Frederick,MD.-Father and 4 children dead-missing mother Deysi Benitez/BODY FOUND

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http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?storyID=58357

Police face two mysteries
Location of Deysi Benitez, cause of death for 5 still in question
Originally published March 28, 2007


By Katie E. Leslie
News-Post Staff
 
  


A neighborhood child posts a handmade memorial Tuesday on a tree in front of the townhouse on Danielle Drive where the bodies of Pedro Rodriguez and his four children were found on Monday.
  
 
FREDERICK — By Tuesday evening, the yellow tape surrounding 1252 Danielle Drive had been mostly removed. The doors were locked, and police had left the scene where a day earlier a man and his four children were found dead inside. But while police say the investigation of the home is complete, they are continuing to search for the children's mother.
No tips have come in about the disappearance of Deysi Marlene Benitez, 25, and little is known about the deaths of the children, said Lt. Tom Chase of the Frederick Police Department. Eleven detectives from the FPD are working on the case, he said.

The father's body was found hanged from a bannister in the home; the children were found in beds.

The state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore will not confirm what killed Pedro Rodriguez, 28, and the children until next week, though Chase said the office has ruled out stabbing and gunshots.

All five of the office's post-mortem examinations have been classified as "pending" as additional toxicology studies are necessary to make definitive conclusions. Chase said the delay is due to decomposition of the bodies, though he did not speculate how many days the family might have been dead.

The examinations will remain pending for at least a week, according to the medical examiner's office.

The search for Benitez

On Tuesday, police classified Benitez as a missing person.

"We are considering every possibility when it comes to Deysi," Chase said. "There's nothing special that we've been told, it's just the fact that she hasn't been heard from by friends and family for a week and a half."

Benitez has a sister who lives in Frederick, Chase said, and another sibling living in the United States. He did not provide the name of the sister, whom police have interviewed, and did not know the name or location of the other sibling. The sister told police her mother in El Salvador has also not heard from Benitez.

Chase would not say whether Benitez's mobile phone and credit card accounts have had recent activity. Benitez did not take any of the family's three cars — a white Nissan Sentra, a green Dodge Caravan and a burgundy Mercury Villager — which were parked next to the home Tuesday.

Frederick police have turned to other agencies to help find her, including the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a Maryland missing persons agency, and the Salvadoran Consulate, he said. On Tuesday, he met with a representative from the consulate.

The Frederick County Sheriff's Office has also offered assistance, he said.

Frederick County State's Attorney Charlie Smith is helping with the case. He said subpoenas will be issued to help find Benitez.

Smith declined to identify the recipients of the subpoenas, which seek information from documents, such as phone, medical or Internet records. Police have not had prosecutors review any applications for search warrants; the state's attorney office reviews applications before they are sent to a judge for approval.

Smith expects to be briefed by Frederick Police Department Chief Kim Dine again today, he said.

"Our focus right now is on finding the missing mother," Smith said. "We will do all we can to assist the police department with their efforts to find her."

Court records show that Benitez and Rodriguez were married Oct. 28, 2002 in Frederick County Circuit Court. They purchased their home in August 2005 for about $195,000, according to tax records.

James A. Dinkins, special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Baltimore, said Benitez was in the United States legally, according to the Associated Press. The status of the other family members was still being investigated, the ICE official said. Benitez was in the United States under temporary protective status, which is similar to asylum, Dinkins said.

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,262161,00.html

Sister of Missing Maryland Mom: Husband Beat Her
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador —

The missing mother of four children found dead in the U.S. state of Maryland had been beaten by her husband and wanted to separate, her sister in El Salvador said Wednesday.

Authorities were looking for Deysi M. Benitez, 25, whose children, aged one to nine, were found dead in their beds Monday of unknown causes and her husband hanging from the townhouse bannister. Police said Benitez may have left the country or could already by dead.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press in El Salvador, Angela Benitez, who is two years older than Deysi, said her sister and Pedro Rodriguez, 28, were having problems in their marriage and he beat her at least once, last December.

"He beat her," Angela Benitez said. "I didn't see it, but she called me and told me that he had left her face a complete mess, that it was a miracle he didn't kill her."

Deysi asked for a separation "but he told her he wouldn't allow it," Angela Benitez said.

The last time Angela spoke with Deysi, however, she "was talking very calmly. She didn't tell me anything ... and he was there."

A portrait emerged of the couple as an immigrant family struggling to live the American dream.

Rodriguez arrived in the United States from El Salvador in 1998 and Deysi Benitez in 2001, the sister said. The couple was married in Frederick, Maryland in 2002 and struggled with financial and legal problems. They held a series of menial jobs, lived at one point in an apartment subsidized by a homeless advocacy group, and took in at least one boarder to help pay their mortgage. Benitez was charged twice with theft and police were called to the townhouse eight times in the last year.

Angela, the sister, said the couple worked separate shifts, Pedro during the day and Angela at night.

