You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the show and do not represent those of I Heart Radio or Tenderfoot TV. This podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised from Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio. Introducing Facing Evil. I'm Rosha Pacarreira and I'm Evett Gintil. For those of you who don't know who we are, we suggest you give a listen to our hit podcast, Root of Evil, the true story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia. Yes, Russia and I are sisters, and in two thousand nineteen we hosted Root of Evil together to help tell the story of our family, which is a crazy story. If you haven't listened to Root and a crazy fan a crazy family, you must listen to it. Yes, and it's really a story about overcoming incredible family secrets, murder and when I say so much more, it's so much more. Specifically, the podcast is a multidimensional story about our connection to George Hoddel, the prime suspect in the Black Dollar murder case, which is also known as the Elizabeth Short murder case. And George Hodel was our great grandfather, and you must know that Rush and I never met our great grandfather, nor did our mother. She talked him on the phone though, yes. But in Rute of Evil we tracked the evidence for George's guilt and we try to come to terms with the impact that he had on our entire family. We also tell the story of our beautiful mother, Fana Hoddel, and how she protected us, our entire lives from this immense craziness that she discovered. We'll talk a little are about that case in a moment, but first let's explain what we're doing here with you today. Yes, this is our new podcast and it's called Facing Evil. It'll be very different from Root of Evil. Well, we focus primarily on our story in that podcast. In Facing Evil, we want to explore other cases and bring attention to missing and murdered people who don't get talked about. We also want to talk about older cases, obviously new cases, society and culture cases. After Root of Evil finished event and I realized that we were not alone in our story. There are hundreds, even thousands of families who face tragedy every single year, whether they were a victim, themselves, close to a victim, or even close to a suspect. Learning that someone you love was involved in a violent crime is never an easy truth to swallow, right, And so we want to share the difficult lessons we've learned throughout our healing process because it's a journey, it's a never ending journey, and we want to shed light on the stories of people like us. Facing evil is about being the light in the dark. Can I just repeat that? Say that again? Let me say it again. Listen, being the light in the dark. It's about moving upward and onward and never ever letting the evil define you. Yes, you know, say that and let that resonate and sink in. Yes. And each week we're going to talk about a different case. So yes, we're gonna bring you the fact. We're going to tell you about what happened. But no one can talk about a story the way that event and I can talk about a story coming from what we've come from and what we've gone through in our lives. I hope that we can help people just find some some healing, right, And we know that there are dozens of cases for us to talk about on facing evil, But if you do know of a case you think we should cover, please please reach out to us and us know before we go any further, there are some things you should know about us. First and foremost, Yvette and I were both raised in the beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii. It's paradise, the most beautiful place in the world, which means you may hear us use Hawaiian words or phrases throughout the show. I love to say, you can take the girl out of the island, but you can never take the island out of the girl. Hawaiian culture is incredibly important to us. Hawaii is a sacred and a spiritual place, and I feel so fortunate that Mom decided to raise us there. Yeah, we learned to cherish the Aina, the means the land. We learned to have inner peace, love which means aloha, and kindness for everyone around us, didn't matter who they were when we were raised in a melting pot. And you might hear us use the word Ohanna, which means family. We say this all the time. Ohannah means everything. Yeah, and sometimes we greet each other by saying a como my, which means welcome, so a como my to facing evil. So with that in mind, we're going to recap the basis of root of evil. That is how we got thrust into the Black Tail You murder case in the first place and entered the true crime arena. The first thing you should know is that our great grandfather, George Odell, was considered a suspect in nineteen forty nine, about two years after the victim, Elizabeth Short, was found dead in nineteen So we're not going to go through all of the case details here, but Short's murder was one of the most gruesome and notorious killings in all of American history. Los Angeles had a rich newspaper and tabloid culture. Crime was central to entertainment in a pre TV world when people still got mourning and evening newspapers, and when you had a really great, horrifying homicide like