Most Evil: (Unsolved Cases) Lipstick Killer = Black Dahlia Killer? - Serial Killer Documentary
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Dr. Stone studies murder cases that for the most part are unsolved. The Lipstick killer was active in the Chicago area, leaving a notorious message in lipstick on one of the victims. William Heirens confessed to the three murders, but was he forced to do that? The "Black Dahlia" is one of the most notorious unsolved cases in American history. However, physician George Hodel was suspected. In 1994 James McVay, Jr. was found killed in his pickup truck at Fort Worth, Texas. His face was spray-printed blue, which left no DNA evidence. A witness said to have seen more than one car driving around McVay's truck, leaving the possibility that more than one person was involved in his murder.
Was the real Lipstick Killer also The Black Dahlia Killer?
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Dr. Stone studies murder cases that for the most part are unsolved. The Lipstick killer was active in the Chicago area, leaving a notorious message in lipstick on one of the victims. William Heirens confessed to the three murders, but was he forced to do that? The "Black Dahlia" is one of the most notorious unsolved cases in American history. However, physician George Hodel was suspected. In 1994 James McVay, Jr. was found killed in his pickup truck at Fort Worth, Texas. His face was spray-printed blue, which left no DNA evidence. A witness said to have seen more than one car driving around McVay's truck, leaving the possibility that more than one person was involved in his murder.
Was the real Lipstick Killer also The Black Dahlia Killer?
The Black Dahlia Murder
The Black Dahlia Killer
The Lipstick Killer
Related Keywords:
Dr Stone Season 4
Dr Stone Total episodes
Dr stone watch order
Dr stone docu netflix
Dr Stone Season 1
Dr stone Netflix
Dr Stone total season
Dr Stone Season 3
lipstick killer,the lipstick killer,serial killer,william heirens the lipstick killer,serial killers,serial killer -the lipstick killer documentary,the lipstick murders,killer lipstick,lipstick killer case,lipstick killer chicago,lipstick killer victims,note from the lipstick killer,lipstick killer evidence,lipstick killer psychology,william heirens lipstick killer,lipstick killer documentary,lipstick killer crime scenes,lipstick killer modus operandi
The Lipstick Killer movie
The Lipstick Killer innocent
The Lipstick Killer victims
How was the Lipstick Killer caught
The Lipstick Killer Hector
The Lipstick Killer Documentary
Lipstick Killer cause of death
The Lipstick Killer 1945
George Hill Hodel Jr.
Black Dahlia death
What happened to Black Dahlia
Black Dahlia suspects
Is the Black Dahlia still alive
Black Dahlia theories
Black Dahlia teeth
the black dahlia corp.
Black Dahlia story
Black Dahlia death
What happened to Black Dahlia
Black Dahlia suspects
The black dahlia murder summary
The black dahlia murder wikipedia
Black Dahlia theories
Black Dahlia story
the black dahlia corp.
Lipstick Killer cause of death
How was the Lipstick Killer caught
William Heirens Reddit
The Lipstick Killer innocent
The Lipstick Killer movie
The real Lipstick Killer
Lipstick killer Hector
Lipstick Killer Documentary
william heirens
william lipstick killer
crime junkie
lipstick killer
dr. stone personajes
dr. michael stone
william george heirens
the lipstick killer
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TVTranscript
00:00Unsolved murders.
00:07This is somebody that suffers extensive torture.
00:10Devastating violence with no one to blame.
00:14I absolutely did not do it.
00:17How do you solve a crime with no known suspects?
00:22Can you reveal the face of evil?
00:25A scale exists to measure the darkest corners of human behavior.
00:31From impulse killings to madness-fueled violence.
00:37Calculated acts of cruelty, torture, and brutality.
00:44Forensics now reveals those among us who are most evil.
00:52Unsolved murders.
00:56Mysteries that inspire fear.
00:59The Lipstick Killer terrorizes Chicago in the 1940s.
01:04And dismembers a six-year-old girl.
01:08Did the police arrest the right man?
01:12The legend of the Black Dahlia murder starts with Elizabeth Short's bisected corpse.
01:18Will the identity of these killers ever be revealed?
01:21Could the discovery solve other crimes?
01:26Fort Worth, Texas.
01:28A body is found at an abandoned warehouse.
01:31Ten years later, a detective still hunts for the murderer.
01:36Now there is a scale with 22 levels that decodes a killer's motive, method, and mind.
01:44The more heinous the crime, and the more rational the perpetrator, the higher the criminal is placed on the scale.
01:52Creator of this scale, Dr. Michael Stone, forensic psychiatrist, Columbia University.
01:59My scale helps me navigate the rather turbid waters of violent crime.
02:05But when the killer is unknown, all that can be placed on the scale is the crime itself.
02:14Dr. Stone will use his scale to create a profile of the possible killer by reviewing the crimes they have left behind.
