The Han Family Murders

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Speaker 4 We don't want to accept that there's actually evil that walks amongst us.

Speaker 4 But it does.

Speaker 4 And this was pure evil.

Speaker 6 The Han family, I felt better whenever I spent time with Henry, Jenny, and Emily. Henry was born to be a healer.

Speaker 7 Henry was the guy.

Speaker 4 In the alternative medicine world, Patients would come in from all different parts of the country to see him. When you go to the clinic, it just kind of oozed of peacefulness.

Speaker 4 He had the magic.

Speaker 6 Emily had her own little table and her crayons.

Speaker 6 Her mom, Jenny, was there working in the clinic.

Speaker 7 It's kind of good therapy to be with the three of them.

Speaker 4 They did make a good team.

Speaker 9 We were business partners with Henry and we were becoming friends.

Speaker 7 We really had a beautiful road ahead of us.

Speaker 10 He had a 10 a.m. meeting with his normal investment group.

Speaker 9 It was probably, you know, a good 45 minutes after the meeting was supposed to start that we all kind of went, where is Henry?

Speaker 7 If he was going to be two minutes late, he called.

Speaker 9 We're trying to call Henry and was going straight to voicemail.

Speaker 11 So for him to miss this meeting would be a big deal.

Speaker 5 He just wouldn't.

Speaker 7 Something was not right.

Speaker 9 We all had a pit in our stomach and we were trying to find a reason why that pit shouldn't be there.

Speaker 9 Emily's birthday is coming up. Maybe they took her to Disneyland.
Somebody's got to go over to their house and check on them. Mark finally gets in touch with Don Goldberg.

Speaker 6 Very unusual not to get any communication from either Jenny or Henry. By midday, I decided to go to the home.
From the outside, it looked normal. Went to the front door.

Speaker 6 The door was closed, but it was not locked. The two vehicles were in the garage, which you could see through the windows at the top of the garage door.
Then I called 911.

Speaker 6 They came over and did a welfare check.

Speaker 10 Around 5.30 that evening, two deputies arrived, made entry, called out, no response, and then started to look to see if there was any sign of foul play.

Speaker 10 And that's what led them to open the garage door. And then if you walk around the first car, They can see what appears to be three bodies wrapped in plastic and duct tape.

Speaker 6 Within a minute or two, it sunk in that the

Speaker 6 three bodies were Henry, Jenny, and Emily. My friends were gone.

Speaker 14 There's a certain amount of shock that that sets in.

Speaker 9 We didn't hear back from Don.

Speaker 9 We didn't eat that night.

Speaker 11 We didn't sleep that night.

Speaker 10 A five-year-old, three days short of her birthday.

Speaker 10 It shook us all to our core.

Speaker 16 It was rough.

Speaker 10 Things started rapidly going into the next phase. Who, how, and why.

Speaker 10 It's a huge home. There was biological evidence throughout, primarily in the upstairs and the bedrooms where the murders took place.

Speaker 10 The smell of bleach was there, indicating a cleanup attempt. The entire family killed, presumably, while they slept.
We knew there was a monster out there and we were going to find him and get him.

Speaker 4 Natalie Morales reports the Hahn Family Murders.

Speaker 19 Mark and Marla Palumbo were concerned when their friend and business partner, Dr.

Speaker 18 Henry Hahn, failed to show up for a meeting on March 23rd, 2016.

Speaker 13 They would learn the horrific reason why the following day from a news report.

Speaker 9 I was in the kitchen on my computer and I kept checking. And I just remember screaming, they're all dead.

Speaker 23 Dr.

Speaker 25 Hahn, his wife, Jenny, and their five-year-old daughter, Emily, were found dead in the garage of their Santa Barbara home.

Speaker 31 Mark had just seen them on his way back from a business trip.

Speaker 7 We went off for dinner, played Connect 4 with Emily.

Speaker 9 He's brought his phone to me and I'm just looking at all these pictures of Emily.

Speaker 9 And they were taken the Friday before.

Speaker 32 Just horrific.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 9 And she was just goofing around with a book.

Speaker 9 Making all these funny faces. And you could tell she was loving life.

Speaker 23 The Palumbos had recently embarked on a new business venture with Dr.

Speaker 21 Hahn.

Speaker 7 I really love the guy.

Speaker 16 I mean, mean, he really was smart and curious and open-minded.

