Texas mother hangs herself, 3 children
By ANGELA K. BROWN Associated Press Writer
News Fuze
Article Launched:05/29/2007 07:58:19 AM PDT
HUDSON OAKS, Texas- A young mother who may have been depressed
apparently hanged three of her small daughters and herself in a closet using
pieces of clothing and sashes, authorities said Tuesday. A fourth child, an
8-month-old daughter, was also found dangling in the closet but was rescued
from the family's mobile home.
"It's horrendous. That's all I can say," Parker County Sheriff Larry
Fowler said.
The woman was identified as Gilberta Estrada, 25. The infant, Evelyn
Frayre, was in good condition at a hospital, Fowler said. Authorities did
not immediately identify the other children, ages 5, 3 and 2.
After Estrada failed to show up for work, her sister, who lived
nearby, forced her way into the locked residence in the Oak Hills mobile
home park, about 25 miles west of Fort Worth in this rural community of
1,600 people.
The sheriff said the sister rescued the infant when she realized the
baby girl was still alive.
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.
The sheriff said Estrada had won a temporary restraining order in
August against Gregorio Frayre Rodriguez, who was believed to be the father
of the infant and some of the other children, after an attack on Estrada.
The sheriff said Estrada and Rodriguez had stopped living together in
February. Tuesday was the first emergency police call to Estrada's trailer,
and authorities said there was no evidence that Rodriguez abused the girls.
A telephone listing for Rodriguez could not immediately be located.
"I just got a big kick out of watching the kids play over there on her
porch, and today it's sad, very sad," neighbor Joyce Harris said as other
trailer park residents milled about on their porches, some crying and
talking softly about the deaths.
Estrada's trailer was dilapidated, with paint peeling off the brown
and white mobile home. Cactus plants and a rose bush decorated the front.
Toys and a bicycle littered the back yard.
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.
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