The father of a woman who fell to her death from a seventh-floor penthouse in Belgium says he knew it wasn’t suicide and was convinced her husband was an American sailor and threw her out the window.
For seven years, Johann Hof has desperately wondered what happened that night in 2015 when his 32-year-old daughter, Johanna “Hannah” Hof-Becker, fell to her death in Mons, Belgium. Hof-Becker’s husband, Vice Admiral. Craig R. Becker told authorities she took her own life. But Hough told Dateline NBC in a recent interview that he knew it wasn’t a suicide and that he was “sure” that his son-in-law killed her.
Hof-Becker’s death was initially ruled a suicide by authorities, but her family and friends refused to accept it. In the spring of 2022, nearly seven years after her death in October 2015, an American military jury in Belgium found Becker guilty of murder.
Dateline NBC’s Dennis Murphy spoke with Hove-Becker’s family and friends in a new two-hour report airing Sunday at 7 p.m. In the spring of 2022, a U.S. military jury in Belgium found Becker guilty of “first-degree murder, battery and misconduct by an officer and a gentleman” in connection with his wife’s death, the Navy Times reported.
That’s the ruling that Huff, president of Buffers USA in Jacksonville, Fla., has been waiting for because he is “determined to find out what happened to his daughter after she fell to her death from a penthouse,” according to NBC News. “I never really liked him,” Hough told the Florida Times Union. “He was aloof … so egotistical.” Becker was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole and removal from office.
His other charges came from Hove-Becker, who was poisoned with the opioid tramadol and the sleeping drug zolpidem the day she died, according to the Navy Times. He is also accused of impersonating Hove-Becker in a text message on the day of her death and lying to local police when he told them he did not know the password to her phone.
Becker has maintained his innocence, insisting his wife’s death was a suicide due to mental illness. His appeal is pending. Hove-Becker, a Swedish-born, Florida-raised psychologist, moved to Mons, Belgium, with her husband Becker in 2013 to serve in the U.S. Navy. They have a daughter, Isabel, who was born in 2014.
Becker reserved the parents’ rights during the appeal and Hough was not allowed to see them. Hough said he didn’t even know where she lived, saying: “I haven’t seen her in eight years. She wouldn’t know me.
