steve hodel

Steve Hodel was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He served four years as a medic in the U.S. Navy, and then joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1963. After six years in uniform patrol, he transferred to Hollywood Division Detectives where he worked all of the “tables”: Burglary, Robbery, Auto-Theft, Juvenile, Crimes against Persons and was then permanently assigned to the Homicide Detail. Twilight Zone oddity - it was his wife that had talked him into getting into the field of police work.

It was also his wife that, unknown to him at the time, who had also known his father, George Hodel, intimately, and about twice the age she had told him she was (she was actually in her forties, instead of the 20s she had told him she was). After learning the two facts, and possibly more, Steve divorced her.

During his career at Hollywood Homicide, Steve promoted to Detective II and in 1983 was the senior field homicide detective. During his years of service he received more than 75 commendations and handled over 300 separate murder investigations and had one of the departments highest “solve rates. “ Steve promoted to Detective III (the highest attainable rank in detectives) and retired from LAPD in 1986.

HODEL INVESTIGATIONS was established in 1986. Steve has been a licensed California Private Investigator, conducting mainly criminal defense investigations, for the past 23-years. He worked over six-years as lead investigator on a high-profile international murder case which resulted in an innocent man (Yoshikuni Okubo) being released from prison in Tokyo, Japan and reunited with his family, after five years of detention.