that, you know, this was the story that she ran with. Elizabeth Short was living in Los Angeles, California at the time, and she was a waitress with hopes of being an actress. But on January eight, she went missing. A few days later, she was discovered in suburban Limert Park and her body was dismembered and mutilated. She had been found on a vacant lot, posed and surgically bisected. Dr George Hoddel became a prime suspect for a number of different reasons. First, he was a surgeon, which would explain the precise cuts identified on the dismembered body of Short. Second, he was known to have been deeply invested in sado masochism. And third and most damning, George was reported to have basically roundabout admitted to killing Elizabeth Short on a wire tap in his home, but before charges could be filed, George fled the country and he landed in the Philippines, where he started a new family. He later went to Hawaii, Japan, and eventually San Francisco, and that's where he died in And thus the Black Dalia case and George's guilt were never fully solved. However, George Hodel was almost certainly guilty of other crimes within our family without a doubt. We know that he sexually assaulted his teenage daughter, our grandmother, Tomorrow Hodel. Yeah, and there was an incest trial, or at the time they actually called it a morals trial, where Tomar's claims of sexual abuse were squashed and ultimately George was acquitted, even though there were adult witnesses, two of them that actually saw him having sexual relations, as they call it, with his own daughter. But George was never convicted of any of those crimes because they recanted their stories. Yeah, in August of nineteen fifty one, our beautiful mother, Fana Hoddel was born. And you know what, this was one of the biggest unanswered questions for us all Who was our mother's father And it's still unknown till this day, and so much was left on the cutting room floor and root of evil, including d N A that could have possibly disproved that mom's father could have been her own grandfather, George Hoddel. I never believed that George's mom's father, although I know that you did. I was actually shocked to learn the DNA results. But we're going to get into that on another episode. But when I was a teenager, I actually had to do a family tree and Mom sent me to Tomar's house and so I asked Tomorrow every question under the sun about our entire family and the Hodel side of the family, and she would never give me a direct answer when I asked about who Mom's father was is. But despite all of that, despite the fact that that mom you know, might have been from George or who knows who her father was, Mom always carried herself like she was just pure love. She was the most beautiful, amazing human being in this entire world. She was beyond her time. Yeah, and she was pure light analoha. And it breaks my heart that she's not here with us talking to you right now, but I know that she's here. Yes. And Mom was actually at birth, she was given up for adoption and raised by a new family in Reno, Nevada. So that's part of the mystery, right, Yeah, yeah, and that's what we want to uncover, so you know, stay tuned. At age fifteen, Mom got pregnant with me and married my father, A. G. Bobby Ward on her sweet sixteenth birthday. Mom gave birth to me in ninety on Guess seventh, a week later in Reno, Nevada, And after divorcing my father, she went on the search to find her biological family. She found them in Hawaii. We ended up there and that's where I was raised. I was born in Honolulu eleven years later in nineteen and our mom, Fauna was truly the most loving mother that Evett or I could ever have asked for. She loved both of us unconditionally, and she was truly our biggest cheerleader. We grew up with such immense love that Mom never let that evil that she came from, She never let that define who she was, and she never became a victim of her circumstances. So one little quick thing that we need to explain to all of you is the somewhat um complex nature of our family's racial identity. When our mother, Fana Hoddel was put up for adoption, her birth certificate said she was biracial, and she was raised by African American parents, Jimmy Lee and Homer Facing, and those were my grandparents growing up, my black grandparents. She grew up believing that she was half black, and it wasn't until she was in her twenties that she discovered the truth. And when my mom finally met her biological mother Tomorrow in Hawaii, Tomorrow revealed in fact that she had lied and made it up and said that Mom's father was Negro for all kinds of different reasons. You know, you can imagine having a birth certificate carrying it around your whole life, and then you meet your real mother, your biological mother, she tells you that you're not black. It completely shattered her world and it took her, I mean it took her many years to reveal the truth to her family, to a black family, and even to my father, who is black. And so my father is actually white and was the first white guy I think Mom had ever ever, ever, ever, ever, ever dated, and she met him on a trip to Hawaiti. So she decided that Hawaiti was going to be the perfect