Siblings Missing for Four Months; Mother Declared Incompetent

Catherine Hoggle, the Montgomery County mother the mother who won’t disclose the whereabouts of her two young children, will not stand trial in their disappearance.

Montgomery Commmunity Media reports that District Court Judge Eugene Wolfe this week declared Hoggle incompetent to stand trial. The action means the mother of Sarah, 4, and Jacob, 2, will not be tried on the misdemeanor charges of child neglect, abduction and hindering a police investigation until she is found competent.

The youngsters have been missing for four months. Their father, Troy Turner, posted Wednesday on the FindSarahFindJacob Facebook page: “We don’t ever give up. … Please continue to share broadly. Hope is alive.”

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Video from a New Jersey rest stop that a woman claims shows missing siblings Sarah and Jacob Hoggle was reviewed by Montgomery County Police last week, but local investigators say they are convinced the children are dead.

Laura Penny of Shoreham, Long Island, NY, told Montgomery Community Media she might have spotted the toddlers Dec. 28 at the Joyce Kilmer Service Area off the New Jersey Turnpike near New Brunswick.

Turner said on Facebook this week that the video quality was poor and the children and adult they were reported to be with stayed out of camera range.

The children were last seen Sept. 8 with their mother, who is being held in the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center and treated for mental illness. Catherine Hoggle says the children are safe, but has not given any information on the children’s whereabouts.

Police Downplay Report

Capt. Darren Francke told Montgomery Community Media he is waiting for a copy of the rest stop video, but he doesn’t believe the sighting to be “credible.”

“We have to run it out. We are focused on a homicide investigation. Every piece of evidence we believe unfortunately that the children are dead,” Francke said Monday in an email to the media site.

The family of the missing siblings have organized searches every weekend since the children disappeared, using the Germantown Community Center as a home base, according to Montgomery Community Media.

While police have shifted the Hoggle case to a homicide investigation, according to a previous Patch story, Turner and the Hoggle family believe the children are still alive and being harbored by someone at Catherine Hoggle’s request. He believes if Catherine Hoggle had killed the youngsters, the massive searches in the area would have uncovered their bodies.

“I can’t imagine anywhere where she could have put their bodies where they wouldn’t have been found by now,” Turner said in December.

Donations to the Hoggle fund can be made at the Find Sarah Find Jacob website or by visiting the GoFundMe page set up by Lindsey Hoggle, the children’s grandmother.

Timeline of Events

On Sept. 7, Catherine Hoggle borrowed her father’s gray 2012 Nissan Rogue SUV and said she was picking up pizza for Jacob. She returned three hours later without the boy or pizza and told her parents she had left Jacob at a playmate’s house.

On Sept. 8, Hoggle left home with Sarah and told Turner she was taking the child to a day-care center. That afternoon when Turner asked about the children’s whereabouts, Hoggle would not tell him where the children were. Both Hoggle and Turner set off for the police station, but stopped at a Chick-Fil-A near the Germantown Transit Center where Hoggle left the restaurant without Turner noticing and disappeared. On Sept. 12, Hoggle was found and arrested in Germantown.

On Nov. 6, it was revealed in court that Hoggle allegedly told her mother she could take the police to where the children are. Hoggle’s lawyer said she did not want to go, and Judge Eugene Wolfe refused to sign an emergency order for her to leave Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center.

On Nov. 17, a psychiatric evaluation of Catherine Hoggle was submitted by Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, finding her not competent to stand trial.

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