KENNEWICK — A tip led investigators to the shallow grave of a mother of nine on an arid remote lot in Eastern Washington.
The discovery five miles outside of Connell ends a more than four-year search for Estela Torres Rodriguez.
Franklin County sheriff’s officials announced the discovery at a news conference Tuesday. They were joined by the county coroner and prosecutor and Torres Rodriguez’s family, still grieving the loss of a woman they have described as “selfless and caring.”
Torres Rodriguez, 54, disappeared on March 28, 2019, while she was cooking at her Orchard Road home north of Pasco.
While her estranged husband and son are charged with killing her, investigators were never able to find her body. Still, Commander Marcus Conner said the searching never stopped.
“Deputies have driven hundreds of miles of roads. Numerous volunteers and agency partners assisted the search on foot and by horseback, and detectives have searched at least 10 separate locations with shovels and cadaver dogs,” he said.
And anytime, Conner was in the Connell area about 30 miles north of the Tri-Cities, he drove through the area to see if he could pick up some new hint to her disappearance. Their last widespread search was last fall.
Then a tip from an unnamed source led them to a specific plot of land that they’d searched before.
“To be frank, it’s a needle in a haystack out there. So we’ve spent a lot of time in that area. We just needed that extra information to help us really pinpoint the location,” he said.
Missing mother and grandmother
Estela and Tiburcio Larios Rodriguez, her husband of 30 years, had separated a month before she vanished, and he told relatives he wanted them to get back together, but she repeatedly refused.
Three of her daughters later told the Herald that she thought she was finally free of their bad relationship.
“I was thinking that this time, she was free,” said one daughter at the time.
Her daughters described their father both as a jealous and stern man, but also as a funny and loving patriarch. But they agree their parents had a troubled marriage that started when she was 16 and he was 26.
Their mom tried leaving him several times over the years, but each time, their children talked them into working it out.
But then their parents returned from Mexico in February 2019 — months earlier than expected — and Estela claimed her husband had attacked her.
“My mom said, ‘I can’t be with him any more,’” Gardenia Rodriguez said at the time. “This time she put her foot down.”
She moved out and lived with family members. And Tiburcio moved in with relatives in Prosser but seemed depressed and lost, they said.
Investigators believe Tiburcio Larios Rodriguez and son Clemente Torres Rodriguez, 37, went to her home, confronted her and then killed her.
Other family members saw her that morning at the house but when they returned hours later she was gone, food was burning on the stovetop and her SUV was missing.
Her husband and son also were gone.
Investigators found three large bloodstains in the living room, her clothes and jewelry in a dumpster and cash missing cash. They later found her SUV abandoned in at a Highway 395 rest area.
First-degree murder warrants were later issued for Tiburcio Larios Rodriguez and Clemente Torres Rodriguez but only Clemente has been arrested. He was caught returning to the U.S. from Mexico in September 2019.
He remains jailed in Franklin County with a trial set for Aug. 16.
His father remains on the run and is believed to be in Mexico.
Franklin County released new photos of Tiburcio Larios Rodriguez on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Conner said they are still working to find Tiburcio and asked if anyone has any information on his possible location to call the sheriff’s office.
Estela Rodriguez Torres’ remains are being sent to the Washington state forensic anthropologist at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office in hopes of determining how she died.