place to raise the two of us because it's such a diverse melting pot and Mom did not want us to experience the type of racism that she experienced growing up in Reno because she was never black enough, she was never white enough. And in Hawaii it's much more of a melting pot and it's so much more accepting. And for me, being blonde hair, blue eyed, I never had an issue growing up in Hawaii ever. Right, So, but back to our upbringing and how we came to learn about George Hoddel. It wasn't until we were adults that the complete truth about George came to light, but we grew up hearing stories about him, throughout our higher childhood. And we know for a fact that Mom never met George, but spoke with him only on the phone. Mom felt that he kept tabs on us throughout our lives. But in George passed away and our uncle retired l A p D. Detective Steve Hodel started to do research into his father's life. I flew to San Francisco. I'm sitting there with June, my stepmother, who had been with my father for thirty years, and June said, I think your father would want you to have this, and she handed me this small album. I looked at it and I said to June, June, who is this? And June said, I don't know somebody your father knew from a long time ago. I was trying to pull it in. Where do I know this picture? Why do I know this woman? Somewhere deep within me? I made the connection the Black Telliott. In two thousand three, our great uncle Steve published book Black Dahlia Avenger, exposing George and essentially revealing that he was almost certainly the Black Dahlia Killer. And this is when the world, and when I tell you, the whole world new our dark family secrets. Yeah, I remember when Uncle Steve came out on I can never remember if it was Dateline or forty eight Hours, but I remember sitting next to Mom watching it, and I remember literally saying out loud, I am so ashamed to be a hotel. And Mom looked at me because she wouldn't let me sit in that and she's like, no, like, we are not the evil that we came from. And she kept telling us over and over again, like you better know your mantra. We are the daughters of a Faano hotel. Yeah. I remember reading the Black Dahlia Avenger for the first time and thinking, Holly shit, the whole world knows. That's such a crazy feeling of knowing that that bloodline runs through our family. Mom was even more convinced after this that she needed to tell the world her story to shed light on overcoming evil, and she spent her whole life on this mission, the mission to not only tell her story, but to tell other stories about healing and surviving, just as we are doing now. Yeah. Mom was a trailblazer, like she first and foremost always wanted to empower anyone, especially people who were a victim. But then in two thousand and seventeen, everything changed and our world was shattered when our beautiful mother, Fauna Hodel died from breast cancer. Sorry sorry, I always get emotional over this, um, but yeah, our mother died from breast cancer, and it was just weeks before her lifelong dream of telling her story to the world came to fruition and we were given we were given this incredible opportunity to tell her story via Root of Evil and T and T s limited TV series I Am the Night, and it was. It was truly a cathartic and surreal we kept saying surreal over and over process for both of us being on set in the recording studio. As weird as it may sound, it really felt like we were helping to bring our mother back to life. And in two thousand nineteen, it's shocked us, but Root of Evil shot to the top of the podcast charts and Yvette and I were basically thrust into the spotlight. But please don't be fooled. Mama Fono Hodel. She she was working things from up above like she was Streak Lane her fairy dust. Yeah, she knew what she was doing and she prepared us for this. Our entire lives and we went on this world wind Press tour. We basically didn't even have time to grieve, but we did all kinds of things, including going on the Today Show Dr Oz and my personal favorite, believe it or not, Dr Phil, And the best therapy I've ever had in my entire life was actually with Dr Phil, not on his TV show that we were on, but afterwards he invited us to be on his podcast. Yeah. So this is a funny story because I did not want to go on the Doctor Field Show and Rasha was like, come on, let's just do another one. But I went on it, and to my surprise, he was truly a wonderful human being and he taught us so much, so much on that show. Dr Phil is pretty awesome and I even still have the Doctor Phil handkerchief that he literally handed to me any vet when we were bobbing uncontrollably in front of him. And the reason that we were sobbing is after he took in the entire story that we were telling him about our family and our lives, he looked right in our eyes and he said, what you girls are doing is so incredible because someone's going to be listening to this and they will see that it's okay because monsters live in the dark, and what you're doing is bringing this to light because you're talking about it. That was such a powerful moment for me, for both of us, And what we realized in that moment is people don't talk about