Speaker 1: How about your name?
Speaker 2: Happened? Ashley Hockle? Thank you?
Speaker 1: How old are you?
Speaker 2: Thirty six?
Speaker 1: What's your birthday?
Speaker 2: Eleven thirteen eighty six.
Speaker 3: Standing before Judge James Bonavent is Catherine Hockle. It's November
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, and she's here in a Montgomery County,
Speaker 3: Maryland courtroom because Judge Bonavent has to decide if the
Speaker 3: thirty six year old mother of three might finally be
Speaker 3: fit enough to stand trial for the murder of two
Speaker 3: of her children.
Speaker 1: Do you know what evidence is? Yes, sir, mat don't
Speaker 1: want you to tell me anything about circumstances in this case,
Speaker 1: but generally, what is evidence?
Speaker 2: Something that makes things, something that's used for a case,
Speaker 2: good or bad.
Speaker 3: Today Catherine calls the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup, Maryland,
Speaker 3: a psychiatric hospital home. She's been there, locked up for
Speaker 3: nearly a decade, charged with the first degree murders of
Speaker 3: two year old Jacob and three year old Sarah, but
Speaker 3: yet to stand trial because for the past eight years,
Speaker 3: Catherine has been deemed incompetent.
Speaker 1: Do you know what attorneys do? Yes, Anna, tell me
Speaker 1: what attorneys do?
Speaker 2: A pass q or defend.
Speaker 1: What should an attorney know.
Speaker 2: What happened at the alleged crime.
Speaker 3: Being incompetent to stand trial is not the same as
Speaker 3: being found insane or not criminally responsible. Competency deals with
Speaker 3: Catherine's state of mind since her arrest. In order for
Speaker 3: Catherine to receive a fair trial, she has to understand
Speaker 3: the proceedings, the role of the judge and jury, and
Speaker 3: her lawyer and the prosecutor, the whole process.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that they should know?
Speaker 2: I can't think of anything right now. I'm not very
Speaker 2: good at pope speaking.
Speaker 3: As Catherine sits in that Marilyn courtroom, she does know
Speaker 3: where she is, she understands what's happening to her and why.
Speaker 3: But for the last eight years, psychiatrists have regularly determined
Speaker 3: that she's not well enough to assist her lawyer in
Speaker 3: her own defense, and that this is what makes her incompetent.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the phrase attorney client privilege? Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: what do you think that means?
Speaker 2: It's a private conversation with you and your attorney.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Matt.
Speaker 4: She left with Jacob to go get pizza right up
Speaker 4: the street and came back three and a half hours
Speaker 4: without him.
Speaker 3: September seventh, twenty fourteen, would be the last Dey Troy
Speaker 3: Turner would ever see his kids again, because not only
Speaker 3: did Catherine fail to bring two year old Jacob back
Speaker 3: home after a supposed pizza run, she also took her
Speaker 3: three year old daughter, Sarah sometime that night or early morning.
Speaker 3: She never came home with her either. To this day,
Speaker 3: their bodies have not been found. It's not clear where
Speaker 3: Catherine took the kids or why, and she continues to
Speaker 3: insist that her children have not come to any harm.
Speaker 4: They were great kids. They both had very sweet souls.
Speaker 4: I used to call Sarah my tomboy princess. She loved
Speaker 4: to play fight with me and the boys. She would
Speaker 4: come to defend her brothers because I would be, you know,
Speaker 4: slamming them around stuff, and she would punch me in
Speaker 4: spell MC and I would be like, okay, play time's over.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 5: She was just a sweetheart, and.
Speaker 4: You know, she didn't take any stuff from her brothers.
Speaker 4: And then Jacob was just super sweet. He always smiled,
Speaker 4: he was just always happy.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 4: He would hate for any of his older siblings to
Speaker 4: be in trouble.
Speaker 3: I found out about this story when I received a
Speaker 3: Facebook message on January twenty third, twenty twenty two. It
Speaker 3: was from a family member close to Sarah and Jacob's father, Troy,
Speaker 3: pleading with me to help them. My name is Sarah Treleven.
