Speaker 1: So we just have a lot of stuff at home,
Speaker 1: and so these are just some examples of bracelets that
Speaker 1: we've always had for the kids. The pink and blue
Speaker 1: they say justice for Sarah and Jacob on them, always
Speaker 1: in our hearts.
Speaker 2: The first time Beth Carris and I met Troy and
Speaker 2: his wife Stephanie in suburban Maryland, they were covered in
Speaker 2: Sarah and Jacob merch hats and shirts and buttons into
Speaker 2: their jackets.
Speaker 1: We have match boxes that we bring to the candle
Speaker 1: light vigels that also say a voice for Sarah and Jacob.
Speaker 1: And we have flyers, you know, with Sarah and Jacob's
Speaker 1: pictures on them, asking for information from the public to
Speaker 1: help us in their recovery.
Speaker 2: And can you tell me a little bit about the
Speaker 2: candlelight vigils.
Speaker 1: They've been held annually and we up until two years ago,
Speaker 1: we would hold them in that parking lot of the
Speaker 1: restaurant where everything kind of just started.
Speaker 2: Took Troy on that wild goose chase from daycare to daycare,
Speaker 2: always promising that the next one was where she had
Speaker 2: dropped off the kids. After hours of driving, Catherine asked
Speaker 2: Troy to stop off at a restaurant, so she could
Speaker 2: get a soda, and while he waited in the car,
Speaker 2: she took off.
Speaker 1: So we held them in that parking lot up until
Speaker 1: two years ago. But they are on September seventh every year,
Speaker 1: rain or shine, no matter the weather, because that's the
Speaker 1: day that she took them. So in the last two years,
Speaker 1: we've done them at places that Sarah and Jacob used
Speaker 1: to like to go. We've kept them a bit more
Speaker 1: private and had them at locations that the kids enjoyed
Speaker 1: being at.
Speaker 2: I've seen this before with the families of missing children,
Speaker 2: pictures of a kid frozen in time about to blow
Speaker 2: out the candles at a fourth birthday party maybe, and
Speaker 2: that picture gets transformed into a million T shirts and
Speaker 2: posters and ball caps, wristbands are made, and hashtags are
Speaker 2: created with the.
Speaker 3: Flyers still like if someone happened to see something they
Speaker 3: didn't realize they saw, and as things keep developing it
Speaker 3: rings a bell, then hopefully we'll hear something.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 2: Do people ever come up to you when you're wearing
Speaker 2: the shirts, when you have any of the sort of
Speaker 2: stuff that you've put together on or with you and
Speaker 2: ask what the story is? Yes? Yes, And.
Speaker 1: We have people that message the social media that have
Speaker 1: some of the stuff and they say, oh, people were
Speaker 1: asking can I get some more, you know, wrisbeyans flyers,
Speaker 1: I'd like to hand them out. So the community has
Speaker 1: also engaged in trying to, you know, keep their names
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: These items are a way to raise awareness, for sure,
Speaker 2: but it's also a version of keeping your missing kid alive,
Speaker 2: of not letting anyone forget about them. It's a terrible cliche,
Speaker 2: but in this case it really is true. Sarah and
Speaker 2: Jacob disappeared without a trace. There have been no credible
Speaker 2: sightings of the two kids since the night of September seventh,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen, and their mother, Catherine Hoggle, believed to be
Speaker 2: the last person to see them, has refused to share
Speaker 2: any details of what happened that night, and with the
Speaker 2: charges against her now dismissed, Troy is doubtful that she'll
Speaker 2: ever help. Ambiguous loss is a kind of grief without closure.
Speaker 2: It means living in a permanent fog of not knowing
Speaker 2: what happened to the person you love, where they are.
