Indiana dad who stomped on wife's head with boots till she died charged with murder as son exposes grisly killing
NEW ALBANY, INDIANA: A man has been charged with his wife’s murder after one of his children told an elementary school counselor he had seen his father killing his mother in the basement of their home. The child said his father stomped his mother’s head repeatedly with his black boots. Rebecca Hoover’s body was found on Monday, August 31, after she went missing for almost a month.
Soon after the grisly discovery, her husband, Judson Keith Hoover, was arrested and charged with the August 2 murder of his wife. According to police chief Todd Bailey and Floyd County Prosecutor Chris Lane, the 50-year-old accused has also entered a guilty plea at a court appearance on Thursday, September 3.
On August 5, Rebecca’s mother filed a missing report for her daughter, who was also a mother-of-three. Police searched the couple's home but could not find anything. But the investigation took a new turn when police received new information on August 27. The court records stated that one of the three kids of the couple told a counselor at a local elementary school that he saw his father killing his 38-year-old mother in the basement of their home on St. Joseph Road in New Albany.
After getting the information, the police approached Judson on the same day when he arrived to pick up his children from school. After getting consent from the suspect and his attorney, cops searched his home and cars and found something like blood at the bottom of the basement stairs. The young boy also gave a graphic detail of the crime that happened a few weeks earlier, around the same time when Rebecca disappeared.
As the investigation progressed, police searched a storage unit on Mount Tabor Road that had been taken on rent by Judson. They also searched another storage unit in Louisville, where they found the victim’s body inside a 55-gallon container. Police chief Bailey said that the investigators “put everything into high gear and spent countless hours uncovering the facts of this case" after they heard the attack story the child told school officials. "That took a lot of courage," he added.
Meanwhile, when Judson appeared in court on Thursday he suggested he believed that Rebecca died from strangulation. His statement came after he was asked if he killed the woman by repeatedly stomping on her head. However, the autopsy result stated that the victim died due to blunt force trauma to the head and torso. The autopsy also backed the child’s claim that Rebecca was hit multiple times in the head with the suspect's foot and in the stomach with a weapon, The Sun reported.
It has also been reported that Judson has a history of being aggressive and violent. Earlier, he was arrested on domestic violence charges. In April, he had allegedly struck Rebecca 15 to 20 times in the face, head, and neck. For the latest allegations, he could face a jail term between 45 and 65 years, with an advisory of 55. Currently, he has been held at Floyd County Corrections and a sentence hearing has been scheduled for October 2.