The case of the Hoggle children is fucked up. Did she give them away to another family or did she kill them?
Taken from the Reddit page Unsolved Mysteries:
Catherine Hoggle was not supposed to be alone unsupervised with her children. Despite this, on September 7th or 8th, 2014, Catherine managed to take off with her two youngest children – Sarah (3) and Jacob (2). Her children disappeared one by one over a 12 hour period. Neither child has been seen since.
The Disappearance
In 2014, Catherine Hoggle and Troy Turner had 3 children – a boy aged 5, a daughter, Sarah (3), and another son, Jacob (2). Catherine lived at Troy’s apartment in Clarksburg, MD, because Troy felt it was important for their children to be around their mother, even though she wasn’t allowed to be alone with them due to a long history (beginning as a teenager) of mental illness, paranoia, and schizophrenia. Catherine had been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital a few times, most recently about a year prior to the disappearance of the children.
On September 7, 2014, Catherine and her 3 children went to spend the day with Catherine’s mother, Lindsey, at her home in Gaithersburg, MD (roughly 15 miles south of Troy’s home). Catherine’s father, Randy, was also there that day. Both Lindsey and Randy were active in the lives of their grandchildren, often supervising Catherine when she was with the children and providing rides to them since Catherine was not allowed to drive. Lindsey had gone out for a brief period of time that day. At some point, Catherine asked Randy for his keys so she could take Jacob to go get pizza. He agreed. Catherine left with her son. Lindsey returned at some point and expressed concern because Catherine was both a) alone with Jacob and b) driving (neither of which were allowed). They attempted to look for her but didn’t find her. She returned home after about 3 hours. She had neither pizza nor Jacob. Catherine told her parents she’d dropped Jacob off to spend the night with a friend. They accepted this explanation and didn’t notify Troy Turner. Later in the evening, Catherine, her oldest son, and Sarah returned back to Troy Turner’s house.
Turner returned home that night close to 1AM on September 8, 2014. He claims that he wasn’t alarmed when Jacob wasn’t in his crib because Jacob would often climb out of his crib and wander into the bedroom of the oldest son. Troy Turner went to sleep. When he woke up, Sarah was not there and he realized that his youngest, Jacob, was also not in the house. Catherine told him that she dropped both Sarah and Jacob off at a new daycare center (they’d not currently been enrolled). At this point, no one had yet told Troy that Jacob hadn’t technically been seen since the previous night, or about the “slumber party”. Troy was initially willing to accept the daycare story because it was similar to how they’d started their oldest child at daycare, but over the course of the day, as he learned more information about the previous 18 hours, he became uncomfortable and decided it was time to go pick up his children.
Some quick things that I’d like to pause and call out about the timeline:
- 1) Now, as of Monday morning, the last time Jacob had been seen was when he left to get pizza with Catherine the night before.
- 2) According to Troy Turner, his oldest son (who was 5 when this happened) confirmed that Sarah was at Troy’s house the night before after they’d left from Catherine’s parents house. This means that
- 3) Jacob disappeared from Gaithersburg, MD, over a 3 hour period of time whereas Sarah disappeared from Clarksburg, MD, roughly 15 miles further north, at some point after getting home and everyone waking up in the morning. Troy did not confirm that Sarah was home before he went to sleep early morning on 9/8/14.
- 4) These two locations are located geographically close enough that it’s entirely possible that both of the children ended up in the same location. It is also possible that Jacob was in one location temporarily and, whenever Sarah disappeared, she and Jacob were reunited, at which point they went to a different location altogether. Whether they were alive or not when this happened, no one knows.
Back to September 8…
According to in interview conducted by Bob Barnard and featured on the first episode of a series on the Hoggles from Podcast “Missing Pieces”, Troy Turner convinced Catherine that they needed to go see both the children and the day care center, so they got into the car to leave. Turner tried to get information from Catherine about the day care center – a name, location, phone number – but she was vague and generally unhelpful in providing details. At some point they picked up their oldest child and went to drop him off with Lindsey. After dropping the child off with Lindsey, Turner claims that Catherine’s mood quickly shifted and she grew upset. This detail is called out by Turner and will be mentioned again later on when exploring theories.
Turner decided that it was time to to go to the police station in Germantown, MD, in order to get them involved. On the way, Catherine claimed to have remembered the daycare where the children had been left (located a few miles away in Damascus, MD) and suggested they go there before the police station. Catherine also asked that they stop at Chik-fil-A so that she could get a soda. Catherine’s medication often made her drowsy, so this was a normal request and Turner stopped. According to Turner, they got her soda, returned the car, and she asked to run back in to get a refill before they left. Turner waited in the car, realized this was taking far too long, and decided to go check on her. He discovered that she’d left the Chik-fil-A and disappeared. It would take 4 days for police to locate Catherine.
