Saved By The Ghetto

[MUSIC] Rude of Evil is a production of C13 Originals, a division of Cadence 13 in partnership with TNT. Before we begin, we'd like to point out that this podcast will take a deep dive into the lives of the Hodele family, which inspired the TNT limited series, "I Am the Night." If you're following along with both "I Am the Night" and this podcast, the podcast may address key events prior to those events occurring in the limited series. This story contains strong language and graphic and potentially disturbing content. Discretion is advised. Oh yeah, let me get to the Black Dahlia. When I was 11, my mother and I were open to George's house. She was on acid, of course. I did what I was told. I found a window or something like that. I was on the side and I found a window and I got in. And that was the first time I heard about George being dangerous. And he killed his secretary. I'd never heard that before. So we got inside there and she's pointing out the place where she remembered a woman screaming in the basement. And then she told me she remembered a woman being hit over the head and buried by the stairs. So anyway, so we're in the house and we're running around for a very long time and there's a silent alarm which I didn't know about. But we were there for hours before any police were sent out. That was like when I was 11 or 12. That was my introduction to the deaths that happened at the house. That's when I first started hearing about the Black Dahlia. [Music] That story you just heard was my aunt describing the time she broke into a house with my grandmother when she was 11 years old. The house was my great-grandfathers and his name was George Hodell. My sister and I heard crazy stories like this all the time growing up from all of our family members, especially our mom. They said our great-grandfather was responsible for the most famous unsolved murder in American history. And they also said he did unspeakable things to our family. Things that have haunted us all for more than 70 years. It was only much later in life that we realized that all of these stories were true. [Music] [Music] The more and more I learned about it growing up, I just thought, wow, I'm from a really dark family. There's got a lot of fucked up things that I don't even know about. It's like one big happy party for them and you're in the middle of it being victimized. Basically my mom's told us there's no two ways about it. The Hodell secrets. The George Hodell secrets are heavy shit. [Music] This guy was majorly fucked up, worse than any I've ever seen or known. And he was my dad. We're all a little crazy, you know, but everybody is. [Music] Sometimes you don't realize how much family baggage you have until you start digging. [Music] Welcome to Rude of Evil, the true story of the Hodell family and the Black Dahlia. My name is Yvette and I'm her sister, Rasha. And we're your hosts. [Music] Most of the people you'll hear from in this podcast are members of our family. Some we've been close with all our lives and others we've barely met. But we all share the same Hodell blood and the pain that's associated with that. Now for the first time, all of us have agreed to tell our story. The horrors of our past are hard to imagine and hard to believe. But everything you're going to hear is true. [Music] Rasha, you got to help me. You're here, Chucky. Here. I see go through that hole. My sister, Rasha and I are at the storage facility in San Francisco, where our mother kept so many things that were important to her and her unique life. If we're going to tell the Hodell story, it makes sense to start with our mom. Her name was Fauna Hodell and she passed away in September of 2017. But she knew her entire life that she had a story to tell. She always wanted to write her autobiography. So for nearly three decades, she recorded interviews with friends and family, conversations, and read passages she was working on into a tape recorder. Event and I have never seen or heard any of it. But that's why we're here at the storage facility to try to find them and anything else that will help tell their story. I got it. I did it again. Yay! Push. Maybe. Okay. Okay. All right, the only thing about the dark is it's so dark. We could turn the phone flashlight on too, you know. We have to move stuff out so we can kind of go through it. What's this one? Oh, this is our family portrait. Oh, we got it. This is a circle. Mom loved this picture. I hate this picture too. I hated this picture too. Like this big old earrings. Like what was I thinking? My god. Mom looks the best here though. Okay. I got it. Okay. Two hands. Two hands. Okay. Let's see. Yeah, so this is. What is this? There were stacks of journals filled with mom's poems and daily affirmations. Mom wrote 10904. Can you see it? I'm gonna have to do that. Yeah, yeah, no. I am crystal clear that this is my time. My daughters are strong, happy, proud of me. Proud of me. I am recognized for my work. That was 10204. I'm getting so emotional because she's like saying, you know, I'm happy to be alive. I'm like, yeah, she's not here right now. And it just makes me really sad. It's like I just. Feels like she's here. Our mom had a storage container for more than 20 years. It makes us feel closer to her being here, but it also reminds us how hard it is without her. Rasha, I'm gonna get another box, okay? Okay. Yeah, I need help. Okay. Put it down on the