Do you love research? Of course you do or you wouldn’t be reading the Daily Mirror.

But do you love research about the Hodel family? Possibly not.

I’m going to delve into a bit of Dr. George Hodel’s life, at great risk to having my head explode, as a simple demonstration of why the unsuspecting reader, with no outside knowledge, could never imagine the type of terrible “research” that has been conducted by Steve Hodel.

I have always been curious about Steve Hodel’s claim on Page 10 of “Most Evil” (yes, that’s the Zodiac book. Or rather the first Zodiac book).

By age nine “Georgie” was playing solo piano concerts at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium and even the great Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff traveled to my grandparents’ house in Pasadena, accompanied by the Russian minister of culture, to hear him play.

Fortunately, the Los Angeles Evening Herald of July 14, 1917, is online. If you read the entire article – and I suggest that you do – you will find this:

A little boy, 9 years old, has been chosen by the French committee to play before the Belgian mission at the French celebration at Shrine Auditorium today.

The lad, thus chosen above scores of adult musicians, is George Hodel, son of Mr. and Mrs. George Hodel of 6440 Walnut Hill Ave. He is a pupil of Vernon Spencer and is regarded in the world of music as a genius.

Though a mere youngster, he has studied music for years and he was selected as a piano soloist by the French committee entirely because of his great talent. While he has composed several musical works, he will play Massenet and Chaminade selections when he appears before the Belgian mission.

The article goes on to report that the boy genius had written several poems.

But notice this one “written a short time before the fall of the Russian czar.” This will be important later.

Shrine Auditorium referred to in this story was destroyed by a massive fire in January 1920. The current Shrine Auditorium, with its barn-like acoustics, was built in 1926 and was then considered an architectural triumph and the site of many performances and large public events. Neither one is (or was) suited for a piano recital, so the venue of George Hodel’s “solo piano concerts” is rather suspicious.

If we dig deeper, we find that the Belgian War Mission to the United States (America entered World War I in April) was visiting Los Angeles and was welcomed by a parade in downtown Los Angeles and an event at Shrine Auditorium.

The Los Angeles Times did not mention young pianist George Hodel, but reported:

George Hodel performed exactly once at Shrine Auditorium as part of a much larger event that involved speeches and “other entertainment features.” There was also a banquet at the Hotel Alexandria and Mass at St. Vibiana’s. George Hodel was not playing “solo concerts” (as in multiple performances) at Shrine Auditorium. He was a bit of entertainment between dignitaries’ speeches.

But what about Rachmaninoff? Did he meet the boy genius?

To be continued.

So here we have a passing mention of piano prodigy George Hodel, age 9, meeting Sergei Rachmaninoff “accompanied by the Russian minister of culture.”

I’m particularly interested in this line because Rachmaninoff (Kristof Konrad) shows up in “I Am the Night” while Man Ray (Exhibit B in the George “Evil Genius” Hodel franchise) doesn’t appear. Possibly the Man Ray Trust frowned on the depiction of him as a maniacal killer.

Previously on George Hodel, piano prodigy.

Fortunately for us, though less fortunate for Steve Hodel, the life of Rachmaninoff is well documented. In the early 20th century, Rachmaninoff was a musical sensation, so there are lots of stories about him.

We find that Rachmaninoff (b. 1873 d. 1943 in Beverly Hills) left Russia and visited America for the first time in October 1909. George Hodel was born in  October 1907, so let us assume that no matter how gifted George Hodel was, he wasn’t playing the piano at age 2.

Rachmaninoff’s next U.S. tour was in 1919, when George Hodel would have been 12, three years after his “triumph” at Shrine Auditorium.

A May 25, 1919, article in the Los Angeles Times said that Rachmaninoff would be spending the summer in Los Angeles.

But he didn’t.

Rachmaninoff performed July 22, 1919, in San Francisco, but on Oct. 12, 1919, Edwin Schallert said Rachmaninoff was going back East after staying in San Francisco. No visit to Los Angeles.

