http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/1-05102005-487398.html
Grandfather Describes Finding Slain Girls
By ANNA JOHNSON
The Associated Press
Colias reports the grandfather of the one of the slain girls says the father had just been released from prison.
ZION, Ill. - Arthur Hollabaugh says he had searched through the night for his missing granddaughter when he spotted something in bushes part way down a ravine: a child's bicycle.
Minutes later, he said Tuesday, his son-in-law, Jerry Hobbs, was screaming that he had found the bodies of his 8-year-old daughter, Laura Hobbs, and her best friend, Krystal Tobias, who disappeared together on a Mother's Day bike ride.
"I went and I seen them from a distance," Hollabaugh, 51, told The Associated Press. "It was clear they were laying there."
Laura and 9-year-old Krystal were stabbed repeatedly and left a few yards off a wooded bike path near their homes in this small city near the Wisconsin line. On Tuesday, a memorial of flowers and balloons marked the area where the bodies were found a day earlier.
Police weren't commenting on the case Tuesday morning, but Hollabaugh said investigators were questioning his son-in-law and had also talked to Laura's siblings about Hobbs. Donald Meadie, assistant commander of the Lake County Major Crime Task Force, confirmed late Monday that Jerry Hobbs had been questioned but said there were no suspects. He declined to comment further.
Hollabaugh said Hobbs had just returned to the area about a month earlier to reunite with Laura's mother after serving time in a Texas prison.
"Jerry just got out of prison for aggravated assault and I think they're holding that against him," Hollabaugh said. "I don't think he did it." Hobbs could not be reached for comment Tuesday; Hollabaugh said he was still with the police.
Police searched the family home and Hollabaugh said they took measurements of his shoe soles. "They went through our stuff, took clothes," he said, adding that they took the computer to see if the girl had been on any Internet chat rooms.
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