In 2014, Catherine Hoggle was the mother of three young children who had been working toward restoring her mental health for years. The family had a system in place so that Catherine was never alone with the children without another adult present. Despite this plan, in the late afternoon of Sunday, September 7, 2014, Catherine left the house with her 2-year-old son, Jacob, to pick up a pizza in Montgomery County, Maryland. When she returned two hours later, she was alone & by the next morning, there was also no sign of 3-year-old Sarah.
Catherine Hoggle was the oldest of four children & when she began middle school, she started to struggle with her classwork. At the time, she was diagnosed with a learning disability & problems with “executive functions” such as planning & organizing. As she continued to be evaluated by doctors, they became concerned with her mood & questioned if she suffered from bipolar disorder. As the search for answers continued, Catherine worried about being stigmatized by mental illness. Sometimes she was vague or elusive with professionals, possibly trying to avoid a specific label or diagnosis.
After high school, Catherine enrolled in community college in Montgomery County, Maryland & in 2007, she began waitressing at the Greene Turtle, a Germantown sports bar. Here, she met & fell in love with a bouncer named Troy Turner & considered their love affair “a fairytale.” In the fall of 2008, Catherine gave birth to their first child, a son & the family relocated to Harrisonburg, Virginia. Troy began working, selling timeshares & Catherine’s mom Lindsey helped the couple out with the baby two days a week.
When Lindsey would leave the house with her grandson, Catherine would stuff index cards full of instructions for caring for the baby. Some of these included: How to mix baby formula, when to feed him, a reminder to keep pillows away from the crib.
It was around this time that Troy began to worry about Catherine when she became paranoid that someone was trying to break their family up. According to Troy, Catherine’s concerns weren’t warranted & he attributed them to post-partum depression. The couple welcomed their second child in 2010, this time a girl that they named Sarah. At this point, they moved to a three-bedroom apartment in Montgomery which was in walking distance to a swimming pool & playgrounds for the kids. Their third & final child was born in 2012, it was a boy that they named Jacob.
Because they were close in age, Sarah & Jacob formed a very strong bond as they grew. Sarah would often imitate her mom & grab a small blanket to cover up Jacob, saying, “Here, Mommy will cover you up.” Within this case, the oldest child’s name was not released to protect his privacy.
Troy started seeing concerning behaviors from Catherine & felt that she was seeking control by withholding basic information from both himself & Lindsey. One day Troy asked her the basic question of which 7-11 she’d gone to & Catherine told him, “the one in Germantown,” despite the fact that there were multiple locations in that area. When he asked which specific location, she would say, “I already told you.”
Her confusion began to morph into paranoia & in 2013, Catherine became convinced that Troy’s sister was regularly breaking into their apartment. She filed court papers, indicating that she’d stolen a $12.09 pack of toddler undershirts & a $30 plastic toy. She also believed that Troy’s sister was following her & indicated, “We go to the grocery store, she shows up there. We start going to a different grocery store, she starts showing up there” which she told a Montgomery County Judge. “I go to take my kids to the pediatrician, she shows up there. I go to my mom’s house, she shows up there.” The judge asked if she wanted to issue a restraining order & she said no. The theft allegations were reviewed by the Montgomery State’s Attorney’s Citizen Complaint Bureau which declined to pursue them.
Troy urged Catherine to go to therapy & start taking her medications but was unsure if she did these things since improvements were not being seen. One day as they drove in the car together, Catherine began to whisper & look around the SUV as if she was concerned that it was bugged. When Troy pulled the car over so they could get out & talk on the side of the road, he told her that no one could hear them & tried to soften the message with humor, assuring her that they were too boring to listen to.
Troy was tempted to take Catherine to the hospital, but worried about how she would react & imagined she would leave, kicking & screaming. The family talked & decided to seek a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation & on August 13, 2013, sheriff deputies arrived at the apartment to take Catherine to the hospital. In addition to this occasion, authorities were called to the apartment two more times & still, her condition continued to worsen. She was involuntarily committed to the largest private psychiatric hospital in Maryland, Sheppard Pratt, which is just north of Baltimore.
When Troy explained to the kids where their mom was, he compared it to the time he had to go to the hospital for two days to get better for his asthma & told them that she would just have to stay longer. Catherine’s mom Lindsey began following the story of Virginia state senator Creigh Deeds who had been stabbed by his mentally ill son who then shot himself. Lindsey sent Deeds an email in order to express her sympathy & wrote, “While my daughter is closing in on three weeks of hospitalization, she is still very fragile & I only pray in the right direction.”
