Opportunists Never Sleep

Tuesday, CBS reran their episode of 48 Hours that was essentially an infomercial for Steve Hodel's shabby, opportunistic book alleging that his late father, Dr. George Hodel, murdered Elizabeth Short. And then, Wednesday at midnight, Los Angeles FM radio station KPFK replayed a two-hour interview with Hodel. I find it impossible to believe this is coincidental, especially since KPFK is in the middle of one of their fund drives.

Hodel's book has been taken apart by reviewers at Amazon and even managed to make Gary Indiana, who wrote a terrific takedown of the book for the Los Angeles Times, indignant and disgusted.

Also along for the ride is James Ellroy, a shameless self-promoter. On October 21, 2004, Ellroy told a reporter, "(Steve Hodel) investigates the case at great length, puts together a finally unconvincing case, but it turns out his old man was the number one suspect and admitted it on a tape." George Hodel was just one of a number of suspects and never admitted anything inculpatory. Hodel's house was bugged, and out of over one hundred pages of transcripts of conversations, Steve Hodel isolated one sentence where his father told a friend, "What if I did kill her? They couldn't prove it." Ellroy has eroded any credibility he had left as a serious writer by providing an introduction to the paperback edition of Hodel's book, endorsing Hodel's bogus claims.