The Associated Press
PORT ARTHUR, TX - Three elderly women were found dead in their closets this week in this southeast Texas town, authorities said.
Two of the women were found Thursday in the same neighborhood. Police said they believe both were victims of foul play, but that it did not appear that the women had been shot or stabbed.
A third woman, Dorothy Barrett, was discovered Monday. An autopsy showed she died of trauma to the chest. She had been kicked and punched, authorities said.
All three women were 82 years old.
Meanwhile, a 60-year-old woman said she was attacked in her home Thursday when she went inside from working in the yard and saw that her purse had been tampered with.
Police were questioning a man in connection with the deaths, but he was not necessarily a suspect, Assistant Police Chief Mark Blanton told the Beaumont Enterprise in Friday’s editions. He said investigators were looking for a man who was seen riding a blue bicycle with a basket or child seat on the back.
The attacker may have been casing area neighborhoods to learn the women’s daily routines, police said.
Port Arthur is a town of 56,000 people about 90 miles east of Houston.