Mother, kids shot to death in Dallas home

[December 20, 2008]  DALLAS (AP) -- A mother and her two young children were found shot to death Friday, possibly by the mother who may have also staged a series of attacks on the family over the last two weeks, police said.

Police responding to a report of gunfire found the bodies of 49-year-old Jeanmarie Geis, her 8-year-old son and her 4-year-old daughter in their Dallas home Friday morning.

No official ruling on the deaths has been made. "We are still waiting for tests to come back to determine if it was in fact a murder/suicide," Dallas police spokesman Senior Cpl. Kevin Janse said.

Frank Geis, Jeanmarie Geis' husband, was at a doctor's office at the time of the shootings and was questioned and released. "He's been very forthcoming," Lt. Craig Miller said, adding that police are not calling him a suspect.

Police said there were at least three disturbance calls involving the dead woman since Dec. 6, when she reported that a gun-wielding man stole her purse and laptop computer outside the real-estate office where she worked with her husband.

Officers had visited the home twice within the past week, responding to a reported home invasion, assault and kidnapping.

"We are looking to determine whether or not they were valid offenses and whether they occurred the way they were reported," Miller said.

On Dec. 13, 51-year-old Frank Geis was interviewed by police after he was apparently assaulted in his home, according to police reports obtained by The Dallas Morning News. His wife told police that two men dressed in black and wearing ski masks and gloves burst into the home around 8:30 a.m. She said they beat her husband with a hammer on the right side of his head.

Frank Geis, however, told police he could not recall anything past 12:30 a.m., according to the police report.

Jeanmarie Geis said that after the assault on her husband, she was kidnapped by the two men. She told police the men tied her up with duct tape and taped her eyes shut.

Later, the men put her in a car and tried to sexually assault her. She told police that when she resisted, they pushed her out of the car and fled the scene, according to police reports.

The next day, she was in her driveway when a man approached her, put a gun to her head and forced her into a car, according to police reports. He made her remove her shirt and rubbed the barrel of the gun across her face, she told police. The man then told her, "You're going to be mine."

Jeanmarie Geis also told police that the man said, "This is for what your sweet daddy did to my family." The woman was the daughter of the late state District Judge Mark Tolle, who presided over some high-profile criminal trials in Dallas.

According to the police reports, Geis escaped from the car. The man chased her and pinned her to the ground but fled again when a nearby garage door opened.

[Associated Press; By JEFF CARLTON]

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