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Laura Hobbs stole $40.00 from her mothers purse. Her father set out after her. He was a man out of control. Jerry Hobbs was a career criminal who had just got out of prison. He now was trying to fit in the family. He went after his daughter in a rage. His anger ended so violently, the authorities contended, with him viciously beating and stabbing to death little Laura and the second-grade playmate who came to her defense. The father, Jerry Hobbs, 34, had rejoined the family upon being released from a Texas prison only weeks before the Mother's Day killings, was ordered held without bail after a brief hearing in Waukegan on Wednesday. Hobbs had just spent two years in prison because in 2001 he had a fight with Laura's mother in which he chased her and others through their trailer park with a chain saw. Jeffrey Pavletic, chief deputy state's attorney here in Lake County, told the judge that Laura had been stabbed 20 times and her 9-year-old friend Krystal Tobias 11 times. "You can see through the injuries to these individuals the rage that was exhibited," Pavletic said after the hearing, where he described Laura's neck wounds as being so deep that the 4- to 6-inch blade penetrated her spine. "This man did not just kill but a slaughtered in a fit of rage these two little girls." Hobbs, ankles and wrists shackled, bowed his head and shook as Pavletic cited the suspect's own signed and videotaped statements to paint a horrific portrait of parental discipline gone awry. Pavletic said Hobbs had told investigators he was angry that Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh, had lifted the punishment over the stolen money, grounding, to let her play outside, and, thus, went to fetch Laura late Sunday afternoon from the densely wooded Beulah Park near their home in Zion, Ill. When Laura refused to come with him, the prosecutor said, Hobbs punched her twice in the face, knocking her to the ground. The authorities say Hobbs told them that Krystal then rushed to rescue her friend, pulling out what he called a potato knife, and that Hobbs, in turn, hit Krystal, then grabbed the knife and repeatedly stabbed it into each girl's body. Pavletic and Michael Waller, Lake County's top prosecutor, said they do not believe that the knife, which has not been recovered, belonged to Krystal. Hobbs became a suspect hours after he reported finding the girls, their faces bruised and bloody, in the woods Monday morning, because he told the police he never got within 20 feet of the bodies yet described their injuries in detail. Hobbs, who had been arrested 29 times and convicted 10 times in Texas, has a history of violent rages.
In a separate incident, in 1990, Hobbs confronted a driver and told him to quit spinning his tires. Sgt. Cindy Walker of the police department in Wichita Falls, Texas, said police reports indicated that the two men had exchanged words. "He pulled out a hunting knife from his belt and said, 'I'm not going to stab you, I'm going to kill you,' and he stabbed him on the left side of his abdomen," Walker said. Hobbs was convicted of aggravated assault in the case. The Texas Department of Family Services had frequent contacts with the family, with six cases over 10 years, the last one in 2004, but none involved accusations of physical or sexual abuse, a spokesman said. |