Once Catherine disappeared, Turner got the police involved.
According to the second installment of the “Missing Pieces” series on the Hoggles, Captain Darren Francke said that the police initially heard that two children went missing and now the wife was gone. Over time, the multiple different stories that Catherine had told people began to emerge leading everyone to realize that there was no clear timeline and further complicating the situation.
Four days after she disappeared, Catherine was spotted by someone who recognized her photo from the news. Police were called and, although she briefly tried to get away, Catherine was taken into custody. Cpt. Francke said that the police believe Catherine had stayed in the Germantown area for the 4 days she was missing but if they know anything more specific, they’ve not released it. According to Cpt. Francke, Catherine told Police that she left the two children with someone (she provided a name) and then she became progressively vaguer as the interview went on and they asked for additional details. Later, she changed her story to be that she’d left the children at a local park. She offered to take police to the park – and eventually they indulged her – but there were never any signs of the children or any evidence that they’d been there. Catherine was charged with a misdemeanor for child neglect but, due to her extensive mental health history, she was held at a mental health facility until she was declared fit to stand trial.
In the months following the disappearance, there were extensive searches for the children. There was a wide swath of territory covered, and police traced what they could from Catherine’s cellular activity from the days the children disappeared. There didn’t find any trace of the children or any evidence to help push the investigation along.
The Felony
Over the years, there have not been any clear new leads in this case. Catherine has continued to stay at The Clifton T. Perkins Hospital where doctors work to see if she will improve enough to be found competent to stand trial.
A 2016 article by the Washington Post focuses the headline on the fact that Catherine has tried to escape from Perkins multiple times, but couched within the article was another interesting sentiment. From the article:
”(Prosecutors) filed affidavits from Hoggle’s ex-boyfriend, mother and aunt, who say Hoggle is faking incompetency. “Catherine understands precisely what is going on,” wrote her mother, Lindsey Hoggle, who added that her daughter’s IQ was once tested at 135.”
This reflects the thoughts of Cpt. Francke, who admits that he isn’t able to determine if Catherine is competent, but does recall that she was lucid at the time she was being interviewed by police. He said even though she seemed to be lucid, he still has no reason to believe anything he told her was actually true. Whatever the case may be, it all leads to one simple fact, which is that Catherine is still not deemed fit to stand trial or to assist in her own defense. This all is relevant as we discuss the timing of the upgraded felony charges.
As mentioned earlier, Catherine has been held at the Perkins Hospital since she was charged with misdemeanors stemming from this incident in 2014. Maryland has laws that limit how long someone can be held with the goal of them becoming competent for court. These laws were created to avoid legislative purgatory where someone might find themselves held indefinitely without having due process and access to a trial. From an
unrelated article, but one that clearly breakdown the limits in MD around how long someone can be held:
“Maryland law sets limits on the time people who have been found incompetent can be held: 10 years for those accused of capital crimes, and five years for a felony or violent crime. For other crimes, the limit is three years or the maximum sentence for the most serious charge.”
As Catherine’s 3 year limit for her misdemeanor charges approached, Prosecutors indicted her and upgraded her charges to two counts of felony murder. She was ordered to stay at Perkins, and that opened a 5 year window for her to become competent to stand trial. As of the time of her indictment, Tony Turner has come to believe that his 2 youngest children are dead. In his interview on Episode 1 of the Hoggle series on “Missing Pieces”, Turner says that he tries to “take the emotion out of it and look at it logically”. He admits that is difficult in the context of his own children, but he tries to think about if it weren’t his kids, he’d think “Man, I really feel for that family because those kids are dead”.
In this Washington Post article following Catherine’s felony indictment, Turner says, "There has always been a faint hope… And I know now, with the passage of time, that Catherine killed my babies."
Similarly, Captain Francke and the Montgomery County PD believe the children are dead. One reason is that, due to the sheer magnitude of press coverage, they find it unlikely someone would want to keep the children and be involved in such a situation. Generally speaking, the amount of time that has passed with no evidence of the children also strengthens this belief.
As of November 30, 2018, Catherine was still being held at Perkins pending either changes to her competency to stand trial or the limit for how long she can be held by the state.
The Theories
Catherine was having a psychotic episode or delusion and she killed the children. She doesn’t remember and likely wouldn’t be able to.