Speaker 2: Even if Catherine revealed all today, even if the kid's
Speaker 2: bodies were found, no one believes that their father, Troy
Speaker 2: would be able to cheerfully move on with his life,
Speaker 2: but still it would close one very particular type of wound,
Speaker 2: the not knowing, the rational acceptance that the kids are
Speaker 2: most likely dead after so many years, but the inability
Speaker 2: to completely quiet the tug that theirs still out there,
Speaker 2: still waiting for their dad to pick them up and
Speaker 2: bring them home. The loss of Sarah and Jacob, the
Speaker 2: lack of answers nine years later, has created a huge
Speaker 2: amount of emotional collateral damage, and not just for Troy.
Speaker 2: Everyone who comes into contact with this family with this
Speaker 2: story seems tainted by it. It's unshakable, and the deep
Speaker 2: grief and near obsession the haunting that has become an
Speaker 2: everyday part of life have been shaped by two divergent
Speaker 2: ways of looking at this case at what likely happened
Speaker 2: to Sarah and Jacob, either staring at the grim Fax
Speaker 2: head on or disappearing into a fantasy to avoid just
Speaker 2: how awful the truth really is. I'm Sarah Trelevin and
Speaker 2: this is Unrestorable, an original podcast from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5: Nice to meet you guys.
Speaker 6: Sarah's and Halifax and I'm in New York City.
Speaker 7: Okay, Yeah, thank you again for taking the time.
Speaker 6: You do homicides right.
Speaker 2: It took months for Beth and I to get Detective
Speaker 2: Dmitri Ruven to talk to us. He's a homicide detective
Speaker 2: with the Montgomery County Police Department, and he took the
Speaker 2: lead on Sarah and Jacob's case, and he wasn't what
Speaker 2: I expected. Dmitri has shoulder length, light brown hair with
Speaker 2: day's old stubble, a whole hipster Jesus surfer kind of vibe.
Speaker 2: Around the same time it became Troy's full time job
Speaker 2: to search for his children, it also became Dmitri Ruven's.
Speaker 5: My sergeant at the time. There, I was like, hey,
Speaker 5: we just got a call. There's a missing lady with
Speaker 5: two of her children.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of confusion when Catherine first disappeared
Speaker 2: along with the kids. She hadn't been well. It felt
Speaker 2: like a rescue effort for a family in disarray. But
Speaker 2: things took a turn when Catherine was found later without
Speaker 2: Sarah and Jacob. The police mobilized resources quickly.
Speaker 5: We had volunteers and dogs, and we were searching those
Speaker 5: five six seven days. We were probably working eighteen twenty
Speaker 5: hour days, searches, tips, sidings, and I think I've preceived
Speaker 5: like over three hundred tips for months.
Speaker 2: The police searched houses and fields, they used dogs and volunteers.
Speaker 2: Dmitri thinks they searched more than thirty thousand acres. They
Speaker 2: found nothing, and almost immediately there were indications that something
Speaker 2: really bad had happened.
Speaker 5: She had a conversation right before anybody even knew that
Speaker 5: the kids were missing.
Speaker 2: Dmitri is talking about a conversation that Catherine had the
Speaker 2: morning of September eighth, when Troy thought the kids were
Speaker 2: in daycare.
Speaker 5: She was at a day program where they helped people
Speaker 5: with mental illnesses, and she spoke to somebody and that
Speaker 5: person was going to a class and it was like
Speaker 5: stress management class. And again, nobody even knows that the
Speaker 5: kids are missing at that time. And she's walking in
Speaker 5: the hallway and that person says, Hey, Katherine, I'm going
Speaker 5: to stress management. Do you want to come with me?
Speaker 5: And she was like, yeah, I could use some stress
Speaker 5: management because I just and she kind of motions with
Speaker 5: that hand. She's like, I just strangled my kids. That
Speaker 5: person kind of stops, and then Catherine's kind of stoke
Speaker 5: and she goes, I'm just joking.
Speaker 2: If it's true that she made this damning admission about
Speaker 2: strangling her children, it may be a critical piece of
Speaker 2: the state's evidence. This seems to be the only time
Speaker 2: that Catherine reference killing her children when asked. She's always
Speaker 2: said that they're fine, that they're safe. But that's not
Speaker 2: what the police or the FBI believe.