Speaker 3: I'm a journalist and I had recently appeared on an
Speaker 3: episode of the news program twenty twenty about another podcast
Speaker 3: I made, this one about a woman recently convicted of
Speaker 3: murdering her two children, Lori Valo Davel. When the show aired,
Speaker 3: I heard from a number of people who are desperate
Speaker 3: in some way. They wanted help solving cases of their
Speaker 3: missing children, parents, partners. They all wanted the media to
Speaker 3: pay it attention to something that had gone terribly wrong
Speaker 3: in their lives. This one was different. This message said
Speaker 3: that if Catherine was not brought to competence, then the
Speaker 3: charges against her would be dropped. In Maryland, if someone
Speaker 3: charged with murder is unable to stand trial because they
Speaker 3: are deemed incompetent, the state only has five years to
Speaker 3: try and get them healthy enough to go before a
Speaker 3: judge and face the charges. And if that doesn't happen,
Speaker 3: if they go five years without being declared competent, then
Speaker 3: those murder charges are dismissed, they all but disappear. Catherine
Speaker 3: could be released from Perkins, Troy might never find out
Speaker 3: what happened to his kids, And when I got that
Speaker 3: Facebook message, the clock was running out. This is the
Speaker 3: story of two kids whose definitive fates are unknown, other
Speaker 3: who has been found not competent to stand trial for
Speaker 3: their murders. But it's also the story of unintended consequences,
Speaker 3: about a legal system that was set up to protect
Speaker 3: people but actually raises questions about public safety and how
Speaker 3: we balance the rights of the mentally ill with our
Speaker 3: ideas about justice and accountability. This is Unrestorable, a podcast
Speaker 3: from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4: I spent some time working bars, nightclubs, cleaning them up,
Speaker 4: things like that, and that'd be in between, you know,
Speaker 4: times when I was in college, or during different parts
Speaker 4: of my career, you know, day jobs or whatever.
Speaker 5: Sometimes that was my career.
Speaker 3: Troy and I talked for months over zoom, and I
Speaker 3: soon got a sense of his warmth, his sly sense
Speaker 3: of humor, his determination and tenacity. He's a classic tough
Speaker 3: on the outside, teddy bear on the inside kind of guy.
Speaker 3: But the camera concealed one thing. The true depth of
Speaker 3: troy sorrow, the impossible sense of grief he wakes up
Speaker 3: with every morning and carries with him until he falls
Speaker 3: asleep every night. That I saw clearly the moment we
Speaker 3: met in person, the second I looked in his eyes.
Speaker 3: Troy and I finally did get to meet in person
Speaker 3: in December twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: Nice to meet you in person today.
Speaker 3: Troy sells insurance, but at more than six feet tall,
Speaker 3: he certainly looks like the former high school football player
Speaker 3: and bouncer that he used to be. We start by
Speaker 3: talking about how he and Catherine first met.
Speaker 4: She was wasting going to junior college, and let me see,
Speaker 4: I mean, we didn't probably talk the first three or
Speaker 4: four months that I was there.
Speaker 3: In pictures, Catherine is pretty and wholesome looking. She has
Speaker 3: shoulder length, medium brown hair, a sun kiss complexion, and
Speaker 3: a shy smile. It looks like someone it would be
Speaker 3: easy to have a crush on. When she and Troy met,
Speaker 3: she was twenty two, he was thirty six.
Speaker 4: We wound up talking more, and then we wound up
Speaker 4: basically connecting. She got pregnant, and at that point it's like,
Speaker 4: well we should probably, you know, see if this will
Speaker 4: work or whatever.
Speaker 3: What was she like back then?
Speaker 5: She was a pretty fun person.
Speaker 4: She appeared to kind of have you know, some animosity
Speaker 4: with her family at times, things like that. But it
Speaker 4: was like, you know, it's kind of normal stuff when
Speaker 4: you're talking to and when you're here, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: just overall fairly normal.
Speaker 3: This pregnancy was not Sarah or Jacob. This child was
Speaker 3: their first kid. Sarah was their second, and Jacob was
Speaker 3: her third. This child, the eldest, is still alive, and
Speaker 3: we won't be naming him. Everyone agrees his privacy is
Speaker 3: more important. Did you feel like, because she got pregnant
Speaker 3: so soon after you started dating obviously, were you like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is a person I have a genuine connection with,
Speaker 3: or were you like, well, we've got to make the
Speaker 3: best of this situation.
Speaker 5: I felt like that I liked her.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed being around her, So there was, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe some kind of connection, but a lot of it
Speaker 4: was we should probably.
Speaker 5: See if this should work. I mean, she's pregnant with
Speaker 5: my child.
