Charges to br filed in Zion murders

[YASNY]

Fox News just stated the the Trib is reporting that charges will be files today on the murder of the 2 little girls in Zion.

 

Link

Edited May 10, 2005 by YASNY

[Soxy]

Wow, when I got in this morning the police chief said he had no clue as to who did it. Said, for all he knew it could have been Santa Clause

[Steff]

Wow, when I got in this morning the police chief said he had no clue as to who did it. Said, for all he knew it could have been Santa Clause

 

They were speculating this morning on Channel 2 that it would be the father of one of the girls.

[mreye]

Wow, when I got in this morning the police chief said he had no clue as to who did it. Said, for all he knew it could have been Santa Clause

Did he actually say "Santa Claus?" That's crazy! In a murder involving kids? :headshake

[Soxy]

Did he actually say "Santa Claus?" That's crazy! In a murder involving kids?  :headshake

Yep, here's what he said:

Police continued to conduct interviews and gather evidence Monday evening, but no arrests had been made. Zion Police Chief Doug Malcolm said at an afternoon news conference that his department had no solid leads. The chief said he could offer no comfort to parents and neighbors chilled by the thought of a killer on the loose.

 

"It could be Santa Claus. Who knows?" Malcolm said. "There's nothing I can say to them to make them feel better."

 

 

(from today's trib)

[Chisoxrd5]

Did he actually say "Santa Claus?" That's crazy! In a murder involving kids?  :headshake

 

He sounds like a real class act...

 

He also went on to say that "this is not CSI"...when asked what sorts of things are they doing in the investigation.

 

Makes you wonder if this police chief is enjoying this publicit a little TOO MUCH :headshake

[mreye]

He sounds like a real class act...

 

He also went on to say that "this is not CSI"...when asked what sorts of things are they doing in the investigation.

 

Makes you wonder if this police chief is enjoying this publicit a little TOO MUCH :headshake

I think he's probably tired of the publicity and cracking under the pressure.

[retro1983hat]

I think he's probably tired of the publicity and cracking under the pressure.

 

 

Based on my experience covering Chicago area crime, these Suburban Police Chiefs are not prepared to handle the media when a big event breaks out. They also don't have the money for a Public Information Officer unless your a bigger town like Aurora, Joliet, Elgin, etc.

 

If it is the dad, this is the second suburban case in a week where a parent has brutally stabbed their kids. Sickening and disgusting are the only thoughts I have toward the perpetrator. For the families, it's beyond sad and tragic.

[mreye]

Based on my experience covering Chicago area crime, these Suburban Police Chiefs are not prepared to handle the media when a big event breaks out. They also don't have the money for a Public Information Officer unless your a bigger town like Aurora, Joliet, Elgin, etc.

 

If it is the dad, this is the second suburban case in a week where a parent has brutally stabbed their kids. Sickening and disgusting are the only thoughts I have toward the perpetrator. For the families, it's beyond sad and tragic.

I hope to God it's not the Father.

[Dick Allen]

I hope to God it's not the Father.

It appears it is the father who "found" them who will be charged. The guy just got out of jail in Texas last month. If he did it and there is any justice in the world..............

[Steff]

Father charged. 2 counts of 1st degree.

[Queen Prawn]

If dude did it, he is one sick bastard.

[Texsox]

If dude did it, he is one sick bastard.

 

Whoever did it is one sick bastard.

[Steff]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=747943

 

 

"Jerry Hobbs told investigators he was angry at his 8-year-old daughter for breaking curfew when he tracked her and a young friend down in a wooded park, punched her and then killed both girls, stabbing his daughter over and over again in the neck and eyes", prosecutors said his first court appearance Wednesday.

[Steff]

This man needs to meet the same fate he delivered..

 

 

http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_131103130.html

 

May 11, 2005 11:00 am US/Central

WAUKEGAN, Ill. (AP) Jerry Hobbs told investigators he was angry at his 8-year-old daughter for breaking curfew when he tracked her and a young friend down in a wooded park, punched her and then killed both girls, stabbing his daughter over and over again in the neck and eyes, prosecutors said Wednesday at the man's first court appearance on murder charges.

 

Hobbs, shackled and in a dark blue jail uniform, stared at the courtroom floor as Assistant Lake County State's Attorney Jeff Pavletic described the case against him.

