Missing Hoggle Kids: Mom Indicted For Murder Ruled Incompetent

ROCKVILLE, MD — A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge on Tuesday determined that Catherine Hoggle — the mother indicted for the murder of her two children — remains incompetent to stand trial. Attorneys for the prosecution question how long Hoggle can be kept in a hospital before she must be freed, and a judge will have to decide if she must be released in 2019 or 2022 if she is not able to stand trial.

Judge Robert Greenberg's decision on Tuesday comes less than a month after a separate psychological evaluation of Hoggle also concluded she was unable to stand trial. That report was written by psychiatrist Christiane Tellefsen. Montgomery County prosecutors had picked her to conduct a separate evaluation on Hoggle after the 32-year-old mother was repeatedly found unfit to stand trial by her doctors at the state psychiatric facility.

Hoggle was indicted on murder charges in 2017 and is believed to be the last person to see her children, Jacob and Sarah Hoggle. The youngsters were 2 and 3, respectively, when they disappeared in September of 2014.

Since their disappearance, Hoggle has been held for treatment at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital in Jessup.

If she's still there in September, there's a chance Hoggle will walk free.

According to prosecutors, there is a five-year limit on how long someone charged with murder can be held under medical care.

That five-year deadline, Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy contends, shouldn't be in September. Citing Kimble v. State, McCarthy said the time period after which a court must drop criminal charges against a defendant should start from the date of the first incompetency filing.

Hoggle was first found incompetent to stand trial on Dec. 1, 2017. According to McCarthy, the five-year deadline should be in 2022, not 2019.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the father of Sarah and Jacob — Troy Turner — repeatedly asserted that Hoggle is more competent than doctors think.

"It's not about the mental illness with what happened. It wasn't a psychological break. It was planned out. This wasn't caused by mental illness. This was something that she chose to do," Turner said.

Since Dec. 1, 2017, doctors treating Hoggle at the state's psychiatric facility have repeatedly determined that she is "not competent, dangerous, but restorable."

Prosecutors, however, believe the mother is malingering so she can avoid trial on felony charges — and have repeatedly asked Judge Greenberg to allow a doctor of their choosing to evaluate Hoggle's mental state. On July 3, Greenberg agreed it was time for other experts to become involved.

With that green light, McCarthy sent Tellefsen to evaluate Hoggle at Perkins.

Her report, filed Aug. 6, states Hoggle remains incompetent.

"Ms. Hoggle is not currently competent to stand trial and remains dangerous," the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office said in a motion filed several days later, per The Washington Post.
Citing the report, prosecutors said that Hoggle was improving and is "approaching a level of understanding in which she could be considered competent."

According to the motion, Hoggle was also in the middle of a medical trial with the drug Clozapine.

The National Institutes of Health says Clozapine "is used to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia (a mental illness that causes disturbed or unusual thinking, loss of interest in life, and strong or inappropriate emotions) in patients who have not been helped by other medications or who have tried to kill themselves and are likely to try to kill or harm themselves again."

Hoggle, however, is no longer participating in that medical trial, which served as the basis for the motion.

An official with the State's Attorney's Office tells Patch that eight days after Tellefsen filed her report, the state psychiatric facility changed Hoggle's medication. The official could not confirm the medication, but said it is entirely different from Clozapine.

Until she is found competent to stand trial, the judge will not allow her to be interrogated about the fate of her children.

According to authorities, Jacob was last seen with Hoggle Sept. 7, 2014. Sarah was last seen with her mother a day later. When pressed where the children were, Hoggle told Turner that she gave the young children to someone for safekeeping.

When he asked to pick up the kids, Hoggle said she couldn't remember where they were. Turner said he'd go to the police, but first stopped with Hoggle at a Germantown Chick-fil-A. That's where she ran away.

On Sept. 12, 2014, Hoggle was found alone in Germantown. Police arrested her on misdemeanor charges.

Under state law, there is a three-year limit on how long someone charged with a misdemeanor can be held under medical care. Prosecutors were later able to get the misdemeanor charges bumped up to felony charges.

As a patient at Perkins, Hoggle has undergone a series of psychological evaluations. For years, the conclusion reached by doctors and judges hasn't changed: Hoggle is unfit to stand trial.

For Turner, hearing that she cannot face trial for the murder of their two kids is a nightmare. He says it feels like he's reliving the same day over and over again.

"It feels kind of like a horror movie version of 'Groundhog Day,' or something, in some ways," Turner said.

Judge Greenberg has scheduled Hoggle's next hearing in February 2020.