James D. Hoff
RENO EVENING GAZETTE
June 25, 1979
MANHUNT FOR OFFICER, DRUG DEAL SUSPECTS
Reno police launched a manhunt today after a narcotics officer making a pre-dawn cocaine buy disappeared.
Reno police fear the undercover agent has been killed.
Police and the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department jointly began a ground and air search of a wooded area near Verdi for Officer Jimmy Hoff.
Hoff was last seen in Verdi in his undercover 240-Z car with three suspects at about 3 a.m. …
Hoff, 33, has been one of the Reno Police Department’s most effective narcotics officers. He is on a second tour in that capacity, having been in narcotics two and one-half years and with the police department since 1972.
RENO EVENING GAZETTE
June 25, 1979
SLAIN RENO OFFICER VICTIM OF AMBUSH
The Monday slaying of Reno Police undercover Narcotics Officer Jimmy Hoff was a planned ambush, detective Capt. Ken Pulver said today.
Monday evening, police found Hoff’s body near the Dog Valley Road summit northwest of Verdi a few hours after they had arrested two suspects. Pulver said he anticipates arresting two other suspects “within a few days.”
…Although he was under surveillance by six other officers, Hoff disappeared, was stabbed to death, and his body was buried under some rocks near Verdi.
NEVADA STATE JOURNAL
June 28, 1979
POLICE RECOVER DRUG BUY MONEY, BUT STILL SEEK TWO TEENAGERS
While Reno police continued their search Wednesday night for two teen-age suspects in the stabbing death of narcotics officer Jimmy Hoff, most of the $16,000 taken from him during the Monday’s drug buy-turned ambush was recovered, police said.
…Police said Hoff had driven to the Riverside Hospital for Extended Care on Idlewild Drive with a man from whom he was trying to buy 10 ounces of cocaine. The “cocaine” turned out to be baking soda. Pulver said police believe several persons planned from the outset to lure Hoff to a remote spot, offer him the soda as cocaine, then rob and kill him in a “drug burn.”
Police found Hoff’s partially buried body wrapped in a sheet in the hills above Verdi. They said he had been stabbed several times by two persons. A bloody butcher knife was found near the hospital.
Hoff was the first Reno police officer killed in the line of duty since 1947.
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