Speaker 3: The first baby was hard in the way that all
Speaker 3: babies are hard, but there was so much excitement and
Speaker 3: a lot of support. Catherine was the first of her
Speaker 3: four siblings to have a kid, so everyone wanted to
Speaker 3: play with the new baby, to take pictures of him,
Speaker 3: to make him laugh. Over the next few years, the
Speaker 3: family continued to grow. Fewer than six years into the relationship,
Speaker 3: Catherine and Troy had three children under the age of five.
Speaker 3: The family was living in a small apartment. Money was tight,
Speaker 3: It was a lot, and at times Troy did feel
Speaker 3: that Catherine was a little wobbly.
Speaker 4: There were some things here or there where I was
Speaker 4: kind of like, okay, that's you know, off or something,
Speaker 4: but nothing major.
Speaker 5: We had some fun together.
Speaker 4: We you know, we went to the beach or whatever,
Speaker 4: did things like that, took the kids to see the
Speaker 4: dolphins down off was at Yorktown or whatever, you know,
Speaker 4: stuff like that. So I mean like we had like
Speaker 4: some decent times. We did some cool things. But it
Speaker 4: was just with each child things seemed to progress differently.
Speaker 3: When Troy says that things progressed differently, what he means
Speaker 3: is that Catherine was different. She was acting weird. But
Speaker 3: Troy told me he put it out of his mind.
Speaker 3: He figured that it was a lot to be pregnant
Speaker 3: three times in five years.
Speaker 4: I'm obviously not a doctor. I can't say what happened
Speaker 4: or what didn't. I know that she had told me
Speaker 4: that she was on medication for ADHD and things like
Speaker 4: that when we met and when she got pregnant. Initially,
Speaker 4: I know she had quit smoking and drinking, you know,
Speaker 4: right away, so she it could be that she was
Speaker 4: on medication at that point and quit taking that too
Speaker 4: right away without saying anything. I don't know, but there
Speaker 4: was definitely kind of a change there. I think, very
Speaker 4: black and white, you know. I thought it was like
Speaker 4: hormones from the pregnancy. So I went and I looked
Speaker 4: that up. I like googled stuff with that, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 4: it says it can last to a year after pregnancy.
Speaker 4: So we get towards the end of that year a
Speaker 4: part and then she's pregnant with Sarah. So I just
Speaker 4: thought it was a continuation, same time frame kind of
Speaker 4: between Sarah and Jacob.
Speaker 3: But as time went on, Catherine became more and more erratic,
Speaker 3: doing things that Troy couldn't explain away. Sometimes she would
Speaker 3: just disappear when she was supposed to be taking care
Speaker 3: of the kids, leaving them alone. Other Times she seemed confused.
Speaker 4: So I'm on my way home from work and I
Speaker 4: get a call from her that she's in DC and
Speaker 4: running out of gas and she needs me to come
Speaker 4: into DC to get gas in my car. So I
Speaker 4: go in and she appears to be from an area
Speaker 4: that's not, you know, a great neighborhood necessarily, and I'm
Speaker 4: going with, are you even.
Speaker 5: Doing now here?
Speaker 4: It's ridiculous and you don't even have a license. So
Speaker 4: she said that she was trying to do something.
Speaker 5: Christmas shopping west or something like that. You know, well,
Speaker 5: let's get gas. You're gonna follow me home.
Speaker 4: I pull out, we hit a red light, I make
Speaker 4: a left, she goes right, it goes off the other way.
Speaker 4: She's supposed to be following me home because she doesn't
Speaker 4: even her way out of there, So like, oh, I go,
Speaker 4: what are you doing?
Speaker 5: She goes, oh, well, you know I'm going to different.
Speaker 3: With It happened again just a couple nights.
Speaker 4: Later, she's calling me saying that she has no gas
Speaker 4: or she needs gas, and she's asking me.
Speaker 5: I said, okay, well I'll come meet you.
Speaker 4: She's like, no, can you just drop twenty in cash
Speaker 4: off with the cashier and I'll get.
Speaker 5: It from him.
Speaker 4: I'm going what So she's trying to get me to
Speaker 4: drop cash off at different gas stations with the person
Speaker 4: working to register.
Speaker 3: Catherine also became increasingly paranoid. She kept insisting she was
Speaker 3: being followed. At one she asked Troy to buy a
Speaker 3: staple gun and shoot her with it. Troy couldn't ignore
Speaker 3: things anymore.