When Catherine was released from the hospital, she initially went to a group home; it was the goal for her to get well enough to go back home to her family & by spring she was moving through transitional programs that allowed her to see her kids. She took her medication & seemed to grasp the fact that she needed it to keep her illness under control in order to be around them. She went on to be enrolled in a day treatment program.
Catherine’s father Randy Hoggle saw that his daughter was returning to the attentive mother she had previously been. Not only did she read the children books, but she also sat with them & spoke about the story & why things happened the way they did. Randy also noticed times that the medication seemed to make her tired & disconnected. Sometimes she would open a book & just stare blankly at the pages, allowing the children to turn the pages in hopes of figuring out the story.
Troy continued to monitor Catherine’s overall progress & wanted to avoid taking the children away from their mother. Lindsey & Randy were on board with this goal as well. Troy never thought that Catherine would intentionally hurt the kids but knew that the delusions could return without warning. They tried to avoid leaving Catherine alone with the toddlers & came together to discuss a long-term strategy.
Troy formed a network of support that included Lindsey, Randy, himself, Troy’s mom & sister, Catherine’s siblings, Troy’s friends as well as a babysitter. The goal was to have a second adult around at all times when Catherine was with the children. The adults coordinated their schedules to arrange care at the apartment Troy & Catherine lived with the kids as well as Lindsey’s home in Darnestown. They also discussed utilizing a day care center & possibly hiring an au pair.
Sunday, September 7, 2014 was a typical morning & Troy & Catherine took 2-year-old Jacob & 3-year-old Sarah to their brother’s soccer game. After, everyone went to the park after & Troy remembers the day fondly since the kids were having so much fun. He said he has a ton of pictures from that day. Troy had to leave so he could get ready for his night shift. He drove the family to Lindsey’s home in Gaithersburg, Maryland & Lindsey was out, but Randy who was divorced from Lindsey, agreed to stay with Catherine & the kids. Troy left for work at about 2:30 pm & at the time he did, the kids were happily watching TV & playing with blocks. Before he walked out the door, he gave them a hug & kiss & told them that he loved them & couldn’t wait to get home to see them.
At about 4pm, Catherine told her dad that she wanted to borrow the car since she had a coupon for a pizza & said she would pick it up. At the time, Jacob was clinging to her & Catherine asked if she could just take him with her. For years, Randy saw that Catherine responded well to expressions of confidence & felt this step could be a helpful one for her. Because of this, he allowed Catherine to take his car & leave with Jacob.
Two hours later when Catherine returned, she was alone. She said that she’d left Jacob at a friend’s house for a planned sleepover. Lindsey noticed that Catherine was wearing a large purple dress shirt that belonged to Troy. When Lindsey commented on it, she immediately removed the shirt & left it on the kitchen counter. This indicated that Catherine had gone back to their apartment in Clarksburg at some point when she left with Jacob.
At this point, Randy, Catherine, Catherine’s older son & Sarah returned to Catherine’s apartment. When Troy came home from work at midnight, he saw that Jacob wasn’t in his toddler bed that sat in the primary bedroom. Oftentimes, Jacob crawled into bed with one of his siblings, so Troy went to sleep, unconcerned.
The next morning, Monday, September 8, 2014, Randy left early & soon after, Troy was woken by his older son who was ready to go to school. It was at this moment that he realized that Catherine & the two younger children weren’t there. The last time anyone had seen Sarah was at 9:30 pm the night before.
Troy got his son dressed & onto the school bus & went home to call 911. He told the dispatcher that his two children & their mother were missing & had taken the family car. As he was still on the call, Catherine drove up & he told the dispatcher to wait. Catherine explained that she had gotten up early that morning & took Sarah & Jacob to a trial program at a daycare center to allow him to sleep in.
She explained that the daycare center was in Germantown & that he might want to take a tour when they picked the kids up. Troy was very upset that she had taken the toddlers alone, without telling him, but her story seemed believable. Troy got back on the line with the 911 dispatcher & explained that it was just a misunderstanding.
