October 11, 2023 • 22 mins
Catherine is charged with the disappearance of her children, but a judge finds she is incompetent to stand trial. What does this mean for Troy’s search for his kids and pursuit of justice?
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'd be remiss if I didn't start, ladies and gentlemen
by thanking Montgomery County Police Department. They have worked tirelessly.
There are so many people trying to help, and we
just appreciate that from Mendocile.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Now.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I don't usually cry, so I apologize.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Randy Hoggle is standing in front of electron with a
bunch of microphones capturing every word on either side. He's
flanked by police officers. His words and his presence seem desperate.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Ladies and gentlemen, if I could, I really am saying
this for my daughter, and this is a plea of
my daughter to come home and have help.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Randy looks like he hasn't slept. His crisp blue and
white shirt is a contrast to his drawn face and
the bags under his eyes.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Many people deal with mental illness, Many families deal with
mental illness. It's always a judgment about medication and the
delicate balance of medication being taken.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Randy's daughter, Katherine Hoggle, has been missing on the run
for three days now, and it's been four days since
anyone besides Catherine has seen her two youngest children, Sarah
and Jacob.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
We know she's probably not been on medication for two weeks,
and thus we know, Katherine, this is not you, and
this is not who you're about and what you do.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
For years, Catherine's mental health had been deteriorating. This last year.
In particular, her family, her dad Randy, her mom Lindsay,
and her partner Troy, had run themselves ragged trying to
get Catherine the help she needed. Not only did they
get her committed to a mental health facility for a
time when she was at home, Catherine had to follow
(01:52):
strict rules set out by her family. Catherine wasn't allowed
to be alone with the kids, she couldn't drive, and
she had to continue attending a day program at a
psychiatric hospital. It was all in an attempt to keep
both the kids and Catherine safe. But now as days
went by and the kids and Catherine remained missing, they
(02:14):
were all coming to the horrible realization that Catherine was
more dangerous than they had ever imagined, and maybe, just
maybe they hadn't done enough to help her.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Everyone here is committed to if you just come and
get help, we'll all help you. And for that, I
just want to say, please come home. We miss you,
and we miss the kids.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I'm Beth Carris and this is Unrestorable, an original podcast
from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio. This press conference gave the
family one small win. The very next evening, Catherine was
(03:01):
spotted and police were notified.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
When she was picked up, she was over there with
her purse full of flyers and she was pulling them
down when she was seen by the people who called
the police to say they.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Saw Catherine was finally in custody and police began to
interrogate her. Troy, father of the missing children, breathed a
sigh of relief.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
The next morning, I get a call and they're asking
myself and Randy to come in and saying, look, she
won't tell us where the kids are. Maybe she'll tell
you guys, come ask her.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
This was the moment Troy had put all his hope into.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
When I first walked into the room, she looks at
me and she goes, oh, what are you doing here?
You know, kind of like it's a Saturday and I
show up at a bowling alley and she had like
a tournament or something. I said, well, I'm here to say,
you can tell me what the kids are so I
can go pick up our children, and she was like,
they're safe. I said, where are they? She said, they're fine.
I gave them someone. They're being watched. They're fine. I said, Katherine,
(03:57):
where are my kids?
Speaker 4 (04:00):
It became clear pretty quickly that Catherine's arrest would not
be the end of Troy's nightmare. In many ways, it
marked a new beginning. At this point, Catherine had only
been charged with child neglect and detaining a child misdemeanors.
Murder charges would not come for another three years, but
(04:21):
the capture and arrest of Catherine would kick off a
legal and personal odyssey that would raise questions about mental
illness and how it intersects with policing and the court system.
Her family would also face their own reckoning. They would
have to come to terms with the fact that their
efforts to find Catherine help hadn't been nearly enough, and
(04:43):
that that lack of help meant that the worst thing
they could imagine happening had happened.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Was day in September when in she had been interviewed
by the police. I believe for several hours. They had
brought in some people to talk with her, other people
other than the police to talk with her. In an
attempt to gain information.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
David Felson is Catherine's attorney.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
I then went in to see her. She was in
a very small room. She was in a plastic smock
type of clothing because the police had taken her clothing.