We find that Rachmaninoff did not give his first piano recital in Los Angeles until Feb. 2,1923, when George Hodel was 15. Of course by then, at least according to Steve Hodel, George had enrolled at Caltech to study chemical engineering, presumably abandoning his career as a concert pianist. On Feb. 27, 1929, Rachmaninoff gave a solo recital at Philharmonic Auditorium (RIP), but by that time, George Hodel would have been 19.

About the Russian minister of culture? The April 18, 1919, Los Angeles Herald noted: “Rachmaninoff is concertizing in this country at present, having escaped from Russia with much difficulty, through Finland and Sweden.” So I’m guessing that the Russian minister of culture accompanying Rachmaninoff is kind of a no.

If Steve Hodel has some proof supporting his tale of his father meeting Rachmaninoff, I would love to see it. Otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all bogus.

So I just caught Steve Hodel inserting a nice, fat lie in his dad’s Wikipedia page. Oh this is so much fun!

Steve Hodel is trying to link the Black Dahlia and Suzanne Degnan killings. So he’s inserted this huge lie in his dad’s Wikipedia page.

How do we know it’s a lie? Because I happen to have the Jan. 8, 1946, copy of the Chicago Tribune, which says:

“he discovered the child’s torso in a gutter sewer.”

So no, the killer did horrible things to the body of Suzanne Degnan. But he didn’t cut her in half. That’s a lie perpetrated by Steve Hodel.

And why?

Because Steve wants to tie the Black Dahlia and Suzanne Degnan killings together. So it fits with his claim that the body of Elizabeth Short was left on Norton Avenue as a “pointer” to Degnan Boulevard.

And would you believe it? Steve stole that idea. Flat-out stole it.

Here. Not only is this a stupid idea, it’s a *stolen* stupid idea.

All lies, folks. All of it nothing but lies.

Steve Hodel claims repeatedly in his “Black Dahlia Avenger” franchise that his father,
George Hodel, killed his secretary, Ruth Spaulding. It’s even in Wikipedia.

But, no, nobody was suspected in the death of poor old Ruth Spaulding because it wasn’t a homicide. It was a suicide.

Of course, that doesn’t suit the purposes of the “Black Dahlia Avenger” franchise. But it happens to be true. How terribly inconvenient.

Would you like to see how Steve Hodel lies about things that can be easily checked? Of course you would. This is a graphic that appeared during Steve Hodel’s appearance on “Dr. Phil.”

It’s helpful, at least for me, for Steve to give the date of this supposed excerpt from the LAPD bug at the Sowden House. Because I have all the transcripts and they are (spoiler alert) Bo-RING! Steve also merges the quotes from March 25, 1950, and March 26, 1950. This guy was a detective with the LAPD? This guy?

We’re going to look at the entire transcript and (second spoiler alert) George Hodel never says “I’m in trouble.” No, it’s one of the investigators having trouble with the recording equipment. (This guy was a detective with the LAPD? This guy?)

Notice some of this conversation is actually from March 25, 1950. As Steve Hodel has shown numerous times, he has great difficulty reading what is in front of him.

Here we go:

March 25, 1950

“Sounded like Hodel said something about Black ‘Daliah.’ ”

”Sounded like Hodel wants to get out of the country. mentioned passport.

“Had trouble with one spool.”

March 26, 1950

”Hodel talking about picture police have of him and some girl – thought he had destroyed them all.”

See for yourself.

OK, I admit it. I love that this is happening.

This is Steve Hodel vs. Fauna Hodel’s daughter Rasha Pecoraro on the question of the Hodel family DNA and whether it shows that George Hodel was Fauna Hodel’s father. (Spoiler alert: No. Tamar Hodel got pregnant up in San Francisco while George Hodel was either in Los Angeles or Hawaii).

About 1980, when I was in journalism school, one of my classes heard guest speaker Martin Kasindorf, who impressed the room of aspiring reporters with his tales of being a Newsweek correspondent. (He was later the magazine’s New York bureau chief, worked at Newsday and was White House correspondent for USA Today before retiring in 2007.)

From Kasindorf in 1980, it has been a long, hard fall to 2019 and Kelly Wynne, who graduated from The New School last year and currently writes about culture for Newsweek.

I typically ignore Newsweek. But then it attempted to write something about the Black Dahlia case. Oh dear.

