Speaker 1: Okay, so better, much better outcome than you were anticipating today.
Speaker 2: Definitely, it's way better, a lot better than what we
Speaker 2: thought was going to happen, for sure.
Speaker 1: In August, I got a call from Troy. After so
Speaker 1: many years, he finally got a break in Sarah and
Speaker 1: Jacob's case, the case against their mother. In all the
Speaker 1: time I've spent with Troy in listening to him tell
Speaker 1: his devastating story, this is the first time he's ever
Speaker 1: sounded hopeful.
Speaker 2: The judge determined that there needs to be a hearing
Speaker 2: so that he can determine competency itself, which is something
Speaker 2: we've been pushing for the whole time.
Speaker 1: At this point, it's been almost eight very long years
Speaker 1: since Troy's kids, Sarah and Jacob, were taken by their mother,
Speaker 1: and the state has accused her of killing them. Now,
Speaker 1: in August twenty twenty two, after years of psychiatric evaluations
Speaker 1: concluding that Catherine is incompetent to stand trial, a judge
Speaker 1: is final insisting on a hearing so he can form
Speaker 1: his own assessment. This hearing would be the first time
Speaker 1: since Catherine's twenty fourteen arrest that any judge would hear
Speaker 1: sworn testimony related to Catherine's competency. Until now, judges have
Speaker 1: only reviewed periodic reports about Catherine prepared by doctors at
Speaker 1: Clifton T. Perkins, a psychiatric hospital that she has been
Speaker 1: held in since her arrest. And this is a new judge, right.
Speaker 2: It's definitely a good thing. You know, we still have
Speaker 2: a long way to go, and there's still a very
Speaker 2: good chance, we understand, you know, there's a good chance
Speaker 2: that come December the charges will get dropped. But we
Speaker 2: have a chance to try to at least, you know,
Speaker 2: fight for Sarah and Jacob and fight for what should
Speaker 2: be happening.
Speaker 1: For years, Troy has been watching a clock the countdown
Speaker 1: to the dismissal of Catherine's murder charges. Remember, in Maryland,
Speaker 1: a person cannot be held on charges indefinitely if they
Speaker 1: are deemed incompetent. The clock will run out in four
Speaker 1: months December. First, okay, so talk to me about next steps,
Speaker 1: what happens next?
Speaker 2: So the next steps are we let me see, So
Speaker 2: October it's tenatively set for October seventh.
Speaker 1: This newly presiding judge doesn't just want to question Catherine's
Speaker 1: doctors at Clifton T. Perkins Psychiatric hospital about the conclusions
Speaker 1: of their competency evaluation. He's also suggested that he may
Speaker 1: want to question Catherine to see how much she might
Speaker 1: reveal about her state of mind and her ability to
Speaker 1: withstand the scrutiny of the criminal justice system. For Troy,
Speaker 1: it feels like taking a small step forward after so
Speaker 1: many years of disappointment.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't remember anytime that we walked out
Speaker 2: of the courtroom going okay, well this is where we
Speaker 2: should be, or I mean, we're really not where we
Speaker 2: should be at this point. Anyway. We shouldn't be anywhere
Speaker 2: near you know, the charge is possibly being dropped. We
Speaker 2: should be If anything, we should be years five years
Speaker 2: out from that still and this should have happened, you know,
Speaker 2: four or five years ago.
Speaker 1: Troy's story isn't just the story of one family. Every year,
Speaker 1: millions of defendants with mental illness are jailed, and tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of them will appear before a judge to
Speaker 1: have their competency assessed, many of them with their own
Speaker 1: trail of baggage in the form of desperate family members
Speaker 1: or forgotten victims. But as Troy and his wife Stephanie
Speaker 1: prepare for this hearing, As they nervously watch the clock,
Speaker 1: They're consumed by the overarching sense that this is their
Speaker 1: last chance, Troy's one shot at convincing a judge to
Speaker 1: move forward with Catherine's prosecution, and that Catherine and her
Speaker 1: attorney may well be able to maneuver their way out
Speaker 1: of this very specific kind of accountability. The only thing
Speaker 1: that Troy considers justice. I'm Sarah t Levin and this
Speaker 1: is Unrestorable, an original podcast from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This might not come as a big surprise, but the
Speaker 1: hearing did not happen that October. In fact, it didn't
Speaker 1: happen until mid November. My co host Beth Carris and
Speaker 1: I connected with Troy and his wife, Stephanie the night
Speaker 1: before the hearing was scheduled to start. So we'd love
Speaker 1: if you could bring us up to speed in terms
Speaker 1: of what's going on.