02:23How will these profiles challenge Dr. Stone's scale as he asks key questions?
02:29What does the nature of the crime reveal about the killer?
02:33Was the victim tortured?
02:35Did the killer leave a message?
02:37Can Dr. Stone's scale help reveal the face of evil?
02:45June 1945.
02:48America breathes a sigh of relief at the end of World War II.
02:52But in Chicago, there's a woman killer on the loose.
02:57Police find the body of Josephine Ross in her own bed.
03:01Her mattress is soaked with blood.
03:04Her throat is slashed, and her head is wrapped in a dress.
03:09But there is no blood on the body.
03:12The victim has been bathed after the murder, and her wounds carefully closed with adhesive tape.
03:21A witness saw a man descending a fire escape the day of the murder.
03:26The bizarre state of the cleansed and taped corpse is all the police have to go on.
03:32After two months, they have no suspects and make no arrests.
03:37The case goes cold.
03:41Six months later, another victim is found.
03:45The body of Frances Brown is found draped over her bathtub.
03:49She is nude.
03:51Her nightgown is wrapped around her head.
03:54She has been shot twice, and a butcher's knife is lodged in her neck.
03:59Like Josephine Ross, she has also been bathed after the murder.
04:04But this time, the killer left more than a cleansed corpse.
04:09Scrawled and lipstick on the wall.
04:12For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more.
04:16I cannot control myself.
04:19The way the bodies were cleaned convinces police that one killer is responsible for both crimes.
04:26Yet police have no possible suspects.
04:29And from the confession on the wall, police fear they now have a serial killer on the loose.
04:36Newspapers dub him the Lipstick Killer, and everyone is afraid he will strike again.
04:47January 7, 1946.
04:51The parents of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan find her missing from her bedroom.
04:56FBI agents and local police scour the neighborhood for the missing girl.
05:02After a matter of hours, an officer discovers what looks to be a doll's head in a sewer basin.
05:09Instead, he has just found the first piece of Suzanne Degnan's dismembered body.
05:16Parts of the little girl are found scattered throughout the neighborhood sewers.
05:22A partial torso is found wrapped in blue pajamas.
05:27An autopsy reveals that Suzanne's body was not carelessly cut apart.
05:32It is severed at the joints with a surgeon's skill.
05:37Chicago police have never witnessed such brutality.
05:42Police still have no leads, no potential suspects.
05:46Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Stone creates a profile of the unknown killer.
05:51It seems unusual to me that a child killer would be responsible for all the murders.
05:56But I can speculate the suspect is surely a man.
05:59Looking at the lipstick killings, there are some established patterns that emerge.
06:04The most striking of which is the killer's desire to cover up the crime.
06:08The washing of the bodies, placing tape over the wounds, hiding limbs of a little girl.
06:13It's almost as if he couldn't stand to look at what he'd done.
06:16We can assume he suffered an abusive background,
06:19with the progression of crimes leading up to something as tragic as dismembering a child.
06:25He's a psychopath with a possible schizoid personality.
06:28It's for these reasons that I place the murderer, whoever he was, at level 18 on my scale.
06:35These are serial murderers that are sexually perverse.
06:40Following the Degnan murder, panic ensues.
06:44Parents keep their children inside and lock their doors and windows.
06:48Newspapers call the lipstick killer's spree the crime of the century.
06:53After six months, the police finally make an arrest.
06:57A 17-year-old named Bill Hirons.
07:01A small-time thief with a police record,
07:03Hirons is caught breaking into a house in the same neighborhood where Suzanne Degnan was murdered.
07:11Bill Hirons is a loner.
07:14Accepted early to the University of Chicago,
07:17Hirons is a strong student and is studying electrical engineering.
07:23He is good with his hands, spending hours taking things apart
07:29and putting them back together.
07:33But there is another side to Hirons.
07:36At age 13, Hirons began to steal.
07:39By the time he was 17, he was breaking into apartments,
07:43taking people's jewelry, money, and even guns.
07:48Serial killers are not born overnight.
07:51There is a gestation period.
07:53At first, their crimes appear insignificant,
07:55but over time, events escalate.
07:58Evil builds on itself.
08:01It takes a month for Bill Hirons to confess to the crimes of the lipstick killer.
08:06For his cooperation, Hirons escapes the electric chair,
08:10but he is sent to prison for the rest of his life.
08:14However, from prison, Hirons claims he is an innocent man.
08:20Chicago believes they have caught the lipstick killer.
08:24But is this case solved?
08:27Dr. Stone travels to the Dixon Prison to compare his profile of the possible murderer
08:32with the man who has been behind prison walls for the past 60 years.
08:38At 77, Hirons has spent more time in an Illinois state prison than anyone else.
08:46Is Bill Hirons the lipstick killer?
08:48Dr. Stone considers if this case actually remains unsolved.
08:53You confessed to killing the three women 60 years later.
