MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — Just hours before her death, Tabasha Paige-Criado looked like she didn’t have a care in the world.
A surveillance video shows her smiling broadly inside her neighborhood convenience store before walking outside to get a ride home with police. Hours later, she would be dead, along with her four young children.
Police suspect that within the two hours after police took her home Monday morning, her husband, Jordan Adam Criado, stabbed his wife and children, then went around their Medford home setting it on fire, and then stayed inside as it filled with smoke.
Paige-Criado and her four children, Elijah Criado, 7; Isaac Criado, 6; Andrew Criado, 5, and Aurora Criado, 2, were pronounced dead at the hospital.
Police are waiting for Criado to recover enough to leave the hospital, where he was sedated and listed in stable condition, before they arrest him, said Police chief Tim George.
The surveillance video shows Paige-Criado standing at the register in the Minute Mart at 7:46 a.m. Monday, nearly two hours after her husband had reported her missing to police.
A store clerk, Laurie Grow, said Paige-Criado was talking calmly on her cell phone when she came in and bought three packets of fruit-flavored cigar wrappers for 89 cents each, then sat at a table. Grow confirmed that the woman in the video was Paige-Criado.
The woman is dressed in a black cap, black sweat shirt, black pants and white running shoes. She appears to be texting on her phone, then looks outside, stands up and smiles broadly before walking out to join police who had been looking for her.
Police said she did not appear nervous or frightened in the car or when she got home, where they watched her talking to her husband.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, investigators went through the small single-story house, searching for the item used to stab the five family members and other evidence. Police said so far their investigation has concluded that the fire, which they believe to be arson, was started at multiple locations around the house in a working-class neighborhood blocks from downtown.
Authorities have not released a motive. Before she showed up at the convenience store, Paige-Criado had been out all night, police said. Her husband reported her missing at 5:30 a.m. Monday.
It was not Criado’s first marriage: He was married to another woman in California, where court records showed he had been convicted of molesting three children in Sacramento County in 1990.
He was arrested in December 1989 and pleaded guilty in August 1990 to eight counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The convictions were first reported Tuesday by the Medford Mail Tribune.
He returned to jail for 91 days in 2005 for failing to register as a sex offender, according to court records from Kern County, Calif.
