Local News

WASHINGTON (WJZ/AP) ― A woman found in her home Wednesday with the decomposing bodies of four girls believed to be her children faces murder charges in their deaths, authorities said Thursday.

Banita Jacks, 33, was expected to appear Thursday afternoon in District of Columbia Superior Court, where the charges will be formally presented, prosecutors said. Jacks, who faces four counts of felony murder, could receive a maximum sentence of life in prison.

"I don't think anyone in the city can remember a case involving this many young people who have died in such a tragic way," Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said.

Police Chief Cathy Lanier said authorities were operating on the assumption that the girls were Jacks' children, ages 5, 6, 11, and 17.

Sally Thorner reports the bodies were found Wednesday morning by U.S. Marshals, who arrived at the home in southeast Washington to serve an eviction notice. They found the badly decomposing bodies on the second floor of a small, two-story brick building after a routine search.

Medical examiner Dr. Marie-Lydie Pierre-Louis said the bodies were likely there more than 15 days, "based on the insects that were found there."

How the girls died remained under investigation, but Pierre-Louis said it appeared the oldest child might have been stabbed in the abdomen. The other three children might have been poisoned or asphyxiated. The medical examiner's office was working with the Smithsonian Institution to see if they could help identify the girls using dental records or DNA, she said.

Lloyd Nolan Jr., an attorney listed at the courthouse for Jacks, did not immediately return a telephone call from The Associated Press seeking comment.

City officials were scrambling to understand how four children could have been dead for at least two weeks without anyone knowing.

D.C. Council Member Tommy Wells, who chairs the committee on human services, immediately scheduled a hearing for Friday on the matter.

However, on Thursday, his office said it would be postponed until early next week to give officials a chance to compile the information.

Mindy Good, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Child and Family Services agency, said Wednesday that the agency had received one report about a family at that address in April through the city's child abuse and neglect reporting hot line.

"We made several attempts to make contact with these people. We were unable to have any face-to-face contact with them," Good said. "On the last attempt (in early May), it appeared they were no longer living at the address."

Good said investigators later found a new address for the family in Maryland and alerted county authorities there of the report on the family. She would not say where the family was believed to be living.

The mayor said Thursday that officials were working to determine what other contacts city agencies had with the family and pledged to update the public Friday.

"We are going to investigate every single contact that this family has had with the government, with people who are paid to look out for the welfare of children, and we will come back with a full report," Fenty said. "We will let everybody know very candidly what was done and whether it was done to community standards and professional standards, and if it was not, there will be a high degree of accountability."

Nona Richardson, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said Jacks' three younger daughters attended the Meridian Public Charter School consistently until March 2, 2007. When they stopped showing up, Richardson said the school immediately tried to contact the mother by mail and telephone. Officials finally went to the woman's home and the woman told a school official that she wanted to withdraw the children and home-school them. They were officially withdrawn on March 15, 2007.

Richardson said D.C. education officials were notified about the withdrawal at the end of the school year, in accordance with procedures.

D.C. schools spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said none of the children thought to be living in the home was enrolled in the public school system. One child at that address had attended Stuart-Hobson Elementary School but withdrew in 2006 as a fifth-grader, she said.

D.C. Council member Marion Barry, who represents the neighborhood where the bodies were found, said officials needed to consider "tightening up our school attendance laws."

Fenty said Thursday that besides at least one contact with child welfare officials, the family had at least one contact with D.C. police.

According to D.C. Superior Court records, Jacks was arrested and charged in January 2007 with driving an unregistered vehicle. In February, she paid a $175 fine and the case was dismissed.

Larry Jones, who lives next door, said a woman and two or three children lived at the home but he had not seen them since the summer. He said the children appeared healthy at the time. Jones added that in recent months he has noticed a "strange odor" coming through his vent. "We thought it was probably dead mice in the vent or something," he said.

The home where the bodies were found is in one of the city's poorest areas on a block of virtually identical plain brick rowhouses near Bolling Air Force Base.

Area resident Rowand Simpkins said her neighbors tend to keep to themselves and that she never saw the woman or children.

"It's really a mystery," she said of the deaths. "It's a sad situation."

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