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By Newsweek Editors
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Alejandra Estrada probably expected to find her sister Berta asleep. It was 6:30 a.m. last Tuesday, and, after Berta failed to show for her shift at Wendy's, Alejandra, also a Wendy's employee, stopped by her sister's trailer near Hudson Oaks, Texas. But when Alejandra knocked, no one answered. Forcing her way inside, she heard gurgling and saw feet protruding from a sheet strung across a closet. Behind it, her 8-month-old niece, Evelyn Frayre, dangled by her neck from a sweater sleeve. The baby was alive. Hanging next to her, however, were the dead bodies of Maria Estrada, 5; Yaneth (Janet) Frayre, 3, and Magaly Frayre, 21 months. The children's mother hanged at one end of the gruesome lineup. Wailing "my sister, my sister, the children," Alejandra cradled her niece, who was foaming at the mouth, and called 911. "O Dios mio!" she cried. Oh my God.
Ruled a murder-suicide, Berta Estrada's massacre is unfathomable. But it is not unprecedented. Seven other "mommy murders" have made headlines in Texas since Houston's Andrea Yates drowned her five kids in 2001. One mother stoned two sons to death; another severed her daughter's arms. In 2005, Texas reported the most kids killed by caregiver abuse or neglect, 197 of about 1,500 nationwide. (Per capita, Texas has an above-average rate of such killings, but it is far behind Oklahoma and West Virginia.) The Estrada filicide isn't even the first to hit Hudson Oaks (population: 1,800). Five years ago, and just a mile away, Dee Etta Perez drugged and shot her three children before turning the gun on herself. "Everyone is being asked, 'Why did this happen here?' " says Sheriff's Capt. Michael Morgan. His only explanation: "There's not much justice this side of heaven."
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There's no one way to account for the Lone Star State's mommy murders; any number of factors could have led Estrada to her horrific act. Described by relatives as an optimistic, caring parent, Estrada, a 25-year-old immigrant from Tamaulipas, Mexico, had grown depressed in recent months. She'd recently left Gregorio Frayre Rodriguez, her common-law husband, whom she accused of raping her, strangling her and threatening to kill her with a knife. (Rodriguez would not talk to reporters last week.) Estrada moved from a Ft. Worth battered women's shelter into a mobile home, where she struggled to support her daughters on $900 a month. Maria Argelia Martinez, a friend who once worked with Estrada as a maid, visited three weeks ago to pray and offer advice. "It was very hard, the pressure," she says. "Her problems stacked up." Dr. Richard Gelles, a child-welfare expert at the University of Pennsylvania, says Estrada may have been suffering from lingering postpartum depression, may have wanted to get revenge on her alleged abuser or may have thought that killing her children would protect them. "Perhaps," he says, "she was thinking, 'I'm going to heaven and I don't want to leave them behind'."
In the wake of the Perez case, in 2002, Parker County updated its 911 mapping system and worked to improve response times. The area has long boasted a private shelter and a domestic-violence unit run out of its D.A.'s office, in addition to facilities in nearby Ft. Worth. "[We've] been very proactive," says Morgan. Sadly, it wasn't enough to stop this tragedy. Only a mother could do that.
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