I could spend an ocean of time on Wynne’s Black Dahlia article. It’s loaded with mistakes and examples of bad writing.

Consider the lede. Do you think a piece that begins this badly is going to get any better?

No.

Seriously, Newsweek?

I could pick on Wynne – she’s young, inexperienced and an easy target. But the real culprit is Newsweek. What’s most evident from this piece is that nobody – absolutely no one — edited it except for a Web producer to throw in some art because good art means more clicks. The item went on the Web as raw copy or, as we used to say on the copy desk, “untouched by human thought.”

Let’s catalog a few of the more terrible errors, in case I can keep them from spreading:

Dr. George Hodel, Hollywood gynecologist, is from the “I Am the Night” press kit and reporters should not rely on press kits to be truthful. That other writers get material from the press kit is no excuse.

But that’s minor.

Here is where a copy editor hits the despair button. There are lots of things are wrong with this paragraph, from the elementary errors (it was a wire recording, not tape) to the staggering blunders: George Hodel’s secretary, Ruth Spaulding, committed suicide in 1945 while George Hodel’s home was bugged in 1950. A writer – or an editor — could verify this in all of three minutes by Google (it’s all online), but apparently three minutes is too much for Newsweek to spend on this gem.

And George Hodel did not have any photos of Elizabeth Short. Steve Hodel’s purported pictures of her are bogus. Also, no nude photos of Elizabeth Short exist. The image in question most likely shows Dr. George Hodel and Maddy Comfort, an African American performer (you can see her in “Kiss Me Deadly”) who looks as much like Elizabeth Short as I do. This is in the district attorney’s files – if you take the time to look.

Which brings us to:

Let’s just slap the Black Dahlia’s name in there somewhere!

OK, so nobody read this opus before it went online. It would take less than a minute to fix something this clumsy. Apparently that’s one minute Newsweek was not willing to devote to its content.

And also:

How can a body be “mauled” but also skillfully dissected?

And also, also:

Did anyone at Newsweek bother to check whether Elizabeth Short’s body was missing? Because she’s buried up in Oakland – not in George Hodel’s basement.

Wynne is young and may improve. I’m not so sure about Newsweek. It’s unfortunate to see a once-respected magazine become nothing but poorly written click bait. But here we are.

Here’s the May 9, 1945, death certificate of Ruth Frances Spaulding. Notice that the Los Angeles County coroner determined that Spaulding committed suicide at the age of 27.

If you have listened to Steve Hodel at all, you will have heard him say that Dr. George Hodel was a “suspect in the death of his secretary, Ruth Spaulding.”

Like so many things Steve Hodel says, this is a lie.

George Hodel wasn’t a suspect in the death of his secretary because nobody thought she was killed and therefore nobody was a suspect. Not George Hodel nor anyone else.

So how did she die?

Ruth Spaulding killed herself at her home, 1206 W. 2nd St., by barbital poisoning. “Ingestion of lethal dose of barbiturates.” She was transported to Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, the city’s main trauma hospital, and died two hours later.

Notice: Her death was investigated by the coroner, who determined that the cause was suicide. Nobody thought she was killed. And therefore nobody was a suspect.

Dr. George Hodel did not kill his secretary. Nobody did. She committed suicide. There you have it in black and white. Anything else is a lie.

Let’s see what happens when Wikipedia vandalism takes on a life of its own. That would be Black Dahlia “suspect” Jacob Edward Fisk. Never a suspect. It was all just a prank.

On April 13, 2009, someone apparently signing on from Xavier University in Columbus, Ohio, added a few lines about Jacob Edward Fisk to the list of Black Dahlia suspects.

“Though born in 1988, Jacob committed the murder of Elizabeth Short by travelling through time. The time machine he used was build in his sunbird.”

The entry was removed the same day.

More than 10 years ago.

But as recently as May 2019, Fisk was still listed as an “original suspect” with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s files as the purported source.

Nope.

And he appears in Google results. Because Google loves Wikipedia. Never a suspect. Just a 10-year-old prank.

Here we have a purported list of “Black Dahlia Suspects” from Wikipedia. At least as it was of May 20, 2019. Wikipedia, being Wikipedia, this could change at any moment.

