Suspicions of poisoning, the tainting of food and water, the finding of a victim’s burned body in Fresno County, lurid facts of an autopsy, and a murder suspect’s arrest.
Those details in first of a two-day preliminary hearing for a 62-year-old Fairfield man, Gregory Grant Hobson, accused of killing his wife in February, emerged Wednesday in Department 23 of Solano County Superior Court.
Judge Barbara A. Zuniga presided over the morning proceeding against Hobson, who has pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder of Anu Anand Hobson, 53, of Fairfield, on or about Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14.
Shortly after 10 a.m., Chief Deputy District Attorney Bruce Flynn called to the stand his first witness, Fairfield Police Office Keli Callison, who testified that, on Feb. 16, after being alerted through a license plate reader dispatch, stopped Hobson in his pickup truck at about 4 p.m. near the intersection of Highway 12 and Walters Road.
Callison said reports possibly linking Hobson to a missing person’s case was the reason for the traffic stop. He then called Detective Dennis Chapman to the scene while Hobson remained in his Toyota Tacoma truck and, Callison said, did not ask why he was stopped.
As the police officer spoke, Hobson, shackled and dressed in a gray-and-black-striped jail jumpsuit, with his right hand free, appeared to write notes while seated next to his defense attorney, Chief Deputy Public Defender Oscar J. Bobrow.
Flynn, who filed the criminal complaint Feb. 21, then called Chapman to the traffic stop scene, a shopping center parking lot, at East Tabor Avenue and Walters Road, where Hobson was later taken into custody shortly after 5 p.m.
Chapman testified that two Hobson children, Sara and Sean, said their mother believed she was being poisoned by her husband, who, in turn, suspected she was placing eye drops in his water, creating “a heart condition.”
Before Hobson was arrested, Chapman arrived at the family home, in the 400 block of Americana Way, where he found Anu Hobson’s driver’s license in a vehicle.
Citing another police officer’s report, Chapman said Sean and his father went to Pena Adobe Park in Vacaville for a “heart-to-heart” talk, where the elder Hobson revealed his suspicions about his food and water being tainted. In a later interview, Sean Hobson said his father believed his wife was also being unfaithful.
Home surveillance video, Chapman testified, showed Anu Hobson arriving at the family home on Feb. 13, and, at 1 p.m. Feb. 14, video showed Gregory Hobson leaving the house in his truck. However, Sean Hobson told Chapman that he saw his father’s hand move the camera at or before 4 p.m., so activity in the driveway could not be observed. Sean Hobson last saw his father on Feb. 14 at 4:42 p.m. He told Chapman that his father was carrying “a cardboard box to the passenger side of the pickup truck.”
In late February, Chapman received a call from Fresno County law enforcement officers, suggesting Fairfield investigators come to the area near the West Kamm Avenue exit off Interstate 5, where the Fresno officers “located an item that may or may not” be relevant to the disappearance of Anu Hobson, describing it as a “plastic tote container.” DNA analysis revealed the tote contained evidence that it had belonged to Anu Hobson.
On March 3, Fairfield investigators, including search and canine teams, returned to the Kamm Avenue area to conduct “a grid search.” They found Anu Hobson’s badly burned body that day.
Chapman said Dr. Arnold Josselson, a forensic pathologist in Fairfield, performed an autopsy on Hobson’s remains on March 13. An external exam did not yield the cause of Hobson’s death. However, Josselson told Chapman that his “internal examination” showed “two specific injuries,” including “hemorrhage to the front of the scalp” and damage to part of the right jaw.
The injuries had to occur at or prior to the time of death, Josselson told Chapman, who testified that the doctor was unable to determine the cause of Anu Hobson’s death but called it “homicide by unspecified means” and that the body was burned after she died.
During the afternoon session, Chapman revealed he recorded interviews with the Hobson children on March 3, asking them if there was a history of violence between their parents. They said they had no recollection of violence between their mother and father. However, Sara Hobson told Chapman that he “was always irritable and punching walls.”
Upon on cross-examination, Bobrow got Chapman to reveal that Sara told the detective that she never saw her father be violent toward anyone in the home.
Court records show the Hobsons were last seen Feb. 13 in their silver-colored 2021 Toyota Tacoma spotted on roadway surveillance cameras a day later near Elk Grove Boulevard in Sacramento. The couple was reported missing on Feb. 15.
Though Anu was not found at the time, Fairfield investigators reported that “based on evidence collected thus far, police believe she has been killed.”
After his arrest, Hobson was booked into Solano County Jail, and he is being held without bail in the Stanton Correctional Facility.
The second day of Hobson’s preliminary hearing begins at 9:30 a.m. Thursday in Department 23 in the Justice Center in Fairfield. Online court records show that Judge John B. Ellis will preside at that time.
Source: www.mercurynews.com