1. George Hill Hodel was an American physician, and a suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.
19 Facts About George Hodel
1. 2.
George Hodel was never formally charged with the crime but, at the time, police considered him a viable suspect, and two of his children believe he was guilty.
3.
George Hodel lived overseas several times, primarily in the Philippines between 1950 and 1990.
4.
George Hodel had impregnated the woman and wanted to raise their child together, but she refused.
5.
George Hodel was enamored of the darker side of Surrealism and the decadence surrounding that art scene, befriending photographer Man Ray, film director John Huston, and their associates.
6.
George Hodel called her "Dorero" to avoid confusion with his other wife, Dorothy Anthony, at least within their circle, but she was better known as Dorothy Huston-Hodel.
7.
George Hodel purchased the Sowden House in 1945 and lived there from 1945 until 1950.
8.
George Hodel was prone to taking temporary lovers, and witnesses later suggested such a relationship between him and the "Black Dahlia", Elizabeth Short, who was found murdered on January 15,1947.
9.
In March 1950, George Hodel left the United States for Hawaii, then a US territory, where he married an upper-class Filipino woman, Hortensia Laguda.
10.
George Hodel returned to the United States in 1990, and lived in San Francisco for the rest of his life.
11.
However, suspicion of George Hodel was not publicly known until decades later.
12.
The file revealed that in 1950, George Hodel was a suspect of the Dahlia murder.
13.
George Hodel was interviewed as a suspect in the nearby June 1949 murder of Louise Springer, the "Green Twig Murder", though evidence to support this accusation was not publicly available until July 2018.
14.
In October 1949, George Hodel's name was mentioned in a formal written report to the grand jury as one of five prime suspects in the Short murder, but none of the named suspects was submitted to the grand jury for consideration for indictment, as the investigation was still ongoing.
15.
George Hodel obtained a degree in psychiatry and counseled prisoners in the Territorial prison in Hawaii for three years, then moved on to the Philippines, where he started a new family, and appears to have remained until 1990, finally dying in 1999 in San Francisco without charges ever being filed.
16.
Carr's opinion was that George Hodel's theory was based on a few intriguing facts linked together by unsubstantiated supposition.
17.
Short's relatives disagreed that the photos in George Hodel's album were of Short.
18.
In 1949, George Hodel had been arrested and tried for incest by LAPD; his 14-year-old daughter Tamar accused him of raping her, resulting in a pregnancy she aborted.
19.
George Hodel obtained criminal defense attorney Jerry Giesler and was acquitted after a three-week jury trial.