Bodies Of 4 Girls Found in SE House

"I live next door. I can't believe this," said Karen Brown, who said she had smelled a foul odor in recent days. "It's just sad."

Few details emerged yesterday about the woman or the children. It was unclear how long they had been living in the house and whether they had owned it or were tenants.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), who joined Lanier at the scene, said the city was working to learn how much contact the woman and children had had with city agencies, including police, schools and Child Protective Services. Lanier said police had not been called to the house in recent memory.

A police source said that officers had canvassed the neighborhood during an unrelated homicide investigation in recent months and at the time expressed concern about the welfare of the children in the house. Police contacted the child protective services agency, the source said.

Mindy Good, a spokeswoman for Child and Family Services, the agency that oversees protective services, said that the agency had received one report about the woman's family, in April, and "attempted to investigate."

"We were unable to find them at any of the numerous times we attempted to make contact," Good said. "Then they disappeared. We went to the residence, and it was vacated." She declined to comment further about the case.

According to D.C. Public Schools spokeswoman Mafara Hobson, officials believe that only one of the children had ever been enrolled in D.C. public schools. The student, whom Hobson said she was not authorized to name, had once been enrolled at Stuart-Hobson Middle School but withdrew in 2006. The others were enrolled at some point in non-public schools but had not recently been enrolled in any school in the city, public or private, Hobson said.

A police source said authorities believe the children had missed a lot of school and that one had not been to class in 33 days.

D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) expressed surprise that the children had not been reported missing sooner. "The kids are supposed to be in school," he said. "It shows how people drop out of the system."

The eviction proceedings were set in motion in August when a mortgage loan company filed a complaint in D.C. Superior Court seeking a judge's order to take over the home after a foreclosure. Aurora Loan Services bought the property at a foreclosure sale in May, court papers show. After no one responded to the complaint, a judge granted the court order in October, clearing the way for the eviction action.

Staff writers Keith L. Alexander, Sue Anne Pressley Montes, Debbi Wilgoren and Clarence Williams and staff researcher Rena Kirsch contributed to this report.