Horror at Townhouse Doesn't Add Up

Deaths of Father, 4 Children Called Unexplainable

Pedro Rodriguez and Deysi Benitez had faced challenges since their arrival from El Salvador. He worked in warehouses by day; she worked in restaurants by night. As their family grew from three to six, there were financial problems and occasional run-ins with the police.

But there was nothing, friends said yesterday, that would explain or predict the horrible end that came to the family in a townhouse in Frederick. Nothing, they said, that could make sense of what city police officers found a day earlier when they climbed through an open window after a knock at the door went unanswered: the four children dead in their beds and the father hanging from a rope tied to a banister.

"I had no idea they had serious problems," said Esmeralda Bonilla, a former neighbor who is herself an immigrant from El Salvador. "He was a friendly and hardworking man, and I used to see him picking up his two daughters at school every day."

She described Benitez, 25, as a determined woman who had held a series of restaurant jobs but made sure never to leave the children alone and always asked a relative to stay with them. "They both really loved those kids," she said in a telephone interview in Spanish.

Yesterday, as the search for Benitez continued into a second frustrating day, investigators ruled out shooting and stabbing as causes of death for the four children, each of whom was found covered head to toe in bedclothes.

Police Lt. Thomas Chase said poisoning and suffocation were among the possibilities still under consideration in the deaths of Elsa 9, Vanessa, 4, Angel, 3, and Carena, 1. Postmortem examinations of the children and their father, 28, could not be completed without toxicological test results that were not expected for at least a week, police said.

Benitez, who has not been seen since she failed to show up at work at Outback Steakhouse about 10 days ago, was officially considered missing as of yesterday morning, police said.

"We haven't been able to locate her or even come up with any effective leads," Chase said outside the residence in the city's Hillcrest Heights section.

On a brick patio in front of the house, artifacts of the family's life remained: a red tricycle, a blue stroller, an old tire, a yellow hose. Police tape marked out a perimeter, and inside it were the family's three cars.

At Hillcrest Elementary School, which Elsa and Vanessa attended, a crisis team met with students, according to Marita Loose, a spokeswoman for Frederick County schools. Relaying a message from Elsa's third-grade teacher, Loose said: "She was an angel, a very sweet and loveable child. She was very happy and had lots of friends."

Vanessa was described by her pre-kindergarten teacher as "a very sweet, quiet child with a smile that would melt your heart."

Loose said students in that class would be told that "they've lost a friend, a classmate, that she won't be coming to school anymore."