Hoggle children disappearance nears 10 years, father still searching (2024)

CUMBERLAND — Nearly a decade has passed since Troy Turner saw his two youngest children.

In September 2014, their mother, Catherine Hoggle, told police Sarah, 3, and Jacob, 2, were alive and safe, but wouldn’t provide their location.

Three years later, Hoggle was arrested on murder charges, but has repeatedly been found mentally unfit to stand trial, and lives at the maximum security Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center in Jessup.

The children, last seen in their mother’s care in Montgomery County, were never found, and today, their father continues to fight for their rights.

“We’re still looking for leads,” Turner, a Cumberland native, said.

Background, escape attempts

In 2013, Hoggle was committed to Sheppard Pratt Health System where she was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and released shortly after.

She wasn’t supposed to be alone with her children, Turner told the Cumberland Times-News in 2020.

According to Turner, Hoggle’s mother allowed her to leave with Jacob on the afternoon of Sept. 7, 2014.

On the morning of Sept. 8, 2014, Turner and Hoggle’s oldest son woke him, and said he was concerned that his mother and two siblings were not home.

Turner was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher when Hoggle arrived home and said she’d left the children at a day care.

Turner was driving Hoggle to collect the kids when she asked him to stop so she could get something to drink at a fast food restaurant. Her medication made her tired and she frequently needed caffeine to stay awake, he said.

Video recordings at the eatery showed her sneaking out of the establishment.

Days later, Montgomery County authorities found Hoggle, who had cut her hair, in a nearby apartment complex, Turner said and added she was removing posters with photos of her and the missing children when she was recognized by someone who called police.

Hoggle was sent to the Perkins facility, where she claimed she gave the children to someone who would keep them safe, but refused to provide a location.

Vast and wide searches have been held for the children over the years.

In March 2016, The Washington Post reported that 29-year-old Hoggle had tried to escape at least eight times from Perkins.

Each time, she grabbed a staff member’s security badge and ran toward the door of her locked unit, the Post reported.

Murder charges dropped

For years, police have said Hoggle refuses to cooperate, and prosecutors say she’s faked the extent of her mental illness.

In 2022, Maryland Circuit Judge James Bonifant dropped murder charges against Hoggle.

At the time, he cited legal principles that date to 1790 and laws that limit how long criminal charges can hang over a person deemed mentally unfit to participate in a trial, and ordered Hoggle to remain held in a psychiatric hospital under Maryland’s civil commitment procedures, according to The Washington Post.

The newspaper reported Bonifant said Hoggle was diagnosed with schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and general anxiety disorder and suffers from chronic symptoms of impaired judgment, poor insight, paranoia and disorganized thinking.

“Without the structure and stability of a hospital setting, she would be a danger to herself or others,” Bonifant said, according to The Post.

The judge’s ruling changed the mechanism by which Hoggle will be held from a criminal to a civil commitment, and gave circuit judges and prosecutors little to no say over when she could be released, the newspaper reported.

‘There’s a chance’

Meanwhile, most records for legal actions involving Hoggle have been cleared from the Maryland Judiciary Case Search.

Turner fears Hoggle could ask to be released from commitment.

“With the right judge ... she could walk,” he said. “She could become someone’s babysitter.”

Turner said he’s working to change laws that have blocked justice for his kids and protected their mother.

“We’re working to fix what’s broken,” he said.

Logically, Hoggle killed the toddlers, but there are no bodies, he said.

“I haven’t declared them dead,” Turner said. “I believe that there’s a chance that they’re still alive.”