1:00 a.m., July 20, 1957. Auburn football star Bobby Hoppe was enjoying a beautiful mid-summer night as he headed home from a date with his girlfriend. He certainly wasn t expecting trouble as he drove down the steep, winding road in North Chattanooga. When a darkened car, its headlights off, cruised up behind him, he assumed it was old high school buddies playing a prank. But as the driver pulled alongside and pointed a pistol at his head, Hoppe recognized his sister s ex-lover, a disreputable whiskey runner. A shot was fired, the car fell back, and Hoppe fled for his life. No one in town wanted to believe the hometown hero was a killer, and the authorities turned their heads, allowing the case to become another unsolved homicide. But for Hoppe it was a moment seared into memory, plaguing his conscience constantly. He fled to Auburn, to the football field where he could exorcize his demons by running and hitting, and where his senior leadership helped lead the Tigers to the 1957 national championship. As years passed, Hoppe struggled to appear normal. No one saw into his dark conscience or knew he was always seeking penance, yet never able to forgive himself. In an historic indictment, Hoppe was charged with first-degree murder thirty-one years later, although witnesses had died, police records had been lost, and memories had faded. Bobby Hoppe s demons were exposed to the light and his loved ones saw for the first time what lay hidden behind his stoic mask. Sherry Hoppe knew her husband intimately, they shared a deep love, but until the eve of that fateful indictment she did not know his innermost secret, that Bobby Hoppe had killed a man. Through reliving the dramatic trial, where one of America s great attorneys, Bobby Lee Cook, defended her husband with all the skill and wit he could muster, Sherry Hoppe tells the story of her love and the mystery submerged in Hoppe s conscience as he faced the consequences of that fateful morning in July. In the weeks before his death in 2008, with Bobby s blessing, Sherry began to write his story, pouring through trial transcripts, combing through boxes of old newspaper clippings and interviewing friends, family and witnesses. Fifty years have passed since that traumatic event, and mystery still surrounds Bobby Hoppe, his demons have been banished, but what really happened that night? A Beautiful Tribute in True Crime Review by Kim Cantrell In 1957, Bobby Hoppe was on a blessed path. Being a local hometown hero after being the star player for Chattanooga s Central High School, he d signed on with Alabama s Auburn University football team. But just before his departure to Auburn, on July 20, 1957, Hoppe found himself in a dire situation with his sister Joan s ex-boyfriend, Don Hudson, a disreputable whiskey runner with a reputation for settling disputes with violence. Staring straight into the barrel of the gun Hudson aimed at him, Hoppe, in a moment of panic, grabbed a shotgun and fired into Hudson s car. Not knowing what damage he had inflicted on Hudson and fearing revenge, Hoppe sped off into the night. The next day he learned Hudson had died and police believed Hudson had been murdered in a moonshine business related dispute. Scared, confused, and ashamed, Hoppe left for Auburn. Trying to be as normal as possible, Hoppe would go on to help lead the Tigers to the 1957 National Championship. Yet that July night was never far from Hoppe s conscience. In 1988, the past caught up to the present as a case that had remained unsolved for 31 years was suddenly resurrected. A Matter of Conscience is Bobby Hoppe s story. Only weeks before his death in 2008, Bobby Hoppe had given his blessing to his wife Sherry to share his story. Not only is this book a story of an unsolved murder and the sensational trial that followed three decades later, but it is a tribute to a man admired and loved by so many. Let me make it clear to those of you who enjoy nothing but the cold, hard facts of criminal cases, A Matter of Conscience doesn t fit that bill. It is as much a memoir of Bobby Hoppe s days as a football star as it is about the criminal case. While over half of this book focuses on trial with the transcripts and newspapers used as references, A Matter of Conscience flows in an easy-to-read narrative that will have readers cheering Bobby on from the stands and praying alongside him in the courtroom. Seldom do we, as readers of true crime, find such intensity in writing, but Sherry Hoppe, along with Dennie Burke, will have readers feeling a gamut of emotions from the prologue to the very last page. --True Crime Book Reviews By Erik Brady , USA TODAY Bobby Hoppe killed a man and then helped lead Auburn to its only national championship in football, all within a few months of 1957. Sherry Lee Hoppe, his widow, is rooting for Auburn to win a second national championship in the Bowl Championship Series title game against Oregon on Jan. 10 in Glendale, A