A Most Horrifying Murder

Forty years ago today, May 3, 1980, two young boys in Miami County, Kansas, decided that they would spend the day fishing, and headed out to dig for worms that they would use as bait. They found their spot, started digging, and made a gruesome discovery. They had come across the deceased body of 13-year-old Chris Hobson, an Overland Park, Kansas youth who had been missing for about 2 ½ weeks. Law enforcement and the community in general had been frantically looking for Hobson, a 7^th grader at Indian Creek Junior High School. His wallet had been found at Metcalf South Shopping Center. Unconfirmed reports had him at Worlds of Fun amusement park the weekend prior to his disappearance. The fact that Hobson was dead was indeed a tragedy. He had been shot at close range three times. On May 4, three people were arrested for the murder: Sueanne Hobson, Chris’s stepmother; James Crumm, Chris’s stepbrother; and Paul Sorrentino, an acquaintance of Jimmy’s and a student at Shawnee Mission South. Suzanne Hobson was brought in for questioning but was never a suspect. As the story of how it happened unfolded, we would all learn of the most shocking and horrifying murder in Johnson County, Kansas history.

I remember watching the local news on Sunday May 4. The lead story was about Chris, and I was horrified by the story. For the first time in my young 13-year life, pure evil had pierced my little bubble of a world. All of us at Indian Creek lost a fellow student, some of us lost a friend. In this note, I recall the events leading up to and including April 17, 1980, the day Chris was murdered. Then I give some of my own impressions of the people involved. The only one I knew personally on any level was Chris. In a separate companion piece, I discuss my own thoughts on Mrs. Hobson, that you can read about here.

Sueanne Hobson had targeted the night of April 17, 1980. Her husband, Ed Hobson, would be gone to a union meeting (he was a millwright at Ralston Purina). Mrs. Hobson and Ed had married in December 1978 after a brief courtship. Ed’s previous wife (and Chris’s mother) died of cancer in 1976. There were adjustment problems within the marriage, as is common in marriages in which families are blended. Ed had the one son, Chris, and Mrs. Hobson had two children from a previous marriage, James (Jimmy) Crumm and Suzanne Hobson. Suzanne was adopted by Ed after the marriage. Mrs. Hobson had trouble with Chris from the beginning. She convinced her son Jimmy to take him out the night of April 17. Jimmy was accompanied by a friend, Paul Sorrentino. Jimmy was a troubled youth who did not live with Ed and Mrs. Hobson, having moved out in February 1980. The daughter Suzanne was instructed to be upstairs in the shower when Jimmy and his friend came by to pick up Chris. The boys picked up Chris and took a shovel and a shotgun with them (both were stolen from Ed). They lured Chris out of the house on the promise of a “drug ripoff” and drove him to a heavily wooded area in Miami County, about 25 miles south of their Overland Park residence. The spot they chose ran alongside Big Bull Creek (now Hillsdale Lake). They had Chris dig a hole about six feet long, four feet wide and three feet deep to get a truck stuck. Then had him sit in it to try it out and make sure it was the right size (in other words, they had Chris dig his own grave). Then the older boys pulled out the shotgun and shot Chris three times. They each took turns shooting him before he finally died. The boys buried him and headed back home. Chris was reported missing later that night by Mrs. Hobson who told police that he had run away from home and had a shotgun with him.

