WHILE true crime fans eagerly stream the latest Netflix documentary on the Zodiac killer, one expert on the perplexing case will be taking it with a pinch of salt.
Retired homicide detective Steve Hodel is certain that Arthur Leigh Allen, the only person ever named as a suspect in the case and the subject of Netflix's This Is The Zodiac Speaking, is not the serial killer who terrorized the Bay Area in the late 1960s. Instead, he says his own dad was the Zodiac.
Steve has spent the last 25 years painstakingly investigating his father, Dr. George Hodel, probing for any involvement in dozens of unsolved and macabre murders, including the infamous 1947 Black Dahlia killing and the Zodiac killings two decades later.
Using skills honed over a long career as a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department, Hodel has come to the conclusion that his dad - a highly intelligent and well-traveled doctor and surgeon - was responsible for 50 murders in 50 years, making him the worst serial killer the world has ever seen.
And his dad ended his murderous rampage, he says, with the Zodiac killings, in which seven people were killed, and the culprit taunted local police and media with coded messages and letters.
As well as his dad bearing a striking resemblance to police sketches of the suspect, Hodel cites handwriting analysis, crime signatures, and dozens of circumstantial links and connections as evidence that his theory is correct.
His only hope of proving his dad was responsible for the high-profile killings - and bringing closure to the surviving relatives of the victims - is if police in one of the five jurisdictions where the victims were murdered compare his dad's DNA profile with DNA they recovered from the Zodiac scenes.
To date, none of the five police departments involved have done this, and all have ignored Hodel's requests.
In an exclusive interview with The U.S. Sun, Steve revealed how he first started looking into his father's mysterious life after his death in 1999, when his half-sister Tamar claimed that he had once been a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder, a famous Los Angeles case in which a 22-year-old woman named Elizabeth Short was murdered and her corpse brutally mutilated.
George Hodel had been accused of raping Tamar as a 14-year-old but was ultimately acquitted, although Steve would later find out he actually paid off prosecutors.
Steve set out to prove his dad was not a killer but was shocked when evidence not only linked George Hodel to the Black Dahlia murder - but dozens of crimes before and after it.
"I knew Dad had some hangups, and I believe the incest charges because I knew he had some serious problems coming in regards to sex. But murder? No way," he said from his home in Washington.
"So I started out to show he had nothing to do with [Black Dahlia]. I said, 'I can show that in 10 minutes with my background experience.'"
Steve relocated back to Los Angeles, where he carried out a thorough investigation, which ultimately led him to write a book, Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder, about how his dad was the murderer.
"Doors just kept opening one after the other. Initially, I saw on the front page the Black Dahlia killer sent in a bunch of taunting notes
- about a dozen notes over a time period - kind of catch me if you can type stuff, cut and paste that sort of thing," he said.
"And one of them was on the front page of a newspaper. I look at it, and it's my father's handwriting.
"I mean, you know your parents handwriting... and I thought, 'Is he pretending to be him? This can't be..what's going on here?'"
Eventually, Steve's investigation led him to link his dad with eight other murders of women in Los Angeles, which he dubbed the Lone Women Murders.
This man had so much potential, he could have cured cancer, he could have done so much good for humanity and he in fact became one of the world's worst monsters.
Steve Hodel on his father
He secretly submitted his case to an active district attorney in Los Angeles who told him there was enough evidence to convict George Hodel of the Black Dahlia murder and one of the other killings.
After he published his book, it became a New York Times bestseller.
"There are very few that doubt that the case is solved in regards to Black Dahlia," Steve said.
Following the book's release, Steve came across a secret DA file that confirmed his father was a suspect in the murder.
It also revealed his dad had been electronically bugged at his home - the Mayan-inspired Sowden House in Los Angeles - by a team from the DA investigating the crime.
"Eighteen detectives were listening to him for five weeks around the clock," Steve said.
"They basically got confessions from dad; they get him saying, 'Supposing I did kill the Black Dahlia. They can't prove it now. My secretary is dead.'
"Well, one of the things I come up with is that he probably overdosed his secretary....
"The kicker is... I got to the third page of the transcript, and it describes how George and a friend, who they don't identify, go down to the basement, an object is struck, a woman screams, then more blows. She screams again, and then it goes silent.
"I'm reading this, and I'm saying, 'What the hell! Why aren't they there? They're five minutes away... They do nothing."