Troy took Catherine to her treatment program & picked her up at 2 pm & at this point, she said she wanted to pick Sarah & Jacob up. At 1 pm that day, Catherine spoke with her mom & when Lindsey asked about Jacob & Sarah, Catherine made the comment that she was going to her group therapy for the last time. Lindsey questioned her multiple times about her statement of the session being her last one, but Catherine refused to acknowledge that she had said that.
After Troy picked her up at 2 pm, Catherine explained that she couldn’t remember the name of the daycare center but as they got closer, she would be able to direct him. The more they drove, the more evasive she became & after hours of aimlessly driving, Troy told her they would have to go to the police station & demanded to know where the kids were. He was panic-stricken by this time. On the way, Catherine asked if they could stop off at Chick-fil-a so they could get a drink. Once inside, she managed to slip out the back door & disappear. Before she slipped out, she sent a text to her mom saying that the kids were fine.
A massive search for Catherine & the two young children began. Four days later, on Friday, September 12, 2014, Catherine was found wandering the streets, but the children were still missing. Police questioned her for hours, trying to find their whereabouts but learned nothing. They brought Troy into the room & Catherine said, “What are you doing here?” Her demeanor seemed relaxed & he explained that he was there to find out where his kids were as well as to see her.
Troy continued to ask Catherine over & over, just as the detectives had, “Where are the children?” Catherine continued to speak cryptically about leaving them with a woman who she’d gone to high school with named Erin, but refused to elaborate further. She did take police to a playground in Germantown & said she’d abandoned the kids there. Troy has exhausted all search efforts to help find his children, distributing missing-persons fliers & launching a Facebook campaign to spread the word & collect information & clues but they had gotten no closer to finding Jacob & Sarah.
Catherine was initially charged with misdemeanor offenses of parental abduction, neglect & hindering a police investigation & was committed to Clifton T Perkins Hospital which is a maximum security hospital in Jessup, Maryland.
Over the course of three years, her mental competency was evaluated. With the charges set to expire, Montgomery County prosecutors secured an indictment charging her with two counts of first-degree murder. A person charged with misdemeanors & deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial can be held for a maximum of three years & if charged with a felony, they can be held an additional five years. In December of 2017, a judge initially ruled that Catherine was incompetent to stand trial, concluding that she was a danger to herself & others. Authorities were given five years to restore her to competence before the charges would be dismissed.
In 2019, a second opinion was provided by another psychiatrist who agreed with the hospital doctors that Catherine was mentally unfit. When Troy was in court for the case in 2020, he indicated that he fears that Catherine will possibly walk free one day & come for their firstborn who at that point was 11 & had only been 5 when his brother & sister went missing. Troy indicated that his son has nightmares about his mom showing up with his brother & sister’s bodies.
On Wednesday, November 30, 2022, due to the passage of time, a Maryland judge dropped the murder charges against Catherine who remained at the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center. Circuit Judge James Bonifant indicated that laws limit how long charges can hang over a person deemed mentally unfit to participate in a trial, saying, “She has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, major depressive disorder & general anxiety disorder. She suffers from chronic symptoms of impaired judgment, poor insight, paranoia & disorganized thinking. Without the structure & stability of a hospital setting, she would be a danger to herself & others.”
Prosecutors had been trying to persuade the judge to reverse years of ruling & doctors’ opinions that Catherine was incompetent to stand trial. The judge spoke about the fundamental fairness of not putting people on trial who can’t adequately speak with their attorneys to help defend themselves. He cited legal principles that dated as far back as 1790 when a court held that “no man shall be called upon to make his defense at a time when his mind is in that situation as not to appear capable of doing so.”
Catherine’s attorney David Felsen has continued to say that his client’s thinking is far too delusional & tangential to discuss legal proceedings or participate in a trial & said, “She is a profoundly ill woman. She has been an ill woman since 2012, 2013. She has taken medications of last resort for years & she remains ill. And in the United States & in the state of Maryland, we don’t try people for anything, for any crime, if they can’t defend themselves.” This decision will give circuit judges & prosecutors little to no say over when she could be released. If she continues to be deemed a danger to herself or others, she will continue to be held.
Under the rules for civic commitments in Maryland, medical facilities must demonstrate twice a year that a patient meets certain criteria for continued hospitalization: They must continue to have a mental disorder, need inpatient care, present a danger to themselves or others, be “unable or unwilling” to be voluntarily hospitalized & cannot be adequately treated in a less restrictive setting.
