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Bodies of Missing Girls Found in Illinois
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zero
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PostMon May 09, 2005 2:57 pm    Bodies of Missing Girls Found in Illinois

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By MIKE COLIAS, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 5 minutes ago

ZION, Ill. - Two 8-year-old girls who disappeared Sunday were found slain Monday in a park in this city north of Chicago, authorities said. A resident walking through a wooded nature area in the park discovered the bodies around 6 a.m., Deputy Police Chief Clyde Watkins said. A bike path and a ravine run through the area, which police cordoned off Monday.
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The coroner identified the two victims as friends who had been reported missing Sunday night, Watkins said. He declined to identify the two but said their families had been notified.

Watkins said police were investigating the deaths as homicides, but he would not speculate how the girls were killed. Autopsies were scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Constance Collins, superintendent of the Zion Elementary School District 6, said the girls were in the same second-grade class at Beulah Park Elementary School.

She said school was in session Monday and that adults would escort children home at the end of the school day. No child would be allowed to leave unescorted, she said.

She also said social workers and a crisis intervention team had been called to help the students.

Brent Paxton, a Lake County Board member who lives across the street from the nature area, said the neighborhood is generally safe and quiet, and his three young children play in the park.

"Obviously, if it was random act, somebody just picking up kids in the park, I would be very concerned about that," Paxton said.

Zion, about 45 miles north of Chicago, has about 22,000 residents.


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Leo Wyatt
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PostMon May 09, 2005 3:15 pm    

Omg, so sad. People killing kids. THis world gone crazy.

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Starbuck
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PostMon May 09, 2005 9:36 pm    

I used to live around zion. Its not that bad of a neighborhood.

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Republican_Man
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PostMon May 09, 2005 9:54 pm    

Horrifying. Another horrifying tale.


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webtaz99
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PostTue May 10, 2005 11:25 am    

Where were the parents?


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zero
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PostTue May 10, 2005 1:34 pm    

I think they were walking home from school or something of that nature...

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webtaz99
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PostTue May 10, 2005 3:51 pm    

{from CNN}
Quote:

The girls were last seen riding bicycles during the afternoon on Mother's Day, Malcolm said. One of the bikes was recovered near the spot where their bodies were found, shortly after 6 a.m. Monday by a man taking a walk in Beulah Park, a spot that neighborhood parents warn children to avoid.

"It's out of sight of many adults who might possibly be around the kids or monitoring them," Collins said. "We try to keep them in the open."

Malcolm promised that "no stone will be unturned" in the investigation.

"Right now there's no solid leads that we're focusing in on," Malcolm said. "It's a heinous crime. It's a crime against not only those kids, but against all of us."

Hollabaugh said the girls were seen playing in the park about 5:30 to 6 p.m. Sunday.

"I know she didn't come home for dinner and we got worried, and her brothers and sisters went out looking for her," Hollabaugh told Chicago television station WLS. "They didn't find her, and then, about 9 o'clock, they called the police."



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zero
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PostTue May 10, 2005 4:12 pm    

^some mothers day present, eh?

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Republican_Man
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PostTue May 10, 2005 5:40 pm    

And guess what! It looks like it's the father!

FOX News wrote:
Dad to Be Charged in Mother's Day Murders

The ex-con father of a little girl who was beaten and stabbed to death with her best friend on Mother's Day is under arrest and will be charged with first-degree murder.

Jerry Hobbs (search), who has an extensive criminal history and was released from a Texas jail just last month, stabbed his daughter, 8-year-old Laura Hobbs (search), and her 9-year-old schoolmate, Krystal Tobias (search), repeatedly in the neck, Illinois state attorney Mike Waller said Tuesday.

The girls' bodies were found Monday morning in a park where they had been riding their bicycles.

"We are filing two counts of first-degree murder against Jerry Branton Hobbs III of Zion," Waller said at a late-afternoon press conference.

Hobbs was due in court for a bond hearing Wednesday morning. If convicted, he is eligible for the death penalty.

The girls were both reported missing Sunday night, having failed to return from a sunny Mother's Day spent outdoors.

"It was beautiful day on Sunday, it was Mother's Day. They were riding their bikes and visiting friends. At one point they ended up at the park where they encountered the defendant, and that's where the murders occurred," Waller said.

Police believe Hobbs stabbed and beat the girls to death in a wooded, secluded area of Beulah Park, where they died sometime before 8:50 p.m., before their mothers had even reported them missing.

"I have been in this business for 30 years, and this is probably the most horrific crime I have ever seen," Waller said.

