Sisters Connected To Black Dahlia Murder Shine Light On The Dark

TW: Some material in this episode may not be suitable for younger listeners.

Sisters Rasha Pecoraro and Yvette Gentile have dedicated their lives to shining a light on the truth no matter how dark and ugly it may be. They’re carrying on the torch in honor of their mother Fauna Hodel. She experienced abuse and racism, but never dwelled in it for too long, and taught herself then her daughters to break the family’s shame cycle.

RASHA: She was just like, you are not this supposed evilness that we come from. You are pure love and light because you come from me. 

Fauna and her daughters believe when we share our stories they have less power to hurt us.

RASHA: There is no shame in sharing your story. It's your truth… You have to have that safe space for where you feel that you can share it. But I think once you release it and once you bring those monsters into the light, they're not so scary anymore… People probably don't have skeletons in their closet like we do with our family, but it doesn't make it any less scary.

Rasha and Yvette first opened up about their great grandfather’s notorious past on the popular podcast “Root of Evil.”   

YVETTE: It's really a story about overcoming incredible family secrets, murder, and when I say so much more, it's really so much more. Specifically the podcast is a multidimensional story about our connection to George Hodel, the prime suspect in the black dahlia murder case which is also known as the Elizabeth Short murder case. George Hodell was our great grandfather... in Root of Evil we track evidence for George's guilt and we try to come to terms with the impact he had on our entire family.

This is a story about what happens when we shine a light on the monsters.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

The Three Musketeers

To understand Rasha and Yvette’s story we need to go back in time and tell you a bit about their mother Fauna Hodel. Fauna was raised by a Black woman in Nevada, so grew up believing she was mixed race. And because of Fauna’s light skin – she didn’t look like her adopted mother, or her black friends – she didn’t fit in.  

RASHA: She experienced racism for not being white enough, for not being black enough. 

She always knew she was adopted, but her birth certificate said she was biracial. That raised all kinds of questions: who was she? Where did she belong? Who were her biological parents? That began a long journey into self discovery – one that even became the subject of a TV mini series decades later.

Along the way she met and fell in love with a young black man at 15, got married, and gave birth to Yvette.

YVETTE: My mom was my everything. Like, she was my best friend. She was my mother. She was my sister. You know, she was everything because we were all she was so young when she had me.

Fauna and her sidekick Yvette tracked down Fauna’s biological mother Tamar in Hawaii and together they went to meet her.

YVETTE: I remember just the smells in the ocean and, you know, meeting my my uncles for the first time and being in Hawaii was just like as a kid, it was like, oh my God like all these things going on around me. But then all of a sudden, I remember my mom just like heaviness up on her, you know, not really knowing, you know, details of what had happened. 

Those details, one by one, began to emerge. Initially Tamar, her biological mother, openly shared the truth with her. But Fauna was reluctant to accept it and left Hawai’i for a while. Slowly, Fauna and Yvette came back to Hawai’i  to learn more about their family history, and would often spend Sundays with Tamar on the beach in Waikiki. Piece by piece the puzzle that was Fauna’s life started to click.

YVETTE: We'd spend the day at the beach. And I remember probably when I was I would say probably 11,12, really starting to put together the stories of her father, my mom's grandfather, George Hodel. And. I don't really have the words to what I was feeling or thinking, but it was like, ‘okay something's not right with this story.’

Here’s how the story went: Tamar was raped by her father George Hodel, and he was even put on trial for incest in 1949. He was acquitted, but the rapes continued and Tamar became pregnant with Fauna in 1951. She wanted to keep her baby, but was forced to give her up. George arranged for Fauna to be given up for adoption to a black couple in Reno, Nevada. 

As Fauna was coming to grips with her family history, she slept with a man, and soon realized she was pregnant with another child… Rasha.

RASHA: You know, my my mom our mom was supposed to abort me and I no judgment, you know, like no judgment at all. But she told us, you know, the story … the night before she was supposed to have this scheduled abortion, she had a dream about me. And it was a little five year old me… I was like, ‘please don't kill me. I've seen the difference in the world.’ But I was screaming that at the top of my lungs, like screaming … She was like, I kept screaming that ‘I'm supposed to be here, make a positive difference in the world. Don't kill me!’ Like screaming at the top of my lungs. And so she canceled it and had me...My mom consciously made the decision to bring me into this world because I was supposed to be here. And I believe in a woman's right to choose. And, you know, she had abortions before me and after me and was very open with Yvette and I about that. PAUSE

So a few years after meeting her biological mother, Fauna made the deliberate choice to raise her two girls in the multicultural city of Honolulu, not far from Tamar.