It was obvious to me, without disclosing anything confidential, that
there were profound mental health issues for Catherine, clearly and
(05:48):
profoundly not Well.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
What did you observe about her physically or what was
coming out of her mouth that made you conclude she
was profound mentally ill.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well, I'm not a doctor. I can't. It would be
wrong for me to say that I made that conclusion.
I had the suspicion it was profoundly obvious that when
you would talk to her there were significant deficits and
significant disconnects between the circumstances that she found herself in
(06:25):
and the way she would react to people. But my
job was to represent her. There were a variety of
issues that I was concerned with. The first was her competency,
because without her competency, she can't make rational and reasonable
decisions about what she should do in her circumstance.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Well, Catherine's lawyer might have been concerned about her level
of competency. The police had other concerns.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
We had authorities providing a fair amount of pressure on
us concerning the children.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Obviously there are some mental health concerns. Our concern is
the investigation and bringing those two children home.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darren Frank was a captain
in twenty fourteen. He spoke to the media when the
kids first went missing.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
We are running down every single lead. We are collecting
data from phones, We're collecting data from sightings, We're collecting
data from just interviews with people that knew Catherine, and
we're chasing down every single possibility to figure out where
she is. There's at least fifty officers involved with that effort.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Missing people are a concern for the police, but missing children,
they are everyone's nightmare. And sometimes, in their desperate effort
to find missing kids, police will push the envelope on
what is permissible.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
We have two children out there that their client claims
to be alive, and we're trying to locate them, and
the Montgomery County Police will do everything within the bounds
of the law to try and find out where those
children are.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
A few weeks after Catherine's arrest, detectives went to collect
a DNA sample from her. Desperate for answers, the investigators
ended up speaking to Catherine for a couple of hours
without her attorney knowing about it. This is a sticky
area where investigators have to balance a defendant's rights with
(08:36):
the urgency of the situation.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
He has to do his job. We run into this
all the time with all kinds of cases that there
are areas that defense attorneys don't like us acting.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Once her lawyer learned about this interaction between his client
and the police, he filed a motion asking the judge
to dismiss the charges. In court, there was also discussion
about whether Catherine had communicated an offer to take the
police to the children, something Catherine has denied. In the end,
the judge did not dismiss the charges, but told the
(09:11):
police that they couldn't speak to Catherine without her lawyer present.
The police were also prevented from taking Catherine up on
her alleged offer to lead them to the children.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I spoke with her, My investigators spoke with her, and
she very clearly, very lucid, said yes, I want to
take you to an address, and was trying to dictate
terms to us on when she wanted to go, and
she wanted to go immediately. But now I'm disappointed that
she wasn't afforded the opportunity that day to go. But
I certainly understand the judge's decision. As a law enforcement officer,
(09:45):
I understand it.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I respect it.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
As a father. If I wasn't a law enforce an officer,
I'd be very upset, And I think Troyce expressed that,
And I think if you go to most people when
it's their children in that situation, they would feel the
same frustrat that a system is standing in the way
of finding out what happens.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
From him, Troy was no doubt frustrated with the system.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
Once she got locked up. I was calling hoping that
she would say something. I was calling daily at first,
and she would talk to me and she was like,
you know, the kids are saying. I would try to
talk to her maybe about like just some other things,
you know, what's going there or whatever, and then come
back to the kids to see if she would answer differently.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
At the beginning of this whole saga, Troy believed he
might actually find his kids alive. That a small part
of what Catherine had told him was true that she
had dropped them off at a friend's house. This isn't
the first time I've heard about a mother who's accused
of hurting her kids but tells the police that they
are safe with friends. Lori Valo Dabel did that, and
(10:57):
so did Casey Anthony.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
So when it first happened, I'm thinking, Okay, within a day,
we're gonna come back. Then after you know, Tuesday goes by,
we do all the questions stuff on. When Wednesday goes by,
and it's kind of like, all right, we're passing on flyers.
Nobody's seeing nothing, all right, So within a week or
two they're gonna be back home. Then from like two
weeks out, I'm going, okay, within the next three weeks
or so, they got to be back here. So after
(11:20):
a month passes, I go, okay, Well, within it like
the next month or so, whoever has them. They don't
want to feed somebody else's kids, you know, like someone's
gonna come out and be like, oh, is someone gonna
pick up these kids? I was babysitting, you know, or
something like that, And I'm thinking, okay, now they're on
TV and stuff, So whoever has them who thinks maybe
their mom left them and abandon them. They're gonna see
them on TV and go, oh my god, I'm not
(11:40):
actually supposed to have these kids and bring them home.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
But we know that never happened. The children have now
been missing for nine years.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
My perspective started to shift. I felt like, as their father,
though on, my job was to keep hope out there
and continue to look, even though I didn't believe it anymore.
