Haunting similarity to Texas case

But in a tiny town in northern Texas, one longtime lawman has.

It has been more than a dozen years since Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler walked into a mobile home 25 miles west of Fort Worth where three girls and their 25-year-old mother were found dead, hanging from a clothes rack in a closet. A fourth child, an 8-month-old baby, survived when a neighbor, the mother’s sister, forced her way inside and freed her.

“The baby lived,” Fowler remembered in an interview with The Morning Call. “She was really light, didn’t weigh much.”

Much like the Berks County deaths, the May 2007 killings in Hudson Oaks, Texas, garnered national headlines as the community and law enforcement tried to make sense of it all.

“I never did figure out why,” Fowler said. “Nobody ever told me why she would have done that. That kind of haunts you in a way. Looking at a scene like that and there’s just no rhyme or reason to it.”

According to published reports, Gilberta Estrada, the mother, had recently left an abusive relationship and moved into the mobile home with her four girls, ages 5, 3, 2 and 8 months.

Those who knew her described her as being depressed and struggling to raise her family, according to published reports.

Fowler called the scene “horrendous” and said he wishes he could never think about it again.

Household items, mostly clothing from the closet, were used to hang the children. The family was all hanging in a 10-foot wide closet. The mother was kneeling down and leaning forward, her feet not even off the ground.

“She did it long enough that she passed out and she ultimately died in that position,” Fowler recalled.

Fowler has read about the Berks County hangings. He said he’s troubled wondering how 8-year-old Conner ended up with the wire around his neck, a dining room chair knocked on its side near him.

In the Texas killings, Fowlers said, the victims were really small. But Conner was about 150 pounds and apparently capable of resistance.

Toxicology reports showed that neither Conner not Brinley had drugs in their system, Berks County authorities have said. At a news conference announcing Snyder’s arrest, Adams said he couldn’t comment on whether the children were injured prior to being hanged, or if they put up a struggle.

That’s another unanswered question.