[1] A lengthy ESPN.com article by Tom Junod and Paula Lavigne in 2022 led to national interest in Hodne's crimes and their connection to Penn State football, which had already been through another sexual assault controversy several years earlier involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky (who, coincidentally, was on the Penn State staff at the time of Hodne's assaults).
In the summer before his sophomore year, he along with two friends from Long Island broke into and robbed a record store; after being arrested on burglary charges, he was suspended from the team for the season, though coach Joe Paterno said he could return to the team "if he has a good academic year and if he proves to us that [the robbery] was a mistake.
Despite the objections of the Nassau County prosecutor who tried the case, who wrote a letter to the parole board of Eastern New York Correctional Facility, where he had been serving his sentence, detailing Hodne's rape spree once he returned to Wantagh from Pennsylvania, the parole board voted unanimously to release Hodne.
[1] He once again returned to Wantagh, where he got a job working for his family's home improvement company, and began seeing a therapist regularly.
He was evicted from his girlfriend's apartment in nearby Bethpage after the woman's landlord discovered he was living there, then left a rehabilitation center after a week.