The images of Las Vegas that leap to most people’s minds are generally the same: Casinos. Gambling. High-rollers. Big money. Bookies. Fancy cars. Fancier hotels. While gargantuan in industry and notoriety, the Sin City strip is small in geography, encompassing only a little over four miles of the city’s one-hundred-thirty-six square miles.
Outside of the strip, Las Vegas is a typical city beset with the typical city problems such as budget constraints, crowding, pollution . . . and crime.
On the evening of July 23, 1987, sixteen-year-old Kathy Hobbs disappeared after purchasing a book at a local market near her home. Because she suffered from depression and had emotional problems, police initially believed she may have run away.
Nine days later, however, hopes of Kathy’s return were dashed when she was found beaten to death in the desert. The girl who resided not far from the Las Vegas strip, had been stripped of her life.
Kathy Hobbs
Kathy, her sister Theresa, and mother Vivian lived in a Las Vegas apartment. Kathy was a night owl and made many late evening jaunts to the supermarket, only a block-and-a-half from her apartment. She did so on the evening of July 23, leaving shortly after 11:00.
Kathy’s friends often gathered around the apartment complex’s swimming pool. She told her mom that if she saw any of her friends at the pool, she might hang out with them instead.
A Walk To The Store
Shortly after her daughter left, Vivian went outside the apartment and found the swimming pool and the surrounding area empty. Assuming Kathy had gone to the store, Vivian went to bed soon thereafter.
When she awoke the following morning, Vivian found that Kathy had not returned home. She called her daughter’s friends, but none had seen her the previous evening.
Vivian Hobbs
Kathy’s Mother
A clerk saw Kathy in the supermarket and recalled she had purchased a romance novel. Store receipts showed the transaction was made at 11:17 p.m. on July 23.
Whatever happened to Kathy occurred after she left the store.
Kathy Makes It To The Market
Nine days later, geologist Rick Pacult was searching for rock crystals near Lake Mead, approximately nine miles from Kathy’s home. An odor led him deeper into the desert where he found the body of a young female.
Tire prints at the scene showed where a vehicle had pulled in to the area, turned around and left, likely in haste.
Rick Pacult
An autopsy identified the victim as Kathy Hobbs. She had died from repeated blows to the head. Two rocks in the vicinity lay spattered with blood which was later confirmed as Kathy’s.
Kathy Is Found Beaten To Death
On October 24, three months after Kathy Hobbs’ body was found, an anonymous caller left a message on the Las Vegas Police Department’s answering machine, saying he had witnessed a man grab a screaming girl in the supermarket parking lot and push her into a car. He said the girl was wearing a white jacket and pink pants, which were consistent with what Kathy wore when she left home.
Before the vehicle sped away, the caller believed he heard the name “Robbie” yelled. He reported the car’s license plate, but motor vehicle records showed that no such plate had been issued.
Police believed the caller was sincere in what he had seen but had misread the license plate. He did not leave his name or phone number. Police made several public requests for him to contact them again. He did not, and he was never identified.
Was There A Witness To Kathy’s Kidnapping?
Approximately a year later, authorities came to believe Kathy Hobbs had been a victim of serial killer Michael Lockhart of Toledo, Ohio.
Blue fibers found at the crime scene in Lake Mead were matched to fibers from a 1986 Toyota Celica which Lockhart had stolen in May 1987, two months before Kathy‘s murder. Credit card receipts placed him in Las Vegas at the time of the crime.
Lockhart professed his admiration for Ted Bundy and claimed to have killed at least a dozen people. He was convicted of three murders, one each in Indiana, Florida, and Texas, during a five month killing spree, from October 1987, five months after the murder of Kathy Hobbs, to March 1988.
Michael Lockhart
Sixteen-year-old Windy Gallagher was murdered on October 13, 1987, in Griffith, Indiana, and fourteen-year-old Jennifer Colhouer was murdered on January 20, 1988, in Land’O’Lakes, Florida. Both girls had been raped, stabbed to death, and mutilated.
Two months later, on March 22, thirty-year-old Beaumont, Texas, Police Officer Paul Hulsey, Jr. tracked a Chevrolet Corvette with stolen license plates to a Beaumont motel. Officer Hulsey requested backup after determining the car’s occupant was in his motel room, but no officers were available as they were responding to a call of a pedestrian fatality.
As the Corvette’s driver emerged from his motel room, Officer Hulsey approached him. A struggle ensued in which the man, later identified as Lockhart, wrestled Officer Hulsey’s gun from him and shot him to death.
Lockhart was captured after a high speed chase. Fibers found in the stolen Corvette linked him to the murders of Windy Gallagher and Jennifer Colhouer.
Windy Gallagher Jennifer Colhouer Paul Hulsey
Investigators believe Lockhart also murdered Kathy Hobbs, but the state of Nevada chose not to prosecute him because he was already sentenced to death in Texas and Florida. They do not believe he had an accomplice.
Michael Lockhart was executed at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville on December 9, 1997.
Lockhart Is Put To Death
The investigation into the murder of Kathy Hobbs is considered closed.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/172139465/katherine_marie-hobbs
Case Closed
Kathy Hobbs and Kari Nixon were born only twelve days apart from one another.
Kari was murdered in upstate New York on June 23, 1987, exactly one month before Kathy Hobbs was murdered. The cases are not related, but they have similarities as Kari was also accosted late in the evening after walking home from the neighborhood market.
Here is the link to my write-up on the murder of Kari Nixon.
SOURCES
- Associated Press
- Chicago Tribune
- Houston Chronicle
- Las Vegas Sun
- Murderpedia
- Toledo-Blade
- Unsolved Mysteries
0 Comments