CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Multiple points of origin for the fire and the condition of Mary Alice Anzaldua's body led Corpus Christi Police Department officers to consider the scene on the 2700 block of Camargo Drive suspicious, according to the arrest affidavit for her son Abraham Anzaldua.
The report states that as Corpus Christi Fire Department firefighters were working to put the fire out, they broke a bedroom window and found an elderly woman in the back bedroom.
Police said the amount of blood found near the woman, later identified as 67-year-old Alicia Anzaldua, suggested she did not die in the fire. Nueces County Medical Examiner's Office investigators later found her to have suffered severe head trauma consistent with bludgeoning, and also found indications that she had been suffocated.
Fire investigators also found that fires has been started in multiple rooms in the house, including the garage, the kitchen and the living room.
After consulting neighbors for security camera footage, police said they spoke with one man who heard a loud "bang," and then saw smoke coming from the home and people hurrying down the street to help put out the fire when he went to look at his cameras. He also said he saw a dark-colored Chevrolet truck leaving the house, which he told police belonged to Abraham, a man who lived at the house with his mother.
Another neighbor also said she had seen Abraham Anzaldua leaving the house in his black truck, and saw the fire department arrive 5 minutes later.
The report states that Abraham Anzaldua's daughter confirmed to police that only her grandmother and father lived at the house, and that her father recently had been using methamphetamines. She said his use had "been particularly bad" that week and that he had been extremely paranoid, "talking to the walls and claiming that the government was following him, and that people are after him."
She also said that her father had assaulted her grandmother and threatened to burn the house down several years ago, and that she had recently become frustrated with his drug use and was ready to kick him out, but hadn't. The granddaughter said Abraham held a grudge against his mother.