Speaker 1: Good morning.
Speaker 2: I'd be remiss if I didn't start, ladies and gentlemen
Speaker 2: by thanking Montgomery County Police Department.
Speaker 1: They have worked tirelessly.
Speaker 2: There are so many people trying to help, and we
Speaker 2: just appreciate that tremendoucible.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't usually cry, so I apologize.
Speaker 4: Randy Hoggle is standing in front of electron with a
Speaker 4: bunch of microphones capturing every word on either side. He's
Speaker 4: flanked by police officers. His words and his presence seem desperate.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, if I could, I really am saying
Speaker 2: this for my daughter, and this is a plea of
Speaker 2: my daughter to come home and have help.
Speaker 4: Randy looks like he hasn't slept. His crisp blue and
Speaker 4: white shirt is a contrast to his drawn face and
Speaker 4: the bags under his eyes.
Speaker 2: Many people deal with mental illness, Many families deal with
Speaker 2: mental illness. It's always a judgment about medication and the
Speaker 2: delicate balance of medication being taken.
Speaker 4: Randy's daughter, Katherine Hoggle, has been missing on the run
Speaker 4: for three days now, and it's been four days since
Speaker 4: anyone besides Catherine has seen her two youngest children, Sarah
Speaker 4: and Jacob.
Speaker 2: We know she's probably not been on medication for two weeks,
Speaker 2: and thus we know, Katherine, this is not you, and
Speaker 2: this is not who you're about and what you do.
Speaker 4: For years, Catherine's mental health had been deteriorating. This last year.
Speaker 4: In particular, her family, her dad Randy, her mom Lindsay,
Speaker 4: and her partner Troy, had run themselves ragged trying to
Speaker 4: get Catherine the help she needed. Not only did they
Speaker 4: get her committed to a mental health facility for a
Speaker 4: time when she was at home, Catherine had to follow
Speaker 4: strict rules set out by her family. Catherine wasn't allowed
Speaker 4: to be alone with the kids, she couldn't drive, and
Speaker 4: she had to continue attending a day program at a
Speaker 4: psychiatric hospital. It was all in an attempt to keep
Speaker 4: both the kids and Catherine safe. But now as days
Speaker 4: went by and the kids and Catherine remained missing, they
Speaker 4: were all coming to the horrible realization that Catherine was
Speaker 4: more dangerous than they had ever imagined, and maybe, just
Speaker 4: maybe they hadn't done enough to help her.
Speaker 2: Everyone here is committed to if you just come and
Speaker 2: get help, we'll all help you. And for that, I
Speaker 2: just want to say, please come home. We miss you,
Speaker 2: and we miss the kids.
Speaker 4: I'm Beth Carris and this is Unrestorable, an original podcast
Speaker 4: from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio. This press conference gave the
Speaker 4: family one small win. The very next evening, Catherine was
Speaker 4: spotted and police were notified.
Speaker 5: When she was picked up, she was over there with
Speaker 5: her purse full of flyers and she was pulling them
Speaker 5: down when she was seen by the people who called
Speaker 5: the police to say they.
Speaker 4: Saw Catherine was finally in custody and police began to
Speaker 4: interrogate her. Troy, father of the missing children, breathed a
Speaker 4: sigh of relief.
Speaker 5: The next morning, I get a call and they're asking
Speaker 5: myself and Randy to come in and saying, look, she
Speaker 5: won't tell us where the kids are. Maybe she'll tell
Speaker 5: you guys, come ask her.
Speaker 4: This was the moment Troy had put all his hope into.
Speaker 5: When I first walked into the room, she looks at
Speaker 5: me and she goes, oh, what are you doing here?
Speaker 5: You know, kind of like it's a Saturday and I
Speaker 5: show up at a bowling alley and she had like
Speaker 5: a tournament or something. I said, well, I'm here to say,
Speaker 5: you can tell me what the kids are so I
Speaker 5: can go pick up our children, and she was like,
Speaker 5: they're safe. I said, where are they? She said, they're fine.
