Rosa Rodriguez, mother of Pedro Rodriguez, foreground, sits with family members and neighbors during a traditional Novenario ceremony. Photo by Angel Iraheta

The photo is the only way she will ever see them smiling. It is the only one she has.

Three of the Rodriguez children -- Vanessa, 4; Angel, 3; and Carena, 1, -- were born in the United States after her son Pedro Rodriguez and his wife, Deysi Benitez, emigrated from El Salvador. The oldest daughter, Elsa, 9, was a toddler when she left.

Rosa Rodriguez received the lone photo several days after learning the children had been murdered in their Frederick townhouse. Pedro Rodriguez, 28, hanged himself in the same house.

Benitez has been missing since March 18.

Rosa had expected to see the children this year. Pedro and Benitez had planned to bring the children for their first visit since they left El Salvador almost six years ago.

A neighbor of Benitez's family hiked up the winding dirt path to Rosa's cinderblock house in the mountains to tell the Rodriguez family about the deaths.

When she heard the news, Rosa fell to her knees and cried, "how will I go on," she said.

On Sunday she stood in front of the altar, her hands clasped across her stomach as she stared at her grandchildren's photo, sandwiched between two photos of her son.

While she talked, relatives and neighbors set up rows of orange, blue and green plastic lawn chairs.

A neighbor strummed a guitar as the group of about 20 people knelt on the mud floor. They prayed and sang for the third day since the bodies were entombed nearby in the city of Sensuntepeqe's only cemetery. They will repeat the ceremony, known as Novenario, for the next six days. The Salvadoran Catholic tradition is performed so that the souls of the dead find peace.

Rosa Rodriguez blames her daughter-in-law for her son's death.

In December, on one of the rare times she spoke with him on the phone, he told her that if he died it would be because of martial problems.

Pedro told her Benitez would go out with other men, leaving him at home to watch the children.

"'I am the mother and the father,'" she said he told her.

Benitez created a rift in the family, often preventing Rosa from speaking on the phone with her son and grandchildren, she said. Pedro emigrated to the U.S. nine years ago. During his first three years, when he lived in California, he would send money to his mother. After Benitez joined him in 2001, the money stopped coming, Rosa said.

Pedro had brothers in Los Angeles, but the couple moved to Maryland because Benitez wanted to be near friends, Rosa said.

One of 13 children, Pedro was born in October 1978. He had a twin brother, Pablo, who died of bronchitis nine months later.

As a child, Pedro was obedient and hard working, Rosa said.

His sister, Maria Dolores Rodriguez, 32, remembers playing tops and other games with Pedro as they walked two hours to and from school each day.

Pedro stopped attending school at age 14 to work as a farmer, cultivating beans and avocados. When he announced that he wanted to emigrate, Maria worried what would happen to him on the journey.

"He suffered on the way," she said softly.

When asked what she would want other people to know about her brother, she stood silently for several minutes.

"I can't answer," she said as she touched her forehead with her fingers. "It is hard."