Speaker 4: And Mike clin, there's been a progression here, like this
Speaker 4: isn't the same as it was when she was pregnant
Speaker 4: with my first child. This has gotten worse. Our relationship
Speaker 4: was non existent pretty much. You get towards the end
Speaker 4: of twenty twelve, we're sleeping in different places.
Speaker 3: It might have taken a few years for Troy to
Speaker 3: figure out that Catherine had serious mental health issues, but
Speaker 3: Catherine's mother, Lindsay Hoggle, says her daughter's problems started a
Speaker 3: long time ago.
Speaker 6: She struggled in middle school and high school just with
Speaker 6: a variety of different anxieties and mental health issues.
Speaker 3: Signs of real serious issues started to show up when
Speaker 3: Catherine was a young teenager.
Speaker 6: I had known that she was struggling, and Time magazine
Speaker 6: had a front page article on bipolar and teens, and
Speaker 6: so once I went through that, I just went I've
Speaker 6: got to do something. I mean, these symptoms are this,
Speaker 6: you know the same, and so that's when I decided that,
Speaker 6: you know, I was going to take her to a psychiatrist.
Speaker 3: Lindsay says that Catherine's issues affected the whole family, that
Speaker 3: Catherine would often not leave her room, that her oldest
Speaker 3: daughter was in constant conflict with her siblings and completely
Speaker 3: disengaged from school. It seemed like Catherine was falling apart.
Speaker 6: It finally became a situation where, you know, she broke
Speaker 6: the rules. Her father and I were divorced at that time,
Speaker 6: and I just said, well, you know, you've broken the rules.
Speaker 6: You need to find somewhere else to live, you know,
Speaker 6: And so she went to live with her dad.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me the story of how you learned
Speaker 3: that she was pregnant with your first Have you already
Speaker 3: heard that? I haven't heard it.
Speaker 6: Okay, So Catherine had been dating Troy, and you know,
Speaker 6: and she would come over for dinner or something after.
Speaker 6: You know, she really looks like she's pregnant.
Speaker 3: But Lindsay and her daughter's relationship was already strained, so
Speaker 3: Lindsay just let it go. She didn't ask. She was
Speaker 3: hoping she was wrong that her troubled daughter wasn't pregnant.
Speaker 6: And so I got this phone call and so she goes, hi, Mom.
Speaker 7: I'm like hi.
Speaker 6: She goes, well, I have some news. I'm like okay.
Speaker 6: She goes, You're a grandmother.
Speaker 3: Catherine wasn't calling to say, oh, hey, congratulations, you're going
Speaker 3: to be a grandmother in several months. Catherine was saying, surprise,
Speaker 3: I have a baby. At first, Lindsay wasn't even sure
Speaker 3: that she was serious, but it wasn't a joke. She
Speaker 3: had to break the news to Catherine's dad, Randy.
Speaker 6: I could tell he was driving, so I said, pull
Speaker 6: over in the side of the road and call me back.
Speaker 6: And so he did, and so I told him. I said,
Speaker 6: you know, I knew that this would be a little
Speaker 6: bit of a shock, so I didn't want you to
Speaker 6: be driving a car while I was telling you.
Speaker 3: So the whole family is reeling. Lindsay was in shock.
Speaker 3: What are you supposed to do with a reveal like this?
Speaker 3: But this was her first grandchild, a baby boy.
Speaker 6: And so I got in the car, you know, with
Speaker 6: my middle daughter, and gave her money to go buy
Speaker 6: a baby blanket at a nearby store, you know. Where
Speaker 6: you get these ideas, And then we drove to Harrisonburg.
Speaker 6: Luckily for Catherine, she was close to a hospital, and
Speaker 6: so when I went in, one of the nurses took
Speaker 6: me aside and said, you know, you're really lucky to
Speaker 6: have both of them, the baby and Catherine, because she
Speaker 6: had an emergency c section. She said, it's not uncommon
Speaker 6: for us to lose one or the other or both
Speaker 6: during this type of an event, and so, you know,
Speaker 6: it was even more stunned and you know, thrilled. But
Speaker 6: for whatever reason that was, that was how she chose
Speaker 6: to tell me.
Speaker 3: Catherine was twenty two. She and Troy hadn't been dating
Speaker 3: for long, and neither of them really had a career.
Speaker 3: Lindsay knew it would be a rough start.
Speaker 6: They had just gotten to Harrisonburg, didn't have a place
Speaker 6: to live. They were in temporary housing, and so I
Speaker 6: know helped find them somewhere to live and take care.
