Fr. Robert J. Hoeffner
In a 2024 police report, a young man said that Hoeffner had inappropriately touched him as a boy on three occasions, when Hoeffner was assigned to St. Joseph’s Parish and School in Palm Bay. He said the priest would have boys come to his home to do yard work. Hoeffner was killed 1/28/2024 by the man’s former classmate. After the murder, police found a folder in Hoeffner’s office with 46 handwritten notes of stories about child sexual abuse. The night before he was murdered, his assailant texted Hoeffner that he was coming over, and the assailant wrote “You have woken up all of Egypt…Ancient ones know what you have done.” The assailant’s family speculated that he had been abused by Hoeffner.
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