RASHA:  She knew I was probably going to come out looking real white. And my beautiful biracial sister, she was like, okay, how am I going to raise these humans in a place where they can be free from the racism that she experienced growing up in Reno, Nevada, because she was never black enough, never white enough being. You know, she thought she was biracial until she was in her twenties. So it was the most magical, magical place to grow up.

Just a few years after Rasha was born, Fauna and Rasha’s father split up. Fauna and her two girls moved all over Hawaii, never settling in one place for too long. Yvette who is 11 years older says she felt like the protector of both Fauna and Rasha. 

YVETTE: Like she was by my side. She was with me on the bus. So she when she was younger she was a bit of a brat... We have just evolved into being best friends and still to this day. So it's it's a pretty special bond and it's something that my mom really, really cherished about the both of us.  

RASHA: And she was a little jealous of it, too, to be honest. Like, she was always like, don't forget me. Like, it was always, you know, the Three Musketeers,

I believe that we all have multiple soul mates. And I know that my sister is one of mine.

But the girls revered their mother.

YVETTE: It's almost mindblowing to know her to meet her in person, especially with everything that she went through. Like Rasha said, as a child, you know, not fitting in, having racism on both sides. But despite all of her circumstances, she never, ever I don't know how Laurel, I don't know how, but she never took that in. And she never, like, repeated the cycle ever. She was larger than life…

RASHA: She would never be mean or unkind to someone, even if she disagreed with them, even if they had hurt her, even if they were not a nice person. She believed everyone deserved kindness.

Learning Family Secrets

Fauna learned her grandfather kept more dark secrets. In the 1940s George Hodel was a respected doctor in Los Angeles who threw wild parties. Yvette says that’s how most people outside the family saw him until his son Steve, a Los Angeles Police homicide detective, looked into it. The family always knew that he was considered a suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Short, but didn’t know the full extent until their Great Uncle Steve’s book came out in 2003. 

YVETTE: It wasn't until I was really in my teens that I fully understood the that deep seated evil. And it wasn't until, you know, Steve Hodel came out with the book and I read the book, and that's when I was like, oh.

RASHA: I don't remember not knowing. I got it from Mom. I got it from Tamar, our biological grandmother, and I also got it from my father. But I was also a very inquisitive kid. I'd ask the questions, right. So I yeah, And Tamar and I always kind of butted heads and I would always ask her questions and I'd be like, Who is my mom's father? Like, why were you with your dad? Like, what do you mean you had a relationship with him like that to me, sounds like, you know rape. Like, I know, like, I don't get this.

Rasha says her dad would use her family’s history of incest and rape as a weapon.

RASHA: My father was emotionally, verbally and physically abusive. So like when he was saying these stories and telling all these things, like he would go into much more grotesque detail with me than Mom ever would about our family history. And he would say these things to me in order to hurt me, you know, And that was like he was attacking and he was trying to poison me. And I was just like, I know that I don't care what you say about my mother or about, you know, that family like that doesn't define who I am and I know who my mother is and who my sister is and who I am. But it took me a long time to get there. Right? 

Coming Out With Family Secrets

George’s son and Tamar’s half brother Steve, is known for launching his own investigation into the Black Dahlia murder, what has been called “the most notorious unsolved murder of the 20th century,” only to discover his father was the prime suspect. In 2003, after his dad died of congestive heart failure, Steve published a book about it.

RASHA: I remember being like I was seated next to our mom and we were watching I can't remember if it was ‘Dateline’ or ‘48 hours,’ but they did, you know, a special on our great uncle Steve Hodel about his book, ‘The Black Dahlia Avenger.’ And I remember all of this coming out and nothing was new to me. …I was born with the name Rasha Hodel, because my parents were not ever married. And my father ended up, you know, changing my last name to his last name when I was like 11 or 12. And I remember sitting next to Mom who is named Fauna Hodel, and I said, Oh, thank God I'm not Rasha Hodel anymore. Like, I was just like, I'm like, Oh, can you imagine? Like And then she looked at me …She, like, kind of laughed at me and she was like, ‘you can't let you can't sit in that. That's never going to define who you are, who your sister is, who I am. Like, we know who we are. It doesn't matter if we're related to an accused murderer…’She was just like, ‘you are not this supposed evilness that we come from. You are pure love and light because you come from me.’ PAUSE

When George Hodel and the Black Dahlia murder got all this big coverage, Rasha was in college. She decided to take back the narrative for herself.

RASHA: I even wrote like, a paper about, like, not being proud of George Hodel's blood running through my veins, but being firmly rooted in the fact that I come from Fauna Hodel. I'm just going to hit it head on. And this is before, you know, I mean, I think Internet was just starting. So that's how I dealt with it. I'm just like, all right, you're going to talk about me. Then I'm going to tell you how I'm not like him.

Fauna Breaks The Shame Cycle

Meanwhile, Fauna worked through the family demons in her own way.

