Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - High School Cheer Coach Accused of Sex With Student

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Makhaela Hodgins, 32, has been indicted by a grand jury in Randolph County, Alabama on one count of having sex with a student under the age of 19. Hodgins worked as the cheerleading coach at the high school when the alleged incident took place. She has not been in the classroom since November 2024. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with investigative reporter Erica Thomas who broke the story in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Erica Thomas https://x.com/EricaTNewsProducer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Michaela Caldwell Hodgins is a woman who appeared to have it all, the dream job, the college sweetheart, and a beautiful family. But a grand jury says she risked all of that to have sex with a male student. I go over the ugly truth of the allegations against this high school teacher. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Annionette Levy. You know, sadly, we cover a lot of female teachers on this show accused of having sex with students. And this case, it takes us to Alabama. Now, from the outside, the life of 32-year-old Michaela Caldwell Hodgins, it looked picture perfect. But all of it seems to have come crashing down when a grand jury indicted her for allegedly having sex. with a male student. Now, each time we cover one of these, I can't help myself but wonder what drives a woman to risk at all for an inappropriate relationship, allegedly. Now, these are, after all,

allegations and Hodgins is innocent until proven guilty. Randolph County, this is a small place. Less than 22,000 people live there. And Wagawi, the city where this happened, the population is 751. The county sits on the Alabama-Georgia line. Now, this is probably, probably the kind of place where a lot of people know each other. They may go to the same grocery store or the same church on Sunday. Here's what we know about Michaela Hodgins. In March of 2022, Randolph County High School posted on Facebook, we would like to welcome Mrs. Michaela Hodgins into her new role as RCHS cheer coach for the upcoming season. Mrs. Hodgins grew up here in Randolph County and was a cheerleader for six years at Woodland. She served as captain, her senior

year. She is an alumna of the University of West Alabama where she cheered on a scholarship from 2011 to 2013. She will graduate with her master's in education from UWA in May. She has been involved in many aspects of coaching cheer for the past 10 years through judging tryouts, conducting cheer camps, and choreographing routines. She is married to her college sweetheart and they have two beautiful children. Mrs. Hodgins is super excited to build upon the cheer program and to be a part of the R.C.H.H.S. Athletic family. Now, you can tell just how excited the school was to welcome Hodgins, a hometown girl, to the community and to the school back in 2022. But following her arrest, the tone has certainly changed. And it sounds like the charges

weren't a complete shock to the superintendent. John Jacobs released a statement following her indictment writing, Ms. Hodgins began working for Randolph County School System on on August 2nd, 2021. Her last day in the classroom was November 15th, 2024. We will cooperate with local authorities as requested. So right there, it's been nearly 11 months since Michaela Hodgins was in a classroom at the school. So it sounds like they knew about this investigation, or at least an allegation of improper conduct and removed her. This is Michaela's hometown. As I mentioned before, she grew up in Randolph County. So she's familiar with the area and the nearby high schools. She attended the University of West Alabama

on that cheer scholarship and graduated in May of 2022 with a master's in education. Then right out of school, she got hired at Randolph County High School as the cheer coach. Michaela married her college sweetheart and they do have those two children together. So to discuss this case, I want to bring in Erica Thomas. She's an investigative reporter and also the editor at large of 1819. news. Erica, thank you so much for joining me. This is a pretty disturbing case. Everything I'm looking at on Facebook and everything, it looks like the school was pretty excited to have Michaela Hodgins come on board. I mean, they have this glowing Facebook post. And now we've got this. We've got a grand jury indictment for a charge accusing her of having sex with a male student. So tell us what

you know, what you've been able to find out about this. So I've talked to Superintendent John Jacobs. I've talked to investigators that worked the case. And the interesting thing about this case was the teacher was not removed from the classroom until, you know, all this information started coming out in town, so to speak. And she finally did, she did leave the school. She's no longer with the school. But she was not arrested until after the indictment.

