Teen girls likely died 5 days before father at Renton home, investigators say

RENTON, Wash. — Two girls, a 16-year-old and 17-year-old, who were found dead inside of their father’s Renton home last weekend are estimated to have died on Dec. 5, before their father.

Their father, whose body was found alongside them, is estimated to have died five days later, according to Renton police who got that information from the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.

However, officials said those dates have a considerable margin of error as a report into their deaths has not been completed.

KIRO 7 talked to the girl’s mother, Betsy Alvarado, on Wednesday and she said her daughters “were amazing.”

Police have said there was no evidence of foul play, forced entry into the home, carbon monoxide poisoning or drug use, leaving the question open of how the three died.

On Monday when KIRO 7 talked with Renton Police Department Detective Robert Onishi, he said, “Obviously, something killed them. We don’t know what.”

Onishi also said, “We don’t often have death scenes where we have multiple bodies and no apparent, approximate cause.”

“All I do all day is try to put things together,” said Alvarado. But despite all the questions, she and the girls’ stepfather, Ron Anderson, have their own theory.

Alvarado identified the girls’ father and her former husband as 33-year-old Manuel Gil.

Onishi said identifying the girls’ father was initially difficult because “his driver’s license was older. He also lost quite a bit of weight.”

Onishi also said the only criminal history the girl’s father had with Renton police was a traffic infraction.

Alvarado told KIRO 7 that the girls “were being brainwashed by what they were calling a religion but must be a cult.”

She said her former husband was following an extremist fringe of the Black Hebrew Israelites. The Anti-Defamation League classifies some sects of the religion as a hate group.

From the clothes they wore to their diet and even behavior, Anderson said he could see over the last two years how their lives started to change. “Everything just seemed to keep on progressing and getting more extreme and more extreme,” he said.

Things became so extreme that Alvarado said she didn’t spend any quality time with her daughters over the last 10 months.

Onishi added more information will be clear once the toxicology reports are released in a few weeks.

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