grief. People don't talk about death, people don't talk about incest, people don't talk about homophobia or transphobia, or racism or murder. People just don't talk and grief and shame. I mean, they're like a beast. I shouldn't say, they're like it is a beast that we are all constantly trying to tame. So when you have a voice and your privileged enough, like we are to have a platform, which we know we were given this platform as a gift um initially from our mom and then from Weird of Evil and now facing evil, we have to use it to amplify others and share it, share the light and give people hope. We we never thought in a million years that we'd be sitting here talking to you as True crime host. Nope, right, but if we're going to be here, if we're going to be True Crime host, we are going to shed a light and help others, heal somehow, some way. It's what it's all about, overcoming and facing evil. So that's what you can expect from Facing Evil. Episode one will publish next this week, and don't forget to subscribe so that you're up to date on every new episode. All right, We've got one last order of business before we let you go. We've been working with a fantastic, brilliant, phenomenal, awesome producer from my Heart Radio on this show. His name is Trevor Young, and he's here on Mike with us right now. Hello, Yes, I am here. It's a pleasure to be here. Alright. Trevor's hell everyone, a little bit about your amazing self. Sure. So, I am a supervising producer for I Heart Media's podcast network, and I've been here for a little over three years. I started in working with Tenderfoot TV on the second season of the Monster podcast and that was about the Zodiac Killer. Since then, I co created the follow up season, Monster DC Sniper. So a lot of true crime podcasts. I'm also working on a number of other true crime shows, some of which I cannot talk about just yet, but you will hear about soon. Personally, I remember listening to Root of Evil when it came out in twenty nineteen, and frankly, I just had never heard anything like it. The openness with which you were able to tell your story and really share what you had gone through, what had happened to your family, and how that impacted you was utterly groundbreaking. I had never heard anything like that, and I really think it changed the podcast game. I think it blew open the doors in so many ways for what you know, we talk about and do every day, and I'm just so thankful you did that. I'm so thankful you were willing to share your story and open up the way you did. So when the opportunity came up to work with you two, I was absolutely thrilled and so I jumped at the opportunity. So we've been working together a little bit now, and it's been such a great experience for me to get to know you, to get to hear your story firsthand, and I'm really excited to see what you do with Facing Evil, what you do with this show. I think it's going to be fantastic and I can't wait for everybody to hear it. So we've loved working with Trevor so much that we've asked him to join us on the show each week. That's right, Trevor will be our on Mike producer and he's gonna help us stay on track because apparently sisters can get carried away sometimes you think, I mean maybe, So welcome to Trevor. We are so excited to have you on Facing Evil. Likewise, super excited to be here. Thank you. At the end of each episode, I am so honored and excited to bring a special segment that we're going to be sharing with you. And it's called imua. And for those who don't know, Imua means onward and upward and to move forward. In Hawaii, imu is a call for healing, a ritual of sorts. It's where you sit with a family or friends, you talk story and you really share blessings of hope of how you can overcome and he from whatever it is you may be going through today. We want to honor and have our imua for survivors. Survivors like us, Survivors like our mom Fauna and her mother, our grandmother Tamar, all of us who stood our ground in the face of adversity and evil were all survivors and there are so many victims like tomorrow out there. Too many people are abused mentally, physically, verbally, emotionally sexually, and they don't know how they will ever rise above. We are here to tell you that you can survive and rise, and we hope that our Ohanna or our family story can be a guiding light for anyone who needs it, to show that no matter what you've been through, you are a survivor and that is truly beautiful and your life doesn't end there. Those experiences won't ever define you. Once you facetdy well, you can conquer it. Move onward and upward. Mahallau iloa or thank you so much everyone. We are so excited and honored to have you on this ride with us, and look out for episode one of Facing Evil next week. Facing Evil is a production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. The show is hosted by Russia Pecarero and a Vettel. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio, with ducers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Donald Albright and Paine Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on social media or email us at Facing Evil, pot at tenderfoot dot tv. