Henry Eugene Hodges was born in Florida in 1966 into a turbulent household. His father, a truck driver, was married to another woman and regularly abused Hodges’s mother. At age 12, Hodges was sexually assaulted by a stranger, a trauma that courts later cited during sentencing. At 17, he was convicted of armed robbery, kidnapping, and other charges in Hamilton County, Tennessee (1984), and served four years behind bars . Upon release in 1988, Hodges held odd construction and print‑shop jobs, but also worked as a male prostitute, offering services to gay men in Tennessee and Georgia.

On July 14, 1989, Hodges entered the home of 34‑year‑old Barry McDonald in Tennessee, stabbed him 38 times, and stole his belongings. McDonald’s body was discovered three days later, and investigators matched fingerprints from the crime scene to Hodges. 

Exactly ten months later, on May 14, 1990, Hodges and his teenage girlfriend, Trina Brown, lured 37‑year‑old Ronald Bassett to Bassett’s Tennessee home. There, they bound him, robbed him.

Just two days after that, on May 16, 1990, Hodges met 32‑year‑old Michael Whisnant at a gay bar in Georgia. He invited Whisnant to a motel under the guise of a paid encounter, then strangled him with a curtain cord after a payment dispute, and Hodges strangled him to death.

In Georgia, Hodges pleaded guilty on July 31, 1990, and was sentenced to life in prison for Whisnant’s murder. Back in Tennessee, he was convicted of Ronald Bassett’s murder on January 30, 1992, and received the death penalty . Later that year, on December 22, 1992, Hodges pleaded guilty to Barry McDonald’s killing, earning a life sentence plus 30 years. His appeals, including one to the Tennessee Supreme Court, were ultimately rejected, with his death sentence upheld on April 28, 1997.