ground. Okay. Look what I found! Shut your face. Oh my god. Tomorrow, age 48. What is all that? Couset. I am leaves. I think this is the jetbar. That's a lot for you. Oh wow. Yeah. This is it. This is it. It was a box filled with dusty old cassette tapes. None had cases. And most weren't even labeled. A few had the names of mom, friends of hers, and her birth mother, tomorrow, written on them. Nobody has ever heard them. Until now. Okay. All right, well, let's get right in. All right. Let's hear something. What is in now? I'm free. Oh, this one says in now. I'm free too. Well, let's just listen to it and see what it is. Yeah, I'm ready to put it in. Moving? Volume. And now I am free. In reflection. She sounds so young. From the age of 12, I knew my story would be written. Why? I had a mother who was a drug. She detested me and I detested her drinking. Mama was black and I was white. Growing up in the late 50s and early 60s with such odds, I knew if we outlive the circumstances, this would be a story to tell. One lie, one little white lie, caused me to fight for the rest of my life. That's Mom's voice, and she's reading a passage from her manuscript about her childhood. Her life began under the strangest of circumstances and got more strange from there. Probably from the age of five or six, Mom started telling me about my real family. She told me that she was working at the Riverside Hotel as a maid in the restroom. She came across this lady one day who asked her if she wanted a baby. Strange question to ask her, but this lady had seen my mother in the bathroom several times and apparently she'd taken a liking to my mother. Mom said, "What? A baby? What do you mean?" The lady went on to explain to her that a friend of hers daughter was expecting a baby. The baby was going to be mixed mixed with Negro and white. This was 1951 and it wasn't every day that a black woman was approached by a white woman. Especially in a casino bathroom and asked if she wanted to adopt a baby. She didn't take this lady serious. Well, a couple of months passed by and this lady came back to the lounge where a mama was working and asked her, "Why didn't she come to pick up the baby?" And the mama said, "What baby? What are you talking about?" The baby, which was our mother, was named Phanna Hodell. Her birth mother, Tamara Hodell, was only 15 years old. And when Tamara told her parents that the father was black, they decided that the baby should be given up for adoption. Here's mom again from a different tape. Now back then, even if you were a quarter-colored or whatever you were considered tainted, you know, and if a white girl was pregnant by supposedly a black man, the white folks back then weren't about to let this child be capped and no one questioned. Tomorrow's mother, Dorothy Barb, promised her that they'd find a nice, rich black family to raise her baby. But she never intended to keep that promise. Instead, Dorothy asked her friend to find someone to take the baby. Her friend liked to gamble and she took trips from San Francisco where Phanna was to the Riverside Casino in Reno, Nevada. And that's where she met Jimmy Lee Fason, a bathroom attendant at the Casino, and urged her to adopt a biracial baby, who she said was born to a very powerful family. My mother, the lady whom I call my mother is Jimmy Lee Fason, who's been dead for many years now. But her husband was a shoe-shine man in that casino, and he was also a Pentecostal minister. And he was quite concerned that his wife was starting to drink a bit. And they had no children of their own, and he thought this was truly a sign from God, that maybe this would be perfect. This would settle her down and she wouldn't drink anymore. Mom sat in the hospital for a month waiting to be adopted. And then Jimmy Lee finally agreed to come get her. But when she saw the baby, she didn't look biracial at all. She had strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. Jimmy Lee knew she couldn't take such a white-looking baby named Phanna Hodele back to her neighborhood. So she decided to call her patty, a slang name for a white girl. And back in Sparks, Nevada, her new home, Phanna Hodele became Pat Fason. Jimmy Lee's adopted biracial daughter. But it wasn't that simple. As a little girl, I was black. And no one could tell me any different. I didn't care what color my skin was. My mother every step of the way had, there never was a time I wasn't being explained. That the mother's white, the father's black, and when they show dark in. I saw the looks. I saw the people who were always pointing. Often times when mixed children are born, they're much lighter and they darken. On mom's birth certificate, her name was listed as Phanna Hodele. And tomorrow, Neis Hodele was listed as the mother. But for the father, there was no information given, other than his race. Negril. And growing up, that was mom's proof to everyone that she was black. All I ever had was my birth certificate. And it actually said, "Father, knee, grow, name, with hell on it." So I actually wore that around like a badge, thinking that would make me be black, you know. She was my cousin. To be my cousin, she had to have black blood in her. That's cousin Inez. She and mom were really close growing up, and Inez believed mom was black. Here the two of them are laughing about the lengths mom would go to prove it. "I used to tell my friend when I got older, I had a cousin that she's black, but