Elkhart woman charged with killing her 4 children

ELKHART, Ind. -- A prosecutor is considering seeking the death penalty against a mother charged with strangling her four young children.\nAngelica Alvarez, 27, of Elkhart, was ordered to be jailed without bond on four counts of murder during a court hearing held Wednesday just hours after she was released from Elkhart General Hospital. She had been in the hospital since being found unconscious with a faint pulse Nov. 14 next to the bodies of her children, ages 2 to 8.\nElkhart County Prosecutor Curtis Hall called the case one of the worst he could recall because four children from the same family were killed.\n"That is particularly troubling, and I think a circumstance of this nature requires an appropriate response," he said.\nAuthorities allege that Alvarez strangled her children, Jennifer Lopez, 8, Gonzalo Lopez, 6, Daniel Valdez, 4, and Jessica Valdez, 2. Fernando Valdez, the father of the two youngest and Alvarez's husband, came home from work and found their bodies in the basement of their home in Elkhart, 15 miles east of South Bend. The charges came a day after 300 people attended the children's funeral.\nHill would not give specifics on how the children were killed and does not know whether investigators have a theory on motive, saying Indiana law does not require it to try the case.\n"I don't think there's anybody on this earth that can suggest to me a reason for killing children. So I'm not too concerned about what motive might be there," he said at a news conference.\nHill said he would not describe the case as a murder-suicide attempt.\n"I would not consider this as anything other than a murder at this time," he said.\nElkhart Circuit Judge Terry Shewmaker ordered Alvarez be jailed without bond and that she be examined to make sure she is competent to stand trial. Hill said earlier he had no reason to believe she wasn't.\nGonzalo Lopez, father of the two oldest children, has said Alvarez was depressed after losing her job and had been hospitalized for 12 days. Officials at Norco Industries, where Alvarez had worked as a housekeeper for three years, said she quit in mid-September.\nLopez earlier told the South Bend Tribune that he met Alvarez in Mexico and that they lived in Lazaro Cardenas, a port city in the state of Michoacan. A decade ago, Lopez and Alvarez moved to Goshen, Ind., a town near Elkhart, where Lopez had family.\nShewmaker asked Alvarez through a translator Wednesday at the courthouse in Goshen whether she was in the country legally. She said no. A pretrial hearing was scheduled for Dec. 21.\nHill said the Mexican consulate has been in touch with his office about Alvarez and said U.S. immigration officials also have inquired about the case. He said her citizenship status was not a concern.\n"I don't think that really matters," he said. "I don't care if she is an American citizen; I don't care if she's a Mexican national; I don't much care if she is from the planet Mars. When you commit a murder of a child in Elkhart County, you will commit a steep price"