Woman Held in Slayings of Her Three Children : Crime: Suspect had tried to blame killings on estranged husband, but San Jacinto officials say he was in Los Angeles.

A 34-year-old woman who led police to the bodies of two of her slain children Thursday was arrested Friday on suspicion of killing them and her third child. Police Chief Nat Holmes said Dora Buenrostro appeared grim and was still trying to pin the murders on her estranged husband when she was arrested at 2 a.m.

Holmes said Buenrostro, referring to her husband, asked incredulously, “Well, aren’t you going to check things out?”

“We said, ‘We did. We’ve been to L.A.,’ ” Holmes said. Investigators had already substantiated that Alejandro Buenrostro, who lives and works in Los Angeles, was leaving home for his job when his children were slain.

“She got quiet,” Holmes said. “She looked grim.”

Buenrostro, 34, was booked on three counts of murder in Riverside County Jail. She was held without bail on suspicion of using a sharp cutting instrument to kill Susana, 9, and Vicente, 8--whose bodies were found in her living room--and Deidra, 4, whose body was found Thursday night. Youngsters discovered the younger girl’s body strapped in a child’s car seat in an abandoned building about 10 miles away.

Buenrostro may be arraigned as early as Monday, when the Riverside County coroner’s office will conduct an autopsy on the three bodies. Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Bentley said it is too soon to decide whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty, allowable in multiple-murder cases.

Holmes said the two older victims appeared to have been killed shortly before the woman showed up at the small San Jacinto police station Thursday morning. She said that her husband was in her apartment and that she feared for her children’s safety. When police returned to her two-bedroom garden apartment about half a mile away, they found the bodies.

Investigators were less certain about the time of Deidra’s death, he said. “She may have been killed many hours earlier, maybe 24 hours earlier,” Holmes said.

Police Sgt. Barry Backlund said the motive for the killings is unknown, but that a possible murder weapon was found. He would not elaborate.

Backlund said the mother was arrested after making inconsistent statements to investigators. At first she said her husband showed up with a knife early Thursday at her apartment, but later said she never mentioned a knife, Backlund said.

The woman “showed a minimum amount of emotion during the day,” Backlund said.

Bentley said the woman was “evasive and non-responsive,” especially when asked to help locate the youngest child after she led police to the first two bodies.

“She didn’t respond to that line of questioning. And if you can put two and two together, you know what we were thinking--that she already knew the baby was dead,” Bentley said.