Speaker 9 He had to come with food and in shorts and flip-flops, you know. Just no air about him.

Speaker 11 But what made you trust him?

Speaker 9 His passion.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he cared about people.

Speaker 33 Don Goldberg had known Dr.

Speaker 22 Hahn for more than 25 years and thought of him as a brother.

Speaker 29 To Don, he was just Henry.

Speaker 6 I was approximately 10 years older than Henry, but he still called me his younger brother.

Speaker 6 You just don't come across a friend like Henry. It's once in a lifetime.

Speaker 10 Friendship.

Speaker 25 When they met, Henry was making a name for himself after emigrating from China, where he came from a family of physicians.

Speaker 35 He would soon take over the Santa Barbara Herb Clinic.

Speaker 4 I had several patients who had had medication side effects. They would say, I went to see Dr.
Han and it went away. And it was like, I got to meet this guy.

Speaker 25 Dr.

Speaker 21 Glenn Miller, a psychiatrist, says he and Henry developed a mutual respect and even partnered on a book about how Eastern and Western medicine could work together to improve patients' quality of life.

Speaker 16 Henry's practice was flourishing.

Speaker 4 As far as active patients, he would see like in a month, it was hundreds.

Speaker 4 But he also tried to balance it.

Speaker 40 In 2009, that balance he was seeking became a reality when Henry met and married Jenny Yu.

Speaker 16 He seemed incredibly happy.

Speaker 4 It was good to see Henry that happy.

Speaker 9 Jenny was absolutely warm and lovely.

Speaker 25 When they had Emily, the dream was complete.

Speaker 6 Henry was just on Cloud 9. He was a very proud father.

Speaker 14 They were often together at the clinic where Jenny had quickly become Henry's right hand, says her friend Isaiah Oregon.

Speaker 8 He really trusted her and let her kind of take the reins.

Speaker 30 In the spring of 2016,

Speaker 23 they were getting ready to celebrate Emily's sixth birthday.

Speaker 42 Where should I go?

Speaker 5 Go wherever?

Speaker 8 We were making plans for a birthday party and, you know, had all her presents wrapped.

Speaker 23 But just three days shy of her birthday, her loved ones were stricken with grief.

Speaker 6 I don't really have adequate words to describe how I felt.

Speaker 6 The sadness is too deep.

Speaker 14 As night fell on the Han estate on Wednesday, March 23rd, Don tried to process what he had just witnessed.

Speaker 25 He had called 911 when he couldn't find the Hans anywhere.

Speaker 23 And he was with sheriff's deputies when they discovered the bodies in the garage wrapped in plastic.

Speaker 5 none of it made any sense at all.

Speaker 23 Prosecutor Ben Ledinig says it was shortly before midnight when Santa Barbara sheriff's investigators obtained a search warrant and began to piece together what had happened inside the house.

Speaker 30 It appeared the family had been shot while they slept upstairs on the second floor.

Speaker 17 Henry in the couple's bedroom and Jenny and Emily across the hall in Emily's room.

Speaker 31 room.

Speaker 10 Emily's room was tough to see. Mom probably read her stories to have Emily go to sleep that night and was sleeping with her.

Speaker 12 What did that tell you about the depravity of the kind of person who could do something like that?

Speaker 46 What were they after?

Speaker 10 We didn't know what he was after,

Speaker 10 but the depravity, I've never seen anything like it.

Speaker 31 Detectives picked up on the distinct smell of the murderer's attempts to cover his tracks.

Speaker 10 The smell of bleach was there. We had bleach bottles found.
There were bleach stains on the carpet and throughout other items upstairs. And then you see bloody things in a washing machine.

Speaker 29 All the bedding, which had been stripped from the beds, was found piled in the laundry room and in the machine.

Speaker 10 The washing machine, the alarm had gone off because the load was unbalanced. And within there are a huge group of bloody sheets.

Speaker 35 Wedged in pillows in the laundry, crime scene investigators found a.22-caliber bullet and bullet fragments.

Speaker 48 Three matching shell casings were found within the wrapping of Jenny's body.

Speaker 23 And one was later found lodged between the baseboard and box spring of Emily's bed.

Speaker 10 We had one bullet that was a through and through.

Speaker 10 It was perfect for comparison for the murder weapon. As things are going, we start to find clues as to who potentially could be involved.

Speaker 21 Inside a paper bag next to Henry's bed, detectives found a document signed the last day Henry was seen alive.

