Girl’s Screams for Help Cut Off; Police Find 4 Bodies

A screaming girl called police early today to say she was being attacked but the girl, her two teen-age sisters and their brother were beaten and stabbed to death before police could reach their home.

Police Sgt. George Wilson said the telephone caller identified the assailant as the boyfriend of one of the girls, but police did not know which one. He said police arrived at the trailer house at 4 a.m. and found the bodies, dressed in nightclothes and stabbed violently and repeatedly.

Police found several kitchen knives inside and outside the bloody trailer and the attacks were so violent that broken blades were still in some of the bodies, Wilson said.

Tate Murder Recalled

“This to me is a picture of what I recall of the Sharon Tate-Charles Manson murders,” he said, recalling the chilling 1969 California killings. “The brutality of the whole thing is what makes me refer to the Sharon Tate murder.

“It was sickening. It was a blood bath. There was blood all over the trailer. An animal did this. The only difference here is there wasn’t any writing on the wall.”

The killings occurred at the 470-lot Villa Grande Mobile Home Park about five miles southwest of downtown San Antonio.

The victims were identified by police as Jennifer Mann, 19, sisters Shannon, 17, and Martha, 14, and brother Ernest, 13. Homicide Lt. Albert Ortiz said that the parents were divorced and that the father lived at a different address. The mother was not at home during the attack.

“We have received several substantial leads,” Ortiz said at a news conference. “We’re at this time trying to determine if more than one actor was involved.”

Ortiz said that police had received a complaint in March of terroristic threats involving the former boyfriend of one of the sisters, and that police were searching for him. Ortiz did not identify either the former boyfriend or the girl.

No One Escaped

“It’s kind of strange,” he said of the crime. “You have four teen-agers and none of them could overcome him and escape. You don’t know if he surprised them when they were asleep or what. There were some signs of forced entry.”

Wilson said police were called to the scene by a hysterical caller to the dispatch unit.

“A female voice called and told the dispatcher that her sister’s boyfriend was beating them up and one of her sisters was dead,” Wilson said. “At this point she screamed. The phone went dead. The dispatcher was able to get the address before the phone went dead.”

The parents arrived a short time after police did, and screamed hysterically in the parking area outside the home. The mother fell to the ground several times weeping. The father had to be restrained twice by police from entering the house and he screamed out as ambulances drove away from the mobile home park.