The object of these brutal murders was Teresa Hodges. Blaine Hodges was killed at the same time as the rest of the family, within a few minutes. All were murdered around three o’clock in the morning when the Vinton police got a phone call about shots being fired. David Oxley was the hack medical examiner for Southwest Virginia at the time, never asking any questions about the crime or the fire. He misread the damage the high heat had done to Blaine Hodge’s body by assuming Blaine had been dead longer than the rest. The heat was so high in the upstairs bedroom where all the heat collected that the blood was actually bubbling out of Blaine’s body. This fact was never taken into consideration. Just one of the many cases Oxley got wrong in his long career. I have talked with medical examiners and medical investigators in several different states and all said high heat made it impossible to say when someone died. Not Oxley, a quick look at the corpse and he made his decision.
The reasonable conclusion is this crime was first committed on Teresa Hodges and she started up the stairway to summons Blaine to tell him something. Someone caught her on the stairs before she could do that and a fight ensued. A handful of her hair was found lying on the staircase and she was garroted with something, maybe a belt or an electrical cord. The person was so enraged at Teresa just killing her wasn’t enough. They went into the outbuilding behind the garage and got every can of liquid they thought was combustible, came back in and splashed it all over Teresa’s body. Believing someone upstairs might wake up before the heat and smoke killed them they went upstairs and killed Blaine and the children, came back downstairs and lit the fire and left. When upstairs, they had moved the fan and put the window down so the next-door neighbor would not hear the shots.
Had the police followed up on the lead that Teresa was having sex with other men they may have caught the killer. Had the Medical Examiner performed the autopsy in the prescribed manner there may have been DNA evidence to tell who the killer was. The Medical Examiners may have found DNA and suppressed the evidence. I can’t imagine not checking a victim’s mouth for foreign substances but Musallo, who did the autopsy on Teresa, told me that he did not check her mouth. This was a specific question I asked face to face with Musallo. He would not let me see anything they had on the case.
Consider who Teresa would let in the house after dark. Why she didn’t want to have the meeting of the Amway people that night. She definitely supposed Winter was going to school the next morning. The logical conclusion is it would be someone she knew intimately, possible a relative. They may have even brought Blaine in after a night of drinking and helped put him in bed. Got to fooling around, because Teresa was in her panties only, and something was said or done where she wanted Blaine present. My first guess would be it was a brother-in-law.
I have over a thousand letters that Bramblett wrote me and not even in one of those does he mention Blaine at home that night. Bramblett did not kill the Hodges. When police believe something there is never any turning away from that belief, as we see that even where DNA evidence exonerates the accused the police never look for anyone else. Even then they believe they had the right person. The person (s) that killed the Hodges family is still out there.
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