Speaker 5: A lot of times with these you know, these kinds
Speaker 5: of they call them authoristic.
Speaker 2: Mothers, altruistic mothers. Can you explain what that is and
Speaker 2: also how Catherine Hobble fits that profile.
Speaker 5: It's basically the view that kids as possessions. You know,
Speaker 5: a lot they don't view those children as, you know,
Speaker 5: like kids and I'm a mom and I love them.
Speaker 5: They kind of view them as possessions that you can
Speaker 5: just get rid of. If they're no longer convenience too,
Speaker 5: you can just put them in trash, like, which is
Speaker 5: what you would do with an object, right, Like, if
Speaker 5: you don't need an object anymore, you would just trash it.
Speaker 5: And I think it's probably applicable in her case.
Speaker 2: No one but Catherine really knows.
Speaker 5: That could have been a million places she could have
Speaker 5: done it, Like, I think it's very possible that she
Speaker 5: could have just you know, buried them. When we first
Speaker 5: got it, she had all this dirt under her fingernails,
Speaker 5: like it looks like she was in the woods. So
Speaker 5: there's still a part of me that thinks, hey, they're
Speaker 5: still out there and maybe we just miss them.
Speaker 2: The idea that the kids are still out there, dead
Speaker 2: or alive serves as both the hope and the haunting
Speaker 2: of this family of one detective who almost a decade later,
Speaker 2: still talks with Troy on the phone, and he still
Speaker 2: wonders if there's something he could have done differently.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's two kids involved, and you're supposed to, you know,
Speaker 5: have some kind of resolution, whether you you know, find them,
Speaker 5: find their bodies, at least tell Troy, like what happened.
Speaker 5: But like t this day, we really can't. The case
Speaker 5: is still on my desk because I'm like, what if
Speaker 5: we get a call tomorrow while I'm still here and
Speaker 5: you know, somebody finds them, like they're building condoms or something,
Speaker 5: and somebody finds them in the woods. You know, we
Speaker 5: don't have that many cases that you know that's a
Speaker 5: known body case, right, Like, it's pretty rare, and it's
Speaker 5: even more rare when his kids so like, yeah, definitely effective.
Speaker 2: Only can you comment a little bit about what you
Speaker 2: see in terms of Troy's situation and his sense of
Speaker 2: failed justice in this case.
Speaker 5: He's a very like goal oriented matter of fact, like
Speaker 5: I'm going to find my kids. I think a lot
Speaker 5: of people in his situation would have just kind of
Speaker 5: just wanted the world to like stop and just leave
Speaker 5: them alone and let him read. But he just he
Speaker 5: just goes and he's like one hundred miles an hour
Speaker 5: and that's like his mission in life. But yeah, I
Speaker 5: mean I do feel like, you know, as a police department,
Speaker 5: as you know, society kind of failed him, like he
Speaker 5: never got any closure and she knows what happened and
Speaker 5: she's the only person, like we couldn't get her to
Speaker 5: tell us whether we didn't ask the right questions then
Speaker 5: use the right themes. I don't know. I don't think
Speaker 5: that's easy to accept as a dad. And I get it,
Speaker 5: you know, I get it. We never gave Troy like
Speaker 5: a definite answer like what happened? And I mean he
Speaker 5: deserves it, you know, these days kids and we never
Speaker 5: found them, and it sounds like the person that did
Speaker 5: it is going to get away with it.
Speaker 2: While Dmitri Ruven still ruminates over the possibility of finding
Speaker 2: Sarah and Jacob's bodies, of delivering the worst possible news
Speaker 2: to Troy as a form of consolation prize, Catherine's mother, Lindsay,
Speaker 2: has channeled all of this ambiguity into a different kind
Speaker 2: of purpose. She spent the last nine years developing her
Speaker 2: own theories of this case, walking the tightrope of what
Speaker 2: it means to support her daughter and advocate for her grandchildren.
