Parents of Six Children Found Dead : Police Believe Estranged Husband Killed Wife, Then Himself

A man apparently shot his wife to death and then killed himself Thursday in her Anaheim apartment, where the oldest of their six young children discovered the bodies in a closet, police said.

The dead parents were not immediately identified pending notification of relatives. Anaheim police said the woman was 30 to 35 years old and her husband 45 to 50. Their apartment manager said they were originally from Mexico and were separated.

Police said both appeared to have died of gunshot wounds. A handgun was found near the bodies. It was not clear how many times each had been shot or what kind of gun was used, police said.

“There wasn’t anybody there when they did it,” said Lt. Marc Hedgpeth.

The couple’s 13-year-old son apparently had just arrived home from school Thursday afternoon when he found his parents, Hedgpeth said.

The boy and his five brothers and sisters were being held in protective custody late Thursday at the city police station as detectives tried to locate their nearest relatives in order to avoid sending them to a county shelter for the night.

Police said that they did not know of a motive but that the couple had been having marital problems.

Autopsies to determine the exact cause and time of death are set for today Residents of the apartment complex just west of Disneyland said the husband, who was unemployed and suffered from a back injury, had moved out of the family’s one-bedroom apartment several months ago. Working both a day job and a night job, they said, the mother had been supporting her six children: three boys and three girls. The youngest are 5-year-old twin girls.

Apartment manager Angelina Avila said Thursday that the mother had told her that her estranged husband had threatened to kill her.

Investigators said they could not comment on the alleged threat because they had not yet interviewed Avila.

Hedgpeth said the couple’s eldest son called police to the apartment, in the 1500 block of South Michelle Drive, at 3:13 p.m. He reported that his parents were “injured.”

Officers and Anaheim Fire Department paramedics arrived at the apartment and found the “suspect lying on top of the victim in the bedroom closet,” Hedgpeth said. Paramedics pronounced the man and woman dead at the scene.

The six children were to be interviewed by juvenile detectives at the police station.

Police said that if no relative could be found to take custody, the children would be taken to Orangewood, the county’s shelter for abused, abandoned and dependent children.

“We’d prefer to have them picked up here by the next of kin so they don’t have to go through the system,” Hedgpeth said. “We want to provide as little trauma as possible for them. I think they’ve been through enough already.”

The children learned of the deaths as they arrived from school at their upstairs apartment, neighbors said.

“All of them were crying and crying,” said Teresa Mejia, 28, the family’s next-door neighbor. “It was very tragic.”

Mejia said she was home all day Thursday, and “I didn’t hear anything. No screams, nothing.”

Describing the family as “very reserved,” Mejia said, “they hardly ever talked to anyone who lived in this apartment complex, but their kids often played with my kids.”

Long after nightfall, as members of the Orange County coroner’s office prepared to remove the bodies, residents of nearby apartments shared what they knew of the dead man and woman.

Avila said the family already was living at the complex when she moved in one year ago. Their rent, she said, was $435 a month.

Several months ago, however, the couple separated and the husband moved out, though he came back periodically to visit, the neighbors said.

The man, they said, had suffered an on-the-job back injury some time ago and had been “in and out of work” ever since, and that the woman had worked nights at a hospital and held a day job.

“She had asked us (neighbors) to please watch out for her children at night when she went to work just in case he showed up,” Avila recalled. “She told me she was afraid because he had told her he was going to kill her.”

The residents said they wanted nothing to do with the man because, as one put it, he was “bad, especially after the separation.”

He was jealous, the neighbors said, although his wife was not seeing other men.

“She was a stay-at-home (type),” Avila said. “She was a hard worker. She was the one with all the responsibility. With all the children (to care for).”