Speaker 5: I gave them someone. They're being watched. They're fine. I said, Katherine,
Speaker 5: where are my kids?
Speaker 4: It became clear pretty quickly that Catherine's arrest would not
Speaker 4: be the end of Troy's nightmare. In many ways, it
Speaker 4: marked a new beginning. At this point, Catherine had only
Speaker 4: been charged with child neglect and detaining a child misdemeanors.
Speaker 4: Murder charges would not come for another three years, but
Speaker 4: the capture and arrest of Catherine would kick off a
Speaker 4: legal and personal odyssey that would raise questions about mental
Speaker 4: illness and how it intersects with policing and the court system.
Speaker 4: Her family would also face their own reckoning. They would
Speaker 4: have to come to terms with the fact that their
Speaker 4: efforts to find Catherine help hadn't been nearly enough, and
Speaker 4: that that lack of help meant that the worst thing
Speaker 4: they could imagine happening had happened.
Speaker 1: Was day in September when in she had been interviewed
Speaker 1: by the police. I believe for several hours. They had
Speaker 1: brought in some people to talk with her, other people
Speaker 1: other than the police to talk with her. In an
Speaker 1: attempt to gain information.
Speaker 4: David Felson is Catherine's attorney.
Speaker 1: I then went in to see her. She was in
Speaker 1: a very small room. She was in a plastic smock
Speaker 1: type of clothing because the police had taken her clothing.
Speaker 1: It was obvious to me, without disclosing anything confidential, that
Speaker 1: there were profound mental health issues for Catherine, clearly and
Speaker 1: profoundly not Well.
Speaker 4: What did you observe about her physically or what was
Speaker 4: coming out of her mouth that made you conclude she
Speaker 4: was profound mentally ill.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not a doctor. I can't. It would be
Speaker 1: wrong for me to say that I made that conclusion.
Speaker 1: I had the suspicion it was profoundly obvious that when
Speaker 1: you would talk to her there were significant deficits and
Speaker 1: significant disconnects between the circumstances that she found herself in
Speaker 1: and the way she would react to people. But my
Speaker 1: job was to represent her. There were a variety of
Speaker 1: issues that I was concerned with. The first was her competency,
Speaker 1: because without her competency, she can't make rational and reasonable
Speaker 1: decisions about what she should do in her circumstance.
Speaker 4: Well, Catherine's lawyer might have been concerned about her level
Speaker 4: of competency. The police had other concerns.
Speaker 1: We had authorities providing a fair amount of pressure on
Speaker 1: us concerning the children.
Speaker 3: Obviously there are some mental health concerns. Our concern is
Speaker 3: the investigation and bringing those two children home.
Speaker 4: Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darren Frank was a captain
Speaker 4: in twenty fourteen. He spoke to the media when the
Speaker 4: kids first went missing.
Speaker 3: We are running down every single lead. We are collecting
Speaker 3: data from phones, We're collecting data from sightings, We're collecting
Speaker 3: data from just interviews with people that knew Catherine, and
Speaker 3: we're chasing down every single possibility to figure out where
Speaker 3: she is. There's at least fifty officers involved with that effort.
Speaker 4: Missing people are a concern for the police, but missing children,
Speaker 4: they are everyone's nightmare. And sometimes, in their desperate effort
Speaker 4: to find missing kids, police will push the envelope on
Speaker 4: what is permissible.
Speaker 3: We have two children out there that their client claims
Speaker 3: to be alive, and we're trying to locate them, and
Speaker 3: the Montgomery County Police will do everything within the bounds
Speaker 3: of the law to try and find out where those
Speaker 3: children are.