This list is allegedly the 25 suspects named by Lt. Frank Jemison of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. In reality, Jemison listed 22 suspects in his report of Feb. 20, 1951. Jemison did not list Dr. Adam Fairall, Jacob Edward Fisk or Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. They are relatively recent and completely bogus additions,  with ardent Wikipedia users (are there any other kind?) altering the total to agree with the number of names.

Comparing every change on the Black Dahlia suspects entry is quite a chore. Like all entries, it’s frequently subject to vandalism (see the prank entry of “Jacob Edward Fisk” April 2009), reversions and random and totally unnecessary repairs, and random tweaking.  In other words, business as usual for the zealous if factually and grammatically challenged editors of Wikipedia.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

On Sept. 30, 2009, a Wikipedia editor, identified only by ISP, added purported Black Dahlia suspect Dr. Adam Fairall. Apparently the editor was attempting to indicate that Fairall was a strip club owner.

But by May 7, 2010….

Wikipedia user Kinston eagle had changed this to two suspects “Dr. Adam Fairall” and “Strip Club Owner.”

Remember: Neither Dr. Adam Fairall nor “Strip Club Owner” appear in Jemison’s report.

About four years later, on May 22, 2014, another Wikipedia editor removed “Strip Club Owner.”

On April 13, 2015, Wikipedia user Tamfang deleted “apparently meaningless numbers.” Dr. Adam Fairall, who occupied No. 17, was just another suspect. Still attributed – erroneously – to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

Is Dr. Adam Fairall listed anywhere in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s files?

No.

Is Dr. Adam Fairall listed in the 1945 directory of California Physicians and Surgeons, Naturopaths, Drugless Practitioners, Chiropodists, Midwives?

No.

Does an Adam Fairall appear in the archives of the Los Angeles Times?

No.

How about Ancestry.com?

One person named Adam Fairall, born about 1980.

In other words, yet another bogus Wikipedia entry.

The perpetrator appears to be someone in South Africa who is interested in Moonwalking, serial killers, Leowakgomo High School and Greek mythology. Well, that’s Wikipedia for you.

And here’s more handiwork…. Yet another Wikipedia vandal.

How long with Dr. Adam Fairall remain in the Wikipedia entry? Well, I exposed Jacob Edward Fisk last week and he’s still there. This may take a while.

If you’re looking for a lengthy biography of Eric Cartman, or an season/episode breakdown of “The Simpsons,” Wikipedia may be for you. Otherwise, it’s rubbish.

This item is listed on EBay. I’m going to report it. EBay usually ignores me because anything goes on EBay. But even so I’ll give it a try.

Still another person thinks it’s fun to sprawl in the grass near the Black Dahlia crime scene, demonstrating a remarkable lack of taste but also complete lack of information: She’s in the wrong spot.

Previously:

Asshats on South Norton Avenue

Asshats on South Norton Avenue — No. 2

Asshats on South Norton Avenue — No. 3

Time for my annual reminder: Dressing up like the victim of a gruesome murder isn’t cool. It isn’t hip, not even ironically. Reconsider your choices; you still have time to be Harley Quinn or Mad Moxxi. Or for a change, Rainbow Dash.

Seriously. Dressing up like the victim of a grotesque murder doesn’t honor Elizabeth Short – or you.

Every so often, a Black Dahlia researcher cites Morgan Korzik’s blackdahlia.web.unc.edu, presumably on the theory that any source ending in edu is somehow reliable.

It’s not. See if you can spot the mistake.

ps. You cannot trust anything on the Black Dahlia that uses Wikipedia, as Korzik did.

And Fox News gets it wrong on the Black Dahlia case in this story by Stephanie Nolasco.

Let’s go over this once more.

The so-called Gangster Squad conducted a rogue, off-the-books and unsanctioned investigation of the Black Dahlia case that infringed on the LAPD Homicide Division’s inquiry into the killing of Elizabeth Short. The Gangster Squad’s rogue operation was led by Dr. Joseph Paul De River under the theory that Leslie Dillon had a split personality and – under this split personality – killed Elizabeth Short.

