FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. – More than ten years after a Franklin County woman disappeared, there’s finally been a conviction in the case.
After about an hour of deliberations, a jury found Paul Jordan guilty of murdering his girlfriend, Heather Hodges.
The conviction happened even though Hodges’ body has never been found.
“I don’t think I have words for how I feel inside, my emotions showed very much in the courtroom,” Hodges’s sister, Crystal Songer said.
Jordan wasn’t charged with second-degree murder until 2022.
“She was never found, but if the proof is beyond a reasonable doubt that she killed, you don’t get success rewarded because you successfully hid a body,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Bryan Haskins said.
Washington and Lee law professor Jonathan Shapiro has been a criminal defense lawyer for almost 50 years. He’s worked on a no-body murder trial once before.
“People you know are puzzled by how can you prove a case against someone when there’s no body found,” Shapiro said. “It’s just like any other case, the prosecutor has to prove that someone died at the hands of another person and that the defendant is the one who did it.”
The first no-body murder conviction in the Commonwealth happened in 1980, with the killing of Radford University student Gina Renee Hall. Stephen Epperly was convicted for her murder.
“It’s rare,” Shapiro said. “I think maybe 8 or 10 in Virginia state courts.”
Now, Jordan is convicted in this latest case without a body.
“He got it,” Songer said. “He got everything that’s coming to him.”
Jordan was also convicted on Thursday of concealing a body.