If she were to be released, nothing would keep prosecutors from refiling the case & Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said that as long as he’s in that position, if she is ever deemed safe enough to be released, Catherine will be recharged with two counts of first-degree murder. It’s been emphasized that this doesn’t mean she’s been let off the hook; she will remain in the psychiatric hospital indefinitely & face the charges if released since it’s not a double jeopardy situation.
When Troy spoke in court after the decision had been made to drop the charges against Catherine, she sat about thirty feet away. Troy said that he understood the process but felt that the system itself has failed his children, “You have a woman over here who killed two kids. This is a travesty and my kids are gone. Whenever someone can murder two children & then be treated as a regular patient & be given more rights than the kids or the survivors around them who they have affected, there is something really wrong.” He feels that the system is completely broken & instead of being in a hospital, Catherine should be in jail.
Some believe that Catherine is exaggerating the extent of her illness to avoid facing a jury & facing the consequences, pointing to the fact that her IQ was once tested at 135 which is considered moderately gifted. Troy himself believes that she is mentally ill but feigning incompetence.
Troy describes 2-year-old Jacob as the sweetest soul ever born, affectionate & compassionate even at such a young age. When his older brother was placed in time-out, he would go & sit with him so he wouldn’t be alone. He says that Sarah is his “tomboy princess” who loved to equally wrestle with her dad & brothers as much as she loved to play with her dollhouse in her pink bedroom with purple accents. He cannot see any scenario in which his two children are alive at this point, but has tried to hold out hope because they’re his babies.
Catherine’s mom Lindsey feels that the idea of her daughter killing her own children is unthinkable. In a 2018 interview, she said that she has scoured her daughter’s emails, texts & phone records & believes that the children are safe & that Catherine knows where they are. “I think that Catherine probably has a group of people who may have taken the kids.” She feels this way since Catherine often spoke of a plan to escape with the children & possibly leave by the beach. Paired with the fact that no trace of the children’s bodies have ever been found despite an extensive search of over 14,000 acres in the days following their disappearances.
Lindsay wrote an article on Medium & expressed that Catherine felt as if she was being punished for having a mental illness since she could never be alone with her children. She also wrote that those within her inner circle had been gaslighting Catherine & threatening that her children would be taken from her because of her mental illness.
Lindsay indicated that she was typically with the children on weekends, but on the weekend that the children went missing, she had encouraged Troy & Catherine to get another babysitter since she was distracted with a friend in town. She feels that Catherine took advantage of the fact that she was “off guard” that weekend.
Bob Lowery who is vice president of the missing-children division of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children says that they are aware that there are underground networks that will hide children because they believe that it would be in the best interest of the children & he assures the family that the search will continue until the children are found.
As time continues to pass, investigators feel that, by now, if this were the case, a sensible person would have come forward if they did have the children. Troy continues to wait for Catherine to give him the answers he realizes he may never hear. He said that Catherine never made threats toward Jacob or Sarah & had she, he would not have allowed her to be around them. He points out that she wasn’t supposed to be alone with them as it was. He indicated that even if she does give information, no one would know if it were true since she lies about everything.
Logically, Troy believes that Catherine must have killed Jacob & Sarah, but he & detectives will continue to try to find them, no matter what condition that’s in. Sadly, he believes it’s something he may never know. Police also sadly believe that Catherine murdered her children but there is no evidence to indicate their whereabouts. She has told hospital staff that her children are safe, but continues to refuse to reveal their location. The case remains unsolved & foul play is suspected due to involving circumstances.
On July 3, 2024, Jacob would be turning 12 & on November 20, 2024, Sarah would be 14.
If you have information about the fate or whereabouts of Jacob & Sarah Hoggle, please call 911 or 1-800-THE-LOST.
References:
- The Washington Post: Family implores mentally ill mother to tell them where she left missing children
- The Washington Post: Charges dropped for Maryland mom in children’s disappearance
- Law & Crime: Judge drops murder charges against Maryland mom accused of killing her missing children, involuntarily commits her to psychiatric hospital
- Fox 5: 9 years later family still seeking answers in Hoggle children disappearance
- People: Inside the desperate search for Sarah & Jacob Hoggle, missing for three years
- The Charley Project: Jacob Gabriel Hoggle
- Independent: Catherine Hoggle: Man begs judge not to drop charges against girlfriend who ‘murdered’ their two children
- Medium: Top eight reasons to search for 2 missing children
