Bodies Of 4 Girls Found in SE House
Deaths Treated As Homicides

By Allison Klein and Joshua Zumbrun
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 10, 2008

U.S. marshals serving a routine eviction notice in Southeast Washington yesterday were met at the door by a calm woman who offered no clue about what would be found inside the house: the decomposing bodies of four girls, believed to be her children.

Authorities said the girls -- ages 5, 7, 9 and 17 -- were found upstairs in the two-story home and might have been dead for two weeks or longer. How they died remains a mystery, and the woman, 33, was being questioned last night at police headquarters.

Police said that they were treating the deaths as homicides, pending a medical examiner's ruling, and that no one has been arrested.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the causes of death had not been determined because of the decomposition of the bodies. "It makes it difficult to determine obvious signs of trauma," she said.

Police did not release the name of the woman, because she has not been charged with a crime, or the names of the children. "It will take us some time to verify the identities of the children," Lanier said.

A knife was found next to the skeletal remains of the eldest child in an upstairs bedroom, authorities said. The other bodies, not as badly decomposed, were in a separate bedroom. Downstairs, the home was bare and had no furniture.

Lanier sought to reassure neighborhood residents by saying that there were no signs of forced entry to the house. "I don't want the impression that someone kicked in the door and carried out this crime," she said.

Lanier said the woman was cooperating with investigators. Several police sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, raised questions about the woman's mental health. Neighbors said she often seemed dazed when they saw her in recent months.

The home where the bodies were found, in the 4200 block of Sixth Street SE, is a two-story brick rowhouse painted grayish-blue. Until yesterday, nothing made it stand out in the Washington Highlands neighborhood.

The home had been sold to a mortgage company in the spring after a foreclosure, and three marshals arrived there yesterday at 9:30 a.m. with eviction papers. At first, everything seemed normal. "The lady was calm. She was not distraught in any way," said Cole Barnhart, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service.

The marshals service, which carries out evictions for D.C. Superior Court, typically completes a search before clearing out a house. Such a search turned up the bodies and led to calls to D.C. police, the medical examiner's office, the fire department and other agencies.

The block quickly was transformed into a crime scene, with police cruisers, yellow tape and a wagon from the D.C. medical examiner's office parked on the street. Dozens of officers, many in protective suits and masks, worked in and around the house. It was not until 3 p.m. that authorities brought out the four bodies, one after the other, strapped to stretchers and wrapped in body bags. Neighbors expressed shock.

"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.