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Episode 109 - The Black Dahlia

Episode 109 - The Black Dahlia
Jan 23, 2022 · 1h 7m 56s

January 15th, 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short was found mutilated. Someone had performed an hemicorporectomy, the act of cutting a body in half at a specific point of the...

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January 15th, 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short was found mutilated. Someone had performed an hemicorporectomy, the act of cutting a body in half at a specific point of the body. The woman who first spotted the body in a vacant lot thought it was a mannequin, mostly because the skin color was so pale, a result of Short’s fluids and blood being completely drained from her body. In this episode we speak with Steve Hodel, a retired detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Not only is Hodel fascinated by the case, he also has a personal connection.
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Comments
VV VV

VV VV

2 years ago

Steve Hodel-- I have the UNRRA transcript and complete file on George Hodel. Nowhere on the UNRRA application, filled out by George in 1945, does he list 'sole surgeon at a logging camp' --not anywhere. Not under prior work history or experience summary. Thankfully--he does admit to a history of having a bad heart as early as 1942. He was rejected by the Army and Navy for this condition and eventually had to sign a liability waiver in order to 'work'--This bad heart history would preclude him entirely as a "killer" of anyone. And definitely not the killer of Elizabeth Short. The 1950 bugging transcripts clearly show George fighting to breathe, gasping, and unable to get medical insurance for his failing heart and walk from one room to the next without losing breath entirely. He was no killer as he was physically challenged. The pictures you continue push as that of Elizabeth--are not. Elizabeth's family say the pictures are not her. Your continued push to make this a reality is causing further harm to the Short family and borderline exploitative. George was a pedophile. It begins and ends there. George was not friends with Man Ray
steve hodel

steve hodel

2 years ago

Normally I ignore the vindictive comments from retired Los Angeles Times copy editor Larry Harnisch, but a short response and history is required based on his vitriolic post here on Spreaker. Harnisch fancied himself "the Big Dog" on all things "Black Dahlia" in the late Eighties and early Nineties prior to my investigation becoming public in "Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder." (2003) He befriended the then LAPD assigned detective Brian Carr and attempted to convince him that his (Harnisch's) suspect, a doctor Walter Bayley who lived a block from the crime scene and was a surgeon for LA County was the actual killer. They went on TV together with Det. Carr saying, "Well sounds like maybe he could have done it." No real evidence. Dr. Bayley's never came up anywhere in any official police reports, only in the mind of Harnisch. Dr. Bayley died less than a year after the murder, and so Harnisch could make claims with worrying about legal consequences. Harnisch's whole world blew up with the publication of my book two years later. His wife left him, his dog left him, and he has been ranting against my investigation for the past twenty years. He keeps saying that "the photo in Dr. Hodel's album isn't Elizabeth Short and so the son's whole case falls apart. Of course not so. Recent facial recognition lab in Germany gives a 97% probability that it IS ELIZ SHORT, but a 99.7% is required for "positive identification." But, let's throw the photo out of the case as it only went to show they knew each other. Once the concealed official police reports were made public in 2004 they documented that "George Hodel and Eliz Short were acquainted and knew and dated each other in t he years preceding her murder. As far as George Hodel's surgical ability, I produced his medical transcripts showing 755 hours of surgery. He also documented by his application for UNRRA show he was "sole surgeon at a logging camp" and articles from Santa Fe, AZ newspapers show he was interviewed as the sometime "Coroner in Santa Fe, NM." I could go on and on in re. to Harnisch's false claims but just wanted readers to have a little background on the Harnisch History. I long ago chose not to get in pissing contests with Harnisch and have found it is best to ignore is rants as opposed to adding fuel to the fire. Enjoyed doing the interview with Steve Gregory and as those who listened could tell, we didn't have time to cover a lot of the additional linkage and hard evidence as presented in my follow-up books. We are currently in production of making a miniseries that will present many of Dr. George Hodel's serial crimes, so stay tuned. Lot more to come. One final observation. Harnisch prides himself in telling his followers that he hasn't read any of my follow-up books and evidence, and only skimmed my original book when it came out. Detective III Steve Hodel #11394 LAPD Hollywood Homicide (ret.)
L

Larry Harnisch

2 years ago

Hi. Since 2003, Steve Hodel has exploited his career as an LAPD homicide detective to push the false narrative that his dad, Dr. George Hodel, was a serial killer who murdered the Black Dahlia and many, many others, under the protection of multiple law enforcement agencies in multiple jurisdictions because he "knew too much." Please. None of it is true, starting with Steve Hodel's purported photos of Elizabeth Short, which aren't her, according to Short's family. And without the photos, Steve Hodel has nothing to connect his father to Elizabeth Short. George Hodel was put under surveillance for 5 1/2 weeks and eliminated as a suspect according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's final report. Steve Hodel will say that the investigator who wrote the report was a 'white hat' who was 'ordered' to clear his dad and turn over all the records to the LAPD (not true) because of a 'coverup' (also not true), leaving a second set of records for Steve to miraculously find decades later (not even remotely true). Extensive research shows that George Hodel wasn't rich, he wasn't famous, he wasn't influential. He was a public health doctor treating poor Blacks in segregated L.A. during World War II, not the wealthy elite. George Hodel wasn't an accredited surgeon, had no hospital admitting privileges, and had the minimum surgical training to graduate from medical school. (The hemidemicorporectomy he supposedly performed on Elizabeth Short didn't exist in the 1940s). George Hodel had a superficial business relationship with Man Ray and while Steve Hodel brags that his father was best friends with writer Ben Hecht, it is impossible to confirm even the remotest connection by going through Hecht's extensive archives in Chicago. And no, George Hodel did not rape his daughter Tamar. Tamar Hodel was an incorrigible teenager, beyond the control of her mother. The mother sent Tamar to L.A. to live with George Hodel after previously putting her in a boarding school for discipline problems. Tamar did not want to be in L.A. or live with George Hodel and told her half brother Duncan Hodel that she was going to make up a story that George Hodel molested her to get him in trouble -- as Duncan Hodel testified during George Hodel's trial. (Tamar made similar allegations against 13 boys at Hollywood High who weren't charged and frequently made such accusations against random men, which is one reason her mother sent her to boarding school in the first place). During George Hodel's trial (charges were brought by top-notch prosecutors and the D.A.'s office had just won another incest case, BTW), Tamar's mother, her grandmother and about eight other women testified that they wouldn't believe her under oath. (Reality check: Tamar's children also say she was a liar and manipulator). And George Hodel was found not guilty by a jury that included at least eight women, possibly nine. None of which you will hear from Steve Hodel. The person who knows nothing about the Black Dahlia case or only knows what Steve Hodel has said cannot imagine the magnitude of his lies. It truly is stunning. The "Black Dahlia Avenger" franchise is merely a grift to sell books, get on TV and do interviews. The Black Dahlia case was a state-of-the-art investigation for 1947, involving hundreds of officers from multiple agencies, numerous detectives and was the subject of a grand jury investigation because of a rogue inquiry that resulted in the botched arrest of an innocent man (Leslie Dillon). The popular notion that the Brenda Allen scandal proves the LAPD's corruption conveniently ignores the fact that Allen was investigated by vice detectives, a completedly different bureau, and *not* the Homicide Division. The Dahlia case was a top-notch investigaion. Implying anything else, especially a coverup, is to insult the memory of the many LAPD detectives assigned to the case.
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