After 16 Months,
Killer Finally Admitted Murder

Published in The Toledo Blade on December 11, 1997.
By George J. Tanber, Blade Staff Writer.

The story of the 1992 shooting death of University of Toledo nursing student Melissa Anne Herstrum by UT police officer Jeffrey Hodge captivated the city and angered students, who called for better campus security measures.

Ms. Herstrum's partially clothed body was found shortly after midnight on January 27 at a remote site on UT's Scott Park campus. The 19-year-old sophomore from Rocky River Ohio had been shot 14 times in the head, the back, and legs.

On January 31, the day of Ms. Herstrum's funereal, police revealed that she had been shot by the same 9-mm handgun used to fire six shots into a UT dormitory room a week earlier.

The next day, Hodge, 22, at the time and a rookie police officer, was arrested amid widespread complaints in the media of a smail-paced and ineffective investigation. He later was charged with aggravated murder and kidnapping. Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty.

On Februar 18, Hodge pleaded not guilty. The same day, the case was featured on the syndicated tabloid television program A Current Affair, which re-created the murder using actors to portray Hodge and Ms. Herstrum.

Over the next 16 months, prosecutors and Hodge's defense attorneys sparred in numerous pretrial hearings over the admissibility of scientific evidence, a gag order concerning that evidence, and a request to move the trial's locatin, among other issues.

Hodge's trial was postponed twice. On September 22, 1992, Lucas County Common Pleas Court Judge Judith Ann Lanzinger accepted Hodge attorney Alan Konop's request for additional time to prepare for the case. She set March 1, 1993, as the trial date.

On February 9, Judge Lanzinger continued the trail to June 7 to allow Mr. Konop time to study the results of the prosecution's genetics testing and conduce its own.

Although Mr. Konop had argued his client's innocence and railed against what he called excessive pretrial publicity, he ended up reaching an agreement on May 5 with then-county Prosecutor Anthony Pizza that Hodge would plead guilty in exchange for dropping the death penalty specification.

At a May 6 hearing, Hodge pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated murder, kidnapping, and using a handgun in the commission of a felony. He told the courtroom that the night of her murder, he had pulled Ms. Herstrum over for a traffic violation. Hodge said he eventually took Ms. Herstrum to the Scott Park and shot her.

"I don't know, for no reason," he told Judge Lanzinger when asked why he killed Ms. Herstrum.

On campus, Hodge had a reputation among his collegues as a cowboy cop who was overly gung-ho on the job. Reports said that Hodge had deliberately committed crimes so he could report and solve them to be a hero.

Dr. James King, a UT sociology professor, said at the time that he believed Hodge was trying to be a "super cop" and that he did not believe the officer's explanation for killing Ms. Herstrum.

He said he thought Hodge pulled Ms. Herstrum over for a traffic violation and made a sexual advance. Ms. herstrum became angry, Mr. King believes, and threatened to turn Hodge in. That likely would have cost him his badge, his source of power. So Hodge killed the student.

"Why did you shoot her 14 times?" Mr. King asked. "Anger, explosive anger."

At his final hearing, Judge Lanzinger told Hodge that what he had heard in the courtroom from Ms. Herstrum's family were "cries from the heart. I want you to hear those cries for the rest of your life. I hope you never forget this day."

She then sentenced Hodge to life in prison on the three convictions, with no possibility of parole for 33 years.

After Ms. Herstrum's death, students asked for better security on campus. Additional lighting was added to Scott Park campus and UT expanded its security force.

In 1994, two years after her death, the university dedicated a memorial to Ms. Herstrum. The memorial - foliage, a plaque, and some benches - sits in a triangular area among Parks Tower, the Greek village, and the Glass Bowl.

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