Speaker 24 It provided a name.

Speaker 10 It's basically a four-page business contract between two partners, partner one, Pierre Hopsch, and partner two, Dr. Hahn.

Speaker 22 Don Goldberg knew of Pierre that Dr.

Speaker 35 Hahn was associated with, but Don thought he was harmless.

Speaker 6 I did not think that pierre was capable of murder i never really saw pierre become angry or agitated but the palombos had a bad feeling he didn't trust him i did not

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Speaker 4 was left with a scar.

Speaker 13 The indelible scar left by the murders was the kind that not even Dr.

Speaker 35 Hah could have healed.

Speaker 5 Wow, it was like a bomb exploded.

Speaker 9 Nobody could move for weeks.

Speaker 52 There was something very, very, very dark going on.

Speaker 24 Kimberly Ruff says Dr.

Speaker 19 Hahn treated her family for two decades.

Speaker 52 He could do anything.

Speaker 23 Ever since she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after giving birth to her son, Kimberly says Dr.

Speaker 13 Hahn's holistic approach allowed her to nurse her newborn while still treating her tumors.

Speaker 52 No matter how scared you might be or frightened, you just left feeling like it's going to be okay.

Speaker 52 Yeah, he was something.

Speaker 23 Instilling hope may have been one of the secrets to why his patients say Dr.

Speaker 35 Han could heal just about anything.

Speaker 5 Dr. Hahn, like, saved my life.

Speaker 33 Sherry Buron was also a young mother with cancer when she went to Dr.

Speaker 22 Hahn.

Speaker 54 My daughter, Abby, was 15 months old.

Speaker 5 I felt a lump under my armpit.

Speaker 19 Even though she had the prescribed surgery and chemotherapy, she credits Dr.

Speaker 37 Hahn with her survival.

Speaker 54 There were so many people that passed away around me.

Speaker 26 He got me through it.

Speaker 29 What was the impact for you of his loss?

Speaker 54 It's the fear of something comes back. And I'm trying every day to be positive and try to stay with his level of calm and how much confidence he had that like everything's taken care of.

Speaker 17 That conviction is what had drawn the Palumbos, who worked in the skincare industry, into their partnership with Dr.

Speaker 35 Hahn, hoping to treat various skin maladies.

Speaker 9 Henry was very interested in CBD.

Speaker 35 Having used CBD in his practice to treat pain and inflammation, Henry wanted to harness its full potential.

Speaker 25 It was groundbreaking science at the time, and he wanted 25-year-old Pierre Hopsch to help develop it.

Speaker 6 Pierre, from what we gathered, had a lot of experience in laboratories, in this case, relating to CBD.

Speaker 40 Henry had taken a liking to Pierre after meeting him through another associate.

Speaker 25 But the Palumbos were uncomfortable with Pierre from the start.

Speaker 9 You know how when you meet somebody, you can't put your finger on it, but something's not right?

Speaker 9 That was Pierre.

Speaker 7 There was always this kind of little boiling simmer.

Speaker 56 When it came time to do the lab work, the Palumbos say the results were disturbing.

Speaker 9 What we came to find out was he was using toxic materials. When we called him on it, he said, you know, I'm just learning more about the molecules.
It was just weird.

Speaker 14 As it turned out, Pierre wasn't a formally trained scientist.

Speaker 35 He didn't even have a college degree.

Speaker 7 The more you got under that surface, the more you realize that he could talk a game and stay over the folks' heads a bit scientifically.

Speaker 11 Sounds like he was sort of a snake oil salesman type, right? He was.

Speaker 5 Sophisticated one, but yes.

Speaker 9 Yeah, a very sophisticated one.

Speaker 23 There was more eyebrow-raising behavior.

Speaker 47 Pierre had also made odd charges on Henry's account.

Speaker 9 I was doing all the finances and I'm like, this doesn't look right.

Speaker 49 It's not a business expense.

Speaker 9 Not at all.

Speaker 23 After Marla flagged the charges to Henry, he discovered they were for escort services.

Speaker 17 Henry was, you won't believe this.

Speaker 9 Pierre's out.

Speaker 49 That was the final straw.

Speaker 9 That was Henry's final straw.

Speaker 35 But then a few weeks before the murders, Mark and Marla say Henry brought up Pierre out of the blue.

