Mother Had Long Talked of Suicide : Tragedy: Reseda woman who killed her three children and herself had cloaked her remarks in religious references. Apparently no one took her seriously.

Roxanne Jones, the Reseda woman who shot her three children to death as they slept and then turned the gun on herself, talked of killing herself and taking her children with her for as long as two months before carrying out the threat, police and acquaintances said Thursday.

None of those who heard her discuss suicide took her seriously enough to contact authorities or to steer her toward counseling. Some hints that she was suicidal went unrecognized, apparently misinterpreted as part of her fervent new religious beliefs.

Two weeks before the murder-suicide, Jones’ 7-year-old son Jeremiah told his first-grade teacher that his mother was taking him to “a good place, where God is, and there are no worries.” But the teacher took that to mean a religious retreat.

The bodies of Jones, 32, daughters Brandy Fernandez, 15, and Leticia Fernandez, 13, and Jeremiah were found Wednesday afternoon in the family’s small house on Tampa Avenue in Reseda. Los Angeles police said Jones had shot the children while they slept Tuesday morning, then turned the .22-caliber rifle on herself. The family dog was shot to death in the house as well.

Jones, who separated four months ago from her husband, Jeff Jones, 31, left behind a five-page suicide note in which she asked for God’s forgiveness and outlined the family and financial problems that burdened her, police said. They said that Jones had previously told several friends and relatives that she was contemplating suicide.

“She would mention possibly killing herself and she said if she ever did she would take the children with her,” Detective Rick Swanston said. “It wasn’t taken seriously.”

Jeff Jones said in an interview Thursday that he had not picked up any hint from his wife that she was suicidal, nor did he ever hear his son talk obliquely or directly about it. “If he would have, I would have known right away,” Jones said. “I cannot explain this at all.”

He said his wife was consumed by a desire to be “someplace better” and turned to religion for solace and guidance. “She was into nature and wanted to go to God, where the trees and grass were nice,” Jones said. “I hope she’s there.”

Jones said he and his wife of nine years

met in the San Fernando Valley. “(She) had proposed to me and I accepted because I loved her.”

Though separated, Jones visited the family often. He said their problems were “nothing major” and that the couple had attempted to reconcile. He last saw Roxanne on Monday morning.

“She seemed OK,” he said. She told him she was leaving the state for “a couple months” and wanted Jones to “hug her and hold her. She said goodby and that was the last I saw her.”

Jones said his wife was religious but “didn’t quite interpret the Bible the way it should have been. She comprehends things her way and no way else. Whatever she thinks is right is right.”

Last week Roxanne Jones went to the Convenant Faith Center in Northridge, a church that practices faith-healing and which she had attended a decade earlier, before her marriage. She sought counseling from the pastor, but he was not unduly alarmed at her situation, according to a church secretary who asked to remain anonymous.

Two weeks before the deaths, Jones apparently told her son that the family would soon be going to the “House of David,” which Jeremiah then described to his first-grade teacher, Madeleine Bellomo, at Blythe Street Elementary School. He said it was a “peaceful place,” and suggested that “maybe you should go there, too,” Bellomo recalled.

Bellomo said she interpreted his comments as meaning the family was going to “physically leave the scene” and move somewhere else. The child, who was often late to school and rarely completed his homework, did not seem concerned or troubled about the impending move, so she did not feel the need to report his comments to authorities.

Last week, the boy mentioned that he had started attending church and Bible study sessions.

Jeremiah’s last day of school was Monday. He was late, and Jones had given him a note that “was rambling and reflected a sense of struggling and turmoil,” Bellomo said.

School officials said they were aware of Jones’ struggle to provide financially for her children.

“She was quite open” about her money troubles, Principal Maureen Banks said. “She was having problems making ends meet.”

When Bellomo spoke recently with her, Jones said she was trying to “keep them from losing the house, and to keep the children off the street.” Banks said that two weeks ago the mother asked for a job as a playground supervisor, but the position had already been filled.

Jeff Jones, a house painter, said he gave money to his family as often as he could. And the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said that her first husband, Joaquin Fernandez of San Fernando, had made child-support payments totaling $600 already this year--more than called for under their 1979 divorce agreement.

As an unemployed single mother, Jones received welfare payments from the county, but those records are confidential, a spokeswoman said.

Several friends and neighbors said Jones had turned increasingly to religion since her separation and the onset of financial problems. Though police said she spoke specifically about suicide to some acquaintances, other friends only now recognize the hints of desperation in her religious expressions.

“She got pretty heavy into God,” said Crystal Erickson, a 15-year-old friend of the family who found the bodies. “She would start reading Scripture to everyone when we were . . . around.”

Doreena Pacheco, another family friend, said Jones often said that if “she died and went to heaven, she would take the children with her. . . . She wanted to go to heaven so bad, and she wanted the kids to be with her.”

Jones often talked of going to a “better place,” friends said.

“I didn’t think she meant this,” said Pacheco. “I thought she was moving.”

Unfortunately, police said, it is not unusual for suicidal hints to go unrecognized or outright threats not be taken seriously.

“Among the lay public a threat of suicide is not often taken seriously because they don’t want to believe it,” said Martin Reiser, chief psychologist for the Los Angeles Police Department. “They want to believe it is just a feeling of the moment, something that will pass with time.”

But one friend told detectives she had severed ties with Jones because she felt Jones might harm someone.

Times staff writers Amy Louise Kazmin, Steve Padilla, Patricia Klein Lerner, Gabe Fuentes and Robyn Loewenthal contributed to this story.