Speaker 6: I can't remember how many days they kept her. And
Speaker 6: he was less than five pounds when they left the hospital,
Speaker 6: which I was very worried about him, and I have
Speaker 6: eight pound babies, so five pound was just you know,
Speaker 6: is small, and so they had a lot to get
Speaker 6: done before they were ready to have a baby and
Speaker 6: take care of a baby.
Speaker 3: That was the beginning of Catherine being a mom. It
Speaker 3: was chaotic, surprising, disorganized. But people have told me that
Speaker 3: Catherine was a good mom, that she loved her kids.
Speaker 3: It's not unexpected in a way. It just makes what
Speaker 3: would happen later so much more of a shock from.
Speaker 5: The very beginning.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she loved it. I think it helped because my
Speaker 6: youngest daughter is I guess about seven years difference between,
Speaker 6: and so Catherine had kind of grown up, you know,
Speaker 6: taking care of my youngest daughter.
Speaker 3: Lindsay says, Catherine took to motherhood right away, like it
Speaker 3: was the only thing she ever wanted to do.
Speaker 6: I remember this. I had said, you know, let me
Speaker 6: take him for a night or two on the weekend
Speaker 6: and give you guys a break. And so on the
Speaker 6: way out, she has index cards that she's stuffing in
Speaker 6: the back pockets on my jeans as I'm walking out,
Speaker 6: and of course I've been going, okay, I've raised children before,
Speaker 6: I've done this before, I should know everything. And she's
Speaker 6: laughing and she's like, but no, these are his like
Speaker 6: little you know, these are the things that you got
Speaker 6: to take care of them. I'm like, okay, so I'm
Speaker 6: sure I'm going to get drilled when I get home.
Speaker 6: You're going to call and ask me if I've read
Speaker 6: a margin. She goes, yes, So yeah, she was. She
Speaker 6: loved it, you know, she loved it.
Speaker 3: How is she doing over those years? How is she
Speaker 3: managing those stresses? How is she managing being a mother?
Speaker 3: Just you know, what is there of the narrative as
Speaker 3: they build their family? How does she weather those years?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 6: Gosh, sometimes better than others. Part of it, very much,
Speaker 6: was just not the right fit of everything that they
Speaker 6: were doing. I mean, Troy worked nights, which left her
Speaker 6: with the children a lot, and so, you know, her
Speaker 6: father and I tried to help a lot and picking
Speaker 6: up you know, the slack and everything.
Speaker 3: But as Catherine became more erratic, it became clear that
Speaker 3: something had to be done. It all came to a
Speaker 3: head just before Christmas in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 4: I grabbed Randy, her father, and Lindsay her mom, and
Speaker 4: I had them meet me at Lindsay's house and we
Speaker 4: had to talk in her driveway. I said, you know,
Speaker 4: we were coming up on Christmas. I said, look, so
Speaker 4: let's get through Christmas with the kids if we can.
Speaker 4: But at that point, I need you guys to be
Speaker 4: with me on this. We need to sit down and
Speaker 4: talk to her and say, hey, look, either you're going
Speaker 4: to get help or we're going to get you help.
Speaker 3: The family desperately needed to get on the same page
Speaker 3: for Catherine, for the kids, for everyone, but the cracks
Speaker 3: were showing.
Speaker 4: I remember her father, and Randy is easily her biggest enabler.
Speaker 5: He was like, well, I don't know about this.
Speaker 4: And I remember Lindsay going off on him and custom
Speaker 4: out in the driveway, pokeingon as chest, talking about how
Speaker 4: you know, he's always enabled in this and this and
Speaker 4: this is something that he needs to get on board with.
Speaker 3: Despite her father's unease, the family decided that Catherine shouldn't
Speaker 3: ever be left alone with the kids. She wasn't reliable
Speaker 3: and she didn't seem to be making rational decisions. Lindsay's house,
Speaker 3: a big suburban home on a nice piece of property
Speaker 3: not far from Troy and Catherine's apartment, became central dispatch.
Speaker 3: Catherine and the kids would come there while Troy was
Speaker 3: at work. Family members rotated in and out, taking care
Speaker 3: of the three young kids. And making sure another adult
Speaker 3: was always with Catherine.
Speaker 5: I'm going, Okay, she's their mom. I want her to
Speaker 5: be in their life.