Speaker 9 Henry mentioned that he had learned a lot more about Pierre's upbringing, how much Pierre had to overcome from his childhood. Mark nor I really responded.

Speaker 9 We didn't want to have Pierre back in our fold at all.

Speaker 28 The Palumbos were not alone in being wary of Pierre.

Speaker 13 Jenny's friend, Isaiah, says Jenny also had concerns and confided in him about them four days before the murders.

Speaker 8 It was weighing on her heavily. Do we trust him? Do we give him another chance? I was like, absolutely not.
If he stole from you before, he's going to steal from you again.

Speaker 27 But Pierre had already ingratiated himself himself back into Henry's goodwill.

Speaker 6 Henry had a very trusting nature. Henry had shared with me that Pierre told him that he was ill, that it was late-stage cancer, and that he was going to do what he could to help Pierre.

Speaker 8 Using Henry's good nature by lying to him, by manipulating him.

Speaker 14 Authorities learned that Pierre had been an overnight guest at the Hans home before the murders and had formed a new partnership with the healer.

Speaker 25 There was that contract found in the master bedroom they had signed the last day of Henry's life.

Speaker 30 But prosecutor Ben Ladinig says it didn't seem legitimate.

Speaker 10 It was like a college sophomore drafted it. It was not notarized, not witnessed.

Speaker 23 Detectives had found something else of interest.

Speaker 10 A brilliant detective found packaging to the plastic wrapping that all three of the Hahn family were wrapped in in a trash can in the kitchen area, next to packaging of 3M duct tape, similar to the duct tape that was used to wrap all three of the bodies.

Speaker 23 He recognized the plastic wrap was a Home Depot brand and reached out to the company's security department.

Speaker 10 And Home Depot was within hours of us gaining entry into the house.

Speaker 10 able to run those two items together to see if they had been purchased in the Southern California region within the last several days or weeks.

Speaker 23 A Home Depot in Oceanside, California had security footage of a man who matched the DMV photo of Pierre Hopsch, who also happened to have an Oceanside address.

Speaker 10 And that was bam. We knew he's walking out with three huge plastic rolls and sure enough, duct tape.

Speaker 46 So within hours of the crime scene being discovered, Pierre Hopsch became a person of interest.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 23 But where was Pierre now?

Speaker 57 Detectives had a hunch.

Speaker 19 Data from the Hans cell phones, which were missing, showed they were traveling south, further and further from Santa Barbara.

Speaker 10 Then, inexplicably, Henry's phone goes dark, but Jenny's is still on, and it keeps going south. We're getting basically digital footprints leading down to the oceanside area from a dead woman's phone.

Speaker 58 Anytime you're trying to stop somebody that is wanted for homicide, the stakes are going to be high.

Speaker 25 The day after the Hahn family was found murdered, a manhunt was underway in Oceanside, California, nearly 200 miles from the crime scene.

Speaker 23 Sergeant Anthony Flores and his partner were part of the local Oceanside police team assisting the Santa Barbara investigation.

Speaker 58 We had come in to work with our special enforcement section, and we were going to be the stop car for that day. If given a window of opportunity to take them into custody or potentially stop them.

Speaker 23 Meanwhile, undercover detectives were conducting surveillance at the residence Pierre Hopp shared with his father and updating all units, including the homicide team that had driven down from Santa Barbara with prosecutor Ben Ladine.

Speaker 10 All of a sudden, we get chatter on our intercoms. Dad's on the move.

Speaker 23 The surveillance team followed Pierre's father as he drove to a Walmart parking lot, where security cameras captured him meeting up with none other than Pierre.

Speaker 10 That's dad driving in sedan.

Speaker 10 And then you see the Lexus following shortly behind. They appear to be communicating briefly together.
You can just see that trunk pop on dad's car.

Speaker 23 After transferring two large duffel bags to Pierre's car,

Speaker 55 they both drove off.

Speaker 10 We got to move quickly.

Speaker 11 It was a little after midnight and we just got the update that the suspect was on the move.

Speaker 58 As we're traveling, we're hearing that he's pulling into the ARCO station. He had a few miles of a head start.

Speaker 56 The other units and Ladinig had pulled over by the Arco station, waiting for the arrest team to arrive.

Speaker 10 And all of a sudden, you see an unmarked car drive right right through the middle of that intersection. Sparks fly and it just basically comes in and pulls in and lays on the brakes.

