Scary Terri | 6. “I need some money, honey.”
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The Bench. It had been over 15 years of Terry Hoffman being in the spotlight.
Glenn Cooley overdosed on drugs. In 79, Devereaux Cleaver drowned. Sandy Cleaver's car went over a cliff in 1981.
Wrongful death suits. Wills contested.
Robin Lynn Otstadt, Mary Levinson, and Richard Hoffman committed suicide. Jill Bounds was murdered.
Smoke was filling up the room so thick, you can't find the handle of the door. But where was the fire? Ever since Gail and Chuck contacted Cecil Emerson, the assistant DA, he'd been looking into Terry. At this point, Cecil had known about Terry for a decade, since Devereaux's death.
Can these cults be deadly? Oh, they're very deadly.
but he hadn't brought criminal charges yet. Then new evidence came to light. Cecil found out that Terry Hoffman might be pushing pills on her acolytes and even injecting them with God knows what. In fact, Cecil had some evidence that Terry was throwing out needles, syringes, countless pill bottles. Her trash even had a suspicious letter postmarked from San Diego. It read, here's your bulk order plus the samples. Number one is a new formula that's slightly more complex and will cost 35 cents more per capsule. It should contain more amphetamine along with a balancer to mitigate side effects. Number two is the basic E formula without the final purification step to remove all amphetamines. E, here, I think is safe to say, is ecstasy. The white pills?
The drug that was found in Don's system? Terry was no doctor. Why was she buying amphetamines? If she was giving her followers drugs, then maybe Cecil could go after her for a new charge. A local TV station interviewed him in February of 1990. This is nearly a year and a half after Don Hoffman overdosed and left behind that harrowing video, and three months after the Goodmans took their lives and were found decomposing.
Cecil Emerson heads up the DA's investigation of Hoffman. Says he believes she is practicing medicine without a license, and that can be dangerous.
Would you want a tree surgeon doing open-heart surgery on you? That's the way I look at it.
So Cecil's investigation pivoted to trying to get Terry for giving pills. This is when the DA finally admitted on record that they were pursuing a criminal investigation. But then, multiple people told me, just before the grand jury hearing was to be held, Terry's case was pulled from the docket. The criminal case against Terry seemed to be a lost cause. It was deeply disappointing for victims' families, who had in some cases been waiting 15 years for justice. Some even questioned whether Terry had influential followers within the Justice Department or politics who might've been able to summarily quash any trial. But Terry wasn't out of the water yet. After she filed for bankruptcy, the IRS and FBI launched an investigation into her.
This would be the final showdown.
These shark eyes. Those cold, dark eyes.
The most sophisticated sociopath I've ever observed. Her love of money. It just was so evil.
She wasn't accustomed to anyone saying no to her.
I kind of pulled on a thread, and the sweater came undone. They're saying that I wanted her to die, and I hypnotized her and got her to die. All this bullshit stuff...
Why do you think it was so difficult to tie Terry to these deaths?
Because there's no smoking gun.
From Sony Music Entertainment, this is Scary Terry. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Chapter 6. I need some money, honey. I need some money. When Terry filed for bankruptcy, she did so amid a snowball of legal issues that went back several years. Don Hoffman died in September 1988. A wrongful death suit was filed. The Goodmans died in 89, another wrongful death. And two years later, by October of 1991, Terry had filed for bankruptcy. This was not a normal bankruptcy case. And these were not normal creditors. Because it wasn't just MasterCard or a mortgage company that wanted their money back. It was the victims' families.
How many items have been sold? I have sold the Audubon.
Audubon prints.
And what...
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