YVETTE: Normally it was metaphysical for my mom, she was a very deep spiritual being. 

RASHA: I don't think she ever went to a conventional therapist, but… 

YVETTE: No, no, not a convention like the psychics... But the thing about going to psychics, it's like if they said something bad, she'd be like, ‘no, no, no, no, no.’ 

It’s like Fauna rewrote the narrative to suit her. She wouldn’t let any negative prediction penetrate her forcefield. 

YVETTE: She never held on to it. She never held on to it. And I should say she fought. To not let that seep into her soul. She fought. She educated herself. She she kept evolving as a human being and didn't let that sink in.   

LAUREL: Did you ever see her regress or have a dark day? 

YVETTE: Oh, yes, there were there were days that mom had dark days … mom manifested from nothing. You could meet Fauna Hodel, and you would think like she was the wealthiest woman on the planet. But she she created every single day. She manifested, you know, that joy and and the financial necessities, you know, that she needed for herself and her children…But did she have dark days? Absolutely. Mom was still a broken child from back in the early days, but nobody would see that but her children… I was always, you know, building my mom up. You know, I would say, mom, you know, when she would have those moments of insecurity or worry or sadness, I'm like, Mom, you have raised two children, you know, biracial, blond, blue eyed, who are strong women. We've never been on drugs, never been in jail. We know who we are. That is because of you. [00:50:15]  really scared me to see her in those moments because you're so used to this positive, you know, beaming light. And when that light dimmed, you're like what is happening?…[00:50:37]she never held back from us, and then she'd snap right out of it. And you're like, ‘okay, Mom's back.’ 

Yvette says despite Fauna’s dark moments she always bounced back. Fauna was determined to give Rasha and Yvette what she didn’t have growing up – love and a sense of belonging.

YVETTE: She was very conscious of she was very intentional and precise about what she put out into the universe.

Fauna felt strongly that her life story – her search for identity, her message of good coming from evil – needed to be out there.

YVETTE:  She wanted to tell her story for so many reasons, you know, because of what she endured and how she manifested from nothing and got everything.

Fauna wrote it all down in a memoir in the 1980’s, but didn’t end up self-publishing it until 2008. 

RASHA: From the time she was eight years old, she knew she had to tell the world her story. She knew it. And she didn't even know, you know, the connections, you know, to the most famous unsolved murder in American history. She didn't even know that part yet. She just knew that she was different and that she had to tell the world, one, it's okay to be different, too. You know, racism is ridiculous. Like that should not exist in this world. Like she you know, we talk about it all the time, like she would say all the time, like we're all one where humankind like and we're like, well, mom, there's system of oppression. 

Rasha Comes Out

As Fauna came to terms with her family secrets, Rasha realized it was time to tell someone about her own. From a young age her father had abused her. He used the ugly stories about George and Tamar as weapons saying THAT was real abuse–as opposed to what he was doing to her.

RASHA: He was very graphic in detail, told me way too much…he knew that he was abusive. But I remember him pointing out, like, aren't you lucky that I never sexually abused you?... I didn't tell a single living soul that my father was physically, verbally or emotionally abusive until I was 21 when he almost killed me in the last time that he beat me up. And I and I think the reason I suppressed all of that abuse and didn't talk about it is because it wasn't sexual abuse. So that really did a number on me emotionally.

As Rasha grappled with these memories and realizations, Fauna and Yvette gave her the love and support she needed to come out with her own truth.

RASHA: I knew I was gay from a very young age, but I knew my father was homophobic and abusive. I realized that I had been suppressing my sexuality my entire life, and I came out as a lesbian at the age of 30. 

Fauna Finally Shares Her Story With The World

It was around this time that Hollywood director Patty Jenkins (who would later go on to direct Wonder Woman) heard about Fauna’s story. Jenkins and her husband wanted to produce it for TV. So Fauna’s memoir, “One Day She’ll Darken,” became the framework for the limited TNT series “I Am The Night.” In late 2017 they shot the first episodes. 

Just as Fauna was months away from her dream becoming reality, she discovered she had late stage breast cancer. Even after the doctor told her the grim prognosis, Fauna refused to accept it.

​​RASHA: She'd only take the good stuff even when she was. Literally dying from breast cancer…And it metastasized. And by that time, it had gone to her brain. She'd already had, you know, a brain surgery, lived through that. And that surgeon was like, Fauna, you know, it's metastasized to your brain. And he didn't say you're not going to live. But he was basically saying that. And she literally said to this doctor who she absolutely loved. Dr. Mota. She was like, ‘Dr. Mota, I reject that diagnosis.’ 

But on September 30, 2017 Fauna died… just weeks before the series started to film. 