And finally, I remember one of the first time I
ever said of publica, I felt like I was betrayed,
Sarah Jacob. You know, I got home and I broke
down cry and I was like, I betrayed my kids.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Today, three years after she was arrested, Catherine was charged
with the murder of her children, even though their bodies
have never been found, But since being found incompetent to
stand trial, she has never had to face those charges
(12:35):
in court, and because of the limitations in the law
in the state where she lives, she might never have to.
Speaker 6 (12:43):
So people want to make sure that justice, the criminal
side of things, are served, but also oftentimes they want
to make sure that the human beings who are involved
in that process are also treated like human beings. Sometimes
human beings, you know, do really terrible things, but they're
still human beings.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Test Neil is a forensic psychologist and associate professor at
Iowa State University, and she studies the delicate intersection between
the US justice system and the rights of the mentally ill.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
Let's say the court has decided that somebody is incompetent
to stand trial. Now, what that means is that based
on the sixth Amendment to our Constitution, it guarantees that
people who are accused of committeing a crime, they have
the right to confront the witnesses against them, They have
or the right to aid in their own defense. They
have the right to help their attorney, you know, defend
(13:33):
them against those charges. And so the concept here is
that if somebody is incompetent to stand trial, then they
are not in their right mind to be able to
help defend themselves against those charges. And so the system,
our legal system, has said that is unfair. So we
do have the strong public interest, this desire to move
this case forward. But now we have a person who
(13:53):
cannot participate in the process as it has been designed.
So we need to stop that process and wait until
the person is of of their right mind and can
participate in their own defense.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Competency is a legal determination by a judge who considers
what treating doctors and experts have to say. But in
another state, using the same evidence, Catherine may well have
been found competent to stantrial. Even a different judge in
Maryland may have made a different determination. In Maryland, the
longest and incompetent person can be held for any felony,
(14:27):
including murder is five years, and after the five years
are up and that person cannot be made to understand
or to help in their defense, those charges will be dismissed.
This is, no doubt very frustrating for Troy. He's concerned
no one will be held responsible for the deaths of
his children, but he's also worried about something else, that
(14:50):
Catherine might in fact be manipulating the system. He knows
that she is mentally ill, but Troy wonders if she's
more capable than she's letting on, And with hindsight, he's
even now wondering when that manipulation began.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
Nobody thinks about someone would do this, especially in a
way like this, where it would have had to have
been playing net where it's not this psychotic break.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Since the kids have been gone, Troy has discovered more
about the evening leading up to their disappearance. While Troy
was at work, Catherine was with her father, Randy, and
the children. And remember, Catherine was not allowed to be
alone with the kids, nor was she allowed to drive.
But Troy has discovered that that afternoon, Randy gave his
(15:33):
daughter his car keys and let her leave.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
She left with Jacob to go get pizza right up
the street and came back three and a half hours
without him.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Troy learned that when Catherine came back without Jacob, she
told her father that she had dropped the two year
old off at a friend's for a sleepover. A two
year old at a sleepover, think about that.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
I don't know any of this at the time. I'm
at work.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
It occurued to Troy now that Catherine had been capable
enough that day to come up with a light about
what she had done with their son. When Troy gets
home later that night after stopping at a grocery store,
he finds Catherine sitting outside their townhouse on the front steps.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
I'm like, what are you doing down here? She's like, oh,
I was going to help you, Cary the groceries up.
I said, ah, that's cool.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Troy was tired, it had been a long day. He
just wanted to kiss his kids and fall asleep. But
Catherine didn't want to go in just yet. She wanted
to go across the street to grab a soda.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
So I said, yeah, it's fine. So we just went
across the stree real quick. God it came back, carried
the groceries up, put him away, and by then it's
like one o'clock in the morning. I'm tired. Literally every
other night in my life, whenever I got home my
kids were in bed, I would walk in, pray by
their bed, kiss him good night.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And go lay down.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
That night, I was tired, and I was like, you
know what if they wake up, I'm up yourself went
to bed.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
In the rear view mirror, Catherine's actions feel different, manipulative,
like part of a plan.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Do you feel like Catherine took the kids to hurt you.
