Genius Alert

We know that George Hodel played the references and endorsements game well as he reinvented himself professionally and “moved on” periodically over the course of his long life (sometimes while feeling heat from law enforcement.) For example, here’s a remarkable letter of introduction Steve Hodel has shared that his father was granted by the Governor of territorial Hawaii, Samuel Wilder King, dating from the 1950s:

We also know that Prof. Lewis Terman liked to help out the high IQ kids — the “Termites” — in his longitudinal study with personal counseling, letters of reference, job referrals to other Termites, interventions with college admissions offices, etc., (see Joel Shurkin’s 1992 book, Terman’s Kids.) In Black Dahlia Avenger, Steve Hodel recalls how his father took pride in being a member of an elite group and scrupulously kept up with the requirements of the “Genius” study, completing the questionnaires issued over the decades from the study HQ.

It was apparently not uncommon for grown-up Termites to drop in at Stanford to chat with the psychologists running the study about their lives:

I think it might be interesting to check the archives on the off chance there is a record of George Hodel visiting Palo Alto for this purpose during February of 1974.