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In the lone cemetery in Sensuntepeque, El Salvador, the remains of Deysi Benitez are at rest. On April 16, authorities from El Salvador's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with financial aid from the Maryland Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, delivered Benitez's body back to her mother and sisters. Angela Benitez and Elmi Benitez, two of Benitez's sisters, joined her mother, Carmen Odilia Quinteros, at an airport outside of San Salvador, where they would begin the somber procession back to their hometown for a funeral. About 70 family and friends, carrying flowers and colorful paper wreaths, cried and prayed as they followed the hearse carrying the remains of the 25-year-old. In early April, after Frederick authorities identified the remains, Angela Benitez said she was relieved her sister would be buried next to her children where she belongs. March 26 marked the one-year anniversary of the day Benitez's husband Pedro Rodriguez , 28, and the couple's four children, Elsa, 9, Vanessa, 4, Angel, 3, and Carena, 1, were found dead in their Danielle Drive townhouse. But questions lingering about the investigation still troubled family members. "We don't want vengeance, but we want to know who killed her and how she died," Angela Benitez said on the day of the funeral. Quinteros said, "My daughter was killed. She was taken from me, and that hurts." Last month, Elmi Benitez said she hoped someone from the family could return to Frederick and gather some of Benitez's and the children's belongings, and to see the place where she lived and died. Discovering a tragedy In March 2007, the Frederick Police Department was called after a liaison worker from Hillcrest Elementary School received no answer upon going to the residence after Elsa and Vanessa had not been at school in several days. Since Officer First Class Chris Herman with the Community Services Division often visited the school of 600 pupils, he was asked to check the house. "We go to these a lot when somebody hasn't seen someone for awhile," Herman said. "Most of the time they are nothing." After talking with neighbors, he realized the family was out of its normal routine. He received no response when he knocked on the door and called the house phone. Before an officer enters a home to do a welfare check, another officer must be there. Officer First Class Marvin Cox answered the call to help Herman. When going to any call, Cox said, "I always expect the unexpected." The doors were locked, but they found a window on the bottom floor that was closed but unlocked. The family had not been seen in about a week. When the officers opened the window, they were overwhelmed by the smell. The lights were on; so was the heat. Because they did not know what they were walking into, each level and room had to be checked. After searching the first floor, they found Rodriguez hanged by a yellow rope tied to the second-floor banister. They notified headquarters of the death, then moved on to the bedrooms where they found the children dead in beds with comforters placed over them. Sgt. Wade Brown, now with the community services division, was in charge of the patrol squad on duty when the family was found. He said it gives him chills just thinking about when the officers told headquarters that they had five fatalities. Detective Sgt. Bruce DeGrange was busy getting evidence from a bank robbery on East Patrick Street when he heard over his police radio that at least five bodies had been discovered in a townhouse. "I thought, 'Did I hear him right?'" DeGrange said. He immediately contacted dispatchers to find out what was going on, asked several officers to stay at the robbery and headed to Danielle Drive. Once inside, investigators saw that there was no forced entry or sign of a struggle, DeGrange said. There was also nothing really out of the ordinary in the home. They believed the person who committed the crime was "highly involved with the children." In early April 2007, police determined Rodriguez killed his children. The girls died from suffocation while Angel died from blunt force trauma to the head, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Rodriguez's death was ruled a suicide. Rodriguez had recently found out he would be out of a job soon. The Frederick-based door manufacturing company that employed him, Masonite International Corp., was scheduled to close in several months. The search for Deysi After evidence was collected and the bodies were taken out of the home, the search began for Benitez, who was last seen by a neighbor March 18, 2007. A pond near the townhouse was drained and searched. Nothing was found. An FBI official questioned her relatives in Sensuntepeque. They had not heard from her. Other agencies, including the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a Maryland missing persons agency and the Salvadoran Consulate, were brought in to help find her. Her picture appeared on regional television channels, in area newspapers and even on CBS's "Without A Trace" and Fox's "America's Most Wanted." No one had seen her. The department checked every lead and tip for more than a year, DeGrange said. "There was no place left to look for her," he said. "We looked every place we could and basically came up empty." Police thought there was a possibility she could be alive and somewhere in Central America. There were several unconfirmed sightings of Benitez. A distant relative said she fled to Central America with a friend and was in counseling after learning of the deaths. The relative later denied knowing Benitez's whereabouts. Every time a body was found in the area, the department was called to see if it might be Benitez, DeGrange said. Their trips were in vain until Feb. 29, when the cold case was revived. A real estate agent surveying a wooded property near Saint Anthony's and Helmer roads in Emmitsburg found skeletal remains belonging to a young Hispanic woman. The woman was believed to have been about 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed between 125 and 140 pounds, which fit the description posted under Benitez's FBI missing person description. The remains had been at the site for almost a year and were found 18 days shy of the year anniversary since Benitez was last seen. On April 2, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner identified the remains as Benitez's through DNA testing. Investigators believe it was a domestic homicide and the cause of death was asphyxiation. DeGrange said during a press conference there was no indication that anyone else was involved in her death beside Rodriguez. As of May, no new information had been released about the investigation, said Cpl. Jennifer Bailey of the sheriff's office. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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