HOUSTON A security guard suspected of preying on prostitutes in east Harris County was charged Thursday with a second murder.
Steven Hobbs, 40, of Crosby, was already facing capital murder charges in the shooting death of Sara Sanford, a prostitute whose nude, handcuffed body was found in October of 2010.
Thursday he wascharged with the cold-case murder of another prostitute, Patricia Pyatt, whose body was found on the banks of the San Jacinto River in November of 2002.
Pyatt, a mother of five who was also from Crosby, was strangled with such force that there were broken bones in her neck, investigators said.
In addition to the murder charges, Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia said Hobbs has been charged with a 2002 aggravated sexual assault, which occurred within a week of Pyatt s murder.
This guy had been thinking that no one was going to catch him, Garcia said.
Investigators said all three cases were linked by DNA evidence.
Steven Hobbs is a predator, and he s been a predator for at least a decade, HCSO Homicide Lt. Rolf Nelson said.
Hobbs is also facing charges in connection with the sexual assaults of three prostitutes in Pasadena. He was jailed on those charges when Harris County investigators linked him to the murders.
But investigators and Assistant District Attorney Katherine McDaniel said they believe there could be other victims out there both living and dead.
Nelson said he s temporarily moved two additional investigators to the Harris County Cold Case Squad, so they can look through 15 years worth of unsolved cases to see if any could be linked to Hobbs.
Garcia said they ve also issued an alert to all law enforcement agencies in Southeast Texas, in case Hobbs could be linked to crimes in other jurisdictions.
The sheriff said anyone with information on Hobbs, or anyone who thinks they may have been victimized by him, should call authorities immediately no matter what.
Victims are victims in our eyes. We don t care what walk of life or what you may have been involved in. If you have information on this individual, we need it. We need it now. We need you to communicate with us and get us that information, because we need to make sure that we re bringing closure to any other cases that are out there, Garcia said.
McDaniel said investigators fear that because the known victims have all been prostitutes, any living victims could be hesitant to come forward.
I think that there are a number of living victims, and I think that is common with those women in that profession, they are going to avoid reporting it because they don t want to get involved with law enforcement. So that s kind of why I would like to urge them to make contact with us now, because prostituting never should allow someone to brutalize you in this fashion, McDaniel said.
Investigators said Hobbs was known to abuse his victims with batons, handcuffs and handguns.
The known victims who survived the attacks did so because Hobbs was either scared off or distracted long enough for them to escape, Nelson said.
Nelson said Hobbs methods varied, and so far, his known victims have had just two things in common.
The only common factors are what they did for a living and the circles that they ran in on the east side of Harris County, Nelson said.
As for how a suspect like Hobbs could go undetected for so long, Nelson said it all came down to DNA.
Hobbs had never been arrested before, so investigators did not have his DNA or fingerprints on file.
After Sanford s body was found in 2010, they collected DNA from that scene and entered it into the CODIS system. They were able to match it to DNA obtained from the Pyatt crime scene, but they did not have the suspect s identity.
Then, after the skeletal remains of yet another prostitute Wanda Trombley were found in the same general area in September, Nelson said investigators started backtracking and talking to prostitutes who worked the area.
Those women told them about a very large, distinctive-looking man who was known to harm street workers in the area. They suspected he might be some kind of security guard.
Nelson said investigators then went to nearby businesses and collected voluntary DNA samples from the security guards they employed. One of them was Hobbs.
When his DNA was entered into CODIS, Nelson said it was matched to the 2010 and 2002 cases, and the charges were filed.
McDaniel said Hobbs is also a suspect in Wanda Trombley s murder, but no charges have been filed in that case.
Potential victims or anyone else with information on these cases should call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-8477 or the Harris County Sheriff s Office at (713) 967-5810.
