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 m and I'd 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.
Speaker 6: It was from a family.
Speaker 3: Member close to Sarah and Jacob's father, Troy, pleading with
Speaker 3: me to help them. My name is Sarah Treleven. I'm
Speaker 3: a journalist and I had recently appeared on an episode
Speaker 3: of the news program twenty twenty about another podcast I made,
Speaker 3: this one about a woman recently convicted of murdering her
Speaker 3: two children, Lori Valo Davel. When the show aired, I
Speaker 3: heard from a number of people who are desperate in
Speaker 3: some way. They wanted help solving cases of their missing children, parents, partners.
Speaker 3: They all wanted the media to pay it attention to
Speaker 3: something that had gone terribly wrong in their lives.
Speaker 6: This one was different.
Speaker 3: This message said that if Catherine was not brought to competence,
Speaker 3: then the charges against her would be dropped. In Maryland,
Speaker 3: if someone charged with murder is unable to stand trial
Speaker 3: because they are deemed incompetent, the state only has five
Speaker 3: years to try and get them healthy enough to go
Speaker 3: before a judge.
Speaker 6: And face the charges.
Speaker 3: And if that doesn't happen, if they go five years
Speaker 3: without being declared competent, then those murder charges are dismissed,
Speaker 3: they all but disappear. Catherine could be released from Perkins,
Speaker 3: Troy might never find out what happened to his kids,
Speaker 3: And when I got that Facebook message, the clock was
Speaker 3: running out. This is the story of two kids whose
Speaker 3: definitive fates are unknown, other who has been found not
Speaker 3: competent to stand trial.
Speaker 6: For their murders. But it's also the story.
Speaker 3: Of unintended consequences, about a legal system that was set
Speaker 3: up to protect people but actually raises questions about public
Speaker 3: safety and how we balance the rights of the mentally
Speaker 3: ill with our ideas about justice and accountability. This is Unrestorable,
Speaker 3: a podcast 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 6: 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 6: 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.
Speaker 6: Catherine was the.
Speaker 3: First of her four siblings to have a kid, so
Speaker 3: everyone wanted to play with the new baby, to take
Speaker 3: pictures of him, to make him laugh. Over the next
Speaker 3: few years, the family continued to grow. Fewer than six
Speaker 3: years into the relationship, Catherine and Troy had three children
Speaker 3: under the age of five. The family was living in
Speaker 3: a small apartment. Money was tight, It was a lot,
Speaker 3: and at times Troy did feel that Catherine was a
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 6: She was acting weird.
Speaker 3: But 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 part
Speaker 4: and then she's pregnant with Sarah. So I just thought
Speaker 4: it was a continuation, same time frame kind of between
Speaker 4: 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 you even doing now here, it's ridiculous, and
Speaker 4: you don't even have a license. So she said that
Speaker 4: she was trying to do something Christmas shopping west or
Speaker 4: something like that. You know, well, let's get gas. You're
Speaker 4: gonna follow me home. I pull out, we hit a
Speaker 4: red light, I make a left, she goes right, it
Speaker 4: goes off the other way. She's supposed to be following
Speaker 4: me home because she doesn't even her way out of there,
Speaker 4: So like, oh, I go, what are you doing?
Speaker 5: She goes, oh, well, you know I'm going to different.
Speaker 6: With It happened again just a couple nights later.
Speaker 4: She's calling me saying that she has no gas or
Speaker 4: 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. I'm going what.
Speaker 4: So she's trying to get me to drop cash off
Speaker 4: at different gas stations with the person 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 like 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 7: She struggled in middle school and high school just with
Speaker 7: 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 7: I had known that she was struggling, and Time magazine
Speaker 7: had a front page article on bipolar and teens, and
Speaker 7: so once I went through that, I just went I've
Speaker 7: got to do something. I mean, these symptoms are this,
Speaker 7: you know the same. And so that's when I decided that,
Speaker 7: 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 7: It finally became a situation where, you know, she broke
Speaker 7: the rules. Her father and I were divorced at that time,
Speaker 7: and I just said, well, you know, you've broken the rules.