08:57The question now is, is that something you can say that you did or something you didn't do?
09:01I'd say I absolutely did not do it.
09:05Dr. Stone continues his interview to see if Bill Hirons could match his profile of the killer.
09:10I thought it would be good to get a little picture as to what your original family was like.
09:17There are arguments, especially where the money was there,
09:23but my dad pocketed it and used it for other things.
09:28Did he drink some of it away?
09:30I'm afraid so.
09:32Bill Hirons grows up in a lower middle class neighborhood in Chicago.
09:37His parents struggle with money and fight constantly about his father's drinking.
09:44He is a curious but reckless child.
09:47His mother once caught Hirons on top of their roof, ready to take flight with homemade paper wings.
09:54A boy longing to escape.
10:00Because I understand they sent you to some place for wayward kids.
10:05A juvenile offender.
10:09It was a boys boarding school.
10:14You learn from them what you should not be learning.
10:18What did they teach you?
10:20Grabbing purses.
10:23Some people that do those things experience a kind of a rush, a thrill of getting away with it.
10:28Is that something that you experienced?
10:30No, I think it was mostly fear.
10:35That kind of emotion from it.
10:39A lot of the times I put back what I took directly into the place where it was taken from.
10:46When I was creating a profile of a possible killer,
10:49I was forced to rely on the details of the crime scene.
10:53The brutal stabbings.
10:55The cleansing and taping of the bodies.
10:59Even the dismemberment of a child.
11:02Before Bill Hirons, I tried to imagine him as a 17-year-old boy.
11:06And I wonder, was he even capable of this?
11:11I just did some foolish things back in those days when I was a kid.
11:17Without much thought.
11:20You ended up with this nickname, the Lipstick Killer.
11:25Yeah.
11:27So what we're interested in is how you got from being caught stealing the wallet or whatever it was,
11:36and being arrested for that,
11:40and being targeted for these more serious crimes.
11:44The two murders and the kidnapping and murder of the little girl.
11:50Well, these were unsolved crimes.
11:56There happened to be murders, too.
11:59And that's when the publicity was over.
12:03And they were looking for somebody to convict on that.
12:11And that pretty well summarizes what the situation was on me at that time.
12:20That everybody was pointing their finger at me,
12:23and they didn't have any reason to.
12:25Except that I had been a burglar.
12:28Right.
12:29Had you ever, in any of the burglaries, the break-ins, whatever,
12:33had you ever done something that hurt a person physically?
12:38In other words, it was like in the soul, where you hit somebody or hurt somebody physically.
12:45No.
12:47When they were trying to arrest me, I did fight back.
12:52When you were arrested, one of the things that complicated things for you,
12:55you had a gun at that time.
12:57Yeah.
12:58A loaded gun.
12:59Yeah.
13:00So that didn't sit well, I guess, with the police.
13:04Well, I used it to get away.
13:11I stopped them from chasing me by using the gun.
13:15It gave me a little lead, but it didn't get me far enough.
13:19No.
13:20And then a detective came up.
13:23He knew I had a gun because the people that were chasing me told him that I had one.
13:30And as soon as he saw me, he started shooting with his gun.
13:34And he shot three times.
13:36I didn't shoot at all.
13:40But he missed.
13:43And so I took the gun that I had, and I threw it at him.
13:48And he ducked.
13:49The gun hit soundly on the floor.
13:52It didn't go off.
13:53And I jumped on top of him.
13:55And we were wrestling on the floor.
13:57That's when somebody come up behind me.
13:59He had me over the head with the flower pots.
14:03Having the gun helped make the police think that you were somebody capable of doing very violent crimes.
14:12Probably.
14:15And the rest is history.
14:18The last 60 years is history.
14:21So what's intriguing is what were the things that, in your mind, led to your confessing?
14:29How did that work?
14:30Yeah.
14:32Were there any things that the prosecutors did say you had done or whatever?
14:37Was there any truth looking back in your own mind in any of their allegations?
14:45No, I don't believe so.
14:48In fact, the prosecutors admitted later on that they had no evidence at all.
14:57Without the confessions, they could not have gotten convictions.
15:02It was impossible to.
15:04And now that, since then, I've found other things that came up.
15:10Hirons remembers the Suzanne Degnan investigation like it was yesterday.
15:15It has been six months since the brutal murder of Suzanne Degnan.
15:20The public is desperate for a suspect.
15:23After a botched burglary, Hirons is cornered by police only a few blocks away from the Degnan home.
15:30He spends a month in custody, being interrogated by police.
15:34Police are convinced that Bill Hirons is the lipstick killer
15:38and that he is responsible for the brutal murder of two women
15:43and the dismemberment of a little girl.
15:47He faces the death penalty.
15:50Police bring Hirons to pose for the press, reenacting how he kidnapped Suzanne Degnan from her bedroom.
15:58In exchange for a life sentence, Hirons confesses to murdering all three victims.