So in this case, they did the investigation, presented their evidence to the grand jury, and they came back with this indictment. A lot of people in town weren't very shocked. This is a very small town. The name of the town is Wee Dowie, Alabama, very, very small town in East Alabama, really close to the Georgia line. You know, everyone knows everyone here, if they're not related to each other. It's a great town, but this is definitely leaving a black eye in Wee Dowie. I was going to ask you about that because I looked up the population of the county and it was like a little more than 21,000.

And I'm like, this is a small place. And so everybody knows everybody, I'm assuming, or, you know, and then the town itself where the school is located is pretty small too. So somebody says something and it's going to spread around pretty quickly. So when did word of this rumored relationship start spreading around the small town like wildfire? Well, definitely a couple of months ago. And there's an interesting part of this, I graduated from Randolph County High School. I graduated from where this happened. I now live seven hours away, but I heard about this because people knew that I was a reporter and that this is something that I've covered. I've covered so many of these cases. And let's talk

about that too. How disturbing is it that this is not even that shocking of news. It's handled differently because the suspect in this case is a female. And I think that's something that's interesting to look at. Well, you are preaching to the choir here because we have covered so many cases here on crime fix and here at law and crime where we have female teachers, you know, females, women, we're supposed to be maternal and we're supposed to be, you know, taking care of the kids and we're supposed to have that instinct, right? We're supposed to be attracted to men, not boys. And so this is an allegation, of course. She is innocent until proven guilty. But we have covered this in depth. And I personally, as somebody who worked as a substitute

teacher years and years ago, when I first graduated from college, I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't see it. I don't understand it. My mind is not, does can't go there. Even when I was like a younger person and I was in these classrooms, I was like, yeah they're like six years younger than me but they're kids like they're kids like you know like they're children you're in a role where you have authority over them so um you are preaching to the choir here so let's talk a little bit about you went to this high school people start reaching out to you and you are like at my alma mater at my own not really i mean these days in this business it's just not surprising at all like i said the only surprising part of this is

that this was a cheer coach. She's married. She has two children. She's a female doing this allegedly with a male student. And I do believe he was 18 years old. So if not, the fact that she was a teacher, who knows if she would have even been charged. But we have to always keep saying innocent until proving guilty. And I am shocked at the amount of support I've seen for this teacher. If this was a male teacher, we wouldn't be seeing this. I have gotten some hateful emails for even doing the story for even highlighting this. Oh, yes. And that's very rare for me to get an email supporting someone that's charged with anything. You know, a lot of society likes to say guilty until proven innocent, really, even though we know it's innocent until proven guilty.

In our minds, we always seem to kind of convict people just when we see that mugshot. But in this case, that has not been it in Weddowie, Alabama. There has been so much support for her. And I believe this also goes back to women are naturally nurtures. We're naturally those who take care of people. So when we see someone accused of doing absolutely the opposite of that, there's some sense of cognitive dissonance that goes into our perception and what we want to believe. Okay. So let's go back to what you said. You said there's a lot of support. People are emailing you to support Michaela Hodgins. And on some level, I understand that, but you're telling me, and we're learning some new information here, the student is 18 years old. So he's technically

an adult. However, that doesn't matter under the law because you're still in a position of authority. You're in a school setting. So what are these emails of support saying that you are receiving. The emails are saying, you know, this is innocent until proven guilty. You shouldn't be saying this. You have this all wrong. He's 18. He shouldn't be charged. Or she shouldn't be charged. And so the people, you know, who, who know her, they really did. She was a beloved member of that community. She, a lot of kids looked up to her. You know, she was a cheerleader when she was in college. And then she came to Randolph County. And like you said, at the beginning of this, they were just really proud to have her. They're really excited to have her. And it is hard to

really break down for people. Like, this is still a crime. I mean, it's been difficult. I've had to respond very kindly. You know, thank you for reading. I'm sorry, this is happening in your town. My parents still live there. So I get it. I don't want anything bad to happen in my town either. But unfortunately, it looks like it may have. Yeah. I mean, and she is innocent until proven guilty. Of course. I mean, everybody, that's how this works. But it doesn't matter if the student is 18. Right. And some of those supportive emails have also said stuff like, man, when I was in high school, these are for men.

