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The untold story of the most dangerous player in college football history
FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO, Penn State University played for its first national championship in a football season that began against Temple on Sept. 1, 1978, and ended against second-ranked Alabama, on Jan. 1, 1979. It was the season in which Penn State football became Penn State Football, a season that saw head coach Joe Paterno become an American icon. It was also a season that saw a serial sexual predator attack multiple Penn State students.
If you are any kind of sports fan, you probably know the first story, all the way through its shocking denouement 10 years ago—the story of the football coach whose black shoes and white socks were seen as his moral underpinnings until they weren't ... until his career ended when the sexual abuse committed by an assistant coach named Jerry Sandusky came to light. You almost certainly don't know the second. It is not just a story that hasn't been told; it's a story that doesn't exist, even in obscure corners of the internet. It's the story of a Penn State football player who, as his team ascended to the pinnacle of the sport, was ransacking the lives of women in the dark.
His name was Todd Hodne, and he was perhaps the most dangerous predator ever to play college football. "I have been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years," wrote John B. Collins, who prosecuted one of Hodne's crimes, in a letter to a parole board. "I have prosecuted serial killers and capital cases. Todd Hodne, to this day, remains among the three most dangerous, physically imposing and ruthless excuses for a human being I have ever faced in court."
Hodne arrived in State College in 1977 as a prized recruit from New York's Long Island, and in 1978, he was the Penn State Rapist. There were other rapes and rapists; Penn State, in the mid- and late seventies, was enduring an epidemic of sexual assault that female students of the day still talk about. But even against that backdrop, Hodne's rapes and attacks stand out because he was a football player who, according to one family member, "had no control over his dark impulses." He was big and strong, entitled and enabled. He was driven and determined and a little desperate. He was also cruel, the most predatory of predators, a hunter who liked to linger. He attacked with a knife to the throat, and when he attacked women, he made sure they couldn't see him, but he also liked to suggest they knew him. "Do you recognize my voice?" he'd asked Karen.
If you are any kind of sports fan, you probably know the first story, all the way through its shocking denouement 10 years ago—the story of the football coach whose black shoes and white socks were seen as his moral underpinnings until they weren't ... until his career ended when the sexual abuse committed by an assistant coach named Jerry Sandusky came to light. You almost certainly don't know the second. It is not just a story that hasn't been told; it's a story that doesn't exist, even in obscure corners of the internet. It's the story of a Penn State football player who, as his team ascended to the pinnacle of the sport, was ransacking the lives of women in the dark.
His name was Todd Hodne, and he was perhaps the most dangerous predator ever to play college football. "I have been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years," wrote John B. Collins, who prosecuted one of Hodne's crimes, in a letter to a parole board. "I have prosecuted serial killers and capital cases. Todd Hodne, to this day, remains among the three most dangerous, physically imposing and ruthless excuses for a human being I have ever faced in court."
Hodne arrived in State College in 1977 as a prized recruit from New York's Long Island, and in 1978, he was the Penn State Rapist. There were other rapes and rapists; Penn State, in the mid- and late seventies, was enduring an epidemic of sexual assault that female students of the day still talk about. But even against that backdrop, Hodne's rapes and attacks stand out because he was a football player who, according to one family member, "had no control over his dark impulses." He was big and strong, entitled and enabled. He was driven and determined and a little desperate. He was also cruel, the most predatory of predators, a hunter who liked to linger. He attacked with a knife to the throat, and when he attacked women, he made sure they couldn't see him, but he also liked to suggest they knew him. "Do you recognize my voice?" he'd asked Karen.
https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/32496588/before-jerry-sandusky-penn-state-football-had-another-serial-sexual-predator-untold-story-crimes-fight-bring-justice
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