16:05There is no trial.
16:07He is sentenced to life in prison.
16:13When the Degnan child was killed, the publicity was outrageous on it.
16:21The newspapers kept it going, such that everybody was scared.
16:29The Daily News publishes that Hirons admits to all three murders,
16:34even before he can give his own statement.
16:38Everyone believes Hirons is guilty.
16:41The police were manufacturing evidence against me.
16:45Who?
16:46The police.
16:47The police?
16:48I can establish that because of what appeared in the newspapers at that time.
16:55Hirons claims the Chicago police put him through a severe interrogation.
17:00In 1946, there were no Miranda rights for the accused.
17:04Hirons says he was denied access to a lawyer.
17:08He says he suffered beatings, was denied food and water,
17:12given injections with sodium pentothal, truth serum,
17:17and for some unknown reason, a spinal tap.
17:20Hirons claims he was tortured.
17:23After his month in custody, under relentless publicity and scrutiny,
17:29Hirons reluctantly confesses to being the lipstick killer.
17:33You confess to killing the three women.
17:36That brings in the question which must be intriguing people for all these 60 years.
17:40What really prompted you to confess?
17:43Because if it had gone to trial with all the stuff that they had in the newspapers,
17:47I would have been convicted, and it would mean the death sentence.
17:52And if I'm dead, I can't prove that I didn't commit the crime.
17:59So I had to stay alive.
18:01I would be dead if I did not confess to it,
18:06and then I would not have a chance to get those crimes solved.
18:13I could solve them, I thought, on my own.
18:18Does this case remain unsolved?
18:22Hirons is the longest-serving inmate in the state of Illinois.
18:27Legal counsel and nationwide campaigns have attempted to come to Hirons' aid
18:32as a wrongly accused man.
18:34Despite an exemplary record, Bill Hirons has always been denied parole.
18:41Meeting with Hirons poses a serious question.
18:44It's unlikely that Hirons would ever have been capable of the things done by the lipstick killer.
18:49He just doesn't seem to fit my profile.
18:52Looking back all the years now, what are the things about which you have the most regret,
18:57or do you have regret about certain things in your life?
19:01Lots of regrets.
19:07A big loss.
19:12A big, big loss.
19:16All the things I could have done with my life and I have to end up spending 60 years in prison.
19:29Bill Hirons remains in prison as the lipstick murderer, but the crimes may be unsolved.
19:37But 2,000 miles away, are answers right around the corner?
19:44Los Angeles, January 15, 1947.
19:48A woman's naked corpse is found in a vacant lot.
19:52The scene is shocking.
19:54Her face is gashed with a blade, ear to ear, creating a hideous grin.
20:02They find a body that's perfectly bisected, cut in half.
20:07All the blood has been drained from the body.
20:10They see signs of torture, see a careful posing of the body,
20:15not just dumped there or thrown there, but a careful and deliberate posing.
20:19Her upper torso is separated from her legs by six inches.
20:23Her arms are raised over her head and bent at the elbows at 90 degree angles.
20:28She is placed inches away from the sidewalk to ensure her corpse would be noticed.
20:34Police stand over her mutilated body in shock.
20:38They have never seen anything like this before.
20:42Investigators identify the body.
20:44A struggling Hollywood actress, 22-year-old Elizabeth Short.
20:49An autopsy reveals none of her internal organs were damaged.
20:52Her body was cut in half with surgical precision.
20:56Police have no leads.
20:58But the murderer is a constant presence in the investigation, providing intriguing clues.
21:04The killer sends Elizabeth Short's missing purse to police
21:08along with cryptic postcards that taunt the public.
21:12Over the course of the next few months,
21:14newspapers receive numerous messages from the killer, teasing the press with his identity.
21:20Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Stone sees a pattern in these unsolved crimes.
21:26This is an individual who is desperate for recognition.
21:29He wants credit for what he's done.
21:32Like the lipstick killer, the Black Dahlia murderer has a need to communicate with the public.
21:37Investigators follow every lead, yet the case goes unsolved.
21:44The mysterious and dramatic dismemberment
21:46has made Elizabeth Short a murder victim with celebrity status.
21:51Novels and Hollywood films have been inspired by this unsolved case.
21:56Legions of fans have grown obsessed with the gruesome details of her murder
22:00and who could be the killer.
22:04Who would be compelled to tear this woman apart?
22:08In the 1940s, it seemed like everyone in Hollywood was a suspect.
22:12The finger has been pointed to everyone from famous gangster Bugsy Siegel
22:16to legendary director Orson Welles.
22:20But the LAPD could never solve the crime.
22:24The murder becomes forever known as the Black Dahlia.
22:28Steve Hodel was only a boy living in Hollywood
22:31when Elizabeth Short's severed corpse was found.
22:34By the time Steve joined the LAPD in 1963,
22:38the Black Dahlia was already the most notorious unsolved murder in Los Angeles history.
