Dad Details Family's Pain To Daughter's Killer

Published in the Plain Dealer on May 7, 2006.
By Michael K. Mcintyre; Plain Dealer Reporter

As his plane flew over the city where his daughter had been murdered nearly a year before, Alan Herstrum was flush with emotional pain.

Then came chest pain.

As thoughts of his slain daughter and her assailant swirled through his head, Alan Herstrum suffered a heart attack.

His daughter, Melissa Anne Herstrum, 19, was killed Jan. 26, 1992, at the University of Toledo, where she was a nursing student. She had been handcuffed and shot 14 times by Jeffrey M. Hodge, a campus police officer.

Legal maneuvering delayed Hodge's trial for more than a year, the unfinished business weighing heavily on the minds of the Herstrum family. It was only yesterday that Hodge pleaded guilty.

Before he was sentenced to life in prison, Herstrum told him about his heart attack. It came just after 10 p.m. Dec. 16, while Herstrum was a passenger on a flight to Cleveland from St. Louis, where he had been on business.

"It was a clear night, and as we passed near Toledo, I began to think of Melissa and her murderer down below," he said, reading from a typed sheet of paper and speaking slowly and steadily.

"A short time later, we passed just south of Sandusky, and I remembered the last time I had flown with Melissa. It was several years ago and I had just completed a semiannual pilot-proficiency check. Melissa and I were on a sight-seeing trip up over Cedar Point and the Erie Islands," Herstrum said.

He spent several days in intensive care at a local hospital, being released on Dec. 24 - his family's first Christmas Eve in nearly two decades without Melissa.

"The cardiologist said that the heart attack should never have happened. He said it was a direct result of the stress ... in my personal life," Herstrum told Hodge in a steady voice.

He said he may never be able to fly an airplane again because of it. And he said the heart attack probably would result in shortening his life by at least 10 to 20 years.

"You've taken not only my daughter, but part of my life," he said. "Our lives are changed forever, all because of you and the horrible crime you committed against my daughter."

Return to University of Toledo police corruption.