Haunted by Images and Questions

He moved in and out of her home several times but stayed after she discovered she was pregnant with Socorro. Diego followed 14 months after Socorro was born. Although Roque was a devoted father, playing with the children and giving them baths, she said she asked him to move out in mid-March. She said she promised she would never take the children from him.

"I always thought he'd do something to me" for ending the relationship, she said, breaking into tears. "I never thought he'd do anything to those kids."

He asked her repeatedly to take him back, she said. When he talked about wanting to kill himself, she said, she asked him not to.

On April 2, Danforth said, Roque asked to have the children for the afternoon. She said no. She and the kids were going out to dinner that night, she told him, and Socorro and Diego needed to get good afternoon naps.

That must have set him off, she said, reflecting on it.

The next morning, Danforth dropped the children off at the babysitter's. It was the start of an unusually warm spring day. Socorro's curly hair was swept into a ponytail. Lately, she'd been excited about learning to ride horses. She doted on her baby brother. At just over 1 year, Diego wanted to do everything Socorro did, his mother said. He'd started taking a few steps and saying "Mama." He'd just gotten his first haircut.

Roque called later, asking whether he could pick the children up from the babysitter's at 2:30 p.m., something he often did, even after moving out. Only in hindsight, she said, did she take note of his unusually sarcastic tone when he asked, "Did you have a nice dinner?" He also asked whether she had a new boyfriend. She assured him that she didn't.

She was taking the horses into the barn when he called again about 3 p.m. He was talking in "gibberish," she said. He started crying and told her that she would find three dead bodies by the creek. When she found them hanging in the woods about five minutes later, she said, she remembers only throwing her cellphone in the midst of her 911 call and screaming.

Her son's body was already cold, but Socorro was warmer and still sweaty, giving Danforth a fleeting hope that she might still be alive. An autopsy determined that both children had been strangled during the hanging, police said.

Danforth buried her children together in a small, white coffin with their favorite Barney video, Socorro's pink blanket, two stuffed Easter toys and a letter from Allison and Michael. She asked her family to clear her home of Diego's and Socorro's toys, something too painful to see again.

She said she hasn't been back to work beyond riding into the woods to exercise the horses and try to calm her mind. The therapist told her that the images will eventually go away, or at least come less frequently. She hopes it's true.

"It has to be possible," she said, looking up after crying into her hands. "I can't live like this the rest of my life."

Danforth's family is collecting donations through the Danforth Children Memorial Fund through any Bank of America.