she looks like, and she had the flatest ass I've ever seen. That's why he's been telling my friends. I said, "She talks like she's black and she's been around black, but she hurt both of like a white person. Where's she got that from?" Her skin was always real fair. She always looked thick, because she was so pale. She must have been in sixth grade. And I had, she had came over to visit me. She had this golden tan. I said, "Oh, you have a nice tan. You look really good. Her skin looked really good because I had never seen her color." Because it was a QT, QT, the quake tan. I said, "Oh, pan, you look so good with that pan." The only thing is it doesn't wash off the tan. So when you put it on, you should use rubber gloves because otherwise you see these golden colors and I said, "God, see, look at your arms." The QT, the quick tan, mom also put baby oil on her skin and would bake in the sun to try to get darker. This was around the time she started doing a lot of writing and diaries and journals. One of the poems Russia and I found in her storage container is called "Childhood Dreams." And it goes, "Most of my friends wish for toys. Not only did I wish, I prayed for God to give men the knowledge to develop a pill that would darken my skin." At home, Jimmy Lee called mom "white patty." Her drinking had gotten much worse as mom was growing up and Jimmy Lee was an angry drunk and even angrier when she didn't drink. My life was pretty rough when I was real young. I can constantly remember my mother was in jail quite a good. She had started drinking heavily. She was fighting constantly. One particular night I was washing the dishes. I had worn out one of my mother's drinks. She drank gin. That was her favorite drink. It looked like water. I could have poured it out by mistake. My mother came into the kitchen where I was. She was looking for a drink. She couldn't find it. She realized that I had poured it out. She started beating me. She threw me on the floor. She had me down on the floor with the broom in her hand and the broom on my neck as well holding me down with that broom and ready to kill me. Things went from bad to worse. And then when mom was 12 years old, Jimmy Lee kicked her out of the house. And for the next three years, mom stayed with aunts, friends and even in cars. I was born when she was 15 years old. And that was around the time when she began to wonder about her birth mother, who she might be and dream about how much better life might be with her. Back at this storage container, Russia and I found a letter that mom wrote just a few years later. What I just found, look, St. Elizabeth's infant hospital from October 31st, 1969. Mom has a copy of the letter that she got back from Sister Anne. Says, and she hand wrote on it, said, "I wrote this letter. I wrote the doctor who signed my birth certificate. How mama got my real birth certificate, I'll never know." And it says, "Dear Fauna, Dr. Torkelson has referred your letter to me requesting information regarding your mother. Fauna, I would not say your mother gave you away. Your mother was a very young, unsophisticated girl who would not have been able to care for you, because she was immature and was dependent on her mother financially. Your grandmother did make all the arrangement for the adoption of course with your mother agreeing. It was a private adoption, therefore we were not consulted and had no part in the placement. We do not know the whereabouts of your mother. In fact, we heard nothing from her." When she was 18 years old, in 1969, our mom began a quest to find her biological mother. She started with the only piece of information she had, her birth certificate. She'd written the hospital where she was born, but they offered no information. But then, after some time, she discovered the crucial detail that her mother wasn't from San Francisco. She was from Los Angeles. So after calling all the hotels she could find in the phone book, she finally caught a real break when she connected with a distant relative. And he was able to provide our mom with an address in Japan for a man she was told was her grandfather. And a few weeks after writing him a letter, the phone rang. "I received a telephone call from my grandfather. He said, 'Hello, this is his doctor George O'Dell. This is your grandfather. Never with I'm more excited in my whole life. He asked me why I wanted to meet my grandmother. I told him that it was like having a fantastic novel before me, how opening up the pages they were playing. I just had to find out my background. And if it were any way in danger of my mother's present lifestyle, please don't even tell her about me. Just send me a picture of her. Please." He assured me that it wouldn't end age of my mother's lifestyle. And she was in Hawaii. He also told me during that time that I sound quite a bit like my mother. That was extremely interesting to hear. And just out of the clear mood, I decided to try Hawaii information. I asked for tomorrow's day of school day. And just as easy as I asked for it, the telephone number was given to me. You can't imagine how it felt. I just literally freaked out. Mom was 20 years old when she finally dialed the phone number of her birth mother tomorrow hotel in Hawaii. Here's to Mars. The phone rang. I remember distinctly I was nursing my baby. And my daughter picked up the phone and handed it to me and said, "Your daughter, Fauna, is on the telephone." And