Speaker 5: You need to.
Speaker 8: Find somewhere else to live, you know, And so she
Speaker 8: went to live with her dad. Can you tell me
Speaker 8: the story of how you learned that she was pregnant
Speaker 8: with your first Have you already heard that? I haven't
Speaker 8: heard it.
Speaker 7: Okay, So Catherine had been dating Troy, and you know,
Speaker 7: and she would come over for dinner or something after.
Speaker 7: 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.
Speaker 6: She didn't ask.
Speaker 3: She was hoping she was wrong that her troubled daughter
Speaker 3: wasn't pregnant, and so.
Speaker 7: I got this phone call and so she goes, hi, Mom.
Speaker 6: I'm like hi.
Speaker 7: She goes, well, I have some news. I'm like okay.
Speaker 7: 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 7: I could tell he was driving, so I said, pull
Speaker 7: over in the side of the road and call me back.
Speaker 7: And so he did, and so I told him, I said,
Speaker 7: you know, I knew that this would be a little
Speaker 7: bit of a shock, so I didn't want you to
Speaker 7: 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 7: And so I got in the car, you know, with
Speaker 7: my middle daughter, and gave her money to go buy
Speaker 7: a baby blanket at a nearby store you know where
Speaker 7: you get these ideas, and then we drove to Harrisonburg. Luckily,
Speaker 7: for Catherine, she was close to a hospital, and so
Speaker 7: when I went in, one of the nurses took me
Speaker 7: aside and said, you know, you're really lucky to have
Speaker 7: both of them, the baby and Catherine, because she had
Speaker 7: an emergency c section. She said, it's not uncommon for
Speaker 7: us to lose one or the other or both during
Speaker 7: this type of an event, and so, you know, it
Speaker 7: was even more stunned and you know, thrilled. But for
Speaker 7: whatever reason that was, that was how she chose to
Speaker 7: 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 6: Lindsay knew it would be a rough start.
Speaker 7: They had just gotten to Harrisonburg, didn't have a place
Speaker 7: to live, they were in temporary housing, and so I
Speaker 7: know helped find them somewhere to live and take care.
Speaker 8: I can't remember how many days they kept her.
Speaker 7: And he was less than five pounds when they left
Speaker 7: the hospital, which I was very worried about him, and
Speaker 7: I have eight pound babies, so five pound was just,
Speaker 7: you know, is small, and so they had a lot
Speaker 7: to get done before they were ready to have a
Speaker 7: baby and 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 6: The very beginning.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she loved it. I think it helped because my
Speaker 7: youngest daughter is I guess about seven years difference between,
Speaker 7: and so Catherine had kind of grown up, you know,
Speaker 7: 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.
Speaker 7: I had said, you know, let me take him for
Speaker 7: a night or two on the weekend and give you
Speaker 7: guys a break. And so on the way out, she
Speaker 7: has index cards that she's stuffing in the back pockets
Speaker 7: on my jeans as I'm walking out, and of course
Speaker 7: I've been going, okay, I've raised children before, I've done
Speaker 7: this before, I should know everything. And she's laughing and
Speaker 7: she's like, but no, these are his like little you know,
Speaker 7: these are the things that you got to take care
Speaker 7: of them.
Speaker 6: I'm like, okay, so.
Speaker 7: I'm sure I'm going to get drilled when I get home.
Speaker 7: You're going to call and ask me if I've read
Speaker 7: a margin. She goes, yes, So yeah, she was. She
Speaker 7: 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 7: Oh? Gosh, sometimes better than others. Part of it, very much,
Speaker 7: was just not the right fit of everything that they
Speaker 7: were doing. I mean, Troy worked nights, which left her
Speaker 7: with the children a lot, and so, you know, her
Speaker 7: father and I tried to help a lot and picking
Speaker 7: 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 4: I'm going, okay, she's their mom. I want her to
Speaker 4: be in their life. We just have to figure out
Speaker 4: a safe, healthy way to do it at this point
Speaker 4: where and it wasn't a safe, healthy way in terms
Speaker 4: of I thought she would be killing my kids or
Speaker 4: physically hurrying them. It was just the decision making process,
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 6: And Jacob was just one. A baby.
