WildAtHeart

Texas mother hangs herself, 3 children - Yahoo! News

By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 52 minutes ago


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 by her aunt 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, but Fowler said they were apparently ages 5, 3 and 2.

Filly Echeverria, who said she was the children's godmother, identified the dead as Maria Teresa Estrada, Janet Frayre and Magaly Frayre.

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.

Alejandra Estrada discovered the baby was still alive when she made a noise, authorities said. She called 911 and said through sobs that the infant was dying. She and her daughter called back two more times to ask the ambulance to hurry, according to a tape of the calls.

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 the couple 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 Frayre abused the girls.

A telephone listing for Frayre, 38, 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.

Myrissa

I don't even know what to say about this.

Lieutenant H. Steel

so wrong.

elisheva

That's so sad and terrible.

Indian Summer

"Who may have been depressed?" What other possibilities are there? Even if she had another mental condition- eg. schizophrenia- it most likely would've been accompanied by depression, especially given we're talking about murder/suicide. Odd.

I'll never understand what goes through a woman's mind- no matter how diseased it is- as she watches a child she gave life to die.

lytab5

OMG. How sad!

I understand what you're saying, Summer. If you think about how she must have hung 4 little children. I cannot even grasp what that means...

Indian Summer

I think the thing that disturbs me so much about cases like this and the Yates one is that killing multiple children is so... systematic. Like, killing one child is obviously horrendous enough, but even for a diseased mind... how do you hang one child and watch the life be snuffed out of them, and then turn around and do the same thing to the next child, and the next, and then another?

sunnykerr

That is so tragic.

I think it's completely unexplainable and incomprehensible, but I do believe depression must play some part in it. I mean, it's one thing to thing there is no hope of ever finding happiness, health, joy or whatever else for one's self. It's another to think there's no hope of ever finding any of that for one's children either. How desperate an act is that?

Of course, post-partum psychosis remains woefully misunderstood. I'm not saying it's an excuse, but if it were better recognized, better treated and better accepted as one of the many possibilities of what happens to a woman who gives birth, then maybe (and obviously I don't know this for sure) many of these children could have been saved.

JohannafromIHJ

One of the most common reasons for a parent to kill their child is actually because the parent him/herself is depressed and wants to die, but doesn't want to leave the child alone/behind. When you reach a point where you want to kill yourself, there's very little logic left in you - the person you were is gone. It's very difficult to explain, because it's impossible to really understand how there's even room in the human mind for that kind of despair, but it happens, and too often.

fetch

I agree. As someone who's been depressed, I know what it's like to not being able to think straight.

Of course, I think there's a difference when you have kids to look after.

abw92

I don't understand how somebody could do this to their children. It is so sad. If somebody wants to kill themself then that is their choice, but she didn't have to take the life of her kids too. They were all so young.

It makes me sick, especially when people like this get off on a charge of insanity. They deserve to go to jail.

JohannafromIHJ

What would you call a person who kills herself and her children if not insane? Call me naive, but I don't think killing one's children is a natural part of parenthood, or even humanity. The mind has to go pretty twisted before you go to such lengths - and suicide, that's the bottom, the suffering up to that point is acute, indescribable.

We're not doing anyone any favours by dismissing people who commit such deeds as "evil" or whatever. This is not about people being evil, it's about people who are sick. There needs to be a safety net in place, especially for single, poor mums, to prevent this sort of thing from happening, to catch the depression before things turn for the worst.

migamoo

They would still get sent to a psych facility though. It's not like they are being let back out to the public.

sunnykerr

And I certainly don't want to excuse their actions, but these women were let down at some point or other by the medical community. No way can a person who's going through that level of despair go on without medical attention.

And notice how we're talking about women who have newborns, too. I get that women "often" (whatever that means) experience some level of the "baby blues" after delivering. It makes sense; their hormonal levels must be entirely out of whack. Which is why their physician should always, always, always do a proper follow up. I don't care if nine times out of ten the woman is just fine.

That's why we do physicals and gynecological exams yearly, even when the odds of something being funky are extremely low. You don't wait for a crisis to rear its head. Every time a woman gives birth, there should be a proper follow up. Not just for the woman, but for her child also. And not just when we're talking potential postpartum psychosis, but also with all the other things that new mothers (even if it isn't their first child) should be made aware of.

jalapeno_wildchild

how couls a person kill their children? parents are supposed to protect their children,not kill them. how terribly sad.