September 2024 marks 10 heartbreaking years for the family of Sarah and Jacob Hoggle. The children were just 2 and 3 years old when they vanished in Montgomery County. What happened to them remains a mystery. In this NBC Washington Rewind, News4’s Darcy Spencer has followed this case since the beginning. She explains the efforts to find them and how prosecutors plan to hold their mother accountable.
Sarah Hoggle was 3 when she was last seen in September 2014. Her brother Jacob was just 2.
A decade later, they have never been found.
The children’s mother, Catherine Hoggle, was charged with killing them, but the charges were dropped because she was found not competent to stand trial.
News4 has followed the case since the start. We recently combed through years of archival footage and spoke with the children’s father and prosecutors about finding the children and holding their mother accountable.
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‘I’ll die looking for them’
In fall 2014, it seemed like you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing Sarah’s and Jacob’s faces.
The mystery of what happened to them gripped the D.C. area. Where were they and why wouldn’t their mother tell investigators what she did with them?
The Hoggle children’s father, Troy Turner, has spent the past decade trying to find them.
“I feel like my kids will be searched for until they’re found, or I’ll die looking for them. It could turn into 30, 40 years, or however long I’m blessed to live,” he said.
A father realizes his children are gone
Hoggle and Turner lived together with their three kids in Montgomery County.
According to multiple law enforcement sources, Hoggle took Jacob and Sarah separately by car and returned each time without them.
Investigators say she has told various stories about where they went: She took them for pizza. She took them to a friend’s house. She dropped them off at day care.
“She was able to abduct them while I was at work,” Turner said. “When I went to work that day, she was never supposed to be alone with the kids. There was a family plan in place. A family member threw her the keys, allowed her to take my son. When she came back without him, nobody called me. And then, because of that, she was also able to get Sarah later.”
Turner, who worked nights, didn’t immediately realize the kids were gone.
He said Hoggle told him the children were at a new day care. Later in the day, Turner tried to get Hoggle to take him to the day care.
“Whenever I turned back around and said, ‘OK, what’s the address?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘What’s the phone number there so I can call them?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Well, what street is it on?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘You mean to tell me you don’t know what it’s called, you don’t know where it is, you don’t know the address and you don’t have a phone number? And you dropped our kids off there?’” he said.
After hours of driving to different places, Turner decided they had to go to the police.
But Hoggle wanted to stop at Chick-fil-A in Germantown for a drink first, Turner said.
She went inside but Turner never saw her head back out. She was gone.
“I go look in the women’s bathroom. I look in the men’s bathroom, check all the stalls in both, probably look like a crazy person,” he recalled. “I come back out, don’t see her anywhere, look out the other door, don’t see her in the parking lot anywhere. So, then I go get in the car and just drive directly to the police station.”
Hoggle went missing for several days. Surveillance video showed her in a building. She had changed her appearance.
Eventually, she was found and taken into custody. But Sarah and Jacob were not with her.
Police had Turner try to get Hoggle to say where their children were.
“She was saying that the kids were fine. She had given them to someone to watch until she could execute her plan to, like, go live somewhere else, like the beach or something like that. I don't remember exactly what that was. But, she had a plan. Supposedly they were going to watch them while she got things together,” he said.
‘We’ve not given up hope on this case’
Detectives, the family and the community searched for the children, and Hoggle was held on abduction charges. The charges were upgraded to murder in 2017.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy called the case one of the most frustrating he has ever prosecuted.
“I was very hopeful that we would ultimately find out where they were. That has not turned out to be the case,” he said. “I think probably what surprises me more is the journey that we've traveled and not being able to get her to trial because I was, you know, I was virtually certain that ultimately she would be found competent and we would go to trial in this matter. So, that to me, that's the real surprise.”
Hoggle was found not competent to stand trial. That led to the murder charges being dropped in 2022.
“If you cannot restore a person to competency within a specified period of time, in this instance it was five years, the charges against her must be dismissed,” McCarthy said. “So as we sit here today, she's not charged with the crime, but she's not free in the community. And the reason she's not free in the community is the same: Doctors who said she was incompetent to stand trial said that she continues to be a danger to herself or others. And so she was civilly and involuntarily committed, because of her dangerousness. And she remains, to my knowledge, remains incarcerated in an institution for treatment for that reason.”
Hoggle could be charged with murder again one day, McCarthy said.
The defense could still raise the argument that Hoggle was not criminally responsible, entering an insanity plea.
“We’ve not given up hope on this case,” McCarthy said. “You know, not giving up hope that someday she will improve satisfactorily, that the state doctors who are evaluating her will find that she's competent or think that she's no longer a danger to anyone else and release her back into the community. And if she's released back into the community, we'll reinstitute the charges.”
‘I think that justice was done’
David Felsen represents Hoggle.
“There was no question that she was incompetent to stand trial. Every doctor – and these were the state doctors – found that she was incompetent to stand trial. They basically agreed in their diagnosis and prognosis. Even when the state asked for a second state doctor, that doctor agreed with the diagnosis of the prior doctors and the subsequent doctors. And I think, under the law, I think that justice was done.”
Felsen contends that the answers people are looking for simply don’t exist. News4 asked him if he believes there ever will be a time when Hoggle will be able to tell her family and authorities what happened to the children.
“No, I don’t,” Hoggle’s lawyer said. “As I said, what happened back in September of 2014, she was in the throes of paranoid schizophrenia with delusions. And to think that anything she might recall or say that she recalls would not be credible in terms of any investigation.”
Hoggle’s lawyer declined to comment on whether he believes that Hoggle killed her children.
“I personally don't know what happened. I do know what the records say, but I have never seen any forensic evidence of anything relative to the children. I've never seen any video evidence relative to the children. I don't know what happened and, unfortunately, I don't know that we will ever know.”
Felsen said he doesn’t know if Hoggle will ever be competent to stand trial. He said Hoggle has been “vilified.”
“There's no question that she's been vilified. There also is no question that she is a loving and caring mother, that she cared about her children, that she was also in the throes of probably some of the most profound mental health issues that one could think of and one could describe,” he said. “This case is a tragedy. As I said, this case is a tragedy on many levels, including for her.”
Still asking why, all these years later
Questions that have never been answered are if Hoggle killed her children, why? And why did she take them in the first place?
Turner said he believes Hoggle resented choices he made when he had her committed a year earlier.
“When I had her committed in 2013. I think that created some resentment. I think the family plan that was put in place afterwards, where she could not be alone with the children and things like that, I think that definitely caused some resentment,” he said. “And I think she probably – and this is just me guessing, obviously – but I think that she probably kind of felt like maybe, you know, it was almost like having a life, her life be like a prison in a way where she wasn't allowed to just do what she wanted.”
McCarthy, the prosecutor, said he was unsure of Hoggle’s motive.
“I think that's a question that only Catherine can answer,” he said.
Turner said he believes the system failed Sarah and Jacob.
Hoggle “has more rights and protections than my kids. In the state of Maryland, victims are just not protected. There's no hope for us out there, you know, in terms of the system itself. The system isn't designed to protect, you know, people from crime. The system there right now is designed to protect criminals. And I'm not talking about punishing people for being mentally ill; I'm talking about protecting victims and handling criminals appropriately with a justice system.”
Turner said he refuses to give up his life’s mission and purpose.
“If the police are correct, then they were put in a dumpster and incinerated. So that's why we possibly will never find the bodies, in which case I'll die looking for my children,” he said. “If they're not, then, I mean, we have to find them, if they're out there somewhere and whatever that entails, and bring them home.”