El Salvador's consul general for the Salvadoran embassy in Washington, Ana Margarita Chavez, taped a televised appeal Wednesday asking the missing mother to contact her.

Chavez said she told Benitez in the appeal that "I will provide her with security and also that I understand her situation and that I was going to be waiting for her phone call."

However, the consul general acknowledged that the appeal, which will be broadcast on a Spanish-language station in the Washington-Baltimore area that encompasses Frederick, may be in vain.

"There are so many scenarios. One is that maybe she already left the country and she has already passed the border," Chavez said. "The other one is that probably she is in the United States. And there is another one that maybe she is dead."

Ernesto Clavijo, news director of Univision's local affiliate, planned to broadcast the appeal during Wednesday's evening news shows.

Chavez said she met Tuesday with Frederick Police Department officers and was able to locate family members in Sensuntepeque in north-central El Salvador. The consul general said Angela Benitez told her she spoke with her sister daily until March 16, when Deysi stopped answering her cell phone.

The consul general said she also had spoken with Rodriguez's parents, whom she described as "in shock."

Chavez said she planned to speak again Wednesday with family members about funeral arrangements. She said Benitez's sister indicated that relatives expect the bodies to be sent to El Salvador for burial.

Chase said the unanswered calls to Benitez's phone supported the theory that she has come to harm. "Absolutely, we're concerned about that," he said.

Chase said police didn't directly ask Chavez to help but "we welcome their assistance. It's something that makes sense, and we're glad that they've taken the initiative to do that because our goal is to find Ms. Benitez."

Police were awaiting complete autopsy results that they said could help explain the deaths of the children and their father. Officers found the children — girls Elsa, 9, Vanessa, 4, and Carena, 1, and 3-year-old boy Angel — in their beds with sheets and blankets pulled over their heads. The husband had apparently hanged himself, police said.

They said they had no suspects in the deaths.

Preliminary autopsy results ruled out shooting and stabbing as the cause of death for the children, Chase said. He said poisoning and suffocation are possibilities, and that police will learn more after the state medical examiner's office completes toxicology studies that could take at least a week.

James A. Dinkins, special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Baltimore, said the family was in the United States legally. Benitez, Rodriguez and their oldest child were in the United States under temporary protected status, which is similar to asylum and is extended to those from countries affected by war, disaster or other extraordinary circumstance. The three youngest children were U.S. citizens.

[MuffyBee]

Pictures of tragedy
Police release photos of house where Rodriguez family died
Originally published November 26, 2007


By Gina Gallucci
News-Post Staff
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?storyID=68093

 Today marks eight months since the bodies of Pedro Rodriguez and his four children were found in their Danielle Drive townhouse. Police determined that Rodriguez killed the children then hung himself.

The children's mother and Rodriguez's wife, Deysi Benitez, remains missing. Police have been searching for her since March.

"There is nothing new," said Detective Sgt. Bruce DeGrange of the Frederick Police Department. "We still need to talk to her and she is still a missing person."

Despite the department's best efforts, detectives have no new leads on Benitez's disappearance, he said.

"There hasn't been anything going on."

Six high-profile cases of domestic violence in and near Frederick County have resulted in the deaths of nine children and eight adults this year. The Rodriguez family murder/suicide was the first of these.

The police department recently released nine crime scene photos taken March 26 -- the day the five bodies were discovered.

The pictures show the outside entrance, the living and dining room on the first floor, the staircase, and two upstairs bedrooms.

The living room pictures show the window where officers first entered the house after getting a call from a Hillcrest Elementary School liaison worker, DeGrange said.

The Frederick County Public Schools employee went to the house on March 26 because the two school-aged children, Elsa, 9, and Vanessa, 4, had not been in school for several days.

The television was on when police arrived, with a Dish Network logo drifting around on the screen, DeGrange said. Christmas tinsel and other holiday decorations still adorned the living room.

After checking the first floor, officers went to the staircase where they found Rodriguez's body hanging from a yellow rope tied to a second-floor banister.

One of the photos show a red stain at the bottom of the stairs, but DeGrange said it was not blood.

Another photo shows part of the master bedroom where the bodies of Angel, 3, and Carena, 1, were found covered in blankets and tucked in the bed.

Elsa, Vanessa, and Carena were suffocated, an autopsy report determined. Angel died from blunt force trauma to the head. Detectives said Rodriguez, 28, killed his children and then hanged himself.

Rodriguez and Benitez, 25, are still listed as the owners of the townhouse, according to the Frederick County office of the Department of Assessments and Taxation.

The townhouse will go into tax sale -- the sale of the property for unpaid taxes -- in May, according to the county treasurer's office.

A lockbox has been placed on the front door of the residence, DeGrange said. He believes all of the family's possessions remain inside. To his knowledge, no next of kin has come to claim any of the belongings.

Pedro Rodriguez's brothers, contacted in Los Angeles, said they have not seen or heard from Deysi Benitez. The mayor of Sensuntepeque, the couple's home town in El Salvador, also said he has heard no news regarding her whereabouts.

