hearing to determine <\/a>whether Hoggle was competent to stand trial, despite a serious schizophrenia diagnosis. She had previously been found incompetent to stand trial consistently since first being charged with murder in 2017.<\/p>\n\u201cThe key points here were text messages and phone conversations, not private phone conversations \u2026 where Catherine Hoggle, even though he declared her to be schizophrenic, declared that she was capable of understanding the charges against her,\u201d WTOP\u2019s Dan Ronan reported live from the court house, adding that Bonifant acknowledged Hoggle has made significant progress as a result of the in-patient treatment she\u2019s undergone.<\/p>\n
\u201cJudge Bonifant also said that Hoggle is able to participate in her own defense and she is aware of the charges in connection with the disappearance of her two small children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hoggle will be remanded to a state psychiatric institution and will be back in court on Dec. 23 for a status hearing.<\/p>\n
Montgomery County State\u2019s Attorney John McCarthy said Hoggle\u2019s case is very complicated and been in the public\u2019s eye for over a decade. Because of the length of time involved to prepare for the trial, it could be the end of 2026 before a plea hearing.<\/p>\n
In 2014, Hoggle was initially charged with misdemeanor child neglect \u2014 misdemeanor charges of parental abduction and obstructing an investigation were later added \u2014 but she was repeatedly found incompetent to stand trial by Montgomery County District Court judges.<\/p>\n
In September 2017, with the children still missing, Hoggle was indicted on two counts of murder.<\/p>\n
Psychiatrists disagree on Hoggle\u2019s competency<\/p>\n
A state-appointed psychiatrist and a psychiatrist hired by McCarthy\u2019s office held differing opinions on Hoggle\u2019s cognitive ability at a competency hearing Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Dr. Nicole Johnson is a state-appointed forensic psychiatrist with the Clifton T. Perkins psychiatric hospital where Hoggle has been housed and treated for years.<\/p>\n
Johnson told Bonifant Tuesday that she believes Hoggle is still not competent to stand trial \u2014 that she is psychotic, delusional and dangerous.<\/p>\n
Johnson said Hoggle has psychotic thoughts and still has the delusion that prosecutors are fabricating and falsifying evidence against her. She said Hoggle\u2019s disorganized thinking would make it impossible to assist in her own defense.<\/p>\n
But Dr. Christiane Tellefsen, a psychiatrist hired by the Montgomery County State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s Office, told the judge she believes Hoggle is competent to stand trial.<\/p>\n
After reading texts, listening to jail phone calls and talking with Hoggle, Tellefsen said she believes Hoggle has shown no evidence of psychosis since 2014, and that she is rational and able to assist in her own defense.<\/p>\n
WTOP\u2019s Neal Augenstein contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u00a9 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Montgomery County judge declares Catherine Hoggle competent to stand trial for murder in the 2014 disappearance of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,171534,451,171535,25811,156805,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-342038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-catherine-hoggle","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-incompetent-to-stand-trial","13":"tag-montgomery-county","14":"tag-murder-case","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}