Mother, three children found dead in closet
The discovery of the bodies in a run-down shack appalled
neighbours accustomed to seeing the children playing happily
outside.
Photos: AP/Reuters
The discovery of the bodies in a run-down shack appalled
neighbours accustomed to seeing the children playing happily
outside.
Photos: AP/Reuters
May 30, 2007 - 8:54AM
Authorities did not immediately identify the victims in the Oak Hills mobile home park, about 40 kilometres west of Fort Worth, Texas, in this rural community of 1600 people.
The woman's sister, who lived nearby, forced her way into the locked home after the woman failed to show up for work.
Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said the sister rescued the infant when she realised the baby girl was still alive.
The other children, ages 5, 3 and 2, had all had been hanged with strips of clothing and sashes, Fowler said.
"It's horrendous. That's all I can say," he said. "It's just something you don't want to see."
The infant was listed in good condition at a Fort Worth hospital, Fowler said.
The sheriff said the hangings appeared to be murder-suicide because the trailer's doors were locked from the inside and a relative said the woman had been depressed.
The young mother and her girls were last seen alive Monday evening, he said. She was believed to be separated from her husband.
"I just got a big kick out of watching the kids play over there on her porch, and today it's sad, very sad," said neighbour Joyce Harris.
Texas has seen a number of child killings by mothers in recent years.
Less than five years earlier, another Hudson Oaks family was torn apart when Dee Etta Perez, 39, shot her three children, ages 4, 9 and 10, before killing herself.
Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001. In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub. Dena Schlosser fatally severed her 10-month-old daughter's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004.
All four of those women were found innocent by reason of insanity. Yates initially was convicted of capital murder, but that verdict was overturned on appeal.
AP