Distraught mom 'poisoned kids'

2006-01-31 10:02

De Queen - A woman accused of murdering her three children was distraught over the break-up of her marriage and might have fed the youngsters pesticide before smothering them, said police on Monday.

Eleazar Paula Mendez, 43, pleaded innocent to three counts of murder and was jailed without bail and placed under a suicide watch. The judge also ordered a psychological evaluation.

Prosecutor Tom Cooper said Mendez said that she tried to kill herself on Friday by swallowing ant poison. She said the children saw her take the pesticide and asked her to kill them, too.

According to Cooper, Mendez told investigators: "I blessed them and then I suffocated them."

Kid's bodies sent crime lab

Cooper said he believed Mendez poisoned the children before suffocating them, but he questioned other parts of her account. The children's bodies were sent to the state crime lab for autopsies.

Police found seven-year-old Elvis and five-year-old twins Samantha and Samuel side-by-side on a bed in their home on Saturday after a call from the children's worried father, Arturo Morales, 37, who lived in New York.

The prosecutor said Mendez had left a note in Spanish saying she could not go on without her husband. Elsewhere in the house, authorities discovered four cups on a table near a container of ant poison.

Police chief Richard McKinley said: "It looked like they had been drinking some hot chocolate. We also found nearby some poisoning. The poisoning was called Tempo. It was an insecticide poisoning. We also found, right by that, a mixing glass."

Safe environment

He said the mixing glass and the cups were also sent to a lab for tests.

Mendez had moved to the small Arkansas town about a year ago to give the children a safer environment, but her husband could not make a living and returned to New York to work.

McKinley said he was supposed to visit the family in Arkansas during the Christmas holiday, but he didn't show up, so Mendez took the children to New York. He said during the visit, Morales asked for a divorce.

Morales met with police on Monday after travelling to Arkansas. McKinley said: "He's having a hard time making sense of everything."

Prosecutors had the option of pursuing the death penalty.

- AP