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals participating in the show and do not represent those of I Heart Radio or Tenderfoot TV. This podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised from Tenderfoot TV and I Heart Radio. Introducing Facing Evil. I'm Rosha Pacarreira and I'm Evett Gintil. For those of you who don't know who we are, we suggest you give a listen to our hit podcast, Root of Evil, the true story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia. Yes, Russia and I are sisters, and in two thousand nineteen we hosted Root of Evil together to help tell the story of our family, which is a crazy story. If you haven't listened to Root and a crazy fan a crazy family, you must listen to it. Yes, and it's really a story about overcoming incredible family secrets, murder and when I say so much more, it's so much more. Specifically, the podcast is a multidimensional story about our connection to George Hoddel, the prime suspect in the Black Dollar murder case, which is also known as the Elizabeth Short murder case. And George Hodel was our great grandfather, and you must know that Rush and I never met our great grandfather, nor did our mother. She talked him on the phone though, yes. But in Rute of Evil we tracked the evidence for George's guilt and we try to come to terms with the impact that he had on our entire family. We also tell the story of our beautiful mother, Fana Hoddel, and how she protected us, our entire lives from this immense craziness that she discovered. We'll talk a little are about that case in a moment, but first let's explain what we're doing here with you today. Yes, this is our new podcast and it's called Facing Evil. It'll be very different from Root of Evil. Well, we focus primarily on our story in that podcast. In Facing Evil, we want to explore other cases and bring attention to missing and murdered people who don't get talked about. We also want to talk about older cases, obviously new cases, society and culture cases. After Root of Evil finished event and I realized that we were not alone in our story. There are hundreds, even thousands of families who face tragedy every single year, whether they were a victim, themselves, close to a victim, or even close to a suspect. Learning that someone you love was involved in a violent crime is never an easy truth to swallow, right, And so we want to share the difficult lessons we've learned throughout our healing process because it's a journey, it's a never ending journey, and we want to shed light on the stories of people like us. Facing evil is about being the light in the dark. Can I just repeat that? Say that again? Let me say it again. Listen, being the light in the dark. It's about moving upward and onward and never ever letting the evil define you. Yes, you know, say that and let that resonate and sink in. Yes. And each week we're going to talk about a different case. So yes, we're gonna bring you the fact. We're going to tell you about what happened. But no one can talk about a story the way that event and I can talk about a story coming from what we've come from and what we've gone through in our lives. I hope that we can help people just find some some healing, right, And we know that there are dozens of cases for us to talk about on facing evil, But if you do know of a case you think we should cover, please please reach out to us and us know before we go any further, there are some things you should know about us. First and foremost, Yvette and I were both raised in the beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii. It's paradise, the most beautiful place in the world, which means you may hear us use Hawaiian words or phrases throughout the show. I love to say, you can take the girl out of the island, but you can never take the island out of the girl. Hawaiian culture is incredibly important to us. Hawaii is a sacred and a spiritual place, and I feel so fortunate that Mom decided to raise us there. Yeah, we learned to cherish the Aina, the means the land. We learned to have inner peace, love which means aloha, and kindness for everyone around us, didn't matter who they were when we were raised in a melting pot. And you might hear us use the word Ohanna, which means family. We say this all the time. Ohannah means everything. Yeah, and sometimes we greet each other by saying a como my, which means welcome, so a como my to facing evil. So with that in mind, we're going to recap the basis of root of evil. That is how we got thrust into the Black Tail You murder case in the first place and entered the true crime arena. The first thing you should know is that our great grandfather, George Odell, was considered a suspect in nineteen forty nine, about two years after the victim, Elizabeth Short, was found dead in nineteen So we're not going to go through all of the case details here, but Short's murder was one of the most gruesome and notorious killings in all of American history. Los Angeles had a rich newspaper and tabloid culture. Crime was central to entertainment in a pre TV world when people still got mourning and evening newspapers, and when you had a really great, horrifying homicide like that, you know, this was the story