How could Jerry Hobbs have murdered his own daughter?
Monster Dad: Why did Jerry Hobbs murder his own daughter?
Top Story: A rational explanation can be found in unimpeded alcoholism.
Parents in the quiet community of Zion, Illinois were “shocked”after the fatal stabbings of eight-year-old Laura Hobbs and her best friend, 9-year-old Krystal Tobias, by Laura’s father, Jerry Brandon Hobbs lll. State Attorney Michael Walker said, “there isn’t any rational explanation for what happened,”while Zion Police Chief Doug Malcolm intoned, “This sort of thing just doesn’t happen here.”
Yet, Hobbs had reportedly been arrested 29 times in the last 15 years for committing violent acts. Once, “a drunken Hobbs chased neighbors with a chainsaw”while screaming at his girlfriend and mother of his child, Sheila Hollabaugh, “I’ll kill you.”He was last released from prison only a month earlier, having served two years for domestic assault. The Department of Family Services visited the family “many times”over a number of years, launching six investigations. Despite the fact that the odds of alcoholism in any one case of domestic violence are 85% and most domestic strife is a result of this disease, the media failed to suggest that it could explain the tragic events that unfolded May 8.
Hobbs’ sister, Sandra, tried to explain. “Our father…physically punished the two of us…We had a twisted life…We were on the run for 14 years, running from the sheriff and creditors.”Their mother has been a fugitive since violating probation for a grand theft conviction in 1986. Sandra did not explain why the troubled upbringing didn’t affect her in the same way, because she doesn’t seem to know that the predisposition for heinous conduct originates in biochemistry. She appears unaware that they had a “twisted life”because their parents had the disease of alcoholism, which Hobbs inherited.
While Sandra knew that Hobbs and Hollabaugh fought almost every day, she apparently had no idea that such fighting is a behavioral symptom of addiction. Had she known this and understood that alcoholism can fuel wildly irrational, pre-civilized behaviors, she might not be feeling remorseful over the fact that she introduced the two in 1991 and encouraged Hollabaugh to keep the family intact. Had Sandra understood her family’s disease, she might have instead long ago explained that offering a choice of rehab with family, or insobriety without, can instill in an addict a desire to get clean and sober. However unlikely as it now seems, had Hollabaugh limited Hobbs to these two alternatives, Hobbs might have made the right decision and his daughter would be alive in a home with a recovering alcoholic.
While close people rarely attempt to impose abstinence, the law and its agencies, which came into contact with Hobbs at least 35 times, could have easily done so. It had every reason and opportunity to offer a choice of freedom with regular and random blood and urine tested abstinence, or imprisonment, with any relapse resulting in a loss of freedom, starting the process all over again. If it had set such ground rules, Hobbs might have gotten sober. In the worst case, he’d still be in prison or would likely have been sent back sometime during the preceding month. In either case, Laura Hobbs and Krystal Tobias would probably be alive today. Instead, the system failed and two innocent little girls died because the underlying cause of Hobbs’ horrific misbehaviors went untreated: alcoholism, a biochemical disease that damages the neo-cortex and allows the lower brain centers to determine actions without the restraint of reason and logic.