Author/Journalist Sheila Weller's "SINS OF THE FATHER" article published in DUJOUR Magazine
May 30, 2015
Los Angeles, California
JUNE, 2015
“Solving Hollywood’s Greatest Mystery”
Author/Journalist Sheila Weller’s excellent article, THE SINS OF THE FATHER, appeared today in the, June, 2015 edition of DUJOUR MAGAZINE.
The article’s cover page (shown above) contains a photo of my half-sister Tamar Hodel and reads:
THE SINS OF THE FATHER
THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER HORRIFIED HOLLYWOOD AND NEVER LOST ITS GRIP ON OUR IMAGINATION. HERE, THE STORY OF THE SUSPECT WHO GOT AWAY, THE POLICEMAN SON WHO PROVED HIS GUILT AND THE HIDDEN LEGACY OF HIS DAUGHTER, THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
WRITTEN BY SHEILA WELLER
To read complete article click below.
Dujour Mag article June 2015 (1)
Ms. Weller’s, excellent article in Dujour Magazine primarily focuses on the personal devastation of a family, the root cause of which was the father’s incest and sexual molestation of his 11-year-old daughter.
I found Sheila Weller’s piece well balanced and that it gave a fair and even-handed look at what was a very dysfunctional family. The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.
I was especially pleased to see how she did not sugar-coat what is most common in generational incest. That being that the victim, having been sexualized by the parent, then frequently inflicts the same or similar crimes upon their own children. (I strongly believe that our father, George Hill Hodel, was also a victim of incest, either from his mother, Esther, or another close family member.)
Many thanks to Sheila Weller for helping to “tell the story” and underscoring just how historically important it is to the public in general and particularly to us hardcore–Angelenos.
(SKH Note- Sheila Weller grew-up in Hollywood and her uncle was the owner of the famous Hollywood Strip restaurant, CIRO’s. She wrote an excellent book, a family memoir, telling that story, Dancing at Ciro’s. Recommended reading.
Sheila Weller is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning magazine journalist. She is the author of five previous books, most recently her 2003 family memoir, Dancing at Ciro’s, which The Washington Post called “a substantial contribution to American social history.” She is the senior contributing editor at Glamour, a contributor to Vanity Fair, and a former contributing editor of New York.
Author Sheila Weller’s NYT Bestseller
GIRLS LIKE US: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation
Let me offer my condolences for Tamar’s need for hospice care.
This article contributes to my belief that your investigation will one day be officially cleared.
Hi John: Thanks for the condolences for Tamar. Stay tuned, new information soon to release. Best, Steve
Hello Steve!
Just finished your amazing book BDA, and it is without a doubt a brilliantly written, fascinating, yet harrowing tale. I have the utmost admiration for you and your siblings for bravely coming forth with the ugliest family tale ever to be told. You have turned over a boulder to reveal some ugly insects and worms crawling below the surface that needed exposure, the sparkly city of LA with it’s many quiet and restless tombs. God only knows what still goes on in those Hollywood Hills to this day. I wish we could stop police corruption. That was the most disturbing part of all.
Hi Kathryn: Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated. Yes, LA/Hollywood was much darker than any NOIR pictured it. (Literally.)
Lot more linkage in BDA II and MOST EVIL and stay tuned, new information out soon. Best Regards, Steve
God Bless you honey, you’ve lived through hell itself and have come back out of the fire. You are a true PHOENIX!
Kathryn M: Thanks again. Few feathers singed, but otherwise intact. Steve
I have profound sympathy for Tamar, and hope that she has truly found peace in her last days. It is sad to consider what this beautiful, and highly talented and artistic woman might have done and become were it not for the damage done her, and her daughters as well, by her father.
I have always loved certain Surrealist artists such as Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst, but I will never see the movement the same way after learning of Man Ray’s connection with Short’s murder, his friendship with George Hodel, or his participation in the depraved debauchery that took place in that house, and the abuse of Tamar. I have to believe that he and John Huston at least suspected Hodel of the murder, and probably knew, yet said nothing. So many prominent people protected and enabled this insane psychopath, that you have to believe that there are many victims we will never suspect. How horrible it must have been for the dependent women in that household- my condolences also to the late Dorothy Huston Hodel. She must have lived in terror at all times.
Laura:
Thank you for your kind words to all the family victims.
Yes, no question that John and Man Ray and Juliet and many other “insiders” KNEW after the fact and kept it secret. In a very real sense that does make them “accessories after the fact.”
In my follow-up books, MOST EVIL and Black Dahlia Avenger II, we learn many more facts and linkage to the Dahlia and other 1940s “Lone Woman Murders.”
Then, the crimes in the Sixties where dad “reinvents” himself as Zodiac in the San Francisco Bay Area and commits the Manila murder of Lucila Lalu and after surgical bisecting her body again, poses her in public view just a mile from his Manila residence.
This all wrapped around his own personal insanity with the signature, “Murder as a Fine Art.”
In BDA II I have reproduced the Huston Letters where my mother writes to John telling him of her fear and terror and pleading for him to help her “get her and the children out of the house.” Very sad and very revealing of as you say, her “living terror.”
Again, my thanks and stay tuned. More to come soon.
Regards,
Steve Hodel
Los Angeles
Last of all, I have to hand it to you and your late brother for growing up into such sane, compassionate, intelligent, and functional men in such a household, and I have to hand your mom Dorero many accolades for sheltering you two so effectively from the depravity of your dad and his best buds, that you two grew up having no idea what he was really like; and I believe she deserves a medal for molding you into the fine men that you became in spite of her own struggles, in spite her many personal difficulties (which were a result of living with an insane depraved psychopath and living with the knowledge of his crimes), and the poverty that was your lot when Hodel fled and left you all in destitution.
Hello Steve,
Just finished article “The Sins of the Father” and was tearful as I read the last paragraph about Tamar and her daughters and grandchildren. The assaults on Tamar and her children by George Hodel were beyond heinous! The tears I had though were those of happiness as Tamar, along with your tremendous help, surmounted huge obstacles to ‘break the chain” for her children and grandchildren. I was saddened to see that she is in hospice but I am sure she is surrounded by much love and peace from all her family including you. If possible, I hope she can read this. Recently I read an autobiography similar to yours and Tamar’s lives….a sad and rather brutal account of the facade promoted in the movie “Your, Mine and Ours” starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda…..an entirely false rendition of a pretty horrible situation! You might be interested in reading it: “True North” by Thomas North. Another California native, living in Carmel….you may even know him as he is very proactive in prevention of child abuse. As I too face the “sunset years” watching Jerry Brown (my sandbox playmate in the Marina) struggle w/drought, Humboldt Co. problems etc I find myself looking back on my youth and young adulthood in CA….SF, the Bay Area, LA and San Diego vacations etc! It was glorious in many ways, but to quote Maureen Reagan many years ago: “California is really a state of mind!” So true, so true. God bless you and your family, Steve! Pat O’Neill
Hi Pat: Thanks for the kind words to my family.
Not familiar with either the “Your, Mine and Ours” story or “True North”. Have to check them out.
Stay tuned, more develops just around the corner. Best Regards, Steve