World News | Agence France-Presse | Saturday January 2, 2021 . Williams said the death is being investigated as a homicide. Stone suggested an abusive childhood helped form the adult Torrez became. Hobbs recently made news with another arrest again this month, according to a Wichita Falls, Texas, television station, which reported Hobbs, now 48, was jailed in Archer City after a police pursuit Sept. 4. Man found dead at Zion National Park after medical emergency. SPRINGDALE, Washington County — A body believed to be that of a man who went missing in Zion National Park on Monday has been found, park officials said Wednesday. Three men and one woman have been killed in flash flooding in Zion National Park and three others are missing, park officials said. document.write('Tuesday, May 10, 2005 Posted: 0324 GMT (1124 HKT)'); A body of a missing hiker has been found below Angels Landing in Zion National Park. “I just want to say we’re glad it’s over,” she said after the hearing. ST. GEORGE, Utah (ABC4 News) – The body of a missing hiker was found below Angels Landing, a popular trail with 1,500-foot drop-offs with handrails along the most narrow and dangerous part of the route. The body of a 47-year-old man reported missing Monday afternoon in Zion National Park was found Wednesday at the end of a dead-end spur off the trail he was hiking. Hobbs spent nearly five years in Lake County jail before he was exonerated in 2010 by DNA evidence that pointed to Torrez. [Most read] Trump farewell planned for Wednesday morning at military base ahead of Joe Biden’s oath of office, [Most read] COVID-19 in Illinois by the numbers: Here’s a daily update on cases, positivity rate and hospital data in your area, [Most read] Members of Trump campaign behind rally that ignited US Capitol riot, records show, From running back to quarterback to receiver: How Libertyville’s Riley Lees ended his career at Northwestern and looks ahead to the NFL. Galveston Police Detective Jeff Banks talks Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, about the findings in the autopsy of "Little Jacob," a young boy found dead on the beach in October. . Maurice Harris, 47, was last seen Monday afternoon at the trailhead of the East Rim Trail on the way to a shuttle stop, according to a statement from the park. "We do have two murdered children, and we don't have anybody in custody," Zion police chief Doug Malcolm said. Torrez, a former Zion resident, was linked by DNA evidence in 2014 to the killings of 8-year-old Hobbs and 9-year-old Tobias in the Beulah Park nature area. A man was found dead Sunday after going missing during a hike in Zion National Park, the National Park Service announced. host = new String(location.hostname); “You are a serial killer,” Shanes told Torrez in approving the plea and sentence, which followed lengthy negotiations between Lake County prosecutors and defense attorney Jed Stone. The body of a man was found in a retention pond Monday morning in north suburban Zion. Bodies Found in Zion Identified. }else { They also found his wife, 53-year-old Dawn R. Whitney dead in the bathroom. "This is an unusual occurrence for our community, and we are going to do everything we possibly can to bring this to a quick resolution," Mayor Lane Harrison said. A search and rescue team found the body of the 19-year-old Savannah McTague on Thursday. Zion is a city in Lake County, Illinois, United States. Police were alerted Saturday afternoon to a body near a rock pile in an empty lot near Lebanon, Illinois, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Laura's grandmother, Emily Hollabaugh, said the girls may have gone to the park for a picnic. Zion police late Monday said in a news release that they recovered a body from a retention pond in the 1500 block of Lorelei Drive at approximately 11:30 a.m. Monday. "A couple of younger boys had seen them over at the park playing about 5:30 or 6 o'clock, and I guess that was the last time anybody saw them," Hollabaugh told Chicago television station WLS. Torrez was sentenced to five life sentences at the state level in Virginia, and is sentenced to death at the federal level for Snell's murder. It's a crime against not only those kids, but against all of us.". As the reality of the events sunk in, grade school officials described Laura Hobbs as an active reader who enjoyed acting out stories with puppets, and Krystal Tobias as artistic. "They were out all night helping us search," he said of the volunteer group. ZION, Ill., May 9 - Two second-grade girls who spent Sunday riding bikes around this working-class town on the edge of Lake Michigan were found dead of stab wounds … The cause of death appeared to be multiple stab wounds with a knife, said Lake County Coroner Richard Keller, adding at an afternoon news conference that autopsies were still under way. Stone said the plea deal was more