Speaker 10 Two huge dudes get out of the car and pull a gun on him and prone him out. And our eyes are like saucer.

Speaker 59 We're like, whoa, wow.

Speaker 11 It's 200 miles away that this investigation started and it culminated here.

Speaker 26 Sergeant Flores had handcuffed Pierre. What do you remember about that arrest?

Speaker 60 I remember it going down really fast.

Speaker 58 All of our senses were heightened.

Speaker 23 Within 48 hours of the murders, investigators had the Han family's alleged killer in custody.

Speaker 31 Pierre Hopsch waived his Miranda rights and started talking to detectives.

Speaker 42 What he told them was something out of a spy thriller.

Speaker 23 He claimed that his life was in danger.

Speaker 36 Over the past couple of days, I kid you not, I've been shot at.

Speaker 5 Probably about...

Speaker 36 Five individuals so far that I shot in self-defense.

Speaker 53 He claimed he was being targeted because of a scientific marvel he had invented.

Speaker 36 What does it do?

Speaker 36 It's a very, very advanced energy source. It's a quantum kind of energy source.
I think probably at least 15 individuals who have been connected to this project are dead.

Speaker 35 Pierre said he had gone to Dr.

Speaker 29 Han's house earlier in the week to install one of his perpetual energy devices and that the plastic wrap and duct tape he was seen purchasing were for that purpose.

Speaker 45 Dr.

Speaker 36 Henry, we signed a contract together. He was going to facilitate taking the technology out to China.

Speaker 36 Loved the guy to death. He really,

Speaker 36 really liked this project.

Speaker 26 Pierre said he had left Santa Barbara around 2 p.m.

Speaker 21 on March 22nd, the day before the murders, after signing the contract.

Speaker 56 But detectives pushed back.

Speaker 36 Is there more to this story that you're not telling me?

Speaker 5 Dr. Han is dead.

Speaker 36 I have no clue that.

Speaker 36 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 36 everything was perfectly fine when I left.

Speaker 23 Pierre was adamant he would never hurt the family and insisted the shadowy figures who had been after him had killed the Hans and were trying to frame him for murder.

Speaker 36 I invented a technology that changes the world at oil companies and people don't want this technology out there.

Speaker 10 It was this massive conspiracy to keep this next level energy system from getting out to market. James Bond, Mission Impossible, this fantastical life.

Speaker 36 I jumped out the window.

Speaker 31 Pierre's outlandish story continued.

Speaker 23 But then detectives received an unexpected call from someone who claimed to have information about the murders.

Speaker 5 I'm a pretty rough around the edges guy. I have rough around the edges friends.

Speaker 23 TJ Dorito was a marijuana grower who said Dr.

Speaker 34 Hahn had approached him about supplying CBD-rich strains.

Speaker 23 TJ had also met Pierre.

Speaker 5 Dr. Henry had told me that he was like a prodigy street chemist.
He had done some stuff that was ahead of his time.

Speaker 49 So a little bit of a mad scientist.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I would say.

Speaker 56 According to TJ, Pierre had a penchant for making up grandiose stories to seek attention, but he befriended him nonetheless.

Speaker 5 He was that awkward kid that wanted to fit in. And I was the guy in high school that stuck up for kids like that.
So I took an interest in him in that regard.

Speaker 11 You think he trusted you then?

Speaker 5 Oh, he absolutely trusted me.

Speaker 23 As TJ revealed to detectives, Pierre had reached out to him via text the morning of the murders.

Speaker 35 The message sent at 9.39 a.m.

Speaker 19 Said, I need your help with something urgently, like it's urgent.

Speaker 46 What was he asking for?

Speaker 5 He needed my help moving something.

Speaker 26 He says Pierre told him he was in Santa Barbara and needed to talk face to face.

Speaker 12 So TJ had him come to his house in Thousand Oaks, about an hour away.

Speaker 5 The first thing out of his mouth, just so you know, I'm a monster. He had told me right then and there that he had killed Dr.
Henry, his wife, and his child, and needed help.

Speaker 46 Did he give you details of what he did?

Speaker 5 He did.

Speaker 35 TJ told detectives Pierre said he had tried to put the bodies in his car, but they wouldn't all fit, and Henry was too heavy. Details Ladinig says only the killer would know.

Speaker 10 How the killings were done, how the bodies were wrapped up, how he had the doctor's phone.

Speaker 35 TJ told detectives Pierre had also revealed his motive.

