http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4846340.htmlHUDSON OAKS, Texas — Nothing seemed out of the ordinary when Gilberta Estrada held her infant daughter outside her white-and-brown trailer that muggy spring afternoon.
But by the next morning, she had apparently hanged herself and her four young daughters in a closet in their mobile home, authorities said. Only her 8-month-old survived.
They were discovered by the woman's sister, Alejandra Estrada, who lives across the street and had broken into the locked trailer after her sister's employer called Tuesday morning to say she missed work, authorities said.
Alejandra Estrada heard sounds from the infant — who was hanging by her tiny neck from the arm of a sweater — and quickly pulled the baby out of the noose before calling for help, Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said.
On the 911 tape, the hysterical woman can be heard saying in Spanish, "Tell them to hurry because the little girl is dying. My sister hung herself." She also gives the phone to her young daughter, who tells the 911 operator in English that her aunt and cousins are "sick really bad" and need an ambulance.
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.
The infant, Evelyn Frayre, was listed in good condition at a Fort Worth hospital, Fowler said.
He said the hangings appeared to be murder-suicide because the doors were locked from the inside and a relative said the 25-year-old woman had been depressed. He said they had last been seen alive Monday afternoon outside the trailer and things appeared normal for the family.
He said more information, such as how long they had been dead and whether the children were drugged or suffocated before they were hanged, could be revealed after the autopsies were performed Wednesday.
There were no stools or chairs under the bodies, Fowler said. After hanging her daughters with pieces of clothing tied around a wooden board serving as a clothes rod, Estrada apparently looped the noose around her neck, leaned into it and buckled her knees to kill herself, he said.
"My mind cannot get around how all this can happen," Fowler said. "It's almost unthinkable."
Fowler 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 that trailer, and Fowler said there was no evidence that Frayre abused the girls.
Attempts to reach Frayre, 38, were not immediately successful.
Child Protective Services will decide who takes custody of the baby, Fowler said.
Gilberta Estrada's trailer was dilapidated, with some paint peeling off. Cactus plants and a rose bush were growing in the front. Toys and a bicycle littered the back.
"I just got a big kick out of watching the kids play over there on her porch, and today it's sad, very sad," said neighbor Joyce Harris, as other residents of the trailer park in this town of 1,600 about 25 miles west of Fort Worth milled about on their porches, some crying and talking softly about the deaths.
Maria, the 5-year-old, attended pre-kindergarten at Coder Elementary, where classes were not scheduled to end until early June. Principal Jason Beaty said extra counselors would be on hand Wednesday.
Texas has seen a number of child killings by mothers in recent years.
Less than five years earlier, 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 and injured a third with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her two 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.
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