Speaker 7: Well, I think it very quickly became you know, she's
Speaker 7: got mental illness. You know she probably harmed them, which
Speaker 7: there's no data for that kind of belief.
Speaker 2: Lindsay thinks the police jumped to conclusions about Catherine because
Speaker 2: she's schizophrenic. They assumed that Catherine must have killed her
Speaker 2: kids and declared the case a likely homicide within days.
Speaker 2: That they operated under biases about mental illness, convincing themselves
Speaker 2: that Catherine must be dangerous, even though Lindsay says she's
Speaker 2: only ever been a danger to herself. What do you
Speaker 2: think happened to the children, What do you think happened
Speaker 2: that night?
Speaker 7: I think I think she had had somebody help her plan.
Speaker 2: An escape.
Speaker 7: She had been unhappy for a while, and you know,
Speaker 7: a lot of it was just family tension, family dysfunction
Speaker 7: that happens in every family, but this was a little
Speaker 7: bit different, and I think she saw that as her
Speaker 7: only escape is just to disappear with the children.
Speaker 2: Lindsey insists that Sarah and Jacob are still out there,
Speaker 2: still alive, that Catherine was actually dropping the kids off
Speaker 2: with someone for safe keeping, just as Catherine has always insisted.
Speaker 2: I mean, the idea that the kids are alive somewhere
Speaker 2: and being sheltered by someone, it's it's challenging to accept because,
Speaker 2: you know, because the logistics of it, like what are
Speaker 2: these kids, you know, living under false identities? You know,
Speaker 2: who would be willing to take this risk? You know,
Speaker 2: all of this stuff. It's just it is really when
Speaker 2: you think I understand it, yeah yeah, I mean, so,
Speaker 2: so what is the narrative there for you? What makes
Speaker 2: sense to you?
Speaker 7: I think she was put in touch with the right people,
Speaker 7: and I understand when people are this is just too
Speaker 7: wild to believe. And that's the whole story. I mean,
Speaker 7: every single twist and turn of the story is just
Speaker 7: you know, you kind of get to the point where
Speaker 7: it's like someone could write something so bizarre. It's there
Speaker 7: are things that I know about people she might have
Speaker 7: been in touch with that make me believe, yes, this
Speaker 7: could happen. It is unfortunate that we've not spent more
Speaker 7: time looking for the possibility of that they could be
Speaker 7: out there. But you know, I have enough information that
Speaker 7: I believe that I'm not going to stop until I
Speaker 7: find out what the answer is. And Catherine knows that.
Speaker 2: Lindsay was careful and a bit vague when Beth and
Speaker 2: I sat down with her at her townhouse in Gaithersburg,
Speaker 2: but she's elaborated in other conversations and in posts she's
Speaker 2: created online where she poores over the details of Sarah
Speaker 2: and Jacob's case. Lindsay believes it's possible that Catherine took
Speaker 2: Sarah and Jacob to some kind of underground safehouse for
Speaker 2: women and their children, that Catherine was worried she would
Speaker 2: lose custody and wanted to get them away from Troy,
Speaker 2: And for the last nine years, Lindsay has been trying
Speaker 2: to get Catherine to confirm her theory, to provide her
Speaker 2: with the kind of lead she needs to go out
Speaker 2: and find her grandchildren. Jacob, who would now be eleven
Speaker 2: years old and Sarah twelve. She also wants the reassurance
Speaker 2: that her daughter isn't capable of doing the really awful
Speaker 2: thing that everyone says she did.
Speaker 7: Wait, i'd say what happened to Sarah and Jacob, She's like,
Speaker 7: nothing happened to them. And so I've been persistent in
Speaker 7: that path with her, and she knows how I stand.
Speaker 7: I'm you know, I'm again. I've had advice that I
Speaker 7: should just cut her off, and I said, you know,
Speaker 7: I I'm the only one that can approach her from
Speaker 7: the standpoint being a mother. You can't sub anybody else in.
