Bobby Hoppe, a Former Football Star at Auburn, Will Stand Trial in Chattanooga, Accused of Killing a Man 31 Years Ago : A MURDER TIME DIDN’T FORGET

Teddy Donald Hudson was heading home early in the morning of July 20, 1957. Even at 1 a.m. the air was heavy. The heat wave that had gripped Chattanooga the last few days had not let up and everyone was suffering.

Hudson drove his 1948 DeSoto north on Bell Avenue, heading for his home in North Chattanooga. His car windows were down.

He was tired. He had made three trips that Friday night across the Tennessee River, into Chattanooga proper. On one of the trips, Hudson had collected money from a bootlegger. Around Chattanooga, Hudson, 24, was known as a liquor runner.

It also had been an eventful week.

On Monday, the police had identified him as the driver of a car that had crashed while being chased by authorities. He had been charged with transporting unstamped liquor, reckless driving, violating the state driver’s license law and hit and run.

Later in the week, he had spoken with Chattanooga police, asking them to “lay off” him.

He had a big week coming up, too. In exactly a week, Hudson was going to be married to a woman in another town.

But as Hudson approached the intersection of Bell and Snow avenues, he was struck above his right eye with a blast from a small-bore shotgun at close range.

Somehow, Hudson’s foot jammed the accelerator and his car slammed into a utility pole with such force that it uprooted the sidewalk.

Hudson died 28 minutes later in Erlanger Hospital. He never regained consciousness.

The Chattanooga police in 1957 theorized that the assailant might have been in the car with Hudson, shot him, then fled in a second car. Or, police thought, a second car might have driven alongside Hudson’s car, allowing someone to fire at him.

No charges were filed in the case, though, and for nearly 30 years it languished in police files as an unsolved murder.

The popular belief around Chattanooga at the time of the killing was that Hudson had been involved in a “corn liquor feud,” as the Chattanooga Times reported. Hudson was not prominent and his death was soon forgotten.

But not by everyone. Hudson’s mother, now 78, remembered everything. Early in 1986, she talked to Richard Heck, a Chattanooga homicide detective. She told him a sensational story about revenge and murder and a police cover-up. She told him how little value had been put on the life of a rough kid from the wrong side of the river and how precious the reputation of a star athlete was.

Georgia Hudson told Heck about the stormy, on-and-off relationship her son had had with the sister of the local football hero. She was not the woman her son was planning to marry but the football hero didn’t like Hudson seeing his sister and, according to Hudson’s mother, told him so. She said he had threatened her son.

She told how, one night, the football hero got into a car with some friends and lay in wait for her son. When her son was little more than a block from home, the football hero shot her son in the head and drove off. Her son was dead and the football hero went free.

Ultimately, Heck believed Georgia Hudson’s story. So did the Hamilton County District Attorney.

And Tuesday morning, one of the best athletes ever to come out of the state of Tennessee, Robert G. Hoppe, will go on trial for the murder of Teddy Donald Hudson.

After 31 years.

Bobby Hoppe, despite a lack of dominating size--he never reached 6 feet--was the finest football player ever in Chattanooga. Some say the best, toughest player ever in the state. In Tennessee, where they take their football seriously, that is saying something.

Hoppe (sounds like hoppy) went to Central High School, the major athletic power among the three high schools in the city. An all-state halfback, he led Central to state titles in 1951, ’52 and ’53.

After high school, Hoppe left Tennessee for Alabama to play college football at Auburn. He became a three-year letterman for the Tigers and averaged 6.5 yards a carry as a junior. He also played on special teams and gained a reputation as a punishing tackler and stubborn blocker.

“Bobby was just a fabulous football player in high school,” Auburn alumnus Richard Eiland told the Birmingham Post-Herald. Eiland was living in Chattanooga in 1953 and recruited Hoppe for Auburn. “He had tremendous speed. I used to love to watch him play. I don’t know what kind of adjectives to use to describe the way he played.”

It was the summer before Hoppe’s senior year at Auburn that Hudson was killed. That fall, Auburn went 10-0 and shared the national championship with Ohio State. Hoppe was a key member of that team.

