Indiana Man Murders Wife and Kids after Arguing About Housework

About 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday, police received a suicide call from the south side of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Arriving at the scene, officers found Simon Rios, 33, on the front porch of his home. Inside, they discovered a puddle of blood on the living room floor. Fearing the worst, police searched the rest of the house and found Rios’ wife, Ana Casas, 28, and their three children lying dead in a bedroom.

Rios told police that after he got home from work about 1:30 a.m., his wife had started arguing with him about doing chores around the house. Rios got angry, grabbed a steel pipe, and hit his wife in the head with it. Then he grabbed an extension cord and strangled her with it. He then grabbed his 20-month old baby daughter Thannya Karolinna and strangled her with his bare hands. He used the extension cord to strangle his other two daughters, 4-year old Katherinne and 10-year old Liliana. After killing his family, Rios carried the bodies of his children into the bedroom and placed them on the bed. He then dragged his wife’s body into the bedroom.

Just one day earlier to their grisly discovery of the murders, police and the FBI had searched homes in Rios’ neighborhood for clues about the disappearance of 10-year old Alejandra Gutierrez, who had disappeared a few days earlier on her way to a school bus stop nearby. So far police have not found a connection between the two cases, but because of Rios killing his family, they will now consider him a suspect in Gutierrez’s disappearance.

Friends and acquaintances are shocked and saddened by the murders and say that saw no signs of trouble in the family before the killings. Nancy Gater, a neighbor of the Rios family, said that the family had moved into the house about four years ago. When Simon lost his job earlier this year, he went down to Mexico for a while. Adolfo Puebla, the godfather of Rios’ youngest daughter, said that the Rios family had attended a birthday party he and his wife hosted Saturday. According to Puebla, the Rios family left happy and laughing. Michael Guzman, who calls Rios a great friend, said that he had never heard Rios even raise his voice to his children, and he had never had anything bad to say about his wife. "Everybody who knows him loves the guy," Guzman said.

According to court records, Rios was convicted in 2003 of a misdemeanor battery charge, but it is not clear who the victim of that assault was. The court at that time ordered Rios to stay away from the victim, but that order was lifted in July 2003. In court Wednesday Rios pleaded not guilty to four preliminary counts of murder and two counts of moving a body. Prosecutors have not indicated that they will seek the death penalty.