Episode 8 – Justice

Well, the record, Anthony mws N twenty sixth District, I get the sixes and seven is mixed up, but this is five O seven and this is the one that would extend the amount of time that the court can dismiss the charge of a defendant who is incompetent to stand trial and who was charged with first degree murder or sexual assault.

In March twenty twenty three, Maryland State Senator Anthony Muse was introducing a new bill SB five oh seven to a Senate committee in Annapolis.

It changes that time period from five years to a reasonable time of ten years. And also this legislation would allow the actual victim or the victim's representative to petition the court to extend the time for dismissal of certain charges against a defendant who is found incompetent to stand trial.

This bill is in direct response to what Troy Turner and his family have been going through.

So the question comes why is this important? This legislation is important because of the victims, like my panelists from whom you hear mister Troy Turner, who must have a voice, and I think once you hear his story today, you'll understand why we need this bill.

Troy is sitting in the gallery waiting his turn to speak, wearing his signature uniform, a T shirt with pictures of a smiling Sarah and Jacob.

I guess before I get into the story in the first for the record, mister, my name's Troy Turner, than father of Sarah Jacob Hoggle, so you may not already know who they are. There are my two children who were taken and their mother murdered them.

After the crushing disappointment of the murder charges against Catherine being dismissed, this feels like a way for Troy to keep his fight alive.

I've been trying to find them ever since, to bring them home for a peaceful rest.

Today, Catherine is still living at Perkins, but she's only committed civilly, not criminally, which means that in time, if doctors sign off, she could eventually leave the psychiatric hospital and begin to ease back into life on the outside. We reached out to Catherine, both directly and through her lawyer, and never heard back from her.

I have a son now who was six at Simon is now fourteen, and very soon I figure we're going to have to sit down and tell him that as her third intended victim to police believe, and we know she was.

Coming back for him.

Troy wants a ten year window of incompetency before murder charges can be dismissed. In fact, there was a ten year window for capital crimes, including murder, until the State of Maryland repealed the death penalty in twenty thirteen.

As her third and tended victim, We're going to have to sit him down and tell him that she's out there at some point. From everyone who I've spoken to, it doesn't seem like it's going to be very long.

Quayfrank Troy believes this expanded timeframe would have given Perkins more time to treat Catherine or catch on to any deliberate efforts she may have taken to remain deemed incompetent.

We're basically just asking to fix that oversight and put the ten year period back for the egregious acts that would be capital offenses. As the law now stands, it's pretty much just the same bar if you murder two children or if you still a fifteen hundred dollars.

Television I'm Beth Karris and this is Unrestorable, an original podcast from anonymous content and iHeartRadio.

It's weird because you know something's coming, but it's almost like if you have an elder in your family who's been sick for a long time and you know they're going to die, but then when they pass, it's like you're still never really prepared, even though you knew it was coming. It was kind of like that we knew what was coming, but the feelings still hit. The anger is still there, the disappointment in the system.

When Beth and I met with Troy, his wife Stephanie, and Matt Alegie in Matt's suburban law office after the charges against Catherine were dismissed, the three of them looked tired and defeated, like they hadn't slept for months.

I feel like I let downsair in Jacob.

Troy, typically gregarious, was subdued, a ball cap pulled low over his eyes. Stephanie, always warm and a bit high strung, was doubly anxious and appeared to be subsisting on mostly energy drinks. Matt seemed unsure of what might be helpful. They were lost, unmoored, and now facing a terrible prospect grappling with the grief they've been caring for almost a decade in the absence of a clear purpose.

Having the charges dismissed, and we have lots of you on record about how devastating it is. But does does the advocacy feel different, Like does it feel like you're coming at this from a totally different place or does it feel like you're still just every day more of the same.

For Sarah and Jacob, I don't think those two were like exclusive from each other.

I mean it's like kind of both.

I mean it's it's you know, we have a lot of the same conversations, but then it extends into things like protecting our family, protecting our son.

So now it's like where do we go from there in terms of I.

Mean, she can't get questioned or anything, you know what I mean, Like there's there's really no recourse because the only person who really knows what happened right at this point it is her, and the only people who may know something would be the people who were around her then, So it's kind of like, Okay, so we really don't have any way to even go after information at that point other than just advocating trying to figure out kind of just off ways to put pressure or I mean,

Anyway?