Speaker 3: A young family that should have been brimming with hope,
Speaker 3: but this one was spiraling. After a short period, Catherine
Speaker 3: was able to check herself out of the hospital, but
Speaker 3: from then on, over the next year, she was in
Speaker 3: and out of treatment. Did she reject the diagnoses or
Speaker 3: was she at peace or as much as one can
Speaker 3: be with the fact that she has mental illness. It
Speaker 3: needs to be managed.
Speaker 7: I think the main thing that her feelings throughout that
Speaker 7: time period were very much, my children could be taken
Speaker 7: from me if I admit to having serious mental illness.
Speaker 6: Were you afraid that Catherine would hurt herself?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: Were you ever afraid she would hurt the kids?
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 6: Lindsay says that all.
Speaker 3: Of this just made Catherine increasingly fixated on the idea
Speaker 3: that her kids were going to be taken away from her.
Speaker 7: So I had an office in my home and she
Speaker 7: would come and say, you know, they're trying to take
Speaker 7: the children from me, And so I just assumed that
Speaker 7: it was that part of paranoia that had arisen. Things
Speaker 7: 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 7: It gets to the point where you realize that someone's
Speaker 7: not making good judgment and that they're emotional and your
Speaker 7: expectations of how they should act are not the way
Speaker 7: 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 said you need to keep her. Here's why. And
Speaker 5: now I walked out and they kept her.
Speaker 6: But it wouldn't last.
Speaker 3: Catherine would once again go through the revolving doors of
Speaker 3: the hospital and come back home, and while everyone around
Speaker 3: her kept trying to pull it all together, tragedy felt imminent.
Speaker 3: Tragedy struck on Sunday, September seventh, twenty fourteen. That night,
Speaker 3: as Troy got ready to go to work. He said
Speaker 3: goodbye to his kids, as he 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 grow.
Speaker 6: Dimmer and dimmer.
Speaker 3: In addition to a really complicated personal story about a
Speaker 3: family tragedy, there are so many complex issues here to
Speaker 3: tease out, regarding the law and mental health, and how
Speaker 3: these systems intersect, about our perceptions of mental illness, about
Speaker 3: our expectations from others, about how we balance public safety
Speaker 3: versus the rights of the accused, and what justice and
Speaker 3: accountability mean for the most heinous of crimes. And you're
Speaker 3: going to hear from experts about these bigger questions as
Speaker 3: we dig into the details of this very complicated story.
Speaker 7: How's it going, well, We just went pretty well.
Speaker 9: I had an all day interview yesterday, right, I mean
Speaker 9: I got off at we like, actually I was up
Speaker 9: 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.
Speaker 6: And here's the thing about Beth. She's a bit of
Speaker 6: 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, now I'm going to the police station to
Speaker 4: basically have them, you know, do whatever they need to
Speaker 4: do to find out where my kids are. So I
Speaker 4: can get my kids, and I'm thinking that I need
Speaker 4: to get there before I lose control over my emotions.
Speaker 5: At this point. It's just too much. At this point,
Speaker 5: I'm like this, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: We're on the phone one night and he just kind
Speaker 2: of stopped me and he told me that his two
Speaker 2: kids were missing, and honestly, I don't think that I
Speaker 2: believed him.
Speaker 10: There have been amendments to our mental health statutes throughout
Speaker 10: the years, and two thousand and six there were major
Speaker 10: amendments because they were concerned that people were just going
Speaker 10: to be locked away, people would forget about them, you know,
Speaker 10: no oversight somebody.
Speaker 9: It was really kind of cynical looking at this whole
Speaker 9: eight year Saga would say that Katherine Hoggle has been
Speaker 9: a master manipulator this entire time, right until now. She's
Speaker 9: avoiding this final hearing and she may prevail in getting
Speaker 9: 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