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Photo by Bill Green
Todd Johnson, left and Peter Gorelick, both members of the Frederick County Swift Water Rescue team, probe through the muddy waters of a ponds off McCain Drive Thursday afternoon. The pond is located near the townhouse where five bodies were discovered earlier this week. |
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Frederick -- With no leads or tips to go on, Frederick police are desperate for clues that might lead them to Deysi Benitez, 25, whose husband and four children were found dead in their home Monday. "There's nothing here. She has vanished and she has vanished for a couple of reasons," said Lt. Tom Chase of the Frederick Police Department. "She's vanished because she was killed, or she vanished because she chose to." Two bodies were found Wednesday evening in Baltimore and Anne Arundel Counties, but neither was Benitez, Chase said. A search of the David Park pond, across from the couple's townhouse at 1252 Danielle Drive, yielded nothing, according to Peter Gorelick, with the Frederick County Swift Water Rescue Task Force. He and another searcher probed the pond's murky brown water for nearly three hours Thursday afternoon as neighbors looked on, afraid of what the men might find. Charles Harvey and his wife Wanda, who live in an adjacent Hillcrest neighborhood, were surprised police waited until Thursday to search the pond. "You would think considering the pond is directly diagonal from where their house is É--I would've checked here first, like Tuesday morning," Charles Harvey said. Chase said officials searched the water only because it was close to the house; they have no plans to probe other waters unless a specific tip comes in. "We're going to pursue all avenues to shake a lead loose, because we're getting nothing," Chase said. Benitez was last seen by a neighbor on March 18, two days after her oldest children, Elsa, 9, and Vanessa, 4, last attended Hillcrest Elementary School. The girls were picked up by their father, Pedro Rodriguez, 28, who one day earlier learned he was losing his job at Masonite International Corporation, a door manufacturer near Frederick . Police towed away the couple's three vehicles Thursday to conduct additional forensic analysis, Chase said. The white Nissan Sentra, green Dodge Caravan and burgundy Mercury Villager had been parked outside the townhouse for several days prior to the discovery of the bodies, according to neighbors.
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