A former Marine convicted of rape in Arlington and potentially facing the death penalty in a 2009 slaying at Fort Myer-Henderson Hall has been charged with stabbing two young girls to death in Illinois in 2005.
The Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday that 23-year-old Jorge A. Torrez has been charged in the killings of 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias. The two were killed in May 2005 in a park in Zion, Ill., a town outside of Chicago.
Torrez used to live there and was friends with Krystal’s brother.
Laura’s father, Jerry Hobbs, was initially arrested in the killings and spent five years in jail awaiting trial until DNA evidence implicated Torrez in the case.
Torrez was indicted in federal court in Alexandria last year in the July 2009 slaying of Amanda J. Snell, a Navy petty officer. In 2010, he was sentenced to five life terms in Arlington County Circuit Court for abducting and raping one woman and robbing another in separate attacks.
Illinois authorities will wait until the federal murder case against Torrez concludes before trying to prosecute him, said Stephen Scheller, the chief of the criminal division for the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Scheller said there was other evidence besides DNA that links Torrez to the killings, but would not elaborate.
