about threatening his family, so why would he be above making himself look more impressive than he really was? I think it was an empty lie to impress the Baron and to control his family with fear. That's a pretty big lie to throw around when he knew the cops were watching him though.

but maybe he didn't know that his house was bugged or he did know and he was just trying to see how they'd react.

Okay, let's look at the evidence here. We all agree that he killed Ruth Spaulding. Definitely. Yeah, I agree with that. He might have even killed a woman that they caught on the recordings. Sure. There's only a few witnesses who saw him attending parties with a dark-haired woman who resembled Elizabeth. What else is there to tie him to her, besides the fact that he had the technical background that gave him the skills to dismember her so expertly?

There were the cadaver dogs that alerted in the basement and the backyard. So somebody definitely died in that house, whether it was murder or natural causes. With no physical evidence, hair, blood, nothing found to corroborate the dog's

Remember that this house was a house of horrors. There were probably bodily fluids of dozens of people there and a bunch of drugs too. I wouldn't put too much faith in canine detection under those conditions. We can throw out the handwriting match too. Compared to Hodel's writing, the letters written on the papers signed by the Black Dahlia Avenger were only slightly similar.

My interest was piqued not by Steven Hodel's theories, but by the fact that Hodel was at the top of the suspect list for the police, even above Leslie and Hanson. Now, why would that be? Hanson and Leslie had much more against them than Hodel did. Witness statements put them with Elizabeth. She dated Hanson, well, sort of, And it's all but certain he was getting annoyed with her for

flaunting her dates in his face. Leslie was an unstable individual who admitted to the crime and gave details of the murder that only the killer would know.

So, did the cops have something else against Hodel that we don't know about? Besides having the skills to perform the dissection and being a predator that preyed on his own daughter and countless other women, I can't see how he fits into Elizabeth Short's murder. I don't think he killed the Black Dahlia. I'm not even sure he was a serial killer at all. Hey, you know what? You're right.

Besides Ruth Spaulding and maybe, maybe the woman on the recording, there's no other victims that would give him serial killer status. He fled the country because they could get him for Ruth Spaulding's death and probably plenty of fraud and medical malpractice crimes.

Then there's the Jigsaw Murder, or what they call it in Manila, the Chop Chop Lady. There really isn't anything to tie him to it, besides that he was in the general area.

She was dissected into many pieces, frozen before being dumped all around the city. That isn't consistent with the Dalia's remains. And the Philippines had its fair share of unusual killings at the time, mostly related to gang and organized crime. There's no real evidence to suggest that she and Hodel even knew each other.

I have to agree with you there. The body was not handled in the same way at all. So is there any solid connection to any of the serial murders in US before he fled? I honestly think that Steven Hodel tried to tie him to everything that he possibly could at the time. None of them carry any real resemblance to the Black Dahlia.

The biggest giveaway that he could actually have killed Elizabeth Short is the statements from his daughter, the actress, and his comments on the recordings. That's three separate indications, but like we said earlier, it could have been an empty threat to control the women and the kids with fear. Steven came to the realization that his father was a monster

And he felt responsible for not seeing Hodel for the criminal and, probably killer, that he was. I can see him trying to make the situation right. It's made Steven a very far reaching individual. He's willing to put his teeth into even the smallest possibilities. All of his evidence is circumstantial.

And that's the other red flag for me.

I think that he was dangerously obsessive. Even back when he had an affair with his professor's wife as a teenager, he followed that woman halfway across the country to get her. I think she was the only one that he'd ever been forced to let go. All of his wife stayed close. All of his kids were crammed into the house and every mistress kept coming back.

I don't care if he had them all hooked on drugs, some of them would have left with or without their fix. I think they had to be truly afraid of him.

Had to be if a mother was willing to testify against her own daughter after just telling her to run away for her own safety. We can all agree that Hodel isn't the best suspect for the Black Dahlia murder, but he was killer nonetheless, with the possibility that he could have even been a serial killer.

