JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Jerusalem mother suspected in the murder-suicide of her four children was an immigrant from France who had recently reached out for help.
The bodies of her daughters — the oldest 11 — were found Sunday locked in a bedroom in a fifth-floor apartment that had been set on fire. The mother was found dead, apparently hanged, according to reports.
The children’s father on Monday agreed to a “partial autopsy of two of the girls after police investigators found signs that they may have been dead before the fire started,” The Times of Israel reported. The father was not at home at the time of the fire and is not a suspect in his family’s deaths.
The woman, 36, who has not been named, reportedly sought help for depression from the city psychiatric services, which determined that she was not suicidal, Haaretz reported.
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