that she ran with. Elizabeth Short was living in Los Angeles, California at the time, and she was a waitress with hopes of being an actress. But on January eight, she went missing. A few days later, she was discovered in suburban Limert Park and her body was dismembered and mutilated. She had been found on a vacant lot, posed and surgically bisected. Dr George Hoddel became a prime suspect for a number of different reasons. First, he was a surgeon, which would explain the precise cuts identified on the dismembered body of Short. Second, he was known to have been deeply invested in sado masochism. And third and most damning, George was reported to have basically roundabout admitted to killing Elizabeth Short on a wire tap in his home, but before charges could be filed, George fled the country and he landed in the Philippines, where he started a new family. He later went to Hawaii, Japan, and eventually San Francisco, and that's where he died in And thus the Black Dalia case and George's guilt were never fully solved. However, George Hodel was almost certainly guilty of other crimes within our family without a doubt. We know that he sexually assaulted his teenage daughter, our grandmother, Tomorrow Hodel. Yeah, and there was an incest trial, or at the time they actually called it a morals trial, where Tomar's claims of sexual abuse were squashed and ultimately George was acquitted, even though there were adult witnesses, two of them that actually saw him having sexual relations, as they call it, with his own daughter. But George was never convicted of any of those crimes because they recanted their stories. Yeah, in August of nineteen fifty one, our beautiful mother, Fana Hoddel was born. And you know what, this was one of the biggest unanswered questions for us all Who was our mother's father And it's still unknown till this day, and so much was left on the cutting room floor and root of evil, including d N A that could have possibly disproved that mom's father could have been her own grandfather, George Hoddel. I never believed that George's mom's father, although I know that you did. I was actually shocked to learn the DNA results. But we're going to get into that on another episode. But when I was a teenager, I actually had to do a family tree and Mom sent me to Tomar's house and so I asked Tomorrow every question under the sun about our entire family and the Hodel side of the family, and she would never give me a direct answer when I asked about who Mom's father was is. But despite all of that, despite the fact that that mom you know, might have been from George or who knows who her father was, Mom always carried herself like she was just pure love. She was the most beautiful, amazing human being in this entire world. She was beyond her time. Yeah, and she was pure light analoha. And it breaks my heart that she's not here with us talking to you right now, but I know that she's here. Yes. And Mom was actually at birth, she was given up for adoption and raised by a new family in Reno, Nevada. So that's part of the mystery, right, Yeah, yeah, and that's what we want to uncover, so you know, stay tuned. At age fifteen, Mom got pregnant with me and married my father, A. G. Bobby Ward on her sweet sixteenth birthday. Mom gave birth to me in ninety on Guess seventh, a week later in Reno, Nevada, And after divorcing my father, she went on the search to find her biological family. She found them in Hawaii. We ended up there and that's where I was raised. I was born in Honolulu eleven years later in nineteen and our mom, Fauna was truly the most loving mother that Evett or I could ever have asked for. She loved both of us unconditionally, and she was truly our biggest cheerleader. We grew up with such immense love that Mom never let that evil that she came from, She never let that define who she was, and she never became a victim of her circumstances. So one little quick thing that we need to explain to all of you is the somewhat um complex nature of our family's racial identity. When our mother, Fana Hoddel was put up for adoption, her birth certificate said she was biracial, and she was raised by African American parents, Jimmy Lee and Homer Facing, and those were my grandparents growing up, my black grandparents. She grew up believing that she was half black, and it wasn't until she was in her twenties that she discovered the truth. And when my mom finally met her biological mother Tomorrow in Hawaii, Tomorrow revealed in fact that she had lied and made it up and said that Mom's father was Negro for all kinds of different reasons. You know, you can imagine having a birth certificate carrying it around your whole life, and then you meet your real mother, your biological mother, she tells you that you're not black. It completely shattered her world and it took her, I mean it took her many years to reveal the truth to her family, to a black family, and even to my father, who is black. And so my father is actually white and was the first white guy I think Mom had ever ever, ever, ever, ever, ever dated, and she met him on a trip to Hawaiti. So she decided that Hawaiti was going to be the perfect place to raise the two of us