Mother questioned after daughter found dead in bedroom

TOLUCA, Mexico – A disabled four-year-old girl whose disappearance became the talk of the region was found dead in her own bedroom…

TOLUCA, Mexico – A disabled four-year-old girl whose disappearance became the talk of the region was found dead in her own bedroom more than a week later.

Prosecutors said on Wednesday the girl had been asphyxiated, and that her mother is a suspect.

The discovery of Paulette Gebara Farah’s body under the mattress of her bed at her wealthy parents’ apartment late on Tuesday left prosecutors struggling to explain how multiple searches could have been conducted without her being found.

Investigators were not looking for the girl in the apartment on the outskirts of Mexico City when they found her body, but were searching for suitcases or other family possessions that might have been missing or moved.

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“There was a presence of odours,” Mexico state attorney Gen Alberto Bazbaz said.

He also said he had talked to the mother in the bedroom where the body was found but had detected nothing. This suggested the possibility that the mother, a lawyer, had spoken to authorities and journalists while sitting on the bed under which her daughter’s body was found.

Since she was reported missing on March 22nd by her parents, family and supporters had scattered images of Paulette on flyers across Mexico City.

The girl had difficulty walking and talking because of a disability.

Gen Bazbaz said prosecutors initially assumed Paulette had been taken from the luxury apartment building. But he said they became suspicious of the mother, Lisette Farah, after she was overheard telling her other daughter not to talk because the family might be blamed for the disappearance.

Lisette Farah, her husband, Mauricio Gebara, and two nannies were put under a form of house arrest for questioning on Monday.

Authorities said the four were not suspects. They were being held at a hotel in Toluca and were not available to comment on the prosecutors’ statement.

It was not clear whether the spot where Paulette’s body was found wrapped in sheets was where she died, or whether the body had been moved, authorities said. The family lives in a wealthy suburb of Mexico City.

In previous television interviews, the mother said she had put Paulette to bed in her bedroom on the night of March 21st.

The next morning, one of her nannies reported that she was not in her room, and investigators found no signs of forced entry to the apartment. – (AP)