Rasha And Yvette Shine A Spotlight On Fauna’s Story

As the show was in mid-production Rasha and Yvette were asked to do a companion podcast. They were still grieving the loss of their mother, but knew sharing her story was a way to honor Fauna and her wishes. 

Neither of them shied away from the public eye. Yvette was an actor and model. Rasha had a stint in reality TV on The Biggest Loser.

RASHA: I think it's like something in the Hodel DNA. Like we all want to be in the limelight or in the spotlight in some way. And our mom always wanted us to do something together. And she, you know, no matter what each of us were doing on our own, she's like, you two are supposed to either write a book, be on a TV show, do something together. 

In preparation for the podcast they opened up Fauna’s old storage unit and found tapes, including an audio diary and letters that revealed another side to their mother.

YVETTE: We found a whole bunch of stuff, right? We found the tapes, but we found a letter that I had never read. And it basically was a letter saying how unfair about having me, how unfair that this baby is coming. And it's everything that I want to be in that statement. You could take it many different ways, right? But my mom never, ever let me feel that that unfairness, you know, because that could have been that could have gone either way. And I'm sure many people in their lives. She made a conscious choice to raise me in a way that I was I was loved. I didn't see color. My father was, you know, black. My mom was white. There was never a discussion in my house about color. It was from the day I was born. You were beautiful. You can be this. You can do that. And so that is that is how I was raised.

It was difficult to hear their mother’s voice after she had died.

YVETTE: To now go back right after she's passed and to listen to it. I mean, I bawled like the first time we put the tape in, it just was like. It was it was very surreal. It's very surreal.

With the tv show and podcast Rasha and Yvette soon found themselves on the press circuit. They were featured in Rolling Stone, and appeared on morning talk shows, even the Dr. Phil Show.

RASHA: When we met Dr. Phil, we you know, we were on his television show and then we were on his podcast and this particular podcast that we did with him, it never ended up airing, but he gave us the most amazing, amazing advice. … He said to us, he's like, ‘what you girls are doing is is amazing because monsters live in the dark. And when you bring those monsters into the light, like the scariness is taken away, Right. And that shame is taken away.’ 

Disentangling From Family History

After “Root of Evil” dropped all eight episodes, podcast producers approached the sisters with another podcast idea, “Facing Evil,” where they would interview and discuss people like them who had dealt with great darkness.

YVETTE: It's so important for us all to to lean in to that light and to help others lean into that light. 

LAUREL: Is that a Fauna ism? 

YVETTE: Yes, it is. My God, I love that. Yes, there's a lot of it. Yes.

RASHA: We were given this amazing, amazing gift and this torch, so to speak, from our mom with a bigger message of kindness and healing the world and bringing the world

YVETTE: Everybody has dark, deep family secrets. Ours just happened to be, you know, promoted through book and podcasts and movies and all the things. You can't let that define who you are, but that is a part of your history. We were we were given this legacy of of our mother. But now it is transformed into to who we are, who Rasha I are, what we stand for and our purpose. Never in a million years do we think, you know, we'd be in the true crime arena. And we don't even really like to say that, you know? We really don't, you know. But it's it's really just about having I can't say it enough about having empathy for other people and their stories and just sharing resources and helpers to make us all better people.

At the end of every episode they share a moment of what Hawaiians call “imua,” something that gets to the heart of Fauna’s mission.

YVETTE: This week's message of hope and healing is for Brandon Tina who was adamant about living life as the person he truly was in nearly impossible circumstances. RASHA: Brandon Tina was headstrong, outspoken. What kind of impact could he have made? We'll never know. He shouldn't have had to lose his life or live with fear and abuse. But his death paved the way for so many others to live their truth. And so this week we move onward and upward by recognizing those who face similar struggles. If you're on that path today we see you and honor you. Onward and upward. Imua. Imua.

RASHA: Imua literally means to move onward and upward. But in Hawaiian culture and, you know, in in history it's more than that. It's, it's about healing and it is about moving from the darkness into the light. We had discussions with Hawaiian elders and kupuna is that I'm very fortunate to know. We wanted to do it in a respectful way. And Imua, I believe, is universal. And it just. It's a great way, especially like. … we're not true crime, but whether we like it or not, we're forever attached to a horrific thing that happened and we've, you know, moved onward and upward from that. And we want other people who have been touched by crime or evil or hurt in some way to also move onward and upward…People love true crime and it's salacious, but it's like, okay, what do you do afterwards? How do you heal? What happens to the victims and their families and even, you know, the person who's responsible for the evil, their family? You know, you have to have and find healing in that. 

LAUREL: How did you disentangle yourself from your family history?

RASHA:  We do it every day, Laurel. Practice. Yes. Yes. And that goes back to mom. It really does. It goes back to her. You know, just we were just so deeply rooted in love. And this is a lesson I'm I'm learning every day.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.