Speaker 7: And I've seen and know enough of the players in
Speaker 7: this tragedy to know what you've been through or what
Speaker 7: she's been through. And so I did what I thought
Speaker 7: was the best for her and for the children, because
Speaker 7: I figured if anybody could get the answers out of her,
Speaker 7: I should be able to. And I wasn't. I wasn't
Speaker 7: able to get that answer.
Speaker 2: She'd given you a narrative for what happened that night
Speaker 2: and morning that Sarah and Jacob disappeared. Has she like
Speaker 2: sort of accounted for that time or given you her
Speaker 2: her version of events.
Speaker 7: Not really.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, Lindsay says, there are
Speaker 2: no bodies, no actual proof that Catherine killed her kids.
Speaker 7: Whatever people think, you know, it's been well, you're just
Speaker 7: a distract grandmother, and like I'm more than a distract grandmother.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, and there are ways you grieve,
Speaker 7: even though I believe they're alive. But my body and
Speaker 7: my brain still grieve and I've been through that, and
Speaker 7: so I know exactly what people may think.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't matter. Do you expect one day that
Speaker 2: you will be reunited with Sarah Jacob?
Speaker 7: You know that's that's difficult, just due to the dynamics
Speaker 7: at hand. You know, I may not be right, but
Speaker 7: I feel like I'm the only one right now with
Speaker 7: enough information to say I think they're alive and hopes
Speaker 7: that we can put aside some of the pain of
Speaker 7: this and bring those three children together. But yeah, I've
Speaker 7: not given up.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else you can tell us about the
Speaker 2: leads you're following and where you think Sarah Jacob might be.
Speaker 7: There's not anything I'm gonna say on the record.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 7: I mean, like I said, I have information, but until
Speaker 7: you can, you know, prove probable cause it's not something
Speaker 7: that police are, the authorities or National Center for Missing
Speaker 7: Exploited Children can follow up on.
Speaker 2: And you alluded before to Catherine having help from someone.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's from someone you know or from
Speaker 2: a stranger both? It could be both.
Speaker 6: Yeah, their goal is not to find my children.
Speaker 2: Troy has limited patients for the alternative reality. He says,
Speaker 2: both of Catherine's parents live in their inability to accept
Speaker 2: the truth and push Catherine to cooperate with authorities and
Speaker 2: admit what she did.
Speaker 6: They don't care about my children.
Speaker 3: They care about painting their white big offense and coddling
Speaker 3: their little monster or whatever.
Speaker 6: I don't know know.
Speaker 2: For Detective Dmitri Ruven too, Lindsay's wishful thinking doesn't really
Speaker 2: add up.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean, of course she's a mom and
Speaker 5: she has to, Like I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 5: how I would feel that, like my kids charged with
Speaker 5: something like that, of course I would hold out hope.
Speaker 5: But like to me, it's just not logical. I mean,
Speaker 5: she's been sitting in a mental institution, she was getting
Speaker 5: ready to be prosecuted for double murder. Right, kids are
Speaker 5: somewhere with a friend whoever they are you don't even
Speaker 5: have to, like Graham to port, just have a picture
Speaker 5: of them and then the charges that dismissed.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask, have you seen this in
Speaker 2: other cases with family members where there's this real struggle
Speaker 2: to grapple with what's in front of them.
Speaker 5: Of course happens all the time, especially with moms. Happens
Speaker 5: all the time, with murderers, with rapists, you know, happens
Speaker 5: all the time. Troy and maybe lindsay they don't have
Speaker 5: to be logical about it, like we can stay back
Speaker 5: and be logical, But for them, I think it's not
Speaker 5: a logical thing.
Speaker 2: Troy has tried his best to live in reality. He
Speaker 2: spent nine years mired in the truth of what likely
Speaker 2: happen into his kids, observing every piece of bad news,
Speaker 2: every failed lead, like having one bucket of cold water
Speaker 2: after another dumped over his head. When the kids first disappeared,
Speaker 2: Troy didn't go to work for six months. He barely slept.