Like I feel almost like I'm I'm like lost, Like I'm like on this trip and now I'm in the middle of nowhere, not quite sure which.

Way to go at that point, but I know I got to go somewhere.

Troy is particularly worried that you might not be notified about Catherine's potential release, that she might be moved to a lower security unit and try to escape.

So it goes to a civil commitment for Catherine, which means we are supposedly going to get updates if she's kind of I believe she's moved facilities, if she dies, there's certain things we would get updates on, the State's Attorney's office. The police don't get updates on anything. We're not so sure, you know, we don't have a lot of faith in the system at this point, much less in Perkins that they're going to be held accountable for anything.

Catherine would have to go through a lot of doors before she could move out on her own. She still has to be found not a danger to herself or others and be put on a discharge plan. The state could also bring charges against her down the road once

You know, I go out anywhere and I think, oh, you know, I see those cute earrings that will look good on Catherine, and you realize, you know, she wears basically prison guard. I mean, you know, we've bought her some she has for a coat because the board gets so cold, so her dad got that. And I've sent her things like that. I've sent her like, you know, books like puzzle type books.

But it's like being in prison.

You know.

But as a friend of mine said, she's warm, she's safe. I mean, within reasons, I can't. You know, it's it's just tard some of the patients that she has to deal with, you know, it's it's it's not any kind of existence.

Really, do you have any sense of what her day to day life is like right now?

They're very strict. I mean all along they're like, we're not gonna let her have extra privileges because it's high profile, like I I'll expect you to, you know. I mean, they have different activities. I mean, but they don't have real privileges of any sort. I mean, people think that they're living a luxury life. They don't have the internet. They have restricted television and restricted movies when it's COVID lockdown.

Lindsay's primary goal now is to get Catherine the help she believes she needs.

You know, she may be released. I don't think that the court has that they have a you know, much choice at some part, you know. And my only comment to her was if you're released in any you know, program, which you never know, but I would hope they would have like a step down, you know, integration into normal life. I said, it's not okay for you to be released without knowing what happened to Sarah Jacob. And so she'll

That hope that Catherine will one day lead people to the kids. It's not easy to hold on to that hope. Does she imagine a world or does she talk about a world in which she's reunited with all three children she has she.

Has, you know, and part of that has been me saying you understand that, you know, if the charges are dropped. It's not just you're free to go get the children and raise your children. I'm not sure how much of that is in her disorder thinking and how much is real.

But the question of where Sarah and Jacob or their remains might be, or Catherine's continued insistence that they are still alive, or even that Catherine is pretending to be delusional, those aren't the most pressing fears Troy and Stephanie have right now.

We're probably more terrified right now than we've ever been.

The idea that Catherine might look to reunite with her oldest son, to seek him out in any way, is a worry that keeps them up at night, ruminating about all of the awful possibilities.

I mean, what can you even do at this point.

I mean, I'm with him almost all the time, you know, I mean, he obviously goes to school and stuff. But you know, we have safety plans in place at this school. You know, for years, I've been doing, you know, a lot of things to keep him protected.

But it's it's.

Hard, and I know that she wants to reconcile with him.

There's absolutely no reason she's not going to try to show up somewhere where he is, Like I don't.

I don't necessarily think she's going to show up at my front door where she knows I am or something.

But if she can figure out somewhere where she thinks he might be, there's nothing to stop her from showing up.

I mean, what's gonna stop her? What? The police may come and then what and say stop? Or we'll say stop again.

So now you just have to deal with a huge amount of fear that compounds the grief you've already been living in for years.

Do you think you could get a protective order, a kind of like a permanent order.

There's no there's no way to for I mean, think about it, if I mean batter women who have been beat up and put in the hospital can't get a protective order until they're damn near killed. That's why you have women who die in no situation, you know, because nobody wants to do nothing until something already happens.

It's the same thing.

These feelings of powerlessness, of being forced to sit on his hands to wait for another very bad thing to happen, is part of what propelled Troy to pursue legislative change.