Years later, Steve would take a cadaver dog named Buster to the property to do a search of the basement. Buster alerted to human remains, and soil samples outside also tested positive for human remains.
He also linked his father to three murders in Chicago called the Lipstick Murders in 1945 and '46 - including that of a six-year-old girl called Suzanne Degnan - and an unsolved murder of a woman in Manila, the Philippines, which matched with his father's time in the country.
In a chilling twist, the woman in Manila had been bisected and posed on a street called Zodiac.
"Part of Suzanne's body was buried near a street called Hollywood. Coincidence, dad was a Hollywood surgeon...but you could say that's a bit of a stretch, Steve," he said.
"So fast forward to Elizabeth Short's murder. A year later,
her body is posed off a street named Degnan, the name of the little girl in Chicago.
"Unusual name. I never even heard the name Degnan, fast forward a week, a victim named Jean French's dead body is posed off a street named Mountain View - Mountain View is where Elizabeth Short was buried in Oakland a week earlier.
"So this is his MO. He poses body parts; he leaves clues.
"I came across a murder in Manila in 1967, and her name was Lucilla Lalu, and she was strangled, surgically bisected, and her body is posed on a vacant lot about a mile from George's private residence in Manila.
"I think I've put together a case that's beyond reasonable doubt at this point.
Steve Hodel
"They were sure it had to be done by a surgeon. And wait for it...her body was posed off a street named Zodiac.
"I didn't know much about the Zodiac killings, but I knew it was a famous, unsolved serial killer from Northern California.
"I thought he was much younger - there's no way that could have been George, but I said, 'Well, at least I've got to look at it because of what I know from the past.'"
Immediately, Steve was struck by how much his dad resembled police sketches of the Zodiac suspect.
While the killer's age, according to witnesses, put the Zodiac killer at much younger than George Hodel, Steve believes incorrect witness statements taken at the time, and the fact his dad could pass for much younger, addresses this.
A handwriting expert instructed by Steve compared letters from his dad to the Zodiac letters and concluded the handwriting samples indicated it was "probable" George Hodel was the Zodiac.
Steve also believes he has deciphered the Zodiac's signature - a bizarre symbol the killer used to sign off a Halloween card he sent to the San Francisco Chronicle in 1970.
"Dad was 60, but he could easily pass for 45 to 50. He looked much younger, and I looked at the third composite, and it's picture perfect to George Hodel," Steve said.
"So that basically started me on my investigation into Zodiac.
"You've got the mailings - actually about 25 mailings by Zodiac over decades many of them.
"Again, a lot of disguised handwriting, but I got a qualified handwriting expert, and she said it was 'probable' these came from George Hodel.
"And that leads me to the Halloween card, which is signed off with an encrypted signature.
"A retired teacher from France named Yves Person contacts me and says it's ancient Celtic handwriting, and he said the symbol is five letters and they spell H. O. D. E. L.
"You know he considers himself the master criminal. He's the 'Moriarty' of the world, and he can outthink and outfox anybody.
So he leaves clues to his crimes."
George Hodel led a colorful and mysterious life
George Hodel was born in Downtown Los Angeles on 10 October 1907 to Russian Jewish parents.
He was an extremely gifted musical prodigy and gave his own piano concerts in Los Angeles at age seven or eight.
Hodel had an IQ of 186 - one point above Einstein - and graduated high school aged 14, before enrolling at Cal Tech University.
He was extremely sexually promiscuous and had an affair with his professor's wife. After getting her pregnant, he was asked to leave Cal Tech.
At age 17, he became a taxi driver before becoming a journalist in Los Angeles.
He began dating and hanging around with notable people in Hollywood, including film director John Huston.
Hodel then enrolled at Berkeley University in San Francisco, studying pre-med, and took a job at the San Francisco Chronicle as a columnist, then studied for his medical degree at UCSF.
He graduated as a doctor in 1936 and moved to work in logging camps in Arizona and New Mexico before moving back to Los Angeles in 1938.
He became the head of LA's venereal disease board, married Huston's ex-wife Dorothy, and bought the famous Sowden House in LA, where he had three children, including Steve.
Hodel became involved in the darker side of the Surrealist art scene and enjoyed partying and womanizing with famous Hollywood pals. He was living in Los Angeles at the time of Elizabeth Short's murder in 1947.