Catherine had a long history of mental illness. On Ep1 of the Hoggle series on “Missing Pieces”, they say that Randy had told authorities when the children went missing that Catherine had been off her meds for about 2 weeks. I’ve not seen this reported by additional sources. That said, Troy Turner claims that at the time the children disappeared that Catherine had been doing well. Catherine’s attorney was very careful throughout the podcast not to say anything too definitive to reflect the private discussions he’s had with Catherine, but made an interesting point about this first theory. Her attorney believes that – based on the extent of her mental illness, even if she is found competent at some point, it isn’t necessarily reasonable to expect her to be able to know/understand/identify/remember where Sarah and Jacob actually were, being unable to even know what is and isn’t a hallucination. “Why would anyone believe that information would be accurate?” He made a point to clarify this was a question about anyone who had spent years being treated for paranoia, not specifically Catherine. ”The assumption that a restoration of competency will make restorations of 3.5 years ago clear is putting the cart before the horse.”
Catherine plotted to kill the children and was executing a clear plan. If her reasons were lucid (ie: based on cruelty vs based on a series of hallucinations/her mental state) is not known.
The strongest piece of evidence supporting that this was premeditated is that the children went missing one by one. Jacob disappeared, she returned home with a story about where he was to avoid suspicion, and then Sarah disappeared. Similarly, she created a story to avoid suspicion. Recall during the day of the disappearance that Troy Turner mentioned in the podcast how upset Catherine become once her mother, Lindsey, took their oldest child from them so that they could go look for the missing younger 2 children. Turner believes that once Lindsey had their oldest child, and Catherine realized that she wouldn’t be able to do whatever she’d done with Sarah/Jacob, she freaked out and got extremely upset. That is why she fled from the Chik-fil-A – she realized that her plan would not be completed since their oldest child was safely with his grandmother.
A Doctor interviewed in Ep 4 of the Podcast addressed that it is possible for someone to both carry out a goal related crime (under psychosis or not) while not being motivated by “real events” (ie: they are under the motivation of a hallucination). Having a lucid plan and knowing where you are doesn’t mean that your reasons for being there are based in reality.
Some people believe that Catherine is faking her incompetency. In the 2016 Washington Post article referenced in this post, Catherine’s own mother claims she is competent (that is quoted above). Additionally,
this Patch article says,” Turner has maintained that Catherine is acting a part so she can avoid trial on the felony charges. On social media, Turner has said that Catherine tried at least eight times in one year to escape from her maximum security facility, either by tying bedsheets together or taking a security card from staffers.
Episode 4 of the podcast explores the possibility of if Catherine is faking her mental illness. Interviewing a doctor at Perkins (although one who didn’t treat Catherine directly), he says that someone
could fake something like one of these disorders but maintaining it for a long period of time is “much more difficult”. He said, “I’m not saying it’s outside the realm of possibility that someone could do it long term but it would be very difficult”. He explains further that if they had doubts, they would admit the patient to a hospital specifically to keep them under observation for 24 hours straight. This is because it is hard to maintain a faked disorder over that long a period of time, while being under constant watch by people who are trained in what to look for.
Catherine’s story is true: Catherine gave the children to someone she trusted, and they are presumably safe and being taken care of.
Catherine has claimed repeatedly that the children are safe. According to Episode 3 of the Missing Pieces series on the Hoggles, Troy Turner talks about the last time he’d spoken to Catherine about the children. He asked her where they were and claims she said, “I gave them to someone. Someone has the kids.” She reiterated that they are alive when he asked – the
children were safe, not their
bodies and that “they” are “taking care of them. Somebody I trusted”. No one knows who this “they” might be.
Is this possible? Yes, although it seems unlikely considering how much time has passed. With that in mind,
there was this long investigation in Reuters recently into the world of internet “adoptions”. It’s an extremely long series that goes into how these “adoptions” happen, the questionable legality around them, and then the untraceable black hole into which many of these children disappear. Many of the parents profiled who take part in these communities were off the grid or had histories with CPS that made them prefer to lay low and keep the children (and their own parenting) hidden away. Is it possible someone from a community like this (or another person completely unaffiliated) preyed on a mentally ill woman and convinced her that her children would be better off given away to strangers? Sure, but there is no evidence of that, or that the children were alive after their initial disappearance. As a result, it doesn’t seem likely that this happened, but since Catherine continues to claim they were given away, the option needs to at least be considered.
(Note: These groups are not in any way implicated with this case and have only been mentioned to demonstrate that there are networks that exist in the USA who will facilitate off the record "adoptions".)
Catherine was planning on running away with her children, which is why she tried to extricate them one by one
This theory was only mentioned once or twice over the course of the different articles/podcast. It doesn’t seem overly likely based on the resources available to Catherine, but if she believed she could do this, perhaps she had taken Sarah and Jacob to a location to “wait” for her to return with their oldest. Whether or not she returned during her 4 days missing, or if she even remembered where her children were “waiting”, would be completely unknown.
