Mom accused of murder allegedly made eerie drawing of three kids' faces

Washington Post

a day ago

Of all the bizarre moments in the 11-year case against Catherine Hoggle, the Maryland woman who is set to appear in court Tuesday afternoon on refiled charges that she killed her two youngest children, one coming into focus is the night she hid in a sprawling complex owned by the U.S. Department of Energy.
In new court documents, police say Hoggle slipped into a lobby of the facility in Montgomery County at 7:13 p.m. on Sept. 8, 2014, after an employee who was leaving held the door open for her. Surveillance video recorded her walking slowly — wearing sneakers, jeans, a dark top, and a blank look on her face. Over the preceding 36 hours, authorities allege, she had killed Jacob, 2 and Sarah, 3, whose bodies have never been found, and had plans to use her Chrysler minivan to abduct the children's 5-year-old brother at his school bus stop.
Instead, police say, Hoggle, who has a long history of mental illness, abandoned her final step and spent four days largely out of sight in the Germantown area before officers found her walking alone down a road. Investigators retracing her steps found the DOE building surveillance video and several items they say she left behind in a trash can: her wallet, an ID and a sketch depicting a hand throwing away images of a tiny minivan and tiny faces of what appear to be young children.
The drawing, which has never been disclosed in court, is described in an application for an arrest warrant that was filed late last month in Montgomery District Court. In four pages, it summarizes authorities' case against Hoggle.
Among the allegations: Just hours after her two youngest children disappeared, while Hoggle was at her day treatment program, she told another person: 'I just strangled my kids.' She then made a choking motion with her hands, investigators say, before saying she was joking.
None of the assertions have been proved or faced a jury.
The Hoggle case has long been stalled — and for three years was dropped — because doctors have repeatedly concluded that Hoggle's mental illness makes her too confused to participate in court proceedings. Prosecutors have long argued she was exaggerating her symptoms to avoid trial.
Hoggle's attorney, David Felsen, said Tuesday the new documents are filled with vague descriptions stitched together by police conjecture. 'A great deal of this just seems to be what they think happened,' he said.
He also said the way the application for the arrest warrant played out — it was not accepted by a district court commissioner, who instead concluded the case merited two charges of second-degree child abuse — indicated police and prosecutors simply moved the case to what they thought would be a more friendly venue. It went from Maryland's district court system, generally where cases start, to the circuit court system, where grand jury sessions are held.
Two days after the commissioner's decision, according to court records and Felsen, prosecutors asked a district court judge to drop that version of the case and presented their findings to a circuit court grand jury, which returned an indictment of two counts of murder. That case is what is being heard in court Tuesday.
Prosecutors are expected to argue this afternoon that Hoggle, who was reindicted in the case last week, should continue to be held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility. In such bond-review hearings, prosecutors often reveal details of their cases.
Felsen said the new indictment against Hoggle flies in the face of a 2022 ruling by a Montgomery County judge who dropped the original murder charges in the case. That judge cited Maryland law that people deemed mentally unfit for court proceedings cannot be held indefinitely by the criminal system without being tried.
Hoggle was eventually released from a maximum security psychiatric hospital and was arrested on Friday.
'We believe that she cannot be held, given she was already held for eight years under a finding of incompetency to stand trial,' Felsen said Tuesday.
Montgomery's top prosecutor, John McCarthy, has long vowed to keep the case alive.
'As long as I'm state's attorney,' he said in 2022, 'if she is ever deemed safe enough to be released, and gets out, I will recharge her with two counts of first-degree murder.'
In detailing the case against Hoggle, the warrant included many findings that have already come out in previous court filings and hearings.
On Sept. 7, 2014, police allege, Hoggle was last seen with Jacob — having driven off with him and returned alone before telling family members she'd dropped him off at a friend's for a sleepover. That night, police allege, she secretly took Sarah. The girl has never been seen again.
According to the warrant, investigators consulted with a criminal profiler at the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.
'It was their belief that the children were murdered, likely by strangulation and their bodies were disposed of via an outside trash container,' investigators wrote in the warrant, describing a scenario that matches Hoggle's alleged words and drawing.
On the morning of Sept. 8, the children's father, Troy Turner, who had not been around the children the day before and had worked late, took his oldest son to a school bus stop.
In their warrant, detectives wrote that 'the suspect returned to the school bus stop in attempt to abduct their last five year old child [but] her plan was interrupted by Troy Turner, thus saving the five year old child's life.'
Later that night, she slipped into the DOE building, according to court records, and left it about 4:30 a.m.
Hours later, police officials held a news conference disclosing what had quickly become an alarming case that — at least at that point — was a missing persons investigation.
The evening after the news conference, Hoggle was reportedly seen getting off a commuter bus in Germantown. She was not captured until three days later.
Police originally charged her with neglect and obstruction counts, which were enough to keep her detained. State doctors who evaluated her concluded she was mentally incompetent to stand trial, meaning she would have difficulty understanding court proceedings and communicating with her attorney. She was transferred to the Clifton T. Perkins hospital, a maximum security psychiatric facility.
In late 2022, Circuit Judge James Bonifant, citing the five-year law, ordered the charges dropped. But as he did so, Bonifant ordered Hoggle to remain in a psychiatric hospital under Maryland's civil commitment procedures. But last month, on July 23, Hoggle was released from Perkins.
That set the stage for authorities' seeking the criminal charges and the indictment, placing Hoggle back into the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and at the court hearing Tuesday afternoon.