We try to change it going forward for other families and other people, other victims. We try to change it hopefully at some point going forward for us. So, I mean, where we're at is is we have to get this changed and fix it so other people don't go through it this way. I saw a reporter speaking about it, and the anchor asked him what you know, So what is the state going to make sure this doesn't happen again? And he just kind of stopped. He said, well nothing.

In April twenty twenty three, Troy was back at the State House in Annapolis to push for reform. His bill had been passed through a Senate committee and he was now appearing before a House committee. He was given two minutes to make his case.

One by one.

She took my kids by age youngest to oldest at age two, age three, and then my five year old. Thank god she was stopped before she got him. He's still a miner, and I am terrified that she's going to get out and come after him. Like I said, she's under a civil commitment, so that could be at any point in time. We just want to fix what was broken by accident.

Troy wasn't the only person who spoke that day in support of the bill.

Senate Bill five oh seven is necessary to protect public safety, but it also continues to protect the rights of defendants with disabilities.

That's Tracy Varda of the Baltimore City State's Attorney's Office. She runs the mental health courts in Baltimore City on behalf of her office.

So this tenuere provision needs to be reinstated for the following reasons. First of all, currently Criminal Procedure three one oh seven's allows dangerous defendants to walk free. Second reason, ten years will allow more time for dangerous defendants to receive treatment and become competent. Thirdly, this bill protects the defendants rights. Importantly, the judge still retains the right to dismiss any charges at any time the court believes is unjust, and this only applies to us defendants.

There was also opposition to changing the statute.

My name is Mary Piso. I'm the supervising attorney for the Forensic Mental Health Division of the Office of the Public Defender, and I'm respectfully requesting that the committee issue an unfavorable report on Senate Bill five h seven.

Mary Piso of the Public Defender's Office was calling in from her car. It's her job to provide legal counsel and advocacy for people with mental health issues who are involved in the criminal justice system, and she worried that changes to this bill would lead to an erosion of rights for defendants, not an increase in rights for victims.

The amendments to Criminal Procedure three one oh seven are unnecessary, clinically inappropriate, and inconsistent with constitutional principles regarding those deemed and competent to stand trial, Tying a further increase in length of hospitalization into the severity of the crime is based on a rationale punishment rather than treatment, even though these individuals have not yet and in fact may never be convicted of any crime.

But in the end, it was a father's grief that echoed through the chamber. One man against a system determined to create purpose from his personal tragedy, no matter how painful.

I'll be very honest with you. It's not easy for me to come here and relive this.

Even if changing this statute could never turn back the clock.

I've been doing it over the past few years. I've been here several times. Please do not make me come back again and do this. Please fix this while you can. It needs to be fixed now.

I heard later that when Troy spoke, some of the committee members had tears in their eyes, but in the end it didn't matter. In late April, Matt emailed, he said the bill didn't pass the House. Everyone's a little worn down right now. He said, this was the last major card Troy had to play. For now, nothing would change.

For the next few months. It was hard for Beth Andet to get Troy and Stephanie on the phone. Matt told us they needed a break. They seemed more insular in their grief, more exhausted by so many defeats, less galvanized by the fight, and less convinced that putting everything out there, sharing the intimate details of the horror they've been living with for nine years, was going to help them move forward in any way.

How have you sort of how are you channeling things right now?

But eventually in August we did connect.

So we keep in touch with our PI and see if there's anything that we can run with him, if we can come up with searches.

For years, Troy had been working with a private investigator who ran his own searches for the kids, followed up leads, all pro bono. He wasn't able to turn up much that the police didn't already know. In this case, it's been all dead ends.

Stephanie god bless now she does it, but she mans the page, you know, and she talks to people and puts stuff out there, just stuff like that. We're going to be fighting obviously, you know, to get law changes done, and as new information comes up, then whenever appropriate, we'll run searches. We're looking for new ways to search. We're looking at I don't even remember what the initials are, but we're trying to look into some kind of like that heat.

Yeah, it's like you know what, you know what I'm talking about. I just can't think of it off the top of.

Initials, that thing. So, I mean, we're looking at new ways. But and I think that's just it, like none of it has to do with just you know, throwing pictures out there and hoping someone saw something. At this point, because it's that's for lack of bedroom. That's pretty useless to us at this point, because it's just it's that's been done, you know, for nine years now. It's we've talked to people who have viable stories. We've talked to

It's counterintuitive, but the overwhelming public involvement in this case, the generation of thousands of leads, many from people who believe they're helping, actually complicates things for the family and maybe for any future prosecution of Catherine.

