HODGSON, SEAN: Mail online article - BBC online -
A mentally-ill man who spent 27 years in jail for a murder he did not commit has been finally freed.
As 57-year-old Sean Hodgson declared himself ecstatic at the quashing of his conviction, it emerged that he could have been released ten years ago had it not been for further mistakes, this time by the Forensic Science Service.
Mr Hodgson was jailed after confessing to the 1979 murder of 22-year-old barmaid Teresa de Simone in Southampton. At the trial he was said by his own defence to be a pathological liar ...
But Dawn Burrows, one of his legal team, said it was likely the FSS will be sued to try to obtain more.
She added: ‘There is an issue about how culpable are the FSS. They could have done something about this ten years ago.’
The revelations about the forensic blunders came on a day of high drama.
Gaunt and frail, Mr Hodgson appeared overcome he walked to freedom through the court’s front doors. Mail online article 19th March 2009
A man wrongfully jailed for 27 years for a murder he did not commit has died three years after being released from prison.
Sean Hodgson, 61, of County Durham, was jailed for the 1979 murder of Teresa De Simone, 22, in Southampton.
His conviction was quashed in 2009 after advances in DNA testing showed he was innocent and another man, now dead, was the likely killer.
Mr Hodgson was one of the UK’s longest serving miscarriage of justice victims. BBC online article 27th October 2012
HOFF, JOHN REIGH: True Crime Recaps 2022 -
March 6th 1959: Spokane, Washington: A nine-year-old girl was snatched off the street and brutally murdered while selling campfire girl cookies. True Crime Recaps: Candy Rogers Cold Case Solved 60 Years Later! Youtube 8.39, 2022
Over the years the case slowly and quietly went cold. It was unsolved for over 60 years until modern-day genetic science linked carefully preserved DNA evidence back to one man. ibid.
Hugh Bion Morse: He was part of the Spokane motorcycle club … Hugh was also a serial killer … Four years before Candy’s [Rogers] murder he’d been picked up in California for trying to molest two girl scouts selling cookies. In Spokane he lived just a couple of blocks from Candy. Less than a year after her body was found Hugh raped and beat two women in Spokane and tried to do the same to a third before he travelled to Georgia, Ohio and Alabama beating, raping and stabbing seven more women long the way. He was finally caught in Minnesota in 1961. A DNA test in 2001 tested against the DNA found on Candy’s clothes took him off the list of suspects. ibid.
In 2021 the DNA was sent to a genealogy lab and results came back to three Spokane brothers, and eventually with the help of one of their living daughters they narrowed it down to one man: John Reigh Hoff. ibid.
HOFFA, JIMMY: viz Assassinations: HOFFA, JIMMY
HOFMANN, MARK: The Man Who Forged America 2003 - News report - Robert Stott - Stray Mutt - Masterminds TV - Murder Among the Mormons TV -
Antique documents worth millions. Techniques that fooled America’s greatest experts. A master-plan so profound it takes years to unfold. And a brilliant mind driven to the absolute edge. The Man Who Forged America, 2003
1980 Salt Lake City Utah. Home of the Mormon Church. The setting for a discovery that sent shockwaves around America. Mark Hofmann, a first year medical student, has brought an old Bible. Stuck between its pages is a mysterious document ... The long-lost Anthon transcript. ibid.
Hofmann sells his amazing find to the Mormon Church for $20,000. ibid.
Hofmann makes another incredibly find. He unearths three Joseph Smith letters that he sells for $95,000. The money pours in. ibid.
Over the next year Hofmann makes more apparent discoveries including documents of national importance from the hand of Daniel Boone, Abe Lincoln, George Washington and Jack London. His fame spreads. The Mormon Church believes he is touched by God. ibid.
The world’s most astounding series of forgeries. ibid.
Over six hundred extraordinary forgeries. ibid.
He creates the Salamander letter, the first in a series of controversial documents that threatens the very foundation of the Mormon Church. ibid.
Hofmann now travels east ... He creates an entirely new persona for himself. ibid.
Hofmann poses as an innocent history buff. ibid.
The Oath of a Freeman ... His asking price $1.5 million. He has reached the pinnacle of the forger’s art. ibid.
And it isn’t long before some of his disgruntled investors get ugly. ibid.
Hofmann targets [Mac] Christensen because he was about to expose Hormann’s financial dealings. ibid.
As investigators circle closer to Hofmann as their killer the case throws a cloud of doubt over the Church’s documents and others Hofmann has sold from coast to coast. News report cited ibid.
His [Mark Hofmann] great desire in life was to fool the experts. Robert Stott, prosecutor
Mark Hofmann was a forger and shrewd observer of human behaviour. Like any good con-man, he knew part of his success manufacturing and selling fake historical documents depended on willing victims – people who wanted to believe his claims.
Growing up Mormon, Hofmann realized he was surrounded by credulous people who were trained to trust those who presented themselves as authorities ...
From his years of poking around old documents and studying church history, Hofmann knew there were skeletons in the Mormon closet. Authentic LDS history is far murkier than the official version. He also knew the church was interested in acquiring potentially embarrassing documents so they could suppress them ...
So Hofmann concocted the ‘Salamander letter’, an account of Joseph Smith encountering a talking salamander that turned into an angel. The forgery neatly connected the Smith family’s occult practices with the origins of Mormonism ...
How is it that church leaders could meet several times with Mark Hofmann and never discern the dark spirit inside him? How could they not recognize the devil within their midst? And how many times before had they failed at similar challenges? How many more times would they fail? ...
What about the church’s document experts? Well, they turned out not to be so expert.
Before Hofmann started blowing up people, the church trumpeted the Salamander letter as a marvelous, wonderful new find while carefully spinning its content. After law enforcement forgery experts declared the Salamander letter a fake, however, the brethren had to spin their way back out without making it look like they had been duped and swindled. Furthermore, they resisted cooperating with the investigation out of fear their ineptitude would be further exposed.
The Hofmann case was a shameful moment of ecclesiastical bungling. I don’t imagine it’s an isolated case. The brethren work pretty much in secret, with no checks and balances, answering to no one, except each other and the still, small voices they hear in their heads. Stray Mutt, board post ‘For Newbies and Lurking TBMs – A Review of the Hofmann Case’