I offer these numbers not to belittle LAPD and LASD homicide detectives but rather to make a point. This rash of crimes was not solved because they were most likely committed by the same suspects). These attacks and murders were not committed by eleven different sadistic rapists all operating in the same locale. No, it is my sad but firm belief that most of these crimes were committed by George Hodel and Fred Sexton, operating sometimes together, sometimes alone. That is why LAPD and LASD didn't clear any of the crimes. Had they been committed by different suspects, statistically at least half of the crimes would have been solved.
For me, as a professional in law enforcement, the most painful reality of all is knowing that the blood of these many victims is on the hands of those officers and commanders within the Los Angeles Police Department who initiated, then perpetuated, the cover-up. Perhaps earlier crimes as well, but certainly at a minimum all the crimes committed and all the lives taken after January 21,1947, the date George Hodel's photograph was positively identified by the Johnsons at their East Washington Boulevard Hotel, can be attributed to those officers who obstructed justice and aided and abetted in the cover-up.
*We recall Tamar's reporting that it was on just such a trip eleven years after this murder (1969) that he drugged and took salacious pictures of his thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Fauna 2.
33
George Hodel-Elizabeth Short:
Reconstructed Timeline
IN MY INTRODUCTION I said that solving the murder of Elizabeth Short, as well as the other sadistic murders discussed in this book, "is the result of finding and piecing together hundreds of separate thoughtprints."
In telling this complex story, I have tried first to present all the evidence related to identifying our suspects, then in later chapters to explain the connections to and motivations for LAPD's cover-up.
The evidence linking George Hodel and Fred Sexton to the crimes has been spread across many chapters. We have heard from more than seventy witnesses, and reviewed over sixty separate exhibits. By incorporating many of the "ghost witnesses," those establishing Elizabeth Short's movements during LAPD's so-called "missing week," we now know why they had to be kept silent and discredited. By uniting the fuller knowledge of both Elizabeth Short's and George Model's movements during the mid-1940s, we can now reconstruct and distill a more accurate timeline of events, one which is most unique, as we can now walk in the shoes of both the victim and her killer.
1944-1945
George and Elizabeth meet and begin a relationship of sorts, platonic or otherwise. George wines and dines her in the finest restaurants. Together they frequent the Biltmore, and downtown and Hollywood nightclubs. Elizabeth gets financial aid for food and rent from George when needed.
August 1945
Major Matt Gordon is killed in an airplane crash over India. George Hodel, after learning that Elizabeth's fiance has been killed, asks her to marry him instead. Heartbroken and despondent over the loss of her fiance, she agrees, or at least leads him to believe she will think about it.
October-December 1945
While Elizabeth waits tables at Princess Whitewing's restaurant in Miami Beach, Florida, George Hodel, having joined UNRRA in December, is at the agency's home office in Washington, D.C., studying Chinese. George contacts Elizabeth and asks her to marry him when he returns from China. She expresses second thoughts about marriage. Infuriated at her rejection, he manages to control himself long enough to wire her a restrained telegram from D.C., reminding her that "a promise is a promise to a person of the world" and signing it simply, "Yours."
April 1946
Stationed in China with the honorary rank of lieutenant general, George sends Elizabeth the photographs showing him both in uniform and civilian clothes as "arbiter."
Elizabeth writes to Lieutenant Gordon Fickling about her desire to return to California to see him. Fickling cautions her, "Why not pause and consider just what your coming out here to me would amount to?" Despite his admonition, she travels to California.
August 1946
Elizabeth returns to Hollywood and stays at Mark Hansen's Carlos Street residence, where she lives for three weeks with Hansen's girlfriend, Anne Toth. Looking for work wherever she can find it and left to her own devices, Elizabeth, rummaging through a desk, finds Mark Hansen's blank address book with his name embossed on the outside and takes it.
September 1946
George suffers a heart attack in China and returns to Los Angeles, where he is admitted to a hospital and discharged from UNRRA.
Late September 1946
Elizabeth leaves Mark Hansen's house before the end of September and moves into the Hawthorne Hotel at 1611 North Orange Drive in Hollywood, where she briefly shares a room with Lynn Martin, then shares a room with her friend from Massachusetts, Marjorie Graham.
September 20-21, 1946
Elizabeth meets the Army soldier "Sergeant Doe" in downtown Los Angeles, has a dinner date with him, and as they walk back to her hotel they are seen together and chased by a carload of "Hispanics," one of whom, I suspect, is Fred Sexton. Father, still hospitalized, and knowing Elizabeth is in Hollywood, may well have asked his good friend Sexton to hit the streets and see if he could find her. These males clearly recognize her, because Sergeant Doe hears one of them yell out, "There she is!"
Elizabeth and Sergeant Doe spend the night together at the Figueroa Hotel.
October 1946
Elizabeth is still rooming with Marjorie Graham at the Hawthorne and tells her that her boyfriend is an "Army Air Force lieutenant" in the hospital in Los Angeles. She hopes he gets well soon so that he will get out of the hospital in time for their planned marriage on November 1.
November 13-December 6, 1946
Elizabeth moves to a room at the Chancellor Hotel, 1842 North Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood, which she shares with seven other women. Broke and unemployed, she is forced to move out.
December 6, 1946
On the day she leaves, an anxious Elizabeth tells roommate Linda Rohr, "Fve got to hurry. He's waiting for me." I submit "he" is Dr. George Hodel.
December 6-11, 1946
It is likely that during this period of time after she leaves the Chancellor and for the five days that follow, Elizabeth and George are together. She could be staying at the Franklin House, or perhaps George puts her up in a nearby hotel and she just visits him at his home. It is at this time that he photographs her in the nude and adjacent to the Chinese art object. An incident occurs between them, something traumatic and untoward, perhaps a physical assault, which causes Elizabeth to become fearful for her life. What is known is that Elizabeth arrives in San Diego a few days later, alone and without friends, unemployed, with little or no money, and with no place to live. She has fled!
December 12, 1946
Dorothy French finds Elizabeth in an all-night movie theater, homeless and without prospects, and invites her to stay temporarily with her and her mother, Elvera, at their home in the suburbs of San Diego. The Frenches report to the police that Elizabeth has dated a number of different men during her stay at their house, and that she is especially afraid of "an ex-boyfriend who [is] extremely jealous of her." Dorothy and Elvera French describe Elizabeth's emotional condition as highly agitated and secretive throughout her stay with them and that she becomes "especially frightened when anyone [comes] to the front door." But Elizabeth remains tight-lipped, continually refusing to tell Elvera French the name of the man she fears.