On May 1, 1981, Jimmy Crumm was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. At his trial, Crumm claimed that he killed Chris at the direction of his Mother. Paul Sorrentino took a plea deal offered by the state and was convicted of aiding and abetting a murder, but the first-degree murder charge was dropped. He was to testify against Mrs. Hobson as part of his plea deal. Apparently, the Johnson County prosecutors heard enough that by June 23, 1981, they had arrested Mrs. Hobson and charged her with murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Mrs. Hobson’s trial began in late April 1982. Mrs. Hobson testified on her own behalf. Why her defense attorney, Hugh Kreamer, put her on the witness stand remains a complete mystery. We saw a woman who was a loving and deeply caring stepmother to Chris. She described a near perfect family situation at home. She denied any involvement in Chris’s murder. Yet, there was a dead child in this perfect house, and the older stepbrother admitted to the crime and pointed to him Mother as the mastermind of the whole thing. James Crumm testified against his own Mom and on behalf of the prosecution. He testified grudgingly and only agreed to it at the last minute. He reiterated his story that his mother wanted Chris gone and that she had grown quite agitated that he had not completed the job yet. He testified that she wanted Chris gone by Christmas so that she would not have to buy him any presents. He testified that things got so bad between his Mom and Chris that she refused to be in the same room with him. He testified that she had tried before to kill Chris by lacing a bowl of ice cream with Quaaludes. He testified that his Mom promised to buy him a car and to pay for Mr. Sorrentino’s needed motorcycle repairs in return for killing Chris. Then, Mrs. Hobson’s daughter also testified for the prosecution. She had said in her statement to police on May 4, 1980, that she had overheard her mother and Jimmy talking about the need to “get rid of” Chris. While she did not say that they discussed killing him, it was obvious that Jimmy took the meaning of “get rid of” to mean killing him. Suzanne reaffirmed that she said those things to police. There were several of Mrs. Hobson’s friends who testified for the prosecution that she utterly hated Chris. Mrs. Lee Shank, one of Chris’s teachers at Indian Creek also testified for the prosecution, recalling how Mrs. Hobson noted that Chris was creating problems at home. The jury convicted Sueanne Hobson of murder and conspiracy to commit murder and she was sentenced to life in prison.

Kansas law at the time made each convict eligible for parole after 7 ½ years. James Crumm was paroled in 1999 and is believed to be living in Texas today. Paul Sorrentino was paroled in 2000 and is believed to be living in Florida. Sueanne Hobson was paroled in 2011 and is living in Prairie Village, Kansas with her husband Ed in the house she inherited from her parents.

Chris Hobson was a classmate of mine at Indian Creek Junior High. We were both seventh graders during the 1979-80 school year. He was in my third hour reading class with Mrs. Pipes. That would be the only class that I had with him. I have no particular memories of Chris. He did not strike me as either exceptional or unexceptional. He was not a troublemaker nor a saint. He was remarkably average. Just an average kid, who like me was looking to make his way through life as a sevie. Chris Hobson had no chance. With a weak father, and an evil, determined stepmother, he was doomed to die an early death. Rest in Peace, Chris.

Suzanne Hobson was an eighth grader at Indian Creek that same year. I never knew Suzanne. I could have passed her hundreds of times in the halls of Indian Creek that year and never known it. After April 16, she would never go back to Indian Creek. Suzanne Hobson was the most intriguing character in this story. She knew of her Mother’s desire to have Chris killed by about February 1980. Suzanne was all in on it. She hated both Ed and Chris because they had taken her Mother from her with her marriage to Ed. This would get rid of one of the problems. On the day of the murder, Suzanne knew something was going down that night and she was the intermediary between her Mom and Jimmy. Ultimately, she was brought into the Overland Park police station early in the morning of May 4, 1980. She delivered some very damaging testimony against her Mom. She would try to walk it back at the trial (after some extensive coaching from her Mother), but the damage was done. This testimony she gave the police turned out to be the key testimony in the trial. On the witness stand, Suzanne came across as a sassy, smartass 15-year-old girl. She carried herself as though she was smarter than District Attorney Dennis Moore and she figured she could beat him at his own game and on his own turf. Big mistake. Moore made mincemeat out of her on the witness stand. Some years later, Suzanne admitted that her Mom was guilty. In September 1982, after the trial was over, Ed Hobson sexually assaulted Suzanne. Her Mom took Ed’s side in this dispute and Suzanne decided that she had enough of her Mom. It also led to a series of events that landed Suzanne in a state mental hospital in Topeka. While there, a counselor befriended Suzanne, gained her trust, and Suzanne spilled everything. The lie that she had been living could be lifted and she could truly be freed of her Mom and Ed Hobson.

One character in this whole story that should have garnered a world of sympathy was Ed Hobson. He had experienced immense tragedy before Chris’s death. Chris’s murder was another in a string of tragic deaths in his life. Yet, I find it hard to feel sympathy towards him. Ed initially divorced Mrs. Hobson right after her arrest. But, by December 1980, he had remarried her! He was convinced of her innocence. He comes across to me as a weak, pathetic, and gullible idiot. He was blinded by his lust for his wife, and completely duped by her story. After an unsuccessful attempt to have his wife paroled in the 1990’s, then Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison observed that Ed was “a sap of galactic proportions.” I completely agree with Mr. Morrison’s assessment. Sad thing is that he came across as someone who did not even care that his only biological child was murdered and all the evidence pointed to his wife. He would get his wife back at all costs, and that is all that mattered to him.

