Photo by Associated Press Pedro Rodriguez, left, grandfather of Vanessa Rodriguez, waits next to her coffin outside the Comalapa International Airport in El Salvador on Wednesday.

The remains of Vanessa Rodriguez, 4, and her 1-year-old sister, Carena, arrived on a commercial flight that landed at El Salvador's international airport, just south of the capital, San Salvador.

Government official Elizabeth Quintanilla said family members of the victims were waiting for the remains of two siblings, Elsa, 9, and Angel, 3, as well as the body of their father, Pedro Rodriguez, 28, who hanged himself in the same house. Officials found the five bodies on March 26 at the family's three-bedroom townhome in Frederick .

Ana Margarita Chavez, the Salvadoran consulate general in Washington, said the bodies were sent on three separate flights, with the last flight expected to arrive by Wednesday evening.

Pedro's parents, Rosa and Pedro Rodriguez, received Vanessa and Carena's bodies from authorities, then threw themselves over the small coffins in grief.

"This is the saddest moment of my life," Rosa said between sobs. "Thank God the bodies are finally here and will get a Christian burial."

The children's mother, Deysi Benitez, is on the FBI's national list of missing persons. On Wednesday, Benitez's mother, Maria Quinteros, said her daughter wasn't involved in the killings.

"I don't think she could have committed such a horrendous thing," Quinteros said. "If they can't find her, it's because she's also dead."

Autopsies showed that the three girls were suffocated and Angel, the boy, was bludgeoned to death. Authorities have declined to say who may have killed the children.

The five bodies will be buried in the family's Salvadoran hometown of Sensuntepeque, 60 miles northeast of the capital. Mayor Edgar Bonilla said the city, which has a population of about 17,000, was paying the funeral costs.

Typically, a burial in El Salvador costs about $1,000 per person, but the family will not have to pay anything, Chavez said. Even fees for the land in the city-owned cemetery will not be charged.

The Salvadoran government and members of the Salvadoran community in Maryland helped pay to ship the bodies home.

Relatives and co-workers have said the family struggled with English and financial difficulties and that the marriage was troubled.

The parents and their oldest daughter were legal immigrants from El Salvador, while the three other children were born in the United States.

Rodriguez learned March 15 that he would lose his factory job at a door-manufacturing plant scheduled to close in July. Benitez worked in a restaurant kitchen.