Hobbs attracted the interest of detectives during routine questioning, and had been arrested Tuesday afternoon, Waller said. He was being held in Zion Police custody. Waller described him as "somewhat" cooperative.

The discovery of the girls' bodies just four blocks from their school early Monday morning unnerved the tiny city near the Wisconsin border. Zion Mayor Lane Harrison, who also works as a teacher at the high school, said residents should be relieved a killer was no longer on the loose.

"I would think it would make a tremendous difference to community because there wasn't a randomized situation where a person laid in wait for the girls," Harrison told reporters. "More importantly, the person is in custody."

Waller said state law prohibited him from going into more detail on Hobbs' motive and criminal history.

But, he said, "no reasonable motive can be ascribed to an act of horror like this."

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.

Records also show Hobbs had a rocky relationship with Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh. Hobbs had been arrested in 2001 after arguing with her, grabbing a chainsaw and chasing other residents around the Texas trailer park where they lived, according to Wichita County Assistant District Attorney Rick Mahler. Someone eventually subdued Hobbs by hitting him in the back with a shovel, Mahler said.

Hobbs was convicted of aggravated assault and sentenced to 10 years probation, but he failed to appear for his required meetings, so his probation was revoked in 2003 and he was imprisoned until his release on April 12, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

While Laura had lived in Zion since moving there with her family last August, her father rejoined the family just last month after getting out of jail.

Earlier on Tuesday, as rumors swirled that Hobbs would be charged, his family said police were unfairly narrowing their focus on him because of his lengthy criminal past.

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

Hollabaugh said he and his son-in-law were searching for the second-graders early Monday morning when they happened upon his granddaughter's bike.

While Hollabaugh called police, he said Jerry Hobbs began to scream that he had found the girls' bodies.

"I went and I seen them from a distance," Hollabaugh, 51, told The Associated Press Tuesday in describing the scene he found shortly after dawn Monday morning. "It was clear they were laying there."

Zion, along Lake Michigan near the Wisconsin border, was founded in 1901 by a religious faith healer as a utopian community. It is a working-class city that according to news accounts had just started bouncing back from the loss of a Commonwealth Edison nuclear plant in 1997.

Since the girls' bodies were found, fearful residents kept their children close by. A memorial of flowers and balloons marked the area of Beulah Park where the girls' bodies were found.

Grief counselors were sent to Beulah Park Elementary school, where Laura and Krystal were in the second grade. A teacher at the school, Julie Dobnikar, described them as "very sweet girls."

Students at Beulah Park seemed shaken that anyone would want to harm their classmates.

A friend of the girls, Michelle Maldonado, said she and her fellow students would often play in the park without a second thought.

"Every Wednesday we played in the park," she said. "Nothing really happened there, much."

Erica Harris, another friend of the victims, said she would now be afraid to play in the park.

"I was just scared because we would walk home on Wednesdays all the time and we would go to that park and play in the woods. I was sad because we were good friends," Harris said. When asked what warning from adults she received about the park, she said she was told not to talk to strangers there.

The girls' class had just finished reading "Charlotte's Web" and "A Taste of Blackberries," both of which deal with loss, school superintendent Constance Collins said Tuesday.

"I think that those stories will serve as an excellent backdrop for what we're going to have to deal with today," she told ABC's "Good Morning America."

FOX News' Jeff Goldblatt and Jane Roh and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source


Such an evil person! Why do people have to do this? I hope he gets the DEATH PENALTY like he deserves!



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Kyle Reese
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PostTue May 10, 2005 9:50 pm    

Right on! Long live the death penalty! Er... at least for worthless meatbags like him, assuming that he's guilty.

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Jeff Miller
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PostWed May 11, 2005 12:09 am    

Wasn't he just released from prision less than a month ago?

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Leo Wyatt
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PostWed May 11, 2005 3:47 am    

Don't the mother watch her kid play? I know I don't let mine out of my sight. Parents just don't keep eyes on their kids these days.

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Jeff Miller
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PostWed May 11, 2005 8:25 am    

What I don't get is how the mother could trust someone out of prison like that. Didn't he have a record of violence that led him to prision?

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madlilnerd
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PostWed May 11, 2005 8:27 am    

The girls were only 8 and 9. It was not safe for them to be out on the street, just the two of them. Why didn't they have a carer with them?

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Leo Wyatt
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PostWed May 11, 2005 8:29 am    

That what I asked where was the mother? I am with Jeff on this one too.
I mean noway would I let my child with a person right out of prison father or not.


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madlilnerd
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PostWed May 11, 2005 8:45 am    

I might let them be with a guy out of prison if I personally knew that guy for a long time, but I wouldn't let them be with him on their own

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Jeff Miller
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PostWed May 11, 2005 8:48 am    

I think he should had to have to prove that he was not a threat to the mother and the police and untill he could he shouldn't have been near them.