Speaker 25 $20 million that he planned to drain from Henry's accounts after killing the family.

Speaker 19 TJ says he didn't know if what he was hearing was another one of Pierre's far-fetched stories.

Speaker 18 And until he knew for sure, he decided to play along.

Speaker 5 I just wanted to get him out of the house and confirm whether what he had just said was true or not. I said, let me work on it and I'll call you later.

Speaker 39 Once Pierre was gone, TJ tried to reach Dr.

Speaker 40 Hahn and anyone who might have information to no avail.

Speaker 5 I didn't want to call the police because I wasn't sure yet, but it was chaotic. It was scary and also confusing.

Speaker 20 Pierre kept messaging him.

Speaker 23 Around 5 p.m., when TJ still hadn't provided any assistance, Pierre texted him with a proposition.

Speaker 46 Want to come to Vegas tonight? I'll pay. What did you think the reason for that all of a sudden trip to Vegas?

Speaker 5 At that point, I wasn't sure didn't sound right. It was probably gonna kill me and somehow make it look like I had something to do with it.

Speaker 9 You were gonna be the fall guy.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 47 TJ made up an excuse why he couldn't go, and Pierre would send him one final text at 7.35 that night.

Speaker 12 Yep, I'm screwed.

Speaker 35 They just found everything.

Speaker 49 My life's over.

Speaker 47 Only if I'd got to it all sooner.

Speaker 19 Ladinig says Pierre had just returned to the crime scene with a big truck to transport the bodies, but law enforcement had beaten him to the scene.

Speaker 10 He knew his goose was cooked.

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Speaker 37 Pierre Hopsch's arrest near Oceanside, California had come at a critical juncture.

Speaker 23 He was armed with a 9mm handgun that was in plain view on the driver's side floorboard.

Speaker 53 He also had his passport and those duffel bags, which he had received from his father minutes earlier.

Speaker 10 Two go bags, basically

Speaker 10 whatever you need, clothes, everything for the person to live for months.

Speaker 24 Hopsh's father was also detained and questioned, but he was released later that morning.

Speaker 10 We could have charged him as an accessory, but we didn't have any indication that Dad was involved in any way, shape, or form in the killing.

Speaker 23 The next day, during a closer examination of Hopsh's car at the crime lab.

Speaker 10 You name it, we found it in that car.

Speaker 13 There was Henry's wallet, credit card, and social security number, along with an expended shell casing.

Speaker 40 There were also the victim's phones and tablet, all wrapped in aluminum foil, in an attempt to evade tracking.

Speaker 10 In the trunk, you lift up where the spare tire would be, the murder weapon, suppressor, silencer, ammunition.

Speaker 31 A week after the murders, the autopsies revealed the victims had been shot 14 times, three each into Henry and Jenny, and most disturbing, eight in Emily.

Speaker 10 That ammunition is the same stuff that we found at the crime scene in the decedents' bodies. Match, match, match, match, match, everything.

Speaker 14 Pierre Hoppsch was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, making him eligible for the death penalty.

Speaker 41 It was one of the most challenging cases, if not the most challenging case I ever came upon.

Speaker 23 Defense attorney Christine Voss, who was with the public defender's office at the time, represented Hopsch.

Speaker 41 He really wanted to be vindicated. To me, the goal was for him to not get death.

Speaker 34 At the 11th hour, the DA's office agreed to waive the death penalty in exchange for a more expedient bench trial, which meant a judge, not jury, would render a verdict.

Speaker 45 On October 25th, 2021, more than five and a half years after the murders, the prosecution delivered its opening statement and laid out its theory of the case: that Pierre Hopsch had plotted the murder of the Hahn family for financial gain.

Speaker 13 They painted him as a career con man who, up until the murders, flaunted his intelligence and supposed wealth.

Speaker 9 His entire life's drive was being rich.

Speaker 10 He sent screenshots of his chase account from anywhere from about $3 million up to $940 million to various people attempting to dupe them that he's this jet-setting billionaire.

Speaker 34 Hopsch claimed he had received big offers for his energy technology.

Speaker 41 I'm not a scientist, but I don't know that there's a such thing as a perpetual energy machine.

Speaker 23 But several years before the murders, Hoppsch was actually being paid to build one.

Speaker 67 It was going to be a new source of energy, as if he was, you know, an Elon Musk.