22:44Now, 50 years later,
22:47the nature of Elizabeth Short's murder reveals much to the retired detective
22:51about the kind of person capable of such a killing.
22:55Clearly, this is somebody that suffered extensive torture, maybe two or three hours.
23:00We noticed that this was a perfect bisection.
23:03There's only one way you can divide a body without going through the bone,
23:07and that's going through the second and third lumbar vertebrae.
23:10This was not a butcher or a meat cutter.
23:12This had to have been somebody highly skilled in medicine.
23:15With over 40 years of investigating experience,
23:18Detective Steve Hodel has never faced a more daunting case.
23:22But he could never imagine the personal connection he would make to the Black Dahlia murder,
23:28one that involves his own bloodline.
23:31Following the death of his father in 1991,
23:35Steve stumbles across a mysterious black-and-white photo of a nude woman.
23:40It is a picture that his father took.
23:43I looked at the photograph, and I said,
23:45Why does this face seem familiar to me?
23:47To this day, I don't know why, but the Black Dahlia comes to mind.
23:50Steve believes the photo is of a nude Elizabeth Short.
23:54But why would Steve's father, Dr. George Hodel,
23:58have this intimate photograph of the Black Dahlia?
24:01I started researching the investigation and looking into it,
24:04because I really knew nothing, even though I'd been with LAPD,
24:07and this was their most famous unsolved case.
24:09And I discovered that somebody with surgical skill had committed the crime.
24:13And I thought, Interesting, Dad had surgical skill,
24:16but it still never occurred to me that he might be the suspect.
24:19But as Steve's investigation continues,
24:22details of the crime all point him to only one man who could be the killer.
24:27My God, this can't be.
24:30There is the possibility.
24:32Steve's own father, Dr. George Hodel.
24:37Steve's conviction runs so deep,
24:40he takes it upon himself to reopen the case of the Black Dahlia.
24:44As Steve's investigation develops,
24:47he realizes that there are striking circumstances
24:50that connect his father to this murder.
24:53Steve calls these thought prints.
24:56On a fingerprint, you have whorls, arches, ridges.
25:00Think of thoughts as sort of the mental ridges, arches, whorls of the mind.
25:05And I've put together a bunch of points
25:08that link George Hodel to the crime in different ways.
25:14George Hodel is a gifted young man full of promise and privilege.
25:19By the age of 9, he is a piano prodigy.
25:24George is recognized as a genius,
25:27scoring an IQ one point higher than Albert Einstein.
25:31But high genius comes with a price.
25:34Early acceptance to college at the age of 14
25:38keeps George socially awkward and isolated.
25:41George retreats into himself to escape.
25:44He begins experimenting with drugs.
25:47He becomes engrossed with art, sex, and violence.
25:52George thinks of himself as a writer and photographer,
25:56but is never recognized for his talent.
25:59He becomes consumed with the darker, more dangerous sides of Los Angeles.
26:05And he is driven.
26:07Lying about his age,
26:0919-year-old George becomes a newspaper crime reporter,
26:13writing gruesome accounts of murder scenes
26:15along the back streets of Los Angeles.
26:18The violence inspires him.
26:22Oftentimes, genius comes with emotional instability.
26:26That, paired with George's precocious obsession with violence,
26:30can be a dangerous combination.
26:32As a child, Steve was not close to his father,
26:36but remembers him as larger than life.
26:39He was strict. He was formal.
26:41He wasn't very emotional, but his charisma and his charm,
26:45it was more of the awe that we worshipped him.
26:48He was almost godlike to us.
26:50George Hodel becomes a doctor.
26:53By day, he runs a V.D. clinic
26:56that holds the secrets of Hollywood studio moguls and celebrities alike.
27:00Dad was very charismatic.
27:02He'd walk into a room,
27:04and you felt you were like in the presence of a king or a pope.
27:07He had that kind of power.
27:09By night, he throws decadent parties
27:12where the Hollywood elite indulge in drugs and beautiful women.
27:16All of these amazing people coming and partying and drinking
27:19and having a wonderful time.
27:21Henry Miller, Man Ray, John Huston.
27:24You were literally in the middle of Hollywood,
27:26yet you were totally secluded once you entered this concrete fortress.
27:30It is here that George meets Elizabeth Short.
27:33Steve believes that his father and Elizabeth Short
27:36maintained a love affair,
27:38a love affair that may have ended on a vacant lot
27:42with Elizabeth Short's corpse, perfectly bisected at the waist.
27:46The gruesome, unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short
27:49has even inspired Hollywood films and pulp novels.
27:54Veteran LAPD detective Steve Hodel
27:57is convinced that he has found the man responsible for the Black Dahlia murder,
28:02his own father, Dr. George Hodel.
28:07Steve sees his father's connections to her murder everywhere.
28:12In 1947, Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia,
28:16is found naked with her mouth gashed ear to ear.
