Eric Hoffman visits the grave most every weekend.
He places fresh flowers there to honor his mother, a spray of color amid the darkness that haunts him.
Carol Ann Zastudil died in a brutal and bloody slaying when he was only 12. She was stabbed in the face, neck, chest and back. Her throat was cut, her head nearly severed. Her murder remains unsolved more than four decades later.
“I’m tired of it,” Eric said, standing beside his mother’s grave in Akron, Ohio, one recent chilly Sunday morning. “It’s got to be closed.”
Eric, now 54, and his stepfather found Carol, then 36, slain in a bedroom in their Perry Township home when Eric went home from school early because he was sick. In addition to the stab wounds, authorities later noted, her skull was fractured, possibly from being struck by a blunt object or a fall.