Speaker 2: I'll defer to my attorney, Okay.
Speaker 3: So there's been a lot of developments in the last
Speaker 3: twenty four to thirty six hours.
Speaker 1: So oh wow, Okay, this is Troy's lawyer, Matt Alegi.
Speaker 1: Like Troy, Matt is a bear of a man. He's
Speaker 1: big and broad, with dark framed glasses and a salt
Speaker 1: and pepper beard.
Speaker 3: So I mean, well, there's a lot going Principally, Perkins
Speaker 3: has not yet responded to the subpoena for records, which
Speaker 3: is putting a bit of wrinkle in their plans to
Speaker 3: have a full evidentiary hearing on Catherine's competency. The other
Speaker 3: thing that happened that was big was the state requested
Speaker 3: earlier this week that Troy be a witness and testify
Speaker 3: significantly had the hearing, which we were really expecting.
Speaker 1: Matt is actually a real estate lawyer, but he and
Speaker 1: Troy go way back, and he's become Troy and Stephanie's
Speaker 1: biggest advocate.
Speaker 3: I am not a criminal defense lawyer, but because I
Speaker 3: grew up here in Gaithsburg, in Germantown, you know, as
Speaker 3: I'm doing all the sophisticated work, I'm a lawyer in
Speaker 3: the community. And everybody I grew up with, you know,
Speaker 3: if they got in trouble with the police, or if
Speaker 3: their mom died, or if they got a hip back,
Speaker 3: you know what have they just you know, they don't
Speaker 3: understand what different kinds of lawyers are. There's coy and
Speaker 3: I've just never turned that away and the firm has
Speaker 3: been very gracious and letting me help these people, especially
Speaker 3: when they have big problems.
Speaker 1: Almost since the beginning, he's offered the services of his
Speaker 1: large legal firm pro bono, providing Troy and Stephanie with
Speaker 1: legal advice and representation. It would be tough for them.
Speaker 3: To afford, and it looks like the defense file of
Speaker 3: protective order relating to evidence, probably her records, which we
Speaker 3: haven't seen yet. We of course have concerned that this
Speaker 3: is procedural nonsense with an intent to run out the
Speaker 3: clock on the December first mandatory dismissal with the charges date.
Speaker 1: The stakes are really really high, and so Matt is
Speaker 1: helping Troy and Stephanie prepare, guiding them through legal strategy
Speaker 1: and helping Troy prep his testimony while cautiously tempering their hopefulness.
Speaker 1: Matt and Troy knew each other in high school and
Speaker 1: they reconnected right after Sarah and went missing.
Speaker 3: I mean, this has been eight years. I don't know
Speaker 3: how many thousands of hours. Navigating the American justice system
Speaker 3: without a guide or a translator is impossible. When you
Speaker 3: hear a layperson ask questions about why did this happen?
Speaker 3: Why did that happen. Why is this showing up on
Speaker 3: the docket, just being the translator, just being there, being
Speaker 3: able to explain things to have to navigate. Filing a
Speaker 3: motion in a criminal case where you're the victim, just
Speaker 3: so you know if your psychotic ex girlfriend escapes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like those kinds of things, Filing the victim notification motions,
Speaker 3: doing all the things that are required so that the
Speaker 3: hospital tells him when certain things happened that he's you know,
Speaker 3: we just we did a lot of that. You wish
Speaker 3: there was more to do. When it's a criminal case
Speaker 3: and the defendant isn't competent to stand trial, there's just
Speaker 3: not a lot to do. But he did a lot.
