THE man who believes his father is the infamous Zodiac killer and Black Dahlia murderer says he has uncovered 32 “crime signatures” that prove the crimes were committed by the same person.
Retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel believes the macabre similarities between the murders demonstrate they were committed by his father, Dr George Hodel – not Arthur Leigh Allen, who is the subject of a new Netflix documentary.
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This Is The Zodiac Speaking explores the theory that former school teacher Allen committed the eight murders in the Bay Area, California, in the 1960s before taunting local police and newspapers with encoded letters.
But Steve Hodel, who has published several books about his father’s alleged crimes, including the Black Dahlia Avenger and Most Evil I and II, says he gathered enough evidence in his 25-year-long investigation to prove that his dad was responsible for the unsolved murders.
The veteran homicide detective had no suspicion his father could have been a killer until after his death in 1999, age 91, when his half-sister mentioned that he had been a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder.
The Black Dahlia was a famous Los Angeles unsolved case in which a 22-year-old woman named Elizabeth Short was murdered, her body bisected and mutilated, and her face cut from ear to ear in 1947.
Read more on the Zodiac killer
Steve set out to investigate the murder initially to clear his dad of any connections – and was shocked when evidence – such as handwriting similarities, knowledge of complex surgical procedures, and links to the victim – seemed to point to his sister being right.
After publishing his first book, Steve discovered hidden evidence at the Los Angeles district attorney’s archives that proved his father was one of the main suspects in the murder and how officers had even bugged his home as they tried to gather evidence against him.
Over the years, he began to discover his father’s links to other murders – including the Zodiac killings – and now believes his dad was one of the worst serial killers the world has ever seen – responsible for 50 crimes in a 50-year period.
He believes his father killed a total of 16 women – including Short – between 1943 and 1950 as the “Black Dahlia Avenger” killer before having a 16-year gap and reinventing himself as the Zodiac between 1966 and 1969.
He has collected pages of evidence linking his dad to the crimes, including handwriting similarities, links to the surrealist art world his father loved, and the striking physical similarity between his dad and police sketches of the Zodiac killer.
“The final and probably the strongest piece of evidence I have are the crime signatures,” Steve said.
“Normally when you’re looking at unsolved cases, especially a serial killer, if you get two, or three or four crime signatures that are similar – you’re going to take a hard look at it.
“I’ve put together 32 prime signatures comparing black Dahlia to Zodiac.
“While a few of these MO crime signature patterns, if isolated, could be considered generic, in combination, they become exceedingly rare.
“In my twenty-four years with the LAPD, I investigated more than 300 separate homicides.
“None of the murders included an MO where the suspect mailed in a taunting note to the press or police or sent threats to the victim’s parents.
“In fact, I am unable to find a single modern-day serial killer prior to Zodiac’s 1966 Riverside killing who has used the specific MO of taunting the police and press with letters containing obvious misspellings with only one exception – Dr. George Hill Hodel, in the 1940s, calling himself the ‘Black Dahlia Avenger.’
“Prior to those crimes, we have to go back another 60 years to 1888 and London’s Jack-the-Ripper.”
Steve said his dad was a “prolific serial killer” who made “obscure references to art, culture and film” throughout his murders and proceeding letter-writing campaigns – and saw “murder as a fine art.”
The list of “crime signatures” includes how in both the Black Dahlia murders and the Zodiac killings, the murderer masterminded his own PR campaign – sending taunting letters and even coming up with his own “brand” name: “Black Dahlia Avenger” and “Zodiac” – and used the press to try and terrorize the public.
List of Black Dahlia and Zodac “crime signatures”
Steve Hodel has compiled an extensive list of unique crime similarities and MOs he believes were used by his father as the Black Dahlia Avenger and the Zodiac including:
- Created his own marketing/public relations campaign and providing press with a “pseudonym” for them to use in headlining his crimes (“Black Dahlia Avenger” and “Zodiac.”)
- Contacted and taunted press and police by phone after crimes
- Used press as his instrument to terrorize public promising:
“There will be more” - Drew crude picture of knife dripping blood and
mailed the drawing to press - Brought pre-cut lengths of clothesline and used them to
bind and tie his victims during crimes - Mailed more than a dozen notes and sent to police
and press feigning illiteracy, using misspelled words and
disguised his handwriting - Mailed “cut-and-paste” and typewritten notes to press and police
- Placed excessive postage and multiple stamps on the
taunting notes he mailed to press/police - Packaged and mailed personal items belonging to his victims to the press to prove he was the killer
- Included puns and word games in his mailings
- Killer continued to send in mailings to press and police
months and years after original crimes - Demanded constant media publicity and front-page coverage under threat of additional killings
- Several victims stabbed with a long-bladed jungle
or bayonet-style knives - Wrote taunting message at scene either on bedroom wall, a nearby telephone post, a door panel of victim’s vehicle,
or on victim’s body - Left man’s white handkerchief either at scene near body,
or used it to wipe away his fingerprints from inside victim’s
vehicle or from knife left at crime-scene. - Brutal assault and overkill, particularly savage with
his female victims - Telephoned and or sent sadistic note to victim’s parents after
brutal murder of their daughter
The murderer in both killing sprees used pre-cut lengths of clothes line to tie up victims, both mailed personal items belonging to the victim to press to prove he was the killer, both used knives and guns and were particularly savage with females.
