9 months after shootings, wife and 3 kids still unclaimed
By JAMES PINKERTON Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Jan. 31, 2009, 12:23AM

Last spring, at his run-down, secluded northeast Houston home, immigrant Salvador Perez Alfaro, for reasons known only to himself, shot his wife and three children before killing himself.

Today, Alfaro is buried in the family plot at the cemetery in his home town in El Salvador, but the four spaces next to him, reserved for his family, are empty.

Nine months after the shooting, the bodies of his wife, whose true identity may still be a mystery, and his children — ages 3, 5 and 6 — remain unclaimed, stored in the refrigerated morgue at the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office while authorities attempt to locate the wife's relatives.

The nine-month delay has saddened immigrant advocates in Houston, shocked Alfaro's family, and illustrates the difficulties often encountered by authorities when immigrants in Houston die or are murdered, but their next of kin are thousands of miles away.

And it also provides a glimpse into the netherworld in which many immigrants live, especially when not all of the family are in the country legally. Alfaro and his wife were both legal residents at one time, but their temporary protective status as Salvadorans had expired, according to their Houston immigration attorney.

Alfaro and his family lived private lives, known only to the few neighbors who sometimes glimpsed the father giving his children pony rides near their house.

It took police and investigators weeks to establish Alfaro's identity after the killings last May, and even longer for them to trace his family to San Bartolemeo, a suburb of San Salvador.

In August, his body was flown home for burial. His family told authorities they could not afford to fly the mother and children to El Salvador, but would reserve space at the cemetery for them.

Alfaro's family said that until contacted by the Houston Chronicle this week, they assumed his slain wife, identified by Harris County officials as Estela Marilu Quintanilla, and the three children — Jay, Ivy and Claire — had been claimed by the wife's family and given a proper burial.

They also said Alfaro's wife, whom they never met, was apparently using the same name as one of his nieces who lives in El Salvador.

"We thought they had already been buried," said Neri Rodriguez, 30, a niece. "Really, they are still there? How barbarous. Why haven't they found her relatives?"

Nelson Reyes, director of the Central American Refugee Center in Houston, said authorities should make it a priority to get the rest of the family buried.

"They are human beings, and they have a right to a traditional burial, like it should be done ... because they were victims," Reyes said.

Reyes said the legal, health and financial requirements to return a body to an immigrant's homeland often make the process complex.

"When someone from another nation dies in the United States, it's a logistical problem to return the body,'' Reyes said. "First, because the preparation of body is difficult, and second due to the cost. You might not have the money at hand, and you are talking about thousands of dollars."

The delay in the Alfaro case, explained Chief Medical Investigator Beverly Begay, is due to the inability of government officials to locate the next of kin of the wife, whom they have identified through fingerprints as Estela Marilu Quintanilla.

"We're trying to locate the legal family of the remaining decedents, and we're working with the El Salvadorean Consulate to locate any family members," Begay said. "They have to be located first in order for them to be notified of their loved ones' death."

Begay said details of the case have been given to news outlets in Latin America.

"The difficulty lies with trying to locate family from another country, when we don't know who they are. But with the assistance of the Spanish media, hopefully we can find family members," she said.


Wrong path

But authorities may be searching for the wrong woman in the wrong country, since Alfaro's wife was apparently using the name of one of her husband's nieces.

When contacted Thursday, the niece confirmed she learned last year her uncle's wife was using her identity in the United States.

"I learned about it when I read the papers about my uncle," said Quintanilla. "It said I had died in Houston."

The murder-suicide also shocked the family's few neighbors where Alfaro, a day-laborer who specialized in roofing, had erected a rough, fenced compound behind an imposing metal gate. Houston police found Alfaro dead in the doorway of the home, and his wife and children dead inside.

Neighbors and merchants at a nearby Latino grocery market said the family kept to themselves — the eldest child had just graduated from kindergarten — and that Alfaro appeared devoted to the children.

One neighbor said he spoke with Alfaro shortly before his death and said he was upset about his financial situation, but declined an offer of food. Another neighbor recalled an earlier incident in which she translated a letter explaining why a contractor refused to pay Alfaro for a large amount of construction work.


Seeking assistance

Alfaro's body was shipped home to El Salvador on Aug. 10 by Esperanza Funeral Home after his family paid $2,995, said owner Bono Pulido. He said a number of people believe Alfaro's wife may actually be from Mexico, but no one knows for sure.

"The wife was using the name of one of the relatives of the deceased, and her paperwork, here in Houston," Pulido said. "That's where the dilemma comes up, and that's probably why they haven't released (the body). They don't know who the woman is."

Quintanilla, Alfaro's niece, said the family told El Salvadorean representatives they were willing to bury Alfaro's wife and children next to him in a local cemetery, if repatriation costs could be taken care of. They have not heard back from officials and stressed they never met Alfaro's wife and don't know her true identity.

"We didn't have the money for all five, we barely were able to gather the money for our uncle," Quintanilla said.

Pulido, the funeral home owner, said he would be willing to work with state crime victim's program to get the money to ship the wife and children to El Salvador, or bury them here.

"Lets just get their bodies out of there," Pulido said. "Lets get them buried or repatriated or whatever we need to get done just to give them some dignity in their death."

But there is a chance Alfaro's wife will never be properly identified, that the spaces in the El Salvador cemetery will remain empty and that she and her three children will end up in a pauper's grave.

"If the press release doesn't yield results, and there have been no inquiries, we have no choice but to refer them to Harris County for indigent burial," Begay said.

james.pinkerton@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hot ... 39795.html