 

"This was a slaughter of two little girls," Pavletic said.

 

The killer was so enraged, he said, that the knife wounds went through Laura Hobbs' neck into her spine.

 

After hearing the prosecutor's descriptions, the judge ordered Hobbs held without bond. A public defender had not yet been appointed to represent him.

 

Hobbs had led police to the bodies of Laura and her 9-year-old friend Krystal Tobias early Monday morning, claiming he had come across them just off the Beulah Park bike path while searching with relatives for his daughter, who had been missing since Mother's Day.

 

In videotaped interviews over the following two days, however, prosecutors say Hobbs told them he killed both girls after Laura refused to leave the park and then dragged their bodies into the woods.

 

Hobbs, 34, told investigators he had gone out looking for the girls between 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday. He told his daughter to go home, then punched her when she disobeyed, Pavletic said. Krystal then pulled out a potato knife to try to defend her friend, and he attacked her as well, according to the interviews. Hobbs wrested the knife from her, hit her, and then stabbed both girls repeatedly, Pavletic said.

 

He dragged them into the woods and left them face-up, side-by-side, Pavletic said. The girls had apparently taken their shoes off, and Hobbs had found them and left them in an orderly manner next to the bodies, he said.

 

"It was a brutal beating, repeated punching of the two little girls and then repeated stabs. It's pretty horrible," State's Attorney Waller said.

 

Laura was stabbed 20 times in the neck and abdomen and once in each eye, prosecutors said. Krystal was stabbed 11 times in the neck and torso.

 

Waller said he didn't believe that Krystal had brought the knife, but that was what Hobbs had told investigators in the interviews and written statements.

 

Pavletic said Hobbs, who had just been released from prison a month earlier for aggravated assault, told investigators he believed Laura had stolen money from her mother. She had been grounded, but her mother let her go out and play on Mother's Day.

 

Lake County Public Defender David Brozsky said he hadn't seen details of the case and couldn't comment yet, but he said he would assign two capital defenders.

 

The murders happened less than a month after Hobbs was released from prison for threatening his ex-girlfriend with a chainsaw.

 

"There's no rational explanation or reasonable motive that can be ascribed to an act of horror like this," Lake County State's Attorney Michael Waller said.

 

Hobbs, 34, had led police to the girls himself, claiming to have discovered their bodies while searching for his missing daughter early Monday with the girl's grandfather, Arthur Hollabaugh, Hollabaugh said.

 

The father was questioned through the day Monday and again Tuesday in the deaths of Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9.

 

"I think it's safe to say his reaction to questions piqued the officers interest to question him further," Waller said. He told NBC's "Today" on Wednesday that there had been "a minor discipline problem" with Laura, but it had been resolved and was not considered the motive.

 

Both girls had been beaten and stabbed multiple times and then left to die in the woods on Mother's Day, Lake County Coroner Richard Keller said. He said the girls were found side-by-side, facing up and did not appear to have been sexually assaulted. They appeared to have been killed near the area where they were found, he said.

 

At a prayer vigil Tuesday evening, the slain girls' mothers hugged each other, crying.

 

Through tears, Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh, read a poem written by her daughter's classmate that referred to the girls as "little angels" and ended: "They died too young."

 

Authorities said Tuesday additional charges could still be filed in the girls' slayings but did not specify what those might be. Hobbs did not yet have an attorney who could comment.

 

Hobbs has an extensive criminal history dating back to 1990 in Texas, including prior arrests for assault and resisting arrest, according to records kept by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

 

For the two years up until April 12, he was in a Texas prison serving time for assault involving an argument with Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh, during which he grabbed a chain saw and chased neighbors through the trailer park where they lived, according to Wichita County, Texas, Assistant District Attorney Rick Mahler.

 

No one was hurt in the 2001 incident and someone subdued Hobbs by hitting him in the back with a shovel, Mahler said. Hobbs was sentenced to 10 years probation but failed to appear for required meetings, so his probation was revoked in 2003 and he was imprisoned until last month.

 

After the girls' disappearance, Arthur Hollabaugh said police searched his Zion home, where Hobbs was living with the family, and he said they took photos of his own shoe soles.

 

"They went through our stuff, took clothes. They've taken his and my daughter's and taken the computer to see if my granddaughter was on an Internet chat room," he said.

