Hodel also says that Man Ray’s “Minotaur” (1934) may have also served as inspiration for his father’s alleged mutilation of the Black Dahlia. In his painting, Man Ray depicts a female subject with a scratched-out face Hodel believes that his father appropriated this image with his scalpel to create a similar “crime signature” on Short’s body as an homage to his surrealist friend. On the talk show, he said that there are “strong indications that actually could have posed for Man Ray in 1943” and thereafter. There are a handful of artworks that Hodel analyzes, including “L’Equivoque” (1943). Phil, describing the similarities between the Black Dahlia murder and Man Ray’s art (screenshot by author) “I talk about his scalpel being his paintbrush and her body was the canvas. “This is dad’s surrealistic masterpiece,” he told Dr. The former detective believes that his father was trying to emulate the surrealist artist’s work with mutilation of Short’s body. However, the driving forces behind Hodel’s argument are the visual similarities between Man Ray’s work and the Black Dahlia murder. Famously, Marcel Duchamp’s “Étants donnés” (1946–66) was partially inspired by the killing. And he is certainly not the first person to suggest a connection between Short’s death and avant-garde art at the time. He has written five books about the subject including a New York Times bestseller, Black Dahlia Avenger. Rifling through George’s old possessions, he found a photograph of a woman that looked remarkably like Elizabeth Short he also found portraits of his family taken by Man Ray, a family friend.įast-forward 18 years later: Hodel has made a career investigating his father’s relationship to the Black Dahlia murder and surrealist art. Steve’s suspicions grew after his father’s death in 1999. One year later, Hodel abandoned his family to live in the Philippines he wouldn’t return to the United States until age 83 in 1990.

That same year Hodel became a prime suspect in the Black Dahlia case and the subject of the police’s investigation into Louise Springer’s murder. In 1949, his daughter Tamar accused him of incest, a charge he was later acquitted from in court. Problems began in 1945 with the drug-overdose death of his secretary, Ruth Spaulding, who detectives believed Hodel murdered to cover up a financial fraud case involving illegal abortion services. The former LAPD homicide detective believes his father, George Hodel, is responsible for the Black Dahlia murder and nearly a dozen other lone woman killings in Los Angeles around the same time.ĭescribed as a grandiose doctor with a distinct personality, the elder Hodel was the frequent subject of police investigations. And even today, cold-case enthusiasts routinely visit the details surrounding Short’s death to glean new evidence on the unsolved crime.īut few of their hypotheses are as personal as Hodel’s. Her brutal demise was the subject of relentless press coverage the Los Angeles Record reported on the police investigation of the crime on its front cover for 31 consecutive days. The death of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short in 1947 captivated the country because of its gruesome details of dismemberment and torture. That changed yesterday when the eponymous Phillip McGraw invited Steve Hodel onto the show to discuss his almost two-decade-long investigation into the Black Dahlia murder - and how his father may have killed the aspiring Hollywood actress as an emulation of the artist Man Ray’s surrealist aesthetic.

Phil has been running for 17 seasons but has rarely dipped into art historical drama for its content. Man Ray in 1934 portrayed by Carl Van Vechten (via Wikimedia Commons)

Black dahlia murder paint it black