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Republican_Man
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PostWed May 11, 2005 9:19 am    

Jeff Miller wrote:
What I don't get is how the mother could trust someone out of prison like that. Didn't he have a record of violence that led him to prision?


I know. It's amazing. But they CONTINUALLY do things like this ACCROSS the country. In California, for instance, a 17 year old man raped (brutally) a 14 year old girl, drugging her, but it's not qualified as rape.
In Florida, those two children (Lunsford and Lundee) were all raped by people who were ONCE IN PRISON. I don't get how we can trust people like him outside of prison, much less as a father.

madlilnerd wrote:
The girls were only 8 and 9. It was not safe for them to be out on the street, just the two of them. Why didn't they have a carer with them?


It was just them alone. And it's a very small town. Why, not to long ago I was 8 and 9 and I would ride my bike around the neighborhood with my two best friends, without an adult, and it was safe. However, things have changed now, and you just can't do that anymore.



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Leo Wyatt
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PostWed May 11, 2005 9:25 am    

A good parent will never leave there kids outside by themselves no matter what. I sure don't and I live on a military base. Can't even trust people here. The Military police is always chasing down unknown cars with people who has no business being on base that are looking for kids. THey stopped one yesterday.

I go outside with my kids and watch them like a hawk.


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Republican_Man
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PostWed May 11, 2005 9:27 am    

Leo Wyatt wrote:
A good parent will never leave there kids outside by themselves no matter what. I sure don't and I live on a military base. Can't even trust people here. The Military police is always chasing down unknown cars with people who has no business being on base that are looking for kids. THey stopped one yesterday.

I go outside with my kids and watch them like a hawk.


Well, a good parent USED to be able to. I was out continuosly in my SMALL TOWN in New Jersey without parents from ages 6 to now, even. But now you can't even do that in a small town, which shows you JUST where society's going. If they are outside alone, like my siblings, then they should only be in their yard, however, with parents, etc checking on them--and NOT alone.



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Leo Wyatt
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PostWed May 11, 2005 9:29 am    

Maybe where you from but not where I am. Even When I was younger my mom would never leave me outside by myself. Society been bad for years. Trust me. I am 30 I seen some bad stuff as growing up. It all depends where you from.

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madlilnerd
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PostWed May 11, 2005 12:09 pm    

[quote="Republican_Man"]
Jeff Miller wrote:

madlilnerd wrote:
The girls were only 8 and 9. It was not safe for them to be out on the street, just the two of them. Why didn't they have a carer with them?


It was just them alone. And it's a very small town. Why, not to long ago I was 8 and 9 and I would ride my bike around the neighborhood with my two best friends, without an adult, and it was safe. However, things have changed now, and you just can't do that anymore.


My mum didn't let me out of the house on my own unless I was walking home from school or church, which were both less than a kilometre away, until I was 11. Two girls under ten should not be allowed out on their own. They should go round in a group of four or more or have an older sibling with them.


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zero
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PostWed May 11, 2005 1:16 pm    

I would not mind seeing this guy put to sleep. How horrible. Those poor girls.

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Republican_Man
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PostWed May 11, 2005 4:42 pm    

[quote="madlilnerd"]
Republican_Man wrote:
Jeff Miller wrote:

madlilnerd wrote:
The girls were only 8 and 9. It was not safe for them to be out on the street, just the two of them. Why didn't they have a carer with them?


It was just them alone. And it's a very small town. Why, not to long ago I was 8 and 9 and I would ride my bike around the neighborhood with my two best friends, without an adult, and it was safe. However, things have changed now, and you just can't do that anymore.


My mum didn't let me out of the house on my own unless I was walking home from school or church, which were both less than a kilometre away, until I was 11. Two girls under ten should not be allowed out on their own. They should go round in a group of four or more or have an older sibling with them.


I would agree with that if you are in a bigger city or something (well, ANYWHERE now). But just to keep this in mind, I would NEVER leave the neighborhood without an adult.



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PostWed May 11, 2005 5:41 pm    

The kids here play without direct adult supervision. They range from about 6-12, stay in the local area, and are known by everyone. Samantha will probably be joining them when she gets to that age, as there are normally one or two parents watching from the window, making sure they're ok. Means that the individual parents don't have to watch their children all the time.

I walked to school by myself from the age of 7, was allowed to the park with a friend at 9. I was allowed the roam the city (Liverpool) from 11. The children were probably at no great risk from strangers, and the father could have attacked anywhere. It just happened to be in the park at that time.


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