All right, so I might have said on Friday that I was going to let it rest. But now I can see that's impossible. Once you step inside the cloud of mystery surrounding the Black Dahlia murder, there's no way out.
Moviemakers, amateur snoops, retired cops and a gaggle of others got in touch with me to weigh in on the most notorious unsolved murder in Los Angeles history. I began tracking new leads on the 1947 case even as retired LAPD homicide cop Steve Hodel's new book hit the shelves, fingering his father as a serial killer whose victims included the Black Dahlia -- Elizabeth Short.
I've now been told that Los Angeles police are attempting to match prints of Hodel's father, Dr. George Hodel, to material still on file from the 56-year-old case. Short, 22, was sliced in two, drained of blood, and left in a vacant lot in Leimert Park.
If you believe Steve Hodel's "Black Dahlia Avenger," his father, a trained surgeon, romanced Short and then killed her in a jealous rage because she dated other men.
When I read the book I thought, OK, George Hodel could have killed her. But his son, a highly regarded former cop who says he cleared 80% of his 300 murder investigations for the LAPD, hadn't proved it.
But while digging through a 50-year-old grand jury file neither Hodel nor any other reporter had seen, I saw a transcript from the bugging of Dr. Hodel's house in early 1950. At one point, Dr. Hodel said to an unidentified visitor:
"Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They couldn't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary because she's dead."
It's possible Dr. Hodel knew his house was bugged, and he was taunting cops.
"Or," said Steve Hodel, offering another theory, "I'm right."
But who was the secretary? And who was the woman whose screams were recorded on the transcript after Dr. Hodel made that remark?
I can't explain the screams just yet. But as for the secretary, I've learned that the LAPD investigated a report that George Hodel might have poisoned a secretary who was writing about him in her diary. The secretary, whose name my source refused to divulge, died late in 1947 of an apparent poisoning, several months after the Black Dahlia murder.
According to my contact, an anonymous caller told police "Dr. Hodel was involved in a noted case in 1947 and had poisoned his secretary shortly thereafter because she knew of the crime." The caller claimed Hodel had buried something in the yard of his Los Feliz home.