Strangely, a character here who comes off sympathetically is Jimmy Crumm. Jimmy had two conflicting feelings towards his Mother: 1) He wanted to please her; 2) He wanted her out of his life. He convinced himself that killing Chris would ultimately do both. He really did not want to do this. He never really thought he would. By February 1980, Mrs. Hobson got it into her head that she wanted Chris dead, and that Jimmy could do it for her. She relentlessly hounded him. Jimmy tried to put his Mom off as much as she could. Jimmy could not win. Jimmy had even taken Chris to the woods to go hunting at his Mom’s insistence. He was to shoot Chris then. Nobody was more disappointed than Mrs. Hobson when Chris came back home from that outing. The relentless hounding soon became a daily thing. It was Mrs. Hobson’s idea to bring in another person who could get it done.

The other person brought into this was Paul Sorrentino, a friend of Jimmy’s from Shawnee Mission South. Paul was described as a very likable kid, but also one who had frequent run-ins with the law. He came from a troubled home. For some reason, he had harbored a fantasy of being a mafia hit man, so when Jimmy approached him with the idea of killing Chris, Paul was all in. Paul does not come across sympathetically to me at all. He is described as very likable by all who knew him. He was a hired hand who murdered with way too much enthusiasm. Paul returned to South the next day after murdering Chris, and he could not wait to tell his friends at South what he had done. He bragged for the better part of two weeks what he had done, feeling himself rather invincible. He was convinced no one would ever find the body. He came oh so close to being right.

Paul Sorrentino bragged a little too much, and to the wrong person, about his deed. On May 1, 1980, Leila Anderson went to the Overland Park Police and told them what she had heard from Paul. This changed the entire scope of the investigation from a runaway situation to a murder case. With this new information, there was a much greater sense of urgency to find Chris. The police needed a body and needed it quick. Leila promised the police she would come back the next day with more information. She came back but did not have any more information. Detective Douglass asked her to do something very risky, and call Paul. She agreed. The Police taped the conversation. The phone call yielded a goldmine as the police now knew who all was involved. Based on what Anderson was able to get out of Sorrentino, the Overland Park police searched the area around 151^st & Antioch. Today that area is well developed, but in 1980 it was still gravel roads and countryside. The police were unsuccessful in their search of the area on May 2. Anderson is the real hero in this story. Without her courage to step forward, Mrs. Hobson, Jimmy and Paul would have got away with murder.

Detective Stephen Moore of the OP Police comes off as a bumbling idiot. He was responsible for this case after Ed Hobson had called in to report his son missing. It was treated as a runaway case. Ed would call Detective Moore 2 or 3 times a day asking for any updates. Truth is, Detective Moore did not lift a finger to find Chris for nearly a week. When Chris never showed up, Moore ordered an all-out search on April 24, which included a police helicopter. The police searched all along Indian Creek from about Lamar, as it ran behind Shawnee Mission South over past Roe, as it ran behind Indian Creek Junior High. There was no body to be found. Detective Moore put this to the backburner again. Chris’s wallet was found at Metcalf South. This did raise suspicions at the police department that foul play was involved. But not enough to convince Moore that this was a murder. Once Leila Anderson came forward, this case became a murder investigation and was handled with much greater urgency. Detective John Douglass took over. He was much tougher and more professional than Moore, which would come in handy as he interrogated everyone. Douglass handled this case like a pro from the moment he became involved.

District Attorney Dennis Moore deserves credit for getting the conviction. He never could get Mrs. Hobson to admit to any crime on the witness stand. In his cross examination of Mrs. Hobson, he got her to admit that she lied about several points in her story and he did get her to admit to three or four different versions of how the wallet ended up at Metcalf South. He also got Ernestine Bean, a friend of Mrs. Hobson’s who testified for the defense, to contradict several substantial points in Mrs. Hobson’s story. Moore himself worried about the strength of his case. He caught a big break when Jimmy Crumm decided to testify for the prosecution. There was a lot of apprehension before the trial that Moore was more of an administrator than a trial lawyer. But, with a high-profile case, he would try it himself. Everyone knew he had aspirations to be the Attorney General of Kansas. He would eventually be defeated in his attempt to become Attorney General of Kansas, but he would go on to serve as the Kansas 3^rd District Congressmen from 1999-2011.