Speaker 4: A few weeks after Catherine's arrest, detectives went to collect
Speaker 4: a DNA sample from her. Desperate for answers, the investigators
Speaker 4: ended up speaking to Catherine for a couple of hours
Speaker 4: without her attorney knowing about it. This is a sticky
Speaker 4: area where investigators have to balance a defendant's rights with
Speaker 4: the urgency of the situation.
Speaker 3: He has to do his job. We run into this
Speaker 3: all the time with all kinds of cases that there
Speaker 3: are areas that defense attorneys don't like us acting.
Speaker 4: Once her lawyer learned about this interaction between his client
Speaker 4: and the police, he filed a motion asking the judge
Speaker 4: to dismiss the charges. In court, there was also discussion
Speaker 4: about whether Catherine had communicated an offer to take the
Speaker 4: police to the children, something Catherine has denied. In the end,
Speaker 4: the judge did not dismiss the charges, but told the
Speaker 4: police that they couldn't speak to Catherine without her lawyer present.
Speaker 4: The police were also prevented from taking Catherine up on
Speaker 4: her alleged offer to lead them to the children.
Speaker 3: I spoke with her, My investigators spoke with her, and
Speaker 3: she very clearly, very lucid, said yes, I want to
Speaker 3: take you to an address, and was trying to dictate
Speaker 3: terms to us on when she wanted to go, and
Speaker 3: she wanted to go immediately. But now I'm disappointed that
Speaker 3: she wasn't afforded the opportunity that day to go. But
Speaker 3: I certainly understand the judge's decision. As a law enforcement officer,
Speaker 3: I understand it. I respect it as a father. If
Speaker 3: I wasn't a law enforce an officer, I'd be very upset,
Speaker 3: And I think Troyce expressed that, And I think if
Speaker 3: you go to most people when it's their children in
Speaker 3: that situation, they would feel the same frustrat that a
Speaker 3: system is standing in the way of finding out what
Speaker 3: happens to him.
Speaker 4: Troy was no doubt frustrated with the system.
Speaker 5: Once she got locked up. I was calling hoping that
Speaker 5: she would say something. I was calling daily at first,
Speaker 5: and she would talk to me and she was like,
Speaker 5: you know, the kids are saying. I would try to
Speaker 5: talk to her maybe about like just some other things,
Speaker 5: you know, what's going there or whatever, and then come
Speaker 5: back to the kids to see if she would answer differently.
Speaker 4: At the beginning of this whole saga, Troy believed he
Speaker 4: might actually find his kids alive. That a small part
Speaker 4: of what Catherine had told him was true that she
Speaker 4: had dropped them off at a friend's house. This isn't
Speaker 4: the first time I've heard about a mother who's accused
Speaker 4: of hurting her kids but tells the police that they
Speaker 4: are safe with friends. Lori Valo Dabel did that, and
Speaker 4: so did Casey Anthony.
Speaker 5: So when it first happened, I'm thinking, Okay, within a day,
Speaker 5: we're going come back. Then after you know, Tuesday goes by,
Speaker 5: we do all the questions stuff on. When Wednesday goes by,
Speaker 5: and it's kind of like, all right, we're passing on flyers.
Speaker 5: Nobody's seeing nothing. All right, So within a week or
Speaker 5: two they're gonna be back home. Then from like two
Speaker 5: weeks out, I'm going, okay, within the next three weeks
Speaker 5: or so, they got to be back here. So after
Speaker 5: a month passes, I go, okay, Well, within it like
Speaker 5: the next month or so, whoever has them. They don't
Speaker 5: want to feed somebody else's kids, you know, like someone's
Speaker 5: gonna come out and be like, oh, is someone gonna
Speaker 5: pick up these kids? I was babysitting, you know, or
Speaker 5: something like that. And I'm thinking, okay, now they're on
Speaker 5: TV and stuff. So whoever has them, who thinks maybe
Speaker 5: their mom left them and abandon them. They're gonna see
Speaker 5: them on TV and go, oh my god, I'm not
Speaker 5: actually supposed to have these kids and bring them home.
