Cathi Unsworth, “Mistress of Crime” Writes an Unsworthy Introduction to Author Brian Robb’s, “Black Dahlia: the art of killing”-World Crime Magazine

July 6, 2025
Birch Bay, Washington

This is a follow-up, Part II, to the earlier posted blog, “ForteanTimes, Weird Crime Magazine, Black Dahlia: the art of killing.” 

…”But it was retired LA cop Steve Hodel’s 2004 Black Dahlia Avenger that convinced everyone
from James Ellroy to the LAPD’s former head of detectives*, James McMurray, that his father,
also called George-, a celebrity doctor and friend of Surrealist artist Man Ray, was their man.”
At least, until he began to also connect his bad dad to Zodiac and many other unsolved murders.” (Emphasis mine).

*Chief McMurray was not “former head” he was the then the active head and Chief of LAPD’s Detectives Division.

and this from “The Mistress of Crime’s Post Mortem”

I am not surprised that “The Mistress of Crime” made such an uninformed comment.

Clearly she has not taken the time to actually read my investigations as to “WHY I ACTUALLY BEGAN TO CONNECT MY BAD DAD TO ZODIAC AND OTHER MURDERS.”

No. Obviously Ms. Unsworth, simply just considered it unsworthy, and that it was just “too much of a stretch” and dismissed it out of hand.  No need to inform herself of the facts. No need to actually read the two Most Evil books.

Well, for her and others edification, here are just a few of the WHYS I WENT THERE.

1. In Black Dahlia Avenger I established that George Hill Hodel at age 39 was a serial killer whose L.A. Lone Woman Murder crimes (roughly 12) in that investigation spanned the years from 1943-1950, after which he fled Los Angeles to avoid arrest.

2. As any experienced homicide detective would do, I asked myself the obvious question. Did a serial killer that advanced simply wake up one morning and decide, “I think I will now become a serial killer.” I knew the answer–NO. There had to have been crimes BEFORE and likely would (absent his being arrested) be crimes AFTER. (During my four years of investigating his possible criminal activity I had become aware of numerous likely “before” murders (as later presented in “The Early Years” kidnap/murders in two volumes, 1920s and 1930s), but in writing BDA I simply presented the Los Angeles area murders, many that had already been suspected as linked to the same suspect in the LAPD and DA’s original 1949-1950 investigations.

3. The Los Angeles Secret Hodel/Black DahliaFiles then led me to the Chicago “Lipstick Murders” as those police files contained and documented the fact that “George Hodel had known and dated victim Elizabeth Short and indicated in them that  she had gone to Chicago to investigate the Chicago Lipstick Murders.” That was the catalyst of why I investigated those three crimes, committed just a year before the Black Dahlia murder, and ultimately made the linkage showing GHH to be the “Chicago Lipstick Killer.”

4. The post-Black Dahlia 1967 unsolved cold case murder of Lucila Lalu in Manila, just a mile from George Hodel’s private residence, was a no brainer. According to the Manila coroner, her body was “bisected in half by a skilled surgeon performing a hemicorporectomy” (dividing the body between the 2nd and 3rd lumbar vertebrae) as had been done on both the Chicago Lipstick victim, little eight-year-old, Suzanne Degnan (1946) and on Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short (1947). As he had done with Short, he posed Lucila Lalu’s body on a vacant lot off “Zodiac Street.”

5. I knew going in, that his posing bodies off streets names as “taunting clews” was George Hodel’s very specific and very unusual crime signature M.O.I knew going in he had posed the Chicago Lipstick victim Suzanne Degnan’s body off “Hollywood Ave.”-the Hollywood physician’s clew. I knew that posing Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short’s body off (actually on) a street named Degnan was a clew to his Chicago Lipstick murder. I knew his posing of Jeanne French, the “Red Lipstick Murder’s” body off Mountain View St., was a clew to where the Black Dahlia was buried at Mountain View Cemetery, just a week prior to his French murder.

So, how could I ignore the fact that in Manila, in 1967, in comitting “The Jigsaw Murder” he posed victim Lucila Lalu’s body off a street named “Zodiac” just a year before those crimes began in San Francisco.  I had to at the very least “take a look.”Initially, I said, “Zodiac? No way. He’s was much too old. But, in researching the Zodiac crimes I first learned that the best witness, SFPD officer Fouke and his partner, officer Zelm’s had actually stopped and talked to the suspect who was leaving the crime scene after shooting cabdriver, Paul Stine and unknowingly “let him go.” Fouke’s description on the composite sketch made Zodiac much older, “possibly late 40s.” (GHH while 60, could easily pass for late forties in 1969) This was followed by my discovery of two later artist composite sketches that were actually picture perfect to Dr. George Hill Hodel as he appeared in 1969. See below:

1974 photo of George Hill Hodel (must “youthen” him six years)

In working LAPD Hollywood Cold Cases (as a Detective III supervisor, I personally investigated over three hundred murders during my seventeen years at Hollywood Division) if my partner and I had three or four Crime Signatures/M.O.’s that matched another unsolved we would think “possibly related, possibly same suspect” and we would take a look to see if they might be connected.  I did the same in regards to the Zodiac case as I would working Hollywood Homicide. Only in this case I didn’t find just three or four-I FOUND OVER THIRTY (30) IDENTICAL CRIME SIGNATURES BETWEEN ZODIAC AND BLACK DAHLIA AVENGER.  Most of them being highly unusual in nature and as nearly as distinctive as  fingerprints.

This is WHY I began my investigation suspecting that George Hodel, naming himself “Black Dahlia Avenger” in the 1940s, had reinvented and named himself “Zodiac” in the 1960s.

Take a look for yourself. (Nine minute viedo listing thirty separate but identical crime signatures of “Avenger” to “Zodiac.”

Think of a serial killer as advanced as Dr. George Hill Hodel as if he were a young man-eating tiger in the jungles of India or Bangladesh.
He learns to stalk his prey and kill as a young tiger.  Once he has the taste he only stops killing if he is captured, killed, or dies of old age.
George Hodel started very young, at age fourteen and never stopped killing and took his life (Seconal overdose) at the advanced age of ninety-one.
By my count, possibly fifty murders in fifty-years.

So, one who is informed can see the WHY, the actual reasons I decided to take a look at my father, George Hill Hodel as possibly reinventing himself as Zodiac in 1968.
In publishing my first book, Most Evil, I wasn’t totally convinced and left it with “Let’s do DNA and rule him in or out as Zodiac.”

Then with the new linkage, and the cracking of the Zodiac cipher by Frenchman and high-school teacher, Yves Person where GHH actually signed his name HODEL, along with the other investigative linkage as presented in Most Evil II, I said, “Yes, enough here to convict, ‘Beyond a Reasonable Doubt’ and published Most Evil II.

Detective III Steve Hodel, #11394, LAPD Hollywood Homicide Division (ret.)