You know, I think he was sick enough to be a serial killer. He was definitely enchanted by the dark and disturbing and given what he probably did to his own daughter and how he controlled his wives and kids,

There's some psychopathy there. But we're forgetting about Jean Spangler. That's the one that gets me every time. There are too many similarities to ignore here. They both looked alike. The connection to Hanson and the club. What goes off the rails is Jean's connection to Hodel's parties and her probable pregnancy and the abortion she was planning to get. You know, I mean, here's what I think.

Let's say she was going to see Hodel to get rid of a pregnancy, then her death was probably accidental. It happened all the time back then. Then Hodel disposes of the body so well that she still hasn't been found to this very day. That's a big turnaround from a man who displayed Elizabeth Short like a sick statement puzzle on the side of the road.

That tells me he didn't mind killing people or making them disappear while saving his own behind. But he didn't make an art or statement from it. Everything about the Daya murder screams enjoyment and the need for recognition. And quite frankly, Hodel didn't flaunt any of the killings we suspect him of. Ruth Spaulding was played off as a drug overdose. If he accidentally killed Jean Spangler, then he made her disappear.

And the mystery woman on the recordings, if she even existed, has vanished too. Hodel doesn't strike me as loud or boastful about those that he killed. I don't think he killed Elizabeth. So who do you think killed Elizabeth Short then? Leslie and Hanson are still the best suspects thus far. I think they did it. Or at least Leslie did on Hanson's instruction.

I think all of our minds are dead set on Leslie and Hanson. Hodel was a murderer and a child abuser, and possibly even a serial killer. He just didn't kill the Black Dahlia. Yeah, it's a shame that Leslie's life isn't as well documented as Hodel's. He was a ghost until he came to the US and disappeared off the map again after his confession. But I still think that Leslie would have been a deep, dark hole to tap if we knew more about him.

Before actually looking into Hodel, I was on the fence about who could have done it, but I don't think he's a good suspect anymore.

I still think he's a serial killer who never got the punishment he deserved. He didn't just get away with all of his crimes, he got to live it up like a big shot until he was in his 90s. He is the real cautionary tale of Hollywood. Look at the crowd he hung out with. I don't think he was the only one who did stuff like this. And I don't think the industry's changed all that much since then either.

But that's it, isn't it? Hodel was a killer, but not the killer of Dahlia. I'm not gonna lie, I actually feel better about that. I can finally make up my mind about one suspect at least. It's just one of those cases that can drive you up a wall with so many suspects, so many open questions. At least I can let my questions about Hodel be put to rest. I was really leaning more on

But I think you two got it right the first time. It wasn't Hodel.

As much as I despise the man and it kills me to say it, it just doesn't look like Elizabeth Short was one of his victims.

The only real issue I still have are all the missing files.

When Hansen turned the police department upside down, a lot of files and evidence just went missing. The Dahlia case just happened to be among those files that disappeared. Anything to do with mob bosses, big Hollywood directors, the elite took the opportunity in all of the chaos to get rid of an entire generation's worth of criminalities.

If we could have the recordings from Hodel's house today, we could probably clean it up enough to hear what was on them. We could have had tons more of information on Tamar's court case, Leslie's life, Hanson's history, but almost all of it is gone. What a shame. Just think of how many cases will forever be unsolved because of that mess. You know, Dad, that's not even a conspiracy.

Several people took advantage of the mess Hanson left behind to destroy countless documents. There's no telling how many corrupt cops cleaned up after powerful men and completely destroyed any chance of bringing probably thousands of people to justice.

But we can at least put the Black Dahlia to rest. Sure, it will never be officially solved. But at least I feel better now knowing that we've gone through it all. So do I. But what do our listeners think? Leslie Dillon? Mark Hansen? George Hodel? Or someone else? Who do you think killed Elizabeth Short? And was Hodel really a serial killer? We'll leave it up to you to decide.

I think we can all agree that Hodel was a murderer and at the very least had it in him to be a serial killer. But you tell us.

Thank you for joining me and my PICs. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And we will see you next time with more True Crime.