Albuquerque police found this week what is believed to be the remains of the five missing George family members. It is unclear if authorities are currently treating the deaths as a result of foul play.
Sisters Vanessa and Letitia George, and their three young daughters, ages 1 though 4, went missing last week from Albuquerque. Five sets of remains believed to be the missing women and children were found in sparsely populated Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico; the body of Vanessa George, found on Sunday, has already been positively identified.
Concerned family members called the police late last week after the women and children disappeared under mysterious circumstances. When police visited the home they shared, they became concerned about foul play.
“When officers arrived, they felt that something was not right,” Simon Drobik, an Albuquerque Police Department spokesman, told The Albuquerque Journal over the weekend. “They had left all their belongings behind – cellphones, keys, stuff you would take with you if you left a residence.”
The FBI joined the investigation, and on Tuesday, suggested that authorities are not immediately suspecting the women and children were murdered.
“Foul play by another party is not suspected at this time,” FBI spokesperson Frank Fisher told the Albuquerque Journal, later adding that the deaths were “still under investigation.”
Vanessa and the father of her children, Murphy Becenti, had recently had a domestic dispute in which the police were called. According to a criminal complaint obtained by the Albuquerque Journal, Vanessa George told police that an argument about whether she could take one of her children to a doctor’s appointment instead of going to work turned physical, as Becenti did not want her to miss work. Becenti was arrested and released, and told not to contact Ms. George. But since then, he has admitted to seeing both sisters and the children on January 5.