Speaker 4: But we know that never happened. The children have now
Speaker 4: been missing for nine years.
Speaker 5: My perspective started to shift. I felt like, as their father,
Speaker 5: though on, my job was to keep hope out there
Speaker 5: and continue to look, even though I didn't believe it anymore.
Speaker 5: And finally, I remember one of the first time I
Speaker 5: ever said publica, I felt like I was betrayed, Sarah Jacob.
Speaker 5: You know, I got home and I broke down, cried,
Speaker 5: and I was just like, I betrayed my kids.
Speaker 4: Today, three years after she was arrested, Catherine was charged
Speaker 4: with the murder of her children, even though their bodies
Speaker 4: have never been found, But since being found incompetent to
Speaker 4: stand trial, she has never had to face those charges
Speaker 4: in court, and because of the limitations in the law
Speaker 4: in the state where she lives, she might never have to.
Speaker 6: So people want to make sure that justice, the criminal
Speaker 6: side of things, are served, but also oftentimes they want
Speaker 6: to make sure that the human beings who are involved
Speaker 6: in that process are also treated like human beings. Sometimes
Speaker 6: human beings, you know, do really terrible things, but they're
Speaker 6: still human beings.
Speaker 4: Test Neil is a forensic psychologist and associate professor at
Speaker 4: Iowa State University, and she studies the delicate intersection between
Speaker 4: the US justice system and the rights of the mentally ill.
Speaker 6: Let's say the court has decided that somebody is incompetent
Speaker 6: to stand trial. Now, what that means is that based
Speaker 6: on the sixth Amendment to our Constitution, it guarantees that
Speaker 6: people who are accused of committeing a crime, they have
Speaker 6: the right to confront the witnesses against them, They have
Speaker 6: or the right to aid in their own defense. They
Speaker 6: have the right to help their attorney, you know, defend
Speaker 6: them against those charges. And so the concept here is
Speaker 6: that if somebody is incompetent to stand trial, then they
Speaker 6: are not in their right mind to be able to
Speaker 6: help defend themselves against those charges. And so the system,
Speaker 6: our legal system, has said that is unfair. So we
Speaker 6: do have the strong public interest, this desire to move
Speaker 6: this case forward. But now we have a person who
Speaker 6: cannot participate in the process as it has been designed.
Speaker 6: So we need to stop that process and wait until
Speaker 6: the person is of of their right mind and can
Speaker 6: participate in their own defense.
Speaker 4: Competency is a legal determination by a judge who considers
Speaker 4: what treating doctors and experts have to say. But in
Speaker 4: another state, using the same evidence, Catherine may well have
Speaker 4: been found competent to stantrial. Even a different judge in
Speaker 4: Maryland may have made a different determination. In Maryland, the
Speaker 4: longest and incompetent person can be held for any felony,
Speaker 4: including murder is five years, and after the five years
Speaker 4: are up and that person cannot be made to understand
Speaker 4: or to help in their defense, those charges will be dismissed.
Speaker 4: This is, no doubt very frustrating for Troy. He's concerned
Speaker 4: no one will be held responsible for the deaths of
Speaker 4: his children, but he's also worried about something else, that
Speaker 4: Catherine might in fact be manipulating the system. He knows
Speaker 4: that she is mentally ill, but Troy wonders if she's
Speaker 4: more capable than she's letting on, And with hindsight, he's
Speaker 4: even now wondering when that manipulation began.
Speaker 5: Nobody thinks about someone would do this, especially in a
Speaker 5: way like this, where it would have had to have
Speaker 5: been playing net where it's not this psychotic break.
Speaker 4: Since the kids have been gone, Troy has discovered more
Speaker 4: about the evening leading up to their disappearance. While Troy
Speaker 4: was at work, Catherine was with her father, Randy, and
Speaker 4: the children. And remember, Catherine was not allowed to be
Speaker 4: alone with the kids, nor was she allowed to drive.
