“Most Evil,” Page 190, photos shown to support Stevel Hodel’s contention that his father was Zodiac.
I turned on the computer this morning, made a pot of coffee and cracked open Steve Hodel’s “Most Evil.” And I sighed. For anyone who knows anything about historic crimes, this book is a joke. If “Black Dahlia Avenger” was seeing the face of Jesus on a tortilla, then “Most Evil” is the whole enchilada — with rice and beans.
Here’s an example. On Pages 191-192 of “Most Evil,” Steve Hodel gives his father’s shoe size as 10E to support his contention that his father was the Zodiac killer. And, as anyone who isn’t steeped in the minutia of old crimes will ask, “What’s wrong with that?”
Just this: One of George Hodel’s purported victims, Jeanne French, was beaten and stomped to death (Feb. 10, 1947) by someone who left shoe prints on the body. What size shoe? According to the LAPD investigators, the killer wore a size 6 or 7 shoe. Handwriting analysis be damned. The shoes don’t fit!
And I have to ask myself if it’s even worth getting into “Most Evil,” because the whole book is going to be this way. I’ve already done a time-consuming, page by page critique of a Black Dahlia book (Donald H. Wolfe’s “The Back Dahlia Files“) and I’m not sure I’m willing to put myself (and the Daily Mirror readers) through another such experience.
What’s your opinion? Should I pick it apart or just let it go on the shelf as a curio?
ladailymirror.com 
Don’t bother. I sometimes think that all you get for your effort is a slightly better crafted attempt by the next somebody wannabe. The shoe size discrepancy is a little confusing if you assume that the author did at least a little basic research. But if given that, you then are caught chasing your tale.
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I vote curio. If you remember the case of skyjacker D.B. Cooper, who was supposed to have parachuted from an airplane over southwest Washington one Thanksgiving eve, investigators came up with a suspect sketch, too. The sketch looked exactly like my father, right down to the eyes, chin and receding hairline. Just two problems: my father didn’t smoke Raleighs, and he was at home that night with his fear of flying.
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I always thought the Doc was Jack The Ripper but his first name was not Jack.
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Hodel is mentally ill.
Just walk away Larry.
It’s Chinatown.
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Larry dont waste your time. By the way what is the timeline on Dr. Hoedel being a childhood playmate of Walter Collins? I smell a new epic.
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It seems that your work here is done.
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I thought your picking apart of the Big Bad Wolfe book was masterful work. I relished with no small measure of schadenfreude your repeated need to go take a walk after tackling yet another chapter — heck, sentence.
I for one would deeeeeeelight in your Harnischian application of dutiful research and historical accuracy, not only because “Most Evil” deserves it, but because it teaches everyone (including me) what real labor is all about come researchin’ time.
In short, I say go for it.
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Nah, turn it loose. Dogs. Fleas. Pearls. Swine. Move along, nuthin to see here.
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Oh, get OUT–now his father killed the Black Dahlia AND was the Zodiac, too?
Was he on the Grassy Knoll, and cut Jayne Mansfield’s brake lines, and pushed Peg Entwistle, and shot William Desmond Taylor? Young Master Hodel doesn’t have “issues,” he has a SUBSCRIPTION.
(Did his great-grandfather kidnap Little Charley Ross?)
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And my Dad was Jack the Ripper. They both had left thumb prints, which, if not for the conspiracy between British and US authorities, might have matched.
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Larry, I’d like to hear specific results of your research regarding any factual errors of evidence in the book. The shoe size thing is a good start. (Though couldn’t that be explained by two assailants?)
You saved me some time and confusion when you pointed out factual errors in the Wolfe and the Gilmore books, so I look forward to your confirmation or dispute of the evidence in Steve Hodel’s new book.
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If dissecting it would kill it I’d say go ahead. I’ve noticed there’s not nearly the press for this book that there was for the last one so maybe ignoring it is the way to go. I would enjoy your insights though. Tough call.
And that’s not even the police sketch of the Zodiac. Pathetic.
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Hi-
I can review this book without even reading it. Just look at the photo comparison above. That sketch is not from the famous 1969 SFPD wanted poster of Zodiac. I don’t know where it comes from other than the cover of some obscure book on the case edited by one Dean Dickensheet (not to be confused with Charles Dickens).
To have to stoop to comparing your father to a sketch that clearly has no pedigree within the official investigation is to go down to the level of “journalist” Harry Martin, who doctored the SFPD sketch to look like Bruce Davis and then showed the two side by side–the match was incredible! Case closed, right? Wrong.
The Dahlia crime was clearly sexually motivated. Zodiac was as asexual a killer as you can find. To imagine that these two disparate crimes (or series of crimes in Zodiac’s case) were committed by the same person is absurd.
Next case.
Mike
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Yes I think you should picked it apart as much as you can about Gerorge Evil Genius Hodel.
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I am torn on this issue. On the one hand it would take an inordinate amount of time for you to go line by line dissecting the errors with the book. This would likely annoy you beyond measure and take time away from other blog posts.
On the other hand, your dissection of “The Black Dahlia Files” was/is remarkable.
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I’d love to see the glaring errors called out. It’s hard to ask you to do what you did on Wolfe’s book . You should be compensated for that, but it is where many of us got our real facts.
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An Open Letter to Tom Voigt of Zodiackiller.com and all of the other Authors ( Steve Hodel) and people involved with the Zodiac Killer.
Intolerance.
“A Man is innocent till proven guilty”
Not guilty and hung without a court of Law because they are suspicious. The 60’s was a sad reminder of intolerance to the Black Community, The Gay community and mentally ill people.
You need to Tom Voigt move your Suspect list on Zodiackiller.com and place it under the Victim list.
It is obvious if you read the list that there were Gay men and mentally ill people that were suspected simply because of intolerance. You are perpetuating this thinking by being allowed to have this on your website. All of you have no regard to the impact this has on these people’s lives, family members and friends even if they are dead. The very bowels of this type of thinking is the roots of Lynching, The witch Hunts in Salem and Nazism. It carries with it that Law becomes entertainment and cheapens the real victims and what happened to them. How do you legally get away with posting peoples names????
The Zodiac Case should be a monument to an age of thinking that persecuted the weak in our society.
I propose that all of you take all of the profits you have made and give them to the victims of this case and also to the so called suspects who had to live with the Accusations and had it ruin their lives and Families lives. A monument should be set up about how fear mongering and attacking the weak is evident in social Icons of this era. A monument that would say that we have moved beyond being intolerant into a Free thinking society that has compassion for one another .
“Protect the weak and those who do not have a voice” “For that is the sign of a civilized society.”
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Well if George Hodel was the zodiac killer who indeed appeared after 1950, he must have been a very old serial killer, because during the dahlia case, he already was thirty seven and the zodiac case was around the mid sixties to seventies.Perhaps there is more than one psycopath lurking behind mullholland drive!
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