‘He broke’: 93-year-old Fremont man told police he spent month planning to kill wife, docs say
FREMONT — Until police say he made a chilling confession this week, Richard Hocking had lived a life of relative obscurity.
He moved to Fremont with his wife more than 50 years ago, settling in a three-bedroom home he purchased on Drury Court. To his family, he was known as a hard-working man who had a knack for fixing and building things, when he wasn’t racing his Shelby Cobra.
Around the neighborhood he’s called home since 1971, he was frequently seen picking up litter around Blacom Park and the nearby elementary school.
But that all changed Saturday.
Authorities say Hocking called 911 at 12:20 a.m. to admit he shot his 86-year-old wife and told a dispatcher that officers would find them in the parking lot of a strip mall on Mowry Avenue, about an eight-minute drive from his house.
When officers arrived, Hocking got out of his Ford Transit van; his wife of nearly 60 years, Patricia “Patty” Hocking, was seated in the passenger seat, dead from a gunshot wound to the head, according to court records. The firearm that police believe Hocking used was on the driver’s seat, authorities said.
Once taken to the Fremont police station, “Hocking said his wife had been struggling with health issues and killing her was ‘necessary,’ ” according to a police affidavit filed in court records.
He confessed that “he had been planning this for about a month and left his residence with victim knowing he was going to kill her,” the officer wrote in the affidavit.
Now, the 93-year-old with no known prior criminal history is awaiting an arraignment hearing on Wednesday as the oldest murder suspect at Santa Rita Jail and possibly the oldest alleged killer in recent Alameda County history.
He is being held without bail, after prosecutors charged him on Monday with murder and a sentencing enhancement for the intentional use of a firearm, alleging in the complaint that Hocking did “unlawfully, with malice aforethought, murder the victim, his wife.”
In a phone interview, his 74-year-old daughter called the allegations “such a shock.” Her father, who uses a walker for mobility, was the caretaker of her disabled stepmother, she said. She said she suspects the pressure to keep them both healthy may have pushed him over the edge.
“The way I look at it, he broke,” Lenore Hocking said Monday. “He was just super overwhelmed.”
Public records show the Hockings married in Sacramento County on May 13, 1967. He was 35 and the bride, 27.
He worked as a commercial truck driver whose passions were racing cars, swimming, welding and later attending the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, his daughter said. Although she lived with her mother and stepfather after her parents’ divorce, she reconnected with her dad as a teenager and young adult. She moved into the Hockings’ Fremont home in 2014, three years after the death of her younger brother, Rick J. Hocking — a professional motorcycle racer known as “The King of Fremont” who died at the age of 58.
She described her father as a caring and kind man, who was never mean or abusive.
“He’s always been a hard-working man, always. Always there to help people if they need it,” she said.
“Patty and Dick,” as they were known in their daily lives, adored each other, according to multiple neighbors interviewed by this news organization. One neighbor said the couple first met when Patty was a “flag girl” at the Placerville racetrack one day when Dick was racing his Cobra.
They were constantly seen socializing with neighbors, with Patty holding court on the front porch while Dick walked the streets, picking up trash. Once part of a group of longtime homeowners in their cul-de-sac, they watched as friends either moved away or died, neighbors said Tuesday.
Patty, who loved working with kids, served as a local preschool teacher for several years before retiring, and was known to keep a busy schedule. She was part of the “Flirty Floozies,” a Fremont chapter of the Red Hat Society, a social group for women 50 years and older, and regularly held gatherings at the house with friends.
A recent photo of the couple shared by a neighbor shows the pair smiling and wearing stickers that read, “Richard, Dick, dad, cuz, uncle, friend, neighborhood … birthday guy” and “Pat Hocking, wife of the birthday guy.”
Lenore fondly remembers her time with her father, even as his and her stepmother’s health deteriorated. After a welding accident, his daughter would push him in his wheelchair through the city’s Sabercat Park. He was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Patty Hocking had diabetes and suffered pain from a kneecap broken a year ago, the daughter said.
Due to conflicts with her stepmother, she left the family home in 2022 and moved to Sebastopol and hadn’t spoken to them since. She was shocked to hear from a family member this week that police had arrested her father on suspicion of killing of his wife.
Her father could be “stubborn,” she said, and “this would have never happened if he would have reached out for help, because she really needed 24/7 care.”
She now fears how her father will survive inside the county jail at 93 years old. She’s hopeful he can be put in a facility outside of the jail, as the case winds its way through the court system.
“He’s not going to go out and hurt anybody else. And he didn’t mean to hurt Patty either. He didn’t mean to take her life,” Lenore said. “I don’t think he should die in a facility like that. He deserves better. He didn’t do this because he was being mean. He’s not a mean man.”
The details in the police affidavit, which she learned about on Tuesday, left her a bit puzzled.
“Who knows? Maybe he brought it up to her, I don’t know,” she said, referring to the police account of his confession. “I cried so much yesterday. I did all my grieving yesterday. I think he’s wishing he could die. He doesn’t want to be there either. I can’t protect him. He’s done his deal. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.”
Staff writers Jason Green and Harry Harris contributed reporting.