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

He enrolled at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena,[3] but was forced to leave the university after one year, due in part to a sex scandal involving a professor's wife.

[4] After conducting 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.

[2][4] Hodel was also 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.

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

[6] 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.

Known or suspected sex criminals in the area were being investigated for the Short case, and it had come out in that trial that Tamar had allegedly claimed her father was the Dahlia killer.

[2] The full details of the investigation came to light only in 2003, when a "George Hodel–Black Dahlia File" was discovered in archives at the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.

However, his son Steve has written that he believes Hodel re-entered the United States multiple times each year from 1958 through 1988 and specifically in 1966–1969 to commit more murders, and then return to the Philippines.

[11] A September 2006 episode of Cold Case Files,[12] hosted by Bill Kurtis, illustrates the mixed reaction to Steve Hodel's hypothesis as outlined in his first book Black Dahlia Avenger (2003).

Head Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay described himself as highly impressed by Steve Hodel's research and conclusions and even went so far as to declare the case had been solved.

Less impressed was active Detective Brian Carr, the LAPD officer then in charge of the Black Dahlia case, which was still officially open.

In July 2018, Sandi Nichols of Indianapolis, Indiana, while going through her recently deceased mother's personal effects, discovered a "Dying Declaration Letter" written by her grandfather, W. Glenn Martin, dated October 26, 1949.

The handwritten envelope read, "In case of Margaret Ellen's or Glenna Jean's Death" and was initialed "WGM"; the letter was written out of fear that one or both of his teenage daughters might be killed.

The Martin letter, reproduced in full in the chapter "Afterword" in Black Dahlia Avenger III,[13] went on to name "GH" on 17 separate occasions identifying him as a personal acquaintance of Martin's as well as of McCauley's, and named him as the killer of both Short and of a second lone woman, Louise Springer, the "Green Twig Murder" victim.

The letter established that LAPD suspected and brought Hodel in for questioning and "grilled" him on both the Louise Springer and Elizabeth Short murders some three months prior to his incest arrest of his daughter in October of that same year.

Scenes for the series were shot on location at Hodel's 1945-50 residence, the historic Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.-built John Sowden House at 5121 Franklin Avenue, Hollywood, California.

The podcast includes many of the actual investigative findings and linkage of George Hodel to the Black Dahlia murder, establishing that according to secret police records he, in fact, knew and had dated the victim in the 1940s.