Well, now it's all stuff that either we have to run out or let's say they do rearrest Catherine. Let's say they actually get to a point where they're pressing charges. Well, we just gave her her case for a reasonable doubt. Because there's a thousand leads that were never run. There's ten thousand leads that were never run.

That's Troy and Stephanie's friend and lawyer, Matt Right.

But I'm saying there's a thousand newer ones even.

You know, every time there's a news story, they get a call from Australia and the same time they get a call from Scotland.

I see the kids.

Yeah, we've had several leads in Scotland.

Do you think that Catherine will ever tell you what happened to the kids that night?

No?

I don't think she will. There's no there's nothing in it for her to do it.

For years, as Troy has advocated for Catherine to be prosecuted, he's made clear that he's not simply seeking to punish her, that his desire for a trial isn't just about vengeance. Troy believes that the threat of prison, real prison, not being confined in a high security psychiatric facility, is the only thing that might finally push Catherine to reveal what happened the night of September seventh, twenty fourteen.

She says she's not safe in jail.

And now that crucial piece of leverage is all.

But God, there's really no one pressing her in order for it to even happen the institution itself. Of the course, you know, the justice system isn't pressing her. In fact, they're protecting her. Perkins isn't pressing her.

Troy will never stop looking for Sarah and Jacob, and with Stephanie's help, he'll do everything he can to protect his oldest son.

There's no end of the road there, so we keep fighting, We keep looking if we never find him, all by looking.

But the path ahead is murky. There's no real recovery for this family, just the day to day of putting one foot in front of the other under the watch of two children now present only in the pictures that line their walls. Often, when you lose someone, you have a place where you can memorialize them. You go to a gravesite and spend time with them you haven't earned, that reminds you they were once here.

Do you have some version of that where you can kind of spend time with them or is that just a key thing that you've been lacking that you need.

I mean, I don't know.

People, It's like I don't even like when people use words like closure. There's no closure to this. I mean, if we found their bodies to it's not closure. My kids are going so like for me, I don't know. I think Stephanie may have a different opinion, like on probably what I think I need or whatever, because sometimes, you know, I just, you know whatever, I don't know even if their bodies are there, you know, they're not there. My kids aren't in my life anymore.

They're not here.

To you.

Is the accountability part almost sort of the bigger part, because you know.

I think that's I think that would be something that would be helpful. I mean, there's like no cure for it, you know, but it would be helpful if I didn't feel like someone just took them and it's fine, you know, like that's cool. They took your kids, okay, whatever, they killed your kids, cool, Okay, It's like, what the hell is that?

You know?

I mean, I don't even think I really like care how the accountability came about. Like if it's if she's in jail, if it's that they find her in the NCR and then she's at least locked away from society for thirty five years, or if you know, she jumped out a window. I don't care. As long as there's some form of accountability there that would be helpful.

Stephanie, do you have a different or take on this or do you Troy?

I mean, I think the accountability is a huge part of it, because you know, to a lot of people, this is just a story and these are real kids. And you know, my son is really missing his brother and sister. I know that he he wants them here. However, he needs that like memorial piece. He needs that and I can't That's one thing I can't give to him. And she was just able to take them and.

All this suffering, all the trauma that my son has endured, like all the I mean it, this is so layered.

People will never you know.

It touches and or interferes with or hurts every part of everything and makes things you'll creates things that you would have never had to deal with on every level, you know, every level in life.

And when you say that your son needs a memorial piece, do you mean like an end to the not knowing? Yeah?

Yeah, and I mean probably in something physical, yeah, absolutely, Like.

He needs a place to say I can talk to my brothers and sister. This is where they are.

That's really devastating.

Yeah, unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by Me, Sarah Trelevin, and Beth Carris. Our story editor is Kathleen Goldheart Mixing and sound designed by Mitchell Stewart for anonymous content. Jessica Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our executive in charge of production, and nick Yannas is our legal counsel. For iHeart executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer Abu Zafar