Questions Linger About Why Texas Mom Hanged Four Kids & Herself
Posted May 30, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Alejandra Estrada will never forget the awful sight that is burned forever in her mind – her sister and four of her nieces hanging in a closet in a lonely trailer. There are so many questions and so few answers about what drove 25-year-old Gilberta Estrada to apparently take the lives of three of her young daughters before hanging herself in her Hudson Oaks, Texas home, not far from Fort Worth.
The crime has sent shock waves across North America as relatives, friends and neighbours try to cope and the world asks ‘why’? The story unfolded early Tuesday, when Estrada went to check on her sibling, who hadn’t shown up to work at a local fast food restaurant. What she saw inside a closest sickened her. Four little girls, ranging in age from eight months old to just five, were hung with strips of clothing. Beside them, also in a makeshift noose, was the children’s mother.
Only the youngest survived the ordeal. Authorities managed to rush Evelyn Frayre to hospital and revive her. The tiny infant is said to be on the mend, but she may be the only family member to heal from the terrible experience, which authorities believe was a murder-suicide. They claim all the doors to the small trailer were locked from the inside, taking suspicion away from the victim’s 38-year-old estranged husband, against whom the mother had a temporary restraining order. He’s the father of several – but not all – of the children.
Friends recall Estrada as being depressed, but no one had any inkling of how bad it was, and police say they were never called to the home, despite reports from relatives of at least one domestic incident. Even veteran cops can’t get over the scene. “My mind cannot get around how all this can happen,” Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler admits. “It’s almost unthinkable.” Experts don’t know yet if the kids were drugged or suffocated before they were hanged, but authorities are pretty sure about how the mother took her own life. She apparently tied a noose around her neck, leaned into it and then folded her knees, causing her to choke to death.
It’s not yet clear what will happen to young Evelyn or who will get custody of the child once she’s well enough to be released.
