Before Sandusky, Another Sexual Predator Terrorized Penn State: Report

STATE COLLEGE, PA — Nearly everyone who follows Penn State football knows of the long list of atrocities committed by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who in 2012 was convicted on 45 counts of sexual abuse.

However, few likely know about the former Penn State defensive player who terrorized the lives of dozens of female students long before Sandusky and long before former coach Joe Paterno's fall from grace.

Until now.

An extensive report published this week by ESPN’s Tom Junod and Paula Lavigne chronicles in unflinching detail the crimes of defensive linebacker Todd Hodne, who sexually assaulted several women at Penn State in the late 1970s before committing more rapes and eventualy murder in New York.

The report comes a decade after Sandusky was found guilty of sexually abusing 10 young boys over 15 years. During the scandal, Penn State officials were accused of showing "total and consistent disregard" for child sex abuse victims, while covering up the attacks of a longtime sexual predator.

Sandusky was sentenced to 60 years in prison and designated a violent sex offender.

Hodne, who attended high school on Long Island and arrived at Penn State in 1977, began his documented crimes at Penn State a year later, according to ESPN. He and two others were convicted of burglarizing a record store, which earned him a season-long suspension from the football team.

Following the suspension, Paterno told reporters he would eventually return to the team "if he has a good academic year and if he proves to us that (the robbery) was a mistake."

But Hodne's crimes did not stop, according to ESPN. He broke into apartments and raped women at knifepoint. Eventually, he was charged and convicted in the rape of Betsy Sailor, though the cases of multiple other women — including Susan and Karen, who chose not to give ESPN their last names — were dismissed due to lack of evidence.

Weeks after the attack, Susan received a phone call from Paterno, asking if she was okay.

Karen told ESPN that Paterno was "involved" with the case.

"I think he might have. I think he might have,'" she said. "And I’m trying to remember all those details, and I hesitate to blurt things out because I’m not totally certain about how that all went. Yeah. I think he did. I think he did. And from then on, he knew me. He would say hello to me on campus if he would see me … I’m trying so hard to remember. It was a rather shallow conversation. It wasn’t anything."

Little is known about Paterno's full involvement or knowledge of Hodne's crimes. Paterno was fired from Penn State in 2011 just hours after announcing his retirement. He died in January 2012 at the age of 85.

In 2016, years after his death, Paterno was accused of knowing that Sandusky was abusing young boys as early as 1976, according to a CNN report. He was also accused of dismissing a victim's complaint.

Hodne died of cancer in 2020 at age 60 in a New York state prison.

Read the full report by ESPN's Tom Junod and Paula Lavigne.