Former LAPD detective Steve Hodel is convinced that his late father, Dr. George Hodel, killed the Black Dahlia.
After reading his book, I am not.
Many sFormer LAPD detective Steve Hodel is convinced that his late father, Dr. George Hodel, killed the Black Dahlia.
After reading his book, I am not.
Many strong cases are built on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. The problem with this book is that most of the "evidence" Hodel presents isn't circumstantial. It's supposition and conjecture.
Circumstantial evidence is when an item belonging to a suspect is found at a crime scene, or an eyewitness can place a suspect in the vicinity of a crime scene around the time the crime took place.
In "Black Dahlia Avenger," Hodel presents such "evidence" as the fact that a black military-style watch was found at the crime scene (during a second canvassing of the site, much later than the body was first discovered). There's a picture of his father from before the murder wearing a black military-style watch, and then a picture from a few years after the murder where he's wearing a different watch.
He also isn't even able to really place his father in L.A. at the time of the murder, but uses "evidence" like the fact that his father had art objects shipped to L.A. from China, where he was living in late 1946, as evidence that his father's return to L.A. was imminent. But it's equally possible that he had things shipped to his home in L.A. and DIDN'T return home until many months later.
Hodel uses a lot of phrases like "I strongly believe," which might convince people who are unable to think critically, but it doesn't change the fact that they're merely his opinions.
Hodel writes extremely well, and the parts of this book that aren't about his theories are actually fascinating. I knew almost nothing about the Black Dahlia murder before this book, and learned a lot about the facts surrounding the case.
But when he gets into presenting his case, it's a difficult book to get through, mostly because his reasoning is so faulty and preposterous.
He first got an inkling that his father might have killed Elizabeth Short (the Black Dahlia) after finding pictures of Short in his father's personal photo album after his father's death. The problem with these pictures (which are reproduced several times in this book) is that they look absolutely nothing like Elizabeth Short. He claims that he doesn't want to get into a "pissing contest" with people who doubt that they're really pictures of her, and that he has "no doubt" that it is she. He also claims that people who don't think it's she are Dahlia theorists with their own theory to peddle.
I'm not one of those people, and the woman in the photographs looks nothing like Elizabeth Short. They both are young white women with black hair, but that's it.
He also links his father to a number of murders of other women in L.A. in the '40s (as well as a presumed accomplice, Fred Sexton), even though the M.O. in those cases doesn't seem to match the Black Dahlia in any way. There was a handsome, well-dressed, dark-haired man about 5'11" who was linked to these women, which matches his father's description, but it's not exactly a strange or unique description, is it?
Of course, none of this means that Dr. George Hodel didn't kill the Black Dahlia, but the same could be said of many people. In fairness, the picture Steve Hodel paints of his father is a grim one. He doesn't sound like a very good or decent person, but after reading this book, I wasn't convinced by any of Hodel's suppositions or theories about his father's secret career as a murderer.
Also, Hodel continually falls back on the last resort of all conspiracy theorists. Namely, that he's not able to produce definitive evidence because it's being hidden from him. He accuses the LAPD of a massive cover-up, and of protecting Dr. George Hodel and either hiding or having destroyed critical evidence.
He also wrote a follow-up book to this one in which he accuses his father of being the Zodiac killer.
This would have been a much better book if "Monster" Kody Scott had never converted to Islam and then used it as a get-out-of-jail-free card as far asThis would have been a much better book if "Monster" Kody Scott had never converted to Islam and then used it as a get-out-of-jail-free card as far as his own redemption goes.
As it is, his recollections of being a Crip and killing lots and lots of people (mostly other Crips from rival sets, but some Bloods, and a few civilians, too) are tempered by constant non-reflection, in which he states that he is now a Muslim and has made a personal and political transformation. He never really elaborates on what that means to him, however.
Scott now calls himself Sanyika Shakur and states that he has moved past the gang mentality that landed him in prison, but there's no sense in this book of what his new mentality is. In his life, he may very well have made personal changes, but there's no sense of that in this book.
If you want to read a real story of an evolving mind and a man who constantly learned and was brave enough to change his worldview based on what he saw and experienced, read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. If you want some cheap thrills about smoking motherfuckers and watching your homeboy ass-fuck a fat boy in prison after breaking his jaw, you can read this. But if that's what you want, you're better off sticking with the novels of Donald Goines. Unlike Shakur, he kept the hollow redemption to a minimum....more
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