Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - SC Teacher Arrested Again for Child Sex Charge Amid Explicit Photos Investigation

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A teacher from South Carolina's Lowcountry already in trouble with the law for a sex-related crime involving a minor is arrested again. I take a look at the sad case of Holly Hodges and how it all began. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy, and this is Crime Fix. Holly Hodges is free on bail right now.

Starting point is 00:00:31 Up until last Halloween, she was a Head Start teacher in South Carolina's Lowcountry. But that changed last October 31st. Hodges, according to the Beaufort Police, was asked to show up at the department, which she did. They were looking into, quote, an incident. That's all the department's Facebook page says. The post says Ms. Hodges was escorted to an interview room. Prior to any questions being asked or any statements being given, Ms. Hodges assaulted Beaufort police officers by biting and kicking them. Ms. Hodges was taken into custody and a search incident to arrest revealed she was in possession of a Schedule II drug. Schedule II

Starting point is 00:01:12 drugs are narcotics and we don't know which one she's accused of possessing, but yikes on that claim that Hodges was biting and kicking the officers. Hodges was taken to jail and charged with five counts of assault and battery in the third degree, one count of resisting arrest, and one count of possession of a controlled substance. The Beaufort County Sheriff's Office took over the investigation. An incident report from the Sheriff's Office from last Halloween only says the deputies were requested to assist the Beaufort Police Department with an incident at Beaufort Elementary School and that the investigation is ongoing. The next day, the sheriff posted on

Starting point is 00:01:50 Facebook that an arrest warrant for third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor was served on Hodges at the jail. The post said, law enforcement officials received a complaint that Holly Hodges, a Head Start staff member assigned to Classroom 2 at Beaufort Elementary School, possessed inappropriate images of children. Investigators have verified that Hodges possessed at least one image of a child, which constitutes a violation of South Carolina law. This is an active investigation. Additional charges may be forthcoming as the case progresses. Now, just recently, Hodges was taken into custody again and charged this time with first-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.

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Starting point is 00:03:16 background check on myself family members and neighbors just to see what's out there the information that's available is actually pretty shocking. So right now you can get 50% off of confidential background reports. Just log on to www.truthfinder.com slash lccrimefix. Log on and start accessing information about almost anyone. And there's a lot more to this story. So joining me to discuss that and much more is Will Folks. He is the editor and founder of Fitznews.com down in South Carolina. And he's been covering this story very closely. He's been all over it. Will, this is a sad case. So Holly Hodges, it's kind of crazy. She gets arrested on Halloween of last year. She's charged with this third degree felony, sexual exploitation of a minor.

Starting point is 00:04:08 Now she's facing a first degree felony. So what do we know about this? Because I've requested records and really there's not a lot out there other than this involves images. No, you're right. We don't know a lot. And obviously on investigations of this nature, there's not going to be a lot that's releasable. And certainly that pending investigation exemption to Freedom of Information Act request applies. Hodges was brought in for questioning, again, Halloween last year. Apparently all hell broke loose at the Beaufort, South Carolina Police Department. There were allegations that she bit and kicked officers as they were questioning her. That resulted in multiple charges of assaulting police officers, resisting arrest.

Starting point is 00:05:00 There was actually a drug charge there, too, that has since been dropped. But the ones that I think we're focused on today are these charges of, again, sexual exploitation of a minor. And Anjanette in South Carolina, the statute that covers that, Section 1615395, and there are varying degrees of sexual exploitation of a minor. The original charge that Holly Hodges was hit with back last fall was third degree, which is simply possessing an image like this. Second degree would be distributing it. First degree would be producing it or selling it.

Starting point is 00:05:35 And so the first degree charge is very interesting because it's clearly an escalation of that. And I want to point out also, this is a very serious crime here in South Carolina, jail time up to 20 years. But there is a mandatory minimum of three years for this crime. So if she is convicted of that first degree charge, it's three years in prison with no possibility of parole. Wow. So producing that image would mean that possibly she took the photograph. You know, this is an ongoing investigation. We know that Alan Wilson, the attorney general of South Carolina, is handling this investigation, his offices, their computer crimes division.

Starting point is 00:06:17 They're analyzing her electronics. So we know it's one image. They've had the phone now since Halloween of last year. These things can take a while to get through. So it kind of makes you wonder, does this maybe allegedly involve a student? We don't know. She was a Head Start teacher. So Head Start is a program, it's a federal program that is in schools and it can help like, you know, children in need, things like that. So what do we know about that? Do we know anything about it? Because I know that you're always really great about getting the information down there in South Carolina, but again, it's,

Starting point is 00:06:56 people have been pretty tight-lipped about this one. They really have. And you're correct. It is the Attorney General's office that's handling it. It's a special division, the Internet Crimes Against Children Division. They call it ICAC here in South Carolina. That's the entity that is responsible for prosecuting charges like this all over the state. And so one of the things that is interesting, we've heard from sources on the ground that this was, again, these are sources that are supportive of Ms. Hodges, who, again, she's innocent until proven guilty. Obviously, that presumption is one we should apply in all cases. But according to them, this was an incident where she was apparently attempting to document something regarding a student with some, I guess, bathroom issues is the report that we've gotten.