Speaker 3: I'm the sherpa, know, I'm the lawyer, like I'm helping fine,
Speaker 3: but this is all him. This is his drive, this
Speaker 3: is his persistence, this is his what can we do
Speaker 3: every day?
Speaker 1: Romance seems like an inappropriate word to use in this
Speaker 1: dark context, but there's such transparent affection between Matt and
Speaker 1: Troy Stephanie too. Stephanie has described Matt to me as
Speaker 1: their protector, but Matt is also yet another person sucked
Speaker 1: into the vortex of this tragedy. Determined to do something
Speaker 1: anything in what seems like an impossible situation.
Speaker 4: It was really kind of cynical looking at this whole
Speaker 4: eight year saga would say that Catherine Hoggle has been
Speaker 4: a master manipulator his entire time right until now. She's
Speaker 4: avoiding this final hearing, and she may prevail in getting
Speaker 4: her criminal charges dismissed and being civilly committed.
Speaker 3: That is the state's position, and I think everybody on
Speaker 3: this side of the screen agrees with it. And that's
Speaker 3: why they want Troy to testify, which again we were
Speaker 3: surprised about, and the extent to which they're going to
Speaker 3: want him to testify and the things they're going to
Speaker 3: want to talk him to talk about willasurprising, but they're
Speaker 3: going to want to go back and tell the story
Speaker 3: to the judgement.
Speaker 1: So not only would this hearing be the first time
Speaker 1: a judge is said to actively engage with testimony instead
Speaker 1: of just relying on doctor's competency evaluations, it is going
Speaker 1: to be the first time that Troy will get his
Speaker 1: chance to offer his testimony on the record.
Speaker 3: The state's position is she's always been competent, and she's
Speaker 3: always been lingering, and there is significant evidence through her
Speaker 3: words and actions from when this started that Troy has
Speaker 3: firsthand knowledge of that the judge needs to know about,
Speaker 3: but he can make a determination not is she competent today,
Speaker 3: but is she competent today because she's been competent the
Speaker 3: whole time?
Speaker 1: And Troy, how are you feeling about testifying tomorrow?
Speaker 2: It feels like if it's something I can do to
Speaker 2: help my kids, then it's good that there is at
Speaker 2: least something actively I can do, you know. At this point, finally,
Speaker 2: it's been so long since anything has even had a
Speaker 2: potential to make a difference. So that part, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's something that I am. You know, I guess
Speaker 2: I don't happy about it, but it's something that I'm
Speaker 2: definitely happy to do.
Speaker 1: I don't want to keep you any later. Thanks for
Speaker 1: making time again to speak with us. Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for the update. We'll of course be thinking of
Speaker 1: you guys tomorrow and we'll keep an eye on updates
Speaker 1: on what happens. And good luck.
Speaker 5: All right, Counsel and Ms Harrold.
Speaker 6: My name is James Bonathan on the administrative judge here
Speaker 6: at the Court.
Speaker 5: I will be taking.
Speaker 4: Over this case the next day. November seventeenth, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: the hearing Troy has been waiting for finally began.
Speaker 7: Would you please state and name the spell your last
Speaker 7: name for the record, short Turner to you are, and
Speaker 7: you are mister Turner Howell at fifty.
Speaker 4: Matt told us that after weeks of waiting for the
Speaker 4: hospital to comply with the subpoena to deliver Catherine's medical records,
Speaker 4: Perkins finally delivered thousands of pages, and Troy is called
Speaker 4: to the witness stand to be questioned by State's attorney
Speaker 4: John McCarthy.
Speaker 7: Tell us a little bit about the nature of their
Speaker 7: relationship and how long you've known.
Speaker 2: We're coworkers. We met in November of two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: and in two thousand and eight we started to see
Speaker 2: each other and we had our first child later that year,
Speaker 2: and then Sarah and Jacob came later. We lived together
Speaker 2: for about six and a half years, sixty and a
Speaker 2: half years.
