“Two Doors Down”-New Clews in the Murder Investigation of Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short

September 23, 2025
Birch Bay, Washington

Now, let’s turn to the newly uncovered evidence two doors down…

In 2003, shortly after the publication of Black Dahlia Avenger, I was contacted by Judy May, granddaughter of LAPD Sgt. Harry Hansen—one of the two lead detectives originally assigned to the Black Dahlia case. Judy explained that, following her grandfather’s passing at age 80 on October 9, 1983 (the eve of GHH’s 76th birthday), she later found photographs and materials in his personal effects.

When we met at her Los Angeles home, Judy shared a packet that included Hansen’s LAPD Police Academy diploma, production stills  from the 1975 movie, “Who Is the Black Dahlia?” where actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr. played Harry and actress Lucie Arnaz played “the Dahlia.” (Sgt. Hansen was screen credited as a “technical advisor.”)

However, most importantly, Hansen’s private collection contained an official LAPD or LA Coroner’s photograph showing the victim lying on a coroner’s-gurney showing multiple cigarette or cigar burn marks on her back. That photograph had been kept hidden for decades as a confessor-screening tool; even modern LAPD was unaware it existed. (Despite my publication of the actual photograph in my books, the  official statement from within the LAPD and pronounced by the print and television media, even to this day, is “Elizabeth Short had no burn marks on her body.” (Don’t believe your lying eyes?)

 — Sgt. Harry Hansen’s personal effects, shared by his granddaughter Judy May (2003). Includes LAPD diploma, production stills, inter-departmental envelope, and partially visible coroner’s photograph of Elizabeth Short showing burn marks.

The New Clew

We owe this remarkable discovery, documenting the fact that the victim, Elizabeth Short,  was forced to suffer repeated cigarette burns during her hours of extended torture solely to Judy May’s  generosity in helping to bring the truth to light.  If Judy May’s gift exposed a hidden truth about the victim’s suffering, my September 2025 discovery revealed a hidden truth about the investigators themselves.

The next clew would remain secret and sit in silence in my own investigative filing cabinet for the next twenty-two years and only be discovered by me in the early days of September, 2025!

I was rescanning some of the contents of the Inter-Department envelope as well as the envelope itself.
To be clear, this envelope is only used by the LAPD to send messages and documents to and from divisions and sections within the Department.  This is not a mailing it is strictly handled by couriers who hand transport the envelopes to LAPD divisions, departments, or bureaus throughout the city. Hence the term, “Inter-Department.”

In examining the exterior of the envelope I first noticed it had a corner printing,  Form 15.60, Rev. 7/50″  This told me that the envelope was “revised in July, 1950” meaning that the contents would have had to been mailed inter-department sometime AFTER that date.

Upper left corner of LAPD envelope

The next thing that caught my eye was an address (one of many on the form) that informed me (pun intended) that the contents of the envelope were sent to a then “Capt. Stanley at 411 E. 1st Street.”  I read it again and was stunned. “411 E. 1st St.” That address had to be next to the First Street Clinic, 369 E. 1st St., previous to his leaving the country in 1950, was owned and operated by my father, Dr. George Hill Hodel.

An LAPD office, immediately next to my father’s clinic where he admitted on the surveillance wire recording in 1950 that he performed abortions, “lots of them.”  What exactly was going on?

Through archival research and mapping,  by my team assistant, Dorero, we located an LAPD office at 411 East 1st Street. This building, incredibly, was situated just two doors down from Dr. George Hill Hodel’s First Street Clinic. The discovery underscores the unusual proximity and coziness between the suspect and the investigators. It also offers new context for how comfortably George Hodel operated in his environment, shielded not only by his position but by geography itself–the suspect and investigators operating virtually side by side.

It is worth noting that the LAPD frequently housed its most sensitive units in unmarked, out-of-the-way offices. These locations were intentionally designed to be nondescript, places that could conduct the department’s most clandestine work without attracting public attention. Decades later, Detective Mike Rothmiller would recall that OCID’s headquarters in the 1970s was a “windowless, three-story grey brick building squirrelled away on the fringes of downtown.” In that same tradition, the East First Street office may well have served a similar covert purpose. What was its function prior to Captain Stanley’s assignment in 1950? Was it used by Administrative Vice, Intelligence, or some other special section? Whatever its designation, the proximity to my father’s clinic was far too close to be dismissed as mere coincidence.

“‘X’ marks the suspected location two doors down—believed to have been LAPD’s covert office.
Unmarked, hidden in plain sight, known only to insiders.”

Sketch artwork created in collaboration with Sketch showing Dr. George Hodel’s First Street Clinic at 369 E. 1st Street and the LAPD office at 411 E. 1st Street — “two doors down.” The LAPD often placed its most sensitive divisions in nondescript, hidden locations. This East First Street office may well have been one of them, sitting almost invisibly beside the clinic.
Dorero, my AI research assistant.

In checking the newspapers from that period we learn that Captain Charles Stanley was assigned to Personnel Division in July 1949. (SKH Note- It has been said and known within the LAPD that “Captain of Personnel” was regarded  as perhaps the most powerful position in the LAPD hierarchy–the one who knew  where all the skeletons were buried.) Also, July, 1949, happened to be the exact time that George Hodel was taken in and questioned by LAPD as a suspect in the  LA Lone Woman Murder of Louise Springer.

As documented in BDA III, we know he was taken in after being identified by LAPD paid undercover operative Glenn Martin, an acquaintance of George Hodel  who identified him to LAPD as the killer of Louise Springer and Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short.  (Martin in his later “In Case of Death Letter” written in secret in October, 1949, and only discovered by his granddaughter, Sandi Nichols, in 2019,  some sixty-nine-years later and given to me. In that three-page letter he writes that “GH was let go from the Springer/Short murder investigations because “the investigators became GH’s friends so the matter dropped.” (“the matter” being the vicious kidnap sexual assault murder of two young women, both of whom George Hodel knew and was “Avenging.”)

The evidence now points to a reality that is as remarkable as it is disturbing. George Hodel’s First Street Clinic was not tucked away in obscurity but stood virtually side-by-side with an LAPD office at 411 East 1st Street. This was no mere coincidence of geography. This confirms the literal closeness between suspect and investigators — a proximity that could only have furthered the culture of payoffs and protection that permeated Los Angeles in the 1940s.

Below is a scanned extract from the actual LADA Bugging transcripts Feb/March 1950

Sketch artwork created in collaboration with Dorero, my AI research assistant.

For now, I will leave the LAPD Inter-Department envelope sealed. Like Hollywood’s famous refrain, “The Envelope, Please,” its true significance–what it contained, and what it reveals about who knew what, and when-wil be unveiled in Blog Part III.