UBC: Hodel, Black Dahlia Avenger

[truepenny]

Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder by Steve Hodel

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Steven Hodel sets out to prove a number of things in this book:

1. His father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, was an abusive, controlling, sadistic, egotistical whack-job, with a thing for incest, pedophilia, and Asian girls, who was criminally involved in an abortion ring, every illegal depravity you can think of, and also tax evasion.

2. His father, with his friend and henchman Fred Sexton, killed Elizabeth Short.

3. There was a serial killer preying on women in Los Angeles in the 1940s.

4. This serial killer murdered Elizabeth Short.

5. THEREFORE, George Hill Hodel and Fred Sexton, together and separately, were this serial killer, and continued their "work" on into the '50s and even the '60s.

6. The person who killed Elizabeth Short, aside from being George Hill Hodel, serial killer and tax evader, was the person who sent all communications to either police or press about any of these killings and also left the words written in lipstick on Jeanne French's dead body.

Okay. So.

Hodel actually convinces me of (1) and (3) and I'll put an option on (2) even if I don't entirely buy it. (4) I have serious doubts about. (5) and (6) I'm not touching with a ten foot pole.

The basic problem with Hodel is that all of his logic looks like this:

1. George Hill Hodel was a sadistic whack job.
2. The serial killer was a sadistic whack job.
3. Therefore, George Hill Hodel was the serial killer.

Or, for a more specific example:

1. (a.) The newspaper editor who talked once on the phone to a man who claimed to be the Black Dahlia Avenger described his voice as "soft" and "sly," the voice of an "egomaniac" (271)
(b.) This man's claim was true.
2. (a.) Many witnesses across the various crimes described the suspect they saw with the victim as having a "suave" and "cultured" voice. (271)
(b.) Therefore, the serial killer had a "suave" and "cultured" voice.
3. George Hill Hodel had a suave, cultured, and distinctively arresting voice.
4. THEREFORE, the man on the phone, the Black Dahlia Avenger (i.e., the murderer of Elizabeth Short), the serial killer, and George Hill Hodel are all the same man. (Because no other man in Hollywood could possibly have a suave and cultured voice.)

Hodel consistently assumes that things that are probably (or even only possibly) true ARE true. He consistently proceeds as if stating something to be true makes it true. Evidence for his premises is taken as evidence for his conclusion. (E.g., further evidence that Fred Sexton was a child molester is taken as further evidence that he was a serial killer). Anything that that does not disprove his thesis is proof of its truth. And he has the special conspiracy theorist's version of the argumentum ex silencio: the absence of evidence is proof that someone destroyed the evidence and THEREFORE is proof that his thesis is true. He takes an all-or-nothing approach to witness and victim testimony that I find singularly unhelpful, my prime example being his sister Tamar, who at 14 was the victim of statutory rape, incest, and abortion (like I said, I totally buy that George Hill Hodel was an abusive whack-job) and who also got caught up in the DA's panting eagerness to pin something on Dr. Hodel. It's clear from what Hodel says that Tamar was being bullied into testifying, and probably being coached on what to say, so that while I believe her initial claim, that she ran away from home because her father forced her to have an abortion after himself impregnating her, I just can't exclude the possibility that the DA's men were tampering with the witness for her subsequent testimony. This is not to say that Tamar was a pathological liar--the (successful) defense position--just that she was 14, in a cataclysmically horrible place (being the star witness in your father's trial for incest is not ANYBODY's idea of a good time), and being leaned on pretty hard by the DA. Without corroboration (real corroboration, not Hodel's version), I don't feel comfortable believing 100% of what she said. But for Hodel you either believe her entirely (prosecution) or disbelieve her entirely (defense). He doesn't allow for any middle ground.

And then there's the part where he simply assumes that something he has not proven is true, and proceeds with his argument as if its truth were incontrovertible. For example. On p 325, discussing another of the possible victims, Jean Spangler, Hodel says, "Spangler, while working on a movie set at Columbia Pictures with actor Robert Cummings, told Cummings that she 'had a happy new romance' and was having the time of her life. She did not tell Cummings her new boyfriend's name." And then, six pages later, "Or perhaps things are exactly as they appear on the surface, and Jean Spangler, as she represented to Robert Cummings, did meet Father only a few days before her kidnap-murder" (331). But that's not how things appear on the surface, since p. 325 tells us explicitly that Spangler did not tell Cummings her new boyfriend's name. Hodel, having suggested the possibility that Spangler was killed by George Hill Hodel, is now simply forging ahead as if it were true and had been proven conclusively to be true.

After a couple of these maneuvers, it became increasingly impossible for me to trust Hodel or to believe anything he told me.

And it's a pity, because two of his theses I think are true and worth pursuing in different ways. (1) That George Hill Hodel was a criminally abusive parent and husband, as well as being up to his eyeballs in the corruption of 1940s Los Angeles. (2) That there was a serial killer active in 1940s Los Angeles and at least some of the horrifying slew of unsolved rape/murders can be laid at that unknown man's door. (1) is the memoir Hodel (pretty clearly) needed to write to come to terms with his relationship with his father, with his siblings, and with his mother. (2) would have made a fascinating piece of true crime writing, even if it never came to any definitive conclusions. (Notice that neither of these books is about the murder of Elizabeth Short.) Or, if he really wanted to try to pursue this cat's cradle of intertwined theses, he needed to slow down, separate them out--the man who killed Elizabeth Short, the man (or men) who preyed on Los Angeles in the '40s, and the man who claimed to be the Black Dahlia Avenger have to be proven to be the same man, never mind the idea that one or more of them was George Hill Hodel--and distinguish much MUCH more carefully between things he could prove and things he couldn't.

(I see from his bibliography that he has gone on to claim his father was also the Zodiac killer. That may tell you everything you need to know.)



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Comments

[lydy.livejournal.com]

IJWTS that I really love your reviews. I have nothing substantive to add, but I do enjoy them. So, RAEBNC. Like, many times.

Thank you.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[redbird]

Me too.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I see from his bibliography that he has gone on to claim his father was also the Zodiac killer.

. . . . oooooooookay.

I begin to think that Hodel Sr. was not the only one in the family with mental issues.