"On the outside, I was the All-American kid," Hodne says in a 2019 parole hearing, the year before he died. "I was given a full scholarship. I had colleges coming to see me in high school, offering to buy me cars to go to school, to give me money. I chose Penn State and did very well there the first semester . . . And to understand what happened from here, I actually have to go back to the decisions I made when I was 12 or 13 or even younger. The football was everything, my self-worth. It was who I was. It was also where I expressed what you might deem negative emotions. I never dealt with anything in my life, and I stored it up and turned it into anger on the football field, and it made me a very good football player. When I first started playing, I wasn't very aggressive, and they taught me to channel my emotions and become where you don't have empathy for people. The other team is your enemy, and it is your job to destroy them. So I started to develop at a very young age my view of [being] a man was that you didn't show emotion. I had older brothers; if I cried in front of them, they made fun of you. So I really didn't have any other coping mechanism other than you just internalize it and bring it on to the football field."
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The driver's name was Jeffrey Hirsch. He was young, in his early 30s, with reddish hair and a larky smile set in a long, deadpan face. Hirsch had been a successful salesman in Maryland and was about to start his own business when his mother contracted cancer and he came back home to Long Island to take care of her. He had a wife, Mary Beth, and four young children, ranging in age from six months to seven years. His father owned the cab. Hirsch was driving to make ends meet but also because he liked talking to people and hearing their stories. He answered the call at the White Castle, and Hodne gave him the address on a side street behind the Walt Whitman Mall. When Hirsch stopped on the dark street, Hodne threatened him with a knife. Hodne tried to rob him, but Hirsch struggled, and they fought, Hirsch in the front of the vehicle and Hodne in the back. Hirsch was tall and wiry, but Hodne overpowered him. Hodne dropped his knife and put Hirsch in a choke hold and broke the hyoid bone in his neck. Hodne opened the door and stepped outside with Hirsch slumped over in the front seat, his body facing one way and his head another. According to police reports, a man named Robert Gruber stood in front of Hodne on his lawn. He had seen the fight through the window of his home and stepped outside. "I think I might have killed him," Hodne said. 2ff7e9595c
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