Steven Alexander Hobbs born February 23, is an American murderer, rapist and suspected serial killer who is known to have sexually assaulted multiple prostitutes around Harris County, Texas from to , at least two of which were murdered. After a decade-long delay in his trial, he pleaded guilty to his confirmed crimes and was sentenced to life imprisonment , but remains the prime suspect in at least one additional murder.
Little is known about Hobbs' past. Born in in Crosby, Texas , he is said to have come from a reputable family, but was considered a loner who mostly kept to himself. After graduating from college, he married, had two children and held a job as a security guard for a firm in Houston , where he still worked at the time of his arrest. He had no criminal record, but in , he had been detained in the county jail for a couple of hours for a traffic violation. Although investigators suspect Hobbs of crimes dating back to , the first case he has definitively been linked occurred in August At that time, he picked up a prostitute in Houston and paid her to perform oral sex , but instead proceeded to rape, beat and violently choke her.
A couple of months later, he abducted year-old prostitute Patricia Ann Pyatt from her home in Crosby, drove to an isolated area, then raped and strangled her to death. Her remains were found on November 19, beneath the Beaumont Highway bridge. A lull in known attacks then occurred from the rest of until , when Hobbs is known to have assaulted a prostitute named Sandra Gunter near Houston.
In October of that year, the nude body of year-old Sarah Annette Sanford was found in a wooded area near his home. She had been handcuffed, sexually assaulted and shot in the head. Between June and July , Hobbs is known to have attacked and sexually assaulted at least three prostitutes at gunpoint in and around Houston. On September 22, an officer from Pasadena who stopped by a brushy road to clock the speed of passing cars accidentally found the decomposing remains of year-old prostitute Wanda Trombley, who had been reported missing in July.
The discovery of Trombley's body led local authorities to start questioning prostitutes, some of whom alleged that they had been assaulted by a large, red-headed white male wearing thick eyeglasses and a security guard uniform. Using this information, officers ordered all men who worked as security guards in the county to submit DNA samples, including Hobbs. This eventually linked him to the sexual assaults and then the murders of Pyatt and Sanford. The gap between the crimes led investigators to re-investigate the murders of at least 15 prostitutes around Harris County and the surrounding areas, as they believed that Hobbs was responsible for more crimes than what he had been linked to.