Speaker 23 Samantha Spidell met Pierre Hopsch circa 2012 when he moved into a penthouse apartment in a luxury high-rise she managed in Tempe, Arizona.

Speaker 67 He pulled up and had this bright red Ferrari. It was very flashy.

Speaker 23 Ledinig says Hopsch had duped a group of high-rolling investors into financing his invention until they realized it didn't actually work.

Speaker 10 He had basically defrauded all these people and the money dried up. When the murders were committed, I think he had less than $500 to his name.

Speaker 20 Prosecutors presented a detailed timeline retracing Hopsch's movements, including his digital footprint in the days before and after the murders.

Speaker 13 They say as early as March 17th, six days before the murders, he had looked into impersonating the doctor at his bank.

Speaker 10 He's searching for Asian disguises and real-flesh masks.

Speaker 44 Like a Mission Impossible face mask.

Speaker 49 100%.

Speaker 10 This is his fantastical world that he lived in.

Speaker 23 There's no evidence he ever purchased a mask, but a time-stamped receipt and security video placed him at an Arizona gun store four days before the murders, purchasing ammunition and two firearms, including the alleged murder weapon.

Speaker 10 22 pistol with a threaded barrel. For what is a silencer or suppressor?

Speaker 53 On March 20th, he was back in Oceanside, California buying supplies before driving up to the Hans house under the guise of installing the energy machine.

Speaker 35 Instead, Ladinig says Hopsch bugged Henry's computer with a spyware app called a key logger.

Speaker 10 What key loggers do is every stroke, every click of the mouse, every navigation page you go, it documents all of it.

Speaker 23 To their surprise, investigators also found the key logger on Hopsh's laptop.

Speaker 14 On March 21st, while Hopsch was still at the Hahn's home, the key logger had recorded chilling search terms on his laptop.

Speaker 10 What part of the skull is more penetrable? What ammunition would be better?

Speaker 46 As a guest in Dr. Hahn's house, you'd been staying there for the the two nights before, planning this execution-style murder.
Yes.

Speaker 24 Pierre Hopsch left the Hahn residence on March 22nd, but prosecutors allege he went back around 4 a.m. the next morning to carry out the murders.

Speaker 25 They say later that day, he began frantically trying to siphon money from Henry's accounts.

Speaker 10 He's using phones. He's using fake email accounts.
He's doing all these things from personal identifying information of Dr. Hahn's that he stole earlier that week.

Speaker 23 A chase fraud alert had flagged an attempted payment for $72,000.

Speaker 23 Meanwhile, Hopsch also rented that big truck he allegedly drove to the crime scene, hoping to move the bodies.

Speaker 10 There are black and whites all over that house. The crime scene's being processed.

Speaker 23 The Palombos say the meeting they were supposed to have with Henry just hours after he was murdered had foiled Pierre Hopsch's plans.

Speaker 9 He thought that he had that whole day to clean up his mess before Henry would be missed.

Speaker 9 And we screwed it up for him. Happily.

Speaker 12 That's when prosecutors say he fled, driving south toward Oceanside.

Speaker 61 Ladinig argues Hopsch's subsequent searches betray his guilty conscience.

Speaker 25 Is car searched entering Tijuana?

Speaker 35 How crime scene investigation works?

Speaker 26 And how long do fingerprints take to process?

Speaker 31 Incredibly, he even consulted an online psychic named Count Marco and asked him, Will I get caught for what I did?

Speaker 10 And Count Marco replies, Well, what did you do, Pierre?

Speaker 25 Pierre Hopsch never gave Count Marco an explanation,

Speaker 46 but on the stand, he couldn't stop talking.

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Speaker 41 This was a tough case.

Speaker 41 But that didn't change the fact that Pierre was entitled to a vigorous defense.

Speaker 30 Defense attorney Christine Voss was in an unusual position.

Speaker 41 This was a really well-investigated case.

Speaker 41 Because my client wanted to have a trial and wanted me to turn every stone, I did.

Speaker 33 Turn every stone and raise any possible reasonable doubt.

Speaker 46 You argued that there were elements presented that were implausible, unprovable, and simply impossible. Those were your words.
Yeah.

Speaker 39 Voss expressed concerns that the alleged murder weapon and silencer found in Hopsh's car didn't match up.

Speaker 41 It absolutely did not connect to the firearm that they believed was the murder weapon.

Speaker 29 She seized on discrepancies in the location data from Hopsh's car and phone that the prosecution had used in its timeline.

