As a child, Kathy Hobbs had frightening ‘premonitions’. At 8 years old, her premonitions became very specific and she began to tell her friends that she believed she would not live past 16 years old.
Unhappy Childhood
Kathy was not exactly a happy child; her parents divorced when she was 8 years old, and when she was in 7th grade, a very good friend of hers died of a heart disease. She was really effected by these events and her mother decided to move homes.
After the move Kathy made new friends and ‘blossomed’, but as she approached her 16th birthday, her fear of dying returned. She wouldn’t meet up with her friends and spent most of her time in her room. According to her mother, Kathy was relieved and shocked to find she was still alive on the morning of her 16th birthday. A new excitement for life seemed to come over her, and her sister remembers how she began to go out again, “she came out and said, ‘I made it mom, I made it. I’m 16. I did it, I’m alive'”.
July 23 1987: 11pm
A newly 16 year old Kathy Hobbs told her mother Vivian that she was going to the supermarket. Vivian speaks about that night ‘ “mom, I’m going down to the store and buy a book. Give me a kiss before I go” And I said, “why, I’ll be up when you get back?” and she said “well I’ll probably stop and talk to the kids, so you might be in bed when I get back” So I gave her a kiss, and that was the last time I saw her”.
Kathy often walked to the store late at night, and her friends often hung around the area, so Vivian was not worried and she went to sleep.
3am
Vivian suddenly woke due to a ‘strange dream’.
“I felt like I had been hit on the head. And all of a sudden I got a very peaceful feeling and I thought, ‘ well it’s over now’ and I fell back asleep”. You might want to remember this for later!
In the morning, Vivian found Kathy’s room empty.
“At the end of the second day, we were convinced that Katherine had probably been abducted” – Las Vegas Metro Police Homicide Lieutenant Kyle L Edwards.
The Investigation
A clerk remembered Kathy in the store, and receipts confirmed someone did purchase a paperback novel at 11:17 that night.
Kathy made it to the store, but not back home.
9 days later
Hiker Rick Pacult was out in the desert near Lake Mead.
He stated he smelt a very ‘strong odour’ and decided to see what was causing it. He said he had to “sit down and gather my thoughts and make sure that what I was looking at was real”.
He had discovered the body of Kathy Hobbs. She had only been 16 for 3 months.
Tire prints at the scene showed where a vehicle pulled in, turned around and left. Two rocks were also found splattered in Kathy’s blood.
Cause of death
The coroner concluded that she had been sexually assaulted, and the cause of death was repeated blows to the head.
Does anyone else find this interesting? Her mother woke suddenly around 3am the night that she was killed and felt as though she had been hit in the head, then suddenly she felt very peaceful and fell back asleep? Some people believe Vivian felt her daughters pain, and the peaceful feeling came after Kathy had died.
The Letters
After Kathy’s death, several letters were found in her room, one for each member of the family. They were dated one month before her 16th birthday.
“Dear mother: in the event of my death, you shall get this letter. I hope you live happily and I don’t want you or anyone else to dwell on my death”.
Three months later
An anonymous caller left a message on the Las Vegas Police Department voice mail. He said that he had seen Kathy being dragged into a vehicle by 2 men as she screamed. He gave the exact location of where she was last seen and what she was wearing. The caller also said one of the men was called Robbie.
He gave a license plate number, but when the police looked into it, they found it did not exist. Police pleaded in the media for the caller to talk to them, but he never did.
Unsolved or Solved?
Michael Lockhart is a serial killer, who was arrested for cases which were similar to Kathy Hobb’s. The Las Vegas Police looked into him for Kathy’s murder and blue fibres found at the crime scene matched the blue 1986 Toyota Celica Lockhart stole in May 1987. He kept this stolen car until November of 1987. Credit card receipts also put him in Las Vegas at the time of Kathy’s murder.
Before he was executed, he was questioned by the police and did confess to killing Kathy. He never said if anyone was with him, or helped in the murder.
Authorities “strongly believe” Lockhart was responsible, but it is still not certain what happened.
This makes the anonymous call even more odd. How did they manage to give the exact location and what she was wearing, yet say there was 2 men involved?
The Theories
There are two theories that stand out to me about this case. The first being that she really did have premonitions and had an extrasensory perception. Extrasensory perception can be defined as: perception (as in telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition) that involves awareness of information about events external to the self not gained through the senses and not deducible from previous experience. Basically, she had a sixth sense. Daryl Bem, a highly regarded researcher conducted a study to see if ESP is actually possible, and his findings showed that in some cases it is. Perhaps Kathy inherited ESP from her mother? This would explain how she woke up feeling like she had been ‘hit on the head’ (as Kathy was being hit on the head with a rock) and then all of a sudden felt like ‘it was over’ (as Kathy’s death ended her suffering), perhaps she was feeling what her daughter was going through. It is very sad to think.
The second theory I want to talk about is how Kathy was suffering from feelings of Impending Doom.
With both her parents getting divorced, and her close friend suddenly passing away due to heart disease, Kathy did not have a happy childhood. It is possible that she was suffering from depression and/or anxiety which triggered these feelings of impending doom. One of the side effects of this is believing you have premonitions of your death, just as Kathy did.
Does this mean that Kathy was suffering with poor mental health, and her death just happened to be a tragic coincidence? A case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? But with her specific belief that she would not live past 16, and being killed at aged 16 and 3 months, it just seems all too much of a coincidence to be true?
So what do you think? A case of inherited Extrasensory Perception, which some studies show to be possible, or a case of impending doom and tragic coincidence?
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