Crime & Safety
Child Murders: Ex-Marine Serial Killer Guilty In IL Girls' Deaths
Jorge Torrez is already on death row for the unrelated murder of Navy officer and serving life sentences for abducting several women.
WAUKEGAN, IL — More than 13 years after the notorious Lake County double murder of two little girls, the serial killer and former Marine behind the horrific crime has been sentenced to 100 years in prison. Jorge Avila-Torrez pleaded guilty Tuesday to the Mother's Day 2005 rape and murder of two young girls in Zion, receiving his sentence under a plea deal in which he admitted to the stabbing deaths of Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9.
As part of his guilty plea, Torrez is expected to be transferred to a federal penitentiary, most likely in Terre Haute, Indiana, according to his defense attorney Jed Stone, the Daily Herald reported.
Avila-Torrez is already serving five life sentences plus 168 years and is awaiting a execution for convictions in the 2009 murder of U.S. Navy Petty Officer Amanda Jean Snell and the 2010 stalking and kidnapping of three women in Virginia, including one crime in which the victim was raped, choked and left for dead.
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"Within each of us, there is a divine spark of goodness. But not for you," Judge Daniel Shanes told Avila-Torrez Tuesday in court, calling the ex-Marine a serial killer, according to the news report.
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Jerry Hobbs, Laura's father, was initially charged with the murders after finding the girls' bodies and confessing after a police interrogation, but he was exonerated after DNA evidence ended up pointing to a then 16-year-old Avila-Torrez.
In 2013, Patch reported Hobbs was to receive $6 million for being wrongfully charged and jailed for five years in the murder of his daughter and her friend.
Main photos: In this May 10, 2005 file photo, Sheena Humphres, 22, of Zion, Ill., places flowers at a memorial for Laura Hobbs and Krystal Tobias at the Beulah Park Nature Area in Zion, Ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)/Photo of Jorge Avila-Torrez via Lake County Sheriff's Office
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