Speaker 4: McCarthy persuades the court that it's important that Troy testify,
Speaker 4: in large part because no one at Perkins has ever
Speaker 4: spoken to him about Catherine's competence, about his conversations with her,
Speaker 4: and what he insists is not just lucidity, but literally
Speaker 4: a plan to get away with murder.
Speaker 7: Did she did any of those conversations discuss with you
Speaker 7: what was the best path for her to pursue in
Speaker 7: this case?
Speaker 2: Yes, explain that in competency was the best path. The basically,
Speaker 2: she was advised to remain incompetent. From my understanding and
Speaker 2: from what she said to me, she understood everything.
Speaker 5: You can remember the conversation.
Speaker 7: Tell us about what was being said at the time
Speaker 7: that she indicated that that about the competency bad thing.
Speaker 2: The ones she wanted to pursue, specifically was that she
Speaker 2: was not going to plead guilty to killing the children,
Speaker 2: and her way to not do that and not be
Speaker 2: accountable for that was incompetency.
Speaker 7: Did she say to you why she didn't want to
Speaker 7: please guilty to killing the kids?
Speaker 2: She said she didn't do it.
Speaker 4: The state's attorney is leading Troy down a familiar path,
Speaker 4: but one that this new judge hasn't heard before. McCarthy
Speaker 4: is getting Troy to explain how rational Catherine seems, how
Speaker 4: motivated she appears to be to remain incompetent, that this
Speaker 4: label wasn't simply applied by her doctors but actively chosen
Speaker 4: by her as a way to avoid accountability.
Speaker 5: And did she ever speak about jail with you?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 5: What did she say about jail.
Speaker 2: That she would not be safe in there?
Speaker 7: How many different conversations do you think you had with
Speaker 7: Katherine once she arrived at Firk.
Speaker 2: How many times you talked about for the first year
Speaker 2: and a half?
Speaker 8: Let me see.
Speaker 2: I would say for the first year it was minimum
Speaker 2: three or four times a week. A lot of weeks
Speaker 2: was daily. I was calling quite often, trying to see
Speaker 2: if she would slip up and say something about where
Speaker 2: my kids were.
Speaker 7: The conversation relating to her wanting to remain income, when
Speaker 7: did that take place?
Speaker 2: There were several of them, so it was over the
Speaker 2: course of from two thousand and fourteen through twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: Troy answers questions from the state's attorney for over an hour.
Speaker 4: They covered Troy's early life with Catherine, his attempts to
Speaker 4: get her to tell him what happened to the kids,
Speaker 4: and his efforts to get anyone at Perkins to talk
Speaker 4: to him about Catherine.
Speaker 8: Thank you, sure, I think I'm done, Okay, mister Belson.
Speaker 9: I need a minute just to organize my thoughts.
Speaker 3: That I may, you may.
Speaker 4: The state has just finished questioning Troy Turner, Sarah and
Speaker 4: Jacob's father, as Catherine's attorney, David Felson takes time to
Speaker 4: prepare his cross examination. Troy waits in the witness chair.
Speaker 4: He has no idea what's coming. Despite all the years
Speaker 4: of pushing for this hearing, the weeks of prep done
Speaker 4: by him and Matt, you can't be prepared for everything,
Speaker 4: and Troy is about to find that out.
Speaker 9: Sure, you filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court for
Speaker 9: Montomery County, Maryland, number one two seven zero three zero
Speaker 9: FL in the matter of Catherine Howard. You remember doing
Speaker 9: that twenty fifteen vaguely, and you sign something under oath
Speaker 9: in that case.
Speaker 1: Didn't it?
Speaker 5: Honestly? I don't remember. Okay.
Speaker 9: That was a lawsuit to have you declared as her
Speaker 9: guardian of the person and her property.
Speaker 5: Isn't that correct that I remember doing that?
Speaker 8: Yet?
Speaker 7: So good?
