Man arrested on rape charge

PALMER — After months of investigative work, Alaska State Troopers say a 55-year-old man finally confessed to having sex with a 27-year-old female relative, but claimed it was consensual.

According to an affidavit Alaska State Trooper James Streicher filed with the case against David Alvin Hodges, the case first came to light Feb. 24 when the woman’s mother called police to say her daughter had tried to kill herself.

The woman told Palmer police a male relative had sexually assaulted her daughter the night before, Streicher wrote.

Streicher said that in an interview with the woman she told troopers that she and the man drank vodka that night. When that ran out they got beer and Jagermeister. Then they went to a friend’s house and drank some more.

Back at Hodge’s house, she said, she was “really drunk.” She sat on the bed and he started trying to have sex with her.

“I tried to push him away and said, ‘we don’t need to be doing this,’” she told troopers.

When it was over, Hodges told her repeatedly, “this never happened,” then drove her to her apartment and told her to take a shower.

Troopers seized the clothes the woman was wearing and tried to tape phone conversations between her and Hodges, but Hodges didn’t have much to say.

“I’m not discussing anything and you got me in major trouble and it’s all bull----,” he told her in one brief conversation.

Streicher started gathering other evidence. A rape exam at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center turned up bruising on the woman’s arm consistent with her allegations that she did not consent. Security tapes at Carrs in Palmer recorded their beer run.

Streicher also talked to the woman’s mother, who said she had gone to the cabin where Hodges lives on the night in question and saw her daughter passed out on the bed and Hodges watching television.

The mother also described the woman’s suicide attempt, saying that she was screaming “you don’t believe me” and slashing at her arm with a knife.

The mother said didn’t believe her daughter at first and tried to talk to Hodges, who told her that the woman was “acting crazy” and nothing had happened.

It wasn’t until June 3 that Streicher got results back from the crime lab. According to a DNA test, Hodges could not be ruled out as a source of semen on the woman’s jeans. That roundabout phrasing is the way that scientists at the crime lab describe what is essentially a positive test result — the semen was Hodges’.

“I explained to David about the results from the crime lab and David stated: OK, I’ll tell you the truth about what happened. She jumped in the sack with me. I came to and she was on top of me,” Streicher writes. “I yelled at her ‘we can’t be doing this’ and tossed her off. She’s out of control. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you she’s crazy. I have a bad heart and this is making me nervous.”

Hodges was arrested, charged with rape and incest.

In Alaska, forcible sexual assault of an adult is an unclassified felony, putting it in the same category as murder with a potential 99-year sentence.

Court records show Hodges has a history of assault and domestic violence. The woman told troopers he’d once tried to molest her when she was a teenager but nobody believed her then, either.

According to jail records, Hodges was still lodged at Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility as of Saturday morning.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.