When I was in high school, I would have loved to be the one to do that with a teacher, you know, hot for teacher type of thing. And it's just wild because I'm telling you, if this was a guy that was charged, we would not be getting these emails or those. And that's the thing. Hot for teacher. That is a Van Halen song. Okay. But it, it still messes these kids up. It still messes these kids up because it's, at some level, at some level, these kids, maybe when this is going on, maybe they think, okay, this is okay. It's fun, whatever. Or maybe they don't. And maybe they do feel like they were preyed upon. I mean, somehow they got an indictment in this case. And somehow they think they're going to. to get a conviction. So my question is, is this teenager, 18 year old, is he cooperating with law enforcement? Do you know if that's true? I haven't heard anything about this victim. I know who it is, obviously, because it's a small town. I've only heard support for him and support for the teacher. As far as him cooperating, I'm not sure I know he's been questioned. We'll have to wait

and see what happens. And we might not ever really know that much detail about him as far as what we can say legally because he is victim. This is a sex abuse case type of case, sex crime. But I think it'll be interesting to see how this plays out because I've been shocked at the attention that this has gotten nationally. And it reminds me of the Mary Kay LaTerno case that I'm sure you've talked about. I've been just, I've watched that for years, you know, and she's passed away now but she she ended up marrying her student going to prison having kids with her student and uh you know they did an interview right before she passed away and it seemed like maybe he he wasn't impacted as much as some others maybe but i think it's very important

for teachers these days to definitely act appropriately unfortunately with technology it's really easy for them to communicate offline with these kids. And so parents have to really be, they have to pay attention. They have to be nosy, getting those phones, make sure, you know, you know who your kids talking to. Because years ago, we didn't have that opportunity. We couldn't message or text message teachers. But now they have all that technology at their fingertips. I find it very interesting that you brought up Mary Kay LaTerno because that's exactly what I was thinking. And, you know, she and Vili Fowl had children. children together. But then they get divorced later on. And he was still a kid. He was still a kid. So I'm not

going to defend that. You know, I don't, yes, they might have been in love, whatever. But that's, you know, that's just whatever. But is that the talk around town that maybe, hey, innocent until proven guilty. And oh, he's 18. This isn't a big deal. Is the talk around town that maybe these two, that that is what this is, that maybe they are in love? And like, is she going to leave her husband? And so people are like, you know, she's a good person and she loves him or whatever. I mean, what is the talk around town? You know, I think there's a mixture of different things. And really people, when it comes down to it, people know what's going on here. They know exactly what happened. They know whether there was an actual relationship or if this was a one-time thing. We don't know that because

investigators are not able to reveal that information. It's not in the charging documents at this time. But people know. And what they're not focusing on is the husband and the two children that this woman has. I mean, there are real, there are people that are hurt in this, no matter what way we look at it, no matter how you slice and dice it. She had a husband and two children. And we need to really be focusing on that right now to pray for that family pray for the the husband and those two innocent children who are now thrown into the national spotlight because of actions that that seemingly occurred yeah very that is the very sad part of this too i mean there's a lot of collateral damage here if she indeed is found guilty of these charges she's married to her high school

sweetheart and has two children i believe i met in college it was like the college it was like the sweetheart thing, and then he moved his life into this small town after college to support her. And, you know, she became this chair coach. They were so proud of her. And now it looks like, like definitely for the children, their lives are falling apart a little bit right now. And we'll see, you know, maybe the husband will support his wife through this and they'll have each other and live happily ever after. But that's just we don't know yet. You know, that's, that's such a sad part of this, too, because that's what people, I don't think, are thinking about. So, so where do we go from here? And how long had this investigation been going on?

