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On August 23, 1996, Glendale businessman Pierre Lebon Hoffman called 911 for help. He said that he came downstairs in the morning and found his wife’s lifeless body slumped over her computer.
Police and rescue units responded. But Winnie Hoffman was already long dead. Investigators noted that the scene was anything but natural.
Make-up was haphazardly smeared on Winnie’s face, a sloppy cover up for the nail marks and cuts evidencing a struggle. She was wearing a dress, but all the buttons were in the wrong holes. The bra she was wearing was snapped shut, but covered only one breast. The victim’s teeth had been recently brushed Q after her death. And Pierre Hoffman was acting strangely.
A day after the death, Pierre made a claim against Winnie’s $500,000 life insurance policy. He also provided family friends and neighbors with conflicting stories of how she died; too much salt, diet pills, Vietnamese Mafia, overwork.
In the meantime, while Pierre was calling his wife’s employers to collect her commission checks, his friend David Rudd was trying to set up an alibi for where he had been when Winnie died. The friend he asked to cover for him said no.
The couple was in the midst of a divorce and Pierre believed he found a way to avoid sharing marital assets and pick up a sizable amount of cash at the same time.
Pierre Hoffman and David Rudd have both since been convicted of first-degree murder. Cause of death was attributed to asphyxiation and blunt trauma to the head and spine.
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