Starting point is 00:07:40 Not entirely sure what that entails or what it involves. But, Anjanette, I'll be honest. If this was an innocent situation, something, an accident or something that wasn't, again, as the statute calls, intended for gratification, that's a key part of that statute. I don't think it would have been escalated. And, again, we don't know exactly why it was escalated, but that new charge, which was filed just last month, that first degree charge, we have confirmed that that's part of the original investigation. It's not a new incident that is related to whatever went down last fall. I don't think that the AG's office would escalate it the way that they have unless there was something to it. But again, got to wait and see until the details of the investigation become public. So this involves one image, as far as you know, as far as what you're hearing or as far as this case goes. We know it involves at least one image.

Starting point is 00:08:39 At least one image. Correct. I want to go back a little bit because as as you mentioned, Holly Hodges, you know, she voluntarily showed up at the Beaufort Police Department last Halloween. And as you said, the Beaufort Police Department said they took her, they were taking her to an interview room to talk to her about this. And then she, something happens and she starts allegedly biting and kicking the officers. She's taken into custody. She's charged with assault and battery in the third degree, resisting arrest and also possession of a controlled substance. They put her in jail. Her electronics are seized.

Starting point is 00:09:17 The Beaufort County Sheriff's Office takes over the investigation. They start looking into this. And then she is basically charged with a third degree sexual exploitation of a minor. They get the phone. This is the timeline. Then the AG ups the NE. They file this first degree sexual exploitation of a minor charge. But going back even further, this is a woman who's had some issues in the past. She's kind of troubled. So tell me what you were able to learn about her past because she had attempted suicide. She tried to take her own life. No, that's correct. And again, in covering this stuff, obviously our first and primary concern is for the safety of the students that are under the

Starting point is 00:10:04 care of the Beaufort County schools and any state and federal programs that are down there. That's obviously our top priority. But in covering these stories, we also try to be mindful, again, of Holly Hodges and of the folks who are accused in these cases, because you never know all the history there. You never know exactly what's going on in the background. So one of the interesting things about this case we had a number of folks reach out after our initial report and said hey this is a very troubled person you need to do some homework and and tell the full story and so we did we we submitted freedom of information act requests to the beaufort county sheriff's office on some other entities down the low country we were able to pull an

Starting point is 00:10:41 incident report and this was in June of 2021, right around the time all of the Murdoch saga down there in the Lowcountry was starting off. But it was an incident where Holly Hodges threw herself off of a bridge down in Beaufort County and was rescued by kayakers shortly thereafter. Police found a suicide note in her vehicle, and at the time she provided a lengthy written statement to local law enforcement detailing a number of the issues that she was experiencing at the time. And these were some very odd statements she made. She talked about how her phone and her tablet were downloading things that she had not clicked on or accessed. She talked about how her car's stereo was being manipulated to play certain songs to convince her to kill herself. It was outlandish, some would say, in terms of these claims, but this is what she said

Starting point is 00:11:37 in her statement to law enforcement. So there were clearly some issues there at the time, and the question was, how exactly did she end up back in a classroom? Because at the time of the bridge incident, the suicide attempt, she was at another school in the South Carolina Lowcountry, somehow ended up in a different Beaufort County classroom. And so I think that was the big question is, if this incident had been made available to local educators, would they have put her in that classroom? Certainly, they're not going to put her in a classroom at this point, but you're right. Very troubled past. And certainly that's going to be part of our reporting moving forward on this story. That's an interesting thing that you talk about because we've heard this in other cases where people say, oh, well, my radio was saying things or my computer was doing things or that.

Starting point is 00:12:24 And I'm not saying that's what was going on with her because I don't know her. I just know what we're hearing and reading. That sounds like some serious mental illness that might've been going on. We don't know that, but I mean, I don't know. That sounds very serious. I've heard people say that in other cases where they're saying, but my computer told me to do this or something infiltrated my Wi-Fi or things like that. So there's definitely more going on here. Yeah. And it's also a pretty convenient excuse if you do have images that are inappropriate on your computer and say, well, I don't know how they got there. They downloaded without my knowledge. And again, I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but it certainly would be a

Starting point is 00:13:09 convenient excuse in the event that there were more than one image related to this investigation. So do we think that there would be more charges filed? Because they've had the electronics for a long time now, and they've just filed the additional first degree charge of sexual exploitation of a minor. They haven't filed additional charges. So I would assume that they've had plenty of time now to go through the phone. Well, you're right. And the lack of additional charges related to, again, additional items of, again, I call it child porn. I think the new term is child sex abuse material. To me, child porn actually sounds worse if you're thinking about a defendant. That's

Starting point is 00:13:51 the kind of thing, if I'm a juror, I hear that I'm much more likely to lock them up for good. But yeah, you're right. I mean, we don't know exactly what they found, but it is a bit surprising that there haven't been any additional charges related to new images found. And I guess if you were trying to put a positive construction on it for Holly Hodges, you might say, well, the elevation of the charge related to that one image. Well, all they found out was that, yes, she took the image. We're still, again, as I mentioned here, in differing reports as to why that image was taken. And could there be an innocent explanation again that's what a lot of folks in Beaufort were telling us but I would be very surprised if the AG would decide

Starting point is 00:14:31 to escalate the charge if there were an innocent explanation it just doesn't seem like something that the uh internet crimes against children task force would do and I know I've reached out to the attorney general's office at the time of this recording, haven't heard back, also reached out to the school district and haven't heard back. So we'll keep an eye on it. But obviously a disturbing case. And Holly Hodges is somebody who's obviously had some issues in the past. And as you mentioned, and I'll just say it, she is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Starting point is 00:15:05 Well, folks, thank you so much. Appreciate you coming back on. Anytime. Thanks for having me, Anjanette. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - SC Teacher Arrested Again for Child Sex Charge Amid Explicit Photos Investigation

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