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‘I Just Killed My Kids’ Five Kids Found Dead in Houston Home, Mother in Custody

H O U S T O N, June 20 — The woman who called Houston police this morning didn't say why she wanted a car to come to her house. When officers arrived, they could only wish they'd gotten there sooner.

The 36-year-old woman answered the door out of breath at around 10 a.m. and told the officers, "I just killed my kids," a police department spokesman said. She led them to a bedroom, where they found four boys, aged 2 to 7 years, all dead and all apparently drowned, covered by a sheet, police said.

Another officer searching the house in the Clearlake neighborhood found a 6-month-old girl dead in a bathtub, said Robert Hurst of the Houston Police Department.

Shortly after police arrived, the woman's husband also showed up, Hurst said. He told officers that his wife had called him and told him to come home, too, the police spokesman added.

The woman, whose name has not been released, seemed calm as she was led from the home in handcuffs. Police said she had not been charged this afternoon.

John Cannon, a police spokesman on the scene, said the woman had not made a formal statement, but that both she and her husband were being questioned.

"It is just rather unimaginable," Cannon said. "It's difficult to deal with when you are talking about five little kids who were killed, probably systematically."

Treated for Depression

Cannon said the man told police that his wife was on medication for postpartum depression, and a neighbor, Pat Salas, said that he recently told her his wife had been depressed since the birth of their most recent child six months ago.

Harris County Child Protective Services said they had no records of incidents with the woman, but that they were contacted two years ago by a local psychiatric facility that had treated the woman for depression.

Neighbors showed ABCNEWS affiliate KTRK a home video from last Saturday, when the boys had come over for a birthday party. On the tape the father appeared happy and smiling with his sons.

Those neighbors said that the father had told them that day that the mother couldn't come over because she was depressed. The father said he loved having so many kids and even wanted more, the neighbors said.

Neighbors often saw both the mother and the father playing outside with their kids.

"They were always out playing with their kids and you know, she'd take the kids riding their bikes," neightbor Kelly McBeth said.

Clearlake is a well-kept middle-class neighborhood with comfortable homes and tree-lined streets, near NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the father reportedly works.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

Answers

Didn't want you to think this report had no effect on me. Can't read it, just can't, so can't comment. Kids and animals. . .

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

I agree, sick beyond mere words. More and more I see this stuff, and can't believe it's real.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

I'm going to say something here, and please bear in mind that I know absolutely nothing about what motivated that woman. Her husband is reported to have made comments to neighbors about wanting even more children. They had produced 5 children in only 8 years of marriage. This woman was depressed two years ago to point of being hospitalized. Her depression was a major cue to stop having babies until the depression cleared. Her husband was aware of her depression and that it was clearly related to her pregnancies. Both of them should have considered not having more babies until the problem was thoroughly eradicated.

Sometimes people do really awful things because they think no one is listening to them.

That she may have agreed to continue having babies on an almost yearly basis is no indication of her wish to have those children. She was operating under conditions of extreme depression when she allowed more pregnancies.

No one heard her, or maybe she wasn't socially allowed to say the words she needed to say. I wouldn't be the first one in there to condemn her. If her depression is ever cleared up, she may suffer devastating horror that no one can help her with.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

Sick -- yes, depression is an illness, and post-partum depression is an especially difficult expression of it for many people to understand.

My heart goes out to all of them, and their friends, family and neighbours who are struggling to understand this horror.

-- Anonymous, June 21, 2001

Helen, yes, that was pretty much my reaction.

-- Anonymous, June 21, 2001