Do you feel like that was her mind?
Speaker 5 (17:15):
I feel like that was probably one, Like I believe
that part of this is a revenge thing, and I
think she felt like I had basically made her life
almost a confinement or something. Because she had the day program,
she couldn't be alone with the kids, you know, So
I think it was a way of taking control. And
I think that it was probably anger towards me because
(17:35):
I'm the one who had her committed, because well, I mean,
her parents didn't have the guts to do it. I
think part of it is just her not wanting the
responsibility of being a mother at that point.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
We know what happens next. Later that afternoon, Catherine takes
Troy on a wild goose chase. The kids are never
found and Catherine takes off. Five days later, she's nabbed
by the police and since then has been in custody.
But Catherine's criminal case was halted soon after her arrest
(18:08):
when her attorney asked for Catherine to be evaluated for competency.
But Troy is skeptical about Catherine's incompetency, especially as time
wore on and Catherine continued to hinder the search for
the kids.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Why wouldn't you just bring them home? I said, bring
them home, they'll drop the charges.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
You're out, And she.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
Said, they still want to put me in jo. I said,
well they can't, So she says, well no, they still
have all the misdemeanor charges, and she goes, well, they
have the primer production, which is sixty days time served.
She goes, there's the obstruction that's ninety days. That's time served.
She goes, but they still have the two misdemeanor neglect charges.
They carry five years each. She says, that's ten years
that they can put on me.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Troy feels that Catherine's refusal to talk about the children
and assist in her own defense is calculated that it
could be a ploy to keep her out of prison,
and he's not alone. The Catherine Hoggle that you saw in.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
That courtroom, was she the same capenhoggle that you interviewed
he did.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Early in the investigation, a local Maryland reporter spoke with
police Captain Darren Frank about Catherine.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
In what way was she different.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
When we have spoken with her every time. She's very lucid.
She knows exactly who's around her. I had ten minutes
of interaction with her when she was originally arrested. She
knew exactly who I was. When I came to see
her at her request. That was one of the first
things that I asked to see. How loocid she was
and she remembered me instantly so, and she also remembers
(19:42):
the investigators by name, and she makes requests of certain
investigators by name completely different person in the courtroom.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
It seems to some that Catherine might have a plan,
knowing that in Maryland, the court must dismiss felony charges
against anyone found incompetent for five years. Has this occurred
to Catherine? Could she find a way to remain incompetent
long enough to see the murder charges dismissed.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
When I would ask her hering game, it was, I've
been advised to remaining confident.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
That's how she said it. I've justsed I've been.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
Advised to remaining confident, And then I would say, well,
who advised you?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Troy?
Speaker 5 (20:18):
You know, I can't tell you that.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Even Catherine's mother, Lindsay, seems to agree with Troy. This
is from an affidavit from twenty fifteen that Lindsay signed.
Catherine has explained to me that her plan is to
try to remain incompetent long enough to be found not
to be a danger to herself or others, and therefore
able to be released and either live with me or
(20:44):
live in a community home for women she has identified.
To do this. To remain incompetent for long enough to
get her charges dismissed, Catherine would have to convince her
therapist and treating psychiatrists at the state hospital where she
lives that she is not restorable, that no medication can
make her competent. But that's not an easy task. The
(21:06):
vast majority of incompetent defendants are restored within a year
or so. Detroit the law seems unfair. It feels to
him that it just allows Catherine to get away with
(21:28):
a horrible crime in a few short years and will
leave those who loved Jacob and Sarah without any sense
of accountability or justice. But to others, the law operated
exactly as it was intended. Next time, Unrestorable.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
We come from this very puritan kind of heritage in
our culture, and we're very punitive, with just an extraordinarily
high rate of incarceration in this country and a kind
of political narrative that we are tough on crime and
we want to make sure that people don't get away
with things. We also have a still pretty stigmatizing view
(22:08):
of mental illness.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by me Beth Carris
and Sarah Trelevin. Our story editor is Kathleen Goldhard mixing
in sound design by Reza Daya for anonymous content, Jessica
Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our executive
in charge of production, and Nick Janyas is our legal counsel.