because it's such a diverse melting pot and Mom did not want us to experience the type of racism that she experienced growing up in Reno because she was never black enough, she was never white enough. And in Hawaii it's much more of a melting pot and it's so much more accepting. And for me, being blonde hair, blue eyed, I never had an issue growing up in Hawaii ever. Right, So, but back to our upbringing and how we came to learn about George Hoddel. It wasn't until we were adults that the complete truth about George came to light, but we grew up hearing stories about him, throughout our higher childhood. And we know for a fact that Mom never met George, but spoke with him only on the phone. Mom felt that he kept tabs on us throughout our lives. But in George passed away and our uncle retired l A p D. Detective Steve Hodel started to do research into his father's life. I flew to San Francisco. I'm sitting there with June, my stepmother, who had been with my father for thirty years, and June said, I think your father would want you to have this, and she handed me this small album. I looked at it and I said to June, June, who is this? And June said, I don't know somebody your father knew from a long time ago. I was trying to pull it in. Where do I know this picture? Why do I know this woman? Somewhere deep within me? I made the connection the Black Telliott. In two thousand three, our great uncle Steve published book Black Dahlia Avenger, exposing George and essentially revealing that he was almost certainly the Black Dahlia Killer. And this is when the world, and when I tell you, the whole world new our dark family secrets. Yeah, I remember when Uncle Steve came out on I can never remember if it was Dateline or forty eight Hours, but I remember sitting next to Mom watching it, and I remember literally saying out loud, I am so ashamed to be a hotel. And Mom looked at me because she wouldn't let me sit in that and she's like, no, like, we are not the evil that we came from. And she kept telling us over and over again, like you better know your mantra. We are the daughters of a Faano hotel. Yeah. I remember reading the Black Dahlia Avenger for the first time and thinking, Holly shit, the whole world knows. That's such a crazy feeling of knowing that that bloodline runs through our family. Mom was even more convinced after this that she needed to tell the world her story to shed light on overcoming evil, and she spent her whole life on this mission, the mission to not only tell her story, but to tell other stories about healing and surviving, just as we are doing now. Yeah. Mom was a trailblazer, like she first and foremost always wanted to empower anyone, especially people who were a victim. But then in two thousand and seventeen, everything changed and our world was shattered when our beautiful mother, Fauna Hodel died from breast cancer. Sorry sorry, I always get emotional over this, um, but yeah, our mother died from breast cancer, and it was just weeks before her lifelong dream of telling her story to the world came to fruition and we were given we were given this incredible opportunity to tell her story via Root of Evil and T and T s limited TV series I Am the Night, and it was. It was truly a cathartic and surreal we kept saying surreal over and over process for both of us being on set in the recording studio. As weird as it may sound, it really felt like we were helping to bring our mother back to life. And in two thousand nineteen, it's shocked us, but Root of Evil shot to the top of the podcast charts and Yvette and I were basically thrust into the spotlight. But please don't be fooled. Mama Fono Hodel. She she was working things from up above like she was Streak Lane her fairy dust. Yeah, she knew what she was doing and she prepared us for this. Our entire lives and we went on this world wind Press tour. We basically didn't even have time to grieve, but we did all kinds of things, including going on the Today Show Dr Oz and my personal favorite, believe it or not, Dr Phil, And the best therapy I've ever had in my entire life was actually with Dr Phil, not on his TV show that we were on, but afterwards he invited us to be on his podcast. Yeah. So this is a funny story because I did not want to go on the Doctor Field Show and Rasha was like, come on, let's just do another one. But I went on it, and to my surprise, he was truly a wonderful human being and he taught us so much, so much on that show. Dr Phil is pretty awesome and I even still have the Doctor Phil handkerchief that he literally handed to me any vet when we were bobbing uncontrollably in front of him. And the reason that we were sobbing is after he took in the entire story that we were telling him about our family and our lives, he looked right in our eyes and he said, what you girls are doing is so incredible because someone's going to be listening to this and they will see that it's okay because monsters live in the dark, and what you're doing is bringing this to light because you're talking about it. That was such a powerful moment for me, for both of us, And what we realized in that moment is people don't talk about grief. People don't talk about