Taunting messages were also left at the scenes of both sets of crimes for example, in the 1947 murder of Jean French, the words “F**k you B.D.” were written on her torso in lipstick, while in the 1969 Zodiac attack on two college students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard, he scrawled the dates of his other attacks on the victims’ car door.
In a chilling twist, Steve has compared the lettering used on French’s body and matched it almost exactly to a letter he received from his father, signed “DAD.”
The taunting letters sent in both sets of crimes contained many similarities – they often used disguised handwritten, cut-and-paste typed letters and word games and puns.
Both the Zodiac and the Black Dahlia killers even sent a crude drawing of a knife dripping blood to newspapers – which Steve believes was inspired by historical London serial killer Jack The Ripper.
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Steve added: “One new discovery that is specific to both Avenger and Zodiac MOs, which has gone unrecognized by me until only recently, is the fact that both used the same unique signatory in one of their mailed taunts to the press – signing it, ‘a friend’.
“Both Avenger and Zodiac signed it using a small letter ‘a’.
“One letter was mailed to newspaper editor by Black Dahlia Avenger” in 1947 and one in 1974 by Zodiac.
“The Zodiac’s letter was mailed by the suspect to the press on February 14, 1974, which was the 26th-anniversary date of the Black Dahlia Avenger’s murder of his Los Angeles victim, Gladys Kern, slain by him on February 14, 1948.”
Steve also believes his dad left clues at the scenes to link all his crimes – as part of a grotesque game.
He linked his dad to the murder of a six-year-old girl in Chicago in 1946, called Suzanne Degnan.
Short’s body was then posed near Degnan St, and French’s body was posed off a street near Mountain View – which is where Short was eventually buried.
Steve also linked his father to an unsolved murder of a woman in Manila, the Philippines, which dates back to the time his father lived in the country.
Shockingly, the female in Manila had been bisected and posed on a street called Zodiac.
“This is his MO. He poses body parts; he leaves clues,” Steve said.
Who was Dr George Hodel?
George Hodel led a colorful and mysterious life
George Hodel was born in Downtown Los Angeles on 10 October 1907 to Russian Jewish parents.
He was an extremely gifted musical prodigy and gave his own piano concerts in Los Angeles at age seven or eight.
Hodel had an IQ of 186 – one point above Einstein – and graduated high school aged 14, before enrolling at Cal Tech University.
He was extremely sexually promiscuous and had an affair with his professor’s wife. After getting her pregnant, he was asked to leave Cal Tech.
At age 17, he became a taxi driver before becoming a journalist in Los Angeles.
He began dating and hanging around with notable people in Hollywood, including film director John Huston.
Hodel then enrolled at Berkeley University in San Francisco, studying pre-med, and took a job at the San Francisco Chronicle as a columnist, then studied for his medical degree at UCSF.
He graduated as a doctor in 1936 and moved to work in logging camps in Arizona and New Mexico before moving back to Los Angeles in 1938.
He became the head of LA’s venereal disease board, married Huston’s ex-wife Dorothy, and bought the famous Sowden House in LA, where he had three children, including Steve.
Hodel became involved in the darker side of the Surrealist art scene and enjoyed partying and womanizing with famous Hollywood pals. He was living in Los Angeles at the time of Elizabeth Short’s murder in 1947.
Altogether he was married four times and fathered 11 children.
In 1949, he was arrested and accused of incest with his 14-year-old daughter Tamar. He was ultimately acquitted at trial, even though there were three adult witnesses. Steve later discovered evidence of corruption and payments to his officials during the trial after his father’s death.
In 1950, Hodel moved to Hawaii, where he married a Filipino woman, became a psychiatrist, and lectured on abnormal criminal behavior.
He later moved to Manila, the Phillippines, and started working in market research, where he lived for around 30 years, making frequent trips back to the US – including between 1966 and 1969 – the timeline of the Zodiac killings.
Hodel married again and moved back to San Francisco in 1990 to a penthouse on the 39th floor, where he died in 1999 at age 91.
After his father’s death, Steve discovered secret DA tapes that showed Hodel was a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder, but charges were never filed.
In another bizarre twist, George Hodel’s logo for the company he set up in later life – also matched the circle and cross symbol that the Zodiac used on his letters.
Steve’s only hope now to prove his theories is to compare his father’s DNA with any DNA found at the various crime scenes.
He has obtained DNA from letters his father sent him and some of his belongings and has even published the profile in his book, inviting law enforcement agencies.
Steve has also offered to present his research to the police departments involved, but so far, none has taken him up on his offer.
Nevertheless, he believes he has proven his dad was responsible for the Zodiac and Black Dahlia murders “beyond reasonable doubt.”
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