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 4: Catherine's lawyer isn't talking about the affidavit Troy signed attesting
Speaker 4: to his belief that Catherine is malingering, and he's not
Speaker 4: talking about Troy's successful petition to revoke Catherine's parental rights
Speaker 4: of their eldest son. Felsen is talking about another approach
Speaker 4: Troy made to the court. Just said, seven months after
Speaker 4: the kids went missing, a request for guardianship over Catherine,
Speaker 4: giving him power to direct her care and control her finances.
Speaker 9: And this is when she was already in the Clifton
Speaker 9: de Permons Hospital.
Speaker 4: Yes, when Troy filed this petition, Catherine had already been
Speaker 4: declared incompetent. He tried desperately to get Catherine to tell
Speaker 4: him what had happened to their children. He called the
Speaker 4: hospital constantly, but Catherine wouldn't budge. She just kept saying
Speaker 4: that Sarah and Jacob were fine. In his guardianship petition,
Speaker 4: Troy indicated that Perkins wasn't keeping him looped into her treatment,
Speaker 4: that they wouldn't let him visit, and for the sake
Speaker 4: of the children, Troy needed to be kept in the loop.
Speaker 9: And you said, under oath with Hoddell lacked sufficient understanding
Speaker 9: or capacity to make or communicate were reasonable to decicians
Speaker 9: regarding her health care treatment, including the administration of medicine
Speaker 9: or the administration of financial affairs.
Speaker 2: You swore that was true, Okay.
Speaker 4: Felson is pointing out what could be perceived as a
Speaker 4: major contradiction. Back then, Troy was arguing that Catherine was
Speaker 4: not competent enough to make her own decisions about her
Speaker 4: health care, but Felson is pointing out that now Troy
Speaker 4: wants the court to find her competent enough to help
Speaker 4: in her own defense and to stand trial.
Speaker 5: Did you or did you not?
Speaker 9: Ante, I asked, I don't remember if it's there or by.
Speaker 5: Times I know one police.
Speaker 4: But Troy has consistently maintained that Catherine is and always
Speaker 4: has been competent, that she can and should be held
Speaker 4: responsible for whatever happened to the kids, That she is
Speaker 4: mentally ill, but not so mentally ill that she's unaccountable
Speaker 4: to him, to society, and to Sarah and Jacob.
Speaker 2: Actually, what I wanted to do was get treatment, hoping
Speaker 2: if she.
Speaker 3: If she was.
Speaker 2: Talking to someone, that she would talk about my kids
Speaker 2: and say where they were.
Speaker 4: From Troy's perspective, this guardianship petition wasn't about whether Catherine
Speaker 4: was competent or not. His kids were gone and he
Speaker 4: was desperate with so few options, so that petition was
Speaker 4: just another tool he was willing to use. And just
Speaker 4: like he never expected, he would post flyers of his
Speaker 4: missing kids in the windows of coffee shops, that he
Speaker 4: would stare at their empty, unmade beds night after night.
Speaker 4: He never expected this petition could haunt him, that it
Speaker 4: would be thrown back in his face years later, during
Speaker 4: his one shot to convince the court that Catherine knows
Speaker 4: exactly what she's doing and always has.
Speaker 9: So that was an attempt when you followed us, it
Speaker 9: was an attempt to get information about where your children were.
Speaker 5: Of course, okay, so.
Speaker 2: It wasn't to care for his hot in terms of
Speaker 2: caring for her as to find out where my children were,
Speaker 2: the only way I felt was for her to get
Speaker 2: someone to properly talk to her.
Speaker 4: Trying to explain himself from the witness stand, Troy is
Speaker 4: racked with anxiety and sadness. Catherine is sitting right there,
Speaker 4: refusing to make eye contact with him. He can see
Speaker 4: her whispering to her attorney making notes. When Sarah and
Speaker 4: I talked to him later, he explained what was going
Speaker 4: through his mind at that moment.
Speaker 2: Very angry. I mean, right now, I think it's towards Catherine.