28:20Her corpse is posed six inches from the sidewalk
28:24on a vicious display,
28:27and her body is perfectly cut in half at the waist.
28:31Shockingly, none of her internal organs were damaged in the dismemberment.
28:36The key is that a hemicorpectomy was performed on Elizabeth Short.
28:40It's only by going through second and third lumbar vertebrae
28:43can you perform this operation.
28:45Steve reviews his father's records from medical school
28:49and discovers George had performed over 700 hours of surgery.
28:54So clearly he was highly skilled in surgery
28:56and had the ability to bisect a body.
29:00Steve sees his father's touch on the anonymous postcards
29:03that taunted Los Angeles newspapers.
29:06What do we have here? We have headlines.
29:08He's sending in headlines.
29:09This is not some thug off the street.
29:11This is somebody trained in journalism.
29:13George's experience as a young newspaper crime reporter
29:16provides a distinct connection for Steve.
29:19It was a journalist. It was a journalist killer.
29:24But it is George's infatuation with surrealist art
29:27that has Steve convinced that his father is the killer.
29:31The key to understanding the Black Dahlia murder is surrealism.
29:36He always saw himself as a surrealist.
29:38He believed that there was no difference
29:40between the dream and the waking state.
29:42Where others intellectually believed this surrealist,
29:45he actually truly believed it in his heart of hearts.
29:48If you go there, that's a very dangerous position to be in
29:51because it basically opens you up to just about anything.
29:55There are no rules. There is no morality.
29:58There is no God.
30:00The surrealist artist Man Ray and George become friends,
30:05sharing a love for deviant sex and the violent domination of women.
30:11Man Ray is an enormous influence on George as an artist,
30:15acting as a surrealist mentor.
30:18Ultimately, it is this relationship that leads Steve
30:22to consider Elizabeth Short's posed corpse.
30:26I reviewed the crime scene photos initially,
30:28and they bothered me, the deliberate posing.
30:31What was I seeing here? What was the killer trying to say?
30:34I started reviewing Man Ray's photographs.
30:36A lot of them depicted decapitations, segmented bodies.
30:40One of his most famous photographs is called the Minotaur.
30:44And this is a woman's body bisected at the waist,
30:48and the hands are posed in this position to represent the horns.
30:51This is a bull.
30:52The Minotaur, of course, was the half-man, half-bull of Crete
30:56who devoured young maidens and was kept alive in a labyrinth.
31:00Did the surrealist work of Man Ray influence George Hodel in his crime?
31:06Elizabeth Short's perfectly bisected body,
31:10the deliberate posing of the figure,
31:13the grotesque gash carved across her mouth.
31:18Is the Black Dahlia George Hodel's work of art?
31:21He actually completed a masterpiece of surrealism.
31:26Elizabeth Short's body was his canvas.
31:28His scalpel was his paintbrush.
31:30He created something that he knew would live forever.
31:35After a seven-year investigation,
31:37Steve presents his evidence against his own father to the authorities.
31:42I go in secret and I take all of my evidence
31:45to an active head deputy district attorney, Stephen Kay.
31:48He says, based on what you've brought to me
31:51and based on the photographs and based on the evidence,
31:55and were your father still alive, I would seek the death penalty.
32:00But mysteries surrounding the Black Dahlia case
32:03will keep the murder of Elizabeth Short unsolved.
32:07All of these reports have been sanitized from the LAPD.
32:10They've all disappeared.
32:11Not only have all of the transcripts
32:13and all of the information on George Hodel disappeared,
32:16but so has all of the physical evidence.
32:18Potential linkage to DNA has all vanished.
32:21It's all vanished.
32:22LAPD has no explanation for it.
32:24All they say is, well, sometimes stuff happens.
32:28Steve believes that evidence in the Black Dahlia file
32:31was destroyed to protect his father.
32:35Dr. George Hodel's VD clinic
32:37may have held sexual secrets of the Hollywood elite,
32:41secrets that may have protected him from the law.
32:45Retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel
32:48believes beyond a doubt
32:50that his own father is the Black Dahlia killer.
32:54When he looks at secret DA files about the case,
32:57he discovers that the LAPD
32:59had come to the same conclusion 50 years earlier.
33:03George Hodel was the chief suspect in the case.
33:08But DA files reveal darker secrets
33:11that Steve could never have imagined.
33:14As Steve reviews the case files,
33:16he learns that Elizabeth Short
33:18may not have been his father's only victim.
33:21The file reveals that George Hodel
33:24traveled to Chicago in 1946,
33:27the same year six-year-old Suzanne Degnan's body is dismembered.
33:32Suzanne Degnan is one of the victims
33:34Bill Hirons was convicted of killing in the Lipstick Murders.
33:39The Black Dahlia and the Suzanne Degnan murder
33:42have striking details in common.
