No one’s ever called journalism an exact science. But it gets to miss the broad side of the barn only so often before the finicky turn angry.
“Channel Seven news has learned that detectives discovered boot prints near the murder scene,” Goudie revealed. “We’ve been told that authorities have now determined the sole pattern was made by boots like this–cheap imitation military-style high-tops.” As Goudie continued, the camera lingered for about nine seconds–a newscast eternity–on a pair of black boots of the type an ersatz storm trooper might wear, especially the worst kind of ersatz storm trooper, the swaggering brutal blond Nazi homosexual ersatz storm trooper and cold-blooded assassin.
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Goudie went on, “Evidence technicians have told police the boots were size 13, the same size worn by Helmut Hofer, and sources tell us that stride, height, and weight tests on the boot prints match somebody of Hofer’s size.”
Channel Seven has not had Hofer to itself but it’s led the stampede. In search of heat if not light, camera crews have set up outside leather bars like Manhole and discos like Bistro Too, where Channel Two said Hofer once worked as a dancer. Channel Two quickly got hold of color photos from Hofer’s modeling portfolio and splashed them on the screen three nights running. The only actual news to report the third night was that no one had been charged with anything.
It strikes Hofer as curious that his bank claimed to lose all record of this check, yet somehow it showed up on Seven. Not just curious but frightening, in his view and ours, is that the police dealt with this trifle by barging into Roscoe’s and leading him out in handcuffs.
We moved on to other key revelations of the coverage. Yes, Hofer lived for a time in Olds’s Streeterville apartment, not because they were lovers, but because the building would accept his schnauzers. Yes, he was driving Dean Olds’s Ford Taurus the night Suzanne Olds died–he drove it frequently. But he adds that parking-lot tickets, telephone records, and the recollection of a garage attendant all support his story that he was visiting his friend Doug Kragness that night on West Cornelia.
Says Hofer, “They destroyed my future. My modeling career–no one will ever hire me again. They have closed every door. I was standing at the bus stop, and one woman started looking at me–and then after a while everybody moved to the other side. I was so paranoid I wasn’t going out on the street for four weeks.
