CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — On June 27, the Beeville Police Department received several calls with concerns about members of the Vasquez family not being able to get in contact with their relatives that lived on the 300 block of South Harrison Street in Beeville.
Beeville Police Department Police Chief Kevin Behr said that they than began to investigate.
"The reporting parties, relatives and people that live there — called us about 10 o'clock in the morning saying they hadn't been in contact with the decedents for a week or so," Behr said.
Officers later responded to the home for a welfare check.
After entering the home, police found 80-year-old Jose Vasquez and his 67-year-old wife Maria Vasquez dead in the living room — already in a state of decomposition.
“We found them in the front room. The female was on the ground and the male was on top of her which led us to possibly think that this may have not been a natural cause," Behr said.
Behr said because of the way the bodies were positioned, the BPD with the help of the Texas Rangers began to investigate the deaths as a homicide.
However after an investigation, Behr said on Friday he was told the causes of death were heat related.
Officers recalled temperatures inside the home were 115-120 degrees. The home was said to have an air conditioner, but it was not working.
"The heat that we experienced inside the house — it was perfectly reasonable to believe that decomposition did speed up and that is why they were in the state of decomposition that we found them," he said.
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