Speaker 4: But Troy has discovered that that afternoon, Randy gave his
Speaker 4: daughter his car keys and let her leave.
Speaker 5: She left with Jacob to go get pizza right up
Speaker 5: the street and came back three and a half hours
Speaker 5: without him.
Speaker 4: Troy learned that when Catherine came back without Jacob, she
Speaker 4: told her father that she had dropped the two year
Speaker 4: old off at a friend's for a sleepover. A two
Speaker 4: year old at a sleepover, Think about that.
Speaker 5: I don't know any of this at the time. I'm
Speaker 5: at work.
Speaker 4: It occurued to Troy now that Catherine had been capable
Speaker 4: enough that day to come up with a lie about
Speaker 4: what she had done with their son. When Troy gets
Speaker 4: home later that night after stopping at a grocery store,
Speaker 4: he finds Catherine sitting outside their townhouse on the front steps.
Speaker 5: I'm like, what are you doing down here? She's like, oh,
Speaker 5: I was going to help you, Cary the groceries up.
Speaker 5: I said, ah, that's cool.
Speaker 4: Troy was tired, it had been a long day. He
Speaker 4: just wanted to kiss his kids and fall asleep. But
Speaker 4: Catherine didn't want to go in just yet. She wanted
Speaker 4: to go across the street to grab a soda.
Speaker 5: So I said, yeah, it's fine. So we just went
Speaker 5: across the street real quick. God it came back, carried
Speaker 5: the groceries up, put him away, and by then it's
Speaker 5: like one o'clock in the morning. I'm tired.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: Literally, every other night in my life, whenever I got
Speaker 5: home my kids were in bed, I would walk in,
Speaker 5: pray by their bed, kiss him good night, and go
Speaker 5: lay down. That night, I was tired, and I was like,
Speaker 5: you know what if they wake up, I'm up yourself
Speaker 5: went to bed.
Speaker 4: In the rear view mirror, Catherine's actions feel different, manipulative,
Speaker 4: like part of a plan.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like Catherine took the kids to hurt you.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like that was her mind?
Speaker 5: I feel like that was probably one, Like I believe
Speaker 5: that part of this is a revenge thing, and I
Speaker 5: think she felt like I had basically made her life
Speaker 5: almost a confinement or something. Because she had the day program,
Speaker 5: she couldn't be alone with the kids, you know, So
Speaker 5: I think it was a way of taking control. And
Speaker 5: I think that it was probably anger towards me because
Speaker 5: I'm the one who had her committed, because well, I mean,
Speaker 5: her parents didn't have the guts to do it. I
Speaker 5: think part of it is just her not wanting the
Speaker 5: responsibility of being a mother at that point.
Speaker 4: We know what happens next. Later that afternoon, Catherine takes
Speaker 4: Troy on a wild goose chase. The kids are never
Speaker 4: found and Catherine takes off. Five days later, she's nabbed
Speaker 4: by the police and since then has been in custody.
Speaker 4: But Catherine's criminal case was halted soon after her arrest
Speaker 4: when her attorney asked for Catherine to be evaluated for competency.
Speaker 4: But Troy is skeptical about Catherine's incompetency, especially as time
Speaker 4: wore on and Catherine continued to hinder the search for
Speaker 4: the kids.
Speaker 5: Why wouldn't you just bring them home? I said, bring
Speaker 5: them home, they'll drop the charges.
Speaker 1: You're out, And she.
Speaker 5: Said, they still want to put me in jo. I said,
Speaker 5: well they can't, So she says, well no, they still
Speaker 5: have all the misdemeanor charges, and she goes, well, they
Speaker 5: have the primer production, which is sixty days time served.
Speaker 5: She goes, there's the obstruction that's ninety days. That's time served.
Speaker 5: She goes, but they still have the two misdemeanor neglect charges.
