Husband, Wife Found Dead in Apartment

An estranged husband stabbed his wife to death, then killed himself Saturday afternoon while her two children and neighborhood kids played in an adjoining bedroom, authorities and neighbors said.

Orange County sheriff’s deputies broke down the door of Lisa Ellsworth’s bedroom after her 7-year-old son Tristan called police saying his mother wouldn’t answer and he had “seen a bloody foot” when he looked under her door, Lt. Jay Mendez said.

Deputies found the bodies of Ellsworth, 32, and her 34-year-old husband, Mark Sliger. A knife lay by the bodies in her upstairs bedroom, Mendez said.

“We believe this is a murder-suicide,” he said.

Neighbors in the Wood Canyon Villa Apartments said Ellsworth, a legal secretary, and Sliger had moved into the sand-colored stucco complex about two months ago and had fought constantly. Deputies had come to the apartment at about 3 a.m. Saturday and took Sliger to a local motel to cool off, authorities said.

“The police were there at 3 this morning and he still managed to get through and do this,” said Ronda Clay, 35, whose two children were in the apartment during the stabbing. “It’s so crazy to think all that could happen when all the kids were there.”

As she stood with her children, Shelly, 12, and Scottie, 7, outside the apartment Saturday night, waiting to retrieve Scottie’s sneakers from investigators, the three of them described what happened.

Scottie, a classmate of Tristan, and Shelly had gone to Ellsworth’s apartment to play at about 10 a.m. Saturday, Clay said.

Clay’s children, Tristan and Ellsworth’s daughter, Kirsten, 4, were watching Superman cartoons on television downstairs when Ellsworth came down to tell them she was going to take a shower.

About half an hour later, the children went upstairs to build a fort in Tristan’s closet. After Tristan refused to allow her to play, Kirsten knocked on her mother’s door and got a hug and kiss. Shortly afterward, Kirsten told the other children she had heard Sliger’s voice in the hallway.

The children played noisily, screaming and giggling in Tristan’s closet. They didn’t hear any noise coming from Ellsworth’s room, Shelly and Scottie said.

Sometime around noon, Tristan and the other children began knocking on Ellsworth’s bedroom door because Lucky, the family’s cocker spaniel, wouldn’t stop nipping at their legs. Each time they knocked, Shelly said, Sliger would tell them “Just a minute. Just a minute.”

“We kept knocking. We went back five or six times and he said the same thing,” Shelly said.

Finally, about 1 p.m., Tristan looked under his mother’s bedroom door and told Scottie and another boy, Lyle, who come to the apartment to play, that he saw “something bloody,” the children said.

“He said he saw a bloody lip,” Scottie said. Mendez said Tristan had described a bloody foot to authorities.

Tristan ran downstairs to call 911 about 1:20 p.m., but the phone didn’t work, so he ran next door and used a neighbor’s phone to call police.

Clay said she panicked when she arrived home from work for lunch at about 2 p.m. and saw the yellow police tape surrounding the apartment in 28500 block of Wood Canyon Drive.

“I said, ‘My kids were in that house. What’s going on?’ ”

She said an investigator told her, “He used a knife on her and you don’t want to know what else.”

Deputies told Tristan what happened in the next-door neighbor’s home, Clay said. “You could hear him crying in there,” she said. Both of the children were given teddy bears before being taken to the Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange, where they were staying until relatives could pick them up, authorities said.

Stanford Ellsworth, Lisa Ellsworth’s first husband and the father of Tristan and Kirsten, said he spoke by telephone Saturday night with Tristan.

“He’s about the bravest man I know,” said Stanford Ellsworth of his son. The father said he is making plans to travel from his home near Salt Lake City to bring his children back with him.

“As soon as I can get those children out of there and bring them home, that’s what I intend to do,” said Ellsworth, who was divorced from Lisa 2 1/2 years ago.

Lisa Ellsworth’s father, who neighbors said had just left this week from a visit to Orange County to see his grandchildren, also was on his way from his Utah home Saturday night.

A girlfriend of Lisa Ellsworth showed up outside the apartment Saturday afternoon to pick up Lucky, Clay said. “She didn’t even know what happened. She said [Ellsworth] called her a week ago and said, ‘You’re going to have to come and get the dog because things are getting worse between Mark and I.”’

Clay and other neighbors said deputies had been called to the apartment on several occasions before Saturday and they had heard that Sliger had moved to Oregon.

But, Clay said, on Thursday morning, deputies were outside the apartment before school.

“She was out front with Tristan, comforting him,” Clay said. “He was crying about their fighting.”

But neighbors said the family was friendly. Sliger helped one neighbor boy patch his bike tire and could always be seen out walking Lucky.

“They moved in here together,” Clay said. “He was real handsome and she was really pretty.”

And neighbors never saw them fighting.

“You’d never know they were fighting unless the police were here,” said Pamela Martin, whose son Kyle also was in the apartment during the stabbing.

Mendez said deputies did go to Ellsworth’s apartment early Saturday morning, but no crime had occurred. Deputies took Sliger to a local motel, he said.

“There were no violations. We informed her of what she could do to protect herself,” Mendez said. “There’s not too much we can do if there’s no actual crime.”