Girls' Bike Ride Ends In Tragedy

Stabbed Bodies Of Two Second Graders Found In Rural Illinois Park

(CBS/AP)  A pair of second-graders rode their bikes all day, stopping to draw in chalk on a neighbor's garage and riding into a typically safe park, people in the small, northern Illinois town of Zion say.

But when neither 8-year-old Laura Hobbs nor her friend Krystal Tobias, 9, returned home at dusk, their parents alerted the Zion Police Department and set off a massive search.

Their bodies were found shortly after 6 a.m. lying side by side, both stabbed multiple times and left to die off a bicycle path in a park, Lake County Coroner Richard Keller said. There is no evidence of sexual assault on either victim, Keller said.

The parents of one of the girls had reported her missing about 8:50 p.m. Sunday, about two hours after she was expected home, Deputy Police Chief Clyde Watkins said. The parents of the other girl called shortly afterward, and authorities with rescue dogs began searching.

A resident walking through a wooded nature area in Beulah Park discovered the bodies, Watkins said. A bike path and a ravine run through the area, which police cordoned off Monday.

Zion police chief Doug Malcolm calls it a "heinous crime" and says "no stone will be left unturned" as they try to find the person or persons responsible.

The Zion Police Department has no suspects, and when asked at a press conference if a murderer was on the loose, replied: "Well, we have two murdered children and no arrest."

Keller said, upon preliminary examination, the deaths appear to have occurred in the early morning hours of Monday — perhaps at 1 or 2 a.m., opening up the possibility that the girls were detained for the evening before being stabbed to death. A bicycle was found nearby, but officials are not certain if it belonged to one of the girls.

Due to the unseasonably cold weather, establishing the precise time of death may be tough, reports CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers. Police are thus back-tracking over the girls' final day, which Hobbs's grandmother said included kite-flying with her family.

Jim Goetz, who lives across the street from Beulah Park, told the Chicago Tribune he last saw the two missing girls about 9 a.m. Sunday. They rode their bicycles to his house to play with his 7-year-old daughter.

At one point, Goetz told the Tribune, he scolded the children for drawing in chalk on his garage and made them clean it off. An hour later, the two visiting girls rode away on their bikes, saying they were going to ride by the ravine in Beulah Park.

Constance Collins, superintendent of the Zion Elementary School District 6, said the girls were in the same second-grade class at Beulah Park Elementary School.

"It's been shocking for all of us," Collins said on CBS News' The Early Show. "Their loss is felt by everyone here in the community."

Collins told Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm that Hobbs was very artsy and also enjoyed reading and taking the puppets in the classroom and pretending that she was acting. She said Tobias also had a sense of humor and was very witty.

"The children enjoyed reading, and they enjoyed volunteering, doing things for the teacher, and spending time with their classmates," she added.