Woman who says she is biological mother of child whose bones were found demands answers

PERRY VANDELL   | Arizona Republic

Priscilla Marquez was at work on Feb. 3 when she received a text message from her father asking her to call him. 

When she did, he asked her if she was sitting down. He had bad news — and it involved three of her children whom she had lost her parental rights for as she battled an addiction to methamphetamine years ago. 

Her dad said Angelina and Joseph, her 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son, were OK. It was about her daughter, Charisma, who would now be 13. Marquez asked what was wrong. 

"It's the worst thing you can think of," Marquez recalled her father saying. "The worst you could imagine."

Marquez thought her daughter had been sexually abused.

Her father shared that her daughter's remains had been found.  

Marquez said her surroundings went blank as she fell into shock, grasping to a hope that her father's words weren't true. 

"I was crying, hysterical," Marquez told The Arizona Republic. "And I said, 'This can't be happening. They're supposed to be taken care of. They're supposed to be OK.'"

Her father recommended she call her uncle, who had taken care of her children between the time they were removed but before they were adopted. Her uncle told her he learned what had happened when he saw the mugshots of Maribel and Rafael Loera.

They were the couple he had met when they adopted three of his niece's children in 2012. The house where he had dropped them off was now surrounded with crime scene tape.

A demand for answers

Phoenix police arrested Rafael Loera, 56, and Maribel Loera, 50, after firefighters saw human remains hidden within drywall after they extinguished a fire at the couple's west Phoenix home on Jan. 28.

Countless questions haunt Marquez as she processes her daughter's death, the largest being: How did her daughter die two years ago without the Arizona Department of Child Safety — the agency tasked with protecting children — knowing?

"How did you not know that they weren't going to school?" Marquez asked. "She disappeared from school? Did they go to school? Why wasn't there any kind of checkup on them randomly?"

DCS removed three children, including two Marquez says are hers, from the Loeras' home before firefighters found Charisma's remains.

DCS told The Republic on Wednesday that no information was currently releasable under state law.

According to court documents, Rafael Loera told police that the skeletal remains belonged to a girl police believed to be Ana Loera, aka Charisma Marquez, who died in 2017. He said she was sick and he waited several days before attempting to take her to Phoenix Children's Hospital. She began to vomit and convulse in the car before she died. 

Rafael Loera said he and his wife didn't tell anyone about what happened because they didn't want to lose custody of their other children, documents say. Rather than deliver the body to hospital staff, Rafael said he and his wife wrapped the girl in a bedsheet and left her in the attic where she would remain for two years.

Marquez said Rafael Loera's admissions left her dumbfounded. 

"Why couldn't you just take her to the hospital?" Marquez asked. "And if you didn't want anything to happen to your other children, why were you putting hands on them in the first place? He says his wife was doing it and he couldn't stop her. That's no excuse."

Struggling to obtain official documents

Marquez says she lost all six of her children in 2012 while in the throes of addiction. Four went into foster care — Charisma, Angelina and Joseph to one, and another daughter to another — while two more went into the care of her relatives. 

She said she no longer possesses her children's birth certificates and lost many important things when addiction controlled her life.

Estevaun Lauro, Marquez's 21-year-old son who now lives with her, said he's faced numerous roadblocks from DCS when he asked for documentation proving his biological relationship to his half-sister, Charisma.

Lauro said he spoke to someone at DCS who told him they couldn't provide any information as it was an open investigation.

"I just wish they cared a little bit more for families instead of caring about getting a child out of their system and closing a case," Lauro said. 

While Marquez has struggled to provide documentation proving the children adopted by the Loeras were hers, she has provided numerous pictures of her children and has spoken to numerous media outlets about her dismay and anguish over the loss. 

She and her family are planning a public protest on Sunday outside the Loeras' home near 59th Avenue and Camelback Road in Phoenix to call for reform at DCS. 

Charisma owned her namesake

Marquez said Charisma was a happy, spontaneous girl with plenty of spunk before she lost her when Charisma was 4 years old. 

"Her name went with her," Marquez said. "She was very sassy. A sassy little girl. She was going to be the little cheerleader."

She needed to carry a purse and wear bracelets wherever she went. 

"She was going to be the one that grew up to be high maintenance," Marquez said. "We've seen it in her."

Charisma's hair curled in a way that it would slink up after you pulled it down. Marquez remembered one day when Charisma had her hair cut and laughed about the situation as her upset mother tried to repair the damage. Marquez said the incident left her daughter with a mullet. 

Marquez said it was just like Charisma to let any negative feelings slide off her shoulders. 

"She brought sunshine to everybody's sadness," Marquez said. "She was never sad. Never. Even if she got in trouble, which was very rare, she'd be smiling. So I don't understand. How can you hurt an innocent child? What was going on for her not to be smiling?"

Lauro echoed his mother's sentiments, recalling one of Charisma's birthdays where he thought she had gone missing. 

"I was riding my bike looking for her," Lauro said. "I come back inside — she's sleeping underneath all of her gifts, underneath all her presents and everything. And she blended in because she had this little tutu-like dress on."

Lauro said Charisma never failed to cheer him up with her beaming face.

"She could walk up to you and just by looking at her face you're, like, happy," Lauro said. "And you could be in the downest mood and all of sudden just joy walks into the room."

Fighting for reunification

Marquez said she wants Charisma's remains released to her after the autopsy so she may give her daughter the proper burial she deserved two years ago. 

Marquez says she got clean and stopped using meth in 2013, shortly after the Loeras adopted her kids, and has fought hard to piece her life back together. She said she got a job cleaning rooms at a hotel and earned enough promotions to where she now manages the hotel's housekeeping department.

Now, Marquez wants to fight to get back parental rights for her other two children whom DCS removed or — if that's not possible — have a family member adopt them. She worries Angelina and Joseph could be abused again if someone outside their biological family adopted them again.

Fred Marquez, Priscilla's uncle, told The Republic that DCS called him on Tuesday morning and asked if he would be willing to take care of the children — including the 4-year-old girl who isn't a blood relative. He said he would and was arranging an appointment to have his Peoria home inspected. 

However, he says DCS told him there was no guarantee the agency would place the children with him.

Meanwhile, Priscilla Marquez's goal is to save enough to purchase a house for her children to live in, hoping they would choose to return to her once they turned 18 — to give them the stability she wasn't able to give them as kids. 

"I told myself to make myself better," Marquez said. "To get a good job. To be able to grow (so) when they do come looking for me, I would have a home for them to come back to. I would be stable for them because I knew one day that would come."

"Unfortunately, it's not going to come for Charisma." 

Reach the reporter Perry Vandell at 602-444-2474 or perry.vandell@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @PerryVandell.