The Gangster Squad’s unauthorized interference in the case and the resulting Leslie Dillon fiasco triggered a grand jury investigation.

Dillon was cleared when it was established – after a long, thorough investigation – that he was in San Francisco at the time of the killing.

End of story.

Five Reasons Leslie Dillon Didn’t Kill Elizabeth Short

The Black Dahlia: Leslie Dillon, Paul De River and the LAPD: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

I usually don’t publish the crackpot comments I get about the Black Dahlia case, but the anniversary of the killing (Jan. 15) is bringing out more than the usual amount of crazy stuff. So I’ll make an exception for this message, which I received today.

BlackDahliaSolution.org was the work of John Frederick “Jack” Kohne Jr., who died in 2016 at the age of 83. And please note that I have a folder several inches thick of his material, as he wrote to me frequently using the fake name Jack Pico and the return address of the now-vacant Mailboxes, Etc. in San Diego’s Clairemont Square Mall.

The now-vacant mail drop of “Jack Pico” (John Frederick “Jack” Kohne Jr.) via Google Street View.

You would think that someone with a purported IQ of 147 would spell my name correctly. Nope.

Pico/Kohne is gone, but he left as his legacy three terrible ideas that have gone viral over the years.

The first is the photoshopped newspaper front page that Pico/Kohne posted on his website. His bogus Page 1 of the Los Angeles Daily News is so popular that it’s been spread all over the Internet and frequently turns up in print. Graphic designers simply cannot resist the image, even though it’s fake. It’s simply too appealing.

The second: Kohne spent hours looking for “hidden” messages in the crackpot mail sent to the police and the newspapers after Elizabeth Short was killed. He made wild inferences and drew geometric figures between letters, eventually deriving the name “Ed Burns.” Kohne elaborated substantially on the fictional “Ed Burns” to the degree that some people believe there actually was an “Ed Burns” (Spoiler: No, he never existed) and that he was considered a suspect. (Nope, never).

Creating “Ed Burns” out of “hidden” messages in crank mail would be bad enough, but there is more.

The third: Pico/Kohne was responsible for the insane idea that the body of Elizabeth Short was left on Norton Avenue as a “pointer” to nearby Degnan Boulevard. And from this bizarre notion, Pico/Kohne went to extreme lengths to link the January 1946 killing, in Chicago, of 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan, and the January 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles.

If this sounds at all familiar (and it should if you know much about the Black Dahlia case,) it is because retired LAPD Detective III Steve Hodel stole Pico/Kohne’s ridiculous idea and grafted it onto his own bizarre claims about his father, Dr. George Hodel.

If you think I’m kidding, there it is, at left: Kohne’s beautifully drawn but utterly crazy map – using one of the crackpot postcards sent to police and the newspapers, which he said “proved” that the body of Elizabeth Short was a pointer to Degnan Boulevard.

And no, Detective III Hodel has never credited Pico/Kohne with the idea. Steve Hodel claims he discovered it independently.

Right.

And to my correspondent, whom I’m not identifying: I know all about Jack Pico/John Frederick “Jack” Kohne Jr. He wrote to me all the time. I have a file 3 inches thick of his material. I’ve examined it thoroughly and it is the work of a madman. I get awfully tired of fighting the same old arguments over and over again.

Today is Jan. 15, the anniversary of Elizabeth Short’s death. As is the custom, the Daily Mirror will be dark.

Trim your roses in her memory.

I’m five years late on this item, but for the record:

Donald H. Wolfe, the fraudster who wrote “The Black Dahlia Files,” died in February 2015.

In 2006, I spent months debunking Wolfe’s book, in which he swiped some of my material without credit and faked – faked – a document from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, earning him a lifetime ban.

Here are the links to all those posts from 2006.

Wolfe joins the august company of Janice Knowlton (d. 2003), Will Fowler (d. 2004) and John Gilmore (d. 2016) in the great beyond of Black Dahlia writers.

Warning: Some clown is circulating a photo on social media that he says shows Elizabeth Short wearing a cameo brooch. And of course, he then produces a brooch just like it. Gosh. Imagine that! At left, the bogus photo and at right, the authentic image. Just what the world needs, another Black Dahlia fraudster.