Cops: Calif. Dad Killed Kids, Put Bodies in Trash

Man arrested after cleaning crew finds bloodstains in apartment
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted May 8, 2012 8:49 AM CDT
Cops: Calif. Dad Killed Kids, Put Bodies in Trash
Arlet Hernandez Contreras, 31, lay unidentified in the morgue for 10 days after her body was found in a gutter.   (AP Photo/Orange Police Department)

Police in Los Angeles County have the grim task of searching a landfill for the bodies of a toddler and a baby they believe were killed by their father and dumped in the trash. Investigators believe Shazer Fernando Limas stabbed his boys, a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old, to death along with their mother, Arlet Contreras, whose body was left in a gutter but not identified until it had been in the morgue for 10 days, reports the Los Angeles Times. He was arrested after a car chase and charged with three counts of murder. “This is like something you'd see on TV,” says a disbelieving cop.

Limas is believed to have carried out the murders in mid-April, but police did not start searching for him and his family until last week, when a cleaning crew at the apartment he had moved out of discovered bloodstains on the walls and under the carpet and called the authorities. Investigators believe he kept the bodies in the apartment for around 10 days. Prosecutors say he had been ordered to start paying child support to his dead girlfriend on April 1 and that could have been the motive, reports the AP. (More Shazer Limas stories.)

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