33:46Both victims were perfectly bisected
33:48by someone with a surgeon's skill.
33:52Each body was severed in half at the waist
33:55with a precise cut through the second and third vertebrae.
34:00The key is that a hemicorpectomy was performed on Degnan.
34:04That is a signature that's so unique.
34:07Again, it's only by going through
34:09the second and third lumbar vertebrae
34:10can you perform this operation.
34:12It's a specific location.
34:14This was done on Degnan.
34:15This was done on Elizabeth Short.
34:18For Steve, the crime scene
34:20where Elizabeth Short's bisected corpse was found
34:24and the Chicago murder of Suzanne Degnan
34:27share an eerie coincidence that is too shocking to ignore.
34:32The Black Dahlia corpse was discovered
34:34on South Norton Street in Hollywood.
34:37Adjacent to South Norton is a street called
34:40Degnan Boulevard.
34:43Degnan, the last name of the little girl
34:46found dismembered in a Chicago sewer.
34:49It is Steve's belief that his father
34:51was trying to send a message to the world.
34:54He bore to the left, still thinking he was on Degnan,
34:56drove up to 3815 South Norton,
34:58placed the body there, believing he was on Degnan,
35:01and went home.
35:03In 1947, it appears George Hodel simply made a wrong turn.
35:09George Hodel's final statement would go unnoticed.
35:13I believe that this was his ultimate taunt.
35:16He was saying to the cops,
35:18OK, if you're really clever and you can figure this out,
35:21you'll be able to make a connection
35:22between the Degnan murder and the Dahlia.
35:25In fact, Steve believes that Elizabeth Short's knowledge
35:29of the Degnan murder may have led to her own fate.
35:34What we now know from getting into the DA files
35:37is that Elizabeth Short somehow discovered
35:40what we believe is George's involvement.
35:43I believe she found out that George committed that murder,
35:48and that's what signed her death warrant.
35:51Could George Hodel be responsible
35:54for two of history's most evil murders,
35:57the mutilation of Elizabeth Short
35:59and the dismemberment of Suzanne Degnan?
36:03Is it possible that he could have also murdered
36:06one of the victims in the lipstick killings?
36:10Could Bill Hirons be innocent
36:12of murdering two women and a little girl?
36:15Dr. Stone reviews the profile of Dr. George Hodel
36:20and the extraordinary possibility
36:22that he is both the Black Dahlia murderer
36:24and the lipstick killer.
36:26It's clear, judging from the profiles of each unsolved case,
36:30that the same killer would be capable
36:32of committing the murders
36:33of both of Elizabeth Short and Suzanne Degnan.
36:36George Hodel was a deeply disturbed man
36:39who, although brilliant,
36:40had a viciously distorted sense of reality.
36:43There's every reason to believe George Hodel
36:46enjoyed the horrible murder of Elizabeth Short
36:49and that he took pleasure in what he had done
36:52for the rest of his long life.
36:54We may never know for certain the killer
36:56responsible for the first two lipstick murders,
37:00but George Hodel's profile
37:02would make him more than capable and willing.
37:05If Steve is correct, I would place George Hodel
37:09at the very top of my scale,
37:12level 22,
37:14psychopathic torture murderers
37:16with torture their primary motive.
37:20But questions remain about Bill Hirons,
37:22the man actually convicted as the lipstick killer.
37:27From my meeting with him,
37:29I feel his profile
37:30simply does not match that of a murderer.
37:33Although Steve Hodel may have solved the case
37:36of the black dahlia and the lipstick killer,
37:39he may be too late to save Bill Hirons,
37:42the man convicted as the lipstick killer.
37:45The sad thing is that we have a man
37:4760 years incarcerated, wrongfully prosecuted.
37:51Bill Hirons remains Illinois' longest-serving inmate
37:56and has always claimed his innocence.
37:59Despite recent legal campaigns
38:02and Steve Hodel's shocking revelations
38:04that his own father may be responsible for the murders,
38:07Bill Hirons has still been denied parole.
38:10The only reason he confessed was to save himself.
38:13They said, you'll be executed, we're going to cook you,
38:16confess or die.
38:20And he made the right choice.
38:22A 17-year-old boy who had been beaten
38:25and under extreme duress.
38:27He would be dead, he would have been dead within a year
38:30had he pled not guilty.
38:33But for Steve Hodel, it is beyond doubt.
38:36His father, Dr. George Hodel, is a serial killer.
38:40And based on my now seven-year investigation,
38:43we know that George Hodel committed
38:45the black dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short.
38:48I further am absolutely convinced
38:50that William Hirons did not commit the murder
38:53of Suzanne Degnan, and he's been serving 60 years
38:56for a crime that George Hodel committed.
38:59The unthinkable.
39:02The unsolvable.
39:05What do some of history's most legendary unsolved murders
39:09tell us about the mind of a killer?
39:12Killers that may still be among us.