Speaker 2: He spent all of his days and most of his
Speaker 2: nights looking for Sarah and Jacob, driving around and handing
Speaker 2: out flyers. He went on TV news programs and announced
Speaker 2: that he kept his door unlocked in case anyone wanted
Speaker 2: to drop off his kids, no questions asked. But months
Speaker 2: passed and Sarah and Jacob didn't come home. Troy still
Speaker 2: had another kid to raise, and at some point he
Speaker 2: had to go back to work find a way to
Speaker 2: move on but without forgetting, and he found help to
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 1: I was new to the area, so I was looking
Speaker 1: for I just had one child, she was getting older,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I need some probably need some
Speaker 1: ad friends. So I think that we initially met online,
Speaker 1: but then he was down close to the area where
Speaker 1: I worked at and ended up meeting up in person
Speaker 1: there and we just kind of, I don't know, we
Speaker 1: just sort of clicked.
Speaker 2: Troy's wife, Stephanie, is slim and tall, with glasses, and
Speaker 2: she typically wears her brown hair up in a ponytail.
Speaker 2: She's a nurse in her forties, and she both gives
Speaker 2: off a no nonsense vibe and has a discernible nervous energy.
Speaker 2: She met Troy at the oddest time, what would seem
Speaker 2: like the worst time. It was just six months after
Speaker 2: Sarah and Jacob were taken.
Speaker 1: I think the first time we met we went to
Speaker 1: the mall, and I believe we were looking for shoes
Speaker 1: for one of his nephews, and I remember him kind
Speaker 1: of being flirtatious and kind of being shocked by that,
Speaker 1: just kind of like we were teenagers almost. We were
Speaker 1: like in a shoe star were in the mall and
Speaker 1: it was, yeah, is this.
Speaker 2: Your signature move taking women to shoe stores?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 4: No, my nephew. He's what like six eight or something.
Speaker 4: He wears like a size whatever, like fifteen or seventeen something,
Speaker 4: So he was having trouble finding like there was some
Speaker 4: shoes he wanted for basketball, and oh, I wanted to
Speaker 4: get him.
Speaker 2: When is the first time that Troy tells you about
Speaker 2: Sarah and Jacob?
Speaker 4: We were I.
Speaker 1: Don't remember exactly when it was, but we were on
Speaker 1: the phone one night and he just kind of stopped
Speaker 1: me and he said, I just have to tell you
Speaker 1: something before we continue on.
Speaker 2: And I remember going, oh, my god, I mean.
Speaker 1: We're older were and just the way he said it,
Speaker 1: I just I couldn't imagine what it could have been.
Speaker 1: And he told me that his two kids were missing,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I don't think that I believed him. I
Speaker 1: didn't know him very well, and people say a lot
Speaker 1: of things. I mean, I don't know who would say that,
Speaker 1: but I was just maybe it was the shock of it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know the story. I had never seen it
Speaker 1: on the news. I didn't know anything of it. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, well, maybe this is just some kind of
Speaker 1: custody drama, you know, some kind of they don't get
Speaker 1: along anymore. I really had no idea the extent of
Speaker 1: what it really was.
Speaker 2: Stephanie was falling for Troy, but she was wary and
Speaker 2: her family worried about her getting involved in all of this.
Speaker 2: But something shifted in her when she met Troy's son.
Speaker 1: When it comes to the oldest child, I just had
Speaker 1: this loyalty.
Speaker 2: It's like almost immediate. Yeah you felt like he was
Speaker 2: meant to be yours?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah I did. We kind of almost just bonded
Speaker 1: in that way. It wasn't even neither of us had to.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like we tried.
Speaker 2: It just happened.
Speaker 1: It was just I just started doing the things for
Speaker 1: him that I would do that any child deserves.
Speaker 2: Stephanie soon adopted Troy's mission to find the kids, and
Speaker 2: their life together has been overshadowed by that mission and
Speaker 2: by grief from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we had some fun in the
Speaker 1: very beginning, you know, when we were first getting to
Speaker 1: know each other, but it was still there. So I
Speaker 1: don't think in a situation like this you can ever
Speaker 1: really have that complete freedom.