 

"Jerry just got out of prison for aggravated assault and I think they're holding that against him," Hollabaugh said. "I don't think he did it."

 

Arthur Hollabaugh described the search for his missing granddaughter and said the two men were in the woods shortly before dawn Monday when they spotted Laura's bike part way down a ravine in the brush.

 

Minutes later, he said, Hobbs was screaming that he had found the bodies.

 

"I went and I seen them from a distance," said Hollabaugh. "It was clear they were laying there."

 

At the entrance to Beulah Park on Tuesday more than a dozen young children stood quietly around a growing memorial of flowers, balloons and stuffed animals Tuesday afternoon.

 

One sign read: "May your angels rest peacefully in heaven."

 

Zion, along Lake Michigan, was founded in 1901 by a religious faith healer as a utopian community. It has about 22,000 residents but retains a quiet, at times rural feel despite being on the edge of both the Chicago and Milwaukee metropolitan areas.

 

About 300 people, many whom were parents upset about the police response, packed a school gymnasium Tuesday night to hear public officials discuss the slayings, the charges and safety in the community.

 

"We never thought a father would do that to a daughter. They were just babies. They didn't do anything wrong," said Krystal's 15-year-old brother, Alberto Segura.

 

He said he had never met Hobbs but knew Hobbs was searching with his own family the night his sister was killed. Police didn't tell the family much about the investigation, and they didn't find out that Hobbs had been charged or was a suspect until they saw it on television, he said.

 

His mother is distraught over the loss, he said.

 

"She doesn't want to live anymore," he said. "She was the family's little girl and now she's dead."

[Kid Gleason]

Plain and simple, he admitted it, bullet to the head.

[EvilJester99]

A shank in prison is what he will be facing.....

[Kid Gleason]

A shank in prison is what he will be facing.....

 

Thats still too long to wait. As soon as he admitted it, he needed to be taken outside and done away with. There is no reform for s*** like him. Let's see, he's chased people with a chainsaw, and then was released after he was "reformed", and he proceeded to kill his own daughter of 8, and her friend who was 9. Both died in EXTREMELY violent fashion. Seems to me he got worse over time. No reform, and no chance at it, and no further life.

 

THIS guy is why the death penalty should NEVER be done away with 100%. I have no interest in any of my tax money going to this POS to eat dinner and have a comfy blanky at night. But I will gladly hand over the money for a gun and a bullet for his head.

[Steff]

Thats still too long to wait. As soon as he admitted it, he needed to be taken outside and done away with. There is no reform for s*** like him. Let's see, he's chased people with a chainsaw, and then was released after he was "reformed", and he proceeded to kill his own daughter of 8, and her friend who was 9. Both died in EXTREMELY violent fashion. Seems to me he got worse over time. No reform, and no chance at it, and no further life.

 

THIS guy is why the death penalty should NEVER be done away with 100%. I have no interest in any of my tax money going to this POS to eat dinner and have a comfy blanky at night. But I will gladly hand over the money for a gun and a bullet for his head.

 

 

It's not done away with.. and I think the pressure from this one will cause the chair to be plugged back in.. and soon.

[EvilJester99]

I completely agree they should take him out back and blow his brains out on the wall...no question but the moralists in the world worry about the "Slippery slope" and it will never happen...

[Kid Gleason]

Steff,

I was just saying that against the idea of it ever being done away with. I just never understood many of the anti-death penalty arguments when it comes to this type of thing. I understand if there is still questions. But the guy admitted to doing it, so why would anybody (outside of maybe his parents) want him alive? I just don't get that aspect of the anti-death crowd.

Edited May 12, 2005 by Kid Gleason

[YASNY]

They should take him back to Buelah Park in Zion and string the POS up.

[Kid Gleason]

They should take him back to Buelah Park in Zion and string the POS up.

 

But if there is anything to the whole "souls sticking around where they departed" thing, I am not so sure those little girls want him hanging out (heh...puns) with them. But at the same time, they might want to see it.

[Steff]

Steff,

I was just saying that against the idea of it ever being done away with. I just never understood many of the anti-death penalty arguments when it comes to this type of thing. I understand if there is still questions. But the guy admitted to doing it, so why would anybody (outside of maybe his parents) want him alive? I just don't get that aspect of the anti-death crowd. 

 

 

Sorry bout that. I thought you interpreted the moratorium to mean there no longer is one in Illinois.