39:17Bill Hirons was convicted as the Lipstick Killer,
39:20responsible for the savage murder of two women
39:23and a six-year-old girl.
39:25Today, many believe Hirons was wrongly accused,
39:29and there is no hope for his parole.
39:32The potential of a 17-year-old boy
39:34has dissolved into the longest-serving inmate
39:37in the Chicago prison system.
39:40The true Lipstick Killer may have continued to murder,
39:44leaving even more unsolved cases in his wake.
39:49Cold-case detectives are constantly fighting against time.
39:53Dr. Stone's profiles provide another tool for detectives
39:57in their hunt for the killers.
40:00Investigator Steve Hodel makes an extraordinary connection,
40:04linking two of history's most brutal
40:07and vexing unsolved murders,
40:09the black dahlia and the Lipstick Killer.
40:13But these are just two crimes in an ocean of unsolved cases.
40:18Since 1960, more than 200,000 murders in the United States alone
40:23have gone unsolved.
40:26Each year, another 6,000 cases grow cold
40:30and are added to the total.
40:32With lack of evidence, few leads, and no witnesses,
40:36investigators often struggle to find a killer.
40:40In virtually every city in America,
40:43murders continue to go unsolved.
40:47February 25, 1994, Fort Worth, Texas.
40:51Homicide detective Manny Reyes receives a call.
40:55A body has been discovered at a warehouse lot.
40:58The victim is a white male.
41:01He has been severely beaten and shot twice.
41:05Bloody footprints surround the body.
41:08A wallet still in the victim's back pocket reveals his identity.
41:13James McVeigh, Jr., 39 years old.
41:17James' pickup truck is unlocked and filled with valuable tools.
41:22The keys to his truck are in his back pocket.
41:25There appears to be no signs of robbery.
41:28And there is something else unusual.
41:31James McVeigh's face is entirely spray-painted blue.
41:37They went beyond just killing him.
41:40They did a lot of things to him that we had not seen before.
41:44Evidence gathered at the scene provides no answers.
41:47An investigation into McVeigh's background yields no motive for Detective Reyes.
41:53There was nothing about him, his lifestyle, or his work
41:58that contributed to him being killed.
42:00Detective Reyes finds one witness who says he saw McVeigh's truck
42:04surrounded by two other cars.
42:06More than one killer may have been involved.
42:09There's no way he would have gone back there on his own free will.
42:12There had to be somebody in the truck with him
42:15forcing him to follow the lead car.
42:18There had to have been a minimum of three.
42:20One in the driver in the front, one in McVeigh's truck,
42:24and one driving the other car.
42:26For over six months, Reyes tries to crack the case
42:30but can't establish any motive or develop a potential suspect.
42:35Dr. Stone considers the McVeigh murder scene
42:38as he applies his scale to best compose a possible profile of the killer.
42:44We can only speculate what transpired that night,
42:47but the investigation details greatly affect
42:50where the perpetrators belonged on my scale.
42:53If McVeigh's murder was carried out by multiple people,
42:57it shows a heinous level of premeditation and planning.
43:01There was no robbery, and that suggests the only reason to murder
43:05was for the thrill of killing this man.
43:08Was McVeigh's face spray-painted before his murder?
43:11If so, that would be a bizarre form of torture.
43:15I would place the killers at level 16 on my scale,
43:19which I reserve for psychopathic schemers
43:21who commit extraordinary and repeated vicious acts.
43:26Yeah, this is Reyes.
43:27I need to get some property out of the property room.
43:30It has now been more than ten years since the murder of James McVeigh.
43:35There are still no leads.
43:37But Reyes once again examines the evidence from the crime scene,
43:41hoping for something that may have gone undetected,
43:44a clue that may lead to a suspect or an arrest.
43:50This is a .25 projectile.
43:52This is what was used to shoot and kill James McVeigh.
43:58Even on fingerprints, what we were not able to pick up years ago
44:03was the new technology nowadays we can.
44:05Everything's changing so rapidly that that's one reason we keep all this,
44:10is we don't know what we're going to be able to do with this
44:12a couple of years from now.
44:14The case of James McVeigh is not the only unsolved case
44:18that Detective Reyes is pursuing.
44:21In the ten years since the crime,
44:23Reyes has opened Fort Worth's cold case unit,
44:27dedicated to closing the cases that remain unsolved.
44:31The McVeigh case is only one of more than 700 unsolved murders
44:37left for Detective Reyes to face alone.
44:45There's no case that I have that I can say will never be solved.
44:49There's no such thing.
44:51You just can't have that kind of attitude.
44:53At any given time, something can happen on any case.
45:00Unsolved murders, the quest for answers,
45:04and the solutions to the unknown.
45:07Dr. Stone's look into the mind of evil is just a piece of the puzzle.
45:12Creating a psychological profile using his scale
45:16may help investigators zero in on a suspect
45:19and solve mysteries of violent crime.