For iHeart executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer Abu
(22:46):
Zafar
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'd be remiss if I didn't start, ladies and gentlemen
by thanking Montgomery County Police Department. They have worked tirelessly.
There are so many people trying to help, and we
just appreciate that from Mendocile.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Now.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I don't usually cry, so I apologize.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Randy Hoggle is standing in front of electron with a
bunch of microphones capturing every word on either side. He's
flanked by police officers. His words and his presence seem desperate.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Ladies and gentlemen, if I could, I really am saying
this for my daughter, and this is a plea of
my daughter to come home and have help.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Randy looks like he hasn't slept. His crisp blue and
white shirt is a contrast to his drawn face and
the bags under his eyes.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Many people deal with mental illness, Many families deal with
mental illness. It's always a judgment about medication and the
delicate balance of medication being taken.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Randy's daughter, Katherine Hoggle, has been missing on the run
for three days now, and it's been four days since
anyone besides Catherine has seen her two youngest children, Sarah
and Jacob.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
We know she's probably not been on medication for two weeks,
and thus we know, Katherine, this is not you, and
this is not who you're about and what you do.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
For years, Catherine's mental health had been deteriorating. This last year.
In particular, her family, her dad Randy, her mom Lindsay,
and her partner Troy, had run themselves ragged trying to
get Catherine the help she needed. Not only did they
get her committed to a mental health facility for a
time when she was at home, Catherine had to follow
(01:52):
strict rules set out by her family. Catherine wasn't allowed
to be alone with the kids, she couldn't drive, and
she had to continue attending a day program at a
psychiatric hospital. It was all in an attempt to keep
both the kids and Catherine safe. But now as days
went by and the kids and Catherine remained missing, they
(02:14):
were all coming to the horrible realization that Catherine was
more dangerous than they had ever imagined, and maybe, just
maybe they hadn't done enough to help her.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Everyone here is committed to if you just come and
get help, we'll all help you. And for that, I
just want to say, please come home. We miss you,
and we miss the kids.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I'm Beth Carris and this is Unrestorable, an original podcast
from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio. This press conference gave the
family one small win. The very next evening, Catherine was
(03:01):
spotted and police were notified.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
When she was picked up, she was over there with
her purse full of flyers and she was pulling them
down when she was seen by the people who called
the police to say they.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Saw Catherine was finally in custody and police began to
interrogate her. Troy, father of the missing children, breathed a
sigh of relief.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
The next morning, I get a call and they're asking
myself and Randy to come in and saying, look, she
won't tell us where the kids are. Maybe she'll tell
you guys, come ask her.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
This was the moment Troy had put all his hope into.
Speaker 5 (03:36):
When I first walked into the room, she looks at
me and she goes, oh, what are you doing here?
You know, kind of like it's a Saturday and I
show up at a bowling alley and she had like
a tournament or something. I said, well, I'm here to say,
you can tell me what the kids are so I
can go pick up our children, and she was like,
they're safe. I said, where are they? She said, they're fine.
I gave them someone. They're being watched. They're fine. I said, Katherine,
(03:57):
where are my kids?
Speaker 4 (04:00):
It became clear pretty quickly that Catherine's arrest would not
be the end of Troy's nightmare. In many ways, it
marked a new beginning. At this point, Catherine had only
been charged with child neglect and detaining a child misdemeanors.
Murder charges would not come for another three years, but
(04:21):
the capture and arrest of Catherine would kick off a
legal and personal odyssey that would raise questions about mental
illness and how it intersects with policing and the court system.
Her family would also face their own reckoning. They would
have to come to terms with the fact that their
efforts to find Catherine help hadn't been nearly enough, and
(04:43):
that that lack of help meant that the worst thing
they could imagine happening had happened.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Was day in September when in she had been interviewed
by the police. I believe for several hours. They had
brought in some people to talk with her, other people
other than the police to talk with her. In an
attempt to gain information.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
David Felson is Catherine's attorney.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
I then went in to see her. She was in
a very small room. She was in a plastic smock
type of clothing because the police had taken her clothing.
It was obvious to me, without disclosing anything confidential, that
there were profound mental health issues for Catherine, clearly and
(05:48):
profoundly not Well.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
What did you observe about her physically or what was
coming out of her mouth that made you conclude she
was profound mentally ill.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well, I'm not a doctor. I can't. It would be
wrong for me to say that I made that conclusion.
