TWENTY YEARS BEFORE SHOCKING THE WORLD IN LOS ANGELES IN 1947 AS “THE BLACK DAHLIA AVENGER” DID GEORGE HODEL TERRORIZE CALIFORNIA BY COMMITTING SOME OF ITS MOST INFAMOUS CRIMES AND SERIAL MURDERS?
From the Introduction:In writing George Hill Hodel: “The Early Years,” my original intent was to present all my father’s suspected crimes from the 1920s and 1930s in one edition. I have found this is simply not possible as it would require a book that would dwarf Dostoevsky’s nearly seven-hundred-page opus, Crime and Punishment. Therefore, I will present “The Early Years” in two-parts, two editions. This edition is Part I and presents my investigations of his suspected crimes in the 1920s. Note that I said, “suspected crimes.” I want to be crystal clear on this point. My two-part, “Early Years” investigations are just that—a search out of for the truth. …In the presentation of these crimes from the long ago (the first one goes back one-hundred years), I make no claim to a “solution.” I am not saying that my father, George Hill Hodel, committed any of these crimes, beyond a “Reasonable Doubt”—which would be the legal requirement to find him guilty.Several of these crimes, without the introduction of hard physical evidence, or DNA, are not solvable. Others have been claimed “solved” by law enforcement and are considered “Case Closed.”…To be clear.These crimes from the Twenties and Thirties did not present themselves to me post-Black Dahlia Avenger published in 2003. I was aware of them and his possible involvement in them as early as the year 2000, a full three years before I presented my father to the world as the killer of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short and the other LA Lone Woman Murders.
TWENTY YEARS BEFORE SHOCKING THE WORLD IN LOS ANGELES IN 1947 AS “THE BLACK DAHLIA AVENGER” DID GEORGE HODEL TERRORIZE CALIFORNIA BY COMMITTING SOME OF ITS MOST INFAMOUS CRIMES AND SERIAL MURDERS? From the Introduction: In writing George Hill Hodel: “The Early Years,” my original intent was to present all my father’s suspected crimes from the 1920s and 1930s in one edition. I have found this is simply not possible as it would require a book that would dwarf Dostoevsky’s nearly seven-hundred-page opus, Crime and Punishment. Therefore, I will present “The Early Years” in two parts, two editions. This edition is Part II and presents my investigations of his suspected crimes in the 1930s. Note that I said, “suspected crimes.” I want to be crystal clear on this point. My two-part, “Early Years” investigations are just that—a search out of for the truth. …In the presentation of these crimes from the long ago (the first one goes back one hundred years), I make no claim to a “solution.” I am not saying that my father, George Hill Hodel, committed any of these crimes, beyond a “Reasonable Doubt”—which would be the legal requirement to find him guilty. Several of these crimes, without the introduction of hard physical evidence, or DNA, are not solvable. Others have been claimed “solved” by law enforcement and are considered “Case Closed.”…To be clear. These crimes from the Twenties and Thirties did not present themselves to me post-Black Dahlia Avenger published in 2003. I was aware of them and his possible involvement in them as early as the year 2000, a full three years before I presented my father to the world as the killer of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short and the other LA Lone Woman Murders.
When veteran LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel discovered that his late father had known the victim in the infamous Black Dahlia murder case in 1947 Los Angeles, the ensuing three-year investigation became the New York Times bestseller Black Dahlia Avenger. Publication led directly to the discovery of a cache of hidden documents, covered up for decades, that confirm George Hodel had long been law enforcement's number one suspect in Elizabeth Short's grisly death. A lurid murder mystery that had endured for more than fifty years was finally solved. But for Steve Hodel, that revelation was only the beginning. With twenty-five years of experience investigating homicides as an LAPD detective, Hodel's instincts told him that a man capable of bisecting Elizabeth Short's body, arranging it in a gruesome and public tableau, and taunting the police and the public with notes and phone calls, did not begin or end his killing career with the Black Dahlia. A chance encounter in the wake of Black Dahlia Avenger's publication led Steve to consider a question as preposterous as it is compelling: Twenty years after shocking the world in Los Angeles, could Dr. George Hill Hodel have returned to terrorize California as the killer known as Zodiac?