the world dropped away from underneath my feet. I didn't know what to think. How is it astounding? And then when Fauna spoke with me, she said, "This is your daughter, your mother." The first thing that I say is, "This is Fauna. This is your daughter." She was stunned to say the very least. She just didn't even know what to say. I can remember the very first thing I asked her was, was it true if my father was black? I wanted to know that for years it being teased about my race, about not looking blood that I was just white. You know, I was a white girl. I didn't have any black blood in me. Well, in that telephone conversation, she told me, "I'm not going to be a black girl." She told me the truth. Fauna asked me, "Was your father black?" I said, "No, he wasn't." Well, when I found that out, I was devastated. I was glad to have connected with my mother to say the very least, but I was devastated. In fact, I told no one in my family, no one, that I had found out for sure that I was really white. That was a crushing point in my life. There I was after years of being told I was mixed, my birth certificate telling me that I was mixed, but to have to find out that it was something she made up, it shattered me. After that first conversation, Tamar explained to mom about her decision to lie about her race. I found out I was pregnant. I told my mother and she said, "Don't ask me to help you in any way. After what you've done to your father, you're on your own." I didn't know what to do. Finally, a friend of mine who was black and of age said, "Why don't I ask permission for the court? We'll go ask it for you to marry you. And then you'll be a legal adult and you can do as you wish." So we asked the court's permission and they said, "Absolutely, no." But they assumed that the father of the baby was black and I let them assume that. I didn't like white society. I didn't want my baby to grow up white, standard white. I was shown by white society and I was treated kindly by all the black people that I came in contact with. So in my heart, black was beautiful and black was better. So that was the only gift that I could give her as I couldn't have her and I couldn't influence her life in any way. She wouldn't grow up to be a white person. So I kept the story. This explanation was confusing to say the least. It actually raised more questions than answers. What did Timar mean when she said Dorothy wouldn't help after what Timar did to her father? What type of person, even a 15-year-old, would make a decision to lie about the race of the baby's father? And what type of parents did she have that not only allowed this all to happen, but facilitated the entire thing and then lied about who the baby was being given to? So she told me that I couldn't keep my baby, but she found this couple who were artists. They were interracial, they were black and Indian and wealthy and they could give her all these advantages that I, as a single 15-year-old, could not do. I got to see my baby for one moment and none's arms. To a glass window in a door. They wanted to know if I wanted to see her. I couldn't hold her, but I could look at her. And an unheld her in her arms. And the expression on fauna's face blew my mind because she was looking at me like, "What the fuck is going on? Why is this like this? That's how she looked at me." I'll never forget those eyes. And I just kind of shrugged and said, "Well, it's nothing I can do." So I just carried my hurt and let her go. And I just. I felt at last you're forever. It took some time for Mom to accept that she was white, and she kept that secret from everybody in Nevada. For the next two years, she and Tamar spoke on the phone pretty often, and I spoke to her too. And then Mom finally saved enough money for us to go meet Tamar in Hawaii. I got my tickets, event, and I packed our clothes. We went to the airport. You could imagine what a nervous wreck I was. There I was going to meet my real mother for the first time. I had called her and told her what time I would be there, and she was excited. I was excited. There I was. Finally going to meet my real mother. Well, we go to the baggage area. She wasn't there. I called my mother's number. No one answered. I was extremely nervous, you know, extremely upset. Our Mr. Turnin' in two hours. In fact, it was late at night, because we had arrived so late to begin with the airport section that we were in was getting ready to close. I went to the airport to meet her, and we were half hour late getting there. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew that it was going to be monumental. It was going to have a deep effect on my life, and I felt, is it if I were walking the gang plan, you know? Just go. I have a memory of waiting and waiting and waiting for tomorrow, who's probably five hours late. To me as a child, I'm just fidgeting, mom's fidgeting. She's trying to figure out other ways or other places that we could stay. And finally, this beautiful woman, nice and tan. I remember she's wearing like a halter top in a wrap skirt. And when mom and Tamar came together, the tears were just pouring down Tamar's face. And mom was just, I mean, the embrace felt like they were suffocating one another. It just, they held on and held on and held on and held on. What was the most astounding thing was that here were those same eyes, the eyes I last saw as a little baby, but this was, she was an adult woman, with the same