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2 missing girls found slain

in Chicago suburb

Victims were both 8, discovered in city park

MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 4:13 p.m. ET May 9, 2005ZION, Ill. - Two 8-year-old girls who disappeared Sunday were found slain Monday in a park in this city north of Chicago, authorities said.





A resident walking through a wooded nature area in Beulah Park discovered the bodies around 6 a.m., Deputy Police Chief Clyde Watkins said. A bike path and a ravine run through the area, which police cordoned off Monday.

The coroner identified the two victims as friends who had been reported missing Sunday night, Watkins said. He declined to identify the two but said their families had been notified.

Watkins said police were investigating the deaths as homicides, but he would not speculate how the girls were killed. Autopsies were scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Constance Collins, superintendent of the Zion Elementary School District 6, said the girls were in the same second-grade class at Beulah Park Elementary School.

She said school was in session Monday and that adults would escort children home at the end of the school day. No child would be allowed to leave unescorted, she said.

She also said social workers and a crisis intervention team had been called to help the students.

Brent Paxton, a Lake County Board member who lives across the street from the nature area, said the neighborhood is generally safe and quiet, and his three young children play in the park.

"Obviously, if it was random act, somebody just picking up kids in the park, I would be very concerned about that," Paxton said.

45 miles north of Chicago, 22,000 residents

Zion, about 45 miles north of Chicago, has about 22,000 residents.

Jim Goetz, a Zion resident who lives across the street from Beulah Park, told the Chicago Tribune that he last saw the two missing girls about 9 a.m. Sunday. Goetz said the two rode their bicycles to his house to play with his 7-year-old daughter.

At one point, Goetz told the newspaper, he scolded the children for drawing in chalk on his garage and made them clean it off. After about an hour, Goetz said, the two visiting girls got on their bikes and rode away, saying they were going to ride by the ravine in Beulah Park.

About 8 p.m., Goetz said, a relative of one of the girls came by looking for them. The relative told Goetz the families were contacting the police to report the children missing, Goetz told the paper.

"I'm in shock. I'm in utter disbelief," Goetz told the Tribune. He said the girls were "very outgoing and very friendly."

The Associated Press contribued to this report.

I just wonder when all the sick people in this world will meet their maker - if they too will have to endure the pain they caused int his world..Sick Bast@rds

This is so sad. My heart goes out to them and their families.

Ack this kind of news makes me quite ill, where have people gone wrong in killing children. There is no lower.

We have to be the only species that kills our young.

This may be another thread - another time thread for me - but I have to keep to my comment that pedophiles are the lowest form of human. I know it was quite a common and accepted practice - in the Dark Ages - but something really needs to be done to protect our children against repeat offenders. I specifically state repeat offenders because there is no test for for this kind of corruption of a person's soul that leads them to "desire" children in this way. Pedophilia - as far as I know - has no "cure" rate statistic. The information I've read says they cannot be distracted from this need to interact in this manner with our children. I speak passionately because I was pedophile's prey. I was lucky because he was a family member and didn't want to kill me - he needed to keep me around for his pleasure. Maybe there is something to be said about the old saying that "incest is best" sorry had to add my personal joke to that - as a redneck.

God help us all, the father of one of these girls has been arrested and charged in these murders.what horror. i will get the details. his name is jerry hobbs. that's all i know right now.

Huh? More child deaths? What in Heaven's name is wrong with people?!!! For God's Sake! they still had their whole lives in front of them!

Any (stupid or insane) motive for this yet, LC?

lady cop wrote: God help us all, the father of one of these girls has been arrested and charged in these murders.what horror. i will get the details. his name is jerry hobbs. that's all i know right now.


I hear he was just recently released from prison. Do you know what he was in for?

.....Father charged in girls' slayings







Jerry Hobbs has a long criminal record.





The father of Laura Hobbs has been charged in the stabbing deaths of his 8-year-old daughter and her best friend Krystal Tobias, 9, prosecutors said Tuesday. Jerry Hobbs, 34, could face the death penalty if convicted. The girls were reported missing on Mother's Day, and their bodies were found in a park Monday.



FULL STORY

"Hobbs was released from prison in Texas last month after serving nearly two years for violating his probation. He had been serving time after pleading guilty to assault in 2001 against Laura's mother, Sheila Hollabaugh, said Rick Mahler, an assistant district attorney in Wichita Falls, Texas.

"He started chasing people around with a chainsaw that was running," Mahler said. "Somebody hit him with a shovel, knocked him down. Those people held him until the police arrived."

Hobbs was arrested again in 2003 after failing to show up for visits with his probation officer and skipping anger management classes."

Why on earth would you let a monster that had chased you with a chain saw move back in with you? What the heck was this mother thinking, or was she?

The father is beyond sick. I heared he chased his wife around with a chain saw

This guy just plain looks scary too!

Yep... there's a lot of evil out there in the world. That's the sad truth.

...and once a convicted felon... always a convicted felon.

A bit too late now for the two innocent girls who didn't get much of an opportunity to live, but... I hope they get it right this time and put him away for good!