Speaker 2: I'm hearing some of the stuff I heard in the
Speaker 2: hearing towards her parents, even more so than before towards
Speaker 2: her attorney, because he's the piece of garbage. I mean,
Speaker 2: like I understand on your job, but also the way
Speaker 2: that he goes about and the things that he's done.
Speaker 3: It's just.
Speaker 4: Troy is dismissed and steps off the witness stand.
Speaker 7: First of all, you are, I guess I should address
Speaker 7: the fact that we are going to be requesting the
Speaker 7: court to conduct a bladir of Obun's hoggle an open
Speaker 7: court on the record.
Speaker 4: All day, since before Troy first took the stand, McCarthy
Speaker 4: and Felson have been sniping over a key issue, maybe
Speaker 4: the key issue of the day, whether Catherine can be
Speaker 4: questioned by Circuit Court Judge James A. Bonafadt.
Speaker 7: I think the examination of her today on the record
Speaker 7: would be particularly.
Speaker 5: Timely in allowing you to.
Speaker 7: Read those records with a more intelligent eye as to
Speaker 7: what is important and whether you agree or disagree with
Speaker 7: any of the observations are made by the doctors at
Speaker 7: Clifton T.
Speaker 5: Perkins.
Speaker 4: The state wants Catherine questioned, but Phelson argues that she
Speaker 4: has a right to remain silent.
Speaker 5: She has a did themendic privilege not to test. But
Speaker 5: more important, more important, I was already has it for it.
Speaker 9: Any interview that Pork does in this set is not
Speaker 9: going to be relevant.
Speaker 4: Troy also wants Catherine to be questioned because he wants
Speaker 4: the judge to see what he sees a woman who's competent,
Speaker 4: a woman who can assist her counsel, a woman who
Speaker 4: was more than capable of acting in her own best interests,
Speaker 4: even if she couldn't do that for her own kids.
Speaker 5: You can't plead incompetency and then refuse to answer questions.
Speaker 7: I think that there's an implicit waiver of that Fifth
Speaker 7: Amendment Frickage.
Speaker 4: In his argument to the judge, Felson attacked the state's position.
Speaker 5: It's not pleading of inhabitants.
Speaker 9: It's a suggestion of intrabinans that results in the ardors
Speaker 9: and evaluation.
Speaker 10: And then I find if there's client, she doesn't planed anything.
Speaker 10: And the reason she hasn't plant anything, she doesn't play
Speaker 10: not guilty. She doesn't play an see all, she hasn't
Speaker 10: played guilty just because she's.
Speaker 5: Not competent to do that.
Speaker 4: Listening intently to all of this is Judge Bonavan. It's
Speaker 4: his call, and all eyes are on him as he
Speaker 4: makes a decision.
Speaker 5: All right, what I'm going to do?
Speaker 6: Uh, mister Felson. I appreciate your statement that I'm persuaded
Speaker 6: by the crash now and legal reasoning that the Fifth
Speaker 6: Amendment does not arise when the defended statements are used
Speaker 6: solely for the limited neutral purpose of determining competency to
Speaker 6: stand trial.
Speaker 4: This is it. This is the moment that Troy has
Speaker 4: been waiting for for the first time since Sarah and
Speaker 4: Jacob disappeared without a trace. Catherine will have to answer
Speaker 4: questions posed by the judge. No filter, no doctors, nowhere
Speaker 4: to hide this hole.
Speaker 5: How are your name happened?
Speaker 2: Ashley Hacker?
Speaker 5: How old are you?
Speaker 8: Thirty six?
Speaker 4: That's next time on Unrestorable. Unrestorable is executive produced and
Speaker 4: hosted by me Beth Carras and Sarah tre Our story
Speaker 4: editor is Kathleen Goldhar, Mixing and sound design by Mitchell
Speaker 4: Stewart for Anonymous content. Jessica Grimshaw is our executive producer,
Speaker 4: Jennifer Sears is our executive in charge of production, and
Speaker 4: Nick Janiez is our legal counsel. For iHeart. Executive producer
Speaker 4: Christina Everett and supervising producer Abu Zapfer