I had the suspicion it was profoundly obvious that when
you would talk to her there were significant deficits and
significant disconnects between the circumstances that she found herself in
(06:25):
and the way she would react to people. But my
job was to represent her. There were a variety of
issues that I was concerned with. The first was her competency,
because without her competency, she can't make rational and reasonable
decisions about what she should do in her circumstance.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Well, Catherine's lawyer might have been concerned about her level
of competency. The police had other concerns.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
We had authorities providing a fair amount of pressure on
us concerning the children.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Obviously there are some mental health concerns. Our concern is
the investigation and bringing those two children home.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darren Frank was a captain
in twenty fourteen. He spoke to the media when the
kids first went missing.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
We are running down every single lead. We are collecting
data from phones, We're collecting data from sightings, We're collecting
data from just interviews with people that knew Catherine, and
we're chasing down every single possibility to figure out where
she is. There's at least fifty officers involved with that effort.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Missing people are a concern for the police, but missing children,
they are everyone's nightmare. And sometimes, in their desperate effort
to find missing kids, police will push the envelope on
what is permissible.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
We have two children out there that their client claims
to be alive, and we're trying to locate them, and
the Montgomery County Police will do everything within the bounds
of the law to try and find out where those
children are.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
A few weeks after Catherine's arrest, detectives went to collect
a DNA sample from her. Desperate for answers, the investigators
ended up speaking to Catherine for a couple of hours
without her attorney knowing about it. This is a sticky
area where investigators have to balance a defendant's rights with
(08:36):
the urgency of the situation.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
He has to do his job. We run into this
all the time with all kinds of cases that there
are areas that defense attorneys don't like us acting.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Once her lawyer learned about this interaction between his client
and the police, he filed a motion asking the judge
to dismiss the charges. In court, there was also discussion
about whether Catherine had communicated an offer to take the
police to the children, something Catherine has denied. In the end,
the judge did not dismiss the charges, but told the
(09:11):
police that they couldn't speak to Catherine without her lawyer present.
The police were also prevented from taking Catherine up on
her alleged offer to lead them to the children.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I spoke with her, My investigators spoke with her, and
she very clearly, very lucid, said yes, I want to
take you to an address, and was trying to dictate
terms to us on when she wanted to go, and
she wanted to go immediately. But now I'm disappointed that
she wasn't afforded the opportunity that day to go. But
I certainly understand the judge's decision. As a law enforcement officer,
(09:45):
I understand it.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I respect it.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
As a father. If I wasn't a law enforce an officer,
I'd be very upset, And I think Troyce expressed that,
And I think if you go to most people when
it's their children in that situation, they would feel the
same frustrat that a system is standing in the way
of finding out what happens.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
From him, Troy was no doubt frustrated with the system.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
Once she got locked up. I was calling hoping that
she would say something. I was calling daily at first,
and she would talk to me and she was like,
you know, the kids are saying. I would try to
talk to her maybe about like just some other things,
you know, what's going there or whatever, and then come
back to the kids to see if she would answer differently.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
At the beginning of this whole saga, Troy believed he
might actually find his kids alive. That a small part
of what Catherine had told him was true that she
had dropped them off at a friend's house. This isn't
the first time I've heard about a mother who's accused
of hurting her kids but tells the police that they
are safe with friends. Lori Valo Dabel did that, and
(10:57):
so did Casey Anthony.
Speaker 5 (10:59):
So when it first happened, I'm thinking, Okay, within a day,
we're gonna come back. Then after you know, Tuesday goes by,
we do all the questions stuff on. When Wednesday goes by,
and it's kind of like, all right, we're passing on flyers.
Nobody's seeing nothing, all right, So within a week or
two they're gonna be back home. Then from like two
weeks out, I'm going, okay, within the next three weeks
or so, they got to be back here. So after
(11:20):
a month passes, I go, okay, Well, within it like
the next month or so, whoever has them. They don't
want to feed somebody else's kids, you know, like someone's
gonna come out and be like, oh, is someone gonna
pick up these kids? I was babysitting, you know, or
something like that, And I'm thinking, okay, now they're on
TV and stuff, So whoever has them who thinks maybe
their mom left them and abandon them. They're gonna see
them on TV and go, oh my god, I'm not
(11:40):
actually supposed to have these kids and bring them home.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
But we know that never happened. The children have now
been missing for nine years.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
My perspective started to shift. I felt like, as their father,
though on, my job was to keep hope out there
and continue to look, even though I didn't believe it anymore.
