Lee County man sentenced to life in prison for patricide
Matthew Roy Hopson sentenced for murder of Keith Bradford Hopson
By Gypsy Crow
Editor’s Note: Warning, some of the material mentioned in this story is particularly graphic in nature.
LEESBURG — Matthew Roy Hopson was found guilty on Wednesday for the murder of his father, Keith Bradford Hopson, in Lee Superior Court.
The jury found him guilty on all charges, including the first count of malice murder, the second count of felony murder and the third count of aggravated assault. There was, the jury determined, insurmountable evidence against Hopson, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Keith Hopson was shot to death some time between 5:30 and 6 p.m. on May 24, 2017, in Lee County. His wife called the police when she saw his body on the ground outside their home. The victim’s son, Matthew Hopson, was arrested without incident and initially held without bail. The victim was murdered with Matthew Hopson’s Taurus .45-caliber handgun.
Acting District Attorney Lewis Lamb said the case is one of the saddest he’s ever dealt with.
“You had a father who was gunned down by an uncontrollably violent son,” Lamb said. “I can move on from this case, but the family will always have to deal with this loss.”
In the search for evidence against Hopson, investigators obtained a warrant for his home to obtain a collection of journals written by Matthew Roy Hopson that would ultimately be the damning evidence against him in the eyes of the jury. The journals revealed Hopson’s meticulous behavior such as logging everything he ever did, even down to how much money he spent on food, according to Lamb.
At a glance, the entries could almost be called mundane, but while reading, investigators discovered the malicious will that apparently guided Matthew Roy Hopson.
The journal entries told in detail how much hatred Hopson harbored toward his father. Any action Hopson saw as a slight against him was recorded in detail. Hopson’s entries displayed paranoid thoughts, down to thoughts that his father and his step-mother were trying to turn his own dog against him by feeding it. Hopson recorded in the journals that his father was “cutting the grass too much” just to harass him. From there, the entries only grew darker and more obsessive.
“The journals were enlightening and disturbing,” Lamb explained after the trial. “He had an obsession with death and killing. He wrote down any time he killed any animal around home or in the woods. He shot dogs; he shot a dog in the head, and then cut the dog open to see what kind of damage the bullet had done.
“He wasn’t just a country boy. He wasn’t out trying to live off the land. He has a bizarre fascination with death and killing, and I think the jury believed that and thought that he was someone that no matter who he encountered, if it was the wrong time and wrong place, he could have been a danger to anyone.”
On July 12, 2017, public defender Kevin Kwashnak motioned for a psychiatric evaluation for his client, Matthew Roy Hopson. The psychiatric evaluation was ordered by Judge W. James Sizemore Jr. on July 17, but Forensic Psychologist Holly M. Schilling informed the court through a letter that Hopson refused the evaluation.
The defense argued that Keith Hopson’s death was a result of actions committed in self-defense. Kwashnak would not say a lot about the case at this time, but he said, based on conversations with his client, he did believe that it was self-defense.
“(Matthew Hopson) thought he saw his father reaching for a weapon,” Kwashnak said.
Keith Hopson was found unarmed with no discarded weapons near the body, according to the evidence collected by Major William C. Smith of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. Hopson testified to the jury on his version of the events.
Kwashnak said that he will be filing a motion to appeal the verdict and ask for a new trial on behalf of his client. He was unable to comment further because of plans to file for the appeal.
The jury deliberated at around 11:40 a.m. on Wednesday after hearing closing arguments and returned at around 12:20 p.m. to deliver the final verdict of guilty on all three counts.
“Good cases are made out of good evidence,” Lamb said. “The evidence in this case was strong and persuasive to the jury.”
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