Staff writer Nicholas Stern contributed to this story.

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COULD THIS BE HER?????

The Baltimore Sun
 
December 6, 2007 Thursday
FINAL EDITION 
 
 
WOMAN'S BODY FOUND IN WATERS OF MIDDLE BRANCH
 

An autopsy was to be performed on an unidentified woman whose body was found floating in the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River near Middle Branch Park yesterday evening, said a spokesman for the city Fire Department.

Shortly before 5 p.m., authorities were told that a body was floating near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge in the 2400 block of S. Hanover St. in South Baltimore, said Capt. Roman Clark, the spokesman.

Clark said a Fire Department rescue boat pulled the woman, believed to be about 30, from the water and that medics attempted to revive her there and on the way to Harbor Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

City police were checking missing-person reports. 
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100020825&docId=l:711908483&start=9

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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8VQD0H01&show_article=1

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) - Investigators have identified a set of human remains as those of a woman missing since her husband killed their four children and himself more than a year ago.
Cindy Feadstein of the office of the state's chief medical examiner identified the remains as those of Deysi Benitez. She declined to provide details and referred questions to the sheriff's office.

The sheriff's office declined to comment until an 11 a.m. news conference.

Benitez disappeared in March 2007, about the time that police say her husband killed their children and himself. The remains were found on Feb. 29 in a shallow grave.

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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.co.remains04apr04,0,6012204.story


Investigators will attempt to piece together the events leading to the death of Deysi M. Benitez, a Frederick woman whose body was identified this week, one month after being discovered in a field and more than a year after the bodies of her four children and her husband were found in their home.

Frederick authorities believe Benitez's husband killed her and dumped her body into a shallow grave in a wooded area near Emmitsburg. Her body was discovered on Feb. 29 by a real estate agent conducting a property survey.

Benitez probably died from asphyxia, investigators said yesterday during a news conference held by the Frederick County sheriff's office and the Frederick Police Department. There were no signs of damage or injury to the skeletal remains, according to authorities. The state medical examiner's office informed Frederick officials on Wednesday of the results of the DNA analysis, police said.

For family and friends of Benitez, a native of El Salvador, the identification brings a close to a long stretch of uncertainty about the missing woman's fate.

"It's sad but I feel that it is better to know that she is dead, because of the pain that she would face because of the loss of her children," said Ana Margarita Chavez, consul general for the Salvadoran Embassy in Washington, who has begun arrangements to transport Benitez's body to El Salvador.

"I hope that Deysi is in heaven with her four kids," Chavez said. "Now she can rest in peace."

Police have long suspected the body to be that of Benitez. Clothing and jewelry that belonged to the 25-year-old woman also were recovered at the scene. A preliminary autopsy determined that the remains were those of a Hispanic woman in her mid-20s, 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 125 to 140 pounds, with long dark hair. Investigators believe the woman died between last March and June.

Benitez was last seen alive a little more than a week before the bodies of her children and husband were found in their three-bedroom home on March 26, 2007.

Her husband, Pedro Rodriguez, 28, had apparently hanged himself. The four children - daughters Elsa, 9, Vanessa, 4, and Carena, 1, and son Angel, 3 - were found dead in bed. The girls were suffocated, and the boy had been battered, shaken or bludgeoned, an autopsy found.

Investigators do not know where or when Benitez was killed, or why her body was left in the Emmitsburg area.

"This was not an area that we had any connection with the Benitez family," said Detective Sgt. Bruce C. DeGrange of the Frederick Police Department. Authorities had not searched the Emmitsburg area during the search for Benitez, he added.

Now that the identification has been made, police will attempt determine a motive and a construct a timeline. Investigators will search the couple's three vehicles - two minivans and a Nissan Sentra - and possibly return to their home.

The chances of police establishing a motive are daunting given that no suicide note or other type of message was found at the residence, police said.

"We know that there were some family issues, there were some financial issues," DeGrange said. "I'm not sure that we will ever know what was going on in Pedro's mind."

Rodriguez worked at a Masonite International Corp. residential door manufacturing plant in Frederick. Before taking his life, he learned that he was going to lose his job, a spokesman for the company said last March.

Frederick authorities have expressed frustration in recent days because of the pace of the state's identification process. Sheriff's department officials said the agency was told recently by the state that the identification would take an additional four months because of a backlog at the medical examiner's office.

Because of the delay, the sheriff's department had been seeking an independent forensic investigator to analyze the remains, officials said.

"That's the time that we were told," Jennifer Bailey, spokeswoman for the sheriff's department, said of the apparent disconnect. "We received this information yesterday and we called a press conference. We're doing the best that we can."

Dr. David Fowler, the state's chief medical examiner, could not be reached for comment yesterday and did not return several phone calls this week seeking comment.

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins said he plans to call the medical examiner's office and complain that an employee there leaked the analysis results to the media before yesterday's news conference.

"That is not the normal course of doing business," he said.

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I am moving this to SOLVED, as it is quite obvious what happened here and no one else was involved. Case closed.