Willie James Hodges

In March 2017, in the aftermath of Hurst v. Florida, Hodges applied to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment citing ineffective counsel and a non-unanimous decision of 10-2 for his death sentence. According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Hodges' sentence was successfully commuted and he is currently incarcerated at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Lake City. It is unclear if he will be charged with the murders in Alabama and Ohio.

Due to the overwhelming amount of evidence against him, Hodges was swiftly found guilty by a jury verdict. He was subsequently sentenced to death in February 2009.

The following year, investigators from Alabama and Ohio charged Hodges with the two murders in their respective jurisdictions, citing similarities to the Belanger case. However, it was decided that Hodges should first be tried in Florida, where prosecutors would seek the death penalty and had managed to convince the judge that despite his low IQ, the defendant knew right from wrong and was thus sane to stand trial. His trial began in February 2008.

The final murder linked to Hodges took place on March 19, 2003, when 81-year-old Laverne Jansen was raped and beaten to death at her apartment in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was speculated that she had been followed home after purchasing a lottery ticket at the Glenway Pony Keg, whereupon her killer knocked on the door and forced his way inside once the door was opened. This interaction was secretly observed by a neighbor of Jansen who described what she was seeing through a peephole, but a 16-minute delay to arrive at the scene on the officers' side resulted in the suspect escaping. Ten days later, Cincinnati Police Department announced that they were searching for an unidentified person of interest in the case who was last seen shopping at the Glenway Pony Keg, but this did not lead to an arrest. The responding officers would later receive counseling for their handling of the case.

Hodges' first suspected murder is that of 66-year-old Winnie Johnson, who was shot to death during a burglary of her home in Sumter County, Alabama on November 26, 2001.

Willie James Hodges (born June 19, 1960) is an American murderer and suspected serial killer who has been convicted of a 2001 murder in Florida, to which he has been linked to via DNA evidence, and remains the prime suspect in two additional murders in Alabama and Ohio with which he has never been charged. Originally sentenced to death for the Florida conviction, the sentence was later overturned following Hurst v. Florida and he was subsequently resenteced to life imprisonment.