Coast to Coast AM Live Radio Interview Sunday SEPTEMBER 29, 2019: Award Winning Journalist George Knapp and Steve Hodel Dicuss “Black Dahlia Investigation 2019”

3 Comments

1. Dan on October 1, 2019 at 12:31 pm

   Hi Steve, I listened to part of your Coast2Coast interview and have been doing nothing but reading about all things Black Dahlia and Zodiac since. As the saying goes ‘if this was a movie nobody would believe it’. Your father may be the most interesting devious serial killer in American history, the LA District Attorney and LAPD should put together all the evidence for the public and officially close the case naming GHH as the murderer. There is blood on their hands, he should have been charged in 1950, the corruption is sickening – the letter from the informant whose granddaughter discovered the letter that was to be opened only in the event your father or an accomplice killed his teenage daughters is chilling, that he knew his daughters were at risk and did or said nothing with the damning information he had is mind boggling. No doubt he feared for his own life but still it was cowardly.

   I have some questions, your father was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who must have emigrated in the late 19th century, it sounded like your father was brought up well to do, what did his father do for a living?

   When your father left the States in 1950 he left no letters for your mother and you and your brothers? Just disappeared? What happened to the famous house you lived in? It sounds like your mother was left nothing to support her kids with? He emptied the bank accounts she was aware of?
   How long was it from 1950 until you heard from him?

   What is the evidence you have that makes you think he made trips in and out of San Francisco during the Zodiac killing era? The Zodiac murders don’t seem to match the ‘surreal art’ style of his diabolical work of the 1940s.

   When George Hodel died did he leave much of an estate? At one time he was a wealthy man.

   And finally do you have any thoughts or answers to the question of what made your father into an evil monster? He truly seems like a Jekyll and Hyde personality.

   I know there have been movies made about the Black Dahlia murder and a recent series about one of your tragic half sisters but your story has to be made into a movie – a retired homicide detective hunting down the ghost of his serial killer father relentlessly, simply amazing.

   Oh, was the John Huston character in Chinatown based on your father’s incestuous ways? Were you able to talk to any of the people who were his close friends and contemporaries during the 40’s? Were they aware of his sexual abuse of his daughters?

   I’m going to buy your books, will read the latest first.

   Thanks and you’re doing the right thing, there is no time limit on justice though the LAPD seems to think otherwise.

   – Dan G

   Reply
   • Steve Hodel on October 1, 2019 at 1:21 pm

     Dan G:

     Thanks for the kind words. Much appreciated.
     As to your questions:

     1. His father, my grandfather was an Insurance Salesman/Agent in downtown Los Angeles as well as a realtor who bought and sold land in the LA area during the Teens and Twenties.

     2. Dad sold the Sowden House to pay off his high priced lawyer, Jerry Giesler and likely had little leftover when he fled to Hawaii. Divorced from my mother in 1945 he was ordered by the court to pay $200 mo for her/our support, but best I can tell the money never really came to her.

     3. Growing up with our mother in the Fifties we would see our father on occasion when he “passed through town” on infrequent trips to the U.S. Short visits of a few hours through the years. Then when I joined the Navy at seventeen, Fate chose to send me to a billet in Subic Bay, Philippines, so I saw my dad regularly for the two years I was stationed in the P.I. Detailed in BDA.

     4. I will let you read Most Evil and Most Evil II for the Zodiac linkage. In the first book, I only say, “Maybe he was Zodiac? Let’s do DNA” In the followup book, based on all the new linkage, I say “He was Zodiac” but still let’s do the DNA.” To date, they have no confirmed Zodiac DNA to compare.

     5. Do his “estate” was fairly modest at his death. He generally spent what he earned and of course his income dropped drastically after he entered his Eighties. He died at age 91.

     6. I examine many of the “triggers” of WHY in my books. They are rather complex and came together as a perfect storm in a very complex and troubled mind. I see the WHY as part nature and part nurture. Again, best to read the books for a better understanding.

     Here is the suggested reading order and editions FYI:

     BDA (Skyhorse 2015); Most Evil (Dutton 2009); BDA II (Thoughtprint Press 2014); Most Evil II (RareBird Books 2015); BDA III (RareBird Books 2018) and In The Mesquite (Thoughtprint Press 2019)

     Reply
2. Barry Guerrero on October 3, 2019 at 2:26 pm

   That order worked for me (the books). I’m also quite convinced that GHH is the best candidate for Zodiac.. If so, he became even more cunning and devious. As you like to say, Steve, he reinvented himself.

   Reply