Speaker 3: I mean, we would have fun, but then I would
Speaker 3: like call Catherine, you know, and try to get information.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, it's not that we've never had
Speaker 3: fun together, but it's like, you know that it's like
Speaker 3: you said, it's always there. We you know, we so
Speaker 3: we're having fun and then and then maybe we go
Speaker 3: to a concert and then come home and then there's
Speaker 3: five leads that we're looking at online, you know.
Speaker 1: So it was definitely difficult.
Speaker 2: I think it's still difficult.
Speaker 1: All these years later, to build maybe what we couldn't
Speaker 1: have or didn't to maintain things.
Speaker 2: It goes back and forth.
Speaker 1: Our relationship definitely isn't the priority. But I also came
Speaker 1: into the picture as a mother. I came in as
Speaker 1: you know, having a full time career, so I understand priorities,
Speaker 1: and you know, our kids were our priorities.
Speaker 2: Troy and Stephanie have created a blended family, which also
Speaker 2: includes Stephanie's daughter from a previous relationship. They live in
Speaker 2: a tidy home not far from DC, with lots of
Speaker 2: framed family photos, those decorative inspirational sayings, and the kind
Speaker 2: of overstuffed couches that are perfect for napping for family
Speaker 2: movie nights.
Speaker 1: I mean, Troy takes our son to school every morning.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: We have dogs and a home, and I do laundry
Speaker 1: and dinner's at six o'clock every night, and we go
Speaker 1: to church on Sundays, and we go to my parents'
Speaker 1: house and visit. You know, we have to regularly kind
Speaker 1: of weigh things, and I constantly feel like I'm choosing
Speaker 1: the two children at home over Sarah and Jacob or
Speaker 1: vice versa. It's a constant battle as parents that I
Speaker 1: think that we deal with all the time. But I
Speaker 1: have a loyalty to Sarah and Jacob, and I have
Speaker 1: a loyalty to my son that these are his siblings,
Speaker 1: So we just have to keep going.
Speaker 2: Stephanie runs the social media pages for Sarah and Jacob,
Speaker 2: posting their pictures on Facebook and Instagram, updating followers on
Speaker 2: developments and milestones, in the case celebrating their birthdays.
Speaker 1: This is kind of also my way of making sure
Speaker 1: that they still have a voice that someone is speaking
Speaker 1: and advocating for them, that people don't forget that they're
Speaker 1: real children, that we're really here, and they deserve to
Speaker 1: never be forgotten, to not even just be remembered, but
Speaker 1: to be reminded of.
Speaker 2: And be part of our daily lives. I saw a
Speaker 2: picture on Facebook of a portrait, a family portrait that
Speaker 2: you must have had commissioned. Troy did that Troy had commissioned? Yes,
Speaker 2: that was my Christmas gift.
Speaker 1: Troy had a family portrait made of him and I
Speaker 1: and our oldest son, Sarah and Jacob, my daughter, and
Speaker 1: then our two dogs. So kind of our combined family,
Speaker 1: you know, all together in one place, even if everyone's
Speaker 1: not here.
Speaker 2: And what did it mean to you to get that?
Speaker 1: It's something that I would hope for.
Speaker 2: Next time on Unrestorable.
Speaker 3: There's no end of the road there, so we keep fighting,
Speaker 3: we keep looking if we never find them all by looking.
Speaker 2: Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by Me, Sarah Trelevin,
Speaker 2: and Beth Carris. Our story editor is Kathleen Goldheart. Mixing
Speaker 2: and sound designed by Mitchell Stewart for anonymous content. Jessica
Speaker 2: Grimshaw is our executive producer. Jennifer Sears is our executive
Speaker 2: in charge of production, and nick Yannas is our legal
Speaker 2: counsel for iHeart, executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer
Speaker 2: Abu Zaphar.