Speaker 4: We just have to figure out a safe, healthy way
Speaker 4: to do it at this point where and it wasn't
Speaker 4: a safe healthy way in terms of I thought she
Speaker 4: would be killing my kids or physically hurrying them. It
Speaker 4: was just the decision making process, wasn't there.
Speaker 3: Despite all the attempts to help Catherine at home, eventually
Speaker 3: the family realized she needed more help. Catherine was committed involuntarily.
Speaker 3: She was placed in handcuffs and taken away, spending Christmas
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen in the psych ward the suburban Baltimore Hospital
Speaker 3: after being diagnosed with schizo effective disorder. Catherine and Troy's
Speaker 3: oldest son was four, Sarah was two, and Jacob was
Speaker 3: just one, a baby. A young family that should have
Speaker 3: been brimming with hope, but this one was spiraling. After
Speaker 3: a short period, Catherine was able to check herself out
Speaker 3: of the hospital, but from then on, over the next year,
Speaker 3: she was in and out of treatment. Did she reject
Speaker 3: the diagnoses or was she at peace or as much
Speaker 3: as one can be with the fact that she has
Speaker 3: mental illness? It needs to be managed.
Speaker 6: I think the main thing that her feelings throughout that
Speaker 6: time period were very much, my children could be taken
Speaker 6: from me if I admit to having serious mental illness.
Speaker 3: Were you afraid that Catherine would hurt herself?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Were you ever afraid she would hurt the kids?
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: The family implemented new rules. Katherine couldn't be left alone
Speaker 3: with the kids, she couldn't drive, and she had to
Speaker 3: receive psychiatric treatment. Lindsay says that all of this just
Speaker 3: made Catherine increasingly fixated on the idea that her kids
Speaker 3: were going to be taken away from her.
Speaker 6: So I had an office in my home and she
Speaker 6: would come and say, you know, they're trying to take
Speaker 6: the children from me, And so I just assumed that
Speaker 6: it was that part of paranoia that had arisen. Things
Speaker 6: started happening that I wasn't sure was true or not.
Speaker 3: Troy says that during this time, as Katherine moved in
Speaker 3: and out of the hospital, staff would release her, assuring
Speaker 3: him that while his wife was definitely troubled, she was
Speaker 3: not dangerous. But Troy was starting to worry that the
Speaker 3: doctors were wrong.
Speaker 4: In that timeframe, she says things and does things that
Speaker 4: show me she's definitely dangerous.
Speaker 3: The family felt like Catherine wasn't getting better, that she
Speaker 3: she wasn't getting the help she needed. One time, after
Speaker 3: Catherine was released from a psychiatric facility, she approached a
Speaker 3: random stranger on the street and ended up spending the
Speaker 3: night at her house.
Speaker 6: It gets to the point where you realize that someone's
Speaker 6: not making good judgment and that they're emotional and your
Speaker 6: expectations of how they should act are not the way
Speaker 6: they're acting. I mean, just upset over things, irrational thinking.
Speaker 3: The family was coming apart and they couldn't keep limping along.
Speaker 3: Troy wanted Catherine committed for longer stretches of time.
Speaker 5: So I took her up there one day and I said,
Speaker 5: you guys need to keep her. I just walked in
Speaker 5: and I said, you need to keep her. Here's why.
Speaker 5: And now I walked out and they kept her.
Speaker 3: But it wouldn't last. Catherine would once again go through
Speaker 3: the revolving doors of the hospital and come back home,
Speaker 3: and while everyone around her kept trying to pull it
Speaker 3: all together, tragedy felt imminent. Tragedy struck on Sunday, September seventh,
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. That night, as Troy got ready to go
Speaker 3: to work. He said goodbye to his kids, as he
Speaker 3: did every.
Speaker 5: Night, So hugged and kissed the kids.
Speaker 4: Sodim I loved them, said day guy got to work,
Speaker 4: but I'll be back later this evening, you know, And
Speaker 4: I left.
