Troubling questions in Hobbs case

This is what we know today in the case of Jerry Hobbs:

His daughter, Laura, and her friend, Krystal Tobias, just 8 and 9 respectively, were brutally murdered in Zion on Mother's Day 2005.

He spent five years in jail after confessing to the crime.

This week, he was released and the charges dropped when Lake County prosecutors said they no longer could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hobbs was the killer because of DNA found on Laura Hobbs that did not match her father.

And this is what we don't know:

Who is the real killer and what has that person done in the five years Lake County authorities focused their efforts on convicting the 39-year-old Hobbs?

How was the small sample of DNA missed five years ago?

Why would Jerry Hobbs confess to killing his own daughter when the new evidence suggests he did not?

It all sounds so familiar - and so troubling. A man wrongfully charged for a crime he didn't commit after actually confessing to that crime. DNA evidence not detected at first that leads to someone else.

This was exactly the case with Kevin Fox. In late 2007 we wrote an editorial urging Will County authorities to focus their efforts on finding the real killer of 3-year-old Riley Fox. They eventually charged someone else earlier this year. That editorial was written after a jury awarded Riley's parents, Kevin and Melissa, $15.5 million (later reduced to $8.6 million) in their lawsuit against the Will County detectives who arrested and interrogated Kevin Fox for the 2004 crime. Fox was held for eight months before being released.

Two other cases didn't involve confessions but are similar. The "Ford Heights Four" spent 18 years in prison before getting cleared in a 1978 double murder. They were awarded $36 million in a settlement with Cook County.

Rolando Cruz was awarded $3 million from DuPage County after Cruz was freed from death row in 1995 after his acquittal, in a third trial, of the 1983 murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville.

Now Lake County law enforcement officials must answer these hard questions. And they may have to do it as part of a civil suit. Attorney Kathleen Zellner, who also represented Kevin Fox, has been hired by Hobbs' family to investigate.

"This is better DNA in this case than there was in Fox," Zellner said last month after a hearing on the DNA. "It's highly unusual for someone to be locked up for five years without a trial. So that's what we're investigating."

Indeed it is. We agree with Lake County State's Attorney Michael Waller who said Wednesday his priority "is holding somebody responsible for these murders." But we also believe his priority should be to fully investigate the early days of the murder case and why Jerry Hobbs would apparently falsely confess to the crime.

This is owed to Hobbs and to the people of Lake County.