Speaker 5: They carry five years each. She says, that's ten years
Speaker 5: that they can put on me.
Speaker 4: Troy feels that Catherine's refusal to talk about the children
Speaker 4: and assist in her own defense is calculated that it
Speaker 4: could be a ploy to keep her out of prison,
Speaker 4: and he's not alone. The Catherine Hoggle that you saw in.
Speaker 6: That courtroom, was she the same capenhoggle that you interviewed
Speaker 6: he did.
Speaker 4: Early in the investigation, a local Maryland reporter spoke with
Speaker 4: police Captain Darren Frank about Catherine.
Speaker 5: In what way was she different.
Speaker 3: When we have spoken with her every time. She's very lucid.
Speaker 3: She knows exactly who's around her. I had ten minutes
Speaker 3: of interaction with her when she was originally arrested. She
Speaker 3: knew exactly who I was. When I came to see
Speaker 3: her at her request. That was one of the first
Speaker 3: things that I asked to see. How loocid she was
Speaker 3: and she remembered me instantly so, and she also remembers
Speaker 3: the investigators by name, and she makes requests of certain
Speaker 3: investigators by name completely different person in the courtroom.
Speaker 4: It seems to some that Catherine might have a plan,
Speaker 4: knowing that in Maryland, the court must dismiss felony charges
Speaker 4: against anyone found incompetent for five years. Has this occurred
Speaker 4: to Catherine? Could she find a way to remain incompetent
Speaker 4: long enough to see the murder charges dismissed?
Speaker 5: Well, I would ask her. Hering game it was, I've
Speaker 5: been advised to remaining confident.
Speaker 6: That's how she said it.
Speaker 1: I've justsed I've.
Speaker 5: Been advised to remaining confident, And then I would say, well,
Speaker 5: who advised you?
Speaker 1: Troy?
Speaker 5: You know, I can't tell you that.
Speaker 4: Even Catherine's mother, Lindsay, seems to agree with Troy. This
Speaker 4: is from an affidavit from twenty fifteen that Lindsay signed.
Speaker 4: Catherine has explained to me that her plan is to
Speaker 4: try to remain incompetent long enough to be found not
Speaker 4: to be a danger to herself or others, and therefore
Speaker 4: able to be released and either live with me or
Speaker 4: live in a community home for women she has identified.
Speaker 4: To do this. To remain incompetent for long enough to
Speaker 4: get her charges dismissed, Catherine would have to convince her
Speaker 4: therapist and treating psychiatrists at the state hospital where she
Speaker 4: lives that she is not restorable, that no medication can
Speaker 4: make her competent. But that's not an easy task. The
Speaker 4: vast majority of incompetent defendants are restored within a year
Speaker 4: or so. Detroit the law seems unfair. It feels to
Speaker 4: him that it just allows Catherine to get away with
Speaker 4: a horrible crime in a few short years and will
Speaker 4: leave those who loved Jacob and Sarah without any sense
Speaker 4: of accountability or justice. But to others, the law operated
Speaker 4: exactly as it was intended. Next time, Unrestorable.
Speaker 6: We come from this very puritan kind of heritage in
Speaker 6: our culture, and we're very punitive, with just an extraordinarily
Speaker 6: high rate of incarceration in this country and a kind
Speaker 6: of political narrative that we are tough on crime and
Speaker 6: we want to make sure that people don't get away
Speaker 6: with things. We also have a still pretty stigmatizing view
Speaker 6: of mental illness.
Speaker 4: Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by me Beth Carris
Speaker 4: and Sarah Trelevin. Our story editor is Kathleen Goldhard mixing
Speaker 4: in sound design by Reza Daya for anonymous content, Jessica
Speaker 4: Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our executive
Speaker 4: in charge of production, and Nick Junyas is our legal counsel.
Speaker 4: For iHeart executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer Abu
Speaker 4: Zafar