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Sisters speak out about siblings found dead in storage area
| Thursday, Sep 4 2008 10:57 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Sep 5 2008 7:10 AM
The trash container pulled from a storage shed had Tricia Reyes’ favorite blanket on top, a red and blue one with squares. Sticking out by the blanket was a boney hand.
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Vanessa and Tanya Reyes remember when Child Protective Services came to their neighborhood to get a 1-year-old boy who was locked in a feces-coated closet for three days.
It was right next door, they said.
Television reports have said a Reyes family member was involved in the December 2003 case on Crane Street. But in fact, it was Eliana Espinoza, not the Reyes family who was charged with felony child abuse, according to The Bakersfield Californian coverage.
CPS only visited the house when Alicia Reyes was given custody of her children after she was released from serving time in jail, the siblings said.
Photos:
Victor and Tricia Reyes on Victor's birthday, July 21, 2004. (Photo courtesy of family)
Her sisters, Vanessa and Tanya Reyes, suspected what else was inside the container.
Then sheriff’s investigators said there was a smaller container in the shed with human remains.
“We just had a feeling,” Tanya Reyes, 19, said in an interview Thursday. “If it wasn’t them, it was a big coincidence. It’s just crazy. They were missing for four years.”
Tricia and Victor Reyes would have been 16 and 15 today. But on Aug. 15, their bodies were discovered by a family friend trying to retrieve a dining room set the alleged killer never handed over. The suspect: their mother, Alicia Valadez.
On Thursday, the two sisters spoke for the first time in detail about their lost siblings and their mother.
FAMILY LIFE
Tricia loved sports, especially track and running, said Vanessa, 20, and Tanya Reyes.
“She was the athletic little girl,” Tanya said. “She was fun. She was cool.”
Victor, the only boy in a family with seven siblings, was the “funniest of us all,” Tanya said. And he was smart — getting straight A’s in school, they said.
“He was always making faces and making us laugh,” Tanya said. “Mom would say he was the man of the house.”
Family life was good for the most part, they said.
“There was nothing that we needed that we didn’t have,” Tanya said. “She always fed us. The kids always went to school. They were always clean.”
MOVING AROUND
When Alicia Valadez — other documents show she went by the name Alecia and numerous aliases — went to jail in 1996 for possession of a controlled substance, according to court records, the kids were sent to live with their grandmother in Los Angeles. There they were physically abused by their grandmother, they said.
But Alicia would visit them often when she was released from jail, and took them to many places, including Disneyland, they said.
The children called Child Protective Services on their grandmother when the abuse was too much, and they were released back to their mother.
They lived on Mt. Vernon Avenue first, then moved into bigger home on Height Street. Then a bigger house on the 700 block of Crane Street became available around March 2004.
It was there that things started to change for the family. Alicia was doing heroin, they said. She started yelling at the kids.
“She started to hit Tricia,” Tanya said.
Then Tricia disappeared, they said, and they moved. She had been sent to Mexico, their mother said.
They stayed at a place on Hill Street. Then Victor disappeared seven months after Tricia, they said, and they moved to Potomac Avenue. He was sent to Victorville, their mother would tell them.
But the story changed. Alicia Valadez would say he was in Delano and Tehachapi as well, they said.
Alicia would lock herself in a room and say she was on the phone with the children.
“We would ask if we could talk to them, and she just got mad,” Tanya said.
It wasn’t until this year when they found out why she was upset when they asked.
NEXT TO MOM
Alicia Valadez was taken to the hospital the day after Christmas last year. She died on Jan. 3 at 41 from symptoms usually seen from drug use, the coroner’s office said.
“If she knew she was going to die, she would have told us, I think,” Tanya said. “She had to have known they would find out either way.”
The sisters suspect there might have been someone else involved in the deaths.
Detectives are investigating that possibility, but Alicia has been officially named the “primary suspect.” The cause of the siblings’ death has not been determined.
The family is mulling laying the children next to their mother’s grave.
“It was a mistake,” Tanya said of the murders, saying they were drug-induced. “She loved her kids.”
She added: “We can’t judge her. God’s doing that. She’s suffering in her own way now.”
A rosary is set for 11 a.m. next Friday at Basham Funeral Care, they said, which the funeral home is paying for. A car wash is being planned to raise money for a memorial for the kids.