Evidence and Surveillance Reveal Full Scope of Hoover Case
As the investigation progressed, court records and forensic findings provided a clearer picture of what occurred inside the Hoover home. A probable cause affidavit detailed the child’s account of the violence he said he witnessed in the basement of the residence. The affidavit stated: “The child disclosed seeing his father stomp his mother in the head 20 times, wearing black boots, while she was lying on the ground next to a black refrigerator in the basement. The child also observed Judson Hoover punch Rebecca Hoover in the stomach with a set of keys in his hands, but she was unresponsive and did not move. The child observed blood coming from Rebecca Hoover’s head and left ear.”
On August 27, detectives spoke with Judson as he arrived to pick up his children from school. He consented to searches of the family home and vehicles. Inside the basement, investigators and crime scene technicians documented blood spatter at the bottom of the stairs, reinforcing the child’s account.
During his plea, Judson claimed he strangled Rebecca to death and initially left her body in the basement. However, the medical examiner later determined that Rebecca died from blunt force trauma to the head and torso, findings that aligned with the physical evidence and eyewitness description. Authorities also confirmed that her body had been mutilated, though Judson said he could not recall causing those injuries.
Surveillance footage from a storage facility added another critical layer to the case. Video showed Judson on August 4—minutes after police first visited the home—moving what appeared to be a body into storage. Additional footage captured him returning on August 28, one day after police questioned him, driving a rented Dodge Caravan and loading a 55-gallon container into the vehicle.
Judson later admitted transferring the container to a different storage unit on Strawberry Lane in Louisville. Rebecca’s body was ultimately recovered from that location.
The case concluded with Judson’s guilty plea, sparing his son from testifying and closing an investigation that exposed a calculated effort to conceal a violent crime.