And finally, I remember one of the first time I
ever said of publica, I felt like I was betrayed,
Sarah Jacob. You know, I got home and I broke
down cry and I was like, I betrayed my kids.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Today, three years after she was arrested, Catherine was charged
with the murder of her children, even though their bodies
have never been found, But since being found incompetent to
stand trial, she has never had to face those charges
(12:35):
in court, and because of the limitations in the law
in the state where she lives, she might never have to.
Speaker 6 (12:43):
So people want to make sure that justice, the criminal
side of things, are served, but also oftentimes they want
to make sure that the human beings who are involved
in that process are also treated like human beings. Sometimes
human beings, you know, do really terrible things, but they're
still human beings.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Test Neil is a forensic psychologist and associate professor at
Iowa State University, and she studies the delicate intersection between
the US justice system and the rights of the mentally ill.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
Let's say the court has decided that somebody is incompetent
to stand trial. Now, what that means is that based
on the sixth Amendment to our Constitution, it guarantees that
people who are accused of committeing a crime, they have
the right to confront the witnesses against them, They have
or the right to aid in their own defense. They
have the right to help their attorney, you know, defend
(13:33):
them against those charges. And so the concept here is
that if somebody is incompetent to stand trial, then they
are not in their right mind to be able to
help defend themselves against those charges. And so the system,
our legal system, has said that is unfair. So we
do have the strong public interest, this desire to move
this case forward. But now we have a person who
(13:53):
cannot participate in the process as it has been designed.
So we need to stop that process and wait until
the person is of of their right mind and can
participate in their own defense.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Competency is a legal determination by a judge who considers
what treating doctors and experts have to say. But in
another state, using the same evidence, Catherine may well have
been found competent to stantrial. Even a different judge in
Maryland may have made a different determination. In Maryland, the
longest and incompetent person can be held for any felony,
(14:27):
including murder is five years, and after the five years
are up and that person cannot be made to understand
or to help in their defense, those charges will be dismissed.
This is, no doubt very frustrating for Troy. He's concerned
no one will be held responsible for the deaths of
his children, but he's also worried about something else, that
(14:50):
Catherine might in fact be manipulating the system. He knows
that she is mentally ill, but Troy wonders if she's
more capable than she's letting on, And with hindsight, he's
even now wondering when that manipulation began.
Speaker 5 (15:05):
Nobody thinks about someone would do this, especially in a
way like this, where it would have had to have
been playing net where it's not this psychotic break.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Since the kids have been gone, Troy has discovered more
about the evening leading up to their disappearance. While Troy
was at work, Catherine was with her father, Randy, and
the children. And remember, Catherine was not allowed to be
alone with the kids, nor was she allowed to drive.
But Troy has discovered that that afternoon, Randy gave his
(15:33):
daughter his car keys and let her leave.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
She left with Jacob to go get pizza right up
the street and came back three and a half hours
without him.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Troy learned that when Catherine came back without Jacob, she
told her father that she had dropped the two year
old off at a friend's for a sleepover. A two
year old at a sleepover, think about that.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
I don't know any of this at the time. I'm
at work.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
It occurued to Troy now that Catherine had been capable
enough that day to come up with a light about
what she had done with their son. When Troy gets
home later that night after stopping at a grocery store,
he finds Catherine sitting outside their townhouse on the front steps.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
I'm like, what are you doing down here? She's like, oh,
I was going to help you, Cary the groceries up.
I said, ah, that's cool.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Troy was tired, it had been a long day. He
just wanted to kiss his kids and fall asleep. But
Catherine didn't want to go in just yet. She wanted
to go across the street to grab a soda.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
So I said, yeah, it's fine. So we just went
across the stree real quick. God it came back, carried
the groceries up, put him away, and by then it's
like one o'clock in the morning. I'm tired. Literally every
other night in my life, whenever I got home my
kids were in bed, I would walk in, pray by
their bed, kiss him good night.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And go lay down.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
That night, I was tired, and I was like, you
know what if they wake up, I'm up yourself went
to bed.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
In the rear view mirror, Catherine's actions feel different, manipulative,
like part of a plan.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Do you feel like Catherine took the kids to hurt you.
