In talking with the various teenagers, the police found her hiding out with a girlfriend, and Tamar, taken to the police station as a "runaway," was questioned, and quickly began to talk. "The police took me in and, because I had just had the abortion, I thought that they could tell that I had had an abortion. So I told them. Then one question led to another."
Soon the entire story of the incest and the goings-on at the Franklin House were out in the open, and the prosecutors had their case. But they still needed Tamar to testify against her father. They needed her trust. As Tamar remembers it, a husband-and-wife team from the DA's office brought her to court every day and promised her that they would protect her and take care of her. Tamar told me, "They said that I had never been loved and I didn't know what love was and that when this trial thing was all over that they were going to adopt me. I guess that was just their way of handling it to get me to say everything. I really believed them when they told me they would adopt me and give me love."
Adding political urgency to the incest trial and the prosecution of George Hodel was the fact that William Ritzi, the state's lead trial attorney, was also running for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. And apparently Ritzi thought he knew more about my father than what was simply in the case he was prosecuting. As Tamar remembers it, "He told me that Dad might be a suspect in the Black Dahlia case. 'We know all about your father and you,' he said. That's how they got me to talk to them.
"I know that the police did talk to George back in 1947 because George said, 'We have to be careful about doing our nude sunbathing because the police are watching the place.' I'm pretty sure it was the year the Black Dahlia was killed when the police came out to the house. George never mentioned anything to me about that case. My gut feeling is that he knew and had met the Black Dahlia, but I really can't say for sure."
Dad's statutory rape of Tamar notwithstanding, he was still cautious about how he treated her at the house. Tamar confirmed that the testimony at the incest trial, about what had happened on the night of July 1, 1949, was all true. She remembered it clearly. Even the witnesses Corrine and Barbara had told the truth to the police investigators and the prosecutors, but Dad's sharp defense attorneys were still able to make it seem as if the entire event was a figment of Tamar's imagination.
In my conversations with her it became obvious to me that Tamar has no current memory of the questions she was asked by attorney Robert Neeb relating to her accusing Dad of being the killer of the Black Dahlia and having a lust for blood. Nor did she remember telling anyone of her being afraid that, in her words fifty-two years ago, "My father is going to kill me and all the rest of the members of this household." Moreover, because she had been detained in Juvenile Hall during the entire trial, she had had no access to newspapers, and so to this day remains unaware of what Neeb said about her in the courtroom after his cross-examination of her. I do believe that the "lust for blood" statement and the Black Dahlia original accusations attributed to Tamar by Neeb and Giesler had originally been told to her by Dorero, because those are the identical references, "blood-lust" and "insanity," that Mother said to me in her drunken state when we lived in Pasadena.
It is probable that Mother, while intoxicated, told Tamar about her fears or suspicions that Dad had killed Elizabeth Short after Tamar made her initial disclosure to Mother about Dad's having had sex with her. Mother was clearly fearful that if George discovered that Tamar had told anyone about their incestuous relationship, he would most likely have murdered his daughter before she could have an opportunity to reveal it to the authorities. Mother knew that Dad was capable of killing anyone, including a family member who might reveal his deepest secrets. Genuinely fearful for Tamar's safety, Mother told her of her suspicions, and may well have encouraged her to run away, to get her away from the house. That set into motion the search for the missing Tamar, the arrest of Father, the trial, and Dad's flight from Los Angeles after his acquittal.
Tamar, Dad, Michelle Phillips, and the Mamas and the Papas
Tamar remembered a night in 1967 when Dad visited her in San Francisco at the same time Michelle Phillips and the Mamas and the Papas were coming into town to perform their first live concert at the Pan Pacific. Tamar took George and the two beautiful Asian women he had brought with him to the St. Francis Hotel where Michelle was staying. "I introduced them to her," she told me, "and she almost fainted, and her eyes rolled back in her head and she curtsied and said to George, 'I feel like I've really known you since I was twelve.' It was because of all the things I had told Michelle about him."
Father took over like an impresario, Tamar said. After discovering they had ordered a large dinner to be brought up by room service before the scheduled concert, Father stepped in and took control, informing them that they "shouldn't eat a large meal before a big concert." She added, "Dad had the waiters take everything back and changed it all to just appetizers, like Po Po and stuff. They all began smoking hash, and Dad passed it around, but he didn't smoke it."
Afterward, Tamar remembers, "I met Dad and his two girlfriends and we went out to Enrico's for dinner. George got quite drunk and I was supporting him as we walked up the hill. That's when he said to me, 'Why did you do it?' I was so stupid. I didn't know what he was talking about because I always loved him. I thought he meant why had I always pursued and loved him. So I said, 'I always loved you, that's why.' Which, of course, was a very strange answer to someone who is really asking me, 'Why did you tell on me?' He was so drunk; we never really understood each other."
Later on, Tamar asked one of the Asian women whom Dad had brought along why he hadn't smoked the hash pipe. Tamar told her he'd always smoked it in the past, that's why his refusal was so strange. And the woman said, "Oh no, he doesn't do that anymore." She explained, "Before when he smoked hash, he made me lock him in his bathroom. He always made me lock him in there and told me not to let him out. George said to me that when he smokes it sometimes he does terrible things. He would make me lock him in the bathroom and he would cry and stay there all night."
"It made my hair stand on end," Tamar said. "I was so afraid of him because I do believe he has done so many terrible dark things."
The Los Angeles Hotel, 1969
About two years after the Mamas and the Papas concert, Dad saw Tamar again in Los Angeles when he was making one of his business trips through town from Manila. Tamar was pregnant when Dad took her to lunch at one of the Beverly Hills hotels. As they were walking through the lobby, George suddenly stopped and pointed to a design on the carpet. He asked Tamar, "What does that remind you of?" She looked at the carpet and said, "I don't know, some kind of flower or something. Maybe rhododendrons?" George said, "No," and pointed around the edges with his finger. Then he said, "No, look again, it's a vagina and lips." He said, "They are nether lips." Then he stomped hard on the design and he said, "Did that hurt?" "God," Tamar told me, "I couldn't believe it. It sent chills down my spine. 'Nether lips'. He never used that word before."
The next day, George took out Tamar's daughter, Fauna 2, who was then thirteen. Fauna 2 is one of Tamar's five children from five different fathers, and is her second daughter, born from her marriage to folk singer Stan Wilson. She was originally named Deborah, but decided to change her name to Fauna as an adult. But her older sister, from a different father, is also named Fauna. So the children differentiated themselves by calling themselves Fauna 1 and Fauna 2.
Fauna 2 kept secret for many years what happened that night, only telling her mother about it after she had become an adult. At dinner, Fauna 2 suddenly became groggy, attempted to stand up, and almost collapsed on the floor. As she described it to Tamar, both the waiter and George rushed to her side, Dad catching her before she fell. Dismissing the waiter, he then helped her walk out of the dining room. The next thing Fauna 2 recalled was waking up in a hotel. She was lying on a bed, completely nude, having been undressed while she was unconscious. Her legs had been spread open, and George was taking pictures of her with a camera. Fauna was convinced she had been drugged.