A few of Hoppe’s teammates and coaches knew of Hudson’s death.

“I recall the incident,” said Gene Lorendo, the end coach at Auburn when Hoppe was there. “Some guy had been messing around with Bobby’s sister and I heard that Bobby told him to leave her alone or else. The next thing anybody knew, the guy turned up dead.

“If the police had charged him with it right after it happened, I don’t know who we could have replaced him with. He was an important part of that team in 1957, and we might not have been the national champions without him.”

Hoppe went from Auburn to a brief career in pro football, then returned to the Chattanooga area. He coached football in high schools for some time in northern Georgia and Chattanooga, even helping as a volunteer coach at Central High. The last coaching job Hoppe had was at Calhoun High School in Calhoun, Ga., in 1979 and ‘80, where his teams had a 5-15 record.

Last September Hoppe was named athletic director at Chattanooga State Technical Community College. His wife, Sherry Lynn Hoppe, was dean there. She has lately been serving as the interim president of Nashville State Technical Institute.

Hoppe was in Nashville with his wife on March 2, the day he was indicted for first-degree murder. He drove to Chattanooga and turned himself in at police headquarters that night. He is free on $7,500 bond.

“In this 30-year interval, Bobby has conducted himself as a fine human being and a productive member of the community,” his attorney, Leroy Phillips, said at the time of his arrest. “He’s a fine man and I look forward to defending him.”

“I’ve had him described many times during the course of this investigation as Chattanooga’s No. 1 son,” Heck said, sitting in an office at Chattanooga police headquarters.

Heck has learned, during a 14-month investigation, what it is to ask unflattering questions about a city’s No. 1 son. Since the night that Georgia Hudson approached him at a meeting of Families and Friends of Murder Victims, Heck has worked on little else.

“When I met Mrs. Hudson it was in January, 1986,” he said. “She told me there hadn’t been a day go by that she didn’t think about her son’s murder. She and her husband told me they wanted to find out who killed their son before they went to their graves. It’s the sort of thing that’s hard to turn down.

“I didn’t give her anything positive. I knew what I was up against. When I started this, I had to go to reopen the file and start from the original report. Then I discovered, what report?

“There was not a file as such. There were investigators’ notes. Bits of paper. Notes in a 3 x 5 notebook. A lot of the notes in the case (investigating officers) took with them.

“I think what we’ve found is the difference in police work from then till now and the difference in reporting procedures. They just weren’t as meticulous as we are now.”

Heck interviewed more than 45 people but was often frustrated. Some people had moved away and could not be found. More often, possible witnesses had died.

One friend of Hoppe, who had told some people at the time that he had killed Hudson, had since died.

Among those possible witnesses who were found, many did not want to talk to the police.

“A lot of people were reluctant to get involved, as they were in 1957,” Heck said.

Among them is Hoppe’s sister, Joan Hoppe Voiles, who allegedly had a stormy relationship with Hudson.

Although she was questioned at length the night of the killing, Voiles has recently refused to speak to either the police or the district attorney. It is unlikely that she will be called as a witness in her brother’s trial.

“This is the problem we are facing,” said police Major John Taylor, who supervised the recent investigation, “Everybody knew (Hoppe) and they took care of him. People in a community like this aren’t going to come forward against a man like that.”

What people are talking about is the police work involved, and why a man like Hoppe is being brought to trial after 31 years.

Asked why the police had not arrested Hoppe in 1957, Heck shook his head and said, “As far as I can see, they thought they just didn’t have enough evidence.”

Yet, much evidence was turned up in a coroner’s inquest, an extraordinary proceeding that was the first--and last--called in Chattanooga in 50 years.

It was held Aug. 8, 1957, at the request of Hudson’s family and was presided over by Dr. Doyle Currey, the flamboyant Hamilton County coroner. By most accounts, Currey ran a theatrical show, attended by most of the townspeople, who, by then, had already heard most of the details of the case.

Currey questioned 16 witnesses and quickly established Hudson’s previous legal tangles:

--He had been sent to a federal reformatory in Petersburg, Va., in 1953 for violating liquor laws.