than symbolic for his client. Prior to Torrez being returned to Lake County, he already had been convicted of the strangulation murder of Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Amanda Snell, 20, who lived in the same barracks as Torrez when he served in the Marines at the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia. Krystal Tobias’ mother, Marina Tobias, was among several Tobias family members who watched the plea deal and sentencing play out Tuesday morning. After the girls’ bodies were discovered, with Jerry Hobbs aiding police in the search, the Zion murders quickly became national news. Also, Torrez — who previously had been convicted of murder in an unrelated case in Virginia — will be able to move from Red Onion State Prison in Virginia to a federal Department of Prisons facility, likely in Terre Haute, Ind., according to Stone. Although Hobbs won a multi-million dollar settlement after being cleared, he was later arrested and imprisoned on drug charges. He added investigators have "no solid leads.". The Birmingham Police Department says they are investigating the incident as a homicide at this time. Some parishioners walk out. Shanes added that Torrez “is beyond potential for rehabilitation,” and that his actions met the legal standard of heinous, which includes actions that are “hatefully and shockingly evil.”. Due to his previous life sentences and his death penalty case, barring unforeseen legal circumstances, it’s unlikely Torrez will serve any of the 100-year sentence he received Tuesday, which was 50 years for each of the two Lake County murders. ST GEORGE, Utah (ABC4 News) - The body of missing hiker reported on Wednesday has been found in the Angel's Landing area of Zion National Park, according to St. George News. North Chicago School District 187 enlists tutoring program to fight ‘COVID slide’, Man lived inside O’Hare for 3 months before detection, prosecutors say, Coronavirus in Illinois updates: 50 new deaths, 3,385 new confirmed and probable cases announced Monday, A ‘healthy’ doctor died two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine; CDC is investigating why. ", Hollabaugh said Laura was "a typical 8-year-old girl" who "always had a smile for everybody," and Krystal was "just as sweet as Laura was.". Autopsies determined both girls died of multiple stab wounds. Keller said there were "obvious injuries" and that police were looking for murder weapons. ZION CITY, Ala. (WIAT) — UPDATE (10/18/19): The body of an adult male was found in the Zion City area Thursday afternoon. Father guilty of killing 9 of his children, Security alert issued for 40 million credit cards. Zion police say a Waukegan man who was stabbed during a fight in a Barberry Lane apartment died after being taken to a nearby hospital. Until officials announced incorrectly that Jerry Hobbs committed the murders, parents told reporters they were walking their children to school, and local and national reporters, as well as the curious, crowded outside of the Zion police station and near the scene of the murders as Zion police and the Lake County Major Crime Task Force investigated the crime. “It has been a very long time, and this ensures he’ll never do anything like that to anyone else.”. Birmingham police are investigating a homicide after a body was found in Zion City Thursday afternoon. host = host.toLowerCase(); Johnny Williams, a man's body was found in the middle of a road around 2:30 p.m. The mother of one of the girls called police at about 8:50 p.m. (9:50 p.m. Zion Shooting: 28-Year-Old Man Dead, 8-Year-Old Boy Among 3 WoundedZion police said officers responded to a call of shots fired shortly before 1 a.m. Sunday on the 2300 block of Joppa Avenue. The body was found around 8:20 a.m. in Refrigerator Canyon. Zion murder case informant found dead ... to stand trial on 18 counts of murder alleging he killed the two girls and left their bodies in a Zion park. The body had been in … Hobbs pleaded guilty to methamphetamine possession, among other charges, in Oklahoma, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, with the last 10 years suspended pending successful probation, according to court records. The latest charges come after Hobbs was released on parole for his last Wichita County convictions in May 2017 that included evading arrest. More than 13 years after the bodies of two young girls were found in a Zion park, one of the most heinous crimes in Lake County history was resolved through a plea deal Tuesday morning. Six of seven hikers who were in a slot canyon in Utah’s Zion National Park have been found dead and one person remains missing, officials said Wednesday. His link to the Zion case came after Jerry Hobbs, Laura Hobbs' father, had previously confessed to the girls' murder after a long interrogation and was charged. CNN's Keith Oppenheim contributed to this report.