In October 2002, the life of 44-year-old Karen Sue Hodella was tragically cut short in Clarksville, Indiana. A beautician from Port Orange, Florida, she was visiting the area at the time. Her badly decomposed body was discovered floating in the Ohio River near Clarksville on January 7, 2003, and was later identified using dental records. For nearly a decade, the case of her death remained a cold case, leaving her family with unanswered questions.
The break in the case came in April 2012
with the arrest of William Clyde Gibson for the murder of another woman, Christine Whitis. During his interrogation, Gibson not only confessed to killing Whitis but also admitted to the unsolved 2002 murder of Hodella. He disclosed that he had met Hodella at a bar in Jeffersonville on October 10, 2002. Later, at an apartment complex in New Albany, an argument erupted between them over prescription medication Gibson had allegedly stolen. In a fit of anger, he punched her in the face before fatally stabbing her multiple times in the throat with a pocket knife. He then drove around before dumping her body in Clarksville. As a grim reminder of his crime, Gibson had a tattoo on his arm of a knife with the date '10-10-02,' marking the day he killed Hodella.
Gibson's confessions did not end with Hodella and Whitis. He also admitted to killing a third woman, Stephanie Kirk, and led police to her remains buried in his backyard. This string of brutal crimes painted a picture of a serial killer who had evaded justice for years.
In March 2014, William Clyde Gibson pleaded guilty to the murder of Karen Hodella. He was sentenced to 65 years in prison for her death, which was the maximum sentence. This was in addition to a death sentence he received in October 2013 for the murder of Christine Whitis. Gibson later appeared in court with a new tattoo on the back of his head that read 'Death Rowx3,' a chilling reference to his multiple murder convictions. While an execution date for the Whitis murder had not been set, the legal proceedings brought a close to the long and painful chapter for the families of his victims.