eyes. I cannot describe you what I experienced. Seeing her all grown and there. There was this beautiful, blonde lady on her knees hugging me. That's about all I remember. There was my mother just hugging me and crying. I finally connected with my real mother. It was so intense watching them not let go of one another. They've waited their whole lives to have this embrace. So after that, after they finally let go of one another, we started to walk out to a friend of Tamar's who had a van. And it was painted all different colors like purple, blue, red. And then she opens the, you know, slides the door open. And there's like beads and kind of velvety things. It really reminded me of the parchment family. The drive to my mother's house, I don't remember that conversation, but I can just remember my excitement brought off real fast. Right away, I sensed that my mother was a real strange character. When we got to the house, both mom and I realized that things were a little different than what we were used to back home. There was marijuana smoke everywhere. And Tamar's seven, five, and three-year-old sons were right in the middle of it. Their names were peace on earth, joy to the world, and love. We found out that an all counting mom, Tamar had two daughters and three sons, all from different fathers. We also met Tamar's other daughter. She was 18 years old, and her name was Deborah Elizabeth. She was biracial. And when she introduced herself, she told us that she changed her name to Phanna. Things could not get any more weird, or so we thought. This is Deborah Elizabeth, also known as Phanna too. She comes to the house, and I was very excited, but I saw that my mother was really doing bizarre things. So when she comes, I say, "Please watch out for her. Be very careful. Be weary of her." I took her aside and we took a walk on the beach. And she thanked me for the rest of her life for warning her about Tamar. Later that night, after getting that strange warning, mom and Tamar stayed up until the morning discussing their lives. And that's when Tamar told mom about giving her away at birth, her own terrible childhood, and she went on and on about George Hodele. Her father, mom's grandfather. Tamar said he was a doctor and a genius who was rich and powerful and untouchable, and did some very, very bad things. And then she told mom that he was a suspect in the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, also known as the Black Dahlia. And that it was a savage murder that gripped the whole country back in 1947. All I ever had was, I knew my mother's name, Tamar Nes, Hodele. I knew it was born in San Francisco. And fast forward, when I found my birth mom, imagine I find her in Hawaii and she was living in Lonnie Kai. So imagine coming from Sparks, Nevada to Lonnie Kai. We're talking heaven on earth, and also I was meeting my birth mom. And at that time, after my whole journey of searching, I would meet her and I would find out she had made up the story that I wasn't by ratio. She told me things like her father, which would be my grandfather, had an IQ higher than Einstein, and that he had been investigated in the Black Dahlia murder. By about this time, I'm ready to drop dead. You know, I think I'm gonna go meet this rich family, and she proceeds to tell me that her father was investigated in that murder, and she was trying to figure out what was his connection to it. All I wanted to do was get on a plane and go back home. It was just heavy duty stuff. This was the craziest shit you could ever imagine. You can't even wrap your brain around it. I mean, how my mother could stay in the house for one second after that? I don't know. Totally Pandora's Box. She started questioning tomorrow, and she started finding out all of the hidden secreties and the entire story of George Hodele, Tamara's story, Debra's story, the boy's story. I mean, she just kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper in, and no way out. >> Once you get in, you can't get out. I used to always tell mom, I said, Mom, you got saved by the ghetto because these white people are batshit crazy. >> Right up there, radio. Let me tell you all the story. After recap, our mom was born white, given away at birth to a black woman and raised to think she was biracial. Then when she found her real mom, she learned that not only was her whole life alive, but that her grandfather was probably responsible for the most famous unsolved murder in American history. And that's just mom story. >> Last episode, you'll meet our uncle, Steve Hodell, a former LAPD homicide detective who retired and began investigating his very own father, George Hodell, as the black Dahlia killer. >> We're not talking about some unknown suspect out there that I'm looking for. This is my father. His blood is flowing through me. He created me. >> And on later episodes, you'll hear tomorrow's heroine story. And you'll meet her children, peace, joy, love, and Deborah Elizabeth, aka, fauna number two. >> I couldn't explain to her what was ripped out of me. And then it couldn't be Deborah. And it couldn't be Elizabeth because Elizabeth was named after Elizabeth Short. So I had no place to turn. >> Welcome to our family. Thanks so much for joining us for episode one, A Root of Evil. The true story of the Hodell family and the black Dahlia. >> Root of Evil is a production of C-13 originals, a division of cadence 13 in partnership with TNT. [MUSIC]