User:Steve Hodel/sandbox

Steve Hodel(born November 6, 1941) is a retired Los Angeles Police Department Homicide Detective and an American true-crime writer known for a series of books that focus on the investigation of the infamous 1947 Los Angeles murder of the twenty-two-year-old victim, Elizabeth Short, better known to the world as "The Black Dahlia."

Life and career

Hodel was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Dorothy Huston Hodel, was a screenwriter, married to the film director John Huston for seven years (1926-1933). She then divorced and married Steve's father, George Hodel, Chief of Social Hygiene for L.A. County Health Department. In addition to heading the Health Department, Dr. Hodel opened his own private practice, ''The First Street Clinic' in DTLA.

Steve was one of four boys born to George and Dorothy Hodel. His older brother Michael (1939), John, (Steve's twin who died three weeks after birth in 1941) and his younger brother, Kelvin. (1942)

Shortly after Steve's birth, his father purchased the historic Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. built, Sowden House in Hollywood located at 5121 Franklin Avenue. The family moved into the residence and lived there from 1945-1950. Steve joined the USN in 1959, at age seventeen and served as a hospital corpsman for four years and upon being honorably discharged joined the LAPD and graduated from their police academy in 1963. After working uniform patrol for six-years, in four separate police divisions (WLA, Wilshire, Van Nuys and Hollywood) he transferred to Hollywood Detectives where he remained for the next seventeen years.

During his career, at Hollywood Homicide, Hodel investigated over three hundred murder investigations, rose to the rank of Detective III (the highest attainable rank in detectives) and was credited with one of the highest solve rates on the LAPD. He retired in 1986 and now married with two sons (Michael and Matthew) in 1989 he moved his wife and family to Bellingham, Washington.

Literary career