death, people don't talk about incest, people don't talk about homophobia or transphobia, or racism or murder. People just don't talk and grief and shame. I mean, they're like a beast. I shouldn't say, they're like it is a beast that we are all constantly trying to tame. So when you have a voice and your privileged enough, like we are to have a platform, which we know we were given this platform as a gift um initially from our mom and then from Weird of Evil and now facing evil, we have to use it to amplify others and share it, share the light and give people hope. We we never thought in a million years that we'd be sitting here talking to you as True crime host. Nope, right, but if we're going to be here, if we're going to be True Crime host, we are going to shed a light and help others, heal somehow, some way. It's what it's all about, overcoming and facing evil. So that's what you can expect from Facing Evil. Episode one will publish next this week, and don't forget to subscribe so that you're up to date on every new episode. All right, We've got one last order of business before we let you go. We've been working with a fantastic, brilliant, phenomenal, awesome producer from my Heart Radio on this show. His name is Trevor Young, and he's here on Mike with us right now. Hello, Yes, I am here. It's a pleasure to be here. Alright. Trevor's hell everyone, a little bit about your amazing self. Sure. So, I am a supervising producer for I Heart Media's podcast network, and I've been here for a little over three years. I started in working with Tenderfoot TV on the second season of the Monster podcast and that was about the Zodiac Killer. Since then, I co created the follow up season, Monster DC Sniper. So a lot of true crime podcasts. I'm also working on a number of other true crime shows, some of which I cannot talk about just yet, but you will hear about soon. Personally, I remember listening to Root of Evil when it came out in twenty nineteen, and frankly, I just had never heard anything like it. The openness with which you were able to tell your story and really share what you had gone through, what had happened to your family, and how that impacted you was utterly groundbreaking. I had never heard anything like that, and I really think it changed the podcast game. I think it blew open the doors in so many ways for what you know, we talk about and do every day, and I'm just so thankful you did that. I'm so thankful you were willing to share your story and open up the way you did. So when the opportunity came up to work with you two, I was absolutely thrilled and so I jumped at the opportunity. So we've been working together a little bit now, and it's been such a great experience for me to get to know you, to get to hear your story firsthand, and I'm really excited to see what you do with Facing Evil, what you do with this show. I think it's going to be fantastic and I can't wait for everybody to hear it. So we've loved working with Trevor so much that we've asked him to join us on the show each week. That's right, Trevor will be our on Mike producer and he's gonna help us stay on track because apparently sisters can get carried away sometimes you think, I mean maybe, So welcome to Trevor. We are so excited to have you on Facing Evil. Likewise, super excited to be here. Thank you. At the end of each episode, I am so honored and excited to bring a special segment that we're going to be sharing with you. And it's called imua. And for those who don't know, Imua means onward and upward and to move forward. In Hawaii, imu is a call for healing, a ritual of sorts. It's where you sit with a family or friends, you talk story and you really share blessings of hope of how you can overcome and he from whatever it is you may be going through today. We want to honor and have our imua for survivors. Survivors like us, Survivors like our mom Fauna and her mother, our grandmother Tamar, all of us who stood our ground in the face of adversity and evil were all survivors and there are so many victims like tomorrow out there. Too many people are abused mentally, physically, verbally, emotionally sexually, and they don't know how they will ever rise above. We are here to tell you that you can survive and rise, and we hope that our Ohanna or our family story can be a guiding light for anyone who needs it, to show that no matter what you've been through, you are a survivor and that is truly beautiful and your life doesn't end there. Those experiences won't ever define you. Once you facetdy well, you can conquer it. Move onward and upward. Mahallau iloa or thank you so much everyone. We are so excited and honored to have you on this ride with us, and look out for episode one of Facing Evil next week. Facing Evil is a production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. The show is hosted by Russia Pecarero and a Vettel. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio, with ducers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Donald Albright and Paine Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on social media or email us at Facing Evil, pot at tenderfoot dot tv. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows