"Horrendous" Scene As Mom Hangs Self, Kids

Sister Finds Gilberta Estrada, 4 Young Girls Hanging From Fabric Nooses In Closet; Only Infant Survived

(CBS/AP)  Alejandra Estrada broke into her sister's trailer because she wanted to know why she hadn't shown up at work.

Inside, she found Gilberta Estrada and Gilberta's four young daughters hanging in a closet from fabric nooses.

Gilberta Estrada, 25, and three of the girls were dead. The youngest, 8-month-old Evelyn Frayre, was alive but in dire need of medical care.

"They were all dead, just the baby was alive," Alejandra Estrada said in Spanish.

Alejandra Estrada heard sounds from the infant, and pulled her from the arm of a sweater and called 911. The child was listed in good condition at a Fort Worth hospital, Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said.

"It's horrendous; that's all I can say," he said. "It's just something you don't want to see."

Fowler said the hangings appeared to be murder-suicide because the doors were locked from the inside and a relative said Gilberta Estrada had been depressed. He said they had last been seen alive Monday afternoon outside the trailer and things had appeared normal.

"My mind cannot get around how all this can happen," Fowler said. "It's almost unthinkable."

Outside the dilapidated white trailer with brown trim were cactus plants and rose bushes, and a bicycle, plastic cars and other toys cluttered the backyard, reports CBS station KTVT.

Filly Echeverria, who said she was the children's godmother, identified the dead children as Maria Teresa Estrada, Janet Frayre and Magaly Frayre. Authorities said they believed their ages were 5, 3 and 2.

"She was a good mother, and she seemed happy," Echeverria said.

Fowler said more information, such as how long they had been dead and whether the children were drugged or suffocated before they were hanged, would be released after autopsies Wednesday.

After hanging her daughters with pieces of clothing tied around a wooden board that served as a clothes rod, Estrada apparently looped the noose around her neck, leaned into it and buckled her knees to kill herself, Fowler said.

He said Gilberta Estrada had won a temporary restraining order in August against Gregorio Frayre Rodriguez, believed to be the father of Evelyn and some of the other youngsters, after a domestic violence incident involving Estrada.

Fowler said the couple had stopped living together in February. Tuesday was the first emergency police call to the trailer, and Fowler said there was no evidence that Frayre abused the girls.

A telephone listing for Frayre, 38, could not immediately be located.

Child Protective Services will decide who will take custody of the baby, Fowler said.

Texas has had several children killed by their mothers in recent years.

Less than five years ago, another Hudson Oaks family was torn apart when Dee Etta Perez, 39, shot her three children, ages 4, 9 and 10, before killing herself.

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001. In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub. Dena Schlosser fatally severed her 10-month-old daughter's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004.

All four of those women were found innocent by reason of insanity. Yates initially was convicted of capital murder, but that verdict was overturned on appeal.

[3tire]

To my outsiders view, the mother went to get help from a shelter. The mother had a restraining order on her husband. The mother and her daughters were alone.
I would assume she was poor, struggling and, in her mind, under extraordinary pressures to where she finally broke down. The new birth of a child and possible post partum disorders could not have helped, but I don't pretend to have expertise on the subject. I do believe she loved her children very much.
She also hanged her children.
I have all the sympathy in the world for her problems and wish she did not have to endure whatever struggles she had. I give to my church and numerous charities and do voluteer work on behalf of abandoned children. I consider myself someone who tries to help others, but, once she harmed innocents, then all bets are off.
And this has nothing to do with tolerance or understanding of other peoples struggles or mental health.
A serial killer rapist who was abused as a child can have my sympathy for their terrible experience and still be condemned by me for taking out his anger on innocent women.
Say what you will about how she couldn't get help, but I still condemn the mother for hanging her children.

[wiccantexan]

I believe that women are afraid to ask for help, and I think that fear mostly comes from fearing their spouse. Posted by jd52475 at 02:00 PM : Jun 01, 2007

The problem was, she HAD asked for help. Note the link I posted earlier; the women's shelter that was working with her was shocked at the crime. They thought she was making progress and fully committed.

[wiccantexan]

This is what I struggle with. She had been working with a caseworker to get her life under control. By all accounts, she was committed to this. Though she was depressed after the birth, I haven't seen indication that she was divorced enough from reality to have made this sort of leap without forethought. It was premeditated. So, postpartum or not, I cannot feel complete sympathy.

[jd52475]

I am a mother of three, having my first child at the age of fifteen. After that I had 2 more children, now ages 16,15 and 13 and honestly don't regret it. I lost my childhood, I didn't graduate high school. I missed out on alot, but what I didn't miss out on was growing up with my kids and sharing everything I could with them, being there for them, I was a mother. There were/are times when I would love to give up, but in no means does harming my children come into my thoughts My kids come first and they need me, it's my responsibility to be their mother no matter what i'm feeling. Mothers are the role models, they are the ones to not only love their kids but to teach them to love. There are so many places in the world to go to get help, for anything. I don't understand how women can does this. I believe that women are afraid to ask for help, and I think that fear mostly comes from fearing their spouse. My heart goes out to the families of those children. Everyone should pay for their crime. Society is messed up, and the way the world is run. If we punished the ones who do the crime, then maybe people in the future will think twice about the consequences. Men and women should be treated equal in the court of law. May the girls rest in peace.

[wiccantexan]

Again, it's no excuse for the final decision. But child murder in relation to women vs men tends to be differentiated in mental breakdowns vs premeditated actions.

[wiccantexan]

I don't think there's a spike in women's crime, it's just that with global communication we hear about it instantly, and on a large scale. It's also, from what I can determine, more common for men to kill family members after openly threatening to do so, and/or exhibiting prolonged hostile behavior. With the women, it tends to be more of an anomoly, especially with their children, and there don't tend to be clear indicators. Also, if it happens within a couple of years after having a baby, hormonal psychotic breaks are often the culprit.

Even those of us who have been, or are still in, that "black hole" have a hard time comprehending the idea of such a horrific act. I assume that by your comment of calling the police and recalling the crime, that you mean someone like Andrea Yates. A psychotic person (from what my mother, a social worker who works with the mentally ill, says) can still understand that they've done a wrong action; they are just disconnected from the emotional reality of it. They're psychologically numb to what has occurred.

[itsonlyme83]

Don't consider me completely cold-hearted to the mother as I have struggled with suicide and depression tendencies for years. Only by the grace of God can I say that I did go for help and am out of that terrible black hole of dispair.

I guess there is a difference between choosing to end your own life and ending the lives of those innocent defenseless people around you.

But here are some thoughts that have been runnig through my mind. Why is it that men face years in jail for child abuse, but women that behead their children, drown them, hang them, bash their heads in with rocks, or cut off limbs, etc. are dismissed as "insane?" In my opinion, if I can call the authorities and recount in detail my sick behavior, then I deserve to get locked up along with all the other criminals. Murder is murder. Why is it now that we are suddenly seeing a spike in women' crime? Is it because we don't have to pay the same penalty if we were men? Men are imprisoned for life, women are "institutionalized until deemed no longer a threat to society." We are living in a country where women scream for equal rights!! Let's balance out the justice system here.

[wiccantexan]

mchlo, I don't have an answer for you. The only explanation I can give is that the birth of the 4th child unhinged her and created a final break.

[3tire]

Hi Wiccan, that makes the act even more insidious. How do you prevent it?
We can blame society, her husband, mother, shelter/social workers etc., but these people (who, I would think, are concerned caring individuals) thought the mother was trying to turn her life around.
I do not place blame based on 20/20 hindsight. She said and did all the right things and fooled them. This tells me, the mother knew what was the correct path in life and still renounced it.
Everyone has a pet horror story about how "the system failed" but I do not absolve the perpetrator by condemning everyone else.
Oh, and before this story devolves into something about womens rights or mental disease awareness, it is above all, about the murder of defenseless children who experienced the ultimate terror of harm from the one person they loved above all others.
But then again, that's the opinion of an anger addled rascist, completely devoid of knowledge about mental illness.

[wiccantexan]

Apparently, she DID try to get help. See below.
___________

When a pregnant Gilberta Estrada-Vega arrived with her children at the SafeHaven women's shelter last summer, the staff at the Fort Worth shelter figured the 25-year-old would be one of their success stories. But it didn't turn out that way.

http://www.kvue.com/news/top/stories/053107kvuedeadfolo-eh.89add.html