Autopsies set in Long Beach deaths

Autopsies will be performed today on a Long Beach woman and man who were found dead Sunday morning in what police believe may have been a murder-suicide.

Officers were called Sunday morning to a triplex in the 2000 block of East Florida Street after the woman’s daughter found the two bodies and ran screaming into the street, neighbors said.

“That’s what woke me up,” said Lillian Johnson, who lives across the street. “I heard someone saying, ‘Mama, Mama!’ Then the police came.”

On Monday, the Los Angeles County coroner’s office identified the woman as 36-year-old Maria DeJesus Constatino. The man’s identity was not released pending notification of next of kin, officials said.

The couple were quiet, likable and especially hardworking, Johnson said.

“They never went anywhere. They never did anything,” she said. “I used to tell my husband they were going to be the richest people in the cemetery because they never had any fun.”

Johnson said Constatino had moved into the house with her children in the mid-1990s. Her teenage daughter had lived in Tijuana, then moved in last year.

At the time, Constatino was married to the deceased man’s brother, Johnson said. They divorced several years ago.

“I never heard any arguing or anything, except when she was divorcing him,” Johnson said. “He used to play that song in Spanish, ‘No Vale La Pena’ [It’s Not Worth It]. I had never heard that song before. He played it over and over again.”

Constatino’s ex-husband moved away and hasn’t been seen in years, Johnson said.

The deceased man had apparently moved in with Constatino recently, and to neighbors he referred to her as his wife, Johnson said.

“He was such a sweet man. He used to close my gate every night,” she said.

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sam.quinones@latimes.com