Defense: Victim's father, not ex-Marine, killed 2 girls

WAUKEGAN, Ill. (AP) - The defense attorney for a former Marine accused of fatally stabbing two girls in Zion says he will argue at trial that one victim's father previously exonerated in the killings is responsible.

Jorge Torrez is charged in the Mother's Day 2005 killings of 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias. Prosecutors accuse Torrez, who was a 16-year-old friend of Tobias' older brother at the time, of stabbing the girls while they were playing in a forest preserve.

Authorities say DNA found at the scene matches Torrez. Defense attorney Jed Stone said in court Tuesday that the DNA evidence is "junk," and that he'll argue Jerry Hobbs, Laura Hobbs' father, killed the girls.

"Our defense in this case is that Hobbs did it," attorney Jed Stone told a judge. "He confessed to really good detectives that the state has always respected in the past."

Hobbs was charged in the girls' deaths after giving what he said was a false confession. He was in jail for five years before being released, after authorities said DNA evidence linked the killings to another man, who they later identified as Torrez. Hobbs won a multimillion-dollar settlement.

Torrez has been sentenced to death in the slaying of Navy Petty Officer Amanda Snell in Virginia in 2009, in barracks where they lived a few doors done from each other. He has also received life sentences for stalking attacks on three women in northern Virginia in 2010.

Torrez was returned to Illinois last year by the Lake County State's Attorney. Prosecutors have said it's necessary to try him for the girls' death to give their families closure, and because there's always a chance his other convictions could be overturned.

A date for Torrez's trial hasn't been set.