In a gruesome case of murder in New Albany, Indiana, a man assaulted his wife to death last month. What makes this case unique is the fact that the chief witness in the case, who actually saw the crime being committed and revealed the identity of the criminal is an 8-year old boy, the son of the man and his victim wife.
Judson Hoover, 50-years old, has confessed to the murder of his wife and has got into a plea agreement with the prosecutors. The reason he plead guilty was to avoid having his son appear in the court as a witness. The next hearing of the case will take place on October 2.
Sequence of events
Rebecca Hoover was reported missing last month. She was reported to have been last seen on August 2. Police started investigating but the breakthrough happened when it came to light that their son, only eight years in age, told the counselor in his elementary school that his father had killed his mother in a brutal way.
As per the version of the son, Judson stomped on his wife's head 20 times and also stabbed her with keys repeatedly, causing Rebecca to start bleeding. As of now, police believe that this incident and the consequent death of the victim happened on August 2 itself.
However, the main accused says he strangled his wife to death. He also informed the court that after the murder, he carried his wife's body to a storage center nearby and stashed it in a container with 55-gallon capacity.
All the details are corroborated by physical evidence. The body has been discovered in the container and the murderer has been caught on a surveillance camera dragging what appears to be the corpse of his wife on August 4. This was after the police had searched his home. The same camera also produced footage of him moving the container in which he had kept the body with a Dodge Caravan on August 28.
After he confessed to the crime, Hoover revealed that he took the container from its original place to another storage facility. Police recovered the dead body on August 31.
This isn't the first time Judson has entered police records. He had committed a crime in April of this year also when he attacked his wife, this time too in front of his children. Interestingly, he had filed for divorce the very next day.
