2 years after she was murdered, Tri-Cities grandmother’s body has never been found

Two years ago, Estela Torres Rodriguez started boiling a chicken on her stovetop.

Her son, his girlfriend and another son left the 54-year-old grandmother at home while they grabbed a late breakfast down the road in Pasco.

The trio returned less than two hours later to find the pot was burning with all of the liquid boiled away.

Estela was gone. So was her Buick Rendezvous.

She remains missing 730 days later, and those who are believed to know her whereabouts are either locked up in the Franklin County jail or hiding in Mexico.

Authorities say all evidence points to the fact Estela was killed the morning of March 28, 2019, and her body hidden by her husband and an adult son.

However, sheriff’s deputies have yet to find any human remains after a half-dozen searches on the ground and by air focused in rural north Franklin County around the Connell area.

“That’s a tough deal because how do you — as a daughter or a son or a family member — how do you bring closure without that piece, with the body still hanging out there?” Sheriff Jim Raymond told the Tri-City Herald on Friday.

Her abandoned SUV was located one week after her disappearance at a Highway 395 rest stop.

Both husband Tiburcio Larios Rodriguez, 65, and son Clemente Rodriguez Torres, 35, are charged in Franklin County Superior Court with first-degree murder.

“We still have detectives assigned to the case. They reread reports looking to see if they’ve missed something, but we’re just kind of in a holding pattern until the husband is taken into custody,” Raymond added. “The FBI is supposedly going to run him down one of these days and bring him back.”

Rodriguez Torres was arrested after nearly six months on the run. Family, investigators and prosecutors had hoped he would shed some light on what happened, but that door was closed after he met with his attorney.

A GoFundMe account was started by daughter Gardenia Rodriguez to help with bringing home the mother of nine.

“The police believe my father and brother have something to do with her disappearance,” she wrote. “The rest of us siblings are completely lost and don’t even understand this situation they left us in.”

She was “a selfless, caring and loving person and never hesitated nor refused to help others when in need,” Gardenia Rodriguez wrote. “If she had $5 left in her pocket and someone needed something, she would give her $5 not caring if she would (be) without anything.”

In the two years since, Gardenia Rodriguez has remained committed to finding her mother with frequent Facebook posts about Estela.

In one post with the hashtag “bring Estela home,” she said she hurts every single day without her mother, and that “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”

Earlier this month, in recognition of International Women’s Day, she wrote “My mother has inspired me in many ways and many reasons. I will not stop until I know where she’s at.”

Estranged marriage

Estela and her husband of 30 years had separated in February 2019. Relatives say he wanted to reunite and she repeatedly refused, even in the hours before she disappeared.

What started out as a missing person investigation led to premeditated murder charges after detectives found evidence of what they say must have been a violent attack at 140 Orchard Road.

Estela had been alone inside the home, just north of Pasco in the county, when her husband and son allegedly confronted her, killed her and then tried to clean up.

The charges against the two Prosser men are based on three large blood stains discovered on the living room carpet, along with other evidence including her clothes and jewelry tossed into the garbage.

The two suspects were believed to have fled to Mexico shortly after the killing.

Rodriguez Torres returned from Mexico and surrendered at the San Ysidro border entering San Diego on Sept. 19, 2019, and waived his extradition to the Tri-Cities.

He has been in the Franklin County jail since October 2019, with bail set at $1 million. Trial currently is set for June 9.

The case has been delayed — like all others in the Benton-Franklin Superior Court system — over the past year because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Then, at a March 9 hearing, defense attorney Shelley Ajax said she needed a three-month continuance after receiving redacted reports from the prosecutor’s office.

His father’s whereabouts are still unknown.

Sheriff Raymond has said the federal government is working with the Mexican government to try to find Larios Rodriguez, and is taking steps to get a warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

“We know he’s alive. We know where he went when he was in this country, and we know the family has assets down in Mexico,” said Raymond, discussing the probability that Larios Rodriguez eventually will be found. “It’s just a matter of time. Our government is getting with that government and working those processes out, and that can take a long time.”

The sheriff suspects Larios Rodriguez may be caught at the border one day just like his son.

In the meantime, they remain fairly confident that Estela’s body is somewhere in the corner of Franklin County — north or northeast of Connell — and hope for the day they will catch a break on her location.

“You would have thought if it was something obvious, with farmers farming and people hunting, that we would have heard something by now, but we haven’t,” said Raymond.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office at 509-545-3501.