By Jackie Valley
• First of a two-part series
It wasn’t a phone call she wanted, nor ever anticipated, but when Andrea Swanson realized she had not received a call for help, she broke down in tears.
It was June 2010, and Swanson’s youngest daughter, Mary, then 18 years old, sat in the Clark County Detention Center after being arrested for soliciting a police officer. Mary never called her mother. Instead, Mary spent three days in the county jail.
Meanwhile, Metro Police delivered the news to a frantic Swanson. At the advice of investigators, Swanson played ignorant and continued sending her daughter text messages each morning and night, like she had been doing for months:
“I love you. Please come home.”
Home is where this story begins, where a predator named Kobe Hogue worked his way into the family and stole its youngest member, a junior at Centennial High School in fall 2008 who fell for a boy.