Because I read that the superintendent said she was removed from the classroom back in November of 2024. So this had to have happened allegedly sometime before then. So when, what is your understanding of when this allegedly happened? Yeah, I mean, we're talking about a year ago, and it did take some time for the teacher to be removed. When I asked the superintendent about that, he told me it just takes so much to put into an investigation. He said, I couldn't just fire her because somebody said something. So he had to put the case into the proper authority's hands. Now, I think when we're talking about children, we probably need to be a little bit more, more.

careful with this and say, well, can we put her on administrative leave until we have I believe, I personally think that any time there's an allegation against a teacher, you should definitely, you know, put them on leave while you investigate, and that was not done in this case. But whenever you talk to the superintendent, he definitely seemed to, you know, say he was trusting the proper authorities, the investigators who took over the case. And in such a small town again. It's really, things get iffy. Sometimes you have people related to people, like maybe an investigator was a relative of the suspect. These cases end up getting drawn out. A lot of stuff comes out of them, you know, details about things that aren't that important.

But when it comes down to it, the grand jury saw fit to say there is evidence that there was a crime committed. And so when hindsight's 2020, right? When you look back, you know, maybe she shouldn't have been in the classroom that whole time. And I think the school system is kind of getting a little bit of backlash for that. And it was really interesting because the day that all of this came out, the day that I published my story just happened to be the day that the superintendent announced he's running for Alabama House of Representatives. So it was just really bad timing for him.

And I think he wanted to get out ahead of this. And that's why he talked to me. And he talked to me very openly about the case. Interesting. what else did he tell you about the case other than he didn't he felt he couldn't put her on leave immediately or he couldn't just fire her there had to be an investigation done and all this jazz I mean did they call the cops immediately yes according to him you know as soon as they heard something what happened was it's actually people in the community that were kind of talking and so

he he heard this out in the community it wasn't something that was brought to him in his office So as soon as he heard about it out in the community, which I have to say being from there, rumors fly all the time. And it's really, I mean, it's hard to get away from those. But you kind of take everything with a grain of salt. And I'm sure when he first heard this, that's kind of his reaction. But according to him, he knew he couldn't, you know, take it lightly. He had to contact authorities.

That's what he did. It took them time to investigate. You know, the Randolph County Sheriff's Office doesn't have the technology. that a lot of these larger city law enforcement agencies have, especially when it comes to investigating electronics, which I'm sure they had to go through cell phones, computers, all the electronics. It takes them a lot more time to do those things

because they don't have the resources that larger agencies have. And so I think that has something to do with it. And then another reason why it was longer is because their grand jury only meets every so often and, you know, small town stuff. It just takes a long time for these things to come. down. So it sounds like you know that digital evidence is a big part of this. It could be text messages, cell phone stuff, all that. Definitely. I mean, with it being, with the investigation taken that long, I guarantee you there are some communications in electronic devices. That is not

spelled out in the charging documents. But that's a thing that they definitely had to investigate. That's something they had to look into. So this victim is he now. Now, 19, because he was 18 when this occurred? It will be interesting to figure that out. Now, I got an email. One of the supporting emails was from a person with the same name as the victim. And he said he didn't identify himself as a victim, but he told me when this happened, the victim was 18 years old. So I'm going to go with he was 18 when it happened.

Does it really matter? No, still illegal, still a charge. And the charging documents do say a student under the age of 19. Typically, if the student was younger than that, it would say, you know, under the age of 18 or 16. We see that that kind of gives us an indication of the age range of the victim. Now, whether that person, we don't know how long this period was where these alleged crimes were committed. So, I mean, how far back did it go? When did it start?

how did it start we just have so many questions most definitely so um she's going to have to come back to court at some point and then the case will move forward yes the next step will be you know the trial we're going to wait and see what happens if she's found guilty if she's not found guilty uh and i'm sure some details will come out now i would say um likely a plea deal will occur so at some point so we don't even have to go to trial. That would be my prediction is that we'll see a plea deal. Yeah, a lot of times these end up resolving by plea, especially when it's like a female teacher, it seems like. So we'll see what happens. Erica Thomas, thank you so much. Keep us posted. I appreciate you coming on. Thank you for having me. Hodgins was released from custody. After posting bail,

her next court date has not yet been scheduled. She has pleaded not guilty to that charge. And we'll stay on top of this and see where the case goes. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.