Former Auburn football star Bobby Hoppe confessed...

Former Auburn football star Bobby Hoppe confessed to a Baptist minister nearly 31 years ago that he had shot a man to death, the minister testified during Hoppe’s murder trial in Chattanooga, Tenn.

“He told me the killing was done by a shotgun, he shot the man in the face, the man was in a car, the car wrecked,” Joseph Godwin told a Hamilton County Criminal Court jury.

Hoppe, 53, is being tried on a charge of first-degree murder for allegedly using a shotgun to kill Don Hudson, 24, a moonshine runner, on July 20, 1957.

Prosecutors contend that Hoppe, then a 22-year-old student at Auburn, shot Hudson because Hudson had beaten his sister, Joan Hoppe Voiles, with whom Hudson had once been romantically involved.

But the defense has argued that Hoppe shot Hudson in self-defense only after Hudson drove alongside his car and pointed a pistol at him.