(no subject)
RESNO, Calif., March 13 - The police said Saturday that a Fresno man, Marcus D. Wesson, would be charged with murdering nine of his children, a crime so gruesome and distressing that police officers wept at the sight of the bodies.
On Friday, the police found six female and three male bodies in Mr. Wesson's home in a middle-class neighborhood. Three of the children were 1 year old and four others were younger than 9. The other two were a 17-year-old girl and a 24-year-old woman, the police said.
Chief Jerry Dyer of the Fresno police said investigators had an idea of how the nine were killed, but he refused to disclose their theory. The bodies were found in one small bedroom, some of them in a pile.
"This is the worst mass murder we've ever had," Chief Dyer said.
The police and neighbors on Saturday described the household as reclusive and given to unusual behavior. Neighbors told the police that Mr. Wesson lived with and had children by several women and appeared to have the women under his control, sometimes pulling them by their hair, Chief Dyer said. The women wore black dresses; the children were rarely seen outside.
Patrick Collazo, 44, said Mr. Wesson would never talk to him or other neighbors. "You were lucky to get a wave out of them," Mr. Collazo said. But Mr. Collazo said he saw the women come out at 11 p.m. each night to rake pine needles on the lawn.
The police said they were looking into reports that the family practiced polygamy and that there had been incest. Two of Mr. Wesson's slain daughters were children he had fathered with other daughters, the chief said.
"We are trying to determine if it is a cult, a sect, a different belief system or something else," he said.
Lt. Art Alvarado of the Fresno police said that officers were dispatched to Mr. Wesson's neighborhood around 2:15 p.m. on Friday for a child-custody issue. When they arrived, two women said they had been trying to pick up their children from Mr. Wesson's house.
At first, Mr. Wesson was cooperative and told the officers that he would release the children,
Lieutenant Alvarado said. "But during conversation he reneged and he ran into the bedroom and locked them out," he said.
The women told the police that Mr. Wesson had a firearm, so the police called in negotiators and a SWAT team.
Several neighbors said they heard yelling and screaming just before the police arrived, and one person reported hearing gunshots, the police said. Barbara Alec, 61, who lives next door, said she saw two women run from the home and faint.
"All I heard her say is, `It wasn't supposed to happen this way,' " Ms. Alec said of one of the women.
The police surrounded the house for more than an hour.
"During the wait, police didn't hear anything, no screaming or yelling," Lieutenant Alvarado said.
Then Mr. Wesson came out and surrendered. Officers saw stains on Mr. Wesson that looked like blood, the lieutenant said. The police then detained Mr. Wesson and searched the house.
They discovered a pile of bodies in one room and 10 coffins of various sizes in another, the police said. Mr. Wesson was then arrested on suspicion of homicide.
Because the room was so small and the bodies were piled up, it took several hours for investigators to count them all, the police said.
"There were several officers, including myself, that shed some tears at the scene, especially when the children were removed," Chief Dyer said. "It was very disturbing."
Robert Hensel, the chief deputy coroner of Fresno County, said that identifying the bodies was hard "because some of them are so young, we have no fingerprints" on record.
Chief Dyer said Mr. Wesson was cooperating and seemed intelligent and "very articulate."
Another of Mr. Wesson's children, Serafino Wesson, 19, went to the home on Saturday to collect some of his belongings.
Serafino Wesson said he had left the home on Friday morning and did not know of any problems until he went past the house in the afternoon and saw the police surrounding it.
"My nine brothers and sisters are dead and they say he did it," Serafino Wesson said. "I find it hard to believe. He's such a good guy."
He said his father collected the coffins as antiques. The police said Mr. Wesson might have intended to use the wood for furniture.
Serafino Wesson said he was "very, very close" to his father and loved having such a large family. "It was very nice," he said. "It was the way a family should be."
Courtesy of The New York Times