Most Evil

I interviewed Steve Hodel on my radio program after reading his first book Black Dahlia Avenger. As I stated in the Amazon review I wrote for that book, I began a skeptic and was convinced by the evidence presented by Hodel. His father is indeed the Black Dahlia murderer. Even after reading the first book and a two hour personal conversation with Hodel, I was felt anxious about receiving the second book – Most Evil. There seemed to be two alternatives – Steve Hodel had followed his inquiries off a cliff or his father was a prolific serial killer who was never caught.


You walk away from Black Dahlia Avenger knowing that George Hodel committed several murders in the 1940s; and, you realize his type of killer is only going to be stopped by death or prison. Most Evil is essentially set up by Black Dahlia Avenger to ask the question – what else did George Hodel do? That is a big enough question – but, Steve goes further and asks if his father is the Zodiac Killer. Honestly, accepting that George Hodel committed one of the most infamous homicides of the 20th Century is a big deal but tackling him as also one of the most infamous serial killers of the 20th Century seems impossible. That’s the attitude I started reading with – I like Steve, I liked the book and I am convinced George murdered Elizabeth Short, but the Zodiac Killer?

Moreover, I knew more about the Zodiac than the Dahlia. After all, I am of the age that I grew up with the Zodiac. His last acknowledge communication took place only two years before I would find myself attending bootcamp in Alameda (near San Francisco) and later living in Northern California. Heck, as a newspaper boy I delivered papers headlining the Zodiac. I read the original news accounts, read books exploring the killings, visited two of the murder spots and have seen the documentaries produced about the killings.

While I am not any kind of expert on the Zodiac, many years ago I had reached a conclusion about him. I always believed that geography determined the Bay Area killings. In other words, the people were selected to be murdered because of where they were at the time of the homicide. Now, I am not the first one to posit this. There are quite a few people who have explored this angle and come up with interesting explanations. Steve Hodel provides THE answer.

His information concerning the location of the murders as the clue to the identity of the killer is stunning. If it is a coincidence, it is the mother (and father) of all coincidences. Moreover, Steve further lays out Hodel’s propensity to cleverly use geography as a means to communicate his identity. When I read the Chicago murder victims name I thought, “hey isn’t that a street……” I am not going to give it to you, you have to read Steve Hodel’s Most Evil to appreciate the macabre, clever and Most Evil George Hodel.

Is George Hodel the Zodiac? I don’t know. Could George Hodel be the Zodiac? Yes.