Speaker 3: Troy never saw his two youngest kids again. Troy and
Speaker 3: his current wife, Stephanie, the one who sent me that
Speaker 3: letter and started this entire thing for me, have spent
Speaker 3: the last nine years tirelessly looking for the children, advocating
Speaker 3: for them, and hoping that Catherine would one day be
Speaker 3: brought to justice. After the kids went missing, Catherine took
Speaker 3: off that After five days on the run, she was
Speaker 3: caught and arrested. She never told anyone where Sarah and
Speaker 3: Jacob were, and she still hasn't. At first, Catherine was
Speaker 3: charged with parental abduction and obstruction. Months after her arrest,
Speaker 3: Catherine was found not competent to stand trial. Only years later,
Speaker 3: after the children were presumed dead, would she be charged
Speaker 3: with their murders. And then remember, there is this statute
Speaker 3: in the state of Maryland that says that defendants charged
Speaker 3: with felonies or violent crimes who have been found not
Speaker 3: competent have to be tried within five years, or the
Speaker 3: charges against them have to be dismissed. And that is
Speaker 3: Troy and Stephanie's biggest fear and their motivation. It's what
Speaker 3: got them to reach out to me in the first place,
Speaker 3: because when I got her letter, there were less than
Speaker 3: nine months left on that ticking clock. If Catherine couldn't
Speaker 3: be restored to competency, the charges against her would be dismissed,
Speaker 3: and the chances of ever finding out what happened to
Speaker 3: Sarah and Jacob that September night in twenty fourteen would
Speaker 3: grow dimmer and dimmer. In addition to a really complicated
Speaker 3: personal story about a family tragedy, there are so many
Speaker 3: complex issues here to tease out, regarding the law and
Speaker 3: mental health, and how these systems intersect, about our perceptions
Speaker 3: of mental illness, about our expectations from others, about how
Speaker 3: we balance public safety versus the rights of the accused,
Speaker 3: and what justice and accountability mean for the most heinous
Speaker 3: of crimes. And you're going to hear from experts about
Speaker 3: these bigger questions as we dig into the details of
Speaker 3: this very complicated story.
Speaker 6: How's it going, well, We just went pretty well.
Speaker 7: I had an all Day Interview yesterday, right, I mean
Speaker 7: I got off at we like, Actually I was up
Speaker 7: since one am.
Speaker 3: One of those experts who will help us throughout this
Speaker 3: podcast is my friend and colleague, Beth Carris. And here's
Speaker 3: the thing about Beth, She's a bit of a legend.
Speaker 3: Beth was a New York City prosecutor for years, and
Speaker 3: then she moved on to Core TV. She's now been
Speaker 3: an investigative journal list for decades and she's always popping
Speaker 3: up on TV to talk about big cases. One time
Speaker 3: I watched her get recognized by fans in the lobby
Speaker 3: of a courtyard Marriant, and I knew she was the
Speaker 3: perfect person to sort through all of the complex issues
Speaker 3: in this case. If the charges are dismissed, could Catherine
Speaker 3: be released. It's a thought that terrifies Troy and Stephanie
Speaker 3: because they the police and prosecutors all believe that Catherine
Speaker 3: murdered Sarah and Jacob and that there's a lot more
Speaker 3: she's been hiding over the last nine years. Coming up
Speaker 3: on Unrestorable.
Speaker 4: I'm thinking I'm going to the police station to basically
Speaker 4: have them, you know, do whatever they need to do
Speaker 4: to find out where my kids are. So I can
Speaker 4: get my kids, and I'm thinking that I need to
Speaker 4: get there before I lose control over my emotions. At
Speaker 4: this point, it's just too much. At this point, I'm
Speaker 4: like this, it's crazy. We're on the phone one night
Speaker 4: and he just kind of stopped me and he told
Speaker 4: me that his two kids were missing, and honestly, I
Speaker 4: don't think that I believed him.
Speaker 1: There have been amendments to our mental health statutes throughout
Speaker 1: the years, and two thousand and six there were major
Speaker 1: amendments because they were concerned that people were just going to.
Speaker 2: Be locked away.
Speaker 4: People would forget about them, you know, no oversight somebody.
Speaker 7: It was really kind of cynical looking at this whole
Speaker 7: eight year Saga would say that Katherine Hoggle has been
Speaker 7: a master manipulator his entire time right until now. She's
Speaker 7: avoiding this final hearing and she may prevail in getting
Speaker 7: her criminal charges dismissed and being civilly committed.
Speaker 3: Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by me, Sarah Trelevin,
Speaker 3: and Beth Carris. Our story editor is Kathleen Goldhar. Mixing
Speaker 3: and sound designed by Reza Daya for anonymous content. Jessica
Speaker 3: Grimshaw is our executive producer. Jennifer Sears is our executive
Speaker 3: in charge of production, and Nick Yanas is our legal
Speaker 3: council for iHeart executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer
Speaker 3: Abu Zafar