Easter Jubilation Tinged With Sorrow

Montgomery Churchgoers Pray for Woman Whose Children Were Slain

At Barnesville Baptist Church in rural northern Montgomery County, children's choir members Gabby Marsh, left, Madison Marsh, Kristina Cole, Jackie Cole, Ashland Cole, Kyle Marsh, Amber Ennis and Zoe Thomas perform at an Easter Sunday service. (By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)

The Rev. Joe Ivey stepped onto the dais and smiled at the group of girls in pink dresses with pink sashes, wriggling in the church's front pew. Then he took a few steps forward, planting himself squarely before the row of Easter lilies that lined the foot of the dais.

A brisk spring wind whipped over the rolling hills outside, rattling the windows of the tiny church in rural northern Montgomery County. Ivey bowed his head as he stood below the simple wood cross on the wall at the back of Barnesville Baptist Church. Choir members in their white robes looked up at him while a woman tried to calm her colicky baby.

"I want to say a prayer for a mother who has lost so much," Ivey said. "I want to pray for a woman who has lost her children."

Almost everybody had heard about what happened down the road from the church. They knew about the two young lives taken by their father's hand and the suicide that followed. Many had not met Carol Danforth, the mother of the slain children. She was not a member of their church.

But they had heard how Danforth, 42, found her children's bodies hanging from a tree next to the body of the man she had once loved. Good News Farm, the place where police say Danforth's estranged boyfriend, Gerardo Roque, hanged the couple's young daughter and son and then hanged himself last week, is only a few miles from the white clapboard church. It was too close not to talk about it.

In the balcony of the 136-year-old church, Michele Normoyle started crying as the pastor asked the congregation to pray for Danforth and her family. Normoyle, 39, placed her hand on her pregnant belly and leaned a little closer to her husband, Bob, 46, and children. Between hymns about resurrection and redemption, the prayers and tears kept coming.

"It's just so sad to think about what happened," Normoyle said. "That's why it's important to have a place like this to come to, to have something to draw strength from."

County police said Roque, 35, killed himself, daughter Maria Socorro Danforth, 2, and son Carlos Diego Danforth, 1, in woods at Good News Farm about 100 yards from the 16700 block of Barnesville Road in Boyds on Tuesday. Danforth, who lives and works at the stables, discovered their bodies about 3 p.m. after Roque called her and said he planned to hurt the children.

Ivey, 69, presided over the children's private funeral Saturday. Yesterday, he was still trying to make sense of what had happened. Tall, broad-shouldered with white hair, Ivey spread his large hands over the worn cover of his dog-eared Bible as he searched for a way to help his congregation understand the tragedy.

"We all have an emptiness in us," Ivey said. "I don't care who you are. I don't care how much education you have or what position you hold. We all know there's an emptiness in us."

After the Easter service yesterday, Mary Yates mused briefly about the way the world has changed since she first came to Barnesville Baptist as a 7-year-old girl. Now 63, she grew up in an era in which no one thought twice about bringing a sick neighbor a homemade dish, and going to church two or three times a week wasn't unusual. Things are faster now, she said. Now there is more traffic. More competition. More crime. More hunger for more.

Yates, who lives close to Good News Farm, said she didn't know Danforth or her children. But in a town where the closest strip mall is about a half-hour drive away and about the only thing that marks the downtown is the main post office, it's hard not to feel like you know just about everybody, Yates said.

"The community is not that big," she said. "When something happens, it affects us all."