Two Year Wait for Son May Be Over

by Houston (AP)

For Mrs. Dorothy Hilligiest, 51, the news that her 13-year-old son is believed to be among the victims of the Houston mass murder means long two-year wait hear is over. And Friday her thoughts turned to the mother of the 17- year-old youth who may be implicated in the death of her son. “She has a greater burden than I do,” Mrs. Hilligiest said of Mrs. Mary Henley, whose son, Elmer Wayne Henley, has made a statement admitting he took part in the homosexual slayings, which now total at least 21, with more bodies expected to be found.

Mrs. Hilligiest’s son, David, disappeared over two years ago. He, like many of the other suspected victims in the mass slaying, lived in the same neighborhood with her son frequently played with Henley’s younger brothers, at the family home just a block down the street. “There wasn’t a week that I didn’t meet him (Henley), and he was always polite,’ Mrs. Hilligiest said. “He asked me if there had been anything about my son. And I’d ask if he had heard anything and he’d always answer ‘no’, but always said if there was anything he could do to just let him know.”

For Verne Cobble, 45, who lived two blocks from the Hilligiest’s and whose son is one of the confirmed dead, the fact that SO many missing boys came from the same neighborhood should have alerted police. We spent several hundred dollars for private investigators and the police wouldn’t get into it until it got SO bad.” said Cobble, a supervisor in the post office here. Cobble’s son, Charles C. Cobble, 17, and Marty Jones, 17, who had lived with the Cobbles for almost two years, disappeared at the same time July 25 of this year.

The day after the night he left he called me and said he was in severe trouble and had to have $1,000,” Cobble said. “I told him I didn’t have it, then tried to question him about it. He said he would give me a call later and that was the last I heard of him.’ Cobble said his son was a totally dependable boy, and that he knew something was wrong. “The only thing we are thankful is that we found him right away and we didn’t have to wait two years like the Hilligiests down the street,” he said. “He was a timid type of child,” Mrs. Hilligiest said of her son who disappeared after setting out to go swimming. “He was a very compassionate boy and could see wrong in no one. He was too trusting.”

Mrs. Hilligiest and Cobble said they had prepared themselves for the deaths of their sons. “We’ve more or less built ourselves up to it. We expected it three days after his disappearance,” said Cobble, who has four other children. Mrs. Hilligiest, who has five other children, said she also was sure her son was dead. “I think this was my mother instinct in me,” she said. I feared from the very first that something had happened. But our sorrow is over. We know now,” she said. “There’s just no way you can know how we feel,” Cobble said. We are having my son’s remains cremated this afternoon.”