Woman Kills Grandchildren, Self, Deputies Say

A 50-year-old Hacienda Heights woman, apparently distraught about a pending family separation, killed her two young granddaughters Sunday before taking her own life, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said.

The bodies of the little girls and of Mary Jane Schork were found in the Schork house by the girls’ grandfather when he returned from an errand about 11 a.m., Sgt. Robert Stoneman said.

Ashley Ramirez, 9, and Chelsey Ramirez, 3, were in one bedroom. They had been stabbed and strangled with a rope. Phil Schork, the girls’ grandfather, called 911. He greeted arriving deputies carrying Chelsey in his arms.

Ashley was dead when deputies arrived. Chelsey died about an hour later, at Whittier Community Hospital.

Mary Jane Schork, who had been baby-sitting the two girls while their mother was shopping, hanged herself in the closet of another room immediately after the slayings, deputies said.

Phil Schork told investigators that when he left the house that morning to go to a gas station, his wife and granddaughters were fine.

Deputy Bob Killeen, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said Mary Jane Schork might have been upset because her daughter’s family, who had lived with them for many years in the two-story house on Avocado Hills Way, was going to move to Mexico next month.

“Mary Jane was the perfect grandmother, and now this,” said Eva Rek, who lives two houses away from the Schorks. “I am just shocked. Those two little girls were such a pleasure. They were just beautiful.”

The Schorks live in an upscale neighborhood filled with trees and two-story homes with narrow, well-landscaped yards. In front of each house is a small Christmas sign designed by one of the neighbors. Three signs on the pole in front of the Schork house read, “Santa’s Workshop,” “Flight Training” and “Sled Rides 10 Cents.”

The couple’s only daughter, Kris, the little girls’ mother, grew up in that house and continued living there with her husband, Robert Ramirez, whom she met when they were students at Los Altos High School.

The couple lived with the Schorks for several years, until January, when the Ramirez family moved to La Mirada. The Ramirezes’ third child, 18-month-old Jordan, was with his mother Sunday when the slayings occurred.

Even after the Ramirezes moved, their children were a fixture at the Schorks’ house, spending weekends and vacations with their grandfather and the grandmother they called “Nana.”

“She acted like they were her kids,” said one of the neighbors. “She was like a mom.”

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Neighbors said the Schorks own a garment manufacturing company in the San Gabriel Valley. Problems might have started when Robert Ramirez, who worked for the Schorks’ garment company, decided to leave the firm for a better position at a company in Mexico. His wife was planning to become a minister after the move.

Neighbors said Mary Jane Schork had worried that the children would not like Mexico, but it never occurred to them that anything like Sunday’s tragedy would take place.

“We’ve lived here for eight years and I’ve never heard a raised voice over there. The family seems to care for each other so much,” said next-door neighbor Jim Himes.

Neighbor Jerry Rek said Phil Schork was in good spirits when he came over to borrow a battery charger an hour or so before the slayings. After the bodies were discovered, Rek said, he had never seen a man so shaken.

“We have known the kids since they were born, so this is a tremendous tragedy,” Rek said. “The grandmother loved these kids to death and perhaps to death is the reason she killed them.”