Do you feel like that was her mind?
Speaker 5 (17:15):
I feel like that was probably one, Like I believe
that part of this is a revenge thing, and I
think she felt like I had basically made her life
almost a confinement or something. Because she had the day program,
she couldn't be alone with the kids, you know, So
I think it was a way of taking control. And
I think that it was probably anger towards me because
(17:35):
I'm the one who had her committed, because well, I mean,
her parents didn't have the guts to do it. I
think part of it is just her not wanting the
responsibility of being a mother at that point.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
We know what happens next. Later that afternoon, Catherine takes
Troy on a wild goose chase. The kids are never
found and Catherine takes off. Five days later, she's nabbed
by the police and since then has been in custody.
But Catherine's criminal case was halted soon after her arrest
(18:08):
when her attorney asked for Catherine to be evaluated for competency.
But Troy is skeptical about Catherine's incompetency, especially as time
wore on and Catherine continued to hinder the search for
the kids.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Why wouldn't you just bring them home? I said, bring
them home, they'll drop the charges.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
You're out, And she.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
Said, they still want to put me in jo. I said,
well they can't, So she says, well no, they still
have all the misdemeanor charges, and she goes, well, they
have the primer production, which is sixty days time served.
She goes, there's the obstruction that's ninety days. That's time served.
She goes, but they still have the two misdemeanor neglect charges.
They carry five years each. She says, that's ten years
that they can put on me.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Troy feels that Catherine's refusal to talk about the children
and assist in her own defense is calculated that it
could be a ploy to keep her out of prison,
and he's not alone. The Catherine Hoggle that you saw in.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
That courtroom, was she the same capenhoggle that you interviewed
he did.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Early in the investigation, a local Maryland reporter spoke with
police Captain Darren Frank about Catherine.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
In what way was she different.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
When we have spoken with her every time. She's very lucid.
She knows exactly who's around her. I had ten minutes
of interaction with her when she was originally arrested. She
knew exactly who I was. When I came to see
her at her request. That was one of the first
things that I asked to see. How loocid she was
and she remembered me instantly so, and she also remembers
(19:42):
the investigators by name, and she makes requests of certain
investigators by name completely different person in the courtroom.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
It seems to some that Catherine might have a plan,
knowing that in Maryland, the court must dismiss felony charges
against anyone found incompetent for five years. Has this occurred
to Catherine? Could she find a way to remain incompetent
long enough to see the murder charges dismissed.
Speaker 5 (20:06):
When I would ask her hering game, it was, I've
been advised to remaining confident.
Speaker 6 (20:12):
That's how she said it. I've justsed I've been.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
Advised to remaining confident, And then I would say, well,
who advised you?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Troy?
Speaker 5 (20:18):
You know, I can't tell you that.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Even Catherine's mother, Lindsay, seems to agree with Troy. This
is from an affidavit from twenty fifteen that Lindsay signed.
Catherine has explained to me that her plan is to
try to remain incompetent long enough to be found not
to be a danger to herself or others, and therefore
able to be released and either live with me or
(20:44):
live in a community home for women she has identified.
To do this. To remain incompetent for long enough to
get her charges dismissed, Catherine would have to convince her
therapist and treating psychiatrists at the state hospital where she
lives that she is not restorable, that no medication can
make her competent. But that's not an easy task. The
(21:06):
vast majority of incompetent defendants are restored within a year
or so. Detroit the law seems unfair. It feels to
him that it just allows Catherine to get away with
(21:28):
a horrible crime in a few short years and will
leave those who loved Jacob and Sarah without any sense
of accountability or justice. But to others, the law operated
exactly as it was intended. Next time, Unrestorable.
Speaker 6 (21:46):
We come from this very puritan kind of heritage in
our culture, and we're very punitive, with just an extraordinarily
high rate of incarceration in this country and a kind
of political narrative that we are tough on crime and
we want to make sure that people don't get away
with things. We also have a still pretty stigmatizing view
(22:08):
of mental illness.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by me Beth Carris
and Sarah Trelevin. Our story editor is Kathleen Goldhard mixing
in sound design by Reza Daya for anonymous content, Jessica
Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our executive
in charge of production, and Nick Janyas is our legal counsel.
For iHeart executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer Abu
(22:46):
Zafar
Hosts And Creators
Beth Karas
Sarah Treleaven
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