Altogether he was married four times and fathered 11 children.
In 1949, he was arrested and accused of incest with his 14-year-old daughter Tamar. He was ultimately acquitted at trial, even though there were three adult witnesses. Steve later discovered evidence of corruption and payments to his officials during the trial after his father's death.
In 1950, Hodel moved to Hawaii, where he married a Filipino woman, became a psychiatrist, and lectured on abnormal criminal behavior.
He later moved to Manila, the Phillippines, and started working in market research, where he lived for around 30 years, making frequent trips back to the US - including between 1966 and 1969 - the timeline of the Zodiac killings.
Hodel married again and moved back to San Francisco in 1990 to a penthouse on the 39th floor, where he died in 1999 at age 91.
After his father's death, Steve discovered secret DA tapes that showed Hodel was a suspect in the Black Dahlia murder, but charges were never filed.
Steve has also compiled a list of 32 crime signatures, bizarre crime characteristics that match the Zodiac killings to the Black Dahlia, including how he: taunted police and press by phone and letter after the murders, packaged and sent victims' items to the press, and police to prove he was the murderer and wrote taunting messages at the scene.
He believes many of the crimes also have links to the Surrealist art and Hollywood movie worlds that his father loved.
Asked how he felt about discovering his father's links to such horrific crimes, Steve said, "In every homicide you investigate - I've investigated over 300 murders in my career, and I had an exceptionally high solve rate 75 to 80% - you have to separate my feelings from the crime itself.
"And I've had to do that to a later or to a greater or lesser extent on every murder case I've had.
"So, in a way, I was insulated to some degree - even though it was my father.
"It was difficult because you've got the son who loves his father, and initially, it's to show he had nothing to do with it, and it takes him in a different direction.
"And then you've got the trained objective homicide detective doing a parallel investigation with just the facts.
"I've been through every emotion we could go through, you know, and I think I've just left with a terrible sadness that this man had so much potential; he could have cured cancer, he could have done so much good for humanity and he, in fact, became one of the world's worst monsters."
As well as two books on his father's links to the Zodiac, Most Evil and Most Evil II, Steve has also written two books about his father's earlier killings - based on further investigations.
He now believes he has linked his father to 50 murders in 50 years, taking him from his first crime - which he believes was the killing of a priest in San Francisco - and his last, the killing of taxi driver Paul Stine - the last Zodiac victim.
"I believe his first crime was when he was 14 - a priest in San Francisco that he shot - and I think basically he never stopped," Steve said.
"So I'm at 50 years and about 50 crimes.
"And what's amazing is, the early years' crimes prove the later years' crimes, and the later years' crimes prove the early years' crimes because he's got a very similar MO of taunting and mailing.
"[In his first crime] he sends tiny notes to the San Francisco Chronicle, which tie into words that he says as Zodiac. Again, you've just got so much cross-information and proof.
"So basically, I'm overwhelmed by him. I liken him to a wild beast. Let's say, a man-eating tiger loose in a village, the tiger's not gonna stop until he's either captured or killed and George was not.
"He was captured a couple of times, but because of politics and corruption, he was let loose, allowed to go free, but basically was never caught, was never captured, and kept killing."
Steve says he was reluctant to publish his theory about his father being the Zodiac as he was afraid people would think he'd gone too far as it "defies logic."
He's since used his own money to have a DNA profile of his father developed from old letters and possessions and has written to the five police departments involved in the Zodiac investigation - Vallejo Police Department, Solano County Sheriff Department, Napa County Sheriff Department, and Benicia Police Department - asking them to compare the DNA profiles.
"You've got at least five jurisdictions involved, and each one of them supposedly has some unidentified DNA, such as unidentified fingerprints.
"I don't think they're sharing their information with each other
because to my knowledge, they don't have confirmed Zodiac DNA.
In other words, the only way you're gonna get confirmed DNA is if several of the departments match...
"One of the problems you have with police departments is territoriality. Everybody's very guarded and protective...
"I sent my summaries to all of the five agencies, and I said, 'I'll be happy to come up on my dime to make a Powerpoint presentation as to why I believe he's Zodiac' - and it's been silence, crickets from anybody.
"And that's kind of where we're at, I went as far as to print my dad's DNA profile in the book so they could take a look at it...
"It's one of the oldest and coldest cases there is. But I think I've put together a case that's beyond reasonable doubt at this point."
