A Post Humus Thank You to George Parkington – A Star Witness Who Came Forward with Important Confirmations in Identifying Dr. George Hodel as the “Black Dahlia Avenger”

July 21, 2022
Birch Bay, Washington

I received the below email from Steven Skrabak informing me of the passing of George Parkington, former partner of Mattie (Mady) Comfort. Mady was a star witness in the Black Dahlia investigation and former 1940s paramour of both George and Dorothy Hodel.

It was Parkinton who first revealed to me Mady’s involvement with my parents and her knowledge that George Hodel had murdered Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short as documented in the LADA Secret Hodel Black Dahlia Files.

Steve Skrabak’s email of 7/19/22:

Late Whittier woman connected to Black Dahlia murder

Here’s a summary of Parkington’s role in the unfolding of Mady’s secrets as presented in BDA II in 2014.

Excerpt from Black Dahlia Avenger II
Chapter 1- Madi Comfort, Duke Ellington’s Original “Satin Doll”: (2014) Pages 17-19
…

Upon reading the Jemison/Dorothy Hodel transcript for the first
time, I knew my mother was lying and stonewalling. I knew that
Mattie Comfort was my mother’s close friend. One night in the 1970s,
my mother called to ask if I could give her a ride out to the Sunset
Strip, where she wanted to attend a party being thrown by some
friends. So I accompanied her to an apartment house. At the door,
Mother briefly introduced me to a beautiful woman, simply saying,
“Steven, this is Mattie, a good friend from the old days. Mattie, meet
Steven.” The beautiful “Satin Doll” smiled at me. We shook hands, and
I left.
But Mattie Comfort’s face is not a face one forgets.

THE WHITTIER MEETING

I asked Lynelle Lujan and Myra Hilliard to contact Madi’s
boyfriend, “George” to see if he was available to meet with us at their
BLACK DAHLIA AVENGER II|18
office at the Whittier Historical Museum on September 11 2010 at 10
a.m. He was.
“George” is George Parkington, a gentle, intelligent carpenter
with the look and manner of an artist.
George had met Madi in1997. The two of them became very close
and spent the last six years together before her death in 2003.
As the four of us sat down to talk, George spoke first:
I want to say something to you right away. When your book came
out, there was a big article and photos of you in People Magazine.
Madi always read People. And as soon as she read the piece, she
called me. She was so excited. I couldn’t believe it. Madi said,
“George, you’ve got to come home right now.” I drove home
immediately, and she was ecstatic…thrilled because this [the Black
Dahlia connection] was a secret she’d always held inside her. And
now it was in the open.
In the week after my book published, People Magazine
interviewed me and on June 2, 2003, ran a feature story complete
with photos. It was entitled, “Accusing His Father: An ex-L.A. cop
uncovers a painful answer to the notorious 1947 Black Dahlia
slaying.” Madi Comfort never got to read my book as she died from a
sudden heart attack eighteen days later, on June 20, 2003.

My first question to George was the obvious one. “Did Madi ever
discuss with you what she knew about the Black Dahlia murder? Did
she ever provide any specifics?”
George responded:
Here’s what I will tell you. Madi told me that she and everybody
else were sure that it was your father that killed the Black Dahlia.
They had no doubt. She told me, “We all knew that he had done it.”
Now, who the “we” was I’m not sure, but there are some people still
around from way back then. I’ll try and dig on that a little bit and
see if there is someone you can speak with. Most of the people I
know were more like from the fifties, so I’m not sure there is
anybody I can locate from that exact era.
As we listened to George share his memories of Madi, it was
obvious that the man had been deeply devoted to her. When he spoke
her name, his words were filled with a deep love and a great sense of
loss.
A half-hour into our talk, George reached into his briefcase and
removed a stack of papers. Handing them to me he explained:
Madi has written a book. It’s in rough form and unpublished and
runs about twelve hundred pages. It’s her autobiography. The title
is Madi Comfort: The Original Satin Doll. I think Madi started
writing it sometime in the seventies or maybe later. In it, she
mentions and writes about both your father and mother. What
Madi writes about them is explicit, but I thought you would want to
have everything about them. There may be other references
because her writings are scattered, and she jumps back and forth in
time. But, for now, I wanted you to have these pages that talk about
your parents.
I reached for the papers and asked, “Had Madi mentioned
Elizabeth Short in her book?”
George replied:
I don’t think so. I don’t think, even all of these years later, that she
wrote about that. That is why she was so excited when your book
came out. My sense of it was that she was still protecting people she
cared about even though they were dead. She would have been like
your mother. She would have protected anybody she cared about.
She would have protected even somebody that she didn’t care
about.
Our meeting lasted nearly two hours. It ended with a handshake
and the assurance that the four of us would keep in touch. George and
I exchanged phone numbers with the hope and promise to together try
and search deeper into the mystery of Madi and how she was further
connected to my father, Dr. George Hill Hodel, now known and
identified as the “Black Dahlia Avenger.”

THANK YOU GEORGE PARKINGTON. Thank you for your service to the truth and may you truly Rest In Peace knowing you provided a large missing piece to the mystery of who killed Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short.

LADA Hodel Black Dahlia File showing altered witness statement.
(Likely altered years later?) Mattie center photo from the classic noir film, “Kiss Me Deadly” where she had a bit part as a Jazz Singer in a LADT bar. The photo on right shows her on the cover of Ebony Magazine.

Additional clip scene from Mickey Spillane’s, “Kiss Me Deadly”(1955) actor Ralph Meeker as MikeHammer seen at the bar with jazz singer Mattie Comfort.