George Hodel

George Hill Hodel Jr. (October 10, 1907 – May 17, 1999) was an American physician and suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.

He was never formally charged with the crime, but is believed by many to have been the murderer, including by two of his children.

He was also accused of raping his daughter, Tamar Hodel, but was acquitted of that crime.

George Hill Hodel Jr. was born on October 10, 1907, and raised in Los Angeles, California.

His parents, George Hodel Sr. and Esther Hodel, were of Russian Jewish ancestry.

Their only son, he was well-educated and highly intelligent (scoring 186 on an early IQ test).

He was also a musical prodigy.

Hodel attended South Pasadena High School, graduated at age 15 and entered California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.

He was forced to leave the university after one year, due in part to a sex scandal involving a professor's wife.

He had impregnated the woman and wanted to raise their child together, but she refused.

The affair between Hodel and the woman caused her marriage to fall apart.

The structure, built in 1926 by Lloyd Wright (son of the noted American architect Frank Lloyd Wright), has since been registered as a Los Angeles historic landmark.

By around 1928, Hodel was in a common-law marriage with a woman named Emilia; they had a son, Duncan.

In the 1930s, he was legally married to Dorothy Anthony, a fashion model from San Francisco; they had a daughter, Tamar.

Hodel graduated from Berkeley pre-med in June 1932.

He immediately afterward enrolled in medical school at the University of California, San Francisco and received his medical degree in June 1936.

After the success of his medical practice and becoming head of the county's Social Hygiene Bureau, Hodel was moving in affluent Los Angeles society by the 1940s.

He 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.

With Ray and some other Surrealists, he shared an interest in sadomasochism; with the young men of the Hollywood scene, he shared a fondness for partying, drinking, and womanizing.

In 1940, Hodel married Dorothy Harvey, John Huston's ex-wife.

He called her "Dorero" to avoid confusion with his other wife, Dorothy Anthony, at least within their circle, but she is better known as Dorothy Huston-Hodel.

Hodel was effectively a polygamist: in the late 1940s, around the time of the deaths of Spaulding and Elizabeth Short, Hodel was living with "Dorero" and their three children; his first legal wife Dorothy Anthony and their daughter Tamar; and, at times, his original common-law wife, Emilia, mother of Hodel's eldest child (by that time an adult).

He was also prone to taking temporary lovers; a witness later suggested such a relationship between Hodel and Short.

Hodel purchased the Sowden House in 1945 and lived there from 1945 until 1950.

On January 15, 1947, the naked body of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short was discovered in an empty lot in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Short had suffered gruesome mutilation: her body had been bisected at the waist, and her mouth was cut ear to ear.

The case earned major publicity and prompted one of the largest investigations in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The case was never solved.

However, authorities at the time interviewed hundreds of suspects and focused seriously on about 25, including Hodel.

However, suspicion of Hodel was not publicly known until decades later.

In late 1949, Hodel's teenage daughter Tamar accused him of incestuous sexual abuse and impregnating her.

He was acquitted after a widely publicized trial.

Two witnesses to the alleged abuse testified at the trial.

A third recanted her earlier testimony and refused to come forward, with one theory being that Hodel threatened her into silence.

He lived overseas several times, primarily between 1950 and 1990 in the Philippines.

Hodel left the United States in March 1950 for Hawaii, then a U.S. territory, where he married an upper-class Filipino woman, Hortensia Laguda.

After another four children, they divorced in the 1960s; she was later a member of the Philippine Congress as Hortensia Starke.

Hodel returned to the United States in 1990.

He married (legally) for the fourth time, to a woman named June, in San Francisco, where he remained for the rest of his life.

He died in 1999, at the age of 91.