Zion, Ill. – A man with a long record of criminal assault was arrested Tuesday on charges of murdering his 8-year-old daughter and her second-grade classmate as the girls played in a small-town park over the weekend.
Authorities said Jerry Branton Hobbs III came across his daughter Laura and her best friend, 9-year-old Krystal Tobias, on a bike path in the early evening of Mother’s Day. He allegedly forced the girls off the path, beat them, stabbed them repeatedly around their necks, and left them to die side by side in the brush.
Before dawn the next morning, Hobbs joined other family members combing the park for the girls as part of a frantic community search effort. About 6 a.m., he reportedly called out: “I think I found them,” then dashed into the underbrush, authorities said. Hobbs soon ran back to the trail, they said, crying and shouting that the girls were dead.
Hobbs, 34, returned to the scene with investigators Tuesday. Authorities would not say what he told them. But they were clearly shaken.
“There’s no rational explanation or reasonable motive,” said Michael Waller, the Lake County state’s attorney. “This is the most horrific crime I’ve ever seen.” He would not say whether he planned to seek the death penalty.
Hobbs was released from a Texas prison last month after serving two years for assaulting his ex-wife. The officer who responded to that assault – which took place in August 2001 – reported that he saw Hobbs chasing several people around a trailer park with a chain saw, according to Texas officials. He was subdued when someone hit him in the back with a shovel.
Hobbs was sentenced to 10 years of probation and was convicted of violating it when he failed to show up for a meeting in May 2003. He was sentenced to two years in prison, said Rick Mahler, Wichita County assistant district attorney.
Hobbs was released April 12, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
He took a bus straight from prison to Zion to live with Sheila Hollabaugh and their three children, Jerry, 10, Laura, 8, and Jeremy, 6, said Arthur Hollabaugh, Sheila’s father and Laura Hobbs’ grandfather.
The felony assault followed a string of misdemeanor offenses that made Hobbs a familiar presence at the correctional center in Wichita County, Texas.
Court records show 10 misdemeanors dating from 1991, including two convictions for assault, two for possessing marijuana and two for driving with a suspended license. Most of those convictions resulted in fines of a few hundred dollars and, at most, two to four days in jail.
Hobbs’ longest incarceration came after the 2001 assault and chain-saw incident.
Hobbs moved to this quiet community of 23,000 north of Chicago apparently in hopes of reconciling with his family. But neighbors said they could hear frequent fights.
On Mother’s Day, they heard not fights, but laughter, as Laura and Krystal spent much of the sunny afternoon outside, joining a throng of kids biking and roller-skating from barbecue to barbecue, from picnic to picnic, all up and down Gilboa Avenue.
The girls – inseparable friends and members of the same Girl Scout troop – relaxed in a friend’s hammock for a while, then rode around their neighborhood sharing a bike, one of them pedaling while the other perched on pegs on the bike. In the late afternoon, they apparently decided to head for Beulah Park, which features a bike trail winding around a wooded ravine.
Police said when Laura and Krystal did not return by early evening, Hobbs went looking for them.
The girls were found fully clothed about 50 yards off the bike path. They had not been sexually assaulted. The bike they had been sharing was tipped on its side, about 20 yards away.
Waller released few details about the evidence, a motive or whether there was a confession, citing Illinois laws that prevent him doing so before Hobbs’ bond hearing, scheduled for this morning at the Lake County Courthouse in Waukegan.
The Chicago Tribune contributed to this report.
