Dad, 4 young kids cops say mother stabbed to death identified

ATLANTA -- A woman charged with killing four of her young children and their father was due in court Friday, a day after police say she stabbed the five to death and seriously injured another child at a home outside Atlanta.

Authorities in Georgia charged 33-year-old Isabel Martinez on Thursday with five counts of malice murder, five counts of murder and six counts of aggravated assault, hours after police said she called 911 to report the killings from the home the family shared.

A fifth child, a 9-year-old girl, survived but remained hospitalized with injuries described by police as serious.

The hospitalized girl, Diana Romero, was in serious but stable condition Thursday evening, police said in a brief update on the case.

The four children killed were identified as Isabela Martinez, 10; Dacota Romero, 7; Dillan Romero, 4; and Axel Romero, 2. Their slain father was Martin Romero, 33, Gwinnett County Police Cpl. Michele Pihera said.

Neighbor Letty Perez told CBS Atlanta affiliate WGCL-TV Martinez had recently lost her father and the family had only lived in the home for about a month after moving to Georgia from Illinois.

"She says her dad passed away months ago," said Perez. "I think she was in a depression. You can tell when somebody doesn't like their kids. They will scream or yell but she wasn't like that. She was a nice mom."

Other neighbors in the small, largely Hispanic neighborhood said they had no clue anything was amiss in the home until police mobbed the scene Thursday morning. The neighbors said the Spanish-speaking family had moved to the community recently, and their children seemed happy playing with other neighborhood kids.

"What prompts a person to take the life of such innocent children and her spouse is something we may never understand," Gwinnett County police said in a statement. "This is a horrendous crime not only for the victims but for the extended family, neighborhood and community."

Psychologists and others who study cases of mothers accused of killing their children say it's not as uncommon as people might believe. But media coverage often focuses on dramatic cases, such as Andrea Yates, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the 2001 drowning deaths of her five children.

Other cases get less attention, as when a woman kills a newborn or in children's deaths blamed on neglect, said Cheryl Meyer, co-author of two books on mothers who have killed children based on about 1,000 cases during the 1990s.

That amounts to one death every three days. If anything, the total based on media reports at the time underestimates the reality, said Meyer, a psychology professor at Wright State University in Ohio.

In cases when mothers kill intentionally, Meyer said there is often another influence, such as mental health issues, postpartum depression or the loss of a close loved one. Yates' attorneys, for instance, said she had severe postpartum psychosis at the time she drowned her children, including her 6-month-old daughter.

"We like to classify these women as pariahs, that they aren't at all like us," Meyer said. "I found that was not the case."

Isabel Martinez was "immediately" detained after the bodies were found inside the home in Loganville, about 30 miles east of Atlanta, Pihera told reporters at the scene Thursday morning. Authorities haven't said if Martinez was injured and or discussed a motive.

"Right now we believe we have everybody involved in this crime," Pihera said.

Pihera confirmed that the 911 call came from a woman who was inside the home at 4:47 a.m. Thursday to report a stabbing. Police believe Martinez made that call.

Pihera said the caller was speaking Spanish, which initially made it difficult for 911 operators to communicate with her. The county sheriff's office said Martinez is on a hold for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement but didn't provide further details.

Early indications are that a knife was used to attack the five, though a medical examiner will make the final determination about the cause of death, she said.

One 2014 analysis of FBI data found there are around 500 cases per year of parents arrested for killing their children. The study found that contact weapons such as a bat or edged weapons such as knives were rarely used in the cases studied. Beating, choking and drowning were most common.

It's also unusual for a woman to kill an entire family rather than her children alone, Meyer said, adding that she couldn't think of a single comparable case.

Jim Hollandsworth is spokesman at The Path Project, a nonprofit organization that runs an after-school program that the family's children participated in. He said the family had been in the community for a few months. While the children spoke English as a second language, he said, they were fluent.

"It's awful. It's devastating. Everyone is in complete shock," he said. "The kids were engaged in what we're doing. They were happy. They were fantastic kids with a bright future."