--He and another man had been arrested in Chattanooga in April of 1955 for the kidnapping and beating of a 32-year-old man. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.

--On Jan. 7, 1957, Hudson was riding in a car when shots were fired from another car. He was struck in the left hand with a .45 caliber bullet. Hudson lost his little finger as a result of that shooting.

Seven jurors listened to four hours of testimony. Four key witnesses invoked the Fifth Amendment--Hoppe, his sister, his mother and Carlos Hughes, a friend of Hoppe.

Currey operated the inquest as if it were a trial, reminding witnesses that they were under oath and even fining Hughes $10 for contempt for failing to answer Currey’s questions. No one was sure if Currey had the authority to levy the fine.

From those who did testify, however, the night of the murder took some shape.

Thomas L. Smith, the only eyewitness, testified that he had been parked in front of his girlfriend’s home that night and watched two cars moving parallel along Bell Avenue. He said he heard one shot. Smith said he then heard another noise and watched Hudson’s car jump a curb and crash into a pole.

Smith said he could identify the cars but not the persons inside.

Richard Holland Jr., whose car Hudson had borrowed for a while earlier on the night he was killed, testified that Hudson had seemed worried that evening. He said Hudson had told him that a man had threatened Hudson’s life in a dispute over a girl, but did not name the man or the girl.

Georgia Hudson testified that her son had been worried about something and in the weeks before his death had lost 20 pounds.

The autopsy report was read. It showed that an oval shot pattern 3 1/2 inches long was made in Hudson’s head from a .410 bore shotgun.

No shot pellets were found in the car, leading the police to conclude that the weapon had been fired from close range. The report said that the blast blew away part of Hudson’s brain.

Finally, an unnamed witness testified. He told of trading a combination .410 shotgun-.22 caliber rifle with over and under barrels to a young man only hours before Hudson was shot. The witness told how he and the man took the weapon to a quarry to test it.

The witness, however, could not identify the man to whom he had traded the weapon.

The jury deliberated 70 minutes and concluded that Hudson had been slain by “person or persons unknown” and complained that key information was withheld by the witnesses who refused to testify.

The story was big news in town, but not the biggest. Currey, in fact, was bumped off the front page of the newspapers by the arrival of 18-year-old movie star Sal Mineo, whose appearance in Chattanooga was so overwhelming that eight teen-age girls fainted and had to be hospitalized.

Nevertheless, Currey gave a dramatic summation for the gathered press. The killing of Hudson was, he said, “The beginning in our county of Chicago gangsterism.”

Currey applauded the Chattanooga police department for “Their diligent effort to solve the crime.”

Georgia and Roy Hudson have lived in the same frame house on Manning Street for 40 years. This is North Chattanooga, to many the wrong side of the river.

The neighborhoods and houses are old and worn. People have lived here all their lives.

Up a small hill from the Hudson home is the corner where Don Hudson was killed. There is a low rock wall in front of a gray clapboard-sided house and on the sidewalk in front is a wide gap where his car uprooted the utility pole.

Georgia Hudson is reluctant to talk to a reporter. But, even in brief conversation, it is clear that she has a lot to say.

“The police never tried to find who killed my boy,” she said. “I think the big shots paid it off. They knew who did it. They think (Hoppe) was such a good boy, but I know different. He did a lot of things he would have gotten in trouble for. But they didn’t want to get him in trouble. You don’t forget things like that.”

Georgia Hudson said that Hoppe’s sister had called her son and made threats. She said that Joan Hoppe Violes, then a widow with a small child, had often been at the Hudson home.

“If you ask me, I think she planned it, but I can’t prove that,” Mrs. Hudson said.

She said that Donny wasn’t a bad boy, just a little wild. His days of running moonshine were behind him at the time of his murder, she said.

“He was a good boy. It is a relief to us that they are going to solve this, after all this time. They didn’t want to solve it before. They were ball fanatics, they love football. They all said what a good boy (Hoppe) was. Now they know.”

Tom Evans, assistant district attorney for Hamilton County, can’t discuss the pending case but did say he thinks the state has strong evidence.