Speaker 41 He could not possibly have been in San Diego and Santa Barbara simultaneously or Thousand Oaks and Santa Barbara simultaneously, but that's what the GPS data showed.

Speaker 35 And she attacked the credibility of the prosecution's star witness, TJ Dorita.

Speaker 69 Voss questioned why Dorita waited nearly two days to contact authorities and argued in that time, he could have gotten details about the crime scene scene that the prosecution claimed only the killer knew.

Speaker 41 It was not the best-kept crime scene. He was making various phone calls after he heard about the death of Dr.
Hahn.

Speaker 24 But Voss concedes much of Dorita's testimony was corroborated by the evidence.

Speaker 10 This case was over within the first 72 hours.

Speaker 69 In fact, the only witness who provided testimony that someone other than Pierre Hopsch was the killer was Pierre Hoppsch.

Speaker 35 During three days on the stand, he repeated the action-packed account he had given detectives about having shootouts with shadowy figures.

Speaker 37 Now he said he was sure they were sent by the Department of Energy.

Speaker 46 It sounds like there'd be a trail of bodies, but yet is there proof of this trail of bodies anywhere to your knowledge?

Speaker 41 No, which further made him believe it was the Department of Energy.

Speaker 24 And what about all that evidence?

Speaker 35 Investigators found.

Speaker 10 That DOE planted them there. It's all a frame.
All that stuff is frame.

Speaker 10 The banking stuff, frame job. What's in my car, frame job.

Speaker 41 It was difficult for me to

Speaker 41 embrace Pierre's testimony.

Speaker 11 Do you think he himself believed some of the things he was saying were true?

Speaker 41 Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Speaker 67 He was obsessed with the government.

Speaker 56 Samantha Spidell attests there were some kernels of truth in his stories.

Speaker 67 Pierre mentioned that his dad had ties to the CIA, and I could tell that

Speaker 67 he wanted his dad's approval.

Speaker 23 When his father died in 2023, his obituary stated, He was a key player in clandestine central intelligence agency operations during the 1980s.

Speaker 43 Hopsh also told Spidell that his sister was going to star in a reality TV show.

Speaker 67 She got cast on a newlyweds reality show and Pierre was going to be in it. Come to find out, that was true.

Speaker 23 In fact, both Hopsch and his father made appearances on the second season of the Bravo TV series Newlyweds the First Year.

Speaker 34 Start by filling that up.

Speaker 49 Pierre was even shown giving his brother-in-law a cooking lesson.

Speaker 70 More Black Pepper.

Speaker 23 But But prosecutor Ben Ladinig argued any grains of authenticity in Hopsch's life were far outweighed by deceit.

Speaker 15 You called him a lying liar who lies about lying. Right.

Speaker 5 Lie, lie, lie, lie.

Speaker 10 Hundreds of lies we found on him. His life was a con.

Speaker 22 On November 24th, 2021, Judge Brian Hill would get the case.

Speaker 25 None of Pierre Hopsch's family members attended his trial.

Speaker 17 The judge made his ruling guilty on all counts.

Speaker 46 The judge, when he issued his ruling, said his decision was beyond a shadow of a doubt, absolutely no doubt of Pierre Hopsch's guilt.

Speaker 10 Yeah, very satisfactory to hear that.

Speaker 41 I wasn't surprised.

Speaker 46 And what was Pierre's reaction upon hearing that ruling?

Speaker 41 Well, he was visibly disappointed.

Speaker 23 On April 15th, 2022, Pierre Hopsch was sentenced to three life terms without the possibility of parole.

Speaker 26 It was little comfort to those still mourning Henry, Jenny, and Emily.

Speaker 6 I don't understand how there really could be justice.

Speaker 8 He's still alive, and they're not.

Speaker 8 He took precious moments that we'll never get.

Speaker 9 I want him to feel every pain possible for what he did.

Speaker 16 Not enough bad things can happen for him.

Speaker 56 Nearly a decade after the murders, the wounds are still raw.

Speaker 8 It's hard to think of him.

Speaker 4 He was a really good man.

Speaker 4 You don't replace Henry Hahn.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 6 Pretty much every day I think of Henry and Jenny and Emily.

Speaker 6 There's an old phrase that a good man and a good family lives for a limited time, but a good name shall live forever.

Speaker 6 They lived too short, but their name lives on forever.

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