Remains May Be Linked To Slayings Last Year

For nearly a year, detectives in Frederick searched in Maryland and beyond for 25-year-old Deysi M. Benitez, hoping that the Salvadoran immigrant had been spared the violence that claimed her four children.

They followed local leads. They had the case featured on the "America's Most Wanted" television program. They asked authorities in El Salvador to monitor her children's funeral in case she surfaced for the services.

Yesterday, authorities in Frederick announced what could be a major break in the case, although it pointed toward an ending none of the investigators wanted. Skeletal remains found in a shallow grave near the Pennsylvania border, 20 miles north of Frederick, appear to match many of Benitez's characteristics.

Detectives are treating the case as a homicide. If DNA tests confirm that the remains are those of Benitez, her late husband, Pedro Rodriguez, would be the leading suspect, according to Sgt. Bruce DeGrange, a detective with the Frederick city police.

Detectives have concluded that Rodriguez, 28, killed the couple's four children -- sisters Elsa, 9, Vanessa, 4, and Carena, 1, and their brother, Angel, 3 -- in the family's Frederick townhouse and then hanged himself with a rope tied to a banister. "Obviously, he would be the prime suspect," DeGrange said.

Preliminary autopsy results showed that the skeletal remains found Friday are those of a woman who was 5-foot-2, 125 to 140 pounds and about 25 years old, with long dark hair, said Capt. Tim Clarke of the Frederick County Sheriff's Office. Benitez is described as 5-foot-2 and 140 pounds, with black shoulder-length hair, according to an FBI missing-person notice. The remains were found by a man surveying the property for a real estate company, authorities said.

DeGrange said the results of a DNA comparison could be at least three months away, and he cautioned that the remains might turn out to be those of somebody else.

"Everybody is jumping on the Benitez bandwagon, for obvious reasons," DeGrange said of the response to the discovery. "I don't want everybody to lose sight of that fact it could be someone else."

The bodies of Rodriguez and the children were found March 26, when police were called to the townhouse, in the city's Hillcrest Heights section, after a knock on the door went unanswered. The last time Benitez is known to have been seen was eight days before the discovery, authorities said.

In the days that followed, Ana Margarita Chavez, El Salvador's consul general in Washington, appeared on two Spanish-language TV stations to appeal to Benitez to come forward.

Relatives on both sides of the family said the marriage had been troubled. Rodriguez had told his siblings that his wife had been unfaithful, and Benitez had told her eldest sister that Rodriguez once beat her. DeGrange said investigators pursued information that Benitez might have had an affair but were unable to confirm it. He said investigators found little evidence to support allegations that domestic violence occurred before the killings.