Hoppe has two lawyers defending him. Besides Phillips, a local attorney, there is nationally known criminal lawyer Bobby Lee Cook. Cook, from Georgia, has tried more than 300 murder cases and won 90% of them.

Part of the defense’s case will be that Hoppe’s right to due process has been violated by the 30-year delay in bringing the murder indictment against him. It is believed to be the longest pre-indictment delay in U.S. history.

Cook maintains that the authorities had the essential elements of the case long ago and did not pursue it.

In fact, a grand jury was convened on the case in 1966 but no indictment was returned.

Taylor, the head of the homicide division, said: “What is happening is the police are also on trial here.”

The police say they have uncovered new evidence. According to testimony earlier this month at a pretrial hearing, it is evidence potentially devastating to Hoppe.

One witness said that Hoppe was in her home the night before Hudson’s murder. She said that Hoppe had made a threat against Hudson, but that she hadn’t taken it seriously. The next night, Hudson was dead.

Easily the most damaging testimony was offered by the Rev. Joseph Godwin, who testified that two days after Hudson’s death, Hoppe confessed to having killed a man.

Godwin was a preacher and a 37-year-old summer school student at Auburn that year. He testified that Hoppe had come to his dormitory room the morning of July 22, 1957.

Godwin, now the mayor of Mars Hill, N.C., and the pastor of Pleasant Gap Baptist Church there, said he had never seen Hoppe before that meeting and that the football player introduced himself.

According to an account of the testimony by Dick Kopper in the Chattanooga Times, Godwin was a credible and forthright witness.

Godwin reportedly said at the hearing: “He didn’t have to tell me who he was because at that time, anybody in or around Auburn who didn’t know who Bobby Hoppe was was Rip Van Winkle. He had been asleep for a long time. Because Bobby Hoppe was great in football at Auburn at that time. His picture was everywhere.”

Godwin said that Hoppe was clearly distraught. He paced the room and at one point got on his knees.

“His physical condition was so distressed and distraught, such as I have never seen outside a mental hospital,” Godwin said.

Godwin said Hoppe told him “ . . . that he had killed somebody. He said he had gone home over the weekend and that he had killed a man.”

Godwin said Hoppe told him that “he had killed a man by shooting him in the face with a shotgun.”

According to Godwin’s testimony, the two men talked and Godwin said he told Hoppe he couldn’t keep the story to himself. Hoppe said he was concerned about his mother’s health and asked that the story not be told until after his mother’s death.

Godwin said that they both agreed at that point that Hoppe would turn himself in.

Like many states, Tennessee grants a “pastor-parishioner privilege” that protects a clergyman against disclosing information given to him in a confidential manner. The judge in this case has ruled that Godwin and Hoppe had no such relationship and allowed Godwin’s testimony.

In 1966 Godwin called Hoppe and reminded him of their agreement, although Hoppe’s mother was still alive. Godwin then contacted the police and gave a taped statement to Leroy Kington, then chief of the homicide division for the Chattanooga police.

It was revealed in the recent pretrial hearing, however, that even after the police had taped Godwin’s story, they did not intend to reopen the case. The information on the tape was leaked and the tape was subpoenaed.

“We had some jerk in our department that was so good that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and it got up to the grand jury,” Kington testified.

Kington also refused in 1966 to allow the Hamilton County attorney general to see Godwin’s statement. “He didn’t have no business with it,” Kington said.

Finally, a former Chattanooga police detective testified that another detective had obtained a shotgun from someone in Hoppe’s family and that pellets taken from Hudson’s head were of a type that could have been used in that shotgun.

During the hearing, Hoppe sat quietly at the defense table, showing little emotion.

As Godwin finished testifying he walked to Hoppe to shake his hand.

“I feel sorry for you because you are a liar,” Hoppe said to Godwin. “You are a sick person.”

So, Bobby Hoppe will go on trial this week. He will be tried under the law as it existed in 1957, which means that if he is convicted of first-degree murder, he will face 20 years to life in prison.

“I just want to see justice done,” said Georgia Hudson, who had been talking on her front porch. As she turned to go inside, she said: “You know, it’s been a long time but we have never forgotten our boy. Or what happened to him.”