Converse, TX: Converse police investigate apparent murder-suicide

By Eva Ruth Moravec - Express-News
A woman is believed to have fatally stabbed her husband and then hanged herself inside the couple's Converse home, where their decomposing bodies were discovered Saturday night.

Authorities have not yet released the names of the people, who were found dead in the 8900 block of Slumber Street around 7:30 p.m., according to Converse Police Department Assistant Chief Rex Rheiner. It appeared the couple had been dead for at least two weeks, he said.

Neighbors identified the couple as Yadira Medrano, 30, and Jerry Medrano, 34. Neighbors said they had lived in the home for about eight months and stayed mostly to themselves, but typically kept their yard tidy.

Anthanette Bell, who lives across the street, said she began to worry when the couple's yard was noticeably unruly. Phone books that were dropped off about two weeks ago still lie on the couple's front porch, and newspapers had piled up, she said.

On Friday, a city employee issued a citation for an ordinance violation — the couple's grass was too high, records show.

“I was about to call police, but then I thought, well, it is Spring Break; maybe they went somewhere,” Bell said.

Then on Saturday, one of Jerry Medrano's coworkers came to check on him. The couples' vehicles were still parked in the drive. The coworker asked the couple's next-door neighbor, Skye Williams, if she had seen or heard from Jerry Medrano, who hadn't showed up to work in several weeks.

“He said Jerry had been out for at least two weeks; he was a no-call, no-show,” Williams said. “Then, I started thinking it was weird that the grass was so high.”

The couple's two black dogs, which live in a fenced-in backyard, appeared famished as they nearly inhaled the food Williams fed them, she said. Williams sniffed around her next-door neighbors' house and stopped in her tracks near the back, at the master bedroom window.

“I said, ‘I know what I smell, and it's not good,'” she recalls.

Officers pried through burglar bars and picked the front door lock, Williams said, and asked neighbors to stand across the street. Bell said Jerry Medrano had moved out of the house about a month